Remembering TUOLUMNE...

By Joseph Celentano

TCMM Historical Research Committee

May 2006

While researching the archives of the TCMM, we located the following schoolwork from a Summerville Elementary School fourth grade class assignment regarding family history. (No error corrections were made.)

Part one of three.

My Family

By Rosemary Kimball

My grandmother and grandfather on my mother’s side came from Italy many years ago. My grandfather Ciarasso arrived in America around the year 1906. My grandmother arrived nine years later with two children, my Uncle Rick and my Aunt Rose. They later had five more children.

My mother was born in Tuolumne. My mother and father were married in 1948. They had three children--Dolores, myself, and my brother Michael. I have many aunts, uncles and cousins.

My Grandfather and Grandmother Kimball came from Michigan. They had nine children. One was my father. He was born here in Tuolumne also.

My Grandfather Ciarasso is still living here. I never saw my grandfather Kimball. He died many years ago. Grandfather Ciarasso is a great-grandfather four times. He has four great-grandsons. He is 77 years old.

I am glad that I live in California. It is a great state.

My Family

By Rhonda Standage

My grandfather, Robert Standage, was born in Manhattan, Kansas on July 8, 1887.

Eilah Standage is my grandmother. She was born on July 18, 1893 in Manhattan, Kansas. My daddy, Donald Standage, was born in Loveland, Colorado on December 21, 1931.

My grandfather, Ruran Domingo, was born in Murphy, California on August 3, 1897.

My grandmother, Ramona Thompson Domingo was born in Tuolumne, California on April 7, 1907.

My mother’s name is Dorothy Domingo Standage. She was born on Sept. 6, 1928.

My name is Rhonda Lynn Standage. I was born in Sonora, California on December 2, 1952. My sister, Roxanne Danette Standage, was born in Sonora on June 9, 1954. My youngest sister, Donna Jean Standage, was born in Sonora on November 15, 1957.

My mother’s family lived in Tuolumne all her life. My father’s family lived in Kansas and Colorado before coming to California. That is how I happen to be living in Tuolumne.

This year my Grandfather and Grandmother Standage celebrated their Golden Wedding and all their sons and daughters and their families were here to be with them.

My Family Tree or Story

By Shirley Ingalls

I shall start with my Grandmother Ingalls Hill on my father’s side of the family.

There once lived a lady in Cornwall, England. Her name was Elizabeth Anne Trewatha. Her husband was Samuel Trewatha. They had a daughter, Mary Trewatha.

The family decided to come to California. They came by boat around Cape Horn.

Mary Trewatha met a man named John Powning. They liked one another. They were married and now Mary became Mary Trewatha Powning. John was from Lanal, England. They had two daughters, Viola and Muriel. Viola is my grandmother.

In the state of Maine lived a young man named George Ingalls. George decided to come to California. So he did.

A few months later, the Duckwall Party came over the plains in covered wagons and over Sonora Pass into California.

First, they lived in Columbia and Sonora. Then the Duckwalls moved to a ranch across the North Fork of the Tuolumne River, which is now known as the Ingalls Ranch. Duckwall Mountain which stands guard over Tuolumne was named for them.

The Duckwalls had a large family. They spread out to other ranches in the same area. Some are now known as the Ralph and Maier Ranches.

One of the Duckwall girls, Cordelia, married George Ingalls. Cordelia and George had several children. One of them was Guy Ingalls.

Guy Ingalls married a young lady named Viola Powning. They had three sons, Burnell, George Clair, and Robert.

A year after Robert was born, Guy Ingalls was killed in a train accident on the railroad that brought the logs to the mill in Tuolumne.

Later, Viola met a very nice man named Edgar Hill. The boys loved him too, and were happy when they became their new father.

Robert Ingalls met a very nice, sweet lady named Mary Catherine Johnson. They married and now have six children. I shall name them in order--Guy, Kathy, Tommy, Shirley, Mary Lou, and Robin.

You see, my great-grandparents came to California many, many years ago. They, and their families stayed here. That is why California is my home too.

Story of My Family Life

By Jimmy Maxwell

My father was born in Roswell, New Mexico. He moved to California when he was eighteen years old.

My mother was born in Illinois. She came to California when she was twenty-one years old.

I was born in Long Beach, California in 1953. I was the second child born to my parents. I have an older brother, Jeff.

I went to Kindergarten at Stevens Foster School in Compton. When I was five years old, we moved to Tuolumne County. My first home here was at Sugar Pine. We lived there one year.

Then we spent the summer up at the Dardanelles. Later we moved to Mono Vista. I went to Soulsbyville School for one year.

We then moved to White Rock Acres and I attended the Arastraville School for one year. We now live in Tuolumne and I have attended the Summerville School ever since.

My Family History

By Nancy Miller

One set of my mothers great-grandparents crossed the plains from the East Coast in covered wagons. Their name was Soulé.

On the other side, my great-grandfathers family was named Dexter. They were Methodist missionaries in Japan, having come from England.

My great-grandfather, Clarence Soulé, met and married Ella Dexter in Little Shasta Valley, where they were ranchers.

My other great-grandfather, Yank Smith, came from Maine. Yank Smith married Elizabeth Garvey, who came from Ireland. Their youngest child, Waldo Smith married the Soulé’s eldest daughter, Althea Soulé.

Waldo Smith and Althea Soulé are my grandparents. They lived in Yreka, California. The Smiths had three daughters. The youngest, Justin Smith (my mother), married Richard Allan Miller, the second son of Albert and Thelma Miller. This changed her name to the present Justin Fluer Smith Miller.

They had three children, Jennie, John, and myself. I am the youngest, as were both my mother and father in their families.

My birthday is January 14^th, the same as my grandmother Althea Claudia Soulé Smith, although there is a difference of fifty-two years. I am nine years old . She is sixty-one years old.

I am almost as near as I can get to being a real Californian without being an Indian or a Spaniard, as the Soulés and the Smiths were some of the first American people to settle in California. I hope I shall always live in California.

My Family

Donna Malgesini

My father, Tony Malgesini was born in Italy in the year of 1925. He came to the United States in June 1930. He was only four and one half years old then.

His father, Innocent Malgesini, died in Italy at the very young age of twenty-seven from pneumonia.

My father’s grandmother and grandfather were farmers in Italy. They both lived beyond the age of 90.

My father’s mother, Beatrice, was the fourth daughter of Guiseppi Zecca, who was a farmer in Italy. She brought my father and my Aunt Rita to California with her.

My mother was born in Dover, Arkansas in 1932. Her name is Mary Ruth. She was the seventh of nine children born to Edward and Salema Gibson Trantham.

Salema was born in Arkansas and moved to Oklahoma while a baby. Her father, James Gibson, operated a grocery store amongst the Indians. Salema received her strange name by being named for an Indian lady whom her father knew as a boy.

Her mother, Mary Francis, who was my great grandmother, died of pneumonia when Salema was four years old.

My mother’s parents lived in Arkansas on a farm until 1940 when they came to Southern California.

My mother came to Sonora to visit a sister who was living there. She met and married Daddy and now we all live in Tuolumne. We four children--Donna, Marsha, Nancy, and Tommy all love our California home.

Part two, more Family History,

in the next TCMM newsletter