July 21, 2005

OUT of the PAST

Pfeiffer family embodies Almaden history

2002 family reunion drew 300 relatives to Club Almaden

By Jeanne Carbone Lewis
Staff Writer

The following is the first of a monthly column celebrating the history of Almaden Valley.

Margery Pfeiffer Calcaterra is more than a docent at the New Almaden Quick-silver Mining Museum. Her family tree tells the tale of long-ago mining and ranching and the operation of the Graystone Quarry in Almaden.

The Almaden Store during a local celebration.

Calcaterra and her extended family embody the history of Almaden. As many families heeded the call to “go West” in search of better lives, her ancestors found it and succeeded monetarily and personally in the “valley of heart’s delight.” They were also along for the ride as the Santa Clara Valley grew and became what it is today.

A 2002 family reunion was attended by more than 300 relatives at Club Almaden. Fourteen families still live in the Graystone area where Pfeiffer Calcaterra’s great grandfather moved in 1875. In 2004, Robert Conrad Striegel completed a 600-page volume on the Pfeiffer-Striegel connection and related families with deep roots in the Almaden Valley. But let’s concentrate on Margery’s immediate relatives.

Fun-loving Frank Pfeiffer
Calcaterra’s parents were Frank Baptist Pfeiffer [1899-1989] and Florence Elizabeth Striegel [1900-1976]. She is one of four daughters and a son who died shortly after birth.

“My father was a devil,” said the charming Calcaterra whose beauty belies her 1925 birth date. “He liked to tease. He’d ask a woman why she was wearing only one earring and laugh when she pulled on her ears to check. He was called the mayor of Almaden.”

Frank Pfeiffer was born in the family home on Graystone Lane, which was then known as Valley Road. He kept life interesting, involving himself in numerous occupations over his lifetime. He married Florence in 1922 at St. Mary’s Church in San Jose, where his grandfather Jacob furnished the sandstone from Graystone Quarry.

Pfeiffer met his future wife when her family attended dances and social functions at Cannon’s Resort [which was destroyed in 1936 to build Almaden Dam], located about a mile above New Almaden and downstream from Twin Creeks Resort. The same year, he bought one acre on Graystone Lane from his father John, constructing a home on the site. They grew prunes, strawberries and had their own vineyard. Life was good.

In 1928 Frank and his cousin Amy Melanson bought the Almaden Store, California’s oldest adobe, for $6,000. They provided the area with meat, groceries, gasoline and even a barbershop. The repeal of prohibition brought a poolroom and bar. In the 1930s, Frank and his brother Norby held dances at the Hacienda Hall, formerly the Quicksilver Mine Company’s Helping Hand Hall. Margery’s father was also the postmaster at the New Almaden Post Office in a separate building near the store.

“I sold drugs, whiskey, beer, candy, all kinds of groceries,” said Frank Pfeiffer. “I ran a butcher shop. I pumped gas. Weekends were big days for soda water and ice cream.”

Pfeiffer had other business ideas so his wife, Florence, took over the responsibilities of postmaster from 1937 to 1940. She also wrote Almaden Notes for the San Jose News about the area’s social scene and helped him run the Almaden Store until 1938, when Frank sold his half interest to his cousin Melanson.

Father Frank Pfeiffer and Margery Pfeiffer Calcaterra on her wedding day, May 23, 1950.

While running the store, Pfeiffer listened to stories of the old miners who worked for the Quicksilver Mining Company, excavating cinnabar out of the nearby hills before the firm went bankrupt in 1912.

In 1939, the enterprising Pfeiffer built the Calero Oasis Bar at the reservoir of the same name. The brick building was constructed by his wife’s father, Henry Striegel. The family lived at the site until 1943. Florence bartended and cooked at the establishment along with the help of their four daughters: Miriam, Margery, Frances and Barbara.

Frank found time to serve as a trustee for the Almaden Union School District. But what fascinated him most were the stories he heard at the bar about the defunct Quicksilver Mine, which still held a rich mother lode of cinnabar.

At age 39, Frank turned to prospecting for mercury, which became his vocation for the next 20 years. His brother, Norby and he called it the “Hunt and Grunt Mining Company.” One of the tales he had heard was of ore driven from the mineshafts to the smelters in mule-drawn wagons. In rainy weather, the muleteers would fill the muddy wagon ruts by tossing the valuable rocks off their loads. Pfeifer forayed down the wagon paths and Eureka! He found respectable quantities of the precious ore lying in plain sight.

“I made good money and didn’t even have to work too hard,” Pfeiffer told the San Jose Mercury in 1986. When asked how much he made, he amiably answered. “I spent it so fast I don’t know. Some days you could make $400 or $500.”

Pfeifer did admit he made more money mining than he ever did at the store.

In 1948, Pfeiffer bought 16 acres including a cabin in Chilcoot, Calif. He built several more cottages on the property where the family enjoyed vacations. There, he would hunt, fish and teach his daughters panning for gold.

In 1943-44 during World War II, he worked for the U.S. Department of Interior as an inspector for the Bureau of Mines at Mine Hill, Almaden. Later, he worked as a fruit inspector at Rosendin Fruit Packing House in San Jose. He also bought and sold numerous properties and became a realtor.

In 1976, Florence died. The next year Pfeiffer and three partners bought 534 acres of land in Chilcoot for $40,000, which they subdivided and sold as individual parcels. In 1989 at age 90, Pfeiffer joined his wife at Santa Clara Mission Cemetery.

Farmer John Pfeiffer
Calcaterra’s grandfather was John Pfeiffer [1863-1934]. Born in Eudora, Kan., at 12 years old, his family migrated to San Jose. He lived in the Graystone area of Almaden the rest of his life. He was the second of seven children of Jacob Pfeiffer and Agatha Meier.

John and his two brothers worked at the Graystone Quarry, operated by their father who learned the trade in the Alsace-Loraine area in France. John Pfeiffer married Annie “Dolly” Skuse [1871-1912] in 1891. They were blessed with nine children, Frank being the fifth. His wife Annie was the daughter of Nathaniel Skuse who became a large property owner in the Graystone quarry area. At the time of his death in 1948 at age 45, he owned 450 acres. The property was equally divided between his wife and their three children. It was through his wife’s inheritance that John Pfeiffer acquired the property and became a rancher. He farmed hay, prunes, apricots and walnuts in the valley’s rich soil and mild climate. Later, his wife bought the property owned by her brothers, John and Edward Skuse.

The Pfeiffer family home off of Camden Avenue, which was demolished about 20 years ago.

“We also had 10 acres of vineyards,” said John’s son Norby in a 1993 interview. “But the main crop when I was growing up was hay.”

Ranchers were self-sufficient and the family had a few head of cattle, chickens, pigs and other farmyard animals. Pork was used in the preparation of sauerkraut, a German recipe brought from Europe by his father Jacob.

In 1910, “Dolly” was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She signed a deed giving title to all her property to her husband John Pfeiffer. She died two years later at age 41, leaving John a widower with nine children.

Son Norbert Pfeiffer was asked why his father never remarried.

“Who in hell would want nine children?” was his reply.

John Pfeiffer died at 71, a rancher his entire life in Almaden. At his death in 1934, his property was inherited by his children. Through the years, many of his children and grandchildren have purchased additional property in the area. Since the last quarter of the 20th century, descendants of John and Annie Pfeiffer have sold much of the property to land developers though many still live in the vicinity of Graystone Lane as does granddaughter Margery Calcaterra. As of 2004, approximately 52 acres of the quarry’s hilly open space area was still owned by Pfeiffer offspring.

Honest, hard-working Jacob Pfeiffer
Margery Calcaterra’s great grandfather was Jacob Pfeiffer [1828-1905]. He was born in Alsace-Loraine, France and is considered the patriarch of the San Jose Pfeiffer family.

Pfeiffer learned his trade of stonecutter and quarrying in his homeland of France. Moving to New York in 1848, the German-speaking immigrant learned English and applied his trade. He moved to Ohio, Indiana and Illinois before settling in Endura, Kansas, operating a large stone quarry. He met his wife, Agatha Meier (1835-1906] in Chicago in 1860. All of their seven children were born in Endura.

Jacob and his family moved to California in 1875. He worked for Brooks of San Jose at the Goodrich Quarry. Soon he leased the quarry and operated it for 28 years. He changed the name to Graystone after the gray rock in the area. The quarry furnished sandstone for many noted buildings throughout the state: Salinas Court Houses, the Masonic Temple of Oakland, the Normal School of San Jose [now San Jose State University], San Francisco’s Pioneer building and the Lick Baths, the Agnew and Stockton Asylums, Oakland’s Hall of Records, the Carson Mint in Nevada, Lick Observatory, Stanford University and St. Mary’s Catholic Church on Third Street in San Jose where grandson Frank married years later.

John Pfeiffer family, circa 1912. Back row: Anita, John, Nellie, Leo. Front row: Norbert, John, Marie, Victor, Anne, Richard and Frank.

The average number of men working the quarry was 10 to 12, but at one time there were as many as 25 to 30 workers. The pay between 1900 and 1906 was $5 a day for stonecutters and $2.50 to $3 a day for quarrymen. Stonecutters worked eight hours a day and 5 ½ days a week. Quarrymen worked six days.

Though Jacob managed the Graystone Quarry, he never owned property in the area. His family lived and operated the company’s boarding house. Jacob’s three sons worked in the quarry in their early years. All of the workers stayed at Jacob’s boarding house, which was known for the excellent food provided by the Pfeiffer women.

“Mr. Pfeiffer needs no introduction to the people of California, for his efforts have been of too substantial a nature and are too monumental and abiding in their character to permit of his being forgotten or even temporarily overlooked,” read an excerpt in the 1904 “History of the State of California and Biographical Record of Coast Counties California” by Professor J.M. Guinn. “He ships stone all over the Pacific Coast…has built up a splendid and paying business and deserves all possible credit for taking advantage of his opportunities.”

In their later years, Jacob and Agatha Pfeiffer lived with their daughter, Francis in a home they constructed for her on Divisidero Avenue in San Francisco. In the early 1900s, they returned to Graystone, living with their son, John. Jacob still helped managed the quarry until his death.

Jacob Pfeiffer died in 1905 in a house on Graystone Lane in Almaden from heart disease, followed by a hemorrhage to the brain. His funeral was at St. Mary’s Church, which he helped build. He was a master stonecutter and businessman. The demise of the quarrying business and his death coincide. The use of the less expensive and safer-reinforced concrete for construction purposes became popular as well as the soaring costs of processing sandstone. From the 1880s until the Graystone Quarry closed, sandstone quarrying was extremely important in the Almaden Valley—as was Jacob Pfeiffer.

Friendly Margery Pfeiffer Calcaterra
As her father and grandfather before her, Calcaterra was raised in Almaden Valley. In all her photos, she is always smiling. She met her husband David when they were children. He worked at the Almaden Store, which his mother had bought from her cousin, Amy Melanson. The young couple socialized at barbecues, parties, dances and swimming at nearby Twin Creeks as her parents had before her. They married in 1950 and had two daughters, Janet and Karen and are now grandparents.

Margery Pfeiffer Calcaterra at the Almaden Quicksilver Museum where she is a docent. Photo by Jeanne Carbone Lewis

The young couple purchased a 52-acre ranch on Almaden Road [now Almaden Expressway] the same year, producing prunes and walnuts for 21 years. In 1971, they sold the ranch and built a home on Graystone Lane where they have lived ever since. The house is a few 100 feet from where her great grandfather Jacob Pfeiffer’s Graystone Quarry was located. They purchased six acres and a cabin with her sister from their father, Frank Pfeiffer. The Calcaterra’s enjoy traveling when she isn’t working as a docent at the Quicksilver Museum.

Calcaterra was saddened by the recent death of her cousin, Arthur Pfeiffer. They shared the same great-grandfather, Jacob Pfeiffer, and a family history in Almaden over three centuries.

“I grew up with Arthur,” said Calcaterra about her large family tree. “We’ve been friendly and close and always gotten along. Arthur was a double cousin. My mother Florence and his mother Grace were sisters. My father Frank and Art’s father Leo were brothers. Leo married Grace and Frank married Florence.”

Ah, but that’s another story of the family who helped build Almaden.

Copyright 2005 Jeanne Carbone Lewis