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Tag: Elsie McClellan

  • June 6th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1924, the city of Seal Beach was to launch the summer season with a weekend celebration starting with a Friday night Grunion Dance, according to May 28 reports in both the Santa Ana Register and the Los Angeles Times. The night of June 6 was pinpointed by an almanac mentioned in both stories that predicted high tides and the arrival of a grunion run.

    It didn’t happen that night.

    As announced in those May 28 reports, Seal Beach’s Boosters’ Club planned to hire a brass band to arrival of grunions on the shore. Bonfires would would be lit, free marshmallows would be distributed, and a fun Friday night would be had by all but the grunions captured by beachgoers to be cooked and eaten.

    Grunions are two species of fish found off the California coast from Baja to Point Conception. They are slender, tiny fish with silver sides and bellies. From March through August, grunions spawn for a few hours on nights after a full or new moon by swimming as far as possible on high tide waves up on the sandy shores of California beaches. Without getting into the specific details, male and female grunions mate, leaving eggs buried in the sand before returning to the water minutes later. This is known as a grunion run.

    Consider a grunion run for a moment from a grunion’s point of view. You’re about to have the time of your life and fulfill your biological destiny when suddenly large creatures grab you and you get eaten. The human equivalent would be if a couple who had just paired up in a singles bar was grabbed and devoured by a great white shark in the parking lot on their way home to get lucky.

    So one cannot really blame grunions for not being punctual.

    In 1924, a predicted grunion in May run didn’t happen. Thousands of people with sacks showed up on Southern California beaches, but the grunions stayed in the water, perhaps exchanging the fishy equivalent of abstinence rings.

    Come early June, the predicted June 6 grunion run was adjusted for one date earlier at 10:30 pm on Thursday, June 5th.

    According to the June 7 Santa Ana Register, early in the evening, a mock wedding party left the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce and made its way to Seal Beach. At the border, the party was met by the Seal Beach Mayor and city council and escorted to a raised platform at Central Avenue and Main Street where Miss Sealette Beach and Mr. L. Beach were married by Judge G. R. Morrison. This was a purely symbolic act commemorating the good will and co-operation between the two cities.

    The bride, played by Miss Elsie McClellan, “wore a lovely gown of orange and black, with an elaborate veil of lemon chiffon, pinned by orange blossoms symbolic of Orange County.” The groom, played by W. E. Mellinger, wore black.

    The best man was J. A. Armitage of Huntington Beach, and the matron of honor was Mrs. Walter Hilliker of Seal Beach. Flower girls were Seal Beach pupils and members of Miss Doris Greenwald’s dance class. Mr. and Mrs. A. W. Armstrong played the father and mother of the bride, and representatives from various beach cities were the maids of honor.

    After the ceremony, the wedding party moved down to the pier where three minute talks were given by local and visiting officials. Then the amusement zone boardwalk was transformed into a dance floor with Glenda Boston Smith’s orchestra providing music at one end of the boardwalk and an unnamed boys band at the other.

    Thousands of free marshmallows were handed out by a committee of Seal Beach women. Thousands of grunions also showed up in what was described as “one of the best runs of the season.” Reportedly hundreds of Seal Beach visitors left with bags of fish, and one assumes that a larger percentage of romantic and randy grunions successfully made woo and then escaped with their lives.

    So Thursday’s celebrations probably continued into the early morning of June 6th, and the participants probably spent the rest of the day resting and recovering from the event, no doubt to be ready for the upcoming weekend.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • January 27th In Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1925, the Santa Ana Register reported that John Doyle, “said to be a former mayor of Seal Beach” (the newspaper’s odd choice of words, not ours), would face Justice of the Peace and City Recorder William Morrison. City Marshal Jack Arnold had seized liquor and what appeared to be a bootlegging outfit from Doyle’s home.

    Miss Elsie McClellan, a Seal Beach correspondent for a Long Beach newspaper had a confrontation with Doyle earlier and had sworn out a complaint against him for disorderly conduct after Doyle “cussed” her.  An active member of Seal Beach’s Women’s Improvement Club, Miss McClellan had been helping a female friend search for her father, and the friend felt that Doyle was hiding the father.

    Whether “bootlegging outfit” meant a still, a bathtub gin set-up, or evidence of a Prohibition-defying booze distribution ring is impossible to discover over ninety years later, but City Marshal Arnold shared that “wild parties” at the Doyle residence had led recently to complaints from neighbors.

    There is no follow-up to this oddly phrased Santa Ana Register article, so the outcome of Doyle’s appearance before Morrison remains unknown. Why the editors felt it important to run a story the day before Doyle’s day in court, but not to cover Morrison’s judgement on the case is also a mystery.

    Also, there is no further indication one way or another that Elsie McClellan’s friend found her father or not or where he was hiding.

    We can confirm that a John Doyle involved in the often contentious local political scene during Seal Beach’s first decade as a city and was, in fact, elected mayor in April of 1920 and successfully battled a recall effort in August of the same year. All of these were events covered in the Santa Ana Register, making the “said to be a former mayor of Seal Beach” phrase even odder.

    Beyond his time as Mayor, John J. Doyle had a varied history in Seal Beach. The 1918 Coast Cities Directory lists him as working as the secretary of the Seal Beach Concession Company and living at 8th Street and Central Avenue.  In January 1920, a census taker recorded that 63 year-old John J. Doyle, a shipyard boiler maker, lived with his 30-year old wife Alice at 129 Dolphin Avenue.

    This is just speculation, but perhaps Doyle’s skills as a boiler maker came in handy for constructing and maintaining stills for homemade hooch.

    A 1925 city directory, the year of his bootlegging arrest, shows that Doyle and Alice lived at 210 10th Street. According to Zillow, the house was built in 1922 and still stands today. Doyle seems to have moved his residence quite a bit, but it seems likely that this is the address where the booze was seized.

    In the thirties, city directories listed John Doyle as an employee at the Skipper’s Chowder House in Sunset Beach, a notorious local spot for bootlegging during prohibition that continued to have liquor law troubles well into the 1940s.

    – Michael Dobkins

    Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?

    If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.

    Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you.

    This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.