Welcome to Meredith Eliassen's Web Page

Meredith Eliassen, San Francisco State University

MEMORY FUSION

I am a curator, historical research consultant, writer, and artist. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where every neighborhood has a story and every alleyway contains its own hue and value in a dynamic landscape. I do history everyday in my work. Sometimes I do academic history with footnotes, and sometimes I do it for fun. But always, local history for me is an expression of love for the communities that inspire me.

A New Day:
Celebrating Ten Years of Researching History

My first published photo-essay appeared in June 1995, but my first research project incorporating primary sources never got published, it was pulled just before the book on American illustrators went to press. I never forgot illustrator Sarah S. Stilwell (Weber), 1878-1939, because she introduced me to her magical world and made me see that some worthy women were omitted from history. Stilwell, less famous than her contemporary Jessie Wilcox Smith, interrupted her career to marry and have a family. Both women were amongst the first female students at Howard Pyle's Brandywine School of American Illustration at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Both artists drew inspiration from similar subject matter, yet their work was quite different. Stilwell drew from Art Nouveau,a decorative style characterized by organic foliate forms, sinuous lines, and non-geometric curves. Stilwell's work often featured children dancing in fairy gardens or exotic ladies floating in seas of splendid mist fusing the fragility of dreams and fairy tales with turbulent undercurrents from the Industrial Revolution. Her graphic art graced the pages of magazines including St. Nicholas, Vogue, and The Saturday Evening Post.

"A New Day," (left), and "In Paddling," (masthead), from The Luxury of Children and Other Luxuries, by Edward Sandford Martin, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1905), facing page 50.

“Man learns not by eye nor by intellect but through the heart.” – Mark Twain

SERIOUS HISTORY (Selected articles, papers, and lectures)

“Our Intangible Home” (work in progress), a two-part series of articles chronicling the emergence of a distinct boardinghouse culture in San Francisco. This original research examines legal, public policy, economic, and social issues that shaped the lives of female boardinghouse operators in San Francisco during the Gold Rush period, 1849-1855. Information culled from public records, court cases, city directories, newspapers, and published accounts of San Francisco during the Gold Rush, as well as diaries. The purpose of this project was to identify how transient multi-cultural populations, real estate speculation, and unregulated markets shaped female gender roles for this specific group of business women as San Francisco transformed from a village into an “instant city,” contradicting the notion that the volatility of San Francisco’s current real estate market is unusual in our history.

“The San Francisco Experiment: Female Practitioners Caring for Women and Children, 1875-1935” (work in progress), original research examines the contributions, and reform efforts of a mother and daughter team of doctors Dr. Charlotte Blake Brown (1846-1904) and Dr. Adelaide Brown (1867-1940) who shaped women’s and children’s medicine in San Francisco between 1875 and 1935.

“At the Epicenter: Lives and Careers Hewn in the Cultural Hearth of AIDS” (work in progress), an essay on the shaping of memory and the AIDS Lifeline mass media campaign from 1983 to 1993 in San Francisco.

“In the Hands of Children…” (work in progress), a photo-essay exploring the cognitive and historic roles of scrapbook compiling for children in America during the late-nineteenth century.

“The Story in the Quilt” (speaker, 2004), chronicles the romantic story behind Helen Penniman Pardee’s historic wedding quilt housed at the Pardee Home Museum. Helen Pardee (1857-1947) started the quilt with her friends in 1884 on camping trips with the bohemian group known as the Merry Tramps of Oakland and documents her courtship with George Pardee (who became the 1906 earthquake governor in California).

“Adventurers in Nature: The Merry Tramps of Oakland” (author, California Historical Society, California History, 82: 2 (2004), 6-19), a photo-essay chronicling the adventures of a local bohemian group of photographers and artists from a middle-class Oakland neighborhood in scenic locations in California during the 1880s.

“CSI: San Francisco, 1898” (speaker, 2003), traces how early forensics evidence played a pivotal role in the sensational local mystery, but proved to be inadmissible in court. San Francisco Examiner hotshot reporter Lizzie Livernash out-sleuthed police detectives in the case of Mrs. Cordelia Botkin (1854-1910), a woman estranged from her husband who murdered her lover’s wife by sending arsenic-laced bonbons through the mail.

“Palmistry & the Press in 1900 San Francisco” (speaker, 2003), Mme. Neergaard became the palmistry editor at the San Francisco Call newspaper at a time when palmistry as a science emerged in popular culture. She created a media sensation when she offered free readings to subscribers. On May 7, 1899, shortly after her eviction from the Bell Mansion, San Francisco’s legendary Mary Ellen Pleasant (1814-1904) became the focus of a cover story for the Sunday Call. The article, entitled, “Mammy Pleasant: Angel or Arch Fiend in the House of Mystery,” contained an interview by Miriam Michelson, a nationally known writer. Several of the palm prints she collected were impressed upon the letterhead stationary of S.W. Leake, the flamboyant manager of the San Francisco Call, suggested that perhaps the palm reader was also a silent consultant on controversial stories. The following year, a rival palmist, Professor Fosselli of the San Francisco Examiner, created a more sympathetic assessment. This presentation chronicles how Pleasant was tried in the press for her perceived sins.

“Uncovering Secrets of the Theatre and San Francisco Political Stage in 1900” (speaker, 2003), famous stage personalities, including Lionel James, Frederick Warde, Kathryn Kidder, Helena Modjeska, and Edna Hopper shared a secret advisor with “Handsome Gene,” San Francisco’s infamous “1906 earthquake mayor” -- Eugene E. Schmitz.

“The Victorian Doll and Domestic Education for Girls” (speaker, 2002), presented images and texts that demonstrate how dolls were utilized by parents to teach young girls gender roles during the nineteenth century.

“At the Crossroads: Italian Woodcuts in the Frank V. de Bellis Collection” (speaker, 2002), examined how the emergence and visual semantics of printed woodcut designs, as the new technology from the Far and Middle East, influenced popular and political culture in Europe during the Renaissance.

“Forgotten Treasures: Book Formats that Entice Children to Read” (speaker, 2001), presentation on historic children’s materials (hornbooks, chapbooks, board books, toy and movable books, and linen books) popular for centuries with young children.

“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” – Graham Greene
WHIMSICAL HISTORY (Selected fables and such)

“Artists’ Books: Vision – Form – Function” (2005), this virtual exhibit attempted to define the magic and allure of the book as a modern vessel for self-expression.

“Fools Rush In: A Land Fable Based Upon a True Story” (2005), international intrigue, passion and greed shape the lives of the leading land speculators in gold rush San Francisco. The decision by the California State Supreme Court in People ex rel. Attorney-General vs. Joseph L Folsom, 5 Cal. Repts. 373 (1855) brought to denouement a case that excited public attention for over a decade. This case documented the tempestuous transfer of one of California’s largest estates from the charismatic son of a Creole Alexander Liedesdorff (1810-1848) to the haughty ex-army quartermaster at the Presidio Joseph Folsom (1817-1855). Neither lived long enough to enjoy his fortune. This is the story that could not be told in “Our Intangible Home.” Historic treatment registered, no. 1061878, Writers Guild of America, west, 2005.

“The Daydreamer” (1998), a woman escapes her daily monotony by traveling to the seashore where a mysterious stranger from the sea reveals truths about honesty and love.

“Chonchon and the Wild Man of the Woods” (1997), in this original version of “Beauty and the Beast” set in Olompali and ancient redwood forests in California, Beauty is a young Miwok Indian whose virtue transforms a beast into a man.

“She Who Cares for Animals” (1995), in this retelling of a tale recorded by Czech folklorist Bozena Nemcova, forest creatures give advice to a girl that leads her to happiness.

Welcome to Meredith Eliassen's Web Page

I am currently researching the history of multicultural childhood in San Francisco.

Please send relevant comments to eliassen@sfsu.edu.