Of all the people who attended the viewing of Ernest B. Kruttschnitt’s corpse, none was more shaken than an unknown woman, bent with age, who sobbed uncontrollably at his casket. A report in the Daily Picayune on April 18th, 1906, failed to identify this woman, though it did say she had acted as his mentor. “She stood at […]
Society Pages Describe Marie Gingras as French Down to Her Highly Polished Fingertips
Marie Gingras Pickering lived her life, warts and all, under the harsh magnifying glass of the San Francisco society pages, judging by the countless references made to her and her family in newspaper accounts during the early 1900s. A cursory search reveals that she hosted countless bridge and tea parties, always with elaborate flower decorations; served as a patroness of a […]
Julius Kruttschnitt, Sr., Thought Sleep Was Over-Rated
Julius Kruttschnitt, Sr., the one-time chairman of the Southern Pacific Railroad, worked 18 hour days “for considerable lengths of time” during a 43-year career with the railroad that was interrupted by his untimely death. My seemingly indefatigable great-great grandfather was one of several industry leaders asked to respond to a 1920 Cosmopolitan article, “The Pace […]
Posthumous Letter Sheds Light on Kruttschnitt’s Yale Years
“I see you’ve found my scrapbook from Yale,” reads a letter recently sent from the grave by Julius Kruttschnitt, Jr. The talking letter suddenly appeared after this blogger opened Julius’s decrepit scrapbook of his undergraduate college years, 1903 through 1907. “As you can probably see, I had a pretty good time.” To say the least. Kruttschnitt received his degree in […]
Meany Remembered as Brilliant Party Prankster
You know the kind of stories that reduce you to a senseless mass of convulsive laughter, where you involuntarily blurt out laughs like coughs, where your eyes stream with tears and you can’t speak? And just when you stop, you make eye contact with another person who also got the joke and start all over again? Those were the kind […]
Julius and Marie Krutschnitt Couldn’t Wait to Marry
Julius Kruttschnitt, Jr., and his wife, Marie Rose Pickering, married six months ahead of plan, much to the dismay of Pickering’s mother, according to a September 25, 1907 article from the San Francisco Call. Apparently, the ceremony at the Pickering household, was pulled together so quickly that Kruttschnitt’s parents didn’t even attend. He’s quoted in the paper as having no idea […]