Californian born people, how did you get there?

My mom was born there. Her parents wanted to leave depressing south Boston.

My uncle left Spain before the civil war, worked sugar can fields in Cuba, came to the U.S. through Mexico and enlisted in the Army during WWII and settled in California after discharge. In 1963, he sponsored his brother, my father, and mother. I was born a year later.

^ Sugar CANE

My mother’s family came to California in the 1840s and my father’s family in 1852. They came looking for richer land. There wasn’t anything glamorous or dramatic. They weren’t propelled by some mission. I think it was something to do.

By train or covered wagon?

Finnish mom 17 years old came with her family from Duluth to San Francisco in 1946 so stevedore Dad could work the docks. They drove and had to replace tires along the way since rubber was scarce post war. At one point they left one of the 7 kids in a gas station but recovered her, my aunt Scharlene.

My Dad was born in eastern Oregon and got the hell out when he graduated high school. Parents met in SF and claimed to be very happy until they had children.

Great grandparents came over from Ireland and Wales and honestly I never asked how they ended up in California. I assume the gold rush.

American Airlines 707 non-stop from Boston / Logan.

My mother with her five kids in tow. My father had moved ahead of us, by a few months, to find a house and a job. Upon our arrival, my mother learned that he had found neither. Relatives stepped up to help in that first year.

My father's family were early Italian immigrants. My great-grandmother was born in SF in the 1860s. My mother's family didn't get to SF until the 1930s. From Utah, then Nevada.

I'm a fifth generation Californian. When my family got here from Scotland they had to learn Spanish.

My military dad was stationed at two successive California bases. When my mom divorced him she stayed on with the kids.

My dad's parents were from Arkansas and Oklahoma. According to my grandma, they left for California for work. So I guess they were part of the dust bowl.

I have no idea how my mom's parents ended up here.

My great grandfather immigrated around 1910 from the Azores Islands. My great grandmother was already here, but was from the same very small island. Portuguese islanders were lured to California with the promise of work on various farms, mostly dairy and cotton, with the promise of getting their own farms after working a certain number of years.

^ Guessing that never happened...

My immediate family is considered leprous by the extended family because my mom is a dropout runaway who got knocked up by a violent meth dealer (my dad). I don’t know anything about my families history and they basically don’t know I exist.

R14. Actually, Portuguese built up and maintained the dairy business in California for decades—still important today.

Paternal grandmother's side - Norwegian immigrants who came to SF in the 1870s for unknown reasons. Rumor was my great-great grandfather was being sent to Australia and jumped ship in SF to avoid that penal colony. Grandmother became a nurse.

Paternal grandfather's parents were central Oregon pioneers who came from New York by covered wagon. Grandfather became a surgeon who did a residency in SF where he met my grandmother in the late 1910s. They settled in Oakland.

Maternal grandparents were Greek immigrants who ran a restaurant in New Jersey. They arranged my mother's marriage to her first husband, a much older Army Captain who ended up at Ft. Ord near Monterey during WWII. The grandparents followed right after the war, then built and operated a motel. My mother's first husband died when she was 8 months pregnant with her fourth child. My father, a journalist, covered the story and later married her. They settled in the Bay Area, where I was born.

I became a homosexualist who settled in San Francisco, where I would discover the precursor(s) to The Datalounge in the late 1990s.

There is a very good film about Norwegian immigrants in San Francisco circa 1910, "I Remember Mama" (1948) starring Irene Dunn and Barbara Bel Geddes (she was so adorable!).

Even though the characters are Norwegian, my Finnish mother said it nails the atmosphere and family relationships of her immigrant family in SF.

r18, how cool. I've heard of the movie title, but had no idea about its story. Will check it out.

The only things I recall hearing about my Norwegian ancestors in SF is that the men were involved in the fishing industry (naturally, I guess), that they lost businesses and homes in the '06 earthquake, and that young Scandinavian men were sometimes kidnapped or "Shanghai-ed" to work as slaves on merchant ships in the late 1800s.

R18. A movie, you say?

Don’t type that kind of shit on the Broadway thread…they’ll eat you alive.

A movie, you say? My Lord—she was the Maupin of her day.

I'm a first generation Californian. My mom came from Troy, NY at 8 years old in 1952. My dad came from Arizona in '56 at 14 years old. Both settled in the San Gabriel Valley. My maternal grandfather moved to work in the petroleum industry, and my grandmother went to work for ADP as a secretary. My dad's parents were not in the picture, and he bounced around from living in a boy's home for "troubled teens" to living with distant relatives, and then on his own at 19.

By covered wagon from Tucson in 1972.

R20 R21

I know there was a play based on a book. But this isn't a Broadway thread R20, although feel free to be an insufferable scold because this IS Datalounge.

[quote] The only things I recall hearing about my Norwegian ancestors in SF is that the men were involved in the fishing industry (naturally, I guess), that they lost businesses and homes in the '06 earthquake,

Nordic joke my Finnish mother liked: The Norwegians, Swedes and Finns are stranded on an island. Within a year the Norwegians have fished all the waters, the Finns have chopped down all the timber, and the Swedes are waiting to be introduced.

The sequel was much better.

Husband's families arrived in various ways. Navy WWII from Georgia (birth grandfather) and chemist jobs at Shell (two different adoptive grandfathers, one from Canada and one from midwest. ) Nothing fancy.

One friend arrived in San Diego at 13 because her mother was an alcoholic, and her firefighter dad thought that New Jersey was causing it. It wasn't New Jersey, and the mother drank herself to death.

I read a theory somewhere that everyone who came to California in earlier 20th century was desperate, a misfit back home, unable to live by social norms or running from debt or the law. In other words, the cream of the crop.

Cool thread. California has such an interesting history.

My grandparents moved to the US from Scandinavia before WW1 and settled in the Midwest. My grandfather came to CA after the crash to hope to get work as part of the building boom and that's how the family ended up here.

We moved to suburban L.A. from Mass in late 1968…halfway between the RFK murder and the Tate-LaBianca murders. The east coast relatives thought my parents were nuts.

When I got to college, by coincidence, two of my fraternity brothers had the exact same story in their families. The late 60s was the last true era of migration from NY and New England to the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

I share the same hardscrabble Northern European ancestry of so many here. Many farmers, longshoremen and military heroes in my family tree. They would be so proud of their descendant, a fat voracious bottom living off my inheritance, and proud every day for the foresight I possessed in being born white.

My family began on the East Coast in the mid 1600s as Colonists and farmers who slowly moved west to Ohio. My great grandfather joined the military and was stationed in San Francisco, CA, in 1905. He and his unit witnessed the great earthquake and fire and were ordered to fight the fires. When he was released from the military shortly after he stayed in SF where he married and started the family from whom I hatched.

Other ancestors arrived in SF in the 1870s and were tailors. They were Jewish and married into my father's branch in the 1960s. My original family was Protestant, and now, more than 120 years later my California family is now composed of atheists, agnostics, Catholics, Protestants and Jews. We have a half Asian, mixed race African-American and Mexicans, and, most recently, a trans niblet (niece/nephew). Everyone lives, loves, gets along, and life if grand. It's what I love about Northern CA. Not perfect by any means, but rich in diversity, culture, and great food.

When you grow up with people of differing origins you first learn we're all alike. Cultural and ethnic histories I learned later in childhood. Stories told by friends. Chinese railroad workers, Italian immigrants, Irish immigrants, we're all immigrants. What happens within families, whatever the origin, is similar. I didn't even know there was a bigotry against Mexicans until in my teens when I learned about migrant farm worker exploitation and abuse. Now, I have no patience for bigotry. Get to know people for who they are and we'll all be better off.

My cousin left Mississippi for California in the 70s, because her father (a KKK member) beat her to a pulp for having a black boyfriend. They moved to Sacramento, where he had family, and this family has grown and still there today. Proud to have black folks in my family!

Immigrant Jews made San Francisco.

Also, after the Hearst family, leading Jewish families pretty much paid to build up the University of California. Trump is going after Berkeley…because…but it’s entire history is interwoven with the Jewish experience in Northern California.

Mother's family descend from Californios who raised sheep and cattle out in the Pomona Valley until the gringos came, ca 1860, and swindled them out of their land. They survived floods, drought, and smallpox, but not shady capitalists.

Who remembers 4th grade California history in the public schools? We were required to learn the mission system, history of Mexican independence, the Ranchos and admission directly into the union (California was unique in that it was never a territory or organized entity pre-statehood).

Do kids still build a model of a mission these days? We used sugar cubes for adobe. 😎

R34, Immigrant Jews had an important part in settling SF along with many other immigrants. Think North Beach, Chinatown, the Mission District, and the hobos of early South of Market. A NY implant once told me New Yorkers made SF. Geez, give it a rest. SF is grand, newcomers sometimes like to say their natives, but it's also transient with many just passing through. A hodge-podge influenced by all.

They were a key element in the City’s economic development. It’s a very long list.

They're not supposed to, R36, but many teachers still do the old Mission model thing. It has become ridiculous -there are actual Mission model kits at craft stores! Makes me long for the sugar cubes...

¡Oh tiempos, oh modales!

So they still celebrate the Spanish missions even though they made slaves of the converted native people (treated them worse than slaves, acc. to most sources) eventually killing off a huge number of them...

In my day, they actually taught us that was the case. We still made the models, and we still took the obligatory field trips to our nearest mission. 🤷🏻‍♂️

That's why teachers aren't supposed to place too much positive emphasis on them, R41. The trouble is you're dealing with people who have been doing those damn models for years -decades, even. It's had to change. I have seen the shift toward indigenous people's experiences, but it takes time to move a monolith.

See: Christopher Columbus, July 4, and other bits of debunked history.

The missions are all state properties or historical sites, so the honest history is still there. AFAIK—no federal power can change those facts.

Wait wut—there was no July 4 in 1776. A leap day?

Decades? The mission model thing was part of the curriculum going back ~100 years.

I can see Mission San Luis Rey from my house. They do a pretty good job of sharing some of the darker side of their history, but there's still a lot of defensiveness about the justification of bringing salvation...

Yes, R45, but very few 4th grade teachers go back 100 years. They just seem that way...

Duh, R45. The Declaration was not voted on nor signed on July 4. That's a myth that has been taught almost since the founding of the country.

The proposal was adopted on the 2nd. The final wording was adopted on the 4th. The original was formally executed for “posterity” in August.

You can do better.

"The current fourth grade history curriculum covers the plight of Native Californians but it’s only recommended, not required. As a result, lessons vary across school districts, with some students getting scant information – or lessons focused largely on the missions. Under Ramos’ law, lessons on the mistreatment of Native Californians will be mandatory. Some of the information may also be covered in California’s new ethnic studies requirement for high school students, which goes into effect in fall 2025."

My grandfather was in the Navy in San Diego. My great grandmother also llved there. Most of my family still lives there.

R52. But live abroad now. And my immediate family moved to the South many years ago to give their children a less hectic life

My mommy and daddy met, fell in love, and got married, and thirteen month later I was born. Pretty much the way it happens everywhere...

r36, yes! I think it was 2nd or 3rd grade, around 1970. I don't recall a word being said about Native Americans in any context. I remember trying to chose Mission Dolores because it was simple, but ended up getting stuck with having to build Santa Barbara or San Juan Capistrano or something more elaborate with sugar cubes.

Later in life I ended up marrying a Bostonian. Visited there maybe 20 times before he moved out here. I know almost nothing about The American Revolution. We walked the Freedom Trail and all that. Tea Party? Sarah Palin. Paul Revere? And the Raiders on the radio. Plymouth Rock? An insurance company.

[quote]I can see Mission San Luis Rey from my house.

Big deal.

R55 4th grade was the statewide standard

1995/96-The company I worked for was bought by a large private equity firm. I was offered a new position as Head of West Coast Operations. My divorce was starting up& I was getting a very large settlement in the divorce.

All I had to do was pick the city as my West Coast headquarters, Seattle, Portland, San Fran& Silicon Valley, LA or San Diego. I picked La Jolla/San Diego because it was beautiful, home was huge, 9 large bedrooms and the LLC the home was registered under was owned by my wife's family.

You’re Mitt Romney’s ballsac? I knew there was something off about you.

R58 With all due respect, and thank you for sharing such a rich and interesting story, but were you born in California?

My Italian daddy joined the Air Force and ended up at Edwards Air Force Base.

He met my Italiana mom in DTLA in the late '60s.

My maternal grandfather was born in Denmark in 1904. Not sure when he came to the U.S. but he said he remembered the San Francisco earthquake. My paternal grandfather came a region of Russia that been disputed between that country and Turkey for a long time. He moved to a town with a name that sounded like one in Russia. He and my grandmother lived like they were still in Russia for the rest of their lives.

By one of the first 747s.

R60-NO! Born in Philadelphia, Pa, at the end of June 1961 at Germantown Hospital (also in Philly).

Raised in East Falls.

^^^I became a "Californian" when I moved there^^^

The only natives in California were the Indians that populated the area, then the Spanish.

The US Navy. The military be militarying.

My cousins moved there because my mom's sister's Russian-descent husband thought the California sun would help his inherited depression and mental health issues. It kind of did, actually. On the other hand his academic career took off there as well and they achieved financial stability and depression meds got better between the '80s and the '00s. It's not possible to say how much the California climate alone was the reason for his doing better.

R65 Just admit you were wrong. Jeez.

Phillywhore, I never took you for being anywhere near California!

R67 again to add, since people are getting tetchy about adherence to topic... the two younger cousins were born in the Monterey/Carmel area in the 1990s. now one of them has two Calif-born kids as well.

R65 is an example of missing out on 4th grade in California.

R71, do you mean those terrible Missions we had to recreate out of popsicle sticks?

I don't think it's people getting tetchy, it's just that this is a pretty specific topic. If it was about when people moved to California it would be a totally different topic.

Though am I the only one who thinks "Californian born people, how did you get there?' is weird? If you were born there, that's how you got there, right?

R36, OMG I built a mission out of sugar cubes in 4th grade! I forgot all about it. How embarrassing. It's hard not to learn all about the missions but making one from sugar cubes taught me nothing.

In 4th grade it was CA history, fifth grade the US. We each had to do a report on a state and I chose Arizona. An older relative had retired there and we had visited them, sparking a short-lived interest. Too hot!

In sixth we studied Mexico. That was the most fun. Each student chose a different aspect of Mexico for their reports. I chose the art of Mexico, focusing on Diego Rivera. My neighbor Jimmy reported on the food of Mexico and brought in an electric frying pan full of refried beans and melted cheese , along with fresh, warm tortillas, prepared by his Mexican mother. We happily feasted on it. Already a Mexican food lover, my lifelong passion for tortillas and refried beans was born that day. I must have fresh hot corn tortillas with my refried beans.

Fun fact regarding the hideously sculpted statue of Junipero Serra, the Catholic priest and missionary crucial to mission building, along Highway 280 in Hillsborough. It was once known as a gay hook up spot back in the day when closeted gays hung around secretive spots looking for love. The dark side of gay history in CA for sure. Although long a refuge for those deemed unacceptable for "decent" society, California was not always an easy place for gay people. Many were still hiding their true selves.

We lived in Broadmoor Village for a while, a mile of San Francisco. In the early 60s (I'm old) we lived next door to a gay couple. Gays had always been a presence in San Francisco, my father's business was in Polk Gulch. Polk Gulch predated the Castro as a gay neighborhood. The street was lined with cool businesses like coffee roasteries, restaurants, and fashionable home decor. My mom was a devotee of one particular store and I still have a lamp she bought for me there.

I digress. The gay neighbors next door were simply two hardworking men who kept to themselves. Everyone knew they were gay, but the prevailing attitude was live and let live. They kept up their house and were good neighbors. Fair housing laws came into effect in the 60s. At one time some neighbors objected when the learned a family was selling to a Chinese family. My dad was disgusted by that and refused to participate. We forget how much has changed since the huge cultural changes that happened in the 1960s. It's really hard to witness the destruction of hard won liberal progress.

Another sugar cube mission builder here, but this thread is the first time it struck me just how creepy and ironic the project was. The missions were a bloody graveyard for indigenous people, the inverse of "sweet".

R72 no—I meant lack of knowledge as to the most basic facts.

[QUOTE]It's what I love about Northern CA. Not perfect by any means, but rich in diversity, culture, and great food.

R32 - Same here. And you really miss it when it's no longer around. I moved to Bloomington, IN from N. California in '88 for grad school. OMG, the shock! It was so, so white. A few black students here and there. It felt so weird (and I'm incandescently white.)

Tell us you didn’t get into your intended program at Stanford or Berkeley, without telling us.

Or Davis…

UCD '87 if r79 is curious.

Harmless fun—just playing off why you left for Indiana with the UC system at your feet. Ignore me.

My maternal great great grandma was a San Francisco orphan. Not sure who she landed there, however.

My maternal great grandfather came out to Stockton from Chicago in 1918 after nearly dying from the Spanish Flu. He felt he got a second shot at life and wanted his life to have more adventure to it. He met my maternal great grandma (a daughter of the orphan), who was married with two kids, fell madly in love, wooed her, she divorced her drunk husband, married my great grandfather, they moved down to Los Angeles and had my grandmother, who had my mother (also born in Los Angeles), who had me.

Ph.D. from Indiana, r82. And, truly, California is lucky to have UC, CSU, and a decent community college system. So many students who, at best, should have been at a community college trying to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives wasted a year or two in Bloomington because there's no public community college system.

R84 Yes!! I was shocked when I temporarily relocated from SF to Boston and discovered they had no community college system equivalent to California's.

Our community colleges are excellent, affordable, accept every resident, and a two-year associate degree will guarantee acceptance to at least one of the UC campuses. This is a second chance for students who fucked up in high school.

[quote]Californian born people, how did you get there?

My parents had a car. So they drove there

Was it a jalopy? Or a BMW?

Masschusetts (a small state) has 15 community colleges, most of them with satellite locations. Several are in the Boston area. Generally considered to be high quality.

........

But did Massachusetts create a Master Plan for Higher Education like California did in the early 1960s—which to this day is the economic engine for the state and the best public system in the world?

As I understand it, the private college culture held back the Mass public higher ed system…the were slow to recognize what Clark Kerr was doing in CA. To a certain extent, same with NYS. Nelson Rockefeller cobbled together SUNY along the UC model, but it’s never met that higher standard across the system. NYC had, and has, CUNY, which has been a path of success for generations of poor city students.

R90 I have no idea. Why are you changing the goalposts?

What's sad to me is that the public college system in California ceased to have free tuition after Reagan got ahold of it.

R47 - I have friends close to you in Oceanside near that mission. Meanwhile I'm a couple miles from the next Mission south - Mission San Diego.

Not really interesting post, I'll admit.

The Sonoma Mission must have been the easiest to make out of sugar cubes, it's so small and simple.

R92. That’s incorrect. The material change in student fees (no one said the word tuition then), cam after Jerry Brown sought to cut funding across the board in the early 80s. George Dukemejian took that ball and ran with it—and it was thereafter that real tuition was in play.

R94 the 4th grade bro playas knew how to pick the right mission. ;)

R95 The UCLA catalogue used the word tuition.

UCLA’s 1965-66 Course Catalog states: “tuition is free to every student (not in the School of Dentistry or the School of Medicine) who has been a resident of the State of California for a period or more than one year immediately preceding the semester during which he proposes to enroll”

1966: Ronald Reagan assumed office of Governor of California and changed the course of the state’s higher education system. In his eight years, he cut state funding for college and universities and laid the foundation for a tuition-based system.

According to a New York Times article from 1982, during his eight years as governor, “Reagan fought hard in the legislature to impose tuition at four-year colleges. He lost the battle to lobbyists for the university, … However, the Legislature agreed to increase student registration fees.”

Student fees remained very low for several years after Reagan. Increases were continuous from the end of the 2nd Brown term. Look up the timeline of fee increases and, later, actual payment of tuition.

A history. There are others online.

R99 Okay, I believe you, but what part of "In his eight years, he cut state funding for college and universities and laid the foundation for a tuition-based system" don't you understand? He also "fought hard" to impose tuition.

Could not access the link R100.

My great grandfather was a farmer in the midwest and bought farmland in Sonoma County in the 1940s. He later sold it in the 70s but his children stayed in California.

What part of R92’s comment being incorrect. The budget woes and increased fees is not a Reagan legacy—it’s the legacy of every governor.

In my senior year, 1983-84, total fees for two semesters was ~$1500

…being incorrect don’t you get*

During Reagan’s campaign for the governorship of California in 1966, he publicly criticized the University of California system. Reagan referred to these student protesters as “brats,” “freaks” and “cowardly fascists.” In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Reagan’s education advisor, Roger A. Freeman stated, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go through higher education].” This belief has shaped higher education to become a privilege of the upper class, with tuition serving as a barrier to those from working-class backgrounds.

Before Reagan became governor of California, tuition was free for California residents. However, Reagan viewed the University of California system as disruptive, and his distaste and intent to change this system was revealed in an FBI memo. Quickly after being reelected as governor, Reagan began cutting state funding of public universities by 20%. His justification was that colleges have become too liberal and taxpayers should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.

This reasoning represented a shift in the purpose of college. College was no longer a place to pursue higher intellect and endeavors but rather a place to maximize profit-making skills. Eventually, state funding became only 32% of the total budget, causing the system to have to charge a tuition of $630 for the first time. This fee has steadily increased, with the University of California, Irvine now costing $13,985 for in-state residents. As state funding has decreased, increased reliance on tuition hikes has put a financial burden on students.

To R69-since the end of 1996/97, when my home was finally finished renovations. When I moved to the West Coast in 1995, my company rented a home in Brentwood, 2 blocks from OJ's That was fun!! Also, at every dinner party (gossip party) I was invited too, Harvey Levin was always talking to Mrs. Kris Kartrashwhorian (always).

[quote]UCD '87 if [R79] is curious.

UCD 1974 here.

I'm not sure why I didn't figure this out until I was MUCH older, but my father (whose Italian family had been here and owned farms in the southern part of San Francisco in the late 1800s) had an uncle who he was pretty close to. The uncle was a baker and worked for one of the fancier hotels (this would've been in the '30s through the '50s, probably). His "roommate" worked in a bank. They lived in a beautiful home in the city. The uncle died when I was fairly young, so don't remember him very well, but the roommate stayed very close to my father's family. He sent me and my sister (and presumably all of the other children of our generation from other branches of the family) money every Christmas for many years (even into my adulthood) and lived to be almost 100. I didn't even have a glimmer of an idea that they could've been a gay couple. It was just something that would never have been discussed or even mentioned.

This thread is good stuff.

Op here, sorry for the weird wording. I only asked because I found out several members of my family has immigrated and are buried out in California, in the 30s. I had no idea about this. My grandmother told me she lived in California in the 50's (but she moved back to her home state).

There must have been a wild buzz about it even back then. It always seemed like the promised land of America.

Anyway I was just curious, and wish my grandmother had stayed. I could have been in the ranks with all you fine folks.