1st Marriage
Despite broken heart he suffered while he was away in the gold fields in 1863, John Richard Longacre had captured the affections of a beautiful lady and had acquired enough property to take bring a bride into his life by 1867. He married Miss Mary Ann Fletcher of Oregon when he was 27. Their wedding picture is below.
Mary Ann is elegant in a stylish gown of the day, and John Richard Longacre is quite a dashing gentleman in his wedding suit. I might have fallen for him myself, had I been around in 1867! The newlyweds supported themselves by farming and land sales. John Richard joined a Masonic Lodge during this period, and their only daughter was born in 1873. Nearly a decade later the size of their family increased when they adopted a neighbor’s daughter after her parents both died in a flu epidemic sometime between 1881 and 1882.
2nd Marriage
Alas, shortly after the baby’s adoption, the lovely Mary Ann Fletcher Longacre also contracted the flu and the doctors were unable to save her. John Richard was bereft with no wife, two daughters to rear, and a farm to run. But he did not despair. He wrote a stream of letters to family in Missouri again and this time arranged a visit. The transcontinental railroad had been completed in 1869, so his trip home was much easier than the one that first brought him to Oregon.
We don’t know if his trip east was designed to find him a new bride and a stepmother for his daughters, but that was the result. We don’t know how long he stayed in the east, but we do know that a young cousin, the daughter of a relative, caught his eye on this visit; and he began courting her.
Just before he was to return home to Oregon, he asked her to marry him. He was 46. The object of his affections, Susan Emeline, a school teacher, was 33 and happily settled in her single life. She turned him down. He headed for the train station, dejected. Suddenly, my great grandmother, Susan, appeared out of nowhere on the platform as he was ready to board the train and breathlessly told him that she’d changed her mind. Yes, she would marry him and start a new life in Oregon. And so she did in 1885.
Susan and John Richard quickly had two children of their own, pictured below.
ca 1889 Oregon
California years – farming in the Central Valley
When daughter Nellie Irene was born in 1891, she was suffered from asthma. Doctors recommended that the family move to a warmer, dryer climate, thinking that dry air would help her condition. So, without a look backward, John Richard sold his Oregon farmstead and land holdings that he had developed for more than thirty years and purchased farm land near Fresno, California in the San Joaquin Valley, which was technically a desert at the time.
Fresno California is the home of Free Republic, and it is quite a different place today than it was in 1892. I like to think that it is because of early pioneers, like my great grandfather, that it holds the designation as the last bastion of conservatives in California.
Fresno County agriculture today. Cultivated fields of the 1890s would not have been as vast as these, but they would have been equally hot and dry. Today Fresno County farmers manage their water problems through extensive artificial irrigation systems that were unavailable to John Richard Longacre.Growing conditions in the Central Valley were quite different from those in rainy Oregon, with temperatures of 110 degrees in the summer common, and no rain at all from April till October. They nearly lost everything the first year. To make matters worse, baby Nellie died in an accident the first year they were there.
Through diligence, John Richard learned to farm in the hot valley and turn a profit, despite his early misfortunes. Susan Emeline raised the children and learned to manage their income artfully. In her later years when her grandchildren would ask why she walked everywhere and never took the street car, she laughed and said, “I just might need that nickel some day.”
John Richard’s eldest daughter, Ella, eventually moved back to Oregon to attend school and became a teacher; and his adopted daughter, Mary, also moved north after she grew up. Both daughters visited Fresno often and were close to their parents all their lives.
John Richard Longacre and his only son, my grandfather, Albert Sidney Longacre. Photo is taken before a Fresno, CA studio background intended to represent the Cliff House in San Francisco, a famous tourist spot of the era. There is more than one family photo taken in this studio at different times using this background.
John Richard took a keen interest in naming all of his grandchildren – much to the consternation of his daughter in law (my grandmother), who had other ideas for her children’s names! He eventually retired to the city of Fresno where he lived until his death at 90, a year after Susan died. He was buried in a Masonic ceremony. Linda Bell continued to live in John Richard and Susan’s retirement home in Fresno until the late 1960s. She taught Sunday School all her life. Bert’s life-long abiding interest was buying and selling real estate, patterned after John Richard’s early days in Oregon. John Richard Longacre and a great number of his relatives are buried in Fresno, California – home of Free Republic.
John Richard’s and Susan’s retirement home in the city of Fresno, California. By the time I was a child, the shrubbery had grown so high around this house that you could no longer see it from the street. My Great Aunt Bell, who still lived there, would serve us lemonade and cookies under an arbor of trees and vines that shaded the entire back yard. It was heaven on a summer day in Fresno’s 100 degree heat.
I also wish to honor my Great Grandfather on this Fathers’ Day, June 16, 2002, for providing a good example of all the qualities of outstanding fatherhood that are still valid today:
Although I sincerely doubt that John Richard Longacre would have ever wanted to be called a Republican, given the era in which he lived, I am sure that he would have gladly called himself a Conservative.
Therefore:
Whereas John Richard Longacre lived the life of a pioneer settler on the home turf of FreeRepublic more than a hundred years ago,
Whereas John Richard Longacre was never afraid to try new things,
Whereas John Richard Longacre was an example of an eternal optimist throughout his life,
Whereas John Richard Longacre greatly enjoyed the art of social dancing in his youth, he would be an excellent addition to any future Balls, Cruises, and Social Occasions planned and organized by the members of Free Republic.
Whereas John Richard Longacre never faltered in the face of personal or financial setbacks, whether it be the loss of a loved one (mother, sweetheart, 2 wives, daughter, cousins, uncles, friends) or the loss of money or property, I like to think that he would have been an enthusiastic part of the Free Republic Forum from its founding.
Be It Therefore Resolved that:
John Richard Longacre be made an Honorary Member in good standing of the Fresno Chapter of Free Republic, with all benefits and privileges therein and using the official screen name of Trailblazer.
[By my hand signed on this day] Afraidfortherepublic