![]() That was part of an article that appeared in 1869 after someone from the Flag ran into him in San Francisco, where Morrow had been working for Frederick Marriott and his Aerial Steam Navigation Company. But few had seen it and by many it was regarded as a doubtful rumor… passing through Santa Rosa, we heard of a small machine worked by a spring, that flew through the air like a bird. He was engaged in catching various kinds of fowl, carefully measuring their wings, estimating the force and velocity of their motion, and loading them with weights, to find what each could carry. Some years ago, our attention was called to this person, by what was then regarded as a somewhat novel eccentricity. Nothing about Morrow appeared in the local newspapers while he was in Santa Rosa, but much was printed about him afterward, particularly in Healdsburg’s weekly Russian River Flag: John Morrow- Formerly of Santa Rosa, but now living, we believe, in San Francisco. After about three years in town he moved to San Francisco along with his friend Harry Rich. Morrow signed his letter as the “Secretary of the Nevada Territory Engineers Association,” and always listed his profession as a machinist or mechanic – except in Santa Rosa, where he was a “tinner” (tinsmith). So I went to work at Gold Hill Machine Shop at five dollars a day – in Gold.” (He also described to his Pennsylvania folks an unusual plant in Nevada called a “cactus.”) A letter to his parents from Virginia City survives, where he told them he was earning a good wage although many men there couldn’t find any work at all: “I have an advantage over most of the sharps, for when I get broke, I fall back on Science. John Bland Morrow apparently arrived in Santa Rosa during early 1865, then 28 or 29 years old. Selvage made probably the first airplane flight on the West Coast at Eureka in 1909 in the years immediately prior to that he lived here, and is buried (in an unmarked grave) at Santa Rosa Memorial Park. And although he never flew around Santa Rosa, Blaine G. Wiseman for making the first airmail flight between Petaluma and here in 1911 lesser known is that one version of his flying machine was among the first handful of aircraft bought by the U.S. And then there’s this: He patented an invention which could have rewritten the history of aviation.īefore jumping on that story, a reminder that Santa Rosa has been overlooked by historians as a crossroads for many pioneer aviators. ![]() He also created a wind-up toy that could fly a short distance. ![]() He captured birds and then let them go after tying weights to them. In Civil War-era Santa Rosa the town eccentric was a guy named John Morrow. Some had crazy ideas and some were outright crazy some did or said things that seemed bonkers to fellow villagers but might have been seen as reasonable, even inspired, by those in the know. “Every village has its idiot” they say (although Mark Twain might have quipped that was an undercount) but it’s more likely every village in early America had a bonafide eccentric. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |