Description

This is the family album of the Durst, Ream, Fuller, Young and associated families. Not a lot of them are identified and I was able to do a quick id on some of them by going to Find-a-Grave and you should be able to id a bunch more on the Find-a-Grave site with some research time. It features a CDV of the statue commissioned to Vinnie Ream, a CDV signed by her as well as one of her sister Mary Ream which I believe was signed by Vinnie with Mary’s name to the Durst family. If you do a quick search on the internet for letters written by Vinnie Ream you will see the handwriting matches the back of her CDV and her sister’s CDV. I also did a facial recognition match on the CDV from the Addis Gallery and it matches Vinnie, so that would be a previously unknown photo of her as a young girl 15 or 16 years old. I also think the older man with backstamp in New Orleans and the Lady with the Brady back stamp are the parents of Vinnie Ream as he was a government surveyor. There is a Civil War Soldier named Dallas J. Thompson from Co. D 3rd US Veteran Volunteers, an unidentified stage actor who look a lot like Charles B. Durst and a number with Washington D.C. backmarks. The Durst family was famous in their own right as they were the ones who perfected growing Hops in the USA. The CDV with C.B.D. on back is Charles B. Durst and the rest of the brothers are next to him in album. The album belonged to Fannie Durst. The tintype of the group, seated is Fannie Durst with husband Pvt. James D. Young who was in the 100th Infantry Co. B. If you do some research you will find a number of the families were famous for one reason or another. There are 51 photos total.

Dr Daniel Peter Durst – The Greatest Hop Grower in the World Dies At His Home in Wheatland.

Dr. D.P. Durst passed away at this Wheatland home at 4 p.m. yesterday. He had outlived his four score years, being at the time of his death, 85 years, 7 months and 1 day old. He was a native of Pennsylvania and coming to this state in the 50’s settled in Tehama. His first occupation was in the practice of his profession, he being a physician. While living in in Tehama County he was elected a member of the assembly on the Douglas Democratic ticket.

Later he experimented in the raising of hops and is the father of that industry on this coast. In selecting soil, peculiarly adapted to hop culture, he located on the Bear river bottoms in Yuba county at what is now Wheatland. Here he prospered and the result of his labor and enterprise are the largest and most productive hop fields in the world. He started in this industry after he was fifty years of age and amassed great wealth.

For several years he had been in failing health. For the last two years he had retired from participation in active business, his great interest being looked after by his sons who were known in the commercial world as the Durst Brothers. His first venture was a ten-acre tract of bottom land near the town of Wheatland, but later he purchased and cultivated all the land between Wheatland and Bear River running parallel to the stream for five or six miles.

He leaves a wife and three sons, J. H. Durst of Wheatland, and M. D. Durst, who is now in London, England.” ………

From an old newspaper clipping without date or name of paper.

“Early in life Daniel P. Durst took up the study of medicine, graduating from Jefferson Medical College, in Philadelphia, and immediately afterward entered upon the practice of his profession in Mercer County. In 1853 he decided to come to California and made the long voyage around Cape Horn in a sailing vessel as ship’s doctor. On landing at San Francisco, he started for the gold mines and spent his first winter at St. Louis, near La Porte, California, where he practiced medicine and, with several partner, engaged in mining. Dr. Durst then came to the Sacramento Valley and entered upon the practice of medicine at Colusa, where he was married. ………

He was actively interested in reclamation work and in the building of levees and he stood with the ranchers in the anti-debris fight against hydraulic mining, which filled up and raised the river beds and flooded the bottom lands. His hop fields and lands were located in Yuba, Sutter and Placer counties… He passed away in 1911, at the age of eighty-one years, and in his death the state of California lost one of its most progressive and enterprising men.”

From Wooldridge, J.W. Major “History of Sacramento Valley California,” Vol. 3 Pages 128-130 Pioneer Historical Publishing Co. Chicago 1931. Available on line “Yuba County Biographies. Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.

The photo at right of the “Durst Brothers” is incorrectly identified in the book “The Wheatland Hop Riot” and the article in the Sacramento Bee, Tuesday July 30, 2013, D1. The Wheatland Historical Society and The Sacramento Bee have been notified. I am hoping for a correction in the online version of the Bee article. A photograph taken at the same time can be seen on Naomi Brandham Durst’s memorial.