Two typewritten copies of the reminiscences of Addie Cook Ghirardelli and William L. Cook, brother and sister, who came to California from St Joseph, Missouri, by wagon with their family in 1861. The Ghirardelli reminiscence is 7 pages and entitled "My Life on a Ranch in the Early Days in California". The Cook reminiscence is 15 pages and is titled "Westward Ho in '61" and contains details of the overland journey as well as some memories of ranch life in Colusa County.

Addie Cook was born in Missouri in 1858, and travelled to California in 1861where she lived on a ranch in Colusa County, one of the earliest established counties in Californina, with her brother William and family for a time. She married Domingo Ghirardelli Jr., a son of the founder of the chocolate company, and they had seven children. Addie was socially astute and entertained a broad circle of friends, dressed herself and her family in impeccable fashion while guiding them to Episcopalianism, and conceived a spectacular European grand tour for herself and her husband in 1912, when their children were mostly grown. After Domingo's retirement in 1922, the couple lived out their lives at the rambling, Spanish-style La Feliciana on several sloping acres in Hillsborough. Addie died in 1950 in Hillsborough, Calif. See oral history of her great-grand daughter (Polly Ghirardelli Lawrence) at the Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, online. (http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/text/lawrence_polly_ghiradelli.pdf) William L. Cook, her brother, arrived in California in 1861, with their family and lived on a ranch in Colusa County for a time. No further information on him was found.

1.0 folder 2 typescripts (7 pages and 15 pages)

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