In a reference to Nazi Germany, novelist George Orwell wrote, in his science fiction novel, 1984: Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. In an alarming trend to be "politically correct" replete with an Orwellian twist, school boards are intent on whitewashing the past. In June, a Marin County school board voted to expunge the name of a school, the school district, which includes the historic one-room Dixie School building, now a museum, though its founder, pioneer James Miller, did not support the Confederacy during the Civil War. It's an odd case of guilt by association.
The man who founded the school ca. 1862, rancho owner, Irishman, James Miller had a right-hand foreman who was a Coast Miwok named Dixie, whose wife was Mary Dixie. Miller, who had also adopted two Coast Miwok children, XXXX named the school after her, Hence the name Dixie School, or so one story goes.
SIDEBAR: Below is an article on Dixie School's name change initiated by newcomers to Marin, what the Irish would call blow-ins, who want to homogenize it, make it spotlessly lily-whiter-than-thou-yet. Newcomers intent on rearranging the past with alternative facts to suit their egos. The school was not named after the Confederacy, nor was it named in support of the Confederacy. The Confederate naming of the school story is pure 1970s apocrypha invented more than a hundred years after the fact.—probably just to save the historic building.
The new name of the historic Dixie School (and district) will be Lucas Valley School, Miller Creek Elementary School District. Here's the rub, it's not even in Lucas Valley, it's in Las Gallinas Valley. But I guess naming the building after a flock of chickens is oddly inappropriate. Hopefully, the historic Victorian one-room school house will retain its name, as it's a museum.
When we look into a window of the past, we often forget to shed our modern-day notion. For example, when looking into the life of an immigrant to the United States during the19th century, we may need to be reminded that life was not equal if one was, say, Catholic, or Irish, or Italian, or Greek, etc. The social milieu of the United States during the 1840s, reached its zenith towards the end of the 19th c., is best summed up by this:
Political cartoonist Thomas Nast regularly lambasted Irish Catholic immigrants as drunkards and barbarians unfit for citizenship; signs that read, “No Irish Need Apply,” ...statesmen warned about the dangers of admitting Catholics from Southern and Eastern Europe onto American shores, for fear that they were something less than civilized (and less than white)....native-born Americans regarded Catholic immigrants as an ideological and racial threat. —When America Hated CatholicsDue to overt racism in the United States, Irish Catholics had few opportunities—other than low-paying dangerous jobs at the bottom of the occupational ladder: working in the coal mines, building railroads and canals. More importantly, they had no legal representation, no opportunity for citizenship, thus no vote. Many Irish Catholic immigrants found Mexico's Alta California's laid back lifestyle more agreeable than the United States.
So the modern-day reasoning behind removing the name Dixie form James Miller's legacy, including his name, claiming he was a racist, is ironic. We have some modern-day Thomas Nasts among us, wolves in sheep's clothing dressed in the "politically correct" raiments of social justice warriors. And it seems no one has noticed the predators among us.
According to one WeAreDixie, (LP) spokesperson intent on keeping the historic Dixie School District name intact, noted that the players include a rogue school trustee, Green Party activist Marnie Glickman, and her tribe of social justice warriors, Mill Valley activist, Oakland native, Kerry Perison, and PR spokesman Noah Griffin of Tiburon, who have for the past year, disrupted every school board meeting with their agenda. According to an article in The Guardian:
“People wanted a nice story,” said Marnie Glickman, a Dixie School Board trustee who was a driving force behind the latest effort to change the name. “They wanted to believe that racism and the Confederacy couldn’t exist in Marin.” —Dixie school district: why it took 22 years to change a name in liberal CaliforniaThe irony is that the naming of Dixie School is an alleged association with with racist antebellum southern states as claimed by outsiders. It boils down to a matter of interpretation. Marin County, thousands of miles from the South, never supported the Confederacy. Yet these players, convinced of their own moral certitude, were not above dividing a community by twisting the truth and revising history to suit their own political agenda. I have to ask, to what endgame?
Some historical background: In 1846, James Miller, an Irish Catholic immigrant from County Wexford, immigrated to Marin County, California, which was then part of Mexico. Miller received as a gift, 680 acres of Rancho Las Gallinas from Don Timoteo (Timothy) Murphy, a fellow Wexford man. He was in good company from the Emerald Isle. Another Wexfordian, surveyor Jasper O'Farrell, who designed Market Street in San Francisco, bought Rancho Estero Americano in 1843, and Tiburon's famous Dubliner, John Reed, who sang Irish airs to his cows, owned Rancho Corte Madera del Presidio, and constructed the first sawmill in Marin County in 1834.
James Miller was not an American, but he was a farmer. If anything he would've been quite anti-slavery, given the anti-Catholic racist sentiments at the time. Imagine traveling from Ireland to Quebec, Canada, in 1828, then 13 years later, at the age of 27, emigrating to Missouri to farm for two years and three months, from 1841 to 1844. According to the US Census records of 1840-1844, when the Millers lived in the pro-Union Holt County, Missouri, there were no slaves. Also, Missouri is located in the Midwest, not the South.
When Miller had saved enough money, he journeyed to California with the 13-wagon Stephens-Townsend-Murphy party. from Iowa, with his wife, Mary Murphy, and their four children, to the Yuba River in the Sierra Foothills. They then went onto Sutter's Fort, landing in Marin, in 1845, where Miller was gifted 680 acres from fellow Wexfordian, Don Timeteo Murphy. Was Miller part of the Bear Flag Revolt, aka, the 1946 Mexican American war? Did Miller stand with Mexico, the country that recognized him, or the United States? That, we'll never know.
But James Miller had a history of paying homage to indigenous people. It is a historical fact that he and his party named the Truckee River and Lake based on the name of the chief of the Paiute Nation.
During the Gold Rush, Miller and his foreman, John (James or Bill) Dixie, a Coast Miwok rounded up 150 head of the Mexican longhorn cattle and drove them to the placer camps in the Sierra Foothills. Hungry miners purchased the cattle for a dollar a pound. Foreman Dixie stayed in Murphy's Camp and Miller returned to Marin. it seems that John Dixie met his wife, Mary, there, and stayed in the Sierra Foothills.
In 1849, James Miller, who had a long-abiding interest in fostering education, built the first schoolhouse in San Rafael. In 1855, with Timiteo Murphy who donated 315 acres, Miller helped build St. Vincent’s School, a Catholic orphanage near his his hacienda, Miller Hall. (The windows in our own house were from St. VIncent's)
By 1862, Miller really needed a larger school, he had ten kids by then, not counting the two Coast Miwok kids he had adopted. Miller donated 3/4 an acre near the las Gallinas home ranch, and helped haul redwood from the Nicasio Mills for construction of both school buildings. The school was ready by 1863-4.
The total population of Marin was 323 Anglos. Two of Miller's sons were listed on Union military registers as were various Reed, Murphy and Miller relatives. Miller's daughter married a Union soldier. During the Civil War, Irish Catholics were overwhelmingly Republican, or northern Federalists in direct support to Federalist naturalization laws that gave immigrant Catholics the right to vote.
"The Vatican never recognized the Confederacy... (and) priests around the country called upon the faithful to don blue uniforms because, “The Union must and shall be preserved.” ... By the end of the war, Catholics and non-Catholics living, marching, and fighting together overcame many old prejudices." —Catholics and the Civil War
The ONLY Democrats in the North Bay Area were in parts of Sebastopol and Santa Rosa, total population was well under 600, and not all were supportive of the South. There were no Democrat workmen commuting to Marin, there was no railroad. And central Sonoma County where those pesky Democrats lived, was waterlogged much of the year by the vast Laguna de Santa Rosa—"where mud was king" there was little opportunity to travel south.
The Petalumans couldn't even get to Santa Rosa until the dry season. So a bunch of Confederate workers from Santa Rosa (or Scotland) working for James Miller in Marin is a huge improbability. especially since he had a vast labor pool to draw from in Petaluma alone, the biggest town on the North Coast, with a population approaching 1000 Anglos who were vociferously anti-Confederate.
Another unsubstantiated story mentions that Miller hired Scottish workers to build the school. But if they were Scottish, and living in Marin, they would hardly be Democrats or Confederates. They would be Scottish. Another stretchy spandex post facto "fact." And even of they were laborers who may or may not have supported the Confederacy, what difference would it make? The school wasn't named after them. It was named after Mary Dixie.
Maybe Miller named it Dixie as in dix/dex—for his ten kids.
The flaw in the origin of how Dixie School was named, is that it was coined long after founder James Miller had died. In folklore terms, we don't have terminus post quem. No proof of when it began. And Miller's granddaughter, who supposedly made up the story, was born 5 years after Miller's death, she couldn't have heard it from her grandfather's lips post mortem. So, it's a story of a story repeated by a friend of a friend, not the granddaughter—and the earliest terminus post quem is dated 1972, in other words, it's all hearsay.
Sounds like this is some form of a psycho Orwellian publicity stunt to me. In fact, Griffin actually draped himself in a confederate flag and posed for the cameras in front of the historic Dixie Schoolhouse. What is their connection with school board member Marnie Glickman, one of the instigators of this brouhaha? They're hellbent on obliterating an entire school district because of a name? There's something far more devious at work here.
In a 2013 OpEd piece, Marin Voice: Is it true what they say about Dixie? Noah Griffin couldn't even get the basic facts right. He claimed Miller was a Missourian. True, Miller worked in pro-Union county in Missouri for a little over two years, during 1841 to 1844, but he came from Ireland by way of Canada in 1828. That hardly makes him a Southerner. Last time I checked, Missouri was in the Midwest. And during that time, according to the US Census, Missouri had no slaves. Miller lived in Quebec for 13 years before emigrating to the US. Miller didn't purchase 300 acres in Marin, but he was deeded 680 acres by a fellow Wexfordian, Timothy Murphy. Land was everything to the Irish, who weren't allowed to own large parcels of land in Ireland.
Noah Griffin thoroughly maligned James Miller as a Southerner, because he farmed for two and a quarter years in the Midwest. I repeat, Missouri is not part of the South. It has never been part of the South. Missouri was and is, according to the US Census Bureau, part of the Midwest. If Miller were a Scotsman, or a Scots-Irish Protestant, then there might have been some grounds that Miller could have been a Southern sympathizer. But Miller was a good Catholic, the Vatican admonished Catholics to support the Union—or else.
In a hostile takeover, to rebrand the school, the doubtful duo of Peirson and Griffin further claimed that Miller enslaved Chinese and Native Americans, selling them to ranchos. By 1849, there were few Natives left, the missions were closed in 1823, due to decimated Native populations. The Chinese really didn't arrive en masse until the 1860s with the coming of the railroad. Griffin cites no sources. So I seriously doubt the veracity of his statement. Methinks this is a case rampant ego at work. Or corporate raiding. Perhaps it's a set-up to go after the deep coffers of the MCF Buck Fund? Griffin even went so far to buy a Confederate flag, and stood in front of Dixie School for a sick photo op. How yellow is your journalism, Sor?
The Dixie School house, now a museum, was saved from demolition, thanks to an attempt to designate it as an historic Civil War building in 1972. It was then moved to the Miller Creek Middle School site in the late 70’s, or early 80’s. Originally it was situated off Highway 101, near the old Roger Wilco, which is now a school bus yard. The modern Dixie School will henceforth be called Lucas Valley School, at Miller Creek School District.
No matter that the former Dixie School is not even in Lucas Valley. Don't let pesky little facts stand in your way. Lucas Valley itself begins on the other side of Big Rock. It's not part of the Miller Creek watershed. It's part of the Tomales Bay watershed. Just because the road that comes from Lucas Valley is called Lucas Valley Road, and people erroneously think that all those Eichler homes are in Lucas Valley, doesn't mean that it is Lucas Valley, it's not. It's Las Gallinas Valley. Look at a topo map.
I guess they didn't want to name the school district after some chickens.
Whether or not the school was named after James Miller's foreman also named Dixie, or Dixie's wife, Mary, is moot. Or after Miller's ten children, or on a dare to some Scotsmen (why he would even do such a thing is unclear). Dixie is a diminutive form of the Anglo-Saxon surname Benedict that existed long before the advent of the Civil War. Where does this "political correctness" stop? Do we erase Mr. Dixie from the historic records because of his name, and his wife Mary Dixie at the whim of three strangers? And like modern day Orwellian Thomas Nasts, Glickman, Griffin, and Pierson, not content with destroying Dixie School, also want to completely expunge Miller's name from the district—based on hearsay.
Will we need to rename Dixieland jazz next? Or the Dixie Chicks? We've effectively stripped and expunged Fray Junipero Serra from several California place names for cruelty to Indians. Let me tell you, our famed Mountain Men, Kit Carson and John C. Fremont were much worse, they mass murdered the Indians at will. Should we rename the city of Fremont next? Next up on on the list to expunge and hide the past, and rearranging history is George Washington High School's historic WPA mural.
From Facebook posts
revised July 10
NOTES
Marin demographics & timeline
10,000+ years of Coast Miwok rule.
1814: James Miller born in County Wexford, Ireland
1820s: Marin was settled by Mexicans and Californios (& Russians at Bodega, Ft. Ross.)
1828: James Miller's family emigrated from Ireland to Quebec, Canada.
1834, the las San Rafael austencia mission was closed, the land and cattle divided into vast ranchos. Most of the natives had died by then, also epidemics of malaria and smallpox, so there were few Miwok survivors.
1841: James Miller emigrated to Holt County, Missouri and farmed until March 1844.
1844: James Miller, his wife, and four children met up in Iowa to join the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy party to California. a part of Mexico.
1845: James Miller obtained 680 acres of the the Las Gallinas land grant, from Timothy Murphy, the deed was the first recorded in the county.
1849: James Miller built the first schoolhouse in San Rafael. During the Gold Rush, Marin's longhorn herds were driven to the gold country by Miwok vaqueros. Dixie was a vaquero working for James Miller. This is how the Miwok Dixies got to Murphy's Camp in the Sierra Foothills.
1850: Marin County was created by California’s first Legislature before the state was admitted to the Union. Marin was divided into four townships: Sausalito, Baulinas, San Rafael and Novato. Total Anglo population was 323.
In 1855 Miller established St. Vincent’s School for boys, a Catholic orphanage.
1850s rise of the Marin dairies—most of Point Reyes and Sausalito was comprised of tenant ranches/dairies. Most immigrants were Irish, Italian-Swiss, Portuguese from the Azores. Catholics, not Confederates. The Confederacy was deeply anti-Catholic.
1861: Marin’s first newspaper, Marin County Journal founded. Later becomes the IJ. The Civil War breaks out at Fort Sumpter in April.
1862: Miller donated 3/4 an acre near the Las Gallinas home ranch, began construction of two school buildings. Marin provided a quarter of California's butter. Guess what the main industry was? Dairy products, vegetables, especially potatoes, beets, salt, shellfish, apples, meat (cattle, elk), hay, wheat, barley, oats, lumber and bricks were shipped to SF on schooners like the Alma.
1863: The Board of Supervisors authorized the “Dixie Public School District”, making it one of the earliest school districts established in Marin.
1865: Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9.
1868: Marin fed San Francisco: 4,000 acres of potatoes, 11,000 acres of hay, 750 acres of beets, and 4,360 apple trees. (Later, artichokes, cut flowers, peas).
1870: the North Pacific Coast Railroad arrives, changes how produce was shipped. Demise of the schooners.
1890: James Miller, Pioneer of pioneers, died at the age of 76. He was survived by his 10 children William J.. Kate, Mary, Martin, Ellen, Julia, Francis, Teresa, Bernard and Josephine.
1913: the California Cooperative Creamery was established. Marin led California in dairy production.
No slaves in Marin, only immigrants. Settlers weren't from Dixie. The Miwok had largely sucumned to disease, few survivors, other than Olompali rancho owner Camilo Ynitia's family, and some survivors on a rancheria on Halleck/Old Rancho Road in Nicasio. By the 1960s, they were gone.
1949-1982: some 783,000 acres, or one-quarter of Bay Area farmlands, was lost to development, etc.
In 1959 alone, Marin lost 32,000 acres of agricultural lands. People began to move to Marin en masse after WWII. Rise of the sleepy suburbs.
Catholics and the Civil War
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Dixie name dates back to the days of the Civil War itself but that nobody can quite agree on whether it was originally meant to refer to the Confederacy or not.
Recall Marnie Glickman - Dixie School Board Trustee Facebook page
Marin neighbors demand Dixie School District change its name
Why it took 22 Years to Change the Name in a Liberal County
Note bene: this info remains stet. Hearsay. “The granddaughter said it was named on a dare, but she was born after he died. It was family folklore.” If you research the "dare" bit, you'll find it's unsubstantiated, a bit of apocrypha that has its earliest roots ca 1971, and trotted out in 1991. The granddaughter was born five years after Miller's death, so she couldn't have heard it from him (terminus post quem), and the granddaughter was never on record for actually saying that. It was told by someone else who knew her some decades later. What I learned at Berkeley, always double-check your sources. Check your sources' sources. And always keep a timeline on hand so you can see how the information dovetailed with the history of the time. Too often we view the past with a dirty lens. Presentism, that is, viewing the past with modern "politically correct" lenses, creates a false premise. Then you have a house of cards.
Two of the Miller girls had stood up as godmothers to two Indian babies. When their mother died, the father brought the Indian children in baskets to Miller Hall and presented them to their godmothers. The Millers raised the Indian youngsters as part of their household. —The History of James Miller/Founder of Dixie SchoolMarin did not have a pro-Confederacy contingency during the Civil War. It was demographically similar to Petaluma which was a solid Yankee town. Marin and Sonoma—the entire North Bay (except parts of Sebastopol and Santa Rosa) voted for Abraham Lincoln, a Republican (AKA the National Union Party)— against George B. McClellan, a Southern Democrat. It should also be noted also that not all listed Democrats in the larger Bay Area were pro-Confederacy. In San Francisco, there were 15,000 pro-Union Democrats at a rally in 1861, which was “a figure equal to the number of voters in the city.”
The total population of Marin was 323 Anglos. Two of Miller's sons were listed on Union military registers as were various Reed, Murphy and Miller relatives. Miller's daughter married a Union soldier. During the Civil War, Irish Catholics were overwhelmingly Republican, or northern Federalists in direct support to Federalist naturalization laws that gave immigrant Catholics the right to vote.
"The Vatican never recognized the Confederacy... (and) priests around the country called upon the faithful to don blue uniforms because, “The Union must and shall be preserved.” ... By the end of the war, Catholics and non-Catholics living, marching, and fighting together overcame many old prejudices." —Catholics and the Civil War
The ONLY Democrats in the North Bay Area were in parts of Sebastopol and Santa Rosa, total population was well under 600, and not all were supportive of the South. There were no Democrat workmen commuting to Marin, there was no railroad. And central Sonoma County where those pesky Democrats lived, was waterlogged much of the year by the vast Laguna de Santa Rosa—"where mud was king" there was little opportunity to travel south.
The Petalumans couldn't even get to Santa Rosa until the dry season. So a bunch of Confederate workers from Santa Rosa (or Scotland) working for James Miller in Marin is a huge improbability. especially since he had a vast labor pool to draw from in Petaluma alone, the biggest town on the North Coast, with a population approaching 1000 Anglos who were vociferously anti-Confederate.
Another unsubstantiated story mentions that Miller hired Scottish workers to build the school. But if they were Scottish, and living in Marin, they would hardly be Democrats or Confederates. They would be Scottish. Another stretchy spandex post facto "fact." And even of they were laborers who may or may not have supported the Confederacy, what difference would it make? The school wasn't named after them. It was named after Mary Dixie.
Maybe Miller named it Dixie as in dix/dex—for his ten kids.
The flaw in the origin of how Dixie School was named, is that it was coined long after founder James Miller had died. In folklore terms, we don't have terminus post quem. No proof of when it began. And Miller's granddaughter, who supposedly made up the story, was born 5 years after Miller's death, she couldn't have heard it from her grandfather's lips post mortem. So, it's a story of a story repeated by a friend of a friend, not the granddaughter—and the earliest terminus post quem is dated 1972, in other words, it's all hearsay.
In 1972, the Dixie Schoolhouse Foundation submitted an application to the U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service to get the old Dixie Schoolhouse added to the National Registry of Historical Places. The document submitted by Old Dixie Schoolhouse Foundation states that the name “Dixie” was a direct reference to the nickname given to the Confederate States of America. —History — Change The Nameand
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Dixie name dates back to the days of the Civil War itself but that nobody can quite agree on whether it was originally meant to refer to the Confederacy or not....The site also notes that the campaign to get the original Dixie schoolhouse added to the National Register of Historic Places played up Civil War association, alleging that early Marin County settler James Miller picked the name on a dare....Mill Valley resident Kerry Peirson, who organizes much of the anti-Dixie initiative, told the San Jose Mercury News that he first challenged the name back in the 1990s. —Marin neighbors demand Dixie School District change its nameLet me get this straight: instigators, call them "social justice warriors," Kerry Perison, 51, of Mill Valley, and Noah Griffin of Tiburon don't even live in Terra Linda! Nor did their kids attend school there. Yet they get to dictate what place names are appropriate? Peirson was a former Marin Community Foundation trustee, and Noah Griffin is a trustee for the Buck Fund portion of the MCF, he is also a public affairs consultant, speaker and former public member of the IJ’s editorial board.
Sounds like this is some form of a psycho Orwellian publicity stunt to me. In fact, Griffin actually draped himself in a confederate flag and posed for the cameras in front of the historic Dixie Schoolhouse. What is their connection with school board member Marnie Glickman, one of the instigators of this brouhaha? They're hellbent on obliterating an entire school district because of a name? There's something far more devious at work here.
The Green Party activist was a leading force behind successful efforts to jettison the “Dixie” moniker. The change was based on the alleged association of the word “Dixie” with racist antebellum southern states. Glickman was the sparkplug stretching what was a local effort into a regional media circus. Her strategy worked, but at the cost of a sadly divided school community. —Glickman could avoid recall effort by running againThe beleagured district is searching for a new superintendent to replace former Dixie School District Superintendent Jason Yamashiro, who suddenly quit at the end of June.
In a 2013 OpEd piece, Marin Voice: Is it true what they say about Dixie? Noah Griffin couldn't even get the basic facts right. He claimed Miller was a Missourian. True, Miller worked in pro-Union county in Missouri for a little over two years, during 1841 to 1844, but he came from Ireland by way of Canada in 1828. That hardly makes him a Southerner. Last time I checked, Missouri was in the Midwest. And during that time, according to the US Census, Missouri had no slaves. Miller lived in Quebec for 13 years before emigrating to the US. Miller didn't purchase 300 acres in Marin, but he was deeded 680 acres by a fellow Wexfordian, Timothy Murphy. Land was everything to the Irish, who weren't allowed to own large parcels of land in Ireland.
Noah Griffin thoroughly maligned James Miller as a Southerner, because he farmed for two and a quarter years in the Midwest. I repeat, Missouri is not part of the South. It has never been part of the South. Missouri was and is, according to the US Census Bureau, part of the Midwest. If Miller were a Scotsman, or a Scots-Irish Protestant, then there might have been some grounds that Miller could have been a Southern sympathizer. But Miller was a good Catholic, the Vatican admonished Catholics to support the Union—or else.
In a hostile takeover, to rebrand the school, the doubtful duo of Peirson and Griffin further claimed that Miller enslaved Chinese and Native Americans, selling them to ranchos. By 1849, there were few Natives left, the missions were closed in 1823, due to decimated Native populations. The Chinese really didn't arrive en masse until the 1860s with the coming of the railroad. Griffin cites no sources. So I seriously doubt the veracity of his statement. Methinks this is a case rampant ego at work. Or corporate raiding. Perhaps it's a set-up to go after the deep coffers of the MCF Buck Fund? Griffin even went so far to buy a Confederate flag, and stood in front of Dixie School for a sick photo op. How yellow is your journalism, Sor?
The Dixie School house, now a museum, was saved from demolition, thanks to an attempt to designate it as an historic Civil War building in 1972. It was then moved to the Miller Creek Middle School site in the late 70’s, or early 80’s. Originally it was situated off Highway 101, near the old Roger Wilco, which is now a school bus yard. The modern Dixie School will henceforth be called Lucas Valley School, at Miller Creek School District.
No matter that the former Dixie School is not even in Lucas Valley. Don't let pesky little facts stand in your way. Lucas Valley itself begins on the other side of Big Rock. It's not part of the Miller Creek watershed. It's part of the Tomales Bay watershed. Just because the road that comes from Lucas Valley is called Lucas Valley Road, and people erroneously think that all those Eichler homes are in Lucas Valley, doesn't mean that it is Lucas Valley, it's not. It's Las Gallinas Valley. Look at a topo map.
I guess they didn't want to name the school district after some chickens.
Whether or not the school was named after James Miller's foreman also named Dixie, or Dixie's wife, Mary, is moot. Or after Miller's ten children, or on a dare to some Scotsmen (why he would even do such a thing is unclear). Dixie is a diminutive form of the Anglo-Saxon surname Benedict that existed long before the advent of the Civil War. Where does this "political correctness" stop? Do we erase Mr. Dixie from the historic records because of his name, and his wife Mary Dixie at the whim of three strangers? And like modern day Orwellian Thomas Nasts, Glickman, Griffin, and Pierson, not content with destroying Dixie School, also want to completely expunge Miller's name from the district—based on hearsay.
Will we need to rename Dixieland jazz next? Or the Dixie Chicks? We've effectively stripped and expunged Fray Junipero Serra from several California place names for cruelty to Indians. Let me tell you, our famed Mountain Men, Kit Carson and John C. Fremont were much worse, they mass murdered the Indians at will. Should we rename the city of Fremont next? Next up on on the list to expunge and hide the past, and rearranging history is George Washington High School's historic WPA mural.
..."who controls the past controls the future" is a warning about the mutability of information. In today's world, the quote reminds us that we need to continually question the authority of oligarchs, that we need to be able to recognize when we are being manipulated, and that the dangers of being manipulated, whether to take action or not, can be devastating. —ThoughtCo, Kris HirstRestructuring the historic past to fit current political trends is the basis of totalitarianism. This is a slippery slope. When will this malignant political correctness stop?
From Facebook posts
revised July 10
NOTES
Marin demographics & timeline
10,000+ years of Coast Miwok rule.
1814: James Miller born in County Wexford, Ireland
1820s: Marin was settled by Mexicans and Californios (& Russians at Bodega, Ft. Ross.)
1828: James Miller's family emigrated from Ireland to Quebec, Canada.
1834, the las San Rafael austencia mission was closed, the land and cattle divided into vast ranchos. Most of the natives had died by then, also epidemics of malaria and smallpox, so there were few Miwok survivors.
1841: James Miller emigrated to Holt County, Missouri and farmed until March 1844.
1844: James Miller, his wife, and four children met up in Iowa to join the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy party to California. a part of Mexico.
1849: James Miller built the first schoolhouse in San Rafael. During the Gold Rush, Marin's longhorn herds were driven to the gold country by Miwok vaqueros. Dixie was a vaquero working for James Miller. This is how the Miwok Dixies got to Murphy's Camp in the Sierra Foothills.
1850: Marin County was created by California’s first Legislature before the state was admitted to the Union. Marin was divided into four townships: Sausalito, Baulinas, San Rafael and Novato. Total Anglo population was 323.
In 1855 Miller established St. Vincent’s School for boys, a Catholic orphanage.
1860: James Miller's daughter Kate Miller married Union soldier, Captain John Keys.
1862: Miller donated 3/4 an acre near the Las Gallinas home ranch, began construction of two school buildings. Marin provided a quarter of California's butter. Guess what the main industry was? Dairy products, vegetables, especially potatoes, beets, salt, shellfish, apples, meat (cattle, elk), hay, wheat, barley, oats, lumber and bricks were shipped to SF on schooners like the Alma.
1863: The Board of Supervisors authorized the “Dixie Public School District”, making it one of the earliest school districts established in Marin.
1865: Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9.
1868: Marin fed San Francisco: 4,000 acres of potatoes, 11,000 acres of hay, 750 acres of beets, and 4,360 apple trees. (Later, artichokes, cut flowers, peas).
1870: the North Pacific Coast Railroad arrives, changes how produce was shipped. Demise of the schooners.
1890: James Miller, Pioneer of pioneers, died at the age of 76. He was survived by his 10 children William J.. Kate, Mary, Martin, Ellen, Julia, Francis, Teresa, Bernard and Josephine.
1913: the California Cooperative Creamery was established. Marin led California in dairy production.
No slaves in Marin, only immigrants. Settlers weren't from Dixie. The Miwok had largely sucumned to disease, few survivors, other than Olompali rancho owner Camilo Ynitia's family, and some survivors on a rancheria on Halleck/Old Rancho Road in Nicasio. By the 1960s, they were gone.
1949-1982: some 783,000 acres, or one-quarter of Bay Area farmlands, was lost to development, etc.
In 1959 alone, Marin lost 32,000 acres of agricultural lands. People began to move to Marin en masse after WWII. Rise of the sleepy suburbs.
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Marin Journal, Volume 50, Number 29, 20 July 1911
JAMES MILLER. A brief history of James Miller. He was born in the county of Wexford. Ireland, May 1, 1814. With his parents he went to Canada, settling not far from Quebec, where they resided until 1841, when they emigrated to Mission, locating in Holt county, where they engaged in farming until May, 1844. At this time, accompanied by his wife and four children, he started in a train of thirteen wagons for California. It took them about eight months to make the perilous journey from Missouri to Marin county, where they arrived April 6, 1845. They stopped for a time at the San Rafael Mission where they met Don Timoteo Murphy, who was residing there. In 1846 Mr. Miller purchased from Murphy 680 acres, a portion of the Las Gallinas ranch, one of three Mexican grants which he had secured from Micheltorena. the Mexican governor of California. This was the first deed recorded in Marin county. The grounds around the home are ornamented with flowers, ornamental trees and shrubbery, making it a most ideal home. MILLER HALL. Here he erected, first a shack, next an adobe, and later the stately mansion known as Miller Hall, now the property of two of his daughters, Miss Teresa Miller, and Mrs. Joseph Leonard Kirk, wife of Joseph L. Kirk, a prominent attorney. They both now reside in San Francisco. In 1849 Mr. Miller drove 150 head of cattle to the placer mines, where he slaughtered them and sold the meat at $1 per pound. In the following year he returned to his farm, where he continued to reside until his death in 1890. Miller Hall, four miles north of San Rafael, is nicely situated. It is a commodious square building, well apportioned, with broad verandas, and is surrounded by one of the finest dairy ranches in the county. Mr. Miller accumulated other land until he owned eight thousand acres. On September 1. 1834 Mr. Miller married Mary Murphy in Canada. His ten children were William J.. Kate, Mary, Martin, Ellen, Julia, Francis, Teresa, Bernard and Josephine.
Marin Journal, Volume 50, Number 29, 20 July 1911
JAMES MILLER. A brief history of James Miller. He was born in the county of Wexford. Ireland, May 1, 1814. With his parents he went to Canada, settling not far from Quebec, where they resided until 1841, when they emigrated to Mission, locating in Holt county, where they engaged in farming until May, 1844. At this time, accompanied by his wife and four children, he started in a train of thirteen wagons for California. It took them about eight months to make the perilous journey from Missouri to Marin county, where they arrived April 6, 1845. They stopped for a time at the San Rafael Mission where they met Don Timoteo Murphy, who was residing there. In 1846 Mr. Miller purchased from Murphy 680 acres, a portion of the Las Gallinas ranch, one of three Mexican grants which he had secured from Micheltorena. the Mexican governor of California. This was the first deed recorded in Marin county. The grounds around the home are ornamented with flowers, ornamental trees and shrubbery, making it a most ideal home. MILLER HALL. Here he erected, first a shack, next an adobe, and later the stately mansion known as Miller Hall, now the property of two of his daughters, Miss Teresa Miller, and Mrs. Joseph Leonard Kirk, wife of Joseph L. Kirk, a prominent attorney. They both now reside in San Francisco. In 1849 Mr. Miller drove 150 head of cattle to the placer mines, where he slaughtered them and sold the meat at $1 per pound. In the following year he returned to his farm, where he continued to reside until his death in 1890. Miller Hall, four miles north of San Rafael, is nicely situated. It is a commodious square building, well apportioned, with broad verandas, and is surrounded by one of the finest dairy ranches in the county. Mr. Miller accumulated other land until he owned eight thousand acres. On September 1. 1834 Mr. Miller married Mary Murphy in Canada. His ten children were William J.. Kate, Mary, Martin, Ellen, Julia, Francis, Teresa, Bernard and Josephine.
Catholics and the Civil War
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Dixie name dates back to the days of the Civil War itself but that nobody can quite agree on whether it was originally meant to refer to the Confederacy or not.
Recall Marnie Glickman - Dixie School Board Trustee Facebook page
Marin neighbors demand Dixie School District change its name
Why it took 22 Years to Change the Name in a Liberal County
Note bene: this info remains stet. Hearsay. “The granddaughter said it was named on a dare, but she was born after he died. It was family folklore.” If you research the "dare" bit, you'll find it's unsubstantiated, a bit of apocrypha that has its earliest roots ca 1971, and trotted out in 1991. The granddaughter was born five years after Miller's death, so she couldn't have heard it from him (terminus post quem), and the granddaughter was never on record for actually saying that. It was told by someone else who knew her some decades later. What I learned at Berkeley, always double-check your sources. Check your sources' sources. And always keep a timeline on hand so you can see how the information dovetailed with the history of the time. Too often we view the past with a dirty lens. Presentism, that is, viewing the past with modern "politically correct" lenses, creates a false premise. Then you have a house of cards.
Confederate flag rekindles Marin effort to change Dixie School District’s name
Two longtime Marin residents are calling for the Dixie School District to change its name, a decades-old demand revived by the national controversy over various associations with the Confederacy and racism. Kerry Peirson of Mill Valley and Noah Griffin of Tiburon are spearheading the movement to change the San Rafael district’s name. To these activists, and to Marin residents from similar movements in 1997 and 2003, “Dixie” is a Confederate anthem that conjures images of the slave era, racism. . .
Two longtime Marin residents are calling for the Dixie School District to change its name, a decades-old demand revived by the national controversy over various associations with the Confederacy and racism. Kerry Peirson of Mill Valley and Noah Griffin of Tiburon are spearheading the movement to change the San Rafael district’s name. To these activists, and to Marin residents from similar movements in 1997 and 2003, “Dixie” is a Confederate anthem that conjures images of the slave era, racism. . .
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