Tag: Our Town
Our Town: A city without a city hall
By CHARLENE PERRY Reprinted from January 1985 Editor’s Note: Due to the pressures of time, energy and upcoming knee surgery, this writer will return from time to time to reaching into the treasure chest of Charlene Perry’s well-researched columns from the 1980s and 90s. This piece, from 1985, will be the introduction to a forthcoming […]
Our Town: Semple of Benicia, Smith of Martinez, Alike in many ways
By HARRIETT BURT Martinez News-Gazette Contributor Editor’s Note: This is the second part of an article about Robert Semple of Kentucky, the founder of Benicia, who made it possible for another ambitious American from Georgia to found Martinez. Written some years ago for the MHS Newsletter by the late John Bonnell who, in retirement, used […]
Our Town Special Event: “Tucker: The Man and the Automobile” returns to town 30 years later to benefit MHS
By HARRIETT BURT Martinez News-Gazette Contributor Editor’s note: A showing of the recently restored Francis Ford Coppola film “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” is scheduled for Saturday, August 11, 2018 at the Shell Club House. The benefit for the Martinez Historical Society will take place starting at 6 p.m. A small portion of the […]
Our Town: Benicia’s Robert Semple set the stage for William Smith’s Martinez
By HARRIETT BURT Martinez News-Gazette Contributor Editor’s Note: Martinez residents and businesses tend to identify with Contra Costa County in many ways and have especially for the past 6o years since ferry service is no longer needed for us to reach Northern California and beyond. But Benicia is actually Martinez’s “big sister city” as our […]
Our Town: Reminiscences: One by John Sparacino in 1994, One of John Sparacino in 2018
By HARRIETT BURT Martinez News-Gazette Contributor Editor’s Note: Recently digging through Martinez Historical Society archives of newsletter articles, I found a 1994 column by then Society president John Sparacino, former Mayor of Martinez and one of the handful of local folks most responsible for the founding and success of the Society and its Museum. In […]
Our Town: The Gazette moves to Pacheco
By HARRIETT BURT Martinez News-Gazette Contributor Happy New Year 1859 to readers of the Contra Costa Gazette/Martinez News-Gazette. 1859’s first news is about the establishment of an annual County event now beginning its 160th year. January 1, 1859 – Contra Costa Agricultural Society formed at Lafayette. First County Fair was inaugurated October 11, 1859, and […]
Our Town: Headlines from the earliest issues of the Gazette
By HARRIETT BURT Martinez News-Gazette Contributor “The establishment of a newspaper in Contra Costa County was an important factor in its upbuilding and development,” stated the publisher of the Historic Record’s 1926 History of Contra Costa County. He was introducing Chapter XVIII, entitled “Gleanings from the Files of the Contra Costa Gazette, 1858-1926”. Not only […]
Our Town: Headlines from the Past – From the 19th century to the 20th
By HARRIETT BURT Martinez News-Gazette Contributor Thank you for the good feedback about the ‘headlines’ series we started a month ago. When it was a five-day a week ‘daily’, the Gazette had a column called the “Good Old Days” featuring small bits of news on that date going back several decades. My editor, Bob Osmond, […]
