History Of

As a small child, Norah Ann Barry (1838-1879) survived the Great Potato Blight and Famine in Ireland (1845-1848) and immigrated to the United States, probably as a young bride in the late 1850s. She and her husband, whose first name we don’t know, came to the booming city of San Francisco, probably from the East Coast in the early 1870s. But it was in Petaluma that she became the unfortunate victim of financial malfeasance and corruption. 

In 1879, the Petaluma Woolen Mill (operating since 1875 and located near today’s Steamer Landing Park) was bought out with the intention to renovate and refurbish it into the new “North Pacific Woolen Manufacturing Company” by financiers from San Francisco. Norah and her husband heard of the opportunity when he was hired as an engineer to work in the mill. They invested their life savings of $200 and purchased a house in East Petaluma near the mill. However, it turned out to be a pyramid scheme, and the company went into bankruptcy within six months – the financiers leaving the business in tremendous debt. The news devastated Norah. Distraught at the loss of their savings, and likely forfeiture of their home, Norah tried to throw herself down the well intending to drown away her sorrows in death. Her husband managed to restrain her in the attempt. However, two weeks later, as he attended the sheriff’s auction of the foreclosed mill property, Norah went into the hen house, stacked some cages, and tied a noose to the roof beams. From that high perch, she cast herself into oblivion.

Her husband took her body back to San Francisco, where she was buried and eventually moved to the cemetery city of Colma in the 1920s. But her spirit is said to remain trapped in East Petaluma, wandering on moonless nights along Copeland Street and among the open spaces of Steamer Landing Park.

Nancy Adele Wiese (1835-1858) came to Petaluma from Germany sometime after 1850, probably following her older brother who heard the call of the Gold Rush. In 1853, the 17-year-old married the 30-year-old Captain Thomas Fulcher Baylis (1823-1867). Tom Baylis and his best friend David Wickham Flogdell (1825-1856) were among the first Anglo settlers to come to Petaluma after California achieved statehood in 1850. Baylis and Flogdell set up a hunting camp and trading post at Petaluma Creek in 1851. In 1852, they built the Pioneer Hotel, and started Petaluma’s first firehouse. After Flogdell’s death, in 1856, Baylis organized a shipping company that transported goods between Petaluma and San Francisco, earning him the nickname “Captain Baylis.”

In 1854, Adele gave birth to her first daughter, Mary (Minnie) Adele Baylis (1854-1924). This was soon followed by her second daughter, Catherine (Kate) Hannah Baylis (1856-1917), and her son Theodore Henry Thomas Baylis (1857-1900). Whether it was the stress of raising three small children in a rough, lawless, frontier community, or perhaps she and Captain Baylis had marital difficulties, we will never know. But on Mar 1, 1858, the melancholia was overwhelming, and she couldn’t resist the urge to end it all any longer. She hung her bonnet on the wall of the warehouse, bound her eyes with a handkerchief and stepped off the landing into the creek. Her body was only found two days later, and she was buried in what is today’s Penry Park. In the 1860s, some of the bodies at the old “burying ground” were moved to Oak Hill and Cypress Hill Cemeteries and now have gravestones there, but Adele’s is not among them.

It is said that early on foggy mornings, the spirit of a young woman can sometimes be seen walking the west side of the river, on the pedestrian bridge, or on the way to her grave in Penry Park. She always has her eyes tightly bound with a white handkerchief, and occasionally the shadow of her bonnet appears on the old brick wall of the Great Petaluma Mill.

Most of the details and specifics presented in these podcast episodes are based on historical research from primary sources digitized and made available by numerous online services, such as Newspapers.com, Ancestry.com, the University of California’s Calisphere website, the Library of Congress, ProQuest, Santa Rosa City GIS’ Historical Image Viewer, and the David Rumsey online map collection among others. They include old newspaper accounts, maps, photos, census data, birth, death, and marriage records, municipal and military service documents, etc. Physical repositories of primary documents that are not digitized are also accessed whenever necessary. These include the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum, the Sonoma County Library, and the Sonoma County Historical Society, and other historical organizations in the county or state. 

Secondary sources of information used come from the many historical books, newspaper columns, blogs, and interpretive articles and exhibits produced by numerous professionals, including the town’s past journalists (most who have passed into obscurity without a byline), well-known social commentators such as Bill Soberanes and Harlan Osborne, and especially Petaluma and Sonoma-based historians such as Ed Mannion, Curley Allen, Adair Heig, Simone Wilson, Kenneth Kann, John Fitzgerald, Katherine Rinehart, Jeff Elliott, Skip Sommer, Terry Park, Connie Williams, Paula Freund, and John Sheehy. These enthralling writers have led the Petaluminaries down some fascinating rabbit-holes about the history of the city, county, and state. 

When they are quoted in the podcast, all direct sources are verbally identified with the name and date of the publication, and the author if it is available. When a specific interpretation is referred to, but not quoted directly, the source is also named in a more general sense. Since each episode is a compilation of both primary and secondary  information from numerous sources, if a listener has a question about any statement made in the podcast, they can request a list of references by email.