 Hello everyone! My name is Angela and I work in the beautiful Lorraine and Earl Barnes Miller Special Collections Room at the Billie Jean King Main Library in our Long Beach Public Library system. In the Miller Room, in addition to focusing on the study of the arts and performing arts, especially Asian arts and culture, we also focus on local history, specifically in Long Beach. So larger topics and events in California history are also of interest, especially when they play a part in the settlement and development of our local and regional history in this area of Southern California. For that reason, I'm here today to introduce you to a special and rather extraordinary book that not many people know about, but it's one that you should definitely add to your summer reading list, especially as the overarching theme for our summer reading program is Dig Deeper and this week's theme that we're going to dig into is Family History. The book I'm going to tell you about really digs down into a number of fascinating local history and family history profits here in the greater Long Beach and Los Angeles area, focusing on rancher life from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. So without further ado, let's dig deeper into one of the most interesting, charming and engaging nonfiction books involving local history and family history that I've ever read and one that I heartily recommend and encourage people to read entitled, Adobe Days by Sarah Bixby Smith. The author of this book, Sarah Bixby Smith, was born to Llewellyn Bixby and Mary Hathaway Bixby in August 1781 on San Jusdo Ranch near San Juan Batista, California. Her first story, entitled A Little Girl of Old California, was published in 1920, which was later expanded and published as the book Adobe Days in 1925. Adobe Days details Sarah Bixby Smith's childhood on the family sheep branches with a warm and daring and richly detailed style full of vivid recollections and rich imagery that tells a variety of stories about the pioneering Bixby family as they rose to prominence in California. This book also provides fascinating insights into the early history and development of Long Beach as well as the frontier town, Pueblo Days of Los Angeles through the end of the late 19th century, early 20th century. Though this book is not widely known to the public, it certainly deserves to be. It's considered a classic of California autobiography and memoir. Let's begin exploring it now. Adobe Days begins with an overview of the Bixby Flint and Hathaway families of Maine. Sarah's father Llewellyn Bixby decided in 1851 at the age of 25 to travel with his cousin, Dr. Thomas Flint and his brother, Amos Bixby, to join their cousin, Benjamin Flint, who had already traveled to California in 1849 in the early days of the Gold Rush. This is where the Adobe Days story of the Bixby family really gets underway. The family's westward migration begins at the time of the Gold Rush in California, which eventually launches quite a number of Bixby and Hathaway relatives to journey to California to find their fortune, get married, or just begin life anew with their family now living on the West Coast. Llewellyn, his brother and cousin, took a steamship down the Atlantic coast of Panama in 1851, crossed the isthmus and journeyed up the Pacific coast to Panas with the San Francisco, where they disembarked and traveled to the loom town of Volcano, where the relative Benjamin Flint was working, in their Sutter's Mill, where Gold was first discovered. A year later, in 1852, Llewellyn's brothers, Jotham and Marcella Bixby, also traveled out to California to join their brothers and cousins. Ultimately, the Bixby and Flint are examples of people who came to the Goldfield to strike it rich, but ended up seeing more opportunities in other areas of work that would be more lucrative than gold mining. Such as working trade with supplied gold miners and the loom town growing up around the gold mining industry, where they worked as bookchairs in the mercantile business, selling provisions, and raising livestock. To explain some of the early history pertaining to the Bixby's gold rush activities in Northern California, including their eventual move to sheep ranching activities in the Central California area, and then down to Rancho Los Rios and Rancho Los Alamitos, and what eventually became Long Beach. Let's take a look at this video, which provides a broad overview of the family's activities from the Gold Rush Convert. That same year, James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill near Sacramento. The Gold Rush began, and people came from all over the world to look for riches. Few miners became wealthy. Prices for food and housing were high. The work was not easy. And gold was hard to find. Some men made more money by becoming merchants and supplying miners with things they needed to live. Three of these men were Llewellyn Bixby and his cousins, Benjamin and Thomas Flint. Mr. Bixby and his cousins didn't enjoy mining very much. They soon bought a butcher shop and sold fresh meat to the gold miners. Their shop did well, and Mr. Bixby and the Flint's decided to become ranchers and raise their own animals. They sailed to their home in the east to buy sheep, which they would bring back to California. It took ten months to drive the sheep across the United States. The men settled near the Mission San Juan Batista and bought a ranch. Twice a year, they sheared the wool off the sheep and sold it to merchants in San Francisco. They also sold some sheep for food. In 1861, the civil war broke out. Clothing factories in the northeast could not buy cotton from the south since they had become enemies. They started buying more wool from sheep ranches in California, and men like Mr. Bixby and the Flint's were able to expand their businesses. Mr. Bixby and his cousins needed more land for their sheep. Ranchers in Southern California were selling their land very cheaply, because several years of bad weather, in which there was either too much rain or not enough, had killed most of their cattle. Mr. Bixby and the Flint's bought John Temple's land, Rancho Los Cerritos, and brought sheep down from Northern California. Mr. Bixby's brother, Jotham, moved to the rancho to manage the sheep business. Jotham Bixby and his family lived and worked at Rancho Los Cerritos for the next 15 years. Later, as California's population grew, Mr. Bixby gave up ranching and moved to Los Angeles. He sold some of Rancho Los Cerritos to farmers and town developers. The city of Long Beach was built on part of the rancho property. As the video explained, the Bixby's and Flint's made enough money working in volcanoes that they decided to pool their financial resources. And they became sheep ranchers while undertaking an arduous cross-country journey, herding their first block of sheep to California from the Midwest in 1862. They formed a partnership called Flint Bixby and Company and purchased Rancho San Juzo in Central California near San Juan Batista in 1855. They eventually married and started families. Llewellyn's first wife, Sarah Hathaway, passed away not long after they were married and they had no children. So we eventually decided to marry again. This time the Sarah's older sister, Mary Hathaway, so she came to Rancho San Juzo. This was where Sarah was born in 1871. And in Adobe days, she describes life rolling up around the rancho and in the big main style house that the men built in 1863. After the partners purchased their second ranch, Rancho Los Cerritos in 1866, Llewellyn stayed at Rancho San Juzo for a while, eventually moving to Los Angeles with a family in 1878. His brother, Joe from Bixby, however, who had also come to Rancho San Juzo, moved to Rancho Los Cerritos earlier in 1866 to manage the ranch. Their brother, Marcellus went with Joe from as well, but he chose to pursue daring instead of sheep ranching. In Adobe days, Sarah also reviews the early history of her family's Rancho Llewellyn landholdings in Southern California. Rancho Los Cerritos and Rancho Los Alamitos, two ranchos that adjoined each other in the area that would one day become Long Beach, were both originally part of a larger 300,000 acre land grant that was given to a Spanish soldier, Manuel Nieto, in 1784 for his services to the king on the Port de la Expedition. So the land grant was later reduced to 176,000 acres in 1790. It was still vast in scope. After Nieto's death in 1804, the land was eventually split up into six parcels amongst his heirs in 1834 and distributed. Rancho Los Cerritos was purchased in 1843 by John Tumple, a wealthy Yankee merchant in Los Angeles, who was married to Rafaela Cota, who had family ties to Manuel and Nieto de Cota, a daughter and heir of Manuel Nieto. She and her husband owned Rancho Los Cerritos and agreed to sell it to Tumple. After devastating droughts started killing off Rancho's cattle, Tumple decided to sell Rancho Los Cerritos to Flint Dixie and Company in 1866, and Joseph moved there to manage it. Similarly, Manuel Nieto, de Cota's brother, Juan Jose Nieto, owned the adjoining Rancho Los Cerritos. It was sold in 1842 to Abel Stearns, another wealthy Yankee merchant in Los Angeles. And then later it was sold to John Dixie, Joseph and Dixie and Company, and Isaiah Hellman, a wealthy financier who helped found farmers and merchants think. Later, after the death of John Dixie, a portion of the land eventually transferred to his wife, Susan, to her daughter, Susanna Dixie, and her son, Fred Dixie, in his wife, Florence. Fred and Florence Dixie were the last owners of the Rancho before it was needed to the City of Long Beach by Dixie Erickson in 1968. In Adobe Days, Sarah Dixie Smith dedicates a large portion of her discussion about daily life and activities at the Long Beach Area Ranchos to Rancho Los Cerritos in particular, where she spent quite a lot of time. From 1866 to 1881, her uncle Joseph and lived at Rancho Los Cerritos with his wife, Margaret Halfway, who was also her mother, Mary, the aunt, Martha's sister. John Dixie, another family member, came from Maine to Rancho Los Cerritos and started working there during carpentry work and learning ranching. He later married Susan Halfway, yet another Halfway sister, to Mary a Dixie man, and they moved to Wilmington and then Rancho Los Alamitos, where they eventually purchased the land with Dixie and Hellman as partners. Sarah loved to play with her cousins, especially Joseph and the Margaret's son, Harry. And she described the house and ground through the tail, as well as Rancho activities like sheep shearing and sheep living. Among other things, she also mentioned workers, tradesmen, and other people who lived and worked on the Rancho or who visited in time. Adobe Days contains many interesting references to workers and their activities at Rancho Los Cerritos and Rancho Los Alamitos, such as Bath Sheeparders, Mexican ranchhands and the carols like Juan Pieddo, as well as Roy the Englishman, John Portugese, a Portuguese man, the Irishman John O'Connor, Chinese peddlers, and the Chinese cooks are Ying and Fan at Rancho Los Cerritos, who cooked scrumptious meals for the family and workers around the Rancho. This information about various workers and tradesmen at the Rancho is very important as it represents the existence of diverse cultural groups living, working and contributing to life on the Ranchos and long age at this time. And it gives voice and presence to people who might otherwise go and notice or under represented in the historical record. On a fun note, this section of the book was perhaps my favorite with all the descriptions of different foodstuffs, special meals and food preparation being conducted by Ying and Fan, the Chinese cook at Rancho Los Cerritos. Cerebitsby Smith describes the family's meals and their foods are supplied in great detail, which I found most interesting, including descriptions of the families and workers' breakfasts, dinners, supper, and desserts. A lot of food was grown onsite at the Ranchos, and meat also came from the Rancho livestock. Other stable supplies were purchased in Los Angeles. And here in this picture, before I switch slides, I just want to point out on the left, it's Rancho Los Cerritos. In the background, you can see a man in an apron, and that is a Chinese cook. And in the front, in the foreground, it's possibly a Mexican worker. And then on the right side, the photo that we have represents sheep shears in front of the barn at Rancho Los Cerritos. Now we're going to watch a video about Ying and cooking at the Rancho. The Chinese were a major labor force in Los Angeles in the 1870s. Many had come to work the railroads or seek their fortunes in gold. Most ended up working in domestic lines like cooking, laundries, and supplies. Ah Ying was not the first Chinese man I ever met, but he certainly made the greatest impression. I came to the Rancho from San Francisco, where I learned to cook American food. The big space like the single food. And as chief cook, I prepared up to six meals a day. But not just for the big space, there were workers from many countries at the ranch. And I tried to make all of them happy, hot chilies for the Mexicans. Sometimes Chinese food. Sweet sugar cookies for the children. Then my helper and I were busy every day. Together we served the big meals to the workers in the main dining room. The family ate in their own dining room in the house. We even made the lunches for the men who worked in the fields. The big space went to Los Angeles to buy supplies two or three times each month. Mostly stappals like flour, sugar, coffee, and beans. We grew many things at the ranch. Apples and oranges, grapes and pears. And of course, we always had lamb, chicken, and a beef that we raised. And occasionally some fresh cream. We had milk cows and made cheese and a butter from the fresh milk. The things we did not get in Los Angeles or from the rancher, I could buy from our phone. He came every Thursday in his wagon for our fresh fruits and vegetables. He also brought me news from Los Angeles and from my home in China. This information about different types of meals is also informed research and interpretation at Rancho Los Cerritos and Rancho Los Alamedas. Especially in terms of helping current museum staff and volunteers decorate the dining and kitchen areas with faux foods that they've artistically made from scratch or that they've purchased. These faux food items pictured here were made by a volunteer faux foodie group at Rancho Los Alamedas. They are very talented. You can see more examples of these faux foods on their website at Rancho Los Alamedas. Sarah's father Llewellyn and mother Mary eventually moved the family to Los Angeles from Rancho Sanquisto in 1878. Mary was happy to finally have her own house after living with others at Rancho Sanquisto and Llewellyn was able to be closer to Flint Dixie and company's land holding and business interests in Southern California that he wanted to oversee. They eventually built and settled in a house on Hill Street on Bunker Hill in Los Angeles where Llewellyn lived until his death in 1896. So sadly Sarah's mother Mary pictured in the center with long hair passed away from Typhus in 1882 only four years after they moved to Los Angeles. Her mother's sister Sarah's Aunt Martha pictured here at the top left corner of the screen moved to California and lived with the family to help raise Sarah. Sarah's grandfather Reverend George Hathaway at the bottom left corner of the screen also left Maine after his wife died and lived at Rancho Los Alamedas as well then he moved to the house in Los Angeles. Sarah mentioned many places, events, people and activities that he observed but she observed while living in the Pueblo of Los Angeles such as local stores, public buildings, hotels, the Barnum and Bailey circuit, L.A.'s Chinatown, streetcars, the city switching from gas to electric street lights, and much more. She also briefly discusses the growth and development of neighboring towns like Pasadena, Riverside, Anaheim and San Quijote. Other members of Sarah's family pictured here are Sarah's sister Ann, pictured in the center of the photo with the three children. Sarah is pictured to the left of Ann and Sarah's cousin Harry, one of her frequent playmates from the fun of Joe's and the Margaret Vixby at Rancho Los Cerritos, is to the right of Ann Vixby. Also Sarah's uncle George Vixby, a brother of her father also lived at the house in Los Angeles with the family for a while. You can see some pictures of the right. As time goes on in the book Sarah comes of age and attends college at which and with education being strongly encouraged amongst the boys and girls in the Vixby and Hathaway families, Sarah was first enrolled at the field seminary in Oakland and then at Pomona College for a while but she ultimately finished her undergraduate education at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The photos here represent her time at Wellesley. She traveled back across the country on summer breaks to Southern California, always happy to return to her Western roots. Over Christmas breaks, she vacationed with family in Maine and sometimes visited nearby Boston as well. She graduated with a bachelor's degree from Wellesley in 1894 and became a strong supporter of women's higher education and other causes. In her adult years, Sarah was married two times. First to Arthur Matthew Smith in 1896, a college preparatory school teacher, professor and unitary minister at various times in his career. They finally divorced in 1916 after she discovered multiple times if he was having affairs with other women. She then remarried in 1916 to another minister and writer called Jordan Smith, also the last same name, same last name, though they later divorced as well. From her first marriage with Arthur Matthew Smith, she had five children and her second marriage to all Jordan Smith included three children from his previous marriage. During and after her marriages, Sarah produced a number of books. Her writings include a little girl of old California in 1920, a precursor was later adopted into Adobe Days. Then Adobe Days in 1925 and a few books of poetry entitled My Sagebrush Garden in 1924, Haseyad, a second book of California verse in 1926, Wind Upon My Face in 1930 and The Bending Tree in 1933. She also wrote Milestones in Los Angeles being a brief narrative of Los Angeles to five decades in 1930s. Sarah Bixby Smith was also an amateur painter who enjoyed painting rants, dates and portraits and rancher was sweet assessor for paintings in his collection and one of the new pieces at the bottom of the screen here. In a civic capacity, she served in major leadership roles in a variety of organizations such as vice president of the American Association of University Women, as president of the Friday Morning Club, as a trustee of Scripps College, as a member of the Claremont School Board and she was also a delegate to the Pacific Relations Conference in Shanghai in the early 1930s. While working on another book about the history of Southern California, she died in Long Beach on September 13th, 1935 at the age of 64 after contracting trigonosis. Some of Sarah Bixby Smith's personal correspondence, along with photographs, press bookings and other documents, are in the Charles D. Young Research Library Department, a special collection in the UCLA and some of her papers are also at Rancho Los Cerritos Historically. Speaking of Rancho Los Cerritos, many people don't know this but Rancho Los Cerritos' research library collection is actually part of the Long Beach Public Library System. The Rancho's California History Research Library contains more than 3,000 books on California history comprising rare volumes in current publication, as well as materials relating to the decorative arts in Indian studies. It's a non-circulating reference center and it's cataloged through Long Beach Public Library. The archives contain original documents, maps, reprints, photographs, and sound and image recordings directly associated with the Rancho and its owner's occupancy worker. The research files consist of documents, articles, research notes, and photographs collected to support research and further the mission of the museum. Among the research libraries, many archival treasures, its collection includes the Sarah Bixby Smith's manuscript collection. For more information about visiting the Rancho's research library or to make a special appointment, contact the historical curator at Rancho Los Cerritos. Rancho Los Alamitos Historic Ranch and Garden also has a private research library that can be accessed by special appointment, so it is not part of the Long Beach Public Library System. Please contact Rancho Los Alamitos for more detail. Sarah Bixby's younger sister Ann was still alive when the Rancho became a museum and she wrote 12 letters to Rancho Los Cerritos' first curator back in the 1960s. Harry Bixby also kept a diary when he was at boarding school, so he was an author too. We can learn about history from the people who wrote about their everyday lives. That's why we collect books about local history in the library. Did you know that Rancho Los Cerritos' library is part of the Long Beach Public Library System? You might have tried to find a library book before using a computer. In this next segment, you'll find out how people located books in a library before there were computers. The way we keep track of books might be different than what you are used to. Our card catalog is historical in itself. Before there were computers, you'd have to look up your books on paper cards inside the catalog. The cards are organized in alphabetical order within the drawers. For example, if we wanted to look up the book Adobe Days that Sarah Bixby wrote about Rancho Los Cerritos, we would go to the first drawer to look up A for Adobe. When we open the drawer, we then look through the cards until we find the right one. The number on the Adobe Days card tells us where we should look to find that book. So then we just look for the book that has a sticker on it with that number. Inclusion. Adobe Days was a book that I love to recommend to both men and women fiction and non-fiction lovers alike. It's very well written with a lyrical political style that is vivid and full of imagery. Sarah Bixby Smith's clear and descriptive observations of the world around her changed a really colorful and vibrant picture of life as she lived it, experienced it, or recollected it from other family members. Whether writing about the landscape, people, work, or play activities, cultural observations, family traditions, the natural world, whatever she discusses, it's delightful to read and remains both enjoyable and enlightening throughout the book. This book is also important as an accounting of what Sarah Bixby Smith called pioneering life, describing her personal and family experiences forging the life on the western frontier of California. Her storytelling is captivating and induces curiosity about the thoughts, experiences, and lives of the author and her family, as well as evoking something akin to a sense of warmth and nostalgia for a time gone by as well. I felt charmed by a sense of wonderment, wistfulness, and even sometimes a sense of loss. For being unable to see or experience many of the sights, sounds, smells, and cultural experiences of Sarah's day that have now long since vanished. And undoubtedly, Sarah Bixby Smith was wistful for bygone days as well, as many of these experiences were already disappearing or gone when she first started capturing her stories on paper a hundred years ago. Now, Sarah Bixby Smith wrote this book in her adulthood, but recounted her life as a child and young woman from decades before. She was 49 years old when she penned her first book, The Story A Little Girl of Old California, which would later be adapted into Adobe Days when she was 54. And it was again revised in 1931 when more information became available to add to the book. So in conclusion from a historical standpoint, this personal narrative of family history in Adobe Days serves as a valuable educational resource that provides important insights, descriptions, and data points about the lives of a long-standing Bixby family along each Los Angeles and California in general. This book also puts more flesh on the bones of our understanding of the lives of children and women at this time in early Southern California history, while providing helpful tools to launch discussions about notions of childhood and womanhood, family and domestic life, rural and urban life, the rich cultural diversity of people who circles within their orbit in the late 19th century, and so much more. I think this book is one that crosses the divide of gender, age, class, and race. And it's also a relatively short, easy read, about 140 pages. Overall, it's an engaging, endearing, and unforgettable story of California history, especially right here in our backyard. And it paints a fascinating and evocative picture of what rural rancho life and urban town life were like in the early days of Long Beach in Los Angeles. This book will take you on a thoughtfully written, somewhat romantically reminiscent, but effectively remembered tale of days gone by in old California that you won't want to put down until it's done. Finally, this is a good time to mention that you can still visit Rancho Los Cerritos and Rancho Los Alamitos today. These Rancho properties are owned by the city of Long Beach and operated by Private Foundation. They're listed on the National Registrar of Historic Places, featuring beautiful historic house museums, charming and spacious gardens, and delightful gift shops that you can visit. Rancho Los Alamitos even has live farm animals like shire horses, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, and rabbits, which you can see up close in the Rancho's barn area. Furthermore, if you'd like to purchase your own copy of Adobe Days, you can always purchase these books to the museum's gift shop, which helps support Rancho exhibits, operations, and programming. So make sure to call the Ranchos or visit their websites before visiting to find out the most updated information about daily hours or tours. Also check out their websites for interesting online exhibits, virtual tours, and other fun and educational programming for adults to use and hold them. So definitely put Adobe Days on your list or reserve a copy today. There's plenty of books on our library system. We also have many other materials about the Bixby family, Rancho history, our Long Beach area Ranchos, the early history of Los Angeles, and much more. Here are a few that may interest you as well as others featured on your screen. Rancho Los Alamitos by Loretta Burner, Early Long Beach by Jerry Shisky, Long Beach's Los Alamitos by Geraldine Matt, Los Angeles from the days of the Pueblo by W. W. Robinson, and also Port Town by Georgie Carmela Cunningham. Talks a little bit about the Ranchos but also talks about the history of Long Beach in general. Finally, if you're interested in family history, genealogy, or Long Beach history, look no farther because, as I mentioned before, one of the central missions of the Molley Special Collection Room at the G. G. B. Library is to promote study of Long Beach and local area history. We have many resources available in-house to assist patrons and researchers with any topic pertaining to our local Long Beach history. Whether it relates to family history and genealogy, researching a historic house or property in the area, finding obituaries or other local history topics that may interest you. You can also check out our digital resources from your computer or a mobile device, such as our LDPL digital archive of historic photographs, as well as historic city directories, historic yearbook, historic newspapers, and much more. If you're interested in learning more, please don't hesitate to reach out to us in the Molley Room via our website at www.ldpl.org and you can email a research request to us there, or you can also contact us by phone. So with that, I just want to say thank you for joining me in the Summer Reading Program Book Talk with the Molley Room. I also want to extend a huge thank you to the staff at Rancho Los Cerritos Historic site, especially the curator, Gareth S. Gerald, and the Education Director, Megan McGuire, for graciously and generously providing many of the photographs and images of Rancho Los Cerritos and Cerebic Youth Families that were used in this book talk. And like I said earlier, if you haven't been to Rancho, the Ranchos you definitely should go. I also want to encourage you to sign up for our Summer Reading Program. If you haven't done so already, go online to longbeach.genestaff.org and register for our reading challenges. That way you can earn prizes for all the reading you're doing this summer. You've already signed up, enter the code family into the activities tab of your reading challenge to be able to earn points for watching this video today. All right, so have fun continuing to dive deeper into more Summer Reading books and topics like this one. Thanks again and happy reading. Bye!