SMC Places:Searsville

Map of Searsville - Situated on the El Corte Rancho The property of H. Templeton
Surveyed by A S Easton - County Surveyor San Mateo Apr 1866
Filed 1 May 1866 by Thomas H Noble, County Recorder

 "After traveling through the mines for some time, he returned to San Francisco and in 1853 came to this county. The next year he built a house on the site of what was afterwards Searsville. Here he established a blacksmithing and wagon making shop and in 1857, he was in partnership with the late Daniel Ford. Disposing of his Searsville property in 1861, Mr. Sears moved to La Honda where he has remained up to the time of his death. " RC Democrat 20 Jun 1907

So began the town of Searsville.  

In Jan 1862 floods swept away six sawmills in the vicinity of Searsville.   Simon Knight lost a child when a slide from the mountain rushed towards his house.  Simon managed to run with two children, but a son of five or six was crushed and buried when he couldn't run fast enough. The child, unnamed, was buried in Union Cemetery in Redwood City. (California Farmer and Journal of Useful Sciences (San Francisco)--Vol: XVI Iss:14 Pg: 130) 

Later that year the SMC Board of Supervisors granted SM Tilton  the right to construct a turnpike between Searsville and Pescadero, which was then in Santa Cruz County. (Supervisor Minutes Vol 19 pg 270 Road Account No 347)

San Francisco Bulletin, 23 Dec 1863 Vol:XVII Iss:65 Pg:3

SF Bulletin 3 Jul 1865 Vol:XX Iss:74 Pg:2

The town continued to grow.  A.A. Davis and August Eikerenkoetter opened hotels and advertised in the San Francisco papers. Advertisements for help could be found in local papers.

SF Chronicle 3 Apr 1869  pg2

SF Abend Post 3 Apr 1871 p2

Among those who could be found traveling from Searsville and staying in San Francisco hotels were WE Knott, August Eikerenkotter, E Edmunds and RJ Weeks.

Searsville School
courtesy San Mateo County Historical Association

By 1871 the town and surrounding area had grown enough to have 99 students as//////// .  However, in 1877 when the Grand Jury reported that the Searsville School Board had spent $600 on grand piano, there were only 30 students. (Weekly Alta California 14 Apr 1877 p2)

SF Chronicle 10 May 1881 p2

The Searsville Water Company was incorporated in 1872 to acquire water from Arrago Clanbique and Otter Creeks to supply the inhabitants of Searsville and the surrounding vicinity. 

In May of 1881 the Searsville Hotel and Store was put up for sale by August Eikerenkotter. (SF Bulletin, 16 Nov 1872 pg3)
By 1886 Searsville was being considered as a good site for a water project.  It was reported that Charles Web Howard as president of the Spring Valley Water Company had been purchasing land for a reservoir for about five years, and now had nearly all the land required. (SF Bulletin 7 Apr 1886 p3)  A description of the project can be found in the SF Chroncle on 30 Dec 1886. 

The building of the dam took a little longer than the three years originally estimated, but in 1891 the dam was complete, the buildings of Searsville were removed and Searsville Lake was filled.  

Thus ended the town of Searsville.

Some deaths recorded for individuals connected to Searsville include

• Nathan Dawley 23 May 1874 age 57  SF Chronicle
• Frank Booza Pioneer of the county committed suicide 27 Oct 1890 age 65 SF Bulletin
• Louis Stephens "French Louie" 19 Aug 1891 suicide SF Chronicle
• John P Kelly (born in Searsville) in MP 27 Nov 1898  SF Chronicle
• John H Sears 19 Jun 1907 SF Chronicle

courtesy of San Mateo County Historical Association

For Further Research.....
The Town of Searsville - Journal of Local History Summer 2009 RWC Archives Committee
When San Jose was Young: Searsville (San Jose Evening News 9 Mar 1918)
San Mateo County - SF Chronicle 25 May 1890
The Sears Family in Union Cemetery













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Life Story and Family History Writing Group

We would like to form a local group to encourage, support, and learn from each other by sharing writing skills, tips, ideas, organizational strategies, etc.  A ‘sharing of writing’ component would be part of each session. You are invited to join us at a planning meeting on Sunday, Aug 6 at 2 pm. If you are interested, or have questions, please mailing Elle Hedenkamp at e.hedenkamp@stanfordalumni.org or Craig at craigincal@hotmail.com

We hope to hear from you! 

SMCGS Sharing Stories 2017

San Mateo County Pioneers

by Laurie Coulter

My grandparents, Fritz and Louisa Meyer were part of the early growth and development of San Mateo County, in California. They were not part of the wealthy Floods, Menzes, Crockers or Stanfords, but they did play a part in the economic and social growth of the county south of the big City of San Francisico.

Annie, Carl and Freida Meyer and Arthur Wolfe

In the late 1880's San Mateo County was starting to find its own identity other than a country home for the wealthy. Towns which had grown up around stagecoach stops began to flourish. Redwood City less than 30 miles south of San Francisco, had a port. The port on the San Francisco Bay gave access for the redwood cut in the coastal hills to be milled and shipped north to San Francisco and east to the delta and the gold country. Most roads were dirt and horse and wagon were the main source of local transportation.

Fritz and Louise settled in a village called Woodside nestled beneath the coastal hills, about two miles west of Redwood City. They had both traveled a long way to get there. Their families were part of the wave of German immigrants who came to the USA in the mid to late 1800's. They came with their families and extended families many of whom settled in German communities in the midwest. Fritz was born in 1850 and named Fredrick in the farming town of Oiste, Germany, about 70 miles northwest of Hanover. At the age of eighteen he had been in the United States at least five years, because he applied for American citizenship in Mason County Indiana in the year of 1868.  Two years later he is living with relatives in Alameda County, California working as a farm worker. Seven years later he marries Louisa Bolte, born in 1854 also in Oiste, Germany on August 24,1877. Three years after that they have settled in Woodside on the western side of the San Francisco Bay, with two children, Margaret age two years and Henry, age six months.

The Meyers managed to buy a bit of land and build a house. They raised vegetables and chickens. Fritz was hired to work for the county watering the dirt roads, particularly the logging road that carried the lumber to the port of Redwood City. That road, Woodside Road is a major arterial road to the present day. Louisa was busy raising their family. They had nine children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. They were in addition to Margaret and Henry: Louise, b 1881; Augusta, b1883; Freida, b 1885; Anna, b 1887; Matilda, b 1889; Carl, b 1891; and Hazel b 1895. Both Augusta and Matilda died a month after birth.

Farmhouse and Barn with Freida and her future husband Arthur,
Hazel, Carl & Henry (hat).

Henry never married, and was a gardener at the developing Leland Stanford Jr. University, Lou and Margaret worked as housekeepers for the affluent in San Francisco until the 1906 earthquake, when they were brought home, never to work outside the home again. Margaret , Annie and Frieda married and raised their famlies in the area. Carl, my dad, grew up and left home to live in the industrial city of South San Francisco. He worked in the booming meat industry, in the stockyards, slaughterhouses and eventually as a plant manager. Lou and Hazel never married. They lived in the family farmhouse until 1957 when it was sold to support them.

Meyer Gravesite, Union Cemetery, RWC aft. 1903

Fritz died in 1900 as a result of an accident. He was watering the county road and got kicked in the head by his horse.  He was only 50 years old. There is an obituary and a small newspaper article about the accident in the local paper. Louisa died in 1903 of influx of the bowels after a brief illness. Both are buried in the historic Union Cemetery on Woodside Road in Redwood City, CA. along with three of their children, the babies, Augusta and Matilda and son Henry. The rest of the family for the most part, is buried in Colma, CA at Cypress Lawn Cemetery.

Fritz and Louisa were pioneers. They were ordinary people who contributed to the growth and viability of San Mateo County. They will not be found in the history books but they had to be tenacious and kind to have raised a wonderful family. I am still in touch with several cousins because of the value that our parents taught us about the importance of families sticking together.

There is a small obituary for my grandmother Louisa that states that she was a "devoted mother, a true Christian woman and good neighbor and admired for her many womanly virtues." It also states that she was "well known and liked by all." She died at age 48 years leaving five adult children and two young ones, my dad Carl and his sister Hazel. They were raised by their older siblings and it seems Louisa's values of hard work and kindness were passed on to them. Values I got from my dad were about the importance of family, hospitality, never turning anyone away who needs help and doing acts of kindness without any notice to oneself.  4 Jun 2015

Searsville Lake - when it opened for water and Recreation abt. 1893
Annie, Louisa holding Carl, Freida, Fritz, Margaret, Lou, & Henry Meyer
(Hazel wasn't born yet)

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Laurie Coulter has been a member of SMCGS for 8 years. She was born in San Francisco but raised in San Mateo and has lived on the peninsula ever since. Her Dad was born in Woodside in the 1890s where the family had a farmhouse until the 1950s.  She is actively working on her First Families Application.  Laurie started taking classes from Gayle Simon and says "My classes led me to writing stories about my family as a way of sharing the family history which is so much more than a pedigree chart. Since I had no elders to ask, I decided that my own memories and those of my sister and cousins will have to do. I use research for gaps, but I inherited a lot of documents and photos which gain meaning and context in the stories. For now my focus remains on what we know collaboratively  and what I can verify."

© 2017 Laurie Coulter - Please contact SMCGS  for permissions.

The Life and Times of Dennis Martin

We all know the excitement of finding information on our families, but Bo Crane has gone a step beyond.  He has delved into "The Life and times of Dennis Martin", not because he is related, but because he wondered why a creek bore his "full" name.  His interest led to a fascinating study of one of the earliest settlers in the area that eventually became San Mateo County.

If you missed the SMCGS meeting last Saturday, you failed to hear how he found an 1883 map showing the buildings on his land.  Of course by then he had lost the land through the final 1864 Supreme court decision in Greer et Al vs. the Arguellos.

Bo delved into that land decision as well as all other aspects of the life of Dennis not only in San Mateo County, but in his journey from Ireland to Canada, and by wagon train to California in 1844.

The back of the book provides the following summary, "Dennis Martin, an Irish immigrant, died as a broke old man in San Francisco and was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in his own abandoned cemetery wiles west of the Menlo Park depot. His estranged daughters refused to attend his burial. His times spanned the Irish immigration to the New World, the Westward movement from the Missouri River to across the snowy Sierra, armed power struggles between Alta California factions, the Bear Flag revolt, the Gold Rust, the Railroad Big Four and the Silver Bonanza Kings, the demise of Searsville and Mayfield along with the growth of Menlo Park, Woodside, Redwood City, Portola Valley, Palo Alto and Stanford University, as well as the beginnings of Atherton, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos Hills and San Francisco

In gathering information for the book, Bo visited with family members and historians. He gathered maps and pictures from Stanford, the San Mateo County Historical Association, Bancroft Library and more. His list of primary sources fills five pages.

This well researched, well written book goes well beyond the story of Dennis Martin and his family.  About halfway through the book, you run into the appendix,  "Historical Background - Chapter by Chapter." The background discussions cover everything from Woodside, Searsville and SLAC to Ireland, early Canada, Missouri, and the O regon and California trails.  There are notes on many early families in the county, early churches, early cemeteries.  You can read about the Greers, the Mezes, the Hopkins and many other early players in the county's history.

Although you can find the book in the SMCGS library, it is well worth adding to your home library. You can order a copy by sending an email to bcrane65@comcast.net, visting his website dennismartin.net, or on Amazon.


Denis Martin Cemetery