Epilogue

The sea gave Edward Small Graves a wide horizon. 
His children gave him permanence.

Samuel Dean Graves moved to Boston and opened a store. Alta Pease Graves settled in Massachusetts and, like her sister Millie Dean, never married.

Clyde remained in Maine on the old homestead with his wife Lila and sister Millie. Their first son, Rodney Eldrich was born there. A week after Lila gave birth to their second son, Arthur, she died on January 28, 1905. Millie assumed care of the boys while Clyde continued freighting.

Clyde’s work took him often to Boston and Cambridge, where he met Ethel Jeanie Morrison of Lubec, Maine. They married in Cambridge on October 20, 1905. Samuel Dean Graves died of pneumonia on March 22, 1910. Clyde and Ethel continued on the homestead, where Ethel gave birth to Reginald, Clyde Jr., and Donald.

In California, Edna lost her husband, William Chamberlain, in 1911 and was left with younger children still at home. She ultimately raised nine and three grandaughters. When her mother Mercy’s health declined, Edna rented her home and moved to Sunol to care for her mother.

That same year, the old Maine homestead burned. Clyde moved his family to San Francisco, where Ethel gave birth to two more sons—Earl and Mayne. When Mayne was not yet seven months old, Ethel died. Clyde was left with seven motherless boys. Mercy again stepped forward to help her son.

Millie Dean and Jeanie Fogarty Graves later moved west. Jeanie worked in San Francisco as a stenographer and married Alberto Garcia, a jeweler. They had no children.

Mercy suffered a stroke in March 1926 that left her unable to speak or move. She lingered until October 12, 1927, dying in her ninetieth year.

Annie Crie (Graves) Callahan Taylor died in August 1927, at age seventy, after more than forty years in or near Shoup, Idaho.

Leland died on November 17, 1928, following a prolonged illness.

After Leland’s death, his will left the house in Sunol to “my sister Jennie, who has taken care of our mother.” Family letters from Edna to Annie, Mercy’s death certificate, and granddaughter Ruth Dakin’s account indicate that Edna had been Mercy’s primary caregiver during her final years, and Jeanie likely altered the will before she filed it with the probate court. To add insult to injury she had the newspaper publish her lie, and to avoid any scrutiny said that her mother “died some time ago,” instead of “last year.”



Edna lacked the means to contest the will. The property passed to Jeanie Garcia and her husband.

Jeanie and Al showed up in Sunol to tell Edna she had to vacate the house. Edna had to move in with her surviving son while caring for three granddaughters. Eventually she settled in a rental home in Los Gatos.

Clyde Graves died August 21, 1934, at age sixty-seven.

Millie Dean Graves died in 1937 at age seventy-eight and is buried in an unmarked grave beside Clyde at Los Gatos Memorial Park.

Edna (Graves) Chamberlain died October 27, 1938. Her remains are interred at the Chapel of the Chimes Columbarium, Oakland, California (Mozart Room, Tier 7, Niche 13).

Alta Pease Graves died unmarried in Boston in 1955. Her burial place is unknown.

Jennie Fogarty (Graves) Garcia died in Alameda, California in 1956.

Years later, one of Edna’s granddaughters, Ruth Dakin Mauldin, preserved a vivid memory of those final years in Sunol. Her recollection captures the hardship of the household, confirms that it was Edna who cared for Mercy in her final years, and reveals the fierce loyalty that bound the family together.

Grandma’s Tubs

By Ruth Dakin Mauldin, written in Ann Thompson’s class, “Making Memories into Memoirs”

“Grandma” is Edna (Graves) Chamberlain, Edward Small and Mercy Kalloch (Hathorn) Graves’ daughter, the one who cared for her mother for many years.

When my sister Alice and I went to live with Grandmother Chamberlain, her house did not have built-in tubs. There was a large, round, galvanized washtub. For bathing, this tub was put in the middle of the kitchen floor with newspapers around it to catch any errant splashes. It would be filled with cold water and then hot water from the tea kettle on the stove. Another grandchild, Lois (Aunt Edith's daughter) was already living with Grandma there in the tiny town of Sunol, California. At least every Saturday night we three girls happily took turns bathing in the big round tub on the kitchen floor. It was 1927. Alice was 4, Lois was 9 and I was 8, so we were small enough to fit nicely into the tub. Of course, it also was used for washing clothes.

There was quite a bit of washing. In addition to the four of us, in 1927 Great- grandmother Graves was still alive and bedridden. In those days diapers were made of cloth and had to be rinsed out, washed (probably boiled, too) line dried and reused. Grandma changed, bathed and fed great-grandma and reported to us the few words her usually unresponsive mother spoke.

On the morning of the day Great Grandmother died, Grandma went into the room and raised the blinds. The bright sunlight filtered through the curtains and struck those usually sightless eyes.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "It's sunset!"

As to her funeral; Uncle Lee, Grandma's brother may have paid for it. Great- grandmother had no money and Grandma had only the small pension left her by her eldest son who died in World War I.

After a while Grandma's nephew, Clyde, came from his father's house on Quito Road in Saratoga to live with us in order to be near his work. He ate some meals with us and worked in the Pleasanton gravel pits at night. In the daytime he slept in a closed- off section of the front porch.

It probably was from the money that Clyde contributed that Grandma saved enough to buy tubs. She took us with her when she walked up the road to a neighbor's to inspect the tubs they were selling. She gave her approval and the money to make the tubs her own.

What a time that was! The pantry was cleared out to make room for the bathtub and a lean-to was built on the little back porch for the set tubs for washing clothes. Someone came and plumbed them so that we had running water to both facilities. Such a joy! But the joy was not to last: Grandmother's brother, Lee, owned her house. He had been in the hospital in San Francisco for some time and Grandma contended that one reason for his illness was that he refused to eat his vegetables. She used this information to inspire us to eat a healthful diet. The hospital must not have convinced her brother of the error of his ways because he died. He left the house, not to Grandma but another sister who worked as a translator for an import-export company in San Francisco and was married to a jeweler.

Those two, the sister Jennie and her husband AI, came up country to claim the house. They were going to take it away from Grandma, who at 66 had raised nine children of her own, had complete care of her bedridden mother for years and now was caring for three young granddaughters!

When Grandma brought them into the dining room, I was lying on the couch, ill with some childhood complaint. They told Grandma that the house was theirs and she would have to move. There was a loud argument.

"Alright," Grandma said at last, "but I will take my tubs!"

"You will not," shouted Uncle AI, puffing up like a banty rooster. "They are attached to the house, so they are legally ours!"

My little sister, terrified, had been standing backed up against the couch where I was lying. We two had watched as Clyde, awakened by the loud voices, came in from the porch, rubbing his eyes. He had leaned against the door and listened to Uncle AI's diatribe. When he could stand it no longer, Clyde picked Al up by the seat of his pants and the collar of his coat, carried him outside and leaned him up against the fence. Uncle Al, being a jeweler, had a small pistol which he pulled from under his suit-coat to shoot Clyde. Aunt Jennie, who had gone dashing out after them, persuaded Uncle Al to put away his gun and leave.

We thought of Clyde as the hero and Aunt Jennie as the villain. We were sure she had substituted her name for Grandma's in the will because in it Uncle Lee had said he was leaving his property to "my sister, Jennie, “WHO HAS TAKEN CARE OF OUR MOTHER." Since Grandma had no funds to fight this injustice if she had wanted to, we had to move.

As soon as Grandma could pack, we went to stay with her only living son, Drummond, his wife, Helen, and their two children, Jim and Edith in Orland, California. After we were gone, Clyde and his brothers went back to that little house in Sunol, selected whatever they wanted and took those things to their father’s house. They took the old horsehair sofa, the handsome, obsolete, wind-up Victrola, and I’ve forgotten what other furniture. But they even unplumbed the tubs and took them away; so, Aunt Jennie and Uncle Al never did get the tubs!

A footnote written in long hand under Ruth’s story reads:

* The feeling was that Jennie was jealous of Grandma (Edna Graves Chamberlain) because Great-grandmother Graves came West to live with Edna and left Jennie with Millie Dean Graves. (They came out later). There is a rumor that Great Grandfather Graves was cruel to his wife (maybe when drinking) and that was the reason she came to California to live.

Edward Small Graves built ships, crossed oceans, chased gold, and staked his claim in a century that rewarded motion and daring. Yet in the end, what endured was not the gold nor the vessels nor even the land, but the stubborn endurance of his children — women who bathed the old, raised the young, fought for what little was theirs, and carried forward the family name in kitchens, freight yards, and far-flung towns.