03/31/2021 • Background

Celebrating Our Living History

We happily spent Women’s History Month celebrating our colleagues who have greatly contributed to the A/E/C industry. They are pioneers — architects, engineers, designers, marketers, managers, and more — leaders and change-makers, as well as activists, mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives.

As writer Erin Spencer shares in The New York Times (In Her Words, March 29, 2021.), “The pandemic, racial reckonings, economic hardship and a next-to-impossible year have made this March particularly fraught.” Her words resonate with us that in spite of such an unprecedented year, we are still facing so many challenges that affect us both personally and as a Nation.

Patrisse Cullors, a founder of the Black Lives Matter movement commented about Women’s History Month, saying “We celebrate despite the obstacles we face.” And, we couldn’t agree more.

We will continue shining our Talentstar Spotlight on remarkable women (and men) throughout the year.

Image: Marjanne Pearson’s great-grandmother Laura Elizabeth Coons Cutler (front row, middle) and her daughters. Marjanne’s grandmother Laura Edith Cutler (back row, second from the right) is shown together with her mother and sisters in Salt Lake City, 1908.

Note:
In 1853, my great-grandmother Laura Elizabeth Coons Cutler was born in San Leandro CA, on the east side of the San Francisco Bay. Her family was in the first large group of American immigrants who came by ship to San Francisco in 1846.

Her mother’s family (Goodwin) were pioneers, traveling from New York City to San Francisco on the Ship Brooklyn, led by Samuel Brannan. At that time, her mother was a young girl. When the passengers boarded the ship in February 1846, they didn’t know whether San Francisco would still be in Mexican hands or under American jurisdiction. In May 1846, as they were en route, the U.S. declared war on Mexico. Her grandmother (Goodwin) died on the journey and was buried on Más a Tierra Island*, outside of Santiago, Chile, where the ship stopped to take on supplies.

*In 1966, the Chilean government renamed the island “Robinson Crusoe Island,” to reflect the literary connection to the novel by Daniel Defoe (1719), inspired by Alexander Selkirk, a marooned sailor who lived there in the early 1700s.

In June 1846, the American settlers in California staged the Bear Flag Revolt, declaring the California Republic. U.S. military forces took control. The ship arrived in San Francisco on July 31, 1846, which was under the American rule. With 238 passengers, the newcomers doubled the population of the sparsely settled San Francisco peninsula and proceeded to build communities on both sides of the San Francisco Bay, as well as San Bernadino (as a stopping point along a route from California to Las Vegas and then to Utah). They established the first English-speaking school, the first bank, the first library, and San Francisco’s first newspaper, The California Star, printed by Sam Brannan. By 1847, California was under U.S. occupation, and it became a state in September 1850.

My great-grandmother’s grandfather (Isaac Goodwin) was among the men who discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill. Her father (William Coons) had come to California for the Gold Rush, after serving as a soldier in the Mexican War; he was an actual 49er who mined for gold. As a child, she lost both of her parents, and her grandfather took her overland to Salt Lake City, where she later married an English emigrant (Thomas Robinson Cutler) who became President of Utah-Idaho Sugar.