For the little we know about Emma Barton Coombs, perhaps the most we can assume of her personality comes from photographs. While many subjects in early photographs did not smile and can be seen holding a plain, almost bored facial expression, Emma appears in many historic photos with a small, Mona Lisa-esque smile or another captivating expression. She commands each photo she appears in.
Born in 1880 to Homer and Flora Barton, Emma was part of the second generation of the logging-era transplants. Her father was a veteran of the Civil War, having joined the Maine Volunteers at 16. When Homer’s father found out, the older man traveled to the camp and brought his son home, only for Homer to run away again and rejoin. After the war, Homer moved to California in 1867. Working as a teamster, he was known for driving what is believed to be the heaviest load of logs ever driven in the county: ten logs, 12,500 feet of lumber, with ten oxen.
In 1876, Homer married Flora Winslow, another Maine native whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower. The couple had two children: James Abner Barton in 1877, and Emma Elizabeth in 1880. When Emma was still school-age, Homer purchased a farm in Little River where he raised cows and sold milk door-to-door in Mendocino.
Emma attended Mendocino Grammar and High School. She was among the eleven students who made up the high school’s second graduating class in 1897, composed of nine women and two men. Emma then made her way to Ukiah, where she attended Mrs. Porterfield’s Normal School for Teachers for two years. She passed her state examination and began her teaching career in Little River, driving herself to the one-room schoolhouse daily in a buggy.
On November 11, 1900, Emma married William Boyd Coombs, descendant of another Little River family. In their wedding portrait, she is seen draped over a chair looking directly at the camera while William looks off to the side. She stopped teaching to raise their three children: Claire (1901), William Boyd Jr. (1905) and Malcolm (1911).
Emma certainly wasn’t absent from the community, and her interest in education did not stop. In October 1908, Emma was one of the seven founding members of the Mendocino Study Club, an organization originally created for “the highest intellectual and spiritual development of its members through avenues of study or works that seemed profitable.” It later became a charitable organization on the coast.
Averee McNear is the curator at the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino, Calif.