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Pub Date: January 2006
Paper
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5 1/2 x 8 1/4
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176 pp
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$15.00
ISBN 0-9672409-7-2
Publisher:
California Genealogical Society
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When a ribbon-bound
packet of forty yellowing hundred-year-old letters turned up in their
archives, readers at California Genealogical Society knew right away that
the story was too good to leave in the box. Author Dorothy Fowler began
the search for identities of the letter writers with few facts—names on
envelopes and hints found in the letters regarding families and
relationships. The heroine, she discovered, was Sarah Elizabeth Phillips,
a San Francisco native. Her fiancé was George Westinghouse Jones, of the
well-known Westinghouse family of New York.
Travel back to 1906 and the
early hours of April 18th to hear first-hand account of San Francisco's Great
Earthquake and Fire. Events of that day and the following months are
vividly reported in previously unpublished letters of this young San
Francisco woman to her sweetheart in Schenectady anxiously awaiting news
of her. The telegraph was silenced, mail service interrupted, and the
headlines screamed "San Francisco destroyed." Her letters spark a sense of
immediacy, that exciting "you-are-there" feeling, as you mentally go
hiking with her through the ruined city she so graphically depicts.
Published to coincide with the earthquake's centennial, this book will
delight history lovers. Family historians and genealogists will revel in
Fowler's sleuthing as she discovers the identities of Sarah, George and
the elusive "Miss S."
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