women | Evergreen Mural Walk

The Evergreen Schoolhouse opened in 1860. There were enough Chaboyas, both European and American homesteaders and rancheros families to open up a school in Rancho Yerba Buena. It would be incorporated into the Santa Clara County Education system in 1866 as the township became more established.

Famed author Edwin Markham (1852-1940) would come to Evergreen Schoolhouse to teach in its early days after attending San Jose State University. Teaching in Evergreen from 1969-89, he would recall the days of a single story school house, replaced by a larger two-story one. A nearby redwood tree was planted in his honor after teaching there for twenty years, which I intend to find if it’s still around. The Redwood would be over 100 years old now. It is said the Evergreen helps inspire some of Markham’s work. The commemorative redwood tree also might be the inspiration of the Evergreen trees in the School District’s logo.

In general, the School’s schedule would sync up with the fruit picking seasons and operate 10 months a year. They insisted on keeping the school free to the public and secular from its inception. My old time interviewees would recall the school house at the corner or San Felipe/White Road and Aborn Road, then Evergreen Road. That may seem odd now, but it would’ve been located there the shopping center and Valero gas station stands today. The land was donated by Mr. Nirum Cadwallader, who also donated the same amount of land to the WCR some years later, and upheld the donation by William Matthews in the transaction to Geo. Kettmann. Education has been something Evergreen residents have felt strongly about since the town began. The Schoolhouse had been there on Evergreen Road, now Aborn, since the 1860. I think it’s so cool that today’s well-known creek crossings would’ve been somebody else’s path to school 150 years ago.

Katherine R. Smith (1870-1973), daughter of town leader and postmaster Francis J. Smith, would come back to Evergreen schoolhouse after being one of the first women to graduate from San Jose State University and teach down the street from her house. The school house would remain there for a long time. Katie is huge part of Evergreen History.

The two-story school house would be moved by rolling it over logs down the street on San Felipe Road and Yerba Buena Ave. during the 1950’s. This is when San Felipe would’ve changed directions and Keaton Loop created. Post World War and new City Planning developing in effect, Evergreen’s update began with this major move. It also helps explain why this view of the Smith homes feels incorrect. From the drawing, the road now runs between the houses and business, and this driveway between them is essentially Yerba Buena Avenue. Directly next to this road would’ve been Dry Creek, now known as Thompson Creek. The Schoolhouse would come to stand where the General Store and Winery are.

That’s right, the schoolhouse moved across the street from Katherine’s House. How rad is that? Katherine, Katie, would become Superintendent of the Evergreen Elementary School District, watch the school outgrow this two-story facility and move to Fowler Road before expanding with new schools. The Evergreen School is where Evergreen Elementary School is today. Katie would live to be 103 years old and known as the Daughter of Evergreen. As a staple of the Evergreen Community and a beloved educator, it only seems appropriate to name Evergreen’s second school in her honor in 1962.

This two-story school house still stands today, or at least that’s what I had heard from fellow Evergreenians. I did some digging. I found what stands where the schoolhouse was last seen. There is this odd, adobe looking, older apartment building, called the Chaboya Apartments, standing there now at the intersection of San Felipe Road and Yerba Buena Avenue.

What I was not understanding or seeing before was that the Evergreen Schoolhouse does still stand, but with the addition to the original building disguising it. I took a closer look at what was there and found the Schoolhouse I was looking for hidden in plain sight! I find it here farthest to the right in the picture to the right. It would be naturally to extend evenly in each direction, but you’re pretty limited in repurposing a building with a creek in your backyard. To say it’s gotten some body work would be an understatement, but that’s it with the stairs leading up to it. Only the front got the more modern adobe facelift.

It’s an incredible finding as the Evergreen Elementary School District is an ally of The Evergreen Mural Walk project, as well as a source of its inspiration. Education is something we’d like to focus on here in Evergreen and that strength came from within in many instances. Katie is one of those inner strengths. The students still living having used this facility are still a connected family here in Evergreen. Here’s some of the artwork inspired by the early days of the Evergreen Elementary School District.

This this project, I have met some amazing, exemplary women from the Evergreen Community. In fact, they have been the silent hands that guide this artwork and this narrative. Colleen Cortese inspires this work with her series of articles “Evergreen Pathways” published by the Evergreen Times, her curation of the Heritage Room at Evergreen Valley College, her historical work with St. Francis Asis Catholic Church on San Felipe Road and with her own kindness and time. Jennifer DiNapoli helped me find contemporary exemplary Evergreen individuals. Winnifred Coe Verbica is an awesome lady who had one foot in the city and one in the countryside. DeEtte Richmond Sipos is helping us look into Women in the workforce and one of the first Childcare services in regards to her great Grandfather’s business. Evergreen Elementary School District’s Superintendent, Kathy Gomez, is one of this projects and this narrative’s strongest allies. Denise Belilse runs a well-known Evergreen business in Evergreen Village Square, the Evergreen Coffee Company. Our Vice Mayor and councilwoman, Rose Herrera, continues a legacy of women leading the way in Evergreen. Women have been making Evergreen amazing, whether these ladies let me sing their praises or not.

There is a Woman’s organization whose been apart of Evergreen’s identity through the years which is undeniably a symbol of Evergreen, though it has long been forgotten. The Women’s Relief Corps Home in Evergreen can be found in publications and books published on landmarks of the Santa Clara Valley as far back at the 1890’s. This historical home on Cadwallader Avenue, then downtown Evergreen, was burnt now so it is an easily overlooked piece of Evergreen’s narrative. That having been said, the WRC is where women really show their leadership in early Evergreen.

Mr. Nirum Hart Cadwallader donated the 5 acres land for the Evergreen schoolhouse on San Felipe Road and Evergreen Road as early as 1860. Cadwallader aslo donated over 5 acres of land for the Women’s Relief Corps, which was funded by the Grand Army of the Republic following the Civil War. The GAR was made up of Civil War Veterans of the Army and Naval forces beginning in 1866. Women’s Relief Corps, recognized in 1883, were established across the United States of America to house veterans, widows and orphans of the Civil War. As time passed, they became hospitals for the chronically ill.

Evergreen’s Women’s Relief Corps Home was opened in 1889 off of Cadwallader Avenue near present day Thompson Creek and Keaton Loop. It was the only hospital of its kind in Santa Clara County. Though Mr. Nirum Cadwallader originally from Ohio continues to be a mystery, his contributions made to township of Evergreen, then a farming community, made it a more connected, hospitable, praiseworthy place. Mrs. Bayington was once of its earliest Matrons. Evergreen’s WRC would take on patients from around the country, seeking sanctuary from the devastation and injuries of the American Civil War.

Another place where the Women’s Relief Corps Home reoccurred in my research was looking into well-known Evergreen families.

Mineola Wheeler Hassler (1874-1958), pictured here to the left was the Home’s manager in 1899. Miss Mineola Wheeler married German immigrant and Evergreen land owner John Hassler in 1902 at her parents home. The Hasslers, after buying up land from Rancho Yerba Buena with the Kettmanns following land disputes, would come to own the ranch which is now known as “The Ranch Country Club” and Hassler Parkway area. The Hassler family’s bright red barn was very notable and even a point of tourism in the 1920’s.

Mineola would be employed with the Evergreen Home in 1896 and then become Matron of the Women’s Relief Corps in 1899 until 1902 when she married Mr. Hassler. She would raise her family where the now vacant fire station stands on Aborn Road.

The Women’s Relief Corps home would burn down in 1920 flames being seen as far as Norwood Avenue. It’s suspected that an ill patient lit the fire that seized the home. With California’s famed Golden Girl, Mrs. Geraldine Frisbie, the Evergreen patients were then transferred to Osborne Hall in 1921 in the township of Santa Clara. Santa Clara’s Osborne Hall, established by Dr. and Mrs. E. A. Osborne, would later develop into Angew Hospital. It would be one of the first hospitals for the feeble-minded, as Dr. Osborne pioneered the field from the 1870’s forward. With the GAR dissolving in the 1950’s, as Civl War veterans, widows and orphans were passing away, it repurposed the valuable sanctuary/hospital hall.

The artwork, in kind, for this piece of Women’s History in Evergreen, has done some developing as the leads get followed and the story becomes clearer. Here are the pieces we’ve worked up for the WRC with the last being the latest.

Evergreen Mural Walk

A Public Display of Affection

Tag Archives: women

Evergreen School House Rocks

Women’s Relief Corps Evergreen Home