A Different Slant of Light

Family History

Grandparents

Adelaide's paternal grandfather, Isaiah Hanscom, was born in Maine of a long line of seamen and boat builders. During the Civil War he was stationed at Mare Island in the San Francisco bay to build the naval shipyards.

Her mother's parents were from Connecticut. Her grandfather, Munson Hinman Hyde, was a merchant and a tailor in Brooklyn, New York. He lived with Adelaide's family in Oregon and in Berkeley until his death in the early 1880's.

Parents

Meldon came to Mare Island  as a teenager and returned to the east where he attended Harvard. It was during these years he met and married Louisa.

Louisa, Adelaide's mother, attended finishing school in New York. Louisa's mother died when she was four. She was raised by her father and older sister Brooklyn.

Meldon Hanscom's Harvard graduation class. Meldon is on the far right.

Siblings

Adelaide was the fourth of six children. The first two were boys, Meldon and Edmond and the third child was May (Marion). These three were all born in San Francisco. Adelaide was born in Empire City, Oregon (now Coos Bay) and her two younger sisters, Sarah and Gertrude, were born in Parkersburg, Oregon, a settlement on the Coquille River that no longer exists.

Parkersburg

Meldon and two partners, Judah Parker and Isaac Cook, built a sawmill on the Coquille river just above Bandon. The Parker and Hanscom families lived there, with the families of the tug captain and mill workers. It was very remote and primitive on the Coquille, having just been carved out of the dense forests.

The Hanscoms left Parkersburg and moved to Berkeley in 1881, just before Adelaide's sixth birthday. They sought a better environment, and better education, for their children.

Berkeley

The Hanscoms made their home in Berkeley until the death of the parents. Meldon Hanscom became the town clerk, and later the city auditor until his death in 1919. Because of his position as an elected city officer, the family was well-known in Berkeley. One brother lived in San Francisco and his other brother lived in Oakland and in Berkeley.

Meldon and Adelaide joined the Sierra Club in 1905. They knew John Muir. They also knew many other prominent Berkleyites of the period, including the painter William Keith, the Le Contes of the University, Charles Keeler, and Joaquin Miller (of Oakland).

Adelaide and her siblings attended the Kellogg school. She was held back twice and dropped out of school after the sixth grade, at age fifteen. She was already drawing and painting.