Ruth Tremoreux, born in Nevada City, California in 1916, shares her life story and memories of growing up in the area. She recalls attending local schools, the rivalry between Nevada City and Grass Valley, and the burning down of her high school. After graduating, she pursued a teaching career, influenced by her father's wishes for her to have a profession. Tremoreux taught in various locations, including Calistoga and Grass Valley, before getting married and moving to San Francisco. She describes her family life, including her two daughters and their children. Tremoreux also delves into her family history, mentioning her parents and grandparents who were prominent figures in Nevada City. She recounts her childhood experiences living on Nevada Street, her interactions with local families like the Fults and the Laws, and her memories of the mining industry's impact on the region. Throughout the interview, Tremoreux reflects on the changes she has witnessed in Nevada City and Grass Valley over the years, offering a personal perspective on the area's history and development.

Full Transcript of the Video:

You and Mrs.

Ruth Trimmero at 403 Neal Street, Grass Valley, California and today is the 26th of June 2004.

Mrs.

Trimmero, the stage is yours.

Well, I was born in Nevada City, California, from June 19th 1916, which makes me one of the older people that have lived in Nevada City.

And I have spent a lot of my time in Nevada City and Grass Valley, but of course I have been away also.

And I went to school at the Washington Grammar School in Nevada City long ago.

And of course that was torn down.

I can't remember exactly when, in the early 40s maybe.

And a new school was put up in Nevada City.

And I went to high school in Nevada City before there was a union high school.

It was just in Nevada City High School, very provincial.

We hated Grass Valley.

Grass Valley hated us.

We had a hard time going to games because there was always a little riot going on.

And when I was a sophomore, I think, in high school, my friends and I cut classes one spring day and we went to Lake Vera and swam instead.

And we didn't know how we were going to get that over to our parents, especially since my father was on Board of Education.

And I didn't want him to know, oh, I had skipped school.

So that was a Friday afternoon.

Came Monday morning and my usual friend that I walked to school with phoned and said, "Don't get ready for school today.

The school burned down last night.

" Well, I was both pleased and surprised.

So it did.

Burn cleared the ground, I guess.

It was really gutted.

And so we went to school downtown in the forestry building for a while.

And the school was supposed to be built exactly as it had been because of the insurance.

Well, we wanted a new school, but it had to be built the way the old school was because of the insurance.

So we went to school downtown for a while and in any building that we could find it would take us.

And the high school was very small.

I think ours was the biggest class and it was about 50.

And so I guess there were only 150, 200 people in the whole high school.

And we got through that crisis all right and finally graduated.

And then I went on to the University of California in Berkeley, which was about the only place that people wanted to go to college could go.

We didn't have a lot of junior highs then or junior college who's been.

So I went to Berkeley, got terribly homesick, but I stuck it out and finally graduated.

Where did you get a degree in? My degree was in education and I became a teacher.

And from there I went to just to fill in a semester.

I went to San Jose State College for a little while, which was a fine teacher's college.

And my father wanted both my sister and myself to become teachers.

He wanted us to have some kind of a career because he thought in case we married and lost a husband or something, we would have something to rely on.

So I followed in my sister's footsteps.

She went to Columbia for a year and when it became my turn, I went to Columbia for a year.

And I don't think I learned an awful lot there, but I had a lot of fun.

I enjoyed it.

My year in New York I enjoyed very much.

Did you get a master's degree? Yes, I got a master's degree and came back to California and got my first job teaching in Calistoga, California.

And I taught there a year and then there was a vacancy in Grass Valley and my mother and father wanted me to come home and live.

So I did that and I came back and lived in Grass Valley and taught school.

And the school was raised shortly after I left there and it was called the Washington School on Washington Street.

And I taught there for several years because the war, World War II intervened and I stuck around there and taught school.

And then I went to, then I got married and went to San Francisco to live.

Who did you marry? I married Harris Ray and Harris was, he owned Lake Vera.

Oh really? And the Rays had a small little house on the lake, although they lived in San Francisco, they would come up there and enjoy the summers at Lake Vera.

So after I was married to Harris, we lived at Lake Vera for several months because the weather was nice and we could swim and it was very enjoyable.

And I was married at Lake Tahoe because it was during the war and we didn't want a lot of pomp and circumstance.

So we were married very quietly at a little chapel in Lake Tahoe.

And then I moved, it was hard to get a place to live in San Francisco during the war.

So we lived with his mother on Broadway in San Francisco for the interim until we could find the house.

And in 1946, I knew that my baby was on the way and so we did find a house to rent in San Francisco.

And I lived there until she was six, five years old I guess, five years old.

And then we bought a house in Orinda.

And I lived in Orinda almost 20 years, delightful place to live.

And I had a, they needed teachers and so I used to substitute in Orinda as I did in San Francisco too.

And I was kept on because they needed teachers.

And we were even on double sessions in Orinda so I teach morning or afternoon.

And my little girl was in school in Orinda, not the school that I taught at, but another school.

What was her name? Her name was Marcia Ray.

Now she's Marcia Ellers from Nevada City.

And her husband's an attorney up there in Nevada City.

And she is now 59 years old I think, 58 or 59 years old.

But she doesn't look that old.

None of us does.

And then I have another daughter who was born 15 years later when I was still in Orinda.

And her name is Jennifer Ray.

Same father, but 15 years younger than her older sister.

And she now is a psychiatrist in Sacramento.

And she has a PhD and so has her husband whose name is Alan Porson.

And they live near the hospital there, near the Davis Hospital, UC Davis Hospital in Sacramento.

And she now is a mother also.

And she has a little girl named Callie after the port in France.

Callie Porson.

My older daughter had three children.

The oldest of which is Sasha Ellers.

And she works for Genentech in San Francisco.

And her brother is Skyler Ellers, who lives in Barcelona, Spain and loves it there.

I don't know that he'll ever come back.

He's so fond of Barcelona.

And then their youngest daughter is Chloe Ellers.

And Chloe is more or less in the movie field as a producer.

And anything she can do, she does.

And she's a hard worker and a delightful person to know.

And so that is my family.

But getting back to my childhood, when I was two years old, the war was starting in Europe.

And I can remember that my father was one of the unlucky recipients of the terrible flu that came along in 1918.

And he made it through.

And I had two siblings, Dr. Bill Rector, who was a surgeon in Sacramento, and my sister Margaret Rector, who was a teacher and taught in the Union High School in Grass Valley.

And I am the last of that family.

They've all gone.

And so I feel very lonely sometimes because I'm the only one left.

And what else were we doing? Oh, we had a wonderful -- my father rented a house when I was born, because there were three children.

And we lived right near the Washington Grammar School, the old Washington Grammar School.

And my brother went to first grade there, and I wished I could go to school, but I was too little.

And I think he was probably too little too, because he used to come home at recess and lie down and suck his thumb for a little while and go back.

What was this school located? The Washington Street? On Main Street, where it is now.

Same venue.

But that was all torn down and rebuilt.

So when I was about three years old, my father said, "Well," he said, "We're moving from our rented house.

" And he said, "I bought a house up on Nevada Street.

" And so he took us up there to look at it, and I thought it was just terrible, because it was painting what my father called French Blue, but it looked gray, and it looked somber, and it was a big, big house.

And we were not terribly pleased, but we went along.

In those days, you always went along with what your father said, or your mother said, or both.

And so we lived in Nevada City upon what used to be called Aristocracy Hill, now called Nevada Street.

And we lived there, well, we were all raised at 316 Nevada Street.

Is the house still there? Pardon? Is the house still there? Oh, yes, it is still there.

And it's now owned by my niece and myself.

And we each own half, which makes it very difficult.

Is it 316 Nevada Street? Yes.

And it was very Victorian.

It was built in 1882.

And my father remembers it being built when he was a little boy.

His family lived in the National Hotel and owned the National Hotel.

And he and his brother used to walk up there and watch the building and house.

And it is a big house.

It's bigger than the house I live in now.

And we had plenty of yard to play in.

He grew a lot of our own food, fruits and vegetables.

We had a gardener that lived on the premises.

And we had a very, very nice upbringing at 316 Nevada Street.

Plenty of room to play, plenty of people to play with.

And my father, who had regarded himself as something of a gymnast in these early days, had a kind of a gymnasium put up in the barn for us where we could have trapeze and fall down in the hay and all that sort of thing.

We had a good time growing up.

Did you know any of the Futs? Yeah, I knew them all.

Did you know Evelyn? Evelyn? Evelyn, sure.

Did you ever go out to the Star House and visit? Yes.

Yes, I had been out to the Star House and visited.

And we were all about the same age.

Evelyn, maybe a year or so younger than I, her sister Janet is still living.

I think she's a couple of years older than I.

She must be 90.

And Marion was the beautiful girl in between.

They were all beautiful girls.

Did you know Peggy Law? Yes, I knew Peggy Law.

For goodness sake.

And Connie Law.

Who was Connie Law? Sister.

Oh, okay.

Peggy.

Peggy married an onologist, is that what I'm saying? John's.

His last name was John's.

Yeah, I knew him too.

Okay.

I think they were in the wine business, aren't they? He was.

He was in education.

Oh, okay.

And he went down south.

Yeah.

Got into education.

Uh-huh.

I can't remember his first name, but.

.

.

I can't either.

Anyway, I knew Peggy.

And I had her sister Connie.

And Connie was my age.

And Connie went to Cal, Berkeley.

And we were good friends.

But she ran into some hard luck.

She was to be married.

And I think her husband was a chemist and had a lab, a low up or something.

I can't remember exactly.

And so she was left a widow.

And died rather young.

Peggy went on to live in Napa for a while.

Did she? Yeah.

And I remember Lyman Gilmore too.

Oh, do you? He was a neighbor up on Nevada Street.

And we always thought he was very eccentric.

Oh, yes.

A little gentleman.

Lovely piece of property that he lived on.

But he did not fraternize with any of the neighbors.

Pretty much a loner.

Where did the name Trimmerow come from? Well, it's French, of course.

And I don't.

.

.

I think my husband's family came from Alsace and Lorraine in France long ago.

Is this your second husband now? Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

My first husband died.

And then when I left, then I met.

.

.

I didn't meet Roy because I had always known him.

I went to his fifth birthday party, I think.

And so Roy was divorced and I was single and we got together and we were married.

What year was that? 1965, I think.

And my mother and father both died and left the house at 316 Nevada Street to my brother and me.

And my brother left half the house to his daughter.

So now the house is owned by his daughter, Connie Kinison and me.

Oh, good.

Which is kind of difficult to have half a house.

Yes.

An undivided half-interest.

Yes.

That's difficult.

Sometimes we can't always agree on what we're going to do, but right now we just rent it.

Okay.

But we still own it.

You want to take a break? Yes.

Okay.

My father was born in Hollister, California.

His parents came west from Virginia and settled in.

.

.

They were all innkeepers and they found that there was a vacancy.

They needed an innkeeper at the National Hotel in Nevada City.

And they were both southern moved there when he was two years old.

He was born in 1882 and they came there when he was two years old.

And they ran the hotel.

Both my father and his brother were bankers.

Nevada County Bank in Nevada City, well, my mother ran the household and refinished furniture and did anything she wanted to do.

And we had a very high standard of living for those days.

Not that we were rich, but you didn't have to be very rich to have a good standard of living in those days.

Yeah.

It's changed now.

And my mother's family were named Richards.

And they lived on Broad Street in Nevada City at 520 Broad Street.

And that's where I was born and that's where my brother was born.

My sister was born in the National Hotel in Nevada City.

Oh, for goodness sakes.

Just a minute now.

I'm going to stop this again.

There it is.

That's what we want.

Okay.

You were talking about your.

.

.

Yeah, my maternal family.

My mother was born on Broad Street next to the little firehouse there.

And she was born in 1884.

And my grandmother was born in Sutter Creek and her father was a miner and a superintendent of a mine named Grass Valley.

So they moved to Grass Valley.

And that was a family of four siblings.

And my grandfather had a grocery store in Nevada City.

And his name was W.

G.

Richards.

William G.

Richards.

And he also owned a ranch which he had homesteaded on Cement Hill in Nevada City.

160 acres, which has been divided.

And some of our families still own part of it, but I don't own any of it.

In those days, I think the boys inherited things like the ranches.

And so I didn't have anything to do with the ranch, but it's still extant and it's still out there.

A lot of people live out that way now.

You used to be nobody lived out there.

My grandfather had it.

And so after.

.

.

and when he got the grocery store, they moved into Talon, as we called Nevada City.

And he had a house on Broad Street.

And that's where I was born.

And that was 1916.

And my grandfather used to deliver groceries in a horse and wagon.

And he had a man that drove the wagon's name was Sam Paul Glaze by Tree Paul and Pin.

He may know the Cornish men.

And there were a lot of Cornish people in Nevada City.

And Sam was a very good employee.

And he used to drive the wagon and deliver the groceries.

Subsequently, that grocery store was taken over by the Penrose family.

And they owned it for a great many years and gave very good service.

And we used to get on the phone and order groceries and they would come up the yellow and deliver them.

So it was a good time to grow up in.

Really? The good old days? The good old days, yes.

So let's take another break.

So you're Sebastian? My daughter raises these kinds of dogs and he's very old.

But I think, you know, he's had a very westy West Highland Terrier.

A what? A West Highland Terrier.

Okay.

Now what are we going to talk about? What would you like to talk about? Well, I don't know.

Those are the things I remember.

And I don't know what I had for breakfast this morning.

You know, it's.

.

.

Well.

.

.

During the Second World War, did you teach? Mm-hmm.

And where did you teach? Is that a render? Well, I taught first up here in the Grass Valley at the Washington School, which now has disappeared.

Mm-hmm.

And then when I went to San Francisco, I used to substitute.

Okay.

And I got $12 a day.

Just a minute.

Let's get that on tape.

There it is.

Okay.

I got $12 a day teaching.

.

.

substitute teaching in San Francisco.

And I have a little girl and.

.

.

What year was this? 1947, '48.

Okay.

And I would have to hire a sitter in order to go to teach.

And sometimes I didn't know San Francisco well enough to find the school.

I'd have to take a cab there.

So I ended up with zero money for my problems.

And then they offered me a job finally, but we moved to Arinda.

And it was kind of a nice location for young people growing up.

And my daughter was five years old by then, and she went to the Arinda schools.

And I substituted there until finally they gave me a permanent job in Arinda.

And I taught there for 11 years.

And I taught in San Francisco, and I taught substituted around in those Bay Area places.

So I taught school for about 13 years.

And raised my older daughter there in Arinda.

And then surprise, when I was in my 40s, I became pregnant again and had another daughter.

They were 15 years apart.

Yeah, you were telling me.

Let me ask you a question.

When you lived in Grass Valley in Nevada City, you remember what sort of impact the mining industry had on you.

Or did you pretty much ignore it? Well, the.

.

.

The environs around us were not quite the way they are these days.

There was a big hydraulic chasm on one of the hills up above where we lived.

And it was just an open hydraulic sore to people.

Where was this located now? Well, just about a mile from town.

Which town? Nevada City.

Okay, above.

Anywhere near Cement Hill? No, in the other direction, toward Highway 80.

Okay.

And I remember very well when Highway 80 was put through because we kids used to play football and baseball and horseshoes and everything.

The dirt roads in front of our house.

And so it was.

.

.

We didn't like it too much when the road was put through, Highway 80.

And it was called then the Tahoe-Ucaya Road.

And it took a long time to have that get built.

And it was pretty dusty while they were doing it.

And we didn't have any more dirt road to play in.

Now, where did you live when they were putting Highway 80 through? 316 Nevada Street.

Way up at the top of Nevada Street.

Was that Highway 49 or 80? That's 80.

They put 80 through.

Okay.

And.

.

.

I'm off track now.

Okay, we'll turn her off again.

Let's have those names of people.

There are still some people that I went to school with who are still living.

And one is Bill Tamblyn, who lives in Nevada City.

And he's, I think, two years older than I.

So he must be.

.

.

I think he's going to have his 90th birthday this year.

But he's sharp.

And then John Spoffee, whom I went to school with, lives up on Nevada Street.

And graduated from high school with me and was in World War II.

Had some very bad experiences, I'm sure.

He didn't like to talk about them when he came back.

And he's sharp also.

And who else is there? Let's see.

Well, I have two cousins that live here that are younger than I.

One is Mary Libby Barnowitz, and she's almost 80 years old.

And she lives at Morgan Ranch.

And then Ruth Libby Bilheimer, who is living in the house where I was born on Broad Street.

And she and her sister now own that house, and she lives in it.

And she's not quite.

.

.

She's not 80.

She's more like 75.

And let's see.

Who else do I know that's old? Well, John Spoffee has a brother, Joe Spoffee.

I don't know what his condition is, though.

He has had a stroke, I think.

He would be close to 90.

He'd be 90 or 91.

And.

.

.

Who else do I know that's old in here? I'll tell you, somebody that's fairly young, quite young, is my neighbor.

And her father was a doctor here at Grass Valley.

And her name is Jennifer Padgett, and she's now married to somebody named Linton Daniel.

And they have twin boys.

And she remembers a lot of the early days in Grass Valley.

And I'm not up on the Grass Valley history as well as the Nevada City history.

Did you ever get to ride the Narragage Railroad? Oh, yes.

When I was in high school, I played the clarinet.

Squeak, squeak.

And the band went to, I don't know, we went to Colfax, and then we went to Oakland, I think.

And a couple of times we went to different functions and played down there in the band.

And our teacher was named Leslie Sweeney.

Very nice man.

And we had a lot of fun in the band.

Let's see.

Elsie Schreiber is another one that's 80.

And she probably remembers a lot of things that I do.

And her sister Gertrude, the Schreiber family lived on Broad Street, too.

And her father was a restaurateur in Nevada City.

Did you ever get to ride the traction coming to the trolley? Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

And you know, a funny thing.

I found my mother's diary.

My mother grew up, of course, in Nevada City.

And somebody said to me, "Oh, you are so lucky to find that diary.

I bet it's filled with wonderful history.

" Well, I read it through, and it was filled with one party after another.

She had a good time growing up on Broad Street.

And she knew the kidders and the tremoros and all these people around in Grass Valley, in Nevada City.

So she used to take the trolley a lot.

And her diary was full of "took the three o'clock trolley to Grass Valley and stayed with so-and-so.

" And we had a good time, and we went to the Empire Mine.

And I think I and my sister were the only two women that ever went down in the Empire Mine.

Maybe there are a lot of people since.

But we knew the Fulton's, and John Fulton was the superintendent of the mine at that time.

What year was this, do you think? How old were you? Gosh, I think I was in high school.

Okay.

So I don't know how old I was, 14, 15, something like that.

And he got two daughters, the same age as my sister and myself.

So we got to don the lamp and everything go down in the mine.

Not very far, I guess, but it was cold and lucky down there.

And that was kind of an experience.

I had pictures of it, but I've lost them.

I've lost lots of pictures.

And Fulton's were only here for a year or so.

But then they went to—he was the teacher of the Bantie Mines, I think, over in Nevada after he left here.

Oh, okay.

And his name was John Fulton.

Did you ever get to meet the Bourns? No.

I saw the—of course, I went to a wedding at the Bourn College once when I was young.

And I didn't know the Bourns, but when my husband and I were in Ireland, we went to see where the Bourns came from.

They were Irish, I guess, originally.

Actually, in Ireland, their daughter, Maude, married an Irishman.

And they had the Muccross estate over there in Ireland.

Well, I think we went to see that.

Yeah.

That's as close as I ever got to the Bourns.

I don't know when I was growing up—oh, well, the—there was a family that lived there.

And we used to go down there.

My mother knew them, and we used to go down there and call on them.

Oh, me.

At the Bourn Mansion.

And I can't think of their name now.

Can't send me the name.

Okay.

I suspect he was the mine manager at the time.

And I can't remember his name either.

Well, let's take a break.

Let's hear about that cruise now.

Yeah, one of the nicest cruises that we ever took was a University of California-sponsored cruise, starting in Vienna and going down the Danube and ending up in Turkey.

Really? In Istanbul.

And it was a lovely, lovely cruise, and we had a good time.

My husband met people that he had gone to Cal with at Berkeley, and we had a generally good time.

Now, which husband was this? My second husband, Roy Turnar.

Okay.

And then another I told you that my husband always wanted to go back to Japan, so we went back to Japan and had a very nice cruise.

We stayed in Korea for a while.

Oh, did you? What year was this? I can't remember.

I can't remember what year it was.

It was a long time ago.

But when we went to Istanbul, we would have had a better time had my husband not got sick.

Uh-oh.

But when we were there, oddly enough, we were in the elevator, and a man got in the elevator with us.

We, of course, said, "Where are you from? Where are you from?" And he was from the city.

And his name is, I don't know, his wife is a real estate agent up here, I think.

I can't remember his name, though.

And so that was a coincidence.

It started with us.

And when we got to Istanbul, my husband started getting quite ill.

I think he had cancer, and it was the beginning of it.

Oh, dear.

And so we kind of laid low there.

We didn't see too much of Istanbul.

Alrighty.

Okay.

Marjorie Ingram and her family owned the house across the street from me.

It used to be the Coleman house.

We'd call it the Coleman house.

Yes.

And Marjorie, her name was Anglope.

Like the animal, Antelope? No, Anglope.

Oh.

A-M-G-O-V-E.

Oh, okay.

Anglope.

Her family owned that house across the street.

And Marjorie is virtually the same age as I.

And she has good memory, and she lives in Grass Valley.

And I think she could tell you a lot of Grass Valley history.

In fact, she.

.

.