There are a handful of families whose connection to Inverness runs from the present day back to when the community was first subdivided into lots in the late 19th century. The Dornins are one such family.
George Dally Dornin arrived in California as a teenager in August 1849. He would later write a book for his children, “Thirty Years Ago: 1849-1879: Gold Rush Memories of a Daguerreotype Artist,” describing his 186-day voyage around Cape Horn and his early years in California. He observed ships anchored in the San Francisco Bay that had been abandoned by crews in their hurry to get to the gold mines. He recalled that the ship that brought him to San Francisco, the Panama, was hauled onto land—at a spot that is now the intersection of Sacramento and Davis Streets—and converted into a church for seamen. He witnessed a hanging by the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, a vigilante group formed in 1851.
In 1852, George D. made his way to Grass Valley and later North San Juan, living for 15 years in Nevada County. He married Sarah Ann Baldwin in 1853. They had five children who lived past childhood: George W., Mary, John, Julia and Alice. George D. served as a postmaster and represented a Nevada County precinct in the California Assembly as a member of the Union Party, a name briefly used by the National Republican Party to attract Democratic voters in the 1864 election. He served in the 16th and 17th assembly sessions. During this time, he voted to ratify the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery and to authorize the creation of the University of California at the site of the former College of California in Berkeley.
George D. and Sarah Ann later returned to the Bay Area, settling in Berkeley. According to historian Daniella Thompson, their first Berkeley house was built in 1870s at the northeast corner of Dwight and Bowditch Streets, a location where Bernard Maybeck’s masterpiece, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, would later be built. The Dornins then moved into a Dutch Colonial house at 2521 Benvenue Avenue.
George D. served as the Pacific Coast manager for a fire insurance company headquartered in the Northeast. In 1906, he resigned from his position, which he had held for 20 years, in protest of the company’s handling of fire insurance claims arising from the 1906 earthquake and fire. The company instructed him to cut “horizontally” 25 percent in payments to victims of the fire. He refused.
In 1903, George D. and Sarah Ann celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. That same month, and perhaps as an anniversary gift to themselves, they purchased four lots in Inverness: two on Edgemont Way and two on Mesa Way. The next year, one of the two Edgemont lots was transferred to Harriet (Hattie) H. Dornin, the spouse of their eldest son, George W. The couple built a shingle house on Edgemont Way the next year. A March 1905 San Francisco Call article reported that the Dornins “will build at Inverness and their cottage will without doubt be the scene of many a merry gathering.” The builder H. F. Miles completed the work in one month for the sum of $1,612. The plans specified the “best cedar” exterior siding and a clinker brick fireplace to “suit the owner.”
The couple’s arrival in Inverness followed George W.’s retirement from elected office. He had served on the Oakland City Council since 1901, the last two years as president. It was a tumultuous time. Oakland was in a battle to secure a consistent water supply and George W. was at the center of the controversy. He refused an appointment by Oakland’s mayor to serve on a committee created to investigate municipal ownership, explaining that he could do better work for the people if he acted independently.
When George W. and Hattie completed their cottage in July 1905, they were surrounded by family—literally. George W.’s sister Julia and her husband, Reverend George Eldredge, lived in a 1904 house built on Mesa Way just over the back fence. George’s W.’s sister Mary and her husband, Crayton W. Wilkinson, lived in a house also built in 1904 to the south of the Dornin house at the intersection of Laurel View and Edgemont Way. The house remains in the Wilkinson family today.
In a 1975 letter archived at the Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History, Pauline Wilkinson Macaulay, daughter of Mary and Crayton, gave an account of the 1906 earthquake, providing a glimpse into the extended Dornin family’s life in Inverness. “Grampie and Grammie Dornin and the Eldredges (Uncle George, Aunt Dudu & George and Baby John) had gone to Inverness,” the letter begins. She then describes the journey from Berkeley to Inverness in 1906:
“One had to walk from home on Ben-venue around the corner and take the street car on College Avenue, transfer to the Key Route Train at Adeline, get on the ferry boat to San Francisco, wait in the Ferry Building for the ferry to Sausalito, take an electric train to Fairfax Manor, change to the “narrow gauge” steam train and wind through the beautiful countryside and out of tunnels over wooden trestles through a redwood grove to Point Reyes Station. There, Ben [Pedranti] would be waiting in his horse drawn stage and would have a three-quarter to an hour’s ride to Inverness (about four miles).”
Upon arriving in Inverness, Pauline described waiting for the milk to be delivered before going to Grammie Dornin’s house for dinner. “In those days, the milk was poured flat into a pan so that the cream could rise and be skimmed in the morning,” she wrote.
George W. and Hattie’s Edgemont house survived the 1906 earthquake and, soon afterwards, gained a tenant. The landscape artist Jack Wisby had left San Francisco following the earthquake and, after a stay in Lagunitas, he took refuge in Inverness. Sugie Barker, a great-granddaughter of George W. and Hattie, heard from her family that Wisby moved into the Dornins’ house in Inverness, exchanging his landscape paintings for rent.
Wisby and the Dornins remained friends for years afterwards. Barker said Wisby later painted a picture of her father’s boat. Many Wisby paintings have been passed down through the family and remain with them. One bears a gift inscription from George W. to his beloved daughter Helen.
Helen married William Ross Childs in 1910. A column in the San Francisco Call previewed the wedding as “being looked forward to as one of the most interesting events of the season.” Helen’s uncle, George Eldredge, presided. Barker remembered accompanying her grandmother Helen out to Olema to visit the Shafter mansion as a small child; Mary and Helen Shafter were friends of the Dornins.
The Dornins were connected to the Inverness Yacht Club as soon as it was organized in 1912, and they and the Childs family spent much of their time in boats on Tomales Bay. In 1925, George W. had a fine boat built, which he named the Hattie D after his dear wife; he acted as Captain Dornin. It was no ordinary family boat: the large gas-powered vessel could accommodate more than a dozen passengers. The families were active in the yacht club until the club went broke during the Depression.
The Dornins kept a log of trips aboard the Hattie D, full of pictures, clippings and comments. One of their favorite places to go for elaborate picnics was Indian Beach, and they often cruised out to Blue Gums Beach near the bay entrance. The Hattie D caught fire in 1932 and burned at Shell Beach as people helplessly watched on. When the Inverness Yacht Club was restarted in 1950, Helen Childs acted as the honorary commodore.
Helen and George had three children: George III, Sugie and Toby. All stayed in touch with Inverness, using the Dornin house for vacations and occasionally fulltime. Finally, in the 2000s, the family sold the house on Edgemont and the one on Mesa Way, but the Wilkinson house remains in family hands.
The Childs family has a long association with Camp Elwell (now known as Elwell Lakes Lodge) near Graeagle. Built in 1920, the popular rustic summer resort operates on land leased from the United States Forest Service. Sugie Barker met her future husband, John Barker, there as a child and they were married at the lodge in 1971. The couple owns and operates the lodge today but has plans to pass management to their son.
Courtney Linn is the general counsel at a Sacramento-based credit union and lives in Sacramento and Inverness. He thanks Dewey Livingston for his research and assistance with this series on Inverness history.