Coggeshall’s House
Captain Frederick C. Coggeshall and his wife Lavinia were among the very early pioneer settlers of Emeryville. “Captain Fred” was born in 1818 in Nantucket,’ Massachusetts, and in his youth went to sea as a cabin boy. Later, in 1849, as captain of the ship “Chester,” he sailed around Cape Horn and settled as a trader in the booming Gold Rush town of San Francisco. In 1852 he was seeking his fortune in the mines near Sacramento when Lavinia R. Rogers of New Hampshire, his bride-to-be, sailed to California via the Isthmus of Panama. They were soon married. Captain Coggeshall acquired forty-five acres in what is now Emeryville. His land straddled the new San Pablo County Road, stretching from Temescal Creek to half a block south of modern 45th Street.
Proper Yankee Style
Like all pioneer newcomers to California in the 1850s, the Coggeshalls found themselves in a rough and wild frontier where opportunities abounded but amenities, especially housing, were often scarce. The stands of redwoods once in the Oakland hills were quickly depleted during the Gold Rush, and local building materials were in short supply. Anglo-Americans rarely opted to build in local adobe in the Spanish manner, perhaps because the technology and architecture were too unfamiliar. Instead, the Coggeshalls, like many others, settled in 1853 in a wooden house constructed in proper Yankee style of lumber brought by ship around the horn all the way from New England. San Francisco newspapers of the early Gold Rush carried advertisements for prefabricated wood houses that could be quickly erected wherever the purchaser Wished. Their house would have been brought into San Francisco, transported by water to the East Bay, and erected on their land at the corner of today’s 45th Street and San Pablo Avenue. The new home was small and was lined with linen-canvass to keep out drafts and finish the wall surfaces.
Lonely Years
In those days, the village of Oakland, with its few stores, was down the San Pablo Road at the foot of Broadway. The couple raised nearly all their own food on their ranch, including cattle and hogs, with much of the pork being pickled for later use. They also sold beef and pork to the scattered residents of the district, and probably raised provisions for the markets of San Francisco as well. The first years must have been lonely ones for Lavinia Coggeshall, as she was said to be the first European woman to live in Emeryville, and her children were among the first born in the district. From their home they would have seen the tall-masted ships and waterfront of San Francisco; around it were only open fields with sparsely scattered homesteads. It is said that the weekly stage carrying mail along San Pablo Road was eagerly awaited and hailed by the residents of the area.
Death of Coggeshall
The area grew and the Coggeshalls also prospered. They were later supporters and donors for construction of Oakland churches, as well as the railroad between Oakland and Berkeley. They also built a second, larger home on their land, although their original home survived into the early 20th century. A photograph shows the first home to have been a modest two-story structure with an attached one-story addition and a comfortable front porch. Captain Coggeshall died at the age of sixty-nine, but Lavinia lived to celebrate her ninety-first birthday at her 45th Street home in 1907. In the 1890s, the ranch was subdivided and came to be known as the Coggeshall Tract. The next time you pass 43rd Street and San Pablo Avenue, think of Frederick and Lavinia Coggeshall, who settled in the area during the Gold Rush, and how their house, once located nearby, was brought by sailing ship all the way around Cape Horn to early Emeryville.
This story originally published in 1996 for the Emeryville Centennial Celebration and compiled into the ‘Early Emeryville Remembered’ historical essays book.
