CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, historic archives are ever-changing. As we learn new information, we update records to better convey the history of the photographs, documents and items preserved within the archive. The Kelley House archive is also regularly assessing new donations.
Recently, a descendant of the Kelley family donated items belonging to her ancestors. With donations like this, we learn so much about individuals in the past, piecing together their stories through fragile documents and photographs that may otherwise be lost to time.
Many of the items in this recent donation belonged to Elise Drexler. Elise was William and Eliza’s third child, born in 1866. After inheriting a sizable fortune from her late husband in 1899, Elise stepped into the role of independent businesswoman and philanthropist. In 1910, the U.S. Census records Elise and her niece Jean MacCallum living in the house of Alexander Russell, a miner from New Jersey who found success in mining investments in California. 18 people lived in the home, including Alexander and his wife Ida, their three children, and 11 other “roomers.”
At the time, the Russell home was often called the “House of Mystery,” a history that deserves its own deep dive. It’s not clear when Elise and Jean moved out of the Russell family’s home, but several items in this new donation reveal Elise’s long-lasting connection with one of the Russell children. From September 1922 to January 1923, Elise was sent five bills from Montezuma Mountain School for Boys for the tuition and fees for Phillip Russell. Phillip was Alexander and Ida’s second child and would have been 16 years old at the time.
The five bills include tuition costs and “incidental expenses” for each month, which Elise sometimes checked off or, in the case of the expense “cash to football game—$5,” labeled with a question mark. Elise paid every bill. She wrote to the school about an error in the December 1922 bill and received a short letter from the school’s assistant secretary in January correcting the mistake. The response letter contains Elise’s sprawling cursive on the side “Paid Feb 1, ‘23.”
Why did Elise pay for Phillip’s education, and for only five months? Alexander and Ida passed in 1920 and 1917, respectively. Was Phillip short on money? Did Phillip ask Elise for help? Maybe one day letters between the two will be discovered, but for now it remains a mystery.
Averee McNear is the curator at the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino, Calif.
This story originally appeared in The Mendocino Voice.