Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation
Centennial Dates!
First Nature Movie - Yosemite - Summer 1909
AC Pillsbury and the Run Away Balloon - October 31, 1909
Dominguez Hills Air Show - January 10 - 20 1910
First lapse-time movie of flowers blooming - Yosemite - 1912
That
same year, a fellow feminist of the new generation made his first visit
to Yosemite - by bicycle. He was accompanied by his first cousin,
Bernard Lane, also a student at the newly opened Stanford University. His name was Arthur Clarence Pillsbury Thanks
to the local paper in Palo Alto we know what he took with him on his
three week jaunt into the Yosemite; that did not make it into the
family stories. 24 May, Friday - Palo
Alto News - ``Next Wednesday, A.C. Pillsbury and Frank Watson, `95.
Will leave for Yosemite and Kings River Valley on their wheels. They
will carry with them their camping outfits, consisting of aluminum
cooking utensils, 32 caliber rifle and shotgun combined, blanket,
camera and fishing tackle, whole outfit weighing about ten pounds
apiece. They expect to be gone about three weeks and anticipate a
pleasant trip. Mr. Pillsbury will ride a 16 Lb. Rambler. The
paper evidently left out Bernard. AC was very taken with Yosemite. He
arranged to buy a studio there in 1897, dropping the project when his
then wife left him because "he wanted to spent the summers in the
wilderness." AC
had been busy at Stanford. His interest in photography had led him to
design and then build the first panoramic camera. It was this camera
that he then took to the Gold Rush in the Yukon, capturing the images
that still move us today. His journey from the headwaters of the Yukon
River to the ocean was through 3,000 miles of frigid but beautiful land
and waterways. Only a panoramic camera could capture the immensity of
Alaska. Gold miners bought his photos for five dollars each, paid in
gold dust. Back in Anchorage, A.C.'s father, Dr. Harlin Henry
Pillsbury, recovered from the ship wreck that they had experienced on
their way north, was busy playing chess and practicing medicine, in
equal proportions. The next Christmas saw the two back in San Francisco
celebrating the season with family and friends. A.C.'s father stayed
home the next year when AC returned to Alaska for another season of
photography. Dr.
Harlin Henry Pillsbury and his wife, Dr. Harriet Foster Pillsbury, had
left their home in New York to settle in Auburn California and start a
medical practice in 1883, arriving on March 3rd. They had left behind
friends and family. But they were New Englanders and stayed in constant
touch through a constant stream of letters and visits. Family was
important to them. Throughout their lives, the family met for holidays
and vacations whenever, and where ever, possible. The
late 1800's saw many New England families produce thorough genealogies
on their family histories. The Pillsbury's were no different. Emily
Pillsbury Getchall produced the Pillsbury Family Book while living in
the original Pillsbury Homestead House in Newbury, Massachusetts. Dr.
Harlin contributed a letter to the book written for the small town in
New Hampshire where he drew up. 1902: June - Letter from Dr. HH Pillsbury to Church in Hampstead.
Ten
years later, 1883, on account of the ill health of our daughter Carrie,
we located at Auburn California. Our membership continued with this
church 18 years. Our two sons became members at Auburn and as they were
educated at Stanford University we were located in that vicinity for
several years and became members of the Third Congregational Church at
San Francisco and for one year members of the Congregational Church at
Oakland. At present we are members of the First Congregational Church
of Los Angeles. This is a large church with a membership over 1,000 has
two pastors, Dr. Day and his son. But whether in a larger or smaller
church we have felt it our duty and privilege to do the little we can
for the Master. Lake Tahoe, California. This
new California branching of the family participated in the writing of
the Pillsbury Family book, editing early versions. Dr. Harlin's
brother, Daniel, a merchant living in NY City, traveled to the first
Pillsbury reunion at the old House, meeting and sharing memories with
such figures as Parker Pillsbury, the Stalwart for Abolition and
Suffrage who had edited the Revolution for Susan B. Anthony for ten
years. Yosemite
had its tiny community of New Englanders who shared a culture and
cousinship's and who had participated in the causes of liberty for
generations. Who
A.C. was is a question with many answers. He was a dutiful son who
spent much of his life in close contact with his parents and brother.
He was part of a larger extended group of family and acquaintance who
continued to be active on issues such as women's suffrage. He possessed
an inquiring mind and had always been fascinated with understanding the
world around him. His entire family shared a fascination with the
growing body of human knowledge. His
first venture into commerce had taken place in Auburn; raising and
selling exotic birds. At Stanford, he helped pay for his education by
opening a bicycle store. He built bicycles, designed and built the
first motorcycle in California, to the chagrin of the more staid
inhabitants on Stanford's campus. Soon, he was running a combined shop,
selling and building both bicycles and cameras. For a time, he also
used an unauthorized dark room built into the unfinished attic of
Encinas on the Stanford campus. The
family had arrived in California across the Isthmus of Panama before
the building of the Canal. They had brought with them wagon loads of
heirloom furniture, the previously mentioned microscopes, and the crib
in which each of them had laid after their births. Relocated to Auburn
they both practiced medicine, built a home while living in the barn on
their new property, and put in a fruit ranch, planting a variety of
different trees. It was hard work; but each family member worked
diligently and cheerfully to accomplish their joint project. Dr.
Mrs. Pillsbury took care of purchasing the land, signing the deeds, and
oversaw their finances. This was very unusual in the 19th Century. A.C.'s
father, Dr. Harlin, was immediately solicited to become treasurer for
the Congregationalist Church, a post he filled until relocating to Palo
Alto to open and help run a hospital there in the mid 1890s. AC's
adventures during the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire and his near
death by balloon in 1907 were family legend. A.C. hit the ground with
his camera in him hands on that early morning in 1906 and spent the
entire day photographing ensuing events. With no flowing water in San
Francisco, he removed to Oakland that evening to develop the resulting
film and begin sending the pictures out to papers and magazines
throughout the country. He photographed the burning of San Francisco
from the doomed Palace Hotel as well and, though he took the exposed
negatives with him the camera to the conflagration, having left it in
the checkroom at the hotel desk. We will pass over his participation in
the First Air Show in Southern California in 1910 from a balloon
tethered at 300 feet. Everyone in the family was fascinated by air
flight. In
1911 AC had become a father three times over by adopting the orphaned
children of his oldest brother, Dr. Ernest Sargent Pillsbury. 
In
1895 Susan B. Anthony made a tour of the west coast and again stopped
in Yosemite after visiting San Francisco. She and her life long friend
and fellow worker for abolition and women's suffrage, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, had made their first visit to Yosemite years before, in 1865.
My
first membership was with the First Congregational Church at Hampstead.
Soon after our marriage we both united with the Kirk St. Church of
Lowell, Mass. Two years later we joined Dr. Marvins church at Medford
Mass and were members of this church for 16 years or more. Removing to
Brooklyn, New York we with our oldest daughter became members of the
Lee Avenue Congregational Church under the pastoral of Dr. Edward
Eggleson.
Dr.
Harriet's family still occupied the original homestead in Andover,
Massachusetts. The family had been original homesteaders in what was
then Andover Massachusetts and still, today, has in their possession
the bill of sale to the land signed by the local Indian tribal chief.
Dr. Harriet counted in her own heritage nine of the survivors of the
Salem Witchcraft Trials,
