C. Frederick Kohl and the SFPOA

In an earlier post I mentioned that Edgewood’s gym, where so many archival items were hidden away, was named the C. Frederick Kohl Memorial Gym and I wanted to find the reason behind the name.  I had been researching with no luck.  But then I found all of the annual reports from the 1850s through 1930s and my luck improved!

In the 1925 annual report, Frederick Kohl’s estate is listed as giving the San Francisco Protestant Orphan Asylum (now Edgewood) over $27,000, by far the largest gift the orphanage received that year.  That’s $375,555 in today’s money.  He was a millionaire, but it’s still a very generous gift!

The first annual report published after the orphanage moved to its current location, it describes the campus and the amenities for the children.  The report mentions that a gymnasium was made possible “by Mr. Frederick Kohl’s bequest.”

The story of C. Frederick Kohl is intriguing.  His life started out uneventful yet privileged.  Born in 1863, Charles Frederick was the son of the wealthy William H. Kohl, co-founder of the Alaska Commercial Company, and Sarah Hunter Kohl.  He grew up on a 16-acre estate in San Mateo, south of San Francisco, which is now a large city park. “Freddie” enjoyed a life of travel and high society parties.  In 1896, he married Edith Dunlop, who died of appendicitis just four years later.  On October 7, 1903, Freddie remarried to Mary Elizabeth “Bessie” Godey, and his father died later that year.  All was well until 1911.

And then a French family maid named Adele Verge shot Freddie.  Hired to help Freddie’s mother, Adele began to exhibit frightening behavior, getting into a fight with a hotel clerk and spitting on guests while on a vacation with the Kohl family.  Freddie had her arrested and evaluated.  She later sued Freddie over the incident, but the court ruled against her.  Angry that she lost the case, Adele waited for Freddie outside of the courthouse and shot him on June 8, 1911 with a derringer.  Freddie survived, but the bullet was lodged in his chest.  The maid was deported back to France and committed to a mental institution.  Most sources agree that at some point, she began sending him threatening letters.

Source (I love the picture of her with the cops.)

A couple of years after the shooting, Freddie and Bessie built The Oaks, a four-story, 63-room Tudor mansion on a 40-acre lot in Burlingame, as a grand venue to showcase Bessie’s singing talents.  Unfortunately despite being the toast of the town, Freddie’s mental state continued to deteriorate in the wake of his paranoia that Adele would return to seek her revenge and finish the job she started.  By 1916, just a year or so after moving into The Oaks, Bessie moved out and went on a Red Cross World War I entertainment tour throughout Europe.  Freddie moved into the St. Francis Hotel in downtown San Francisco (built by the same architects who built Edgewood!!) with a mistress, Marion Louderback Lord.

Not only did Freddie remain paranoid, he began to experience more physical health problems brought on by the bullet that remained trapped near his heart.  In 1921, he suffered a stroke and Freddie and Marion went to the Del Monte Lodge near Monterey to help him recuperate.  Yet on November 21, just one month later, he shot himself.

Surprisingly, Freddie left most of his estate, including the mansion to Marion.  His wife, Bessie, received “only” $250,000 – just over $3.3 million in today’s money.  Imagine how much Marion received.  Marion sold the house to the Sisters of Mercy in 1924, and it is now used as a high school and event space.  The Kohl Mansion is now a State Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.

Bessie seems to have fared much better than Freddie.  Apparently she never left Europe after her singing tour and ended up marrying two French nobles, Comte de Lambertye and Comte de Thiene.  She reportedly died in 1949 in Monte Carlo.

Other fun facts about Freddie’s story are that he purportedly haunts the Kohl Mansion to this day, and that the mansion appeared in the Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks movie, “Little Lord Fauntleroy”.

So what is Freddie’s connection to the San Francisco Protestant Orphan Asylum?  Why did he leave such a large donation in his estate to the orphanage?  I read through 20 years of annual reports along with other research and couldn’t find that he, his parents, or Marion Louderback Lord ever donated money personally to the orphanage.  However, I did find in the 1913 annual report that his mother’s estate left the Orphan Aslyum $2,000 when she died in 1912, and also found articles in newspapers mentioning her donating to other Bay Area orphanages.  Also, Freddie and his wife hosted fundraisers for other orphanages, so it may have been just a typical type of gift for his family.

I wish I could find a more concrete tie between the Kohl family and Edgewood, but sometimes there just isn’t an obvious answer to be found.  It was still a fun little research project and gave me new insight into a very overlooked detail in Edgewood history.  How often does someone look into the meaning behind a sign on the wall?  Now I have a new story to share with colleagues and visitors to the organization.

Please note: There was a lot of contradictory information in the contemporary articles that I found while researching this post.  I have verified everything to the extent possible.

References

Alper, P. R. (2010, September 6). Music and other mysteries of Kohl Mansion. Daily Journal.  Retrieved from http://archives.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=140355

Buchanan, P. D. (2001, January 16). Kohl Mansion contains history — and mystery. Daily Journal.  Retrieved from http://archives.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=1732

C. Frederick Kohl is Shot. (1911, June 9). The San Francisco Call. Retrieved from
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1911-06-09/ed-1/seq-1.pdf

Charles F. Kohl Weds Miss Godey. (1903, October 8). The San Francisco Call. Retrieved from http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19031008.2.24

Dossa, L., Gouailhardou, M., and Wilkinson, C. (2013). Freddie Facts. Retrieved from  http://kohlmansion.com/wordpress1/freddie-facts/

Mariages. (1925, October 17). Le Figaro. Retrieved from http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k2945490/texteBrut

Mrs. Wm. Kohl dies in Santa Barbara. (1912, February 28). The San Francisco Call. Retrieved from http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19120228.2.23

The Peerage. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.thepeerage.com/p53911.htm

Richter, J. (1999, October 15). Kohl Mansion has its roots in The Oaks. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved from http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Kohl-Mansion-has-its-roots-in-The-Oaks-3062547.php

First day of surveying

Last week, I started my survey of Edgewood’s gym storage, looking for hidden archival records.

The gym is in the main administration building, and is the whole left side of the building (the side behind the power pole).  I’m sorry that the photo isn’t that great.

The storage area is a loft above the gym, and as you can see, it’s under a set of five windows.  It’s also very hot and dusty up there.  The gym is used daily by kids and basketballs and volleyballs end up there pretty often, landing on (and knocking over) boxes and bags.

The gym, like the entire Edgewood campus, was built in 1924.  It was named after a man named C. Frederick Kohl, who has an interesting history that I plan to write about in a separate post.  But first, I need to figure out his ties to Edgewood and why they named the gym after him.

And, here’s what the storage looked like when I got started.  I counted over 110 boxes, as well as a few empty boxes.  Like many other out of sight storage areas, this loft has been the dumping ground for anything and everything that people wanted to get out of the way and think about later, including historical items.

I decided to start in this corner, which is the farthest section back, because I had been told that it was a likely place to have older things.  Everything was also completely coated in dust and right in the sunlight, so I wanted to look through these things first and then start on a more formal inventory of the boxes.

After I moved the large trash bag – which, I kid you not, was filled for some reason with Styrofoam peanuts – and the folded up banner, I came across a box of photo albums.

The photos, which are all unlabeled and don’t have photo release forms, are all from events from the 1990s and early 2000s.  Interesting, but not exactly what I was looking for.  I set them aside and asked the Communications department to go through them.  If they decide to keep any, I’ll rehouse them in more appropriate storage.

There were critters at the bottom of the box.

Next, I turned to the stack of items on top of a little table.  I thought these albums at the bottom looked promising.

And I was right!  These two albums, which are quite large at 20” x 25” each, are filled with old newspaper clippings from the 1920s through early 1950s, as well as other ephemera.  As you can see, both albums, but particularly the one on the right, have damage to their covers.  Part of the binding is also missing from the one on the left.

This album did have several news clippings loose inside, but was mostly used as a scrapbook for clippings related to Edgewood’s 100th anniversary celebration and other events happening around that time, including new Board of Directors and Auxiliary members, Christmas parties for the children, and the opening of a new recreation building on the campus, which is now used as a school.

It also had pictures and names for some of the children, which may be a help to people doing genealogical research.  Edgewood often gets calls from people asking about their parents and grandparents who lived there during its orphanage period.  If I can help connect even just one person to a picture or article on an ancestor, I would be very happy.  I’m going to take more detailed notes when I make my inventory and maybe make some sort of index of the children’s names and ages.

Unfortunately, the clippings are glued into the albums, and all of the opposing pages are yellowed.  The clippings themselves are in varying conditions.  Being in a hot, humid, sunny environment like the gym loft for at least the past few years has not been helping.

This page was a total mess, but it looks as though it’s many clippings of the same article, so it may not be as bad as it looks.

I was surprised to find a telegram from Richard Nixon in the album.  It was the only record from a politician.  It sounds as though as they invited him to the 150th anniversary event, as he was a newly elected California senator at the time.

And this telegram was from Lurline Matson Roth regarding the opening of a new building, Matson, named after her mother.  Lurline was the daughter of William and Lillie Matson, owners of the Matson Navigation Company, which offered cruises to Hawaii.  Lillie and Lurline volunteered at Edgewood.  The Matson home in Redwood City (about half an hour south of San Francisco), named Filoli, is now a California State Historic Landmark and open to the public.  What is very interesting is that the street that leads to Filoli is called Edgewood Avenue.  My colleagues and I suspect that Lillie and Lurline’s connection to Edgewood led to the name of this street, but we haven’t been able to find any proof yet.

This is a script for an NBC show on the Edgewood centennial.

This album looks like it has either mildew or water damage.  I unfortunately think it’s mildew.  I need to figure out where to store it away from other items until I know for sure.

It was not nearly as complete as the first album and about half of it was duplicates of news clippings from the first album.  Many of the items were just sitting unattached inside.

However, it did contain some interesting items, such as photos of the previous buildings.

The building in the background on the right was the Haight Street building, the second to last one used before the current campus.

All in all, I’m happy with the first day of searching.  These albums were a great find and the news clippings give a nice snapshot into Edgewood’s history and the celebration of its first 100 years, along with regular administrative activities, like new Board of Directors and daily life in the residential cottages.

I was also pleased to find the ephemera like the telegram from Richard Nixon and the NBC script.  Although they don’t lend any insight into Edgewood per se, they are fun items that round out the records related to the centennial celebrations.

These albums were not all that I found that day.  More coming soon!

References

Filoli. (2014). History.  Retrieved from http://www.filoli.org/explore-filoli/history/