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Wanda Snow Porter

March is Women's History Month

3/1/2013

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In 1978, a school district in Sonoma, California celebrated women’s contributions to culture, history and society. Hundreds of students from dozens of schools participated in a “Real Woman” essay contest, and a parade was held in downtown Santa Rosa. A few years later, the idea had caught on, and in 1980 President Jimmy Carter issued the first presidential proclamation declaring the week of March 8 as National Women's History Week. The next year, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution and established it as a week long national celebration. Six years later, the National Women’s History Project successfully petitioned United States Congress to expand the event to the entire month of March as Women’s History Month. 

The Captain Henry Sweetser Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution has invited me to speak at their meeting on March 16th. In honor of Women’s History Month, the women in my husband’s family will be the topic of my talk.

Rosa Sparks Porter was a fascinating woman with a strong sense of self. She inherited part of a Mexican land grant rancho from her father, Isaac Sparks, and because of her management most of the Porter Ranch is still in the family today. 

Her  lineage can be traced back to Tahiti and the Bounty mutiny. Barbara Juarez Wilson published a book, From Mission to Majesty, with tons of information about the women in Rosa's ancestry. The London Missionary Society kept an account of their time on Tahiti, and the Catholic Church has documents and baptismal records.The Bounty mutiny was famous, and ship logs were kept. To my amazement,
The Mutiny on Board the H.M.S. Bounty by William Bligh, and The Mutiny of the Bounty by Sir John Barrow, first published in the late 1700s and early 1800s, are still sold on Amazon. 

For 2013, the National Women’s History Project selected the theme, "Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics." 
For the list of their 2013 Honorees & Nominee go to:
http://www.nwhp.org/whm/honorees2012.php    
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Story Inspiration~Island of the Blue Dolphins

3/5/2012

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I recently finished reading the Island of the Blue Dolphins. The book was based on a true story about a woman accidently left on a remote island off the California coast. Strange, although I’m a California native, I had never read it. But when I learned my husband’s great-great-grandfather, Isaac J. Sparks, chartered and was aboard the ship that left the Lone Woman on San Nicolas Island, I had to.
While doing research for Spurs for José, I found this excerpt about the true story that inspired Scott O’Dell's famous book:
In 1880, Dr. Absalom Stuart, a physician in Santa Barbara, wrote an article about the historic events that unfolded in the lives of Captain Nidever and a mysterious, effervescent little woman who lived on San Nicolas Island. The article, printed in "The Sanitarian" magazine, is entitled A Female Crusoe:
 
Captain Nidever is on the scene in Santa Barbara; he is a hard-working family man with a beautiful home. He is hunting otter. It is here that our tale begins in earnest....
Mr Nidever said in substance: "My occupation has been that of otter hunting. When I came here in 1835, I found two other Americans, Isaac J Sparks and Lewis T Burton, engaged in the same business .
"They chartered a schooner of twenty tons, burden-built at Monterey, called Peor es Nada (Better than Nothing), for a trip to the coast of Lower California on another expedition, leaving Santa Barbara about the first of May 1835. I did not accompany them.
"Not being as successful as those in charge expected, three months later the Peor es Nada put into San Pedro, the port or landing of Los Angeles, on her return trip. From San Pedro, she went to the Island of San Nicolas, about seventy miles southwest from San Pedro, and a little further southeast from Santa Barbara, for the purpose of removing the Indians then on the island to the mainland and returned with eighteen men women and children, as told me by Isaac J Sparks.
Unfortunately, due to bad weather the ship had to depart, leaving one woman behind on San Nicolas Island where she lived alone for eighteen years before being rescued and taken to Santa Barbara, where sadly, after a few weeks she died from unknown causes. It was this tragic story that inspired O'Dell's story.
For me, being married to a California pioneer, and knowing descendants of the rancheros, made O’Dell’s story more interesting. The rancheros came west as ship captains, otter hunters, or jumped ship in a strange land, not the play-it-safe kind of men. It is interesting to note that true events connected to my husband’s great-great grandfathers, Isaac J. Sparks and Captain William G. Dana, were the inspiration for both Island of the Blue Dolphins and Spurs for José.
  
   
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