The aunts come home

Is there something wrong with me? I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers....... Blanche DuBois

It feels familiar. It’s a bit like home here. They said never start a sentence with it. But I’m in a launderette with my laptop close to our AirB&B and there’s a sweet domestic smell of electricity, chemicals, washed steel and brushed fluff. Jane has gone back to mend Morris’s curtains, a promise she had rashly made at the start of our stay and now feels compelled to honour. Morris is a lovely person and his is a truly welcoming home but he lacks a feminine touch. Hence the curtains that had been roughly stuck together with tape and are now in the process of being returned to graceful life by Jane.

But I’m holding something back. And it is the most unexpected and happy occurrence. When Jane’s mother Alison again mentioned the great aunts who had left Scotland with their widowed mother for San Francisco many years ago, we sort of put that reminder aside. We had heard it so often that it hardly seemed real any more. Yes, yes, those migrating aunts again! Let’s just ignore an old person’s memory of historic and distant relatives. Anyway, we’ll be on holiday in a strange city and we’ll hardly want to spare a day trying lift this tangled and threadbare veil of uncertainty; we knew the mother was Jane Bishop but were not certain about the second daughter and there was a story that they had started a shop selling baby linen.

But, on a whim, at the throw of a dice, we decided to give it a go and try to reach out to those ancestors, to reclaim for a new generation widow Jane Bishop and her two daughters, who had left their homes in Scotland for California after the bankruptcy and suicide of their father Robert in 1904. Elspeth, Jane’s sister, the custodian of Lewis and Bishop family records, had promptly given us a few well-chosen pointers. Jessie, the oldest sister, was born in 1878, according to Elspeth.

We decided the main city library in downtown San Francisco was the place to start our search. Luck was on out side and we had gracious help with all our inquiries. We scanned microfiched census records, we pored through old street directories, we rifled through databases.

At last we came across the names of three Bishop women in a 1930 census. Jane, widow of Robert, was there as head of the household, then there was Jessie, with an occupation given as dental nurse, and then sister Martha. Elspeth had been uncertain about the name of the second sister. It could have been Janet or possibly Margaret or Beatrice. But the clinching fact was Jessie’s ago on the 1930 census. It was given as 52 – and we knew she had been born in 1878. The dates tallied perfectly!

The next discovery was a street directory for Oakland, across the Bay from San Francisco. We came at last to three Bishops, just before our time on the library computer was due to run out. Eureka! There they were again. Their address in 1928 was 1309 (1309 and a half actually but I can’t do fractions) Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda, which is now part of Oakland. We get a library worker to Google map the address. It’s still there! And he Street-views it for us. We see a small house that could be of Edwardian vintage. Come home, Jane, Jessie and Martha!

Give me your tired, your poor,


Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,


The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.


Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,


I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

(Thank you Wikipedia for that bit of old hokum! A trusty friend in an hour of need.)

But my time is up. The launderette drier is making a buzzing noise. We must get ready.

For today we go to Alcatraz. Tomorrow we leave the City of St Francis, pick up a hired car and head for Bodega Bay. But on the way we visit 1309 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda, and leave our calling cards in memory of Jane, Jessie and Martha, who left a harsh land and a bitter legacy for a freer country. But Morris has just pointed out that they came here at the start of the Great Depression.

Poor Jane, Jessie and Martha, you didn’t have it easy even when you got to the promised land!