Born on July 16, 1839 in Missouri, America Jane Moore was five when her family headed west in a covered wagon train, five years before the California Gold Rush began in earnest. The family settled in Sonoma County, and America’s mother died in 1851. Her father remarried soon after.
In December 1852, America and her stepsister Henrietta Parker had a double wedding, marrying two Elliot brothers. Commodore Cornelius Fulton Elliot was eight years America’s senior, and the couple settled on a ranch in Red Bluff, California. They had five children, the first-born Florence (Flora) Eleanor, born in 1862.
America was a hard worker, raising her children, helping on the ranch, and making riding gloves to sell to the frontiersmen. She used tanned deerskin and embroidered the gloves, which sold at a good price. During America’s last winter on the ranch, Commodore was entrusted with the gloves to sell. In the words of America’s granddaughter, Lela Jarvis Tooby, America’s husband Commodore, “sold them for five hundred dollars, which he spent in one night of revelry. So it was shortly afterwards that my grandmother gathered up her brood and departed.”
In an unlikely action for the late 19th century, America divorced Commodore in 1873 and relocated to Mendocino. She and her children lived in an apartment over the west side of Jarvis & Nichols building on Main Street. The building housed their apartment, the Nichols family apartments on the east, and the Jarvis & Nichols General Store on the ground floor. America began a dressmaking and millinery (hat-making) business with her daughter Flora. Her shop was well-regarded, with the work “done with neatness and dispatch.” America was able to hire several apprentices to take on the growing work.
In 1882, Flora married Arthur Jarvis, brother of the owner of the Jarvis & Nichols store. With America’s business prospering, she sent her sons Henry and Burtt to the Eureka Business Academy, and Burtt bought the Jarvis & Nichols Store in 1916. He ran it until 1959.
America married twice more, to Joseph Burch and Reuben Cameron, but kept Commodore’s name for her business. In 1885, she closed her shop and moved to Eureka, California with two of her daughters, Ida May and Elizabeth. Announcing her relocation, the Mendocino Beacon noted, “As a business and society woman, Mrs. Elliot enjoyed in a high degree the confidence and regard of this community, and she and her pleasant family will be much missed.”
Kelley House Museum curator Averee McNear writes a weekly column on Mendocino County history for Mendocino Voice. To learn more, visit kelleyhousemuseum.org.