Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • 109

4 19-CM Aug. 15, 1971 i rt i i i Memories Haunt Fading Mansion rp JTIXG CITY that rural jf community deep In the a 1 i a Valley was named in 1886 for Oak- lands Charles II. King, a man who loved the soil so much he was never able to shake the good earth from his hands. lie tried school teaching on several occasions early in life, but turned back to the soil after each endeavor, then wound up a redwood lumber baron and later a grain grandee on his 13, 000-acre portion of Monterey Countys sprawling Rancho San Lorenzo where he grew wheat from 1884 until 1897. The old and neglected King family mansion still stands deteriorating at Sixth Avenue and East 11th Street in Oakland, a landmark of 33 rooms but only a fraction of the size it once was.

A portion of the King-sized dwelling was sliced off some years back when industrialists along East 10th Street bought up a. part of the King property. The mansion reached its mammoth size by "growing like Topsy, according to Pearl King Tanner who is now approaching her '92nd birthday; the only surviving direct descendant of Charles and Kate Brown King who presided over the Oakland estate. We came from Eureka to live in Oakland, taking up residence one block away on Seventh Avenue while my father was having our new home built at Sixth Avenue and East 11th Street. I was only about four then.

It must have been two years later that we moved into the new home perhaps 1881 The house wasnt so big at first My father kept on adding rooms until the place had no symmetry it just kept growing. "One day my mother warned him: If another wagon load of lumber comes on this property, Im leaving. Some years later Charles H. King -built the King Building at 12th and 1 Charles H. King added to this Oakland 1 884 home until irtgrew to the proportion of a mansion Harrison Streets on the property that, wras once the College of California.

This is another King landmark still standing. TRAGEDY as well as a bountiful variety of joy emerged through the years from the big house at Sixth Avenue and East 11th Street. Two of Charles and Kate Kings six children died very young, and a third, Mildred, succumbed in Arizona before she was 22. Joseph, Pearl and Charles Jr. grew to maturity and achieved great successes of their own.

Joseph H. King eventually became chairman of the Alameda County Institutions Commission, president of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, president of the Marchant Calculating Machine president of the Athenian-Nile Club, a director of the Bank of America, and founder of the Oakland Downtown Property Owners Association. Charles, named for his father, founded the Special Site Sign Company in Oakland and is credited with being the man who first put movement on billboards. Remember the girl swinging in the apple tree on billboards here and in San Francisco? And the glowing fireplace in the Breuner furniture signboards? Pearl, who made her social debut in the brilliantly lighted drawing room of the King mansion where a string orchestra played for more than 500 dancing guests during a multi-course dinner, eventually went to New York and blossomed into the versatile Pearl King Tanner, She and Ernest Tanner, Los Angeles wholesale druggist, were married in 1908. From stage work, Pearl King Tanner emerged into early radio and fondly recalls the days when Oakland had the worlds largest broadcasting studios old KGO on East 14th Street.

Her greatest fame came with her role as "Mother Sherwood, in thorne a role so vibrantly portrayed that few if any Pacific Coast radio fans ever thought of her as Pearl King Tanner but instead as "Mother Sherwood. -She wound up the owner of the show as a gift from Wesson Oil, her sponsors. There was one binding clause. "No one but you shall be Mother Sherwood ever! Fi ROM Pearl King Tanner we learn that her father Charles H. King claimed Jean Jacques Rousseau, the French-Swiss moralist, as his grandfather.

The King family history notes that sweeping political and sociajl changes in France prior to Rousseaus fatal illness in 1778 hinted of the revolution to come. He sent his family away from France to avoid tragedy. One daughter was sheltered in a r-t PEARL KING TANNER AS, radio's "Mother Sherwood" i Quebec and there fell in love with a French youth named Leroi. The young lovers eloped to the United States and were wed in New York. But instead of applying the name Leroy as their family name they chose the French translation of Leroi to mean "the King.

It was at this point that this particular family named King was established. Charles H. King was a son of the eloping lovers from Quebec. Jean Jacques Rousseau was his grandfather. Continued on Page 22 A UrtftYfWr t.x&S&tey King City Rvitltr portrait CHARLES H.

KING King City treasures portrait.