Marin County CA Archives History - Books .....IV Heirs To Rancho Corte Madera Del Presidio 1958 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/copyright.htm http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/ca/cafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com April 11, 2007, 12:56 am Book Title: Shark Point - High Point IV Heirs to Rancho Corte Madera del Presidio AMONG all the stories of old Marin County there are few so fascinating as the story of the heirs to Rancho Corte Madera del Presidio. John Joseph Reed was born in the Presidio in San Francisco on June 16, 1837, one of the four children of John and Hilaria. He attended the Mission Dolores School and in 1859 came back to the ranch. John Joseph built a house with fourteen rooms and a large porch, located near what is now Bel Aire. This house had an excellent view of the bay and was the scene of many great parties and banquets. He married Carlotta Suarez, a Mexican girl who lived on the Reed ranch. According to Spanish California custom, John Joseph and Carlotta, as well as John and Hilaria, were always most hospitable. John Joseph and Carlotta had one child, a son, John Paul. John Paul's half-sister, Clotilda Reed, was given a life-lease on Strawberry Point. Clotilda has been described by those who remember her as a lovely, dainty woman, lonely and aloof. She wore beautiful clothes and jewelry and traveled rarely. Both Clotilda and John Paul were introduced as children to business. As teenagers, they each were given property and their spending money came from the profits of their own land. Thomas Boileau Deffebach was born in Georgetown, Pennsylvania, on July 25, 1822. Young Thomas spent his early years in Millford, New Jersey, on a farm, and went to country school. He went to St. Louis, Missouri, when he was fifteen and apprenticed to a printer for eight years. In January, 1850, he started out for California to prospect for gold. In August, 1863, he came to visit at the Reed homestead. And on February 17, 1864, he married Dona Inez Reed, the daughter of John and Hilaria Reed. Eleven children were born. Five died in early childhood, as happened only too often, then. Of those who survived, only Thomas (who had one son, Thomas), Jessie (who married Cuthbert J. Sollom and had a son and daughter), and Mary Hilarita (May) lived through adulthood. Mrs. Roy Mills, Jessie Sollom's daughter, lives in Mill Valley; and the C. O. Solloms, son and daughter-in-law of Jessie and Cuthbert J. Sollom, live in Belvedere. The third Thomas Deffebach lives in the large home near Bel Aire built by John Joseph Reed. Benjamin Lyford was born in Vermont near the Canadian border on December 1, 1841. He went to school in Canada and to medical school in New York City. In 1864, he was appointed by President Lincoln as first assistant surgeon with the 68th Colored Infantry in the Union Army, according to a microfilm of his Civil War service record obtained from the National Archives in Washington D. C. The record said he was "recommended very highly by Surgeon Andrews and several eminent Eastern physicians". In 1866 Lyford came to San Francisco to practice medicine, and opened offices at 400 Kearny. In 1876 he retired from active practice, and settled on that part of the Reed estate known as Strawberry Point. There he started the Eagle Dairy, breeding only Jersey cows because he believed they give the best milk. One of Lyford's publications on dairying emphasizes "great kindness" to cows for top milk production. Lyford married John Reed's daughter, Hilarita, in 1872. They had no children, but reared their nieces, Jessie and May Deffebach, and their nephew, Thomas, after the sudden death of Inez and Thomas Deffebach Sr. The two girls were sent to Notre Dame School in San Jose, and Thomas was brought up in a Catholic boarding school in San Francisco. There were still great cattle roundups on Little Reed Ranch during these years. And in a laboratory near the Lyford home, Dr. Lyford performed his scientific experiments in embalming. He was the first to successfully embalm a body for transportation overseas. His formula was lost when he died, however. He died on June 13, 1906, at his Strawberry home. Hilarita died only two years later, on a visit to Cuernavaca, Mexico. The old Lyford home stood on the east side of Strawberry Point. This area and the Tiburon Peninsula were known as Little Reed Ranch. The Reed ranch proper was the Mill Valley - Alto - Corte Madera area. It was Mrs. Lyford who went to the Department of the Interior in Washington, D. C, with Governor Pacheco to establish the title to the Reed property. Squatters had settled on much of the land, even in John Reed's time. After six months in Washington, she received full title in 1884. The Lyford home, built sometime before 1870, was moved to the Rosie Verrall property at Roger's Beach on Tiburon Highway in December of 1957. This area, occupying some nine acres and including a wooded knoll, was given by Mrs. Verrall to the Richardson Bay Foundation and Marin Chapter of the National Audubon Society. The victorian mansion was barged over from Strawberry Point and restored as headquarters for the group. There is another branch of the family to be mentioned here. When Hilaria Sanchez Reed re-married after John Reed's death in 1843, she married into the wealthy and prominent Garcia family, Spanish pioneers in the San Francisco area. They had one child, a girl, Carmelita Natividad. This girl inherited her mother's Latin beauty. In the early part of 1863, Hugh Boyle, a young American from Missouri, met her. They were married in 1865. Boyle, a graduate of Saint Louis University, had emigrated to California when he was only eighteen, perhaps lured by the tales of easy gold and quick fortunes. After he and Carmelita were married, he sttled on a part of the old Reed estate, some 325 acres, and went into dairying. He also went in for politics. From 1868 to 1869, he was mayor's clerk and secretary to the board of health of San Francisco. He lived to be 74 and continued active in bay area politics. He had two children, a girl, Sarah, who died young, and a boy, Hugh. Young Hugh's son, Syd Boyle, lived in Tiburon before moving to Stinson Beach, and still holds some of his grandfather's land on the peninsula. It has been said that "Three Fingered Jack", a notorious bandit of the '70s and '80s, was related to the Garcias, and that he sometimes would "hide out" in the old Reed home in Mill Valley. But this is denied by the heirs, and probably is a legend. Later heirs to Rancho Corte Madera del Presidio include two of Tiburon's older residents: Rosie Verrall and Mary Brazil. Both were at one time in the service of Clotilda Reed, granddaughter of John Reed, and received property from the estate. Rosie Verrall is more familiar to local residents as the "goat lady". Although she does not sell their milk or cheese, she has kept goats for some fifty years. Mrs. Brazil lived for many years in the old house across from the railroad tracks from Del Mar Estates on Tiburon Highway. After the house burned, several old papers were found: receipted bills for feed, milk accounts from the old dairy, and a letter from Hilarita Lyford to her niece, Clotilda Reed, from the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. The letter is in the historical collection at the Belvedere-Tiburon library, along with genealogies of the Reed, Deffebach and Garcia families. THE JOHN REED FAMILY __________________________ | John Thomas Reed | | (1805 -1843) | ___________________________ | m. Hilaria Sanchez, 1836 | | m. Bernardino Garcia, 1843| | (1817 -1872) | |___________________________| |__________________________| | ______________________|__________________________________ | | | | ______|______________ ________|____________ | _______|__________ | John Joseph | | Hilarita | | | Ricardo | | (1837 -1899) | | (1839 -1908) | | | (Died as a child)| | m. Carlotta Saurez, | | m. Benjamin Lyford, | | |__________________| | 1859 | | 1872 | | |_____________________| | (1841 -1906) | | | |_____________________| | | | __|______________ ______|_______________ | | | | Maria Inez (1840??) | _____|_____ | _____|______ | m. Thomas Boileau | | Unknown | | | John Paul | | Deffebach, 1864 | | (Died, as | | | (? -1920s) | | (1822 -1884) | | a child) | | |____________| |______________________| |___________| | | | __________ | Clotilda | | (?-1940) | |__________| Additional Comments: Extracted from: Shark Point - High Point An Illustrated History of TIBURON & BELVEDERE IN MARIN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA BY EIGHTH GRADERS OF THE REED SCHOOL CLASSES OF 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958 PUBLISHED BY THE REED SCHOOL DISTRICT PARENT-TEACHER CLUB BELVEDERE-TIBURON MCMLVIII Designed by Lawton Kennedy, San Francisco 3000 Copies Printed by R. G. Fontana & Son, San Anselmo File at: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ca/marin/history/1958/sharkpoi/ivheirst514nms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/cafiles/ File size: 9.9 Kb