Adeline Martha Mann & Clarence Helmer Turner, parents of the Turner siblings

Adeline Martha Mann was the granddaughter of Clement Trowbridge and Olive Smith, and the daughter of Olive Lucinda Trowbridge and Henry Rice Mann:

Henry Rice Mann was a cabinet-maker.  They married in Michigan, and they had four children: Marian, Henry R. Jr., Adeline, and Hetty.

Henry Rice Mann came to California in the gold rush.  His diary of the trip is in the Bancroft Library, and we have a digital copy.  Olive Lucinda and the children followed some time later by covered wagon (possibly accompanied by her brother James Smith Trowbridge and his family, and brother-in-law Henry G. Whipple, without his family), only to receive news on the way that Henry Rice Mann had been killed by a bear.  (A captive bear, not a wild bear.)  Adeline was about 7 at this time.  The family continued to California, and Olive Lucinda became a hotel keeper in Jackson (1852 Census).  She eventually eventually married her late husband's business partner, William McKim:

Adeline grew up and married Carence Helmer Turner, son of Eleanor "Ellen" De Garmo and Jesse Foote Turner.  Adeline, Clarence, and their children eventually moved to the bay area in the 1880's, where Adeline ran a boarding house for students at 2239 Dwight Way and Clarence worked as a bookkeeper.  His mother Ellen lived with them.

The right-hand picture was taken in 1902.  The adults on the left side are Adeline, Clarence, and Ellen DeGarmo (rear); The three younger women on the right side are Jessie (rear), Olive, and Chester's wife May (far right).  The two children are probably Olive's children Adeline (age 6/7) and Wilber (age 1/2).  Jessie had a ~1 yr old son, but he apparently isn't in this picture.  May and Chester had no children as far as we know.  Wallace wasn't married yet, Henry had recently married and had no children yet, and William's family lived out-of-state, so there were only three Bay Area grandchildren at this time.  (This is a scan of a photocopy.  Eventually we will get a scan of the original.  The adults are identified on the back of the photograph in a note written by Phyllis Embury Turner LaPlante.)

 

Here are Adeline and Clarence in about 1903.  

Adeline Cox (grandaughter of Adeline & Clarence, through their daughter Olive) says in her oral history:

[They moved to the bay area] well, for whatever reason, either his drinking problem or the fact that there were very few opportunities for work for young people. My grandmother came to San Francisco in the 80s somewhere to size up the situation and left my mother in charge of the household and the younger children. My mother [Olive Eleanor Trowbridge] at that time was fourteen or fifteen years old. Eventually she had trouble controlling the rest of the children, so she has told me, and so she, I guess, got word to her mother that [she should] fish or cut bait, and the family moved to San Francisco. My mother s uncle, my grandmother s brother [Henry Rice Mann Jr.], was a very well known insurance man in San Francisco. Mann and Wilson was the name of the firm. He was in the state legislature a time or two and was well to do. We were always the poor relations, and my mother was very aware of that.

[My mother] worked in an office in San Francisco, in the insurance company.  He gave employment to a number of cousins and to my grandfather, his brother-in-law.  So, they lived then in San Francisco, and it was some time later that they moved to Berkeley and they bought this big house on Dwight Way; they bought it from a relative.

My mother's grandmother's maiden name was Ellen De Garmo, and she couldn t read or write. When she married [Jesse Foote] Turner, who later was a judge in Jackson, the story is that she told him if she was good enough to marry him when she couldn't read or write, why, she was good enough still so she never learned.  It apparently was a problem in her later days, because she -- then a widow -- lived in Berkeley with her son and daughter-in-law, and then the son died, and my grandmother had the boarding house for students. Ellen De Garmo couldn t fill in her time. She couldn't read or write, and she was too old to be trusted with some of the kitchen and cooking and so on, and I ve been told that it
was very difficult for her because she'd been a hard worker all her life, and here she was, an appendage.

Clarence died around 1905 (an error in the Cox oral history says 1929).  According to Adeline Cox's oral history, she sold the house and went to keep house for her youngest son Wallace, then unmarried.  It's unclear whether she then lived with others of her children (Adeline Cox says she "lived around with her children"), but she ended up with her daughter Olive in Alameda.  She died March 15, 1932.

Adeline's brother Henry Rice Mann Jr. moved to Sacramento (1866) and then to San Francisco where he worked in the insurance business and lived at 843 Mission (1873), then at 3004 Sacramento (1886) then at 2011 California (1890) (CA Voter Registers).