Details a little blurry in this old photo of a building in Bear River. Any idea what or where it was?
She is none other then the old Capetown Hotel which burned down. Charles Willis Ward mentions Capetown in his book Humboldt County, California: the Land of Unrivaled Undeveloped Natural Resources on the Western Rim of the American Continent Published in 1915
Ward’s book can be read in it entirety at books.Google.com
John Lofland in the blog Davis History Today shares a booklet he found while visiting Ferndale written by Viola Russ McBride. I had never seen the book, titled University Farms verses CO-EDs, or heard this particular tale. The story is about Viola turning the tables on a sexist instructor, and is available from the Ferndale Museum.
It strikes me that the acorn didn’t fall to far from the tree here. Growing up I heard of the historical reference to “Z Russ & Sons” and could never quite figure out what the Z was all about, but thought it sounded cool at any rate. Then I stumbled on an article that tell of when the Hon. Joseph Russ died, his wife Zipporah (Viola’s grandmother) continued his empire as Z. Russ & Sons”!
I suspect she chose to abbreviate her name to cope with the prejudices of her time.
In researching Viola Russ McBride one must keep in mind that she changed her name from Dorthy May Russ to Viola Russ McBride. I remember asking my dad about this and he mentioned it was to more closely resemble her mother’s name, Viola May Russ (Lake), who died in1913 when Dorthy was about 7 yrs old. I remember some family commonly referring to her as Dot. I wished I knew more, but those in the know are gone or not talking much.
Note: Patricia Costanzo (Patty Jean) has scanned hundreds of photo from Viola’s collection, rendering them into a digital format. VMET is working on an accessible portal for browsing the collection.
