There’s no use mincing words. During prohibition, perhaps even afterward, my great-great grandparents Fred Pickering and Marie Gingras distilled their own whiskey. How do I know this? Well, my cousin and I discovered a strange contraption in the basement of their home in San Francisco when the current owner was kind enough to take us […]
Real Estate Mogul Fred Pickering Died Alone
Rhoda Anne Williams and Walter Hinds Doty hadn’t been married too long when a mysterious visitor showed up in their driveway.
Stop the Presses: Marie Gingras Mystery Solved
For half a decade, I’ve been working with relatives to try to figure out where the bedeviling Marie Gingras (1861-1937) came from. I’m pleased to report that, thanks to the hard work of cousin Sue Wolfe, the mystery has been solved
Marie Gingras Pickering: The Missing French Connection
In the early 1880s, Frederick Manthano Pickering set out to make his fortune. He traveled more than 3000 miles by covered wagon from his hometown of Portland, Maine, all the way across the country to San Francisco. Two years later, he sent for his childhood sweetheart, Marie Gingras. Marie’s route was more circuitous, but equally daring. Taking her Hope Chest, which remains […]
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 […]