Sadie Blanche Hinman

(All pictures at bottom instead of intersperred in text)

My grandmother, Sadie Blanche Hinman (called Blanche), was born March 5, 1870, at 101 Henry Street, in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Amanda Josephine Miller and Marshall Littlefield Hinman. Her father had moved to Dunkirk, New York the preceding November to co-found the Brooks Locomotive Works with his partner, Horatio G. Brooks. Her mother evidently stayed in Brooklyn with her parents, the Ezra Millers, until Blanche was born, and possibly, until the family home at 715 Central Avenue was completed. Her name was selected by her father because it had the same initials as his father - Simeon Benjamin Hinman. My grandmother never used the Sadie to my knowledge.

Her brother, Marshall Littlefield Hinman Jr. was born August 30, 1873, and died at the age of 14 on June 14, 1888. Blanche attended the No. 4 Public School, and the No. 1 Public School in Dunkirk and St. Agnes School in Albany, where Bishop Doan was the principal. She attended St. John's Episcopal Church on Fourth Street in Dunkirk, where her parents were literally the pillars of the church, saving it year after year from one financial crisis after another. The incredible success of the Brooks Locomotive Works brought prosperity to the town of Dunkirk.

Her youth seems to have been one social occasion after another, judging from the clippings in her voluminous scrapbook. She also traveled extensively with her parents, taking advantage of the railway pass to which her father was entitled as a manufacturer of locomotives. They came west every year, spending approximately four months in the Los Angeles area, thus missing the harsh winters on Lake Erie. Blanche seems to have had lots of friends, which must have made up in part for the loss of her only sibling. Since there is no mention of any of her cousins from her father's side of the family, I presume that they did not see each other. She was very fond of Adele Miller (Clifton) a cousin from her mother's side of the family, and they remained fast friends throughout her life. Adele was the maid of honor at her wedding.

Blanche was one of the princesses in the Fiesta de Los Angeles in 1897, an event that seems to have inspired the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena. There were innumerable events, displays, parties, and a parade associated with the Fiesta, and it was duly recorded in the press, and preserved in a special scrapbook by my grandmother. That same year she met my grandfather, William May Garland, at Turnverein Hall in the 200 block of Spring Street. She was accompanied by Joseph Cook and Mrs. Granville MacGowan. He had been living in Los Angeles since 1890, and had started his own real estate firm in 1894.

The following year, when Blanche made her annual visit to Los Angeles, they became engaged, and were married October 12, 1898 at St. John's Church in Dunkirk in a large and splendid wedding. Her matron of honor was Mrs. George G. Brooks of Scranton, PA (Grace Williams). Her maid of honor was her cousin, Adele Miller; her bridesmaids were her husband's sister, Rose Garland; her husband's cousin, Marguerite Mitchell (later Mrs. Rothwell Sherriff) of Chicago, Marion Patterson of Dunkirk (later Mrs. Jarvis Barlow of Los Angeles, whose husband, Dr. Barlow, founded the Barlow Sanitarium), and Jessie (Jet) Patterson of Dunkirk (later Mrs. Victor Tyler of New Haven, CT). My father reported in his account that her wedding gown and trousseau came from the James McCreery Company in New York. There is a wonderful wedding book that my grandmother had received from Caroline Miller, Adele's mother, filled with small fabric samples of all the dresses in her trousseau.

The young couple returned to Los Angeles after a honeymoon trip around the east coast to live in the Van Nuys Hotel, while their house was being built at 815 West Adams Boulevard. This was the newest area in town, and although it still had its water supplied by the zanja, an open ditch running down Figueroa Street, it was the most fashionable. My grandfather photographed the progress of the house with many snapshots. It was not finished in time for their first child, my uncle, William Marshall Garland to be born there in May of 1900, but it seems to have been completed soon after. My father, John Jewett Garland, was born April 20, 1902, attended by Dr. E. C. Buell, and the nurse Miss Leila Clinton Cline (Cliney). Cliney appears in some of the pictures taken the following month, so she must have stayed with her charges for a considerable length of time.

The following year, the Garland family seems to have made a trip to Dunkirk to visit the Hinmans and to Daytona to visit the senior Garlands. It was about this time that Marshall Hinman's health was failing, so possibly they realized that the strain of coming west for the winter was too much for him. I imagine these trips were made with one or two nurses and a lady's maid. There are several pictures taken with the boys' dog getting a walk beside the train, so he obviously made the trip as well.

Blanche's father died in Dunkirk after returning from another trip to the west. Her mother came west to live at the Leighton Hotel, 2127 West 6th Street, and it was there that she died on March 29, 1908.

My father would recount tales of the numerous trips to Europe that he had made starting at the age of six. These would be made with a lady's maid and a valet and innumerable steamer and wardrobe trunks. His memories are of rolling a hoop in the Tuileries Gardens. The only picture I have discovered is one taken at the Piazza San Marco in Venice with Marshall and the ubiquitous pigeons.

Blanche enjoyed traveling, her garden and entertaining. The Garlands lived a social life that was full and very active, and when Blanche was called on to be the first lady of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, it was with many years of experience in entertaining behind her. The Garland family had a house at the Crags Country Club near Calabasas which they used for vacations and picnics until it was sold to a movie company in the early Forties. I remember going there for picnics and traversing a suspension bridge that was terrifying to a five year old.

The Garlands lived in the house on West Adams until their deaths, when it was given to St. John's Church, for use as a manse. This arrangement lasted about five years, after which it was sold to the Catholic Church, and subsequently torn down and replaced with a parking lot for the use of the Automobile Club of Southern California.

In the latter half of the Twenties the Garlands bought a five acre parcel of land on Crespi Lane in Pebble Beach, and built a beautiful house called Casa Ladera "House on the Hill" to use for the summers. Robert Farquhar designed a sprawling three level house with a guest wing, a servant's wing, and a wonderful round room where we would have cocktails, surrounded by the posters from the 1932 Olympic Games.

There were vegetable and cutting gardens, a flagstone patio, where tuberous begonias were displayed, a croquet course, a putting green, a pine forest, with many Japanese lanterns, and acres of lawn to run on. It was a dream world that my brother, Bill, and I loved to come to every summer.

The household would move up to Pebble Beach in June: the staff would be driven up by the chauffeur, to begin the task of taking the dust covers off the furniture and draperies, cleaning, arranging flowers, and shopping. Then a day or two later, the family would arrive by the Lark, the Southern Pacific night train that left Glendale at nine, and arrived at Salinas at five thirty a.m. Someone would be left in the Los Angeles house to care for it, and to cook for my grandfather, when he was in town. I gather that my grandmother stayed in Pebble Beach very happily during the heat of the summer.

As children, we would make a two week trip to visit our grandparents every summer, and it was there that I got to know them best. The fog was often a prominent part of the weather so we would have long afternoons playing dominoes, or reading in the alcove, that overlooked the most dramatic views. My grandmother and I would drive to Monterey to get the fish for dinner at the Wharf, to Holman's Department Store in Pacific Grove, to get some household necessity (and presents for us); or to Carmel to pick up some knickknack at Spencer's Gift Store. Albert was the chauffeur that I remember, a very jolly Swede, who didn't mind our request to take off his cap when he was driving Bill and me.

Blanche and Billy did a great deal of entertaining during the period of the Olympic Games in 1932, most of it in their house on West Adams, which was convenient to all the sports venues.

The Garlands traveled to Europe and to Asia to attend the meetings of the International Olympic Committee. My father joined his parents in Berlin in 1936 for the Olympic Games, while my mother stayed home with her newborn son, William May Garland II The following year, my parents went with them to Japan, China and Manchuria, for a fascinating trip to that already turbulent area.

In 1946, the Garlands all went to Europe, right after the war was over while travel abroad was still severely limited.

My grandfather died September 26, 1948 in the Monterey Community Hospital at the age of eighty two. My memories of him are of struggling to get through his increasing deafness in the later years. His death left my grandmother bereft. They had always done everything together, and she was terribly lonely without him.

Sadly Blanche lost her eldest son, Marshall Garland, only nine months later, on June 9, 1949, at the age of forty nine, from heart damage caused by rheumatic heart disease. Brilliant and mercurial Marshall had confounded and exasperated the family for years. He had graduated from Middlesex and Harvard with ease, and then, from their point of view, frittered his life away with his passions for fast cars and jazz. Joining the Army after Pearl Harbor, he went through basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, scoring the then highest the Army should never have taken Marshall, at the age of forty one with a bad heart, and that experience is what led him to an early grave. Marshall had married twice, once to Polly Holbert in 1926, which ended in divorce; and then in the early Forties to Mary Wood. My brother and I were very fond of Aunt Mary, who was fun and entertaining and seemed interested in us. We liked visiting their house on Homet Road in San Marino, hearing records from the huge collection of jazz recordings, and getting rides in the MG roadster purchased in 1946. My grandmother and mother both looked slightly askance at Mary, since she had met Marshall while working as a secretary at the Garland Company. I do not remember seeing Mary at any family gatherings after Marshall's death, but happily encountered her again in the Seventies, and corresponded with her and her husband regularly from then until her death in 1983.

The years of the Fifties passed slowly for Blanche. She missed her husband intensely, and though my father was a dutiful and attentive son, he couldn't spend all the time with her that she craved. I remember her at all our birthday parties, our graduations, and other family occasions. She became rather repetitive, but otherwise kept her mental faculties. In a fall in 1957 she broke her hip, which in those days was the beginning of the end for most people. Her next months were spent in a corner room at the Good Samaritan Hospital where she died March 17, 1958.

Early in the Fifties my grandmother and father purchased a large plot at the San Gabriel Cemetery, just south of our home in San Marino. It was fortunate that the cemetery had
decided to eliminate several cross streets, in order to make more land available for internments, at the same time that the Garlands were in the market for a family plot. My grandmother and father spent a great deal of time deciding on the central stone for the plot, and she made many trips with Albert, the chauffeur, to bring orchids from her greenhouse to adorn the graves. My father also had the names of his mother, father and brother inscribed on the central stones of the Hinman plot in Fredonia, New York, and of the Miller plot in Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

St. John's Episcopal Church on West Adams, built under the direction of the rector and family friend, George Davidson, had been the beneficiary of many gifts from the Garland family over the years. The mosaics of the dome had been given in memory of William May Garland. After Blanche's death, my father started plans for the mosaic to cover the wall of the side chapel, where, unable to kneel, she had taken communion in her later years. The Judson Studio in Highland Park was commissioned to do the work. On a trip made to Europe with my parents in 1959, I visited the mosaic factory in Venice, and helped with decisions about some of the colors. I visited this chapel for the first time on the occasion of my father's funeral in 1968.

My grandmother had two large glasshouses containing orchids and other exotic plants in the garden at 815 West Adams Boulevard. After her death, the best of these plants were given to the Los Angeles Arboretum to be housed in a glasshouse given by my parents. The three of us attended the dedication March 17, 1959.

Another memorial was created to Blanche's memory when my father purchased the land for a Redwood Grove in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in Humboldt County. The Blanche Hinman Garland Grove adjoins the William May Garland Grove. In 1970, two more groves were added: John Jewett Garland and Helen Chandler Garland, and after Bill Garland's death in 1975, his grove was purchased.

Jack Garland had become a redwood enthusiast after many years of camping at the Bohemian Grove encampment on the Russian River. He convinced his father to buy the Jonathan May Garland Grove in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and he and Helen bought the land for the Harry Chandler Memorial Grove in the same park. Jack served on the Board of Councillors of the Save-the-Redwoods League until his death; Bill Garland served on the League until his death; I serve on the Board at present. It is truly a family tradition!

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Blanche Hinman at 18	Blanche Hinman 1897	Blanche Hinman 1898
Wedding was at St John's	Wedding admission card	Dunkirk Evening Observer article about wedding
Blanche, circa 1910, wearing pearls given her by her father Marshall Littlefield Hinman	Gwendolyn (Garland) Babcock wore her grandmother's pearls at her wedding	Blanche (Hinman) Garland circa 1906. She wore pearl "dog collar" rest of her life
Blanche (Hinman) Garland with sons Marshall and Jack in 1903	Jack and Marshall Garland 1913	Blanche (Hinman) Garland in the 1930s
Garland house at The Crags Country Club	The Crags Country Club	Casa Ladera
Casa Ladera	Casa Ladera	Casa Ladera
Casa Ladera front entrance about 1927	Casa Ladera front entrance in 1948	Blanche and Billy Garland in front of the dining room window at Casa Ladera
Blanche (Hinman) Garland in early 1940s, wearing both her trademark pearl necklaces	Blanche and Billy Garland at Lake Geneva 1946	Marshall Garland
St John's Episcopal Church	Nave of St John's Church	Chapel of St John's Church
Dedication of Greenhouse	Garland Groves	Hiking on trail through the Garland Groves
Garland Monument at San Gabriel Cemetery (CA)		Miller Monument at Green-Wood Cemetery (NY)