A new-old story by June Morrall
The answer is YES, it turned out that the third Levy, Adrien, and Josephine’s sister, Emma, were a perfect match and wed soon after meeting.[Makes you think of eHarmony, or one of those love match sites, doesn’ tit?]
There was one more Levy brother left, Armand. This time it was Emma and Adrien who conspired to bring Armand and Josephine and Emma’s sister, Natalie, to Half Moon Bay, where they felt certain another marriage would take place. And it did.
Now all the Levy brothers were on the Coastside and Josephine had her siblings as close companions. To complete this perfect family picture, each of the Levy’s wives bore three children each.
The brothers started out in the general store business but now they wanted to expand into areas they knew less about, always a challenge but a challenge often armed with the unexpected “black swan” kind of surprises. It sounds good but you just don’t know what’s going to happen and when.
They got into the stagecoach business by buying Andrew Taft’s line, including the often rough-and-tumble drivers. Perhaps their name was stamped on the side of the stages, advertising the chain of stores, I am not sure because I have not seen such photographs but it makes sense. The stage probably carried their dry goods, the mail, and of course, the passengers, who, in Half Moon Bay, stayed at the Occidental Hotel.
The newly arrived brother, Adrien, felt the real estate bug, and with his brother’s support bought 3,000 acres near Pomponio Creek. That was about 1900. They may have been going in the wrong direction when they tried to revive whaling at Pigeon Point, but whale oil was often used for light and Pescadero did not get electric lighting until the mid0 1920s. To work in the dark, you had to have lanterns or some way to get light, and the lack of it was a real problem.
Part Vi (finale) Next