Creating an Orange Utopia : Eliza Lovell Tibbetts and the Birth of California's Citrus Industry 9780877856177, 9780877853374

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Creating an Orange Utopia •

Creating an Orange Utopia

Eliza Lovell Tibbets & the Birth of California’s Citrus Industry Patricia Ortlieb & Peter Economy

Swedenborg Foundation Press West Chester, Pennsylvania

© 2011 by the Swedenborg Foundation. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ortlieb, Patricia. Creating an orange utopia : Eliza Lovell Tibbets and the birth of California’s citrus industry / Patricia Ortlieb & Peter Economy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-87785-337-4 (alk. paper) 1. Tibbets, Eliza Lovell, 1825–1898.  2. Oranges—California— Riverside—History.  3. Orange industry—California—Riverside— History. I. Economy, Peter. II. Title. SB370.O7O78 2011 634ʹ.310979497—dc22 Edited by Morgan Beard Cover design by Karen Connor Interior design and typesetting by Kachergis Book Design Cover image: Irrigated orange grove in California; taken from a postcard published by Edward H. Mitchell in the early twentieth century. Manufactured in the United States of America

Swedenborg Foundation 320 North Church Street West Chester, PA 19380 www.swedenborg.com

To children—our future Cameron, Eleanor, and Trevor Billy and Joe Peter, Skylar, and Jackson • In memory of Eliza Lovell Tibbets • In memory of Emily

Contents List of Illustrations

Foreword Preface Acknowledgments 1 Westward, to Cincinnati

ix xi xvii xxiii 1

2 Weddings, War, and New Horizons

14

3 Fredericksburg: Paradise Glimpsed

25

4 The DC Years

39

5 Riverside: Paradise Found

46

6 The Long Road to Paradise

55

7 The Good Years

64

8 Paradise Lost

78

9 Eliza’s Legacy

87

Bibliography

101

Illustrations Oliver G. Lovell

2

Clarissa Downes Lovell

3

Alice Summons

17

Eliza and Jimmy Summons

18

Jimmy Summons in uniform

21

Luther Tibbets

23

Eliza, Jimmy Summons, and the Tibbets family

24

Alice Daisy Summons with nurse

30

Harriet Tibbets Summons with Daisy Summons

45

Eliza Lovell Tibbets

54

The Riverside New Church

73

Jimmy Summons’s home in Riverside

76

The Summons family

81

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Illustrations Clara and Lydia Summons

83

President Theodore Roosevelt at the replanting of one of the Parent Navel Orange Trees

93

The surviving Parent Navel Orange Tree

97

Sower’s Dream, a statue commemorating Eliza Lovell Tibbets 99

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Foreword Riverside in the twenty-first century is working hard to brand itself green. In the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century, Riverside was another color—orange! The inconspicuous arrival of two small Bahia navel orange trees from Brazil via Washington, DC, in the 1870s set in motion the future direction of this city on the edge of the desert in the rapidly growing paradise of southern California. Three essential, definitive “characters” were instrumental in establishing the tone and quality of the city of Riverside: John Wesley North, who sought a suitable location for his “utopian” community; Frank Augustus Miller, who embellished the small village with his grand ideas for the future, including what became the Mission Inn, Mt. Rubidoux Park, the Citrus Experiment Station (precursor to the University of California), and March Air Force Base, among others; and Eliza Lovell Tibbets, a midlife transplant from the East who, in searching for a viable cash crop to thrive in this challenging environment, planted the seeds of the future Riverside. All three of these pioneers were guided by similar principles— deep religious beliefs, a strong sense of social responsibility, and a

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Foreword commitment to education and culture. Those values have continued to influence the nature of Riverside even as it has grown into a major city in the Inland Empire. More than three hundred faith-based organizations are active in the community, providing inspiration, education, and services to others—here and abroad. Three universities and a community college not only educate thousands of young people every year, but also enrich the city by offering outstanding cultural programs and sending students into the community to learn and to serve. Riverside also has benefited from a long history of social capital. Volunteers, as individuals and as part of hundreds of organizations, have found fulfillment in improving the quality of the city. Our early roots have served us well. The lives and impact of John W. North and Frank Miller have been fairly well documented, but even longtime residents of Riverside know little about the woman who greatly influenced the city’s future. This delightful book by Patricia Ortlieb about her greatgreat-grandmother, Eliza Lovell Tibbets, is a very welcome addition to understanding our heritage. When Patricia’s fourth-grade granddaughter wanted to know about Eliza’s role in California history, she rather innocently set Patricia on a quest to discover the true story of their illustrious ancestor. More than just “leafing out” this very special branch of the family tree, Patricia wanted to go beyond the legend of Eliza’s watering the young orange trees with her dishwater and document the life sojourn of this very remarkable woman. Patricia began by physically going to the places where Eliza had lived, seeking out official records and personal correspondence. Her research is extensive and well documented, the writing compelling.

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Foreword The woman Riverside knows as “the mother of our citrus industry” had a varied and significant life before coming west in her middle years. She was a dedicated and committed opponent of slavery and active proponent of women’s rights. Her uniqueness also shone through in her dedication to Spiritualism; her séances must have been something to witness. We learn that Eliza’s life was not without its challenges. She and her husband, Luther, naïve and overzealous in their attempt to establish an open community in the post-Civil War South, met with sometimes violent opposition and ultimately failure. Their lives were peppered with ups and downs, as often happens with committed and assertive people. However, the move to Riverside seems to have been a good one. The Tibbetses were more comfortable in this new, forwardthinking community and were generally well accepted. This colorful couple was impossible to ignore. Eliza’s active personality would not sit quietly on the sidelines. When seeking a way to make a living and to enhance her new community, she turned to agriculture. Some citrus, nuts, and wheat had already been planted, but with modest success. Just before she moved to Riverside, Eliza got in touch with horticulturist William Saunders—an acquaintance at the Department of Agriculture Experimental Gardens in Washington, DC—and requested suggestions for a crop that would do well in this arid Mediterranean climate. Saunders sent starter trees of a navel orange from Bahia, Brazil. These little trees were very happy here. Their buds were grafted onto other trees, again and again, until this delicious seedless orange became the “gold” standard for citrus not only in Riverside, but soon in California and eventually around the world.

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Foreword The important role of the citrus industry to Riverside’s history and character cannot be overstated. Due to the early success of the navel orange in Riverside, by 1900 this was the most extensively grown crop in California, amounting to millions of dollars annually. Associated industries such as the production of related farm equipment and irrigation techniques were developed. Refrigerated rail cars made possible the distribution of oranges all over the country. The value and demand for land increased tremendously. Scientific and practical research and advice from the Citrus Experiment Station led to increased productivity. Farmers joined together to form a citrus cooperative which eventually became Sunkist. Eliza’s little transplants assured the growth and success of John W. North’s “Colony for California.” Riverside in the twenty-first century has grown to a population of over three hundred thousand. It has become a cosmopolitan city rich in history and culture, while retaining small-town values and ambience. Riverside’s landscape is no longer dominated by orange groves, but the impact of the citrus industry is tightly woven into the fabric of the community. The state of California established the California Citrus State Historic Park here, providing working groves, a museum and gift store, and beautiful grounds for events and family fun. The iconic orange, along with the raincross design that appears on our flag, has become an ever-present symbol of the city. Colorful labels that were originally pasted onto orange crates to perpetuate the romantic image of the West are now popular pieces of art displayed throughout the city and beyond. Personally, every December when navel oranges adorn the dark-green trees like succulent golden ornaments, our family

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Foreword sends boxes of this California treat to relatives around the country. No gift could be more happily received! So, enjoy the journey Patricia Ortlieb takes us on, relishing the story of Eliza Lovell Tibbets and appreciate the gift she has given us all. Ron Loveridge Mayor, City of Riverside, California

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Preface The story of Eliza Tibbets and her wonderful navel oranges has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Eliza was quite a trendsetter in her time and different from many other women in the mid-to-late 1800s. Born in 1823 to a progressive family of Republican abolitionists in Cincinnati, Ohio, Eliza Lovell Tibbets was a pioneer, an outspoken supporter of women’s rights, a Swedenborgian, a Spiritualist, and a utopian-community builder committed to creating a better world. Soon after the end of the Civil War, Eliza and her husband would attempt to establish an integrated farm in Fredericksburg, Virginia—a wildly unpopular act that nearly resulted in her husband’s death at the hands of an angry mob. Regardless, she adopted a local African-American child—Nicey Robinson—and welcomed her into the Tibbets family. Later, in 1871, Eliza marched with sixtynine other women (and one man, abolitionist Frederick Douglass) in Washington, DC, to demand the right to vote, fifty years before the right was finally granted by the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But it was Eliza’s introduction of the navel orange to the young utopian colony of Riverside, California, in 1873 that was to cement

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Preface her place in history. At the time, the founders and early settlers of the village were anxious to find a crop that would grow in abundance and assure the town’s survival. This search was becoming increasingly desperate as attempts to turn a profit from silkworms, grapes, wheat, barley, and other crops failed to generate the necessary cash flow. While in Washington, DC, Eliza contacted an acquaintance at the Department of Agriculture Experimental Gardens—William Saunders—for help. Saunders sent two orange trees of a heretofore unknown type from São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos— Bahia, for short—the capital of colonial Brazil from 1549 to 1763 and the epicenter for Spiritualism in that country. The fruit produced by these trees was a particularly sweet, large, hardy, and prolific orange that had no seeds. Eliza nurtured these plants, producing an initial crop of oranges that created a flurry of excitement among the settlers. Soon, grove after grove of Eliza’s navel oranges were planted throughout the Riverside area, ensuring the colony’s survival and creating a booming industry that lifted California upon its shoulders—eventually financially outpacing the Gold Rush that had preceded it some fifty years earlier. The California orange industry— specifically, the navel orange that sparked its dramatic expansion in the late 1800s—literally put Southern California on the map, becoming a powerful engine of economic and cultural growth even today. Indeed, during the 2006–2007 growing season, 64 million cartons of navel oranges were produced in California (each one grown on trees directly descended from Eliza’s original two Parent Navel Orange Trees), with millions more produced in Arizona, Nevada, and other states—and numerous countries around the world—representing billions of dollars’ worth of the golden fruit.

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Preface This then is a book about the remarkable life and times of Eliza Lovell Tibbets, a woman who not only played a role in transforming American beliefs on slavery, on the right of women to vote, and on religious freedom, but who was the idealistic pioneer woman who introduced the navel orange to California, triggering an agricultural, societal, and cultural earthquake that reverberates around the world even today. As I conducted research for this book, I discovered that there is much more to the story of Eliza Lovell Tibbets than her role as mother of the southern California orange industry. Involved in many of the social reform movements of her time—from abolishing slavery to giving women the right to vote to reforming religion—Eliza was a woman far ahead of her time. She spoke for herself and had strong values of right and wrong. For this I credit her Swedenborgian church upbringing, which allowed and even encouraged her to think for herself, make decisions, and work to improve society. Consider her courage in adopting a black child, Nicey, soon after the end of the Civil War. Nicey’s mother approached Eliza and asked her to take the child that she knew would have no future in Fredericksburg, Virginia—putting her complete trust in Eliza and making the tremendous personal sacrifice of giving up her child. The fact that Eliza agreed to do so was a remarkable thing for a white woman of her time to do, when passions were still so high in the years immediately following the war and the prejudice against AfricanAmericans so deep. And Nicey did not become Eliza’s maid or house servant. We have found documentation from Riverside colony founder John North’s daughter proving that Nicey was treated like any oth-

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Preface er member of Eliza’s family—she went to birthday parties and the other children didn’t think anything of the fact that she was black. And of course being a suffragist in Washington, DC—and marching for the right to vote—could not have been a popular stand for any woman to make in those days. These women and their husbands were surely criticized by the vast majority of their fellow citizens (as they were in numerous press accounts at the time), but they stood their ground and became heroes in the process. But as the remarkable events of Eliza Lovell Tibbets’s life gradually fade into the misty shadows of history, a monument stands next to one of the two original Parent Navel Orange Trees at the intersection of Arlington and Magnolia Avenues in Riverside, California—within an easy walk of the original Tibbets home site. Under the auspices of the Landmarks Committee of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), working with the Pioneer Society, the county Medical Society, the Spanish Art Society, the Woman’s Club, and the Wednesday Morning Club, a memorial bronze tablet designed by Helen T. Barker—an art student at Riverside High School—was mounted on a four-and-a-half-ton boulder of light fine granite transported from Bear Creek Canyon, close to the head of the Santa Ana River in the San Bernardino Mountains. The monument was presented to the children of Riverside by the California Fruit Growers Exchange, the California Citrograph, a number of orange grower’s associations, the Citrus Club, the Riverside Pioneer Society, the San Bernardino National Orange Show, and the Aurantia and Rubidoux Chapters of the DAR. The words for the inscription—drafted by S. Alice La Rue, chairman of the Landmarks Committee—were approved by the US Department of Agriculture.

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Preface The monument was dedicated on December 10, 1921, with a large audience in attendance. Adjacent to the surviving Parent Navel Orange that Eliza nurtured more than one hundred years ago—and within a stone’s throw of the property on which she shared so many good times and memories with her husband and family—this monument will surely endure as a lasting testament to the indomitable spirit of this remarkable woman, and as a reminder of the legacy she left behind. To Honor Mr s. Eliz a Tibbets,

And To Commend Her Good Work In Planting At Riverside In 1873, The First Washington Navel Orange Trees In California, Native To Bahia, Brazil, Proved The Most Valuable Fruit Introduction Yet Made By The United States Department of Agriculture 1920 Patricia Ortlieb San Diego, California

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Acknowledgments This project has been a labor of love for me for a number of years now, and I have many people to thank for helping me along the way. I would first like to thank my granddaughter, Eleanor, for inspiring me to write this book. Several years ago, Eleanor asked me for information on my great-great-grandmother Eliza Tibbets for a fourth-grade school project. I quickly realized that I needed to do my homework if I was going to provide her with enough information to be helpful. With some research assistance on my part, Eleanor was able to create a large poster telling the story of Eliza Tibbets and her orange trees for her class project, and I was inspired to dig deeper into Eliza’s story—much deeper, as it has turned out. I thank my son Shawn and his wife, Meredith, for supporting me in this effort and for a lifetime of good memories—I will always be proud of you and all you have accomplished in your life. For encouragement I thank my sister, Nancy Parker Charneski, and my stepchildren, Susan and Randy Ortlieb. I must also take time to thank my grandmother Clara Tibbets Summons Olmsted; my mother, Eleanor Flo Olmsted Parker; and my aunt Lilie Mae Olm-

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Acknowledgments sted Martin—strong women who contributed mightily to my own life and to my interest in Eliza’s story. I would also like to thank Vincent Moses, historian and former director of the Riverside Metropolitan Museum, for his warm friendship and assistance over the years. Vincent is an expert on Riverside’s history, and his help and encouragement have been vital to this project. I was pleased to contribute a number of family heirlooms to the museum while Vincent was in charge, including a chair of Eliza’s, oil paintings in the style of George Inness, silver goblets, a water pitcher, a beaded shawl, and more. Thanks also go to Chester (Chet) Roistacher for agreeing to be interviewed for this book. Chet is the world’s leading expert on the Parent Navel Orange Tree, and a world-renowned plant pathologist specializing in virus and virus-like diseases of citrus trees. His assistance was invaluable and very deeply appreciated. And sincere thanks to former California State Senator Robert Presley, who spoke glowingly about Eliza and her contributions to Riverside at a memorial service some years ago; Sue Johnson, former chairperson of the regents of the University of California, who has helped me move this project forward; Kathy Allavie, chairwoman of the Giant Orange Artventure; Phyllis Crabtree, president of the Riverside Art Alliance; Jan Smithers, WKRP Cincinnati actress; Veora Erwin, who sends me newspaper clippings from time to time about goings-on in Riverside; and to Katherine and Art Gage, who played key roles in the Eliza Tibbets Statue Foundation and who have helped keep Eliza’s memory alive in Riverside for many years. I haven’t enough words to express my gratitude to John ( Jay) Schneider for all he has done to support this project over the years,

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Acknowledgments from driving me around Cincinnati, New York City, Washington, DC, and Riverside, to making copies of much of our research materials. A million thank yous would not be nearly enough for all you have done for me. Thanks to Mary S. Enriquez for your encouragement and positive words. Also, Ambassador Cynthia Schneider made it possible for me to visit the Pilgrim Museum in The Hague. I am thankful for others in Washington who did research for this project, including Ann Maupin and Denise Contee. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my lead researcher, Jane Lawrence, who has been working on this project with me for more than five years. I couldn’t have written this book without your support, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thanks also to Sue Ditmire and Mary Ann Fischer for their additional research support. And a very heartfelt thanks to Morgan Beard, my editor at the Swedenborg Foundation Press. I thank you for believing in this project from the very beginning, and for pouring your heart and soul into it. Finally, thanks to Peter Economy—who provided additional writing and editing support—and to the Reverend Carla Friedrich of the Swedenborgian Church of San Diego, who introduced Peter to me, and who helped Eliza’s navel orange continue its remarkable spiritual journey. I believe it is no accident that we were destined to meet. As Emanuel Swedenborg said several hundred years ago, “When people who have conscience speak they speak from the heart, and when they act they act from the heart.” Each of you in your own way has helped my heart speak, and with your help my spirit soars. Thank you. Patricia Ortlieb San Diego, California

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Creating an Orange Utopia •

One West ward, to Cincinnati

•

I

n many ways, the story of Eliza Lovell Tibbets is the story of America. On her father’s side she descended from Puritans who arrived on the Mayflower. Her grandfather, James Lovell, had fought on the side of the British crown during the Revolutionary War but was eventually elected as a delegate to the Continental Congress, where he signed the Articles of Confederation on behalf of the state of Massachusetts on July 9, 1778. He was a long-time member of the Committee of Secret Correspondence—America’s first foreign intelligence agency—and is considered by many to be the father of American cryptanalysis. Oliver Lovell, Eliza’s father, was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, in 1787. He later moved to Boston, where he met his future wife, Clarissa Downes. They were married on November 5, 1809, at the Second Baptist Church of Boston. Clarissa’s father, Jesse Downes, and grandfather, Edward Downes, were both officers in the Continental Army during the 1

Creating an Orange Utopia

Oliver G. Lovell

Revolutionary War. In fact, Edward had been one of the original minutemen. Clarissa’s brother, John Downes, would later become a naval officer and the commander of the Potomac, the first American naval vessel to circumnavigate the globe and also the first to host royalty (the king and queen of the Hawaiian Islands). In 1812, Oliver and Clarissa packed up their possessions and their two children, Clarissa and John, to move to Cincinnati. At the time, it was no small decision; Boston was a well-established city with hotels, restaurants, music halls, and luxuries of every description. Cincinnati was a tiny settlement on the western 2

Westward, to Cincinnati

Clarissa Downes Lovell

frontier, and the trip there was a long and arduous one. But the many opportunities presented to settlers of this still-young town were an extremely powerful draw to pioneers from the East. Clarissa described the journey in her journal: We started from Boston the first week in May and we reached Cincinnati on the third of July. We had a large covered wagon made for the journey and in this we carried all our goods and a small mattress for the children. There were eight persons in our party, my sister and her husband and their two children, and Mr. L., the two children and myself.

3

Creating an Orange Utopia At one point during their journey, the party found its way to a riverbed, which they followed for an entire day. According to Clarissa, The men went ahead with long poles, so as to prevent our going into any holes. As night came on we saw not far from the shore a small house so we went to this home to ask for shelter for the night. There was only one room, and besides all of us there were several workmen, who had been working on the house. [We decided to] stay all night, for the country around was strange to us, so we took the small mattress out of the wagon and laid it on the floor for the children and the rest of us sat up all night.

After struggling through a particularly muddy section of the road westward, the Lovells reached Pittsburgh, where they waited two weeks for their hired boat to arrive. The boat itself was essentially a small, floating house built on a log platform, equipped with a kitchen, five rooms, and a peaked roof—a type of vessel sometimes called a “Kentucky Ark.” They would live on the boat for three weeks while they traveled from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati. When they finally arrived at their new home, it hardly seemed worth the effort. As Clarissa put it: “We reached Cincinnati on the evening of the third, and Martha and I left the Ark and climbed the bank, and of all dreary-looking places I thought Cincinnati was the dreariest.” As if that weren’t bad enough, it soon began to rain. At that time Cincinnati had no hotels, inns, or other public sleeping 4

Westward, to Cincinnati accommodations beyond the one tavern in town and any privately owned homes willing to rent out a room to a weary traveler. Clarissa continues, It looked lonely enough in the evening but with the Fourth of July came a heavy storm. We had been so long on the river that the roof of our boat had warped, and there we sat all day with umbrellas over us. It being a holiday the only tavern in the village, which was on Front Street, was full and we could not get rooms. But a gentleman who had joined us in Pittsburgh succeeded in getting a couple of rooms in a private house. . . . After two or three days we succeeded in getting a house, away out in the country, on what is now called Seventh Street, but it was then nothing but open space. There was only one brick house in the village and there was just one street—Main Street.

In spite of Clarissa’s first impression, Cincinnati had come a long way since its humble beginnings less than twenty-five years earlier. Originally founded in 1788 on the northern bank of the Ohio River, across from the present-day state of Kentucky, the town attracted only eleven families and two dozen single men in its first year of existence. The next year, however, a new fort was constructed that helped to safeguard residents against attacks by Native Americans, and after that, the population blossomed. With its prime position on the Ohio River, Cincinnati was a magnet for men who sought their fortunes engaging in commerce with river travelers and traders in cities downriver. There were thirty warehouses in the town by 1792, and numerous businesses 5

Creating an Orange Utopia were established by 1795, including a butcher, a chair manufacturer, a spinning wheel manufacturer, and a brewery. There was even a hairdresser and a French pastry chef. Eliza Maria Lovell was Oliver and Clarissa’s seventh and final child, born on August 5, 1823. In the years following their arrival, the Lovells became one of Cincinnati’s most prominent families: Oliver worked as a painter and glazier, and he also served on the Cincinnati city council along with Salmon Chase—who would later become a United States senator, Secretary of the Treasury, and chief justice of the US Supreme Court—and Nicholas Longworth, today known as the father of the American wine industry. Oliver Lovell was also at various times a fire warden, a Flood Relief Committee member, a member of the board of education, on the board of trustees for the City Water Works, and a director of the Ohio Mechanic’s Institute. While her family’s social status afforded Eliza luxuries she might not have had otherwise, her intellectual and moral development was also deeply affected by her faith. Her parents were members of the Church of the New Jerusalem, often called the New Church, which took its tenets from the spiritual teachings of Swedish seer Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). At the time, the New Church was a small religious movement, one of many that had come to the United States from Europe, and Cincinnati had one of the largest congregations—or societies, as New Church members called groups of practitioners—in the country. Oliver and Clarissa converted to the New Church as adults. While it’s not clear exactly when that happened, it was likely after they moved to Cincinnati—Boston did not have a New Church presence until 6

Westward, to Cincinnati 1816, after the Lovells had departed for the frontier, while followers of Swedenborg had been meeting in Cincinnati since 1811. It is certain, however, that Oliver and Clarissa were both members of the Cincinnati New Jerusalem Church at its incorporation in 1818—just a year after the General Convention of the New Church was formally organized in the United States in 1817. When Eliza was born in 1823, her father was the minister who led the evening services. At that time the society worshiped three times on Sunday, led by three part-time ministers who served for no pay: church founder Adam Hurdus, Oliver Lovell, and Daniel Roe. Members of this close-knit society also gathered less formally two or three times during the week at one another’s homes for “familiar conversation on the Doctrines,” as Daniel Roe reported to his church’s organizing body in 1823. Their focus was on understanding the Bible and the works of Emanuel Swedenborg and discussing how to apply them to their daily lives. The New Church placed a strong emphasis on education, perhaps not surprising for a group that made converts primarily by circulating Swedenborg’s writings. From the time they arrived in the dusty town that would become the Queen City, Cincinnati New Church members focused on establishing and improving schools. David Cathcart was teaching in Cincinnati as early as 1810, the year that Milo G. Williams and Ogden Ross helped establish Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In 1832, Alexander Kinmont and Milo Williams were founders of the Western Literary Institute and College of Professional Teachers. New Church members—including several women—established Urbana University in 1850. 7

Creating an Orange Utopia Eliza herself likely attended the Bailey sisters’ boarding school in Cincinnati. The Misses Bailey, whose father, Francis, had published the first Swedenborgian works in America, added their brother-in-law Frederick Eckstein to the faculty in 1824. The curriculum was quite ahead of its time. Eckstein advocated “learning by rote” only “so far as . . . necessary for the cultivation of memory”; his primary object was “to elicit ideas, and to improve the understanding by explanation, illustration, questions and conversation,” according to a contemporary newspaper account. As Eliza grew to maturity, her actions reflected her faith and devotion. The New Church emphasized the importance of good works as an expression of faith, and despite her own asthma and other physical limitations, Eliza was known for her charity to the poor and disabled her entire life. Her faith also emphasized usefulness—the idea that every person has a role to play in the world that helps others—which shaped her work ethic. Many years later, she confided to her granddaughter Clara, “When Grandma was as old as you she would want to run out to play all the time when out of school, but Great-Grandma would say, ‘No! Eliza, sit down and sew a little while, then take a play!’ So I learned to be industrious, and you know Grandma is never idle too much.” As a member of the New Church society that worked so hard to transform Cincinnati into the “Athens of the West,” Eliza absorbed a great deal about community building. The members of the Cincinnati Society, who loved good literature, music, painting, and the theater, contributed to virtually every civic and cultural institution of the early city. Charles Sontagg was a chemist whose son William became a famous painter. Lawyer and news8

Westward, to Cincinnati paper editor Benjamin Powers’s brother Hiram sculpted several presidents. The sons of organ-maker and minister Adam Hurdus worked at the Shellbark Theater. Educator Frederick Eckstein also founded the Academy of Fine Arts. Solomon Smith, a famous actor, played organ in the church, led the New Jerusalem Singing Society, and published the Independent Press. Eliza herself played piano and sang in her church choir. A music book written for piano—Corncrackers, a sett of quadrilles, published in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1843, and inscribed “To Miss Eliza Lovell”—may today be found at the University of Louisville. Eliza was exposed early to the struggle over slavery, which was destined to become an important part of her life. Cincinnati was an ideological battleground between North and South. Slaves escaped from Kentucky just across the river and fled through the city to freedom in the North. Harriet Beecher Stowe was inspired to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin by her experiences there. Many members of the Ohio New Church were abolitionists. Their opposition to slavery was based in part on Swedenborg’s remarks about Africans in his posthumously published short work Last Judgment. According to Swedenborg, the Africans were “. . . in greater enlightenment than others on this earth, since they are such that they think more interiorly, and so receive truths and acknowledge them.” During the course of 1837 and 1838, the prominent Swedenborgian Alexander Kinmont applied those remarks to American politics in a series of lectures titled The Natural History of Man. He believed that Africans were naturally suited to Christianity, that Caucasians were “constitutionally unable” to be true Christians, and that the future therefore belonged to 9

Creating an Orange Utopia the African race. In his lectures, he predicted an epoch of African civilization with theology “more perfect and endearing than that which the intellects of the Caucasian race had ever exhibited.” Many Swedenborgians at the time concurred with Kinmont’s belief, and considered the institution of slavery not only unjust, but unchristian. The prominence of the New Church in Eliza’s story is particularly interesting considering the parallels between her work in spreading the navel orange and Johnny Appleseed’s connection to apple trees. Born in Massachusetts, John Chapman (1774–1845) moved to the frontier around the turn of the nineteenth century, traveling throughout Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana. Best known for his work in distributing apple trees throughout the region, Chapman was also a Swedenborgian, and carried excerpts from Swedenborg’s books with him to give away to settlers. There is no evidence that Eliza consciously patterned her horticultural efforts on Chapman’s, however, she could hardly have been unaware of this living legend. But an equally important part of Eliza’s religious life was Spiritualism, a religion based on the belief that people could contact the dead by way of mediums or other specially trained or naturally gifted individuals. It was thought that those spirits could convey deep spiritual teachings from the unseen realms— or, perhaps, simply comfort a grieving family. In the mid-1800s, less than half of the children born in the United States survived long enough to become adults. The rest died, often at birth, or later as a result of tragic accidents, disease, malnutrition, and abuse. It’s little wonder that numerous women became Spiri10

Westward, to Cincinnati tualists and mediums, hoping to contact their lost children and assure themselves that the little ones had successfully made the journey to a better place in heaven. With no formal churches, orthodoxy, or priests, Spiritualism was also strongly egalitarian; the only authority was the medium who channeled information from the spirit realms. As a result, Spiritualism was one of the few—if not the only—religious movements of the time that gave women the same leadership opportunities as men, a factor that attracted many intelligent and independent women. Spiritualism had a complicated relationship with the New Church from the start. The start of Spiritualism in America is usually traced to 1848, when the family of John D. Fox of Arcadia, New York, claimed that the spirit of a murdered peddler was communicating with them via raps on the wall of their house. The story created a sensation and catapulted the idea of communication with the dead into the mainstream of American consciousness. However, there had been groups in Europe who practiced communication with spirits since the late eighteenth century, and some Spiritualists traced their history back to Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg was a member of the Swedish House of Nobles and an assessor at the Ministry of Mines. In his younger years he delved into diverse sciences, including metallurgy, astronomy, and anatomy. In 1745, at the age of fifty-seven, he began having visionary experiences with angels, demons, and spirits of the departed. He recorded having been allowed to leave his body and visit heaven and hell in spirit form, not once but countless times, and said that once his spiritual senses were opened he was in 11

Creating an Orange Utopia almost constant contact with the spirits of these unseen realms until his death in 1772. Swedenborg wrote volumes about the Bible and about how human beings could grow spiritually closer to God, but even in his own lifetime it was his descriptions of the afterlife and his conversations with the spirits of the deceased that attracted the most attention. There were several well-known instances where he revealed information known only to someone who had passed on, and in one case, in front of sixteen witnesses, he accurately described the details of a fire in Stockholm, 250 miles away. Although he warned that attempting to communicate with spirits was dangerous, many of his followers ignored the warnings and attempted to follow his example. So while the New Church orthodoxy for the most part rejected the wave of Spiritualism that swept across America, many Swedenborgians embraced it. It is not known when Eliza and her father became Spiritualists. Oliver Lovell was considered to be a particularly important practitioner and leader of the faith in Cincinnati, and Eliza played an active role in church proceedings. According to an account by prominent Spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten, For many long years the President’s chair was filled by the pure-minded, amiable, and highly respected Mr. Oliver Lovell, an old citizen, whose venerable face upturned in reverent appreciation of the truths he listened to then, and promulgates now as a ministering spirit, formed in itself a representative picture of the fervent sincerity of these Ohio Spiritualists. His daughter [Eliza], an accomplished medium, and a host of fair and refined women, leaders in the

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Westward, to Cincinnati most fashionable societies of the city, might have been seen, busily arranging the details of their sweet volunteer choir, adorning the rostrum with flowers, or softly whispering to each other some tender message of immortal affection, poured through their organisms by the quenchless love of dear spirit friends. These were Pentecostal meetings, and it was light, life, and spiritual strength to be there.

The twin influences of Swedenborgianism and Spiritualism—which Eliza and her family probably saw as two sides of the same coin—would have a profound influence on her life. Not only did they form the core of her religious practice, but they brought her into contact with intelligent, progressive thinkers who helped to shape her social convictions. She grew into an independent woman who always did what she thought was right regardless of conventional mores, and nowhere was that clearer than in her marriages.

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Two Weddings, War , and New Horizons

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s Eliza matured, her thoughts turned to love and family. Love came in the form of a dashing young man, the scion of a distinguished Cincinnati family. James Summons was the son of John Blair Summons, a famous Cincinnati riverboat captain. Born in 1819, James followed in his father’s footsteps, eventually becoming captain of his own ship. James and Eliza traveled in the same social circles; they met, courted, and on December 7, 1842, they were married. They had their first child, James Blair Summons Jr. (called Jimmy by family members), on April 4, 1845. Their second child, Alice E. Summons, was born in January 1846, but she died at only nine months of age. Eliza and James had a second daughter in 1848, also named Alice. James’s father John had started life as a deckhand, working his way up through the riverboat ranks from mate to pilot and 14

Weddings, War, and New Horizons ultimately to captain, buying interests in several other boats. While James was born into a life of wealth and privilege, he appeared not to have inherited his father’s talent for the family business. James had epilepsy, causing debilitating seizures, and there was no real understanding of the disease at the time, nor any effective treatment. He was never as accomplished a river pilot as his father, and on March 8, 1846, the sidewheel wooden hull packet under his command, the Dr. Franklin, burned and was destroyed in New Orleans. He started drinking heavily. In 1848, Eliza—likely weary of dealing with her husband’s alcoholism and other issues—separated from James and moved back home with her parents and her widowed sister Clara Lovell Smith, taking her children Jimmy and Alice with her. She also took back her maiden name of Lovell. Eliza was a product of her times. She believed in the idea of “free love,” which in the nineteenth century meant that women should be able to marry for love and not be pushed into marriages to acquire money or social status. And when women found themselves victim of a loveless or abusive marriage, she believed they should be able to easily seek divorces and have the opportunity to find and build a new relationship built on love. Before the mid1800s, divorces were generally granted only in the case of adultery or desertion, and even then only to men. This kept the annual divorce rate to less than two per one thousand marriages in 1860. (Contrast this to an annual divorce rate of more than twentytwo per thousand marriages by 1990.) Eliza’s ill-fated marriage to James Summons most certainly influenced her to fight alongside 15

Creating an Orange Utopia other progressive women of her time who sought to bring their gender some measure of equity with their male counterparts. In 1855, Eliza married her second husband, James Neal, a commerce merchant who later became a well-known healing medium. Unfortunately, there is very little information available today about James Neal—about his family, his profession, how he was introduced to Eliza, or about their courtship and married life. However, it is certain that the couple lived in a home they built in the affluent Cincinnati suburb of Clifton, Ohio, on a parcel sold to her by her parents for $1. Eliza even specified the building of numerous large closets throughout the house, a feature unusual in homes at that time. Of the two children from her previous marriage, Eliza’s second daughter named Alice had died in 1850, but Jimmy still lived with Eliza. Eliza’s sister Clara Lovell Smith died in 1855, and when Eliza and James Neal had a daughter the following year, they named her Clara after her aunt. The family of Thomas Gales Forster, a renowned Spiritualist lecturer, also rented space in their Clifton home. Why and exactly when James and Eliza Neal moved from Clifton to New York City is not known. What is known is that their daughter Clara died in Cincinnati on September 15, 1860, and a contemporary New York newspaper puts the couple in that city in November 1861. Perhaps the death of their child led them to decide to leave Cincinnati and rebuild their lives. Or, with the relationship between the North and South crumbling in the run up to the Civil War—and their home in Cincinnati just across the river from Kentucky, which had a large population of Con16

Weddings, War, and New Horizons

Alice Summons, daughter of Eliza and her first husband, James Summons, circa 1848.

federate sympathizers—they were seeking a safer place to live. They may also have simply decided that they wanted to relocate, as was common for members of their social class. They were accompanied by young Jimmy Summons and Eliza’s father, Oliver Lovell. It is not known why Eliza’s mother didn’t join her husband and daughter in their move to New York. 17

Creating an Orange Utopia

Eliza and her son, Jimmy Summons, circa 1859.

They rented a house on Great Jones Street in Manhattan, where James worked as a healing medium. According to James, his power to cure came from both spirits and from God, and he could cure a variety of diseases—including syphilis and rheumatism— through God’s agency and the laying on of hands. Eliza also continued her work as a medium while in New York City. This work brought her into contact with an ever-widening circle of idealists and progressive thinkers. As mentioned previ18

Weddings, War, and New Horizons ously, the state of New York—and New York City itself—had become a hotbed of Spiritualism starting in 1848, when sisters Maggie and Kate Fox of Hydesville, New York, claimed to have heard mysterious rapping, noise, and vibrations within the walls of their home, instigated by invisible spirits. The girls communicated with the spirits by imitating the sounds they heard, which were answered with returning raps—presumably from the spirit world. As news spread of these “Rochester Rappings” (the Fox home in Hydesville was thirty miles east of Rochester), public interest in these spirit visitations was piqued, and tourists—including the famous newspaper editor and politician Horace Greeley—were drawn to Hydesville. In 1850, the Fox sisters visited New York City for five months, escorted by older sister (and manager) Leah, to demonstrate their ability to communicate with spirits of the dead. The sisters grossed approximately $100 a day for their efforts—a considerable sum in those days. In the meantime, the phenomenon of communicating with the dead by rapping, séances, and other means had spread throughout the country. In 1851, a contemporary Spiritualist magazine called Spiritual World estimated that there were a hundred mediums in New York City alone. One of Eliza’s clients was a commodities trader by the name of Luther Tibbets, who hired her to help him contact his dead wife, Joanna Twombley Tibbets. Luther and his wife had lived with their five children on a farm in Falls Village, Connecticut. To better conduct business at the New York Produce Exchange—more than a hundred miles away from Falls Village— Luther rented a room in the New York City home of Eliza and 19

Creating an Orange Utopia James Neal in May 1863. It would turn out to be a fateful decision. As the Neal family settled into their new home in New York, the country was torn in half by the opening hostilities of the Civil War. Although he was only seventeen years of age and not legally old enough to join the Union Army, Jimmy Summons heard the call of duty. He left the commercial college he was attending in New York and asked one of James Neal’s relatives—Albert A. Neal, a military officer—to sign his enlistment papers. On September 9, 1862, he enlisted in Company C, 132nd New York Volunteer Infantry in New York City under the name J. B. Lovell. Jimmy was promoted to the non-commissioned staff of his regiment—attaining the rank of Sergeant Major—and in 1864 became acting aide-de-camp of acting Brigadier General P. J. Classen, who commanded Union forces in the districts of Norfolk and Suffolk, both in Virginia. At the end of the war, Jimmy returned home to New York, but soon moved to Falls Village, Connecticut, where he bought a farm. There he met Luther Tibbets’s daughter, Harriet Emery, whom he married on April 4, 1866. Meanwhile, back in New York, romance bloomed between Luther and Eliza. Luther was a Spiritualist who shared many of Eliza’s progressive social beliefs, and contemporary accounts (including Eliza’s later letters) describe him as an honest man. However, he was also an emotional character with a talent for picking fights, as illustrated by the following story, which made the newspapers of his day. In the fall of 1863, Luther tried to corner the market in mixed western corn by making a series of large purchases of the commodity at the New York Produce Exchange. He ran into prob20

Jimmy Summons in uniform. He was proud of his Civil War service and remained active in veteran’s organizations throughout his life, as seen in this photo, which was taken after he and his family moved to California.

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Creating an Orange Utopia lems with his bankers, however, who threatened the financing he needed to complete his transactions. Finally, on one particular Friday afternoon—February 5, 1864—Luther purchased twentythree loads of corn. According to a contemporary article in The New York Times: About one o’clock P.M., he grew very much excited, having been greatly annoyed by some unknown parties, who had been pelting him with lumps of dough and quantities of grain; also by the persistency of a merchant, who had been offering a load of corn at $1.40, but with whom he had repeatedly declined to have any direct business transactions. He began to talk loudly about combinations which had been organized to crush him; about his fidelity to principle; his determination to fight out the battle of principle, even if it cost him his life; his enemies might take his corn and his money, but he would maintain his character, which he prized above everything else.

As the commotion grew intense and business was suspended on the trading floor, two merchants grabbed Luther and forced him down the stairway and into the street. The next day, Luther was suspended from the Produce Exchange by formal vote of the New York Commercial Association. When Luther tried to return to the exchange anyhow, it sparked a violent struggle, and he was arrested. Despite Luther’s temper, he and Eliza found love with each other—to the dismay, no doubt, of their respective spouses. After the death of his wife Joanna in 1858, Luther had married (at his 22

Weddings, War, and New Horizons

Luther Tibbets (date of photo uncertain)

late wife’s request) Joanna’s sister, Phoebe Jane Twombly. Phoebe had remained on the farm in Falls Village while Luther went to New York to conduct his commodities business. After particularly acrimonious court proceedings, Luther and Phoebe were divorced on April 25, 1865. Eliza and James Neal were divorced in that same year. On December 11, 1865, Luther and Eliza were married in Jersey City, New Jersey—the third and final marriage for each of them. With their lives now joined together legally as well as in23

Creating an Orange Utopia

A photo of Eliza (seated, second from left) and Jimmy (center, seated) with Luther’s sons and daughters, circa 1865.

tellectually and spiritually, Luther and Eliza were ready to help change the world by putting their visions of a new, egalitarian nation into practice. And that’s exactly what they did when they moved from New York to a small town in Virginia by the name of Fredericksburg. 24

Three Fredericksburg: Par adise Glimpsed

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iven the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it’s hard to imagine that any Northerner in his or her right mind could have thought that in the years immediately fol lowing the Civil War the vanquished Southern people would welcome them with open arms and readily adopt their Yankee ideals of justice and equality for all—black or white. Yet that is what many starry-eyed Northerners quite naively believed would happen. Other Northern abolitionists, perhaps with a clearer understanding of the social and political dynamics involved, nonetheless put their full energy and resources into creating opportunities for the newly freed slaves. One of the first such attempts was the Port Royal Experiment. By the end of 1861, Union troops had captured a number of the Sea Islands along the coast of South Carolina. White Southerners fled in droves, leaving behind some ten thousand African25

Creating an Orange Utopia American slaves. In March 1862, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase—who had once served on the Cincinnati City Council with Oliver Lovell—appointed abolitionist and Boston attorney Edward L. Pierce to build schools and hospitals for these former slaves. The freedmen were allowed to run the plantations abandoned by their former masters and become self-sufficient. However, President Andrew Johnson ended the Experiment in 1865, ordering the return of the confiscated properties to their white former owners. The idea of establishing a self-sufficient community as a model for an ideal society went back to the earliest days of colonization of the United States, when groups like the Mennonites and the Shakers established religious communities where they could practice their beliefs as they wished. However, in the decades preceding the Civil War, these utopian communities multiplied and prospered as new theories of social organization combined with a desire to withdraw from an increasingly industrialized society. Some of these communities were religiously based—for example, the Rappites, who believed that the Second Coming was imminent and separated themselves from society to prepare for that event—and some were secular, such as the group at New Harmony, Indiana, founded by industrialist Robert Owen. Owen had transformed a factory town in his native Scotland into a model progressive community by instituting reforms such as reducing working hours, increasing wages, and building a school for children. His attempt to reproduce that success by establishing a socialist community at New Harmony in 1825 failed after only two years, but inspired a wide variety of successors. 26

Fredricksburg: Paradise Glimpsed One such experiment was the Oneida Community in upstate New York, near the Canadian border, which survived from 1847 to 1879 before transforming itself into a highly successful industrial company. Oneida was a commune founded on the ideals and philosophies of John Humphrey Noyes. Some of his key beliefs included “complex marriage,” where every man was married to every woman, and every woman to every man; “male continence,” a form of male birth control; and “mutual criticism,” in which any member of the community could be subjected to the criticism of a committee or the entire community for some perceived or demonstrated shortcoming in adhering to Noyes’s ideals. The members of the Oneida Community thought that with fruit-growing as their primary occupation, they could recreate an environment much like the Garden of Eden. These utopian experiments tended to attract free thinkers in society—the abolitionists and the suffragists, the socialists, the followers of new religious movements who interpreted the Bible in a very different way from their mainstream contemporaries, and the transcendentalists who were inspired by the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. These were the circles that Eliza and Luther traveled in, and so it is perhaps not surprising that they also dreamed of establishing a community of their own where they could live out their ideals. During the course of 1866 and 1867, Luther developed a plan for colonizing a part of Virginia. Luther’s plan—widely distributed in Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston by way of a printed circular—was to develop small homestead farms that would be fairly priced and available to any buyer, irrespective of 27

Creating an Orange Utopia creed or color. Luther had at least two key goals in mind when he developed his plan: to make productive a part of the state of Virginia that was then unproductive (and thereby improving the overall productivity of the United States), and supplying homesteads, as Luther would later write, “to a people capable of infusing new life and energy into our present dead and stagnant state.” The place they chose was Fredericksburg, Virginia, at that time a small town on the Rappahannock River, about fifty miles southwest of Washington, DC, and fifty-five miles due north of Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy. Fredericksburg and its residents suffered greatly during the Civil War, as had many other cities and towns in Virginia. Fredericksburg had been the site of a major battle in 1862, and another in 1863, both of which resulted in severe damage to the town. Luther’s primary motive in establishing this colony in Virginia was not to make his fortune, but to create a model for a new social order in the South. However, to turn this dream into reality required investors who would underwrite the purchase of the necessary thirty thousand acres of land. Luther and Eliza realized this might take some time to accomplish, so upon arriving in Fredericksburg in 1867, their first order of business was to find a place to live and then to start a business that would help generate the funds they would need to pursue their dream. Luther entered into a contract to rent a house and store in Fredericksburg from John Coakley, also of Fredericksburg. The terms of the rental agreement provided for a term of one year or more, with tenancy commencing on May 1, 1867. The yearly rent was fixed at $700, payable in installments on the first day of 28

Fredricksburg: Paradise Glimpsed the month. Luther then turned around and subleased the store to Jimmy for $400 a year so that he could start a general goods business. The household comprised Luther, Eliza, Jimmy Summons and his wife Harriet, three more of Luther’s children, and an English boarder by the name of Edward Brodribb. On August 15, 1867, the large household increased by one additional member when Alice Daisy Summons—daughter of Jimmy and Harriet, and later known simply as “Daisy”—was born. It wasn’t long before Luther made his political and social views known. Not long after arriving in Fredericksburg, he decided to run a Baptist Sunday school for blacks. When former slaves were allowed to vote in their first election on October 22, 1867, Luther was outspoken in his support, prompting the following editorial in the local newspaper, the Fredericksburg News: The public, before whom he has impudently thrust himself and with whose elections he has volunteered to meddle, have a right to know. Unfortunately we are not acquainted with his history. He is a slimy-looking, ignorant Massachusetts Yankee of the Aminidab Sleek order, and seems to aspire to be the negro’s “Friend and Hero” of the Hunnicutt style. We hear that his familiarities and intimate association with the negroes is disgusting even to them, although they do purchase small wares at his store on Main Street, where they get advice gratis to arm themselves to shoot white people. This fellow is suspected of being a paid emissary of some of those Northern philanthropic societies who are trying to sow discord between whites and blacks in Virginia. He came here several months ago and has been going backwards and

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Creating an Orange Utopia

The infant Alice Daisy Summons in Fredericksburg with her African-American nurse, whose name has not been recorded.

forwards frequently, and is evidently doing some Devil’s work among the negroes . . . He was asked if he would allow his daughter to marry a negro? He replied that if she loved the negro he would have no objection to her marrying him . . . White women do you hear that? If he denies this statement we will prove it on him. This is one of the Northern missionaries sent down to civilize the South. We will try to make his civilizing trip a rough road to travel. He and all like him had better go back to Massachusetts. They do us no

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Fredricksburg: Paradise Glimpsed good, and we don’t want to do them any harm. All we ask is let us alone. We don’t want to be civilized in your fashion.

Not long afterward, the trouble started. At the end of November 1867, a Baltimore-based supplier of goods to Jimmy’s store filed a claim for payment in the amount of $410 against him in the Corporation Court of Fredericksburg. This single incident—which appears to have been a simple billing error, but which may have actually been an elaborate setup against these unwelcome Northern interlopers—began a complex chain of events that almost overnight caused Eliza and Luther’s world to turn upside down. Although there was no court judgment against Jimmy—just the filing of a claim by the Baltimore firm—on November 30, 1867, the Fredericksburg sheriff took possession of the general store and the goods within it with the intention of auctioning them off to pay the claim. The sheriff ’s action was supported by an affidavit submitted to a local court stating that Jimmy Summons was contemplating the idea of abandoning the store to defraud his creditors—an accusation that Jimmy denied. Plans for the auction proceeded despite Jimmy’s protests. Another creditor was encouraged to file a claim against Jimmy, which brought the total of both claims to $580 including sheriff and auctioneer costs. Not wanting to cause trouble in their newly adopted community, Jimmy and Luther allowed the auction to proceed. The auction began on December 4, conducted by John Timberlake—deputy sheriff and sergeant of the Corporation Court—and Gabriel Johnston, the auctioneer. 31

Creating an Orange Utopia As the auction progressed, they collected enough money to cover the initial $580 in claims. However, Luther’s landlord John Coakley stepped up and filed his own claim against Luther in the amount of $291.67—the total rent that would be due through May 1, 1868, five months into the future. Although Luther had not breached his agreement with Coakley and there was no legal basis for making the claim, Timberlake and Johnston added Coakley’s claim to the total due and continued the auction. Luther decided at that moment that enough was enough and took action. He tried to physically stop the auction and removal of goods, declaring that any more goods taken from the store should pass over his dead body. He then drew a knife, which he threatened to put to use against the first person to attempt to remove anything more from the store. The following is from Luther’s account of what happened next: As soon as Mrs. Tibbets saw this, she sprang towards her husband, and seized his arm to prevent him from striking any one with the knife. The auctioneer Johnston, with the deputy-sheriff Timberlake, then pushed themselves on to said Tibbets and tried to force him and his wife out of the store into the street, which brought James B. Summons into the scuffle, together with his wife and her sister, Joanna Tibbets, who had just then entered the store on hearing the disturbance there. After a struggle, the said Johnston and Timberlake pushed them all out of the store into the street . . .

Eliza’s hand was cut in the scuffle (“a cut into which you could lay your forefinger, perhaps your two forefingers”), and a 32

Fredricksburg: Paradise Glimpsed mob was drawn to the scene by all the commotion. Several men fell upon Luther, choking him in hopes of getting him to drop his knife, which he eventually did. Luther was dragged to the mayor’s office by the mob, and two doctors sewed up Eliza’s wound and administered a powerful dose of morphine to calm her nerves. Luther, Jimmy, and Luther’s son Francis were soon taken to the Fredericksburg mayor’s office by Timberlake and charged with obstructing an officer of the law in the execution of his duty. A court was quickly convened and Luther was released on several bonds, with the promise that he would appear before a grand jury at the Corporation Court of Fredericksburg on December 12, 1867, and that he would keep the peace for six months. Over the following months, Luther found himself in and out of court numerous times. On June 2, 1868, John Coakley served Luther with a distress warrant for rent in the amount of $106 that Coakley alleged was due to him previous to and on the first day of May, 1868. When Luther heard that the officer who delivered the warrant would have to take goods to secure it, Luther “at once locked all the doors in the house, and told said officer that if he took the goods he must break open the doors, and if did that, he would do it at his peril: that he, Tibbets, should use no physical force, but that he should fight said Coakley, in law, inch by inch.” For two hours the officer remained in the house before he left. As a result of Luther’s action, Charles Mallam—the mayor of Fredericksburg—issued a warrant for Luther’s arrest on June 5, 1868, putting him under a hundred-dollar bond. By that time, Luther had exhausted his supply of willing bondsmen, and he was imprisoned in the town jail for three hours before Union 33

Creating an Orange Utopia sympathizers offered the necessary bail. On June 6, Luther contacted the officer and arranged for him to come to his home to fulfill the terms of the warrant. When the officer arrived on June 8, he removed what Luther termed “a great sacrifice” of his family’s furniture, which was sold at public auction by Gabriel Johnston. Amidst Luther’s legal woes, however, the Tibbetses had a ray of hope in their quest for investors. Their English boarder, Edward Brodribb, had an acquaintance in New York City—a man named Isaac L. Platt—who was interested in Luther’s idea of a colony for Virginia, and he had the funds available to enable Luther to begin purchasing the thirty thousand acres of land needed. Through Brodribb’s efforts, Isaac Platt visited Fredericksburg on March 8, 1868, with his friend George Leach, the man who originally introduced Brodribb to Platt. Luther’s discussions with Isaac Platt went quite well—so well that Platt agreed to invest a considerable sum of money in the colony for Virginia, up to $900,000 if he could secure the agreement of two or three other investors to join with him in the opportunity. According to Luther, With this view Mr. Platt gave to Mr. Tibbets specific instructions, both verbal and in writing, to purchase and contract for certain properties, not to exceed, for the present, one hundred thousand dollars, with the understanding that, as soon as he could see other parties, he would give further instructions to purchase largely. Mr. Tibbets was also instructed by Mr. Platt to purchase a house in the town of Fredericksburg for his use and benefit, that he may live in it, and to where he should remove his effects, he said, and come himself as soon as he could settle up and close out his property in New York.

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Fredricksburg: Paradise Glimpsed Platt mailed a check to Luther in the amount of $3,500, which Luther applied to the purchase of 707 acres of land on the Rappahannock River, along with an option to buy an additional 527 acres. But in the letter that accompanied the check, Platt disclosed that when he returned home to New York, his eldest son John demanded to know what he had been doing, refusing to give him a blank check until he told him what he wanted to know. While the elder Platt held his ground, three days later he sent Luther another letter saying that his family was beginning to apply pressure for him to abandon his idea of investing in property in Virginia. Clearly, Isaac Platt’s children were alarmed that their father—who would be seventy-five in April—was going to fritter away their inheritances in his real estate venture with Luther. On March 26, another of Isaac’s sons, Samuel Platt, came to Fredericksburg and filed suit against Luther in the Corporation Court of Fredericksburg to recover the $3,500 Isaac had just sent. Luther found himself again tangled in another complicated financial and legal mess. When questioned by Luther, Samuel Platt told him that his father was a very old man, infirm, and not expected to live much longer—a few months at the most. Samuel claimed that Isaac Platt was not competent to enter into a business contract, and Samuel had therefore come to Fredericksburg to cancel and settle any transactions Isaac had undertaken. Samuel Platt made several attempts to get Luther to give up his interest in a business enterprise with his father—including a cash offer of $2,500 and whatever amount of bonds would be required to indemnify and hold Luther harmless in the event that 35

Creating an Orange Utopia his father, Isaac, decided to sue Luther for breach of contract. Luther rebuffed all of Samuel’s offers. Ultimately, Samuel filed suit on behalf of his father against Luther in the amount of $4,000, including the $3,500 that Isaac had previously sent. In a deposition for the court on the matter, Isaac Platt described how he was enchanted—and perhaps supernaturally put at a disadvantage—by Eliza Tibbets when he visited Luther at the family’s home on March 8. According to Platt’s deposition, Whilst waiting there together, Mrs. Tibbets assumed a position, different to that in which she had been sitting, that arrested my attention: it was somewhat peculiar; and she commenced a magical discourse—the word enchantment would express my idea better than “magical”—corresponding exactly with the matter of the manuscript read to me by Mr. Leach. I had never witnessed any thing that is called Spiritualism, and had always avoided it, and advised my family to do so. I don’t think this was like it. At several times after that I again witnessed it, and it always possessed the same characteristic, that of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment. The whole matter is like a dream to me, and my name was mixed up with it, and the name of Violet was also mixed up with it. The effect it had upon me was like that produced upon me by the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment when I was seven years old. I was carried away by her fascination.

The first trial on Isaac Platt’s lawsuit began on July 13, 1868. The result, three days later, was a hung jury and a continuation of the trial to September 14. During the course of this second trial, Charles Herndon—a local lawyer hired to help represent Isaac 36

Fredricksburg: Paradise Glimpsed Platt in this matter—testified that he told Samuel Platt that Tibbets “was very unpopular, that he was a nigger man, and pretended to be their leader, that he had failed, and was sold out by the sheriff last winter, that he had no visible property.” On the afternoon of September 17, 1868, the jury found for the plaintiff—Isaac Platt—in the amount of $3,500 plus costs and interest from April 9, 1868, through the date that payment was ultimately made by Luther. In the weeks leading up to the second trial, Jimmy had received threatening letters from the Ku Klux Klan. The final one read: SUMMONS THE RADICAL; Care of L. C. Tibbets (Rad.); Fredericksburg, Va. The Hole in the Wall, No Place, Aug. 5, 1868. Summons—As the time is drawing near when your limit will expire, I again caution you to leave the country: it is not our desire or our object to shed blood, and it is only done in extreme cases when assassination cannot be avoided in order to carry out our plans. Therefore this the fourth warning, although your enemy—warn you as a friend. My other communication was unofficial, being written by myself at the suggestion of some of the “Klan.” You will observe that this bears our seal, and if you are not entirely bereft of reason you will regard it. By order of the G. C. G. L.

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Creating an Orange Utopia Luther and Jimmy didn’t take these threats lightly. They were concerned enough about them to arm themselves, keeping pistols under their pillows and axes next to their beds at night, within easy reach if the need presented itself. Finally, on September 25, 1868, Luther, Eliza, and their extended family left Fredricksburg for good, leaving behind the dream they shared of creating a new social order in the South. They all headed north to a city firmly planted in the Union ideals of Lincoln and his followers: Washington, DC.

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Four The DC Ye ar s

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hen Eliza, Luther, and their family and followers arrived in Washington, DC, on the morning of Saturday, September 26, 1868, they were nearly destitute. The legal battles and the sale of their goods at the sheriff ’s auctions left them with nothing but their personal effects to sell, and they had no place to go. As he was scouting out a place for his family to live, Luther met Mrs. Statts, a “Western lady” who sympathized with their plight. In addition to loaning them furniture and beds in which to sleep, Mrs. Statts introduced Luther to Josephine S. Griffing, general agent for the National Freedman’s Relief Association. Griffing—a committed abolitionist and women’s-rights activist—moved from Litchfield, Ohio (a stop on the Underground Railroad) to Washington in 1863 with her two daughters to help the thousands of former slaves pouring into the city during the Civil War. Griffing in turn introduced Luther to General Oliver 39

Creating an Orange Utopia Howard, who tried to convince him to move his family back to Fredericksburg—even offering the promise of military protection. This offer Luther quickly declined. The Tibbets family moved into a rented home in the Georgetown area of Washington, DC, and they tried raising money by selling some of their personal effects door to door. Luther soon discovered that District of Columbia law required him to first obtain a selling license, at a price of a hundred dollars, which Luther found quite vexing. Because they were unable to readily raise enough money to buy food, Luther out of desperation decided to apply to the Freedman’s Bureau—the agency created to provide emergency food, housing, and medical aid to freed slaves—for help. However, because they were white, Luther’s request was denied. Luther again applied for rations, this time citing the fact that they had brought two African-Americans along with them from Fredericksburg: a woman who was almost eighty years old, and a young girl named Nicey Robinson. Nicey had been bound over to Luther by the Freedman’s Bureau at her mother’s request. Nicey’s mother begged Luther and Eliza to take her daughter with them to Washington—she knew there was no future for Nicey in Fredericksburg, which was returning to its antebellum Southern ways. Rations were granted for the old woman, but not for Nicey. However, the rations stopped after only the second delivery as the Freedman’s Bureau closed its stores and generally withdrew its support from the former slaves. After several unsuccessful attempts to find employment, Luther again tried raise money by selling the family’s personal prop40

The DC Years erty. He used some of the proceeds to start another store, most likely in 1869. The store was a small greengrocer in Washington, DC, through which the family achieved some financial stability. Luther operated this store during his remaining months in Washington, after which time his son Frank J. Tibbets took over. There is no evidence that any of Eliza’s Washington-area relatives, family friends, or acquaintances provided financial support to her or Luther during this time of great need. Eliza’s brother Oliver Lovell, an attorney employed by the Treasury Department as a special agent investigating war claims against the US government, was based in Washington when her family arrived. So too were Eliza’s fellow Cincinnatians Salmon Chase and William Mellen, a neighbor of Eliza’s in Clifton and a distinguished attorney and businessman. One of their other associates, General Benjamin Franklin Butler, proved more helpful. A former Union Army commander, Butler was a member of the House of Representatives and also a member of the Radical Republican faction in Congress, which strongly opposed slavery and supported harsh policies toward exConfederates after the war. According to one source, his wife was a relative of Eliza’s. It was Butler who introduced Eliza to William Saunders, the man in charge of the US Agricultural Department’s division of experimental gardens and grounds, who would later send Eliza the navel orange cuttings that started the citrus boom in California. But while the freed slaves were struggling to adjust to their new lives, another battle was raging: the fight for women’s rights. Suffragists had wholeheartedly thrown their support behind the 41

Creating an Orange Utopia liberation of the slaves, and they looked forward to help in return from abolitionists when they pushed for legislation that would grant them the right to vote and full political equality with men, including easier divorce and equal pay for equal work. It should be no surprise that Eliza was actively involved in the movement. Women had not been subordinated in the New Church as they had in many of the older, more traditional churches. Married and unmarried women had always been members of the Cincinnati Society, and Urbana University—which had been founded by Swedenborgians—was coeducational throughout all levels from its inception. To an educated, intelligent, and socially conscious woman like Eliza, suffrage was an important issue. Eliza was in Washington during the January 1869 National Woman’s Suffrage Convention, which is often considered to be a key turning point in the history of the American women’s movement. Although there is no direct evidence that Eliza attended, Josephine Griffing was one of the speakers, and Eliza would have certainly been aware that it was taking place. In 1871 she marched with sixty-nine other women in Washington to petition for the right to register to vote. The women were joined by one man, the well-known abolitionist Frederick Douglass. When invited to join the march, according to the newspaper Daily Morning Chronicle, Douglass responded, “Do you really mean it? Well, I believe in woman suffrage most profoundly. I believe in bringing the whole moral power of the country to bear in our nation’s councils. The ocean is purer than the

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The DC Years stream. The masses are more trustworthy than individuals. I will go with you. I know what such a struggle means.” The group of seventy women included Belva Lockwood, the first woman admitted to the Supreme Court Bar; Dr. Caroline Winslow, physician to President Garfield; and many other exceptional women. When they then tried to register to vote, the women were rebuffed by the registrar. Although they were ultimately unsuccessful in this round of the fight, they sued the voting inspectors and registrars, eventually taking their case all the way to the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia in Spencer v. Board of Registration. The court found that, in accordance with the Fourteenth Amendment, women were citizens of the United States and were capable of becoming voters. However, until specific legislation was enacted to give them the right to vote, they would not be actually be eligible to vote. Public reaction to these demonstrations was mixed. The Daily Morning Chronicle’s account of the protest described above was encouraging: “The two purposes the ladies had in view are accomplished. They have proven that intelligent Christian women in Washington feel it their duty to exercise the elective franchise, and they have taken the first steps toward securing a legal recognition of their citizenship.” Others were not so supportive, as shown in another contemporary newspaper article about an attempt by a group of thirty other women to register to vote in the District of Columbia: On yesterday the hall in which proceeds the revision of the registration of the District witnessed a novel scene. Some

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Creating an Orange Utopia thirty women, whose presence denoted that number of homes left without the supervising care of wife or mother, appeared in a body and asked to be allowed to register. There was a little speech-making, a great chatter, some unnecessary taking down of names, and a temporary interruption of the business which the registers sat there to transact; but nothing more. The ladies who came to register knew the law confined registration to male citizens. They knew that their presence amid that throng round the registration desks, could accomplish nothing. Why did they go? We would speak of them as we have all learned to speak of womanhood, with the reverence kindled at a mother’s knee and warmed by affectionate memories of wife and sister, and we do but speak the general public sentiment, when we say that after the merriment excited by the saucy novelty of the scene passed off, there was only one feeling—that of general disgust.

Until 1861, there were no women employed by the United States government. However, when Congress passed the Legal Tender Act, Salmon Chase, who was Secretary of the Treasury at the time, received a suggestion that the department hire women as temporaries to cut and trim individual bills from large printed sheets. Chase initially balked at the idea—until he was told that women would work for half the price of men: $600 a year instead of the $1,200 paid to male clerks. Chase relented, and women soon populated the Department of Treasury. Jimmy Summons’s wife Harriet took a job as a Department of Treasury clerk during the 1860s. These women—like Harriet—were accomplished and educated. 44

The DC Years

Harriet Tibbets Summons, wife of Jimmy and daughter of Luther, with Daisy Summons, circa 1873.

The Washington, DC, years were transitional ones for Eliza and Luther, allowing them to recuperate from their disastrous experience in Fredericksburg. Soon, however, they would hear the call of new horizons and find a more permanent home.

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Five River side: Par adise Found

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hile their attempt to establish a utopian community in Virginia ended in disaster, Luther and Eliza never gave up on their dream of creating a better society. It was therefore with open minds and hearts that a broadside published by John Wesley North—a judge living in Knoxville, Tennessee—on March 17, 1870, found its way into Luther and Eliza’s hands. This broadside, entitled “A Colony for California,” was an enticing invitation to join in the founding of a new utopian community in the promised land of California. At the time, California was widely promoted by local chambers of commerce as somewhere just this side of the Garden of Eden, and it was a powerful magnet for people who were ready to make a new start in a promising new place. In the broadside, John North laid out his plan for the new colony: 46

Riverside: Paradise Found Appreciating the advantages of associated settlement, we aim to secure at least 100 good families, who can invest $1000 each, in the purchase of land; while at the same time we earnestly invite all good, industrious people to join us, who can, by investing a smaller amount, contribute in any degree to the general prosperity . . . We expect to have Schools, Churches, Lyceum, Public Library, Reading-room, etc., at a very early day, and we invite such people to join our colony as will esteem it a privilege to build them . . . We invite the earnest co-operation of all good people, who wish for homes in that land that the early Missionaries thought “fit for the abode of Angels.”

The future founders of Riverside were uniformly idealistic. North had moved to Tennessee shortly after the end of the Civil War along with his friend Dr. James Porter Greves. The two intended to purchase land there and create a community where whites and freed slaves could live together—a vision that was snuffed out when, in an echo of the Tibbetses’ experience, North was driven out of Knoxville for interfering with the lynching of a black man. A year later, in April 1870, John North arrived in southern California to find an appropriate area to create a new colony. Landing in Santa Barbara via boat from San Francisco, North prophetically had his first glimpse of orange trees. In a letter to his wife, written in Los Angeles a month later, North recalls his arrival: “I here had my first sight of orange trees loaded with ripe oranges. You can imagine how a tree with a large top of brilliant foliage would look with oranges all over it almost as thick as the 47

Creating an Orange Utopia pears used to grow on that little pear tree in our garden at Santa Clara.” Using Los Angeles as their base of operations, North and Greves worked through the summer, considering a variety of different tracts of land between the Santa Ana River to the south and Santa Monica to the north. To be considered, the land for the colony would have to show promise for cultivating semitropical fruits and grapes. Not only that, but the colony would need to have access to a reliable supply of water for irrigating crops—essential in southern California’s arid climate. As it turned out, the owners of the California Silk Culture Association—established in 1868 on 3,129 acres of ranch land within the Jurupa Rancho, on the east side of the Santa Ana River in San Bernardino County—were interested in selling their operation after the sudden death of association president and visionary Louis Prevost in April 1870. After determining that the land was suitable, North and his party commenced negotiations to purchase the association’s operations and real property. The Southern California Colony Association—North’s official citybuilding organization—was incorporated on September 12, 1870. Shortly after striking the deal to purchase the property, North wrote to his wife: I am at last located on the site of our future city, on a beautiful dry plain, surrounded with varied, picturesque and sublime Mountain scenery, and only wanting the waters of the Santa Anna River that flows near us to be conducted onto this plain to make it a scene of surpassing beauty . . . This is a

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Riverside: Paradise Found great undertaking that I am engaged in but it promises well, and I firmly believe it will prosper.

In the fall of 1870, two different names for the new colony were put up for a vote: Riverside and Jurupa. Riverside won the majority of the vote, so Riverside it was—and Riverside it is to this day. Sometime during the first week of December 1870, a new group of settlers arrived, attracted by North’s promise of a progressive community founded on ideals of political justice. This group included Luther Tibbets, Jimmy Summons, and Eliza’s nephew Sturgis Lovell. According to one source, Tibbets, searching for work, met John W. North, who was recruiting at least 100 good families to establish a fruit-raising colony in California. Tibbets and Summons agreed to join. Without their families, the two men left Washington, D.C. and arrived at Riverside in December, 1870. They viewed a cluster of tents on a dry bare plain and a colony office under construction. Water was only available from a creek north of town.

It didn’t take long for the citizens of Riverside to turn their dusty patch of dirt into a real city. Soon John North’s dream became reality as stores, churches, a school house, a lyceum, and even the first public town library in southern California were built. (Years later, in 1891, the first golf course in southern California would also be built in Riverside, at the Riverside Country Club.) For the most part, men were the first colonists in Riverside. 49

Creating an Orange Utopia The handful of families with women were the affluent ones who could afford to hire men from San Bernardino to build the permanent homes they needed to accommodate a wife and children. In the Tibbetses’ case, Luther, Jimmy, and Sturgis came ahead of their family to build a house and establish themselves in the new colony. They homesteaded on free government land south of town—what was then known as the Government Tract. Although they supported John North’s philosophical goals for the colony, they didn’t want to pay the money to join. By moving onto government land, they were able to obtain the benefits of being situated close to Riverside without paying the price of admission. During these early days of the colony, Riverside was a part of San Bernardino County. When a resident of Riverside wanted to go to the “big city,” that city was San Bernardino, located about eleven miles to the north. Esther Klotz—a prime historian of early Riverside who has written extensively on the city’s history and its orange trees—describes the scene in the early 1870s: Riversiders forded the Santa Ana River at Agua Mansa with their wagons to shop in San Bernardino at Meyerstein’s General Store, the city’s finest. They used the neat one-storied County Courthouse, stayed at Pine’s or Miller’s Hotel, and visited the other 20 large stores, mostly constructed of brick. There they could also get a stage to Los Angeles or Yuma and buy newspapers and books. Skilled carpenters and contractors from San Bernardino built Riverside’s first buildings. Early ranchers worked their own fields with some help from local Indians. The Chinese came later as a major labor supply.

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Riverside: Paradise Found While Riverside’s infrastructure grew quickly, establishing a viable system of agriculture—vital for the growth and prosperity of the colony—was an ongoing challenge. In an article titled “History of Riverside,” Greves described some of these challenges: “For the first ten months all the water for household purposes and the watering of trees and vines had to be carted in barrels full ¼ of a mile from the river. As fast as our trees and vines leaved out they were eaten off by grasshoppers and it was with the utmost care that any were saved . . . the whole plain was entirely bare of all vegetation, and a more desolate spectacle could hardly be imagined.” A number of different crops were tried—with limited success—to generate the cash that the Riverside colonists needed to keep their newborn community afloat. These crops included everything from wheat to silkworms to all manner of different varieties of citrus trees. These early citrus trees were probably exclusively derived from seed or were seedling trees—typical of the trees at the various nearby missions. According to an account written a couple of decades after the founding of Riverside, “The first citrus trees ever set out in Riverside were some orange, lemon, and lime trees put out by Dr. Shugart on the 1st day of March, 1871. . . . To keep his trees alive, the doctor had the water hauled in barrels . . . at 25 cents a barrel, until completion of the canal.” Fortunately, by July 1871 the first irrigation canal was completed, bringing water from the Santa Ana River to the center of the young Riverside colony. Work to build the nine-mile-long canal had commenced almost immediately after the North’s association acquired the property in the fall of 1870. This first 51

Creating an Orange Utopia canal—twelve feet wide at the top, eight feet wide at the bottom, and three-and-a-half feet deep—cost approximately $60,000 to complete. The influx of water led to a plant population explosion. Many of the settlers initially planted corn with good results. The next year many planted vines and trees, and these crops prospered beyond all expectations. Citrus trees especially were generating excitement—by 1872, 6,000 orange trees and 150 lemon trees were assessed for tax purposes—in part due to stories of successful ventures elsewhere. One example was the Wolfskill citrus orchard in Los Angeles, first planted in 1841 on seventy acres of land near the intersection of present-day East 5th Street and South Central Avenue. According to a report in the Riverside Press, “A 60 acre grove cost only $250 a year for pruning and care and in 1879, the entire crop sold for $80,000. Thus in Riverside, a ten acre orchard could produce $30,000 when mature.” Sometime in 1872, Luther sold his original homestead and bought a new one—still in the Government Tract. He bought the property from two men who had had enough of the pioneer lifestyle and decided to call it quits. This 160-acre parcel is bounded by the present-day Arlington, Jurupa, Brockton, and Palm Avenues. While Luther worked hard to establish himself in the Riverside colony, to build a house, and to prepare the way for his family in this wilderness, Eliza and the children remained in Washington, DC. The exact date of Eliza’s arrival in Riverside remains the subject of conjecture. According to Esther Klotz, Eliza—along with Jimmy’s wife Harriet, their daughter Daisy, and Nicey—arrived .

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Riverside: Paradise Found in 1873. Eliza would have been fifty years old at the time. In addition, Edward Brodribb—Luther and Eliza’s English boarder from Fredericksburg—moved to Riverside and into their home at some point, although it’s not clear if he traveled with Eliza and her family. The trip across the country was long and arduous. The group traveled from Washington to San Francisco by train, where they had to carry their own food with them and there were no bathrooms as we know them today. Once they arrived in San Francisco, they took a boat to Los Angeles. Finally, they had to ride on a buckboard wagon along with all of their worldly goods for the final leg to Riverside. Mary North Shepard, daughter of John North, recalls the family’s arrival in her memoir: Mr. Tibbets had been in Riverside some time and had built a neat and somewhat ornate cottage before his wife, Mrs. Eliza Tibbets, came. . . . Both Mr. and Mrs. Tibbets, in manner and speech, showed unmistakable evidence of family backgrounds of intelligence and refinement far above the average. They were spiritualists and Mrs. Tibbets was said to be a “medium” of extraordinary ability. She was not tall and being quite fleshy, perhaps she seemed to me shorter than she really was. She must have been beautiful in her younger days. I remember seeing a photograph of her which, although still a recognizable likeness, so strongly resembled Queen Victoria that someone present exclaimed about it. I can still hear her infectious laughter as she admitted that the same resemblance had been noticed when the photograph was taken.

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Creating an Orange Utopia

Many people commented on Eliza’s resemblance to Queen Victoria in this photograph, which was probably taken in the 1880s.

She was bright, alert, vivacious—of charming personality— and gaily laughed off the inconveniences of their pioneer life.

Eliza lost no time settling in and joining her husband in the search for a viable cash crop. The answer to their prayers came from a friend back east in Washington, DC.

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Six The Long Road to Par adise

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nbeknownst to the earliest settlers of the Riv erside colony, in Washington, DC, fourth-generation horticulturalist William Saunders had taken note of a unique variety of orange—a seedless “navel” orange from Bahia, Brazil—that had been sent to his office at the US Agricultural Department (later the Department of Agriculture). The origins of the navel orange can be traced to the province of Goa in India, which was a Portuguese possession for approximately 450 years. Trade brought the tree to Portugal, where it was known as selecta for the high quality of its fruit, and from there to Brazil, where it was planted first in Bahia and then in other areas of the country. However, the original selecta orange (laranja selecta in Portuguese) had seeds, usually about fifteen to twenty in each fruit. So the seedless Bahia navel orange—selecta de umbigo—would 55

Creating an Orange Utopia have resulted from a spontaneous mutation or “sport” of the parent selecta tree, an occurrence that has been traced to a grove in Cabulla, a suburb of Bahia City. Bahia is also ground zero for Brazil’s Spiritualist community, which merged West African animist beliefs and Catholicism into a religion known as Candomblé. Candomblé emerged in the late 1500s among the local slave population (more than 3.6 million slaves were shipped from Africa to Brazil in total) and it was quickly banned by the Catholic Church. Regardless, the religion thrived, and it is still actively practiced today—and even growing in popularity—with more than two million Brazilians declaring that Candomblé is their religion of choice. The religion has become formalized, and temples—known as terreiro—have been built. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the navel orange would find its way from the intensely Spiritualist area of Bahia and into the hands of an ardent American Spiritualist, Eliza Lovell Tibbets, who would care for it and nurture it. As author William S. Burroughs once said, “In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.” Who, one can only wonder, willed this event to happen? William Saunders—who was in charge of the US Agricultural Department’s division of experimental gardens and grounds— was introduced to Eliza Lovell Tibbets by her acquaintance Benjamin Butler while she lived in Washington, DC. In his personal journal, written a number of years afterwards, Saunders described the events leading to the importation of the navel orange into the

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The Long Road to Paradise United States from its home in Bahia, Brazil: “Sometime in 1869 the then Commissioner of Agriculture, Horace Capron, brought to my office and read me a letter which he had just received from a correspondent at Bahia, Brazil. Among other matters, special mention was made of a fine seedless orange of large size and fine flavor; thinking that it might be of value in this country I noted the address of the writer and sent a letter asking to be the recipient of a few plants of this orange.” The letter mentioned by Saunders was written by Richard Edes, the US consul in Bahia, Brazil, and sent to Horace Capron on January 21, 1871 (Saunders’s recollection in his personal journal of the exact year the letter was written was apparently faulty). The letter reads as follows: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your communication of December 15, 1870. The favorite orange of this part of Brazil, and of which this province is celebrated is named the navel orange. This orange contains no seed and for transplanting, the cuttings of the tree must be used. Such cuttings are usually put into a basket of earth of the diameter of about 10 inches and the baskets to the number of 8 or 10 are packed in a large case with a glass top. In the summer season it can be forwarded without much risk. I shall be glad to forward whatever number of cuttings may be desired and would suggest the month of May as being the most suitable for the purpose.

Edes and Capon made arrangements by mail for the cuttings to be shipped to Washington, and their letters suggest that 57

Creating an Orange Utopia the first batch arrived during the spring of 1871—probably in the month of May as originally recommended by Edes. The first shipment, however, did not fare well in transit from Brazil, and a new batch was sent shortly afterward. Ten surviving trees from the second shipment were sent out by Saunders, with the first two going to Riverside at the personal request of Eliza Lovell Tibbets and the other eight later going to Florida. Eliza knew that orange trees would thrive in arid southern California because other varieties had been successfully grown in the area for decades. However, these other varieties had characteristics that limited their market appeal. While Eliza could not have been aware of the full potential of the navel orange, she was willing to try anything in hopes of finding a marketable cash crop for her family and the Riverside colony. Historian Esther Klotz believes that the trees took about one month to make their journey from Washington to Riverside. The young navel orange trees were shipped from the East Coast by rail—first to Gilroy, California, via San Francisco, and then by stagecoach from Gilroy to Los Angeles. The stagecoach trip alone took three days. It is believed that Luther and Eliza Tibbets drove sixty-five miles in their buckboard wagon from Riverside to pick up the trees. According to Klotz’s handwritten notes, the available evidence points to December 10, 1873, as the date the trees arrived. If this is the case, Eliza would have been in Riverside for only a few months. When the two trees were originally planted, no one really thought much about the event—they had no idea of the trees’ potential value. At the time, the settlers of the Riverside colony 58

The Long Road to Paradise were trying out all sorts of potential cash crops, hoping that something would answer their prayers for a sustainable source of income. The navel orange trees were just the latest in a long series of agricultural experiments, most of which brought results that were anything but spectacular. While Riverside would one day become a Garden of Eden in the middle of this dry and dusty land, irrigation had not yet become well developed in the area and selection of the right crops for the climate had not yet been perfected. Mary North Shepard tells the following story of the introduction of the navel orange to Riverside: She [Eliza Tibbets] should be accorded a prominent place in the history of California, for it was she who obtained from the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C., the two little seedless orange trees which were the parent trees of the Washington Navel Orange . . . When the trees arrived, Mr.  and Mrs. Tibbets—together—drove into the yard of Mr. G. W. Garcelon with the package containing them in the back of their wagon. Mr. Garcelon was acknowledged to be our leading horticulturalist and they came to ask his advice about how to plant the trees. He told them that, as they had had such a long journey, they were probably very dry. He directed them to immerse them in a tub of water, let them remain in the water over night, and in the morning he would come and personally supervise the planting of them.

A source of controversy has been exactly how many navel orange trees were received by Eliza and Luther Tibbets. The common folklore is that they originally received three trees, but 59

Creating an Orange Utopia that one was destroyed by a cow. William Saunders remembers differently, however. After their two navel orange trees began to bear fruit, Eliza and Luther would sometimes send a box of the oranges to Saunders back in Washington, DC. In a letter to Eliza after one such occasion—printed in the April 17, 1886, edition of the Riverside Press and Horticulturist—Saunders again confirmed that he sent two trees: I sincerely thank you and your good husband for the box of oranges which reached me in splendid condition on the 27th. Without any doubt the Bahia is the best orange I have ever tasted. I am quite familiar with the best oranges in Florida, having made several visits to that state, and tasted the very best they have. I am satisfied that California will beat Florida unless the later state pays more attention to producing the best kinds than they are now doing . . . You received two of the original plants as they came from Bahia and none were sent out until we budded young stocks and sent them after [they were] two or three years old, and not a great many of them. I have eaten navel oranges in Florida, very good, but altogether different from yours.

A. D. Shamel, a physiologist with the Department of Agriculture and an early expert on the Parent Navel Orange Trees, supported the theory that only two trees were sent from Washington to Riverside, not three. In a 1933 article, Shamel described the trees as they appeared at the Tibbets home. The two orange trees planted by Mrs. Tibbets were small and rather weak-growing ones according to all reliable accounts.

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The Long Road to Paradise They were planted in the dooryard of the Tibbets home at what is now 4374 Central Avenue and survived the climatic and other hazards largely, in all probability, through the care given them by Mrs. Tibbets . . . The oranges produced by both of the parent trees proved to be seedless and were superior in quality, texture, size and other characteristics. These facts were early recognized by Mrs. Tibbets and her neighbors and were soon appreciated by an ever-widening group of those who were interested in fruit-growing in California.

According to Chester Roistacher, plant pathologist at the University of Riverside since 1963 and the leading expert on the Parent Navel Orange Trees, it’s likely that the trees were “topworked” soon after they began to grow by Sam and Tom McCoy and Josiah Cover, neighbors of the Tibbetses’. Top-working an orange tree—a method of grafting bud sticks containing four or more buds onto an existing trunk of a larger tree that has been cut back—will produce many new buds in a short period of time. It’s also likely that the very first navel oranges grown in Riverside were actually produced on either the McCoys’ or Cover’s trees— not those owned by Luther and Eliza Tibbets. According to an unpublished history of the Cover family: “Because of their interest and the care they had given the trees, McCoy and Cover were allowed to take the first buds from the little trees, and they were put into healthy young seedling trees, and these bore fruit two years before the ‘parent’ trees did. These latter were nearly killed by being cut to pieces for buds; and for these buds the Tibbets got good prices.” And so it happened that the first grower to exhibit the navel 61

Creating an Orange Utopia orange was Tom McCoy, who took his oranges to the Southern California Horticultural Fair in 1878. The Riverside area’s first citrus fair was held at Riverside’s new public hall on February 12–13, 1879. It was sponsored by the Southern California Horticultural Society. There were 275 plates of oranges on display from growers across the state of California. Tom Cover’s two plates of seedless navel oranges, grown from the offspring of Eliza and Luther’s trees, won first prize over all of the competition—including the plate of St. Michael oranges exhibited by Luther Tibbets. A June 1880 article in the Riverside Press and Horticulturist describes the outcome of the 1879 Riverside Citrus Fair: It (Washington Navel) was first exhibited at the Riverside Citrus Fair last year (1879), where it attracted great attention, its appearance being so unlike the other Navels on exhibition, which were from the stock imported into California from Australia. The marked points of difference between the two Navel oranges lie in their external appearance. Instead of being like the Australian, ribbed lengthwise, it is smooth and more globular. The skin is of a finer texture, has more of a satin like appearance and shows a much higher color, being of a bronzy gold tint.

As excitement about the navel orange grew, Luther was able by 1880 to establish a lucrative business selling buds from the two Parent Navel Orange Trees. The parent trees became so valuable that Luther was forced to erect a high fence topped with barbed wire to keep out hungry animals and potential budwood thieves. 62

The Long Road to Paradise Ironically, the orange gold rush that was soon to come mostly passed by Luther and Eliza. Instead of planting groves of oranges as did many of his neighbors, Luther contented himself with selling the buds of the Parent Navel Orange Trees for $1 each, quite a sum at the time for a small—less than one-half inch in length—piece of wood. While this might have been a lucrative business in the short run, it was not sustainable, because once a grower obtained a navel orange tree he could grow and propagate as many of his own buds as he wanted. However, Luther may have been motivated by ongoing financial difficulties to seek out quick money rather than long-term investments.

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Seven The Good Ye ar s

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f there was one thing that everyone in Riverside needed, it was water. While many other parts of the United States can count on precipitation—rain, sleet, and snow—almost year-round, southern California is quite different. The rainy season in southern California lasts roughly from November through March, when powerful storms blow down the West Coast from the Gulf of Alaska. After March, the land may see very little—or no—precipitation until the next rainy season comes again. The Riverside area only gets on average ten to fifteen inches of rain each year, and at the time of the early settlement the only water available year-round came from the Santa Ana River—through which little water traveled during the dry season—and personal wells. Given the built-in scarcity of water in Riverside, combined with Luther’s propensity to argue and fight and litigate, it’s little wonder that water became a constant thorn in Luther’s side. 64

The Good Years When Luther homesteaded his first property in Riverside, the only canal in town ended before it reached his land. He and some neighbors solved this problem by taking matters into their own hands and extending the canal themselves so it would reach their properties. In 1877, however, Indiana banker S. C. Evans purchased this canal and all water rights from the Riverside colony, creating the Riverside Land and Irrigating Company in the process. Evans spent a significant sum of money to improve the canal, and then began charging property owners for access to its water. Many Riversiders—including Luther Tibbets—refused to pay. The result was denial of the water that they so desperately needed to grow their crops, and fuel for years of litigation over water rights. In June 1881, Luther sued the Riverside Land and Irrigating Company and its owner for the right to take water from the canal that crossed his property. Just one year later, Luther was arrested for destroying Evans’s canal water gates on his property—resulting in a jury trial, a conviction, and a twenty-dollar fine. In August 1882, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of Evans and his company in Luther’s suit against the parties. To add insult to injury, Luther was fined $50 for contempt of court. According to the book The History of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, As a man Mr. Tibbets was intelligent and a good neighbor, but being insane on law matters was the bane of his life. Always his own lawyer, he spent some time in the county jail for contempt of court, where he read the Bible to his fellow prisoners. So far as his connection with the introduction of

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Creating an Orange Utopia the navel orange was concerned he had no connection with it whatever, and had their care developed on him the navel would have perished before it had attained fruitage. When its excellence came to be known he sold buds from the trees at a good price, which helped him in a measure to continue his lawsuits, but his skill or lack of skill in cutting bud wood was an injury to the trees . . . Mr. Tibbets was a good man and left not an enemy behind, but his unfortunate predilection for reforming the world by law led him into a mania that was his final undoing.

And yet Luther’s perseverance—some might say stubbornness—did eventually pay off. In an 1886 letter to William Saunders in Washington, DC, Luther praised his wife Eliza’s efforts in spreading her navel oranges among the early residents of Riverside, while proudly pointing out his own role in winning water rights for himself and others. Said Luther, “My wife has justly contended for all the merits in defusing the oranges from your department (trees I mean) among the people here while I have been contending in another way for our water rights whereby the orange might be made to grow. And not until the 11th day of last August was the object fully accomplished. We have now one of the best, most reliable, water rights and irrigating systems in the world. In this I do take much credit to myself.” While Luther waged his ongoing legal battles, Eliza assembled a devoted clan of friends and relatives around her. In her spare time, Eliza made velvet animals to give to children in orphanages and wrote letters and sent packages to shut-ins in the community; she also participated in town events, on one occa66

The Good Years sion dressing up as a gypsy fortuneteller for the local flower show. Eliza clearly enjoyed her family and friends, and she loved having them around her. Mary North Shepard reported that the annual parties Eliza gave for her granddaughter Daisy were lavish by frontier standards, with games and plentiful food. Children’s birthday parties were a rarity in the early 1800s—children were too busy either working to support their families or learning the skills they would need to do their work. However, by the middle of the century, affluent Americans realized that the minor indulgence of a birthday party offered them the opportunity to showcase both their children and their own entertaining skills. Games at these parties—which typically included charades, blind man’s bluff, and pin the tail on the donkey—played an important role in socializing the children who attended. As they played, they were learning etiquette and the value of good deeds, cooperation, and fair play. However, while there was much to celebrate as Riverside began to grow and thrive, there were no guarantees in life, and Eliza and Luther would soon be reminded of that fact in a very direct and brutal way. Consider the recollections of Mary North Shepard: The Santa Ana River was something of a joke to easterners whose first sight of it was during the summer months, when not a trickle of moisture was to be found in its sandy bed; but when the fall and winter rains came it was often a peril to be reckoned with. There was such a flood in the spring of 1878. The most direct route to San Bernardino crossed the river near the present site of the Colton Bridge. The Santa

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Creating an Orange Utopia Ana had no bridges until later, but the single track ford was considered safe if one kept to the beaten track; but the least deviation would be fraught with danger of being drawn down by quicksand.

On April 20, 1878, Luther Tibbets had taken his lumber wagon and team of four work horses to San Bernardino. The river was high and quite treacherous. When it came time to return home, Luther asked one of John North’s sons if he had not just successfully forded the river. North’s son conceded that had done so, but that it was a very close call—he had almost not made it across. Said Luther, “Four horses can paddle through a great deal.” Thus, Luther made the fateful decision to cross his wagon and team of horses at Agua Mansa. Continues Mary North Shepard, [Mr. Tibbets] had driven into the turbulent river at the Colton crossing a little after noon. Mr. and Mrs. Tibbets sat on the front seat with ten year old Daisy Summons between them. On the back seat were Mr. Broadrib (an Englishman and member of the spiritualist group of which Mrs. Tibbets was the center) and Mrs. Ellen White, a spiritualist and intimate friend who spent much time in the Tibbets home. As they reached midstream the horses got off the beaten track and began to sink and flounder. Little Daisy said, “Oh, are we going to be drowned?” as the wagon tipped over and they were all thrown into the water.

Two nearby riders on horseback who witnessed the accident dove into the water to help the men get the women to shore. 68

The Good Years Unfortunately, Daisy was nowhere to be seen. However, when the upside-down wagon had been put right-side-up, her lifeless body was found hidden underneath. The party tried to resuscitate her, but to no avail. Daisy Summons was dead at the young age of ten. Amidst personal tragedy and triumph, Spiritualism remained at the core of Eliza’s religious life. Her reputation as a medium followed her to Riverside, quickly attracting the attention of her fellow townspeople. Mary North Shepard recalls that her father, who was already interested in Spiritualism, sought Eliza out to hold a séance at their home. They had been told that Eliza’s “familiar” or “guiding spirit” was an Indian girl named Floating Feather who, along with other spirits, would from time to time take possession of Eliza. While possessed, Eliza was, as Mary later wrote, “entirely unconscious of her words or actions and had to be told later of what had transpired.” Mary went on to describe the scene in her home: Those in the little circle in our sitting room that evening were my father and mother—Mrs. Tibbets sitting between them—my sister and my nine or ten year old self. We did not hold hands, as is sometimes the custom in such séances, nor were we in darkness; but we sat in silence—Mrs. Tibbets with her eyes shut. I, at least was much awed over this, my first, dip into the occult. It seemed to take an inordinate time to get herself into the trance. She yawned and apologized for being sleepy as she sat, waiting for the transition which was to make her a medium of communication between this and the spirit world. Finally, when I, too, was nearly asleep, she began to twitch and jerk and utter inarticulate sounds:

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Creating an Orange Utopia “Tchk—tchk—tchk.” This continued for several minutes and she then sat erect with eyes wide open, apparently looking at something over our heads, and began to talk solemnly and with great earnestness . . . My chief interest was in the fact that during the whole séance (I have heard my mother say that it was more than half an hour, but perhaps less than an hour) she sat with her eyes wide open and never winked. Had I not seen it myself, I could not have believed it possible for anyone to endure such a strain upon the eyes. This phenomenon impressed us all alike . . . Mrs. Tibbets seemed to have as much difficulty coming out of the trance as she did to get into it. There were the same twitchings and jerkings— evidences of a strong physical struggle. Her eyes closed and her head dropped upon her chest—she breathed heavily. She was quite red in the face and her eyes were streaming when she finally looked up as if surprised at her surroundings, and asked, “What has happened?” Then, as if memory returned to her, she asked, “Was it satisfactory?”

Eliza was raised in the Swedenborgian faith, and it seems that she felt a strong connection to her religious roots even in the later years of her life. The New Church officially arrived in Riverside in 1874 in the form of Calvin Day Noble, a Swedenborgian clergyman from Chicago, Illinois, and his wife Hannah. He was followed four years later by a retired New Church minister from Illinois—the Reverend Berry Edmiston—who moved there with his wife and three boys in October 1878. Originally a Methodist minister, Edmiston had converted to the New Church and in 1869 became pastor for the Henry, Illinois, Swedenborgian 70

The Good Years church. However, increasingly debilitating illnesses forced him to retire in 1878, and Edmiston and his family moved to the more favorable climate of southern California. Soon other Swedenborgian families followed, and a small congregation slowly emerged, with services held at the Edmistons’ home every Sunday. Although it is not clear whether Eliza was a formal member of the group, her granddaughter, Daisy Summons, and her adopted child Nicey were both christened as members of the New Church. According to Mary North Shepard, Once, when my sister and I were at the Streeter’s we were invited to Rev. Calvin Day Noble’s, as Mrs. Tibbets was to bring Daisy and Nicey there to be christened. I well remember the little ceremony—Daisy was christened Daisy Alice Summons, but for the little negro girl Mrs. Tibbets gave only the name, “Nicey.” Mr. Noble asked for a surname, but Mrs. Tibbets said, “Just Nicey.” I have often wondered what became of Nicey. There were but few, if any, of her race in Riverside when my family left there in 1880.

Soon, however, Eliza appears to have split from the local Swedenborgian congregation. At the end of 1881, the Universalist Working Society established a church in Riverside with fifty members, including charter member Eliza Lovell Tibbets. On April 29, 1883, the Riverside Universalist Church building—actually, the town’s first schoolhouse, built in 1871 and moved to a different site at the corner of Seventh and Market Streets for its new use—was dedicated. However, according to church records, Eliza withdrew from membership on June 6, 1883. 71

Creating an Orange Utopia Meanwhile, the New Church flourished in Riverside. An organizational meeting of the Riverside Society was held on May 17, 1885. The church building was dedicated on Palm Sunday, April 18, 1886. At least 150 people attended the dedication, including pastors of the local Congregational and Universalist churches. The source of Eliza’s friction with the New Church—and possibly the Universalist congregation as well—was likely her ongoing Spiritualist activities. In a report published in the NewChurch Messenger on September 13, 1882, Reverend Edmiston announced that “Within the last ten months, four New Church families have come to this beautiful valley and are now settled near us, and two other families are thinking of coming as soon as they can arrange their business affairs. There are now twelve adult receivers of the heavenly doctrines in the neighborhood (apart from the ‘New Church Spiritualists,’ who meet by themselves).” As time went on, this separate-but-equal tolerance for New Church Spiritualists seems to have diminished. In 1889, Reverend Edmiston reported on the visit of Reverend John Doughty of San Francisco, who was engaged to deliver a course of Swedenborgian doctrinal lectures for an entire week at the Riverside opera house. While the weather was “the worst of the season, rainy and disagreeable,” more than 150 people attended Doughty’s lecture on the first night—with even more attending subsequent lectures. According to Edmiston, “A desire having been expressed by many to hear our view in regard to modern Spiritism. Mr. Doughty consented to remain another day, and to deliver a lecture in the evening on the subject. He was greeted by a large 72

The Good Years

The Riverside New Church building as it appears today.

audience, and many, we hope, were led to see the danger of Spiritism, and all were certainly convinced that the New Church has no sympathy with Spiritism.” Despite their legal disputes and personal tragedies, the years from 1881 to 1888 were good ones for Luther and Eliza. A few years earlier, in 1875—using profits from selling budwood from the Parent Navel Orange Trees and proceeds from the sale of half of his original 160-acre property—Luther had added a twostory addition to the family home and put down a well, enhanc73

Creating an Orange Utopia ing their living comfort. In March 1882, Eliza paid $400 to build a one-story carriage house on their property to house the double carriage they had purchased three years earlier. Luther took a loan from a local businessman named Lewis Jacobs in 1885 to provide the funds he needed to subdivide his land for sale to the public. By the mid-1880s, southern California was in the midst of a housing boom, spurred by the success of the navel orange and the influx of new residents from the East seeking to make their fortunes in this idyllic promised land. An article in the Los Angeles Times described the land rush as follows: “People poured in by thousands and prices of land began to climb. Everybody that could find an office went into the realestate business. Doctors, lawyers, and merchants shared the excitement, and some of them gave up their regular pursuits and pitched into real estate . . . One man who bought a city block in Riverside seven years ago for $1,000 has sold it for $101,000.” In April 1886, Luther offered fifty-one city lots for sale at the price of $600 each, including piped water. Prosperous in their own fashion, he and Eliza would often be seen driven through Riverside in their beautiful carriage. Mary North Shepard chimes in with her own recollections of the Tibbetses’ financial good fortune: Early in the 1880s we were told that in one year Mr. Tibbets realized $20,000.00 from the sale of buds from the two trees of the Washington Navel Orange. It was said that he was “at the top of the wave” financially. It was during the comparatively short period of their opulence that I saw Mr. and Mrs. Tibbets last. I was visiting friends in Riverside and saw them drive by.

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The Good Years In the old days their only equipage was a heavy farm wagon— springless, and the seats were only boards laid across the top of the wagon box. How they endured those backless, springless seats on the long rides they took has always been a mystery to me. They now rode in a two seated carriage which had a top and springs, and their seats were cushioned. I rejoiced for them. Best of all, they had a driver and Mr. and Mrs. Tibbets sat at their ease on the back seat.

In a handwritten story entitled “A Bit of Magnolia Corner’s History,” Mabel McIntyre Rogers—daughter of the Tibbets farm foreman, William McIntyre—recounted the following scenes from her time in the Tibbets household. We moved from [the east side of town] to the Tibbets Ranch where we lived for four years. Father was L. C. Tibbets Foreman & counseler. Luther C. Tibbets was a Yankee from Maine and quick tempered. However Father got along with him exceedingly well. They almost adopted we three older children. We called on Grandma Tibbets every afternoon for about fifteen or twenty minutes, depending on how she was feeling. They taught us to call them Grandma & Grandpa. Grandma Tibbets taught me to do quite a little bit of fancywork. Grandma was not well, so they kept a Swedish housemaid. Grandma dressed in [the] same fashion as Queen Victoria of England and looked very much like Queen Victoria of England. She wore her hair like the Queen. However, she was of Irish descent and educated in a Catholic Convent.

These were the best of times for Eliza and Luther. They were prosperous, they had their family close, and the navel oranges that 75

Creating an Orange Utopia

Jimmy Summons’s home in Riverside during the family’s years of prosperity.

they introduced to Riverside had spurred an economic boom the likes of which southern California had never before seen. According to the 1880 Riverside census—the city’s first—Luther and Eliza even had a Chinese servant in their employ named Lan Ah. Eliza’s son Jimmy Summons was doing well, too. He and his family had a big, beautiful home at 327 Palm Avenue in Riverside, situated on 120 acres of land—twenty of which were planted with oranges. New towns sprung up to service the rapidly growing orange industry—towns with names like Redlands, Tustin, Corona, Pomona, Highlands, and Azuza. Land prices skyrocketed—from just 76

The Good Years thirty dollars an acre to a thousand dollars an acre and more— and, during 1887, more than twelve thousand people arrived each month by rail to visit this paradise on earth. Many stayed. In that same year, Luther and Eliza were well-off enough to take a threemonth vacation to the East Coast, including Washington, DC. By the time Riverside County was carved out of San Bernardino County in 1893, Riverside was the wealthiest city per capita in the United States. All because of Eliza’s orange trees.

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Eight Par adise Lost

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n her later years, Eliza’s health declined, and she began to spend less time in Riverside. Asthma was a re curring problem for her—particularly in Riverside’s hot and dusty climate—but Eliza also fell ill to bronchitis and other maladies. These physical ills caused her to occasionally seek relief along the Pacific coast, with friends in Oceanside (near San Diego) or in Summerland (near Santa Barbara). The community of Summerland—named after the Spiritualist realm of the afterlife—was founded in 1889 by Henry Lafayette Williams. He and his wife, Katie, hoped that Summerland would become a center for the Spiritualist belief. They offered sixty-by-twenty-five-foot lots for just twenty-five dollars. Soon, a temple was built, and Spiritualists from throughout California— and across the country—converged on the small town, conducting séances and communicating with the spirits of their dead friends and relatives. Although Eliza explored many religious tra78

Paradise Lost ditions in her lifetime, Spiritualism remained important to her to the very end. Back in Riverside, fortunes took a turn for the worse. In 1887, the bubble from the Riverside real estate boom popped and home and land values collapsed. Eliza’s son Jimmy lost his home and orchard following the crash. Jimmy had lent a male family member a significant sum of money, and the borrower eventually defaulted on the loan. As a result, Jimmy could no longer pay loans he had taken against his own property, and he was forced to sell. He moved to El Monte, approximately fifty miles away. Harriet Summons—Jimmy’s wife and Luther’s daughter— had died in 1875, likely of consumption, the disease that today is known as tuberculosis. Jimmy remarried in 1878 to a woman named Lydia Marie Durfee Wilbur, and they had six children together. The first of those children, Clara, was born prematurely on June 1, 1879, and she almost didn’t survive. When Clara was born, she was placed in a makeshift incubator, a cotton-lined cigar box placed on the door of the family’s wood-burning stove. People came from miles away to see the tiny baby Clara—they had never seen anything like her before. Clara became a favorite of Eliza’s, and the two exchanged warm letters over the years. A few years after Clara’s birth, Eliza’s first husband, James M. Summons—father of Jimmy—also moved to Riverside. Although there is no record of why James made this decision, he may have wanted to live his remaining years with Jimmy and his family. There is also no record of whether or not he interacted with Eliza. Although Luther had won his legal battles over water rights, 79

Creating an Orange Utopia over the years he was involved in a near-constant string of lawsuits over a variety of issues. The battles frustrated Eliza and caused no end to her consternation, as can be seen in this December 20, 1891 letter from Eliza to Clara: “Grandma feels worse about failing in her promise to you, than all else. You do know that I am very particular about keeping promises, and I had planned to take the three or four days before Christmas, to make up some things with your shells, but there came this hateful lawsuit and upset all our plans.” Although her health issues kept Eliza away from her family in her later years, she clearly loved and missed them. Clara went to a Catholic boarding school in Los Angeles, and Eliza herself became deeply involved in Catholicism during the last decade of her life. In an Easter 1892 letter to Clara, Eliza described the important role faith played in her life: You must never think that I forget you for one moment. I have you always in my heart, and every day at twilight, I pray for you, that the dear Lord will keep your mind and heart fixed on Him, that you may love all holy things. I am having a very painful week from a worse attack of asthma than usual, but you know Grandma, never murmurs, only praying at all times for strength to endure to the end, and the good Lord, does most surely give it to me. My dear child, I do so rejoice that I have been able, through the mercy of God, to place you where you will be taught all that this holy week means to Grandma and Grandpa this is a most solemn and sacred time, while most of those about us do not regard its solemnity or its importance . . . Today is indeed a time of great

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Jimmy Summons with his second wife, Lydia, and their two oldest children, Clara (standing) and Frank (on his mother’s lap), circa 1881.

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Creating an Orange Utopia solemnity to me. I cannot for a moment push from my heart and thoughts Our Crucified Savior. To me, this is a day of prayer and in these few lines I want to let my precious child feel my love and that I too pray in unison with the dear ones around you who are leading your young heart heavenward.

Eliza’s letters to Clara speak not only of her affection for her granddaughter, but for her husband. The following letter from August 1892 was written while Eliza was visiting friends in Oceanside: Dear child you cannot imagine what I felt when Grandpa told me he had seen you my tears fell fast to think I should have missed you and I prayed God to open a way that I might hold you to my heart once more and I think it may come for I expect to leave here the first of October. I am going to try to pass the coming winter in Grandpa’s little house in Riverside. The winter here last season was very cold and foggy. I was seriously ill with bronchitis, came very near leaving this troublesome world; for seven long weeks I sat in my chair day and night. Friends had to watch with me for fear I should choke to death. Grandpa and I fear to try staying [in Riverside] through another winter, and I am homesick to be with dear Grandpa, who is so good to me, and tries in every way to make me put aside my sorrows and be the cheerful woman I used to be . . . I cannot expect to live a great while longer. I am quite aged, remember on the 5th of this month I was 69 years old—I suffer a great deal, all the time—but I have quite a number of dear good friends here who do not want me to leave.

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Paradise Lost

Eliza was especially close to her granddaughter Clara, pictured here with her mother Lydia, circa 1890.

Eliza’s and Luther’s lives became increasingly tangled with lawsuits—some filed by Luther, some against him and, occasionally, against Eliza also. These lawsuits took a deep toll on them financially and personally, consuming their assets and their health. However, one lawsuit in particular became the final straw, the one that pushed Luther and Eliza off the land they had pioneered in 83

Creating an Orange Utopia Riverside’s early days. On December 14, 1896, a court judgment was filed against Luther and Eliza in foreclosure on their remaining sixty-three acres of land near the intersection of Arlington and Magnolia Avenues, including the house, barns, and orchard. Luther had mortgaged the property to generate cash for him and Eliza to live on but, strapped for funds, he eventually stopped making the required payments. On August 31, 1897, a commissioner appointed by the court system sold the Tibbets home and property to San Bernardino businessman Lewis Jacobs. Jacobs was the high bidder for the property, offering $30,000. Perhaps it should be no surprise to learn that Luther didn’t take this result lying down. He appealed the decision, filed a cross complaint, and asked for a jury trial. And he continued to live in his home. By this point, Eliza had moved out; according to an 1893 Riverside city directory, Eliza was living at 875 Main Street, about six miles away from her home with Luther. While it’s not clear how much time Luther and Eliza spent together in her final years, it’s clear that they still had affection for one another, as is evidenced by the words of endearment contained in the personal letters Eliza wrote to her granddaughter Clara. Tired of legal attempts to evict him following the foreclosure, Luther transported two small cottages off of the property and into the adjacent street and then moved into one of them. However, he eventually moved back into the main home, where he lived with his friend John Crane and a Swedish housekeeper. In January 1899, Lewis Jacobs filed suit against Luther to force him to move out once and for all. Luther was finally evicted later in 1899. 84

Paradise Lost Eliza never saw the end result of the dispute. On July 14, 1898, Eliza Lovell Tibbets died at a Santa Barbara hospital while visiting Summerland. Her body was returned to Riverside, and she was buried in an unmarked grave in Evergreen Cemetery. After fighting for years to win control of the Tibbets property, Lewis Jacobs died on September 18, 1900. His estate donated the two Parent Navel Orange Trees on the Tibbets property to the city of Riverside. The Tibbetses’ home was eventually torn down. Today, the only remaining evidence of the site’s importance is the name of the street created to access the small housing development built on the site: Navel Court. Luther—homeless and broke—became a permanent resident of the charity ward of the Riverside County Hospital in 1901. The huge orange industry that put Riverside and southern California on the map—enriching many of Luther and Eliza’s neighbors in the process—left Luther behind. The following excerpt from an April 1902 New York Times article—which ignores Eliza’s central role in the story of the navel orange—graphically describes Luther’s desperate situation: The strangest fact of all in this increase in wealth production and the great changes wrought in Southern California by the introduction of the seedless orange into the United States is that Luther C. Tibbets, who planted and grew the original tree, is a homeless, white-haired public charge in Riverside County. Every day he looks out from the county poorhouse across a broad valley on a vast expanse of green orange groves and superb homes, and reflects that when he planted his first navel orange tree there not a tree grew in the

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Creating an Orange Utopia valley. Riverside County sends some 8,000 carloads of seedless oranges to market annually, and they are worth to the growers about $3,000,000. There was not a dime’s worth of fruit marketed when Luther Tibbets set out his little navel orange trees alongside his cabin in lonely, sun-baked Riverside Valley thirty years ago.

According to the New York Times article, Luther never capitalized on this second California gold rush at least in part because of his idealism. As the author of the article put it, Luther reasoned that the Parent Navel Orange Trees came from the federal government in Washington, DC, and were therefore the property of the American people. He was said to have given away hundreds of buds for free. Luther died—penniless—on July 21, 1902. That same afternoon, his body was laid to eternal rest alongside his wife at Riverside’s Evergreen Cemetery.

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Nine Eliz a’s Leg acy

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o get an idea of what Riverside must have looked—and smelled like—during the height of the Orange Empire, consider this description of the view from Mt. Rubidoux, written by George Wharton James in his 1910 book Heroes of California: “Before us, reaching for miles and miles, stretch the orange groves of the city of Riverside, and the thousands of acres of the rich farming land of the Santa Ana valley. On the one hand, an ocean of rich, deep green, tinged with the vivid gold of the orange, and lashed into sparkling foam with the exquisite cream of the myriads of blossoms, the odor from which rises as sweet-smelling incense to the very heavens.” Once the navel orange was introduced to Riverside, the acreage devoted to the fruit expanded rapidly. In 1880, Tom Cover alone reported having budded seven hundred trees to the navel orange. Between 1880 and 1893, California’s acreage devoted to navel orange production exploded from three thousand to more 87

Creating an Orange Utopia than forty thousand acres. This growth was enabled by the biology of the orange trees. Citrus expert Chester Roistacher explains, “Suppose you started with ten plants and each one produced twenty buds. You would then have two hundred buds in three months. Suppose you then had two hundred plants ready to accept those two hundred buds, and you continued on in the same way. Within a year, you could easily produce one million buds.” As Eliza’s oranges fed the wealth and growth of existing cities like Riverside and San Bernardino, new citrus towns like Moreno Valley and Highgrove sprang up all over southern California. In 1886 alone, new citrus towns were laid out in Rialto, Fontana, Bloomington, Redlands, Terracina, Mound City (Loma Linda), and South Riverside (Corona). Between the late 1800s and the early 1900s, the navel orange groves spread across Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Los Angeles, and Ventura counties, and into California’s fertile Central Valley. New rail lines soon connected Riverside to San Diego, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles. Riverside needed these new rail lines to reach distant markets in a timely way, because oranges perished quickly in transit. In 1894, the iced railroad car was developed to prevent decay and to keep the oranges from drying out during their long journey to eastern markets. Experiments in shipping fruit long distance were expensive and only partially successful at first, but the demand was so great outside California that it became clear that development of new forms of shipment would be extremely profitable. According to a December 20, 1898, entry in William Saunders’s personal journal: “Californians claim that [the navel or88

Eliza’s Legacy ange’s] introduction has been of great value to their state. Many thousands of acres have been planted and upwards of 2,000 car loads of the fruit have been transported to the east in one year. It has also been received with favor in the English market, some having been sent to London brought good prices. It has proved to be perhaps the most valuable introduction ever made by the Department of Agriculture in the way of fruits.” The success of the navel orange inspired irrigation projects designed to convert dry, dusty desert land into verdant, productive, and profitable orange groves. The size, scale, and ingenuity of these irrigation projects are considered to be one of the agricultural marvels of the age. Over the years, large-scale irrigation projects opened up millions of acres of new productive land. Wheat had been the state’s single most profitable crop statewide between 1870 and 1900. Sometime about 1880, many agriculturalists in the central valley and southern California began to convert their farms to the production of fruit, and wheat farms were subdivided and used for horticulture. After the turn of the century, wheat exports began a rapid decline, prompted by intense Canadian and Russian competition and declining grain yields due to soil depletion. Fruit became one of the foundations of the state’s economy. A key feature of the growth of the Washington navel orange industry was a scientific approach to improvement. Study of propagation culture, handling, transportation, and other aspects of producing, distributing, and marketing the crop was responsible for many advancements, including many new and important inventions which were used not only for citrus, but also for other fruit industries. The previously mentioned refrigerator cars had 89

Creating an Orange Utopia an enormous impact on California, allowing the state to become the nation’s number-one agricultural producer. Inventors developed new tools for growing, packing, and shipping the fruit, including the mechanized orange grader, box makers, box labelers, citrus packing equipment, nutrients, and pest eradicators. Much of the machinery used in citrus packing houses was invented in Riverside, which became the world center for manufacture of citrus-packing equipment. As new towns sprung up around the orange groves, people flocked to them for jobs. At first, Native Americans and mestizos—people of mixed Spanish and local indigenous ancestry— worked the groves and helped construct the early waterworks. They were replaced in the late 1800s by Chinese workers, whose considerable horticultural skills and knowledge made citriculture enormously successful. By 1885, nearly 80 percent of the labor force was Chinese. Eventually, they were replaced by Japanese immigrants, who were the largest labor group in the citrus industry between 1900 and 1920. Mexicans came to dominate the industry later in the twentieth century, with women working as packers and men in the fields. Tourism went hand in hand with population growth. As more people heard of the Eden that was California, more made the effort to see it. Once they had come as tourists, these visitors brought stories back home with them that added to the image of the Golden State. Of all the crops that constitute California’s agricultural legacy, oranges in particular conjured an image of romance, prosperity, and abundance. And—as the premier orange tree in southern California—the Washington navel orange 90

Eliza’s Legacy played the greatest role in promoting this image, and in the reality of the fruit’s tremendous economic impact on the region. In their history of the Washington navel orange, published by the Riverside Chamber of Commerce in 1933, A. D. Shamel and Carl Pomeroy of the US Department of Agriculture took a moment to assess the impact that Eliza Tibbets’s oranges had on the nation—and on the world. According to Shamel and Pomeroy, “The planting of two small orange trees at Riverside, California, in 1873 led to the development of one of the leading horticultural industries in the state with about 100,000 acres devoted to its culture. In addition, this variety, which was later named the Washington Navel, is now grown commercially in Arizona, Texas, Brazil, South Africa, New South Wales, Japan and other citrus regions so that it has come to be one of the most important citrus varieties in cultivation.” The historical importance of the Parent Navel Orange Trees was recognized early, and local authorities took steps to make sure they were preserved. In 1902, the city of Riverside created a small, fenced park for the Parent Navel Oranges at the intersection of Arlington and Magnolia Avenues—not far from the site of the original Tibbets homestead. On April 23, 1902, the city moved one of the two original trees into the park. The state dedicated this tree as California’s first historical landmark. The other tree was transplanted on May 8, 1903, to the courtyard of the Glenwood Mission Inn. President Theodore Roosevelt was present for the occasion, symbolizing just how important these trees were to the history of American agriculture. According to one spectator’s account: 91

Creating an Orange Utopia Bright red, white, and blue lights crisscrossed over Main Street from Sixth Street to Fourteenth Street. Buildings along Main were draped in bunting in patriotic colors and American flags fluttered from roof tops and high windows. Men, women, and children standing along the parade route waved small flags as the President passed by. A huge portrait of Roosevelt on a tall building became visible as the carriages approached the Mission Inn, and flying above the Inn was the Presidential flag. The courtyard was ablaze with lights. Strings of small lights were fastened on the trees and interlaced through the shrubbery. Japanese lanterns swayed overhead and all the hotel’s lights were on. A large portrait of the President greeted guests as they entered the building.

The Citrus Experiment Station was established in Riverside in 1907 to support the needs of the developing citrus industry in southern California. It became a world center for research in citrus and subtropical horticulture and became the basis for the University of California Riverside. Today, the Citrus Experiment Station’s Citrus Variety Collection consists of more than one thousand different citrus types. This collection is widely considered to be one of the premier citrus germ plasm collections in the world and is a valuable resource for academic study and for the international citrus industry. Maintenance of the two original Parent Navel Orange Trees became one of the station’s first and most public challenges. When the trees became endangered by disease in 1918, scientists from the Citrus Experiment Station were called in to save them. The trees were victims of root rot, the fungus-like organ92

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President Theodore Roosevelt was present for the ceremonial replanting of one of the Parent Navel Orange Trees outside the Glenwood Mission Inn in 1903.

ism known as gummosis or phytophthora—in the family of the same infective agent that causes potato blight and which was responsible for the Great Irish Famine that devastated that country in the late 1840s. Dr. H. J. Webber, H. W. Mertz, and Glenn Blackman of the Citrus Experiment Station devised a way to keep one of the trees 93

Creating an Orange Utopia alive by inarching new seedlings of sweet orange, rough lemon, and sour orange on the outside of the tree—that is, creating new roots using a variety of disease-resistant seedlings, while completely bypassing the old ones. This saved the tree located at the intersection of Arlington and Magnolia Avenues. Unfortunately, the tree transplanted to the Mission Inn died in 1922. When, in 1951, phytophthera lesions were again noted on the original inarches of the remaining Parent Navel Orange Tree, more inarching was performed by Denard C. Wylie, senior superintendent of cultivations at the Citrus Experiment Station, using three seedlings of Troyer citrange and one of trifoliate orange. In the 1920s, some fifty years after the planting of the Parent Navel Orange Trees, there was a movement to minimize Eliza’s contribution to the introduction of the navel orange to Riverside, while elevating the role her husband Luther played in it. Many people tried to claim the honor of planting the original trees for themselves, including Luther. However, witnesses to the original planting are clear that it was Eliza who deserves the credit for planting the trees. According to Mary North Shepard, The attempt, which was made over fifty years later, to prove that it was Mr. Tibbets, and not Mrs. Tibbets who sent to Washington for the two little orange trees, is absurd in the extreme. He appeared to take no interest in trees or vines. His place always had a neglected, run down appearance and it must have been with great difficulty that Mrs. Tibbets kept alive the few flowers, trees and vines which grew about their house . . . If Mr. Tibbets ever took any interest in them it must have been after the beginning of their yielding an

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Eliza’s Legacy income from the sale of their buds. His interests were in raising and selling hay and grain—and in law suits. Grain acreage required no irrigation. He persistently refused to buy a “water right,” which would have assured him sufficient water for irrigation of orchards and vineyards such as his neighbors planted.

On June 1, 1932, the California Chamber of Commerce selected the Parent Navel Orange Tree to be in the first group of twenty California Historical Landmarks. On February 3, 1933, the state of California placed a plaque at the site of the surviving Parent Navel Orange Tree (designated as California Historical Landmark No. 20) to direct attention to this most important landmark in the development of the California citrus industry. On May 5, 1933, the second Riverside Navel Orange Pageant was held to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the planting of California’s first navel orange trees by Eliza Tibbets. The elaborate event—which illustrated various stages of growth of the Washington navel orange industry—included a picturesque presentation by thousands of schoolchildren, a colorful parade, a brilliant anniversary dinner, and a pageant ball. Chamber of commerce officials in charge of the pageant declared the celebration the greatest of its kind ever staged in the citrus empire. More than a hundred thousand spectators cheered the beautiful and spectacular four-mile-long parade. Fifty floats depicted scenes from California history. A replica of the Tibbets homestead made of oranges portrayed the development of Riverside in the 1870s and the planting of the Parent Navel Orange Trees. Following the parade, Riverside schools put on a field day program at the stadium 95

Creating an Orange Utopia featuring a tableau showing Eliza Tibbets planting the two Parent Navel Orange Trees in the backyard of her Riverside home. In the late 1930s, the navel orange disappeared from its native Brazil—including the tree that produced the original limb sport from which the Parent Navel Orange Trees were taken— victims of the deadly tristeza (derived from the Portuguese word for “sadness”) virus, which has killed well over one hundred million trees worldwide. At that time nearly all of the navel orange trees in South America were grafted onto sour orange rootstock, which is highly susceptible to the tristeza virus, and the Brazilian crop was completely destroyed as a result. In a goodwill gesture from grateful US growers, an offspring of the Parent Navel Orange Tree was sent to Brazil in 1955 and planted in Bahia—eventually replenishing the once-thriving orchards. Unfortunately, while the remaining Parent Navel Orange Tree has survived more than 135 years in a relatively healthy condition, the future good health of the tree is not guaranteed. Some years ago, the powers that be in Riverside proposed to move the tree from its longtime home at the corner of Arlington and Magnolia Avenues several miles to the newly opened California Citrus State Historic Park in Riverside. Guardians of the tree at University of California Riverside strenuously objected—such a move would have been very traumatic to the tree—and the proposal was shelved. More recently, an insect called the Asian citrus psyllid has been spreading a deadly disease around the world at an alarming rate, killing off millions of citrus trees in China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, and more recently in Brazil and Florida. 96

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Photo: Michael J. Elderman

The surviving Parent Navel Orange Tree is planted in a small park Riverside. Topping the signpost at right is the rain cross that the city of Riverside has adopted as its symbol.

While Florida is a relatively recent host to the disease, it has been present in Brazil for many years already and the citrus industry there is once again fighting for its life. In a few years, Florida may find itself in much the same situation as Brazil, and California may follow soon after. Although buried in Riverside’s Evergreen Cemetery in 1898, there was no marker on Eliza Lovell Tibbets’s grave until 1993. A group of citizens—led by Dickey DeLoss, who had portrayed Eliza at civic events for decades as a public service to the citizens of Riverside—decided to rectify the situation. Today, there is 97

Creating an Orange Utopia a flat, engraved rectangle of black marble marking the grave of Eliza Lovell Tibbets. On this marker are engraved the following words (unfortunately, including an incorrect birth date for Eliza, who was actually born in 1823): Eliz a Tibbets 1825–1898

In loving gratitude for your dedication in bringing the first Navel Orange trees to Riverside and nurturing them with your dish water. Dedicated September 25, 1993

As this book was bring written, a statue of Eliza Tibbets was being created for installation in Riverside. It is the first statue of a woman ever erected in the city. Designed and created by sculptor Guy Angelo Wilson, the statue is the realization of a dream of the Eliza Tibbets Statue Foundation, a group of community members devoted to this project. The foundation is led by Kathryn Gage (a descendant of Luther Tibbets), and is supported by her husband (Riverside businessman and former city councilman) Art Gage, the city of Riverside, and many others. More than a hundred years after she moved to Riverside, Eliza Lovell Tibbets continues to touch the lives of the people of Riverside, as the offspring of her two orange trees each year blanket the world in their luscious golden fruit. Her many descendants continue to contribute to Eliza’s legacy, and to California—the state that Eliza adopted and so loved in her final years. To raise money to pay for the monument to Eliza Lovell Tibbets that today silently guards the remaining Parent Navel Or98

Sower’s Dream, a statue by Guy Angelo Wilson—still in process at the time this photo was taken—commemorates Eliza Lovell Tibbets’s role in introducing the navel orange to California.

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Creating an Orange Utopia ange Tree in Riverside, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Pioneer Society, the Riverside Women’s Club, and other groups sold a booklet entitled The Story of the Washington Navel Orange by S. Alice La Rue (who also drafted the inscription on the monument itself). At the very end of the booklet is the following poem in honor of Eliza’s tree: Wouldst know the joy of living? The secret of success? Wouldst find the hidden pathway That leads to happiness? Give out the best that’s in you, Give with unstinting hand, ’Tis golden thoughts and actions That make a golden land. We gave the Navel Orange, And thought naught of the gift, And now its golden fruitage Our names to glory lift. Send out thy tiny vessels, Thy gems of deed and thought, At even-time returning Great argosies are brought.

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Bibliography Brown, John Jr., and James Boyd. The History of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. 2 vols. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1922. Coit, John Eliot. Citrus Fruits: An Account of the Citrus Fruit Industry with Special Reference to California Requirements and Practices and Similar Conditions. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915. Dorsett, P.H., A.D. Shamel, and Wilson Popenoe. “The Navel Orange of Bahia; with Notes on Some Little-Known Brazilian Fruit.” U.S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin No. 445 (February 10, 1917): 35. Greves, James P. “History of Riverside.” Journal of the Riverside Historical Society 6 (February 2002): 19–30. Hall, Joan H. Through the Doors of the Mission Inn. Riverside, CA: Highgrove Press, 1996. Hardinge, Emma. Modern American Spiritualism. New York, NY: published by the author, 1870. Holmes, Elmer Wallace. History of Riverside County, California. Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1912. James, George Wharton. Heroes of California: The Story of the Founders of the Golden State As Narrated by Themselves or Gleaned from Other Sources. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1910. Kinmont, Alexander. Twelve Lectures on the Natural History of Man, and the Rise and Progress of Philosophy. Cincinnati: U. P. James, 1839.

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Bibliography Klotz, Esther. “Eliza Tibbets and Her Washington Navel Orange Trees.” In A History of Citrus in the Riverside Area, edited by Esther Klotz, Harry W. Lawton, and Joan H. Hall, 13–24. Riverside, CA: Riverside Museum Press, 1989. ———. Riverside and the Day the Bank Broke. Riverside, CA: Rubidoux Press, 1972. Lovell, Clarissa Downes. “Narrative of a Pioneer’s Journey from Boston to Cincinnati” (unpublished manuscript, 1869). McClain, Cathi. “A New Look at Eliza Tibbets.” Citrograph 61, no. 12 (October 1976): 449–454. Mitchell, Mary. Chronicles of Georgetown Life, 1865–1900. Cabin John, MD: Seven Locks Press, 1986. Podmore, Frank. Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism. 2 vols. London: Methuen & Co., 1902. Riverside Daily Press Job Office. History and Directory of Riverside County 1893–94. Riverside, CA: A. A. Bynon & Son, 1893. Rogers, Mabel McIntyre. “A Bit of Magnolia Corner’s History” (unpublished manuscript, November 4, 1964). Roistacher, Chester N. “The Parent Washington Navel Orange Tree—Its First Years.” Topics in the Subtropics 7, No. 4 (Oct.–Dec 2009): 4–7. ———. “Rapid Multiplication of Citrus from a Single Plant.” Proceedings of the International Society of Citriculture 1 (1992) 309–312. Roistacher, Chester N., R. L. Wagner, and E. C. Calavan. “The Parent Navel Orange: A Healthy Centenarian.” Citrograph 60:343. Saunders, William. “The Journal of William Saunders” (unpublished manuscript, December 20, 1898). Shamel, A.D. “Semi Centennial of the Washington Navel Orange in California.” The California Citrograph (December 1923). ——— and Carl S. Pomeroy. “The Washington Navel Orange.” Citrus Publication No. 3 (May 5, 1933).

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Bibliography Shepard, Mary North. “Memories of the Tibbets Family, Etc.” (unpublished manuscript, September 1946). Smith, Ophia D. “The Beginnings of the New Jerusalem Church in Ohio.” Ohio History 61 (1952): 235–261. Swedenborg, Emanuel. Last Judgment (Posthumous). In Posthumous Theological Works, vol. 1, translated by John Whitehead. West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1996. Tibbets, Luther. Spirit of the South; or, Persecution in the Name of Law, as Administered in Virginia, Related by Some Victims Thereof. Also, its Effects upon the Nation and its General Government. Washington, DC: published by the author, 1869. Williams, Robert C. Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom. New York: New York University Press, 2006.

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