A plaque dedication ceremony was held at 545 Main Street in Nevada City, focusing on the house's history and its occupants, primarily the Searls family. The event began with acknowledgments of the current homeowners, Paul and Susan Zimmerman, for hosting the event and allowing the plaque placement. Dave Comstock, a local historian, provided a brief overview of the house's history, mentioning its first owner, Edward Spence, and subsequent owners, including Addison Niles and Niles Searles. The Searls family occupied the house for a significant period, and several family members were present at the ceremony. Niles Searles, John Drew (representing his mother), and Gwen Searls shared their memories of living in the house and their connections to the local mining industry. The ceremony concluded with the official dedication of the plaque, recognizing the house as a significant local landmark.

Full Transcript of the Video:

We don't have a long or elaborate program today.

We want to get into the historical aspects of this building and the people associated with it.

And we have a wonderful group today of relatives of the Serals family who occupied this house through most of its existence.

And to introduce, I would like to, before I do that, acknowledge Paul and Susan Zimmerman, the present owners of the property, for allowing the plaque to be placed on their property and for their gracious hosting of this event here in front of their property.

With that, I would like to have Dave Comstock come up here and give you a little bit of history of the house as well as introduce the Serals family.

I don't know how many places there are in this country right now where you could have this sort of an event exactly like this, where you could go to the city council and say, hey, we'd like you to block off the street there on a Friday afternoon.

Why?
Well, because we're gonna have some people sitting on chairs in the middle of the street.

Well, okay, and it happens.

Most of you have seen the wording on the plaque.

I'm not gonna read it out to you.

You can come up here and see the plaque.

The plaque weighs 70 pounds even before it's attached to the granite and the reason there are so many words.

And that was cuz we were trying to make brief statements about these three families.

The first owner only lived in this house a short time.

During the time he was there, his young wife died.

He was pretty broken up about this.

He had been born in Ireland.

He went back to Ireland on a trip, came back here, sold the house, and moved to San Jose.

He sold the house to his friend, Addison Niles.

They were both the same age.

The first owner then went on to start some banks in San Jose, started banks in San Diego and Los Angeles, eventually became the mayor of Los Angeles.

And was probably the biggest promoter and person most instrumental in creating Mount Wilson Observatory.

Provided a lot of the funding for it.

But when he was here in this town, this community, he was known as a druggist.

He was a well-known druggist downtown.

But he did invest in a copper mine, which ended up being named after him, or actually a town there being named after him, Spenceville.

And that, that's, that's, that and this house were sort of what he left as his heritage here.

Okay, the next person by Addison Niles was a young lawyer who was the brother of Niles Searle's wife, Mary.

And he was county judge at that time.

And in a short time, he was elected to the state supreme court and had to move away.

So he sold it to his brother-in-law, Niles Searle.

From that point, it stayed on in Niles Searle's family up until just about, I don't know, three or four years ago, the Zimmerman's can tell you exactly what the date was.

But in that one family from what, about 1872 up until the 1990s.

Now there was more than one generation at one point there.

Niles himself got elected to the, or got appointed to the state supreme court.

He became chief justice.

And, and he and Mary made a gift of this house and the property to their son Fred, who was born in Nevada City, one of the very first kids to be born here, grew up here, spent his whole life here.

And, and, and Fred and his wife raised their family here.

And, and so she was a native.

She was, she was born in Downeyville, another one of the early California natives.

There's a whole cluster of folks down here.

And the first person I'd like to introduce you to is Niles Searle.

I'm not fooling you, this is not a masquerade.

Niles Searle is actually sitting at various, he's.

>> [APPLAUSE] >> Niles, could you come up here and tell us about what it's like to live in this house and work in the merching line?
>> Yeah.

I first met Niles a few years ago down in Danville.

He now lives in Murphy's.

He's also got an amazing stamp collection.

Between high school and college, I came up and lived here for a while.

And my father's brother was chairman of the board of Newmont Mining.

So dad asked him to get me a job.

I think I weighed probably 140 pounds.

They stuck me down in a merching mine about 1300 feet down.

Gave me a pick and shovel and I was a mucker.

When I first moved up here, I went to school there next door.

I remember it was, the teacher had a hard time convincing me that four times zero wasn't one.

>> [LAUGH] >> Grandpa Fred Searles in the, I guess it was the late 20s, early 30s.

Just before he died, he'd had a stroke and was paralyzed.

But I remember the big thing in my life was on 4th of July, he'd give me $5 to buy fireworks.

And at that time, there was a lot more Chinese in Nevada City than there are now.

And I'd go down and buy fireworks and we'd have a big fireworks display in the yard here.

It's been nice meeting you all.

Thank you.

>> [APPLAUSE] >> I wonder if John Drew, excuse me, John Drew, and he's gonna tell you a few things.

He's really, he's filling in for his mother who's being very modest right now.

Incidentally, I thought of the two things that I recalled that Edward Spence sold in his drugstore.

One of them was leeches and the other was Japanese veneerials salve.

>> [LAUGH] >> Thank you so much for allowing me to say a couple of things.

And I will speak on behalf of my mother who spent many summers here and tells fond stories, some not quite so fond stories of her time here.

I also had the pleasure of spending some time here from time to time.

And ironically enough, it was connected with mining.

When I was a teenager, I lived back east and my grandfather, Fred Searls Jr.

thought that it would do a lot for my character if I could come out to California and work in a gold mine.

And so one summer, the summer after my senior year, it was arranged that I come out to California and work in Allegheny at the 16 to 1 mine, which was then in the late 50s.

The last at the time, the last operating underground gold mine in the state of California.

And I got a job there and came out to Nevada City by myself on the 4th of July.

Spent the weekend here in this house listening to the firecrackers.

I didn't know that you could buy them here, but I listened and then got in a Jeep and drove out to Allegheny where I lived in a company shack and worked at the 16 to 1.

Unbeknownst to my grandfather, Fred, there was a state law that said that in order to work underground, you had to be at least 18.

So I worked with a couple other kids on the surface crew until one day in the mid summer, my grandfather came out to the mine just to visit.

Went underground and I recall being in the washroom after the day's shift was over and listening to one miner say, who was that old coop down on the mine today?
And somebody else nudged him and said his grandfather.

And after that, I was treated a bit differently for the rest of the summer.

My grandfather was incensed that I was not given a pick and shovel and told to go down and muck that there was something about state law that prevented that, he thought that that was awfully silly.

They agreed that yes, I would be sent underground.

But as soon as he left, the next day I was immediately remanded to the surface crew where I remained until the end of the summer and came back for another pleasant weekend living here in the house for a couple of days before I returned to San Francisco and went back east.

Since then, my family, my mom and the rest of our family have moved out to California.

And we've spent lots of time, weekends and evenings here with Fred Searles III, my mom's brother and his family.

And we've enjoyed the house not just for the memories that it brings, but for the pleasant and relaxed atmosphere that it has always meant to us.

So I'm very pleased to have been asked to say a couple of things.

I have foreborn telling some of my mother's stories that she would make things very unpleasant for me on the way home if I were to tell.

But thank you very much.

>> [APPLAUSE] >> And then if we could have Gwen Searles come up here and say a few things.

She perhaps has the most recent memories.

>> Well, I wanna say thanks to the commission, to Dave, to all of the relatives who came, that's very nice, and to the city for providing us the street space.

And to Paul and Susan Zimmerman, who have done a beautiful job with reviving the yard and the road of dendrons that Fred Searles, the last one on the plaque, my dad and Phoebe's brother, he planted a lot of these things and they've come back just beautifully.

And Fred III is doing okay.

I spoke with him this morning, even though due to his Alzheimer's, he doesn't know about this, but I told him what was happening and I know he'd be very happy about the plaque.

So thank you all.

>> [APPLAUSE] >> Yeah, it would have been really neat to have Fred here today.

I'm gonna turn this back over to Lee now.

And earlier, the Zimmerman's had invited those of you who would like to go inside the house, under the grounds and inside the house, to do so when we're through with this.

Thank you.

>> Other than with this wonderful turnout of relatives of the occupants of this house for much of its life, I consider this a suitable dedication of one of Nevada County's most picturesque landmarks here.

And with that, 545 Main Street is duly dedicated.

Thank you all.

>> [APPLAUSE]