Artifact of the Month – December 2004

Opium Pipe from the Flack Resort, “Magnolia Farm” 

The Artifact of the Month for December, 2004, is a pipe donated to the Healdsburg Museum in 1987 by Keith Packwood, from the estate of Mrs. Ella (Flack) Packwood. Ella was the daughter of John A. and Nelly (McClish) Flack, and the granddaughter of John and Racilla (Field) Flack. The pipe, made of bamboo, has walrus ivory at both ends. It is 2.5 feet long, and 1 inch in diameter. Circa 1870’s, the pipe is thought to have been used by Chinese employees at the Flack resort, “Magnolia Farm,” to smoke opium.

Magnolia Farm, From 1877 New Historical Atlas Of Sonoma County Following James Marshall’s discovery of gold in 1848, and the beginning of the Gold Rush, Chinese immigrants began to arrive in California in the thousands. By 1852 there were 11,794 Chinese living in California. Most individuals proceeded to California’s mining regions. By the late 1860’s, 90 percent of the workforce on the Central Pacific Railroad was Chinese. In the 1870’s, diversification of crops in California developed after the railroad was completed. Chinese aided in cultivation techniques as well as harvest of these crops. In Healdsburg, during this period until around 1900, there were several Chinese laundries, a Chinese vegetable peddler, as well as Chinese workers employed as farmhands and domestic help in private homes, hotels, and ranches.

Chinese Laborers, Picking Olives

Chinese School Children In San Francisco Ella (Flack) Packwood’s grandfather, John Flack, was born in Erith, England, in 1829, and at the age of fourteen came to New York in the United States. In the early 1850’s he came to San Francisco, where for several years he sold vegetables. In 1857, John Flack came to Sonoma County and purchased sixty acres of land southwest of Healdsburg. There he established a resort, known as “Magnolia Farm,” on which he built a hotel and cottages. (Magnolia Drive, west of Healdsburg, was once part of Magnolia Farm.) The resort became quite popular in the 1870’s. An article on June 18, 1878, in the Healdsburg Enterprise described a party held there, “The Magnolia is indeed an Elysian bower – a place where denizens of the smoke-begrimed and noisy metropolis are surrounded by rejuvenating influences, affording rest for the mind and recreation for the body. It is no wonder that its accommodations are taxed to their utmost capacity…” John Flack, Sr. died on the farm in 1910, and his wife Racilla, whom he married in 1866, died there in 1924. John Flack’s son (and Ella’s father), John Alonzo Flack Jr., was born on the family farm near Healdsburg in 1873. He attended local public schools, and with the exception of about seven years, always lived on Magnolia Farm until his death in December of 1942.

References:

“John A. Flack Dies at Home,” Hbg. Tribune, 1 January 1943.

“John Alonzo Flack,” History of Sonoma County, by Honoria Tuomey, Vol. II; The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1926, pp. 573-574.

“Miss Ella Flack Becomes Bride of Wendell Packwood,” Hbg. Enterprise, 2 January 1930.

“Little China in Healdsburg,” from Tales of Sonoma County: Reflections of a Golden Age, compiled by Dr. William C. Shipley, Sonoma County Historical Society; Arcadia Publishing: Charleston, SC, 2000; pp.51-52.

“Mrs. Racille Flack Dead,” Sotoyome Scimitar, 28 Mar. 1924.

“Obituary” for John Flack, Hbg. Tribune, 16 March 1910.

“The Chinese in California 1850-1925,” website compiled by Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley, Ethnic Studies Library and the California Historical Society, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/cubhtml/cichome.html.

The above was researched and written by Whitney Hopkins