In the Water pt 2

This is Gabriel Woods

He is my 3rd Great Grandfather

He was born February 13, 1852, in Eureka, Ca.

His father, Harris Woods, had immigrated from Poland, naturalized in New York, then went to Philadelphia, where he married Fanny Harvey.  Harris & Fanny had 3 kids in Philly. (Sarah, Henry, Esther)

Then around 1852 they headed to California, to the Humboldt region, likely to establish trade with the gold miners of the Klamath & Trinity Rivers.

Once they arrived in Eureka, they had 4 more children; Gabriel, Leah, Benjamin and Gussie.

Gabriel’s mother died when he was just 17 years.  After that the family moved to San Francisco.

Gabriel was a packer with Ackerman Brothers, and later a teamster.

Gabriel married Clorinda Miramontes in 1877.  

Clorinda was considered the “daughter of the Dons”.  She had been born at the Presidio, just 5 years after the little village of the Dons, Yerba Buena, changed its name to San Francisco.   Her father, Vicente Miramontes, had been a commandant at the presidio, but his family had been given the land grant called Los Pilarcitos, and founded the city of Half Moon Bay.  (at that time it was called “Spanishtown”)

Water rights at Los Pilarcitos creek was sold to the Spring Valley Water Co, and was damned to the reservoir, ultimately piping the desperately needed fresh water to San Francisco, thus enabling the city to grow to the world capital it has become.

The union between a Polish Jew and a Californio, brought the old and new worlds together.

In 1900, Gabriel & Clorinda lived at 627 Union St with their 5 kids:

Daughter:  Fanny born in 1878

Son: Michael Ralph born in 1879

Daughter:  Minnie born in 1882

Son:  Eugene born in 1887

Son:  Milton born in 1888

Gabriel became a fireman around 1895.

Gabriel’s daughter, Fanny Woods, married Joseph Peterson.  Fanny & Joe had 3 daughters, Alice (1903), Ethyl (1905) & Madeline (1906). 

April 18, 1906, 5:12am, the Great Earthquake hit San Francisco, Gabriel was a full-fledged fire fighter for the city, assigned to engine #20.

Most people don’t realize how many things went wrong that day.

Chief Sullivan, the head of the entire fire department, was mortally wounded in the first minutes of the quake, when the dome from the California Hotel fell through the roof of his station, causing he and his wife to fall from the third floor to the basement.

Widespread gas main ruptures acted as a catalyst, instantly fueling over 50 separate fires across the city.

Unusual winds pushed the flames into residential areas.

Because many insurance policies covered fire but not earthquakes, property owners deliberately set fire to their own homes so they could collect on their claims.

In a desperate attempt to create firebreaks, untrained firefighters used dynamite to demolish buildings. Instead of stopping the flames, the explosions often ignited the debris, actually spreading the fire further into the city.

But the biggest problem was the complete & total failure of the water system.  The earthquake ruptured pipes for all water in the city.  While more than 50 fires merged into a massive conflagration that burned for days, firefighters desperately tried to find water.

The very water that had been diverted from Spanishtown into the redwood flumes and gravity-fed pipes was now trapped behind miles of twisted metal and ruptured earth.

Firefighters were forced to station multiple engines in tandem to pump water from the bay over distances as long as 3,000 feet.

Engine 20 started their day by searching the ruins of the Union Railroad power house, finding nobody trapped, they moved to a fire a Polk & Union but without water, the heat drove them away.

They joined other companies at the famous “ham & eggs fire” that started when a woman tried cooking breakfast without realizing her chimney had fallen.  They had to use the sewer water to make any progress there.

Engine 20 put in an 18 hour day, and the fires got worse. 

On the second day following the quake, while working in a liquor house on Battery above Pacific, an explosion occurred in the rear of the Building and the walls caved in, falling on Gabriel.  He was critically injured, and he was sent to the Naval Hospital at Mare Island.

The fires were finally extinguished on the 3rd day. 

Gabriel lived another 22 years.  We don’t know much about his life after his injury.

His daughter, Fanny, died in 1915 when her oldest daughter, Alice, was only 12.  That is why, on her 13th birthday, Alice’s father took her to the courthouse to marry Edward Gray.

The Spring Valley Water Company had flourished since 1860 when they bought the water rights from Clorinda’s father,  from his land grant at Los Pilarcitos creek.   The disaster of 1906 exposed the fatal flaw in their empire.

It was Clorinda’s father’s water that had been carried north to build San Francisco. 

It was her husband who stood holding a dry hose as that same water, in its absence, destroyed the same city, linking her father and her husband to two of the most consequential periods in the history of San Francisco.