Hamilton Museum is "Our" Museum

Some enjoy history and some don’t, yet all of us make history every day. This is why the Hamilton Museum is “OUR” history museum. Who back in the 1800’s would have thought their daily lives and belongings would interest and help teach someone in 2011?

The way mankind lived and survived life is a testament to our modern day existence. We would not be where we are in technology if we did not have older inventions to improve upon. Inventions built out of necessity to keep up with a growing nation, born out of need. Early Americans invented many things. They were gifted men and women working out their lives. Out of this necessity they grew a great nation—the greatest on earth. It is their history, as well as other families, who built in these Valleys and grew up townships, farms, and ranches, all across the Nation. They were the beginnings of the great cities of our time.

There was a pattern to survival then. Oil lamps, wood stoves preserving and canning food etc.were still the norm. Things were done by hand, horsepower, manpower and gasoline power. Here in the Anza Valley those patterns of early America in rural areas survived up into the 1950’s. That is when electricity first came to the area.

“The roads were all dirt, and going to town meant a long trip to the big city of San Jacinto,” recalls Margaret Wellman Jaenke, founder and curator of the Hamilton Museum. The road to that area was paved in the 1940’s. Margaret is a living jewel. She was part of the Wellmen family who had a cattle ranch in what is now called Gardner Valley. She grew up and lived all her life in the area. Her Aunt Fannie Arnaiz, her grandmother’s sister, married John Contreras, and built a few homes on the site where the Museum stands.

The first home was built out of lumber taken from the defunked Corona Hotel that was in a town called Kenworthy that used to exist in what is now known as the Garner Valley. When John and Fannie retired from farming they sold their property to her nephew Lincoln Hamilton. John and Fannie lived in Hemet after that on Hamilton Street. Fannie lived to the age of 104 and passed away in the year 2000. Lincoln Hamilton was Margret Wellman Jaenke’s father’s half brother. Lincoln met Louise Stone, his future wife, when she came up to visit the Cary family at their ranch here in Anza. She was a professor of music at Occidental College—an educated city girl. She had been told to take something to do on her visit to the ranch and was given a set of paints. She protested because she had never painted before, but took them anyway. When she arrived she was fascinated by the variety of wild flowers in the valley and set out to paint them one at a time. You will find her paintings in the Anza Library as well as the Contreras House.

Lincoln and Louise were married in 1949. They added on to the house because Lincoln was quite tall, about 6’6” or more and the bed room was too short to fit a bed of his size. They later built in 1965, the home that houses the main part of the museum.

After her husband passed in 1976, Louise Hamilton was left with an unpayable death tax of $75,000. With foreclosure of the ranch close at hand, Louise prayed. The answer came in the form of a new real estate agent, a man who had heard of her plight and worked out a deal to sell some of her property along Hwy 371. She now had not only the tax money she needed, but the money to live out her years.

Margaret often visited with her Aunt Louise after work. At the time Margaret still taught at Hamilton. She also belonged to the Historical Society. Her Aunt Louise knew Margaret wanted to someday start up a museum. She used to make lists of the things Margaret should put into this museum and wanted her to have the Contreras House, and she put it in writing. But the house had to be moved off the property because she felt a need to give back to God for all He had done for her. She died in the year 2000 at the age of 94. The property was willed to Campus Crusade for Christ and Pat Robertson. This was to fulfill her wish to pay back something to God.

After two years the Ranch was sold to Larry Miner of Empire Ag. When Margaret shared with Larry of her dream to create a museum at the original site of her Aunt’s home and her aunt’s wish for her was to have the Contreras house, he agreed to let her have it and keep it where it now stands. A meeting was held to work out the details.

“Our” museum survives on donations and is run by a staff of volunteers. It hosts two libraries: one full of research books on Anza and the area, which include catalogs of pictures, letters, and such, gathered from local families, and two, a genealogy library. Margaret Jaenke has written several books at the request of others and the published works can be found for very reasonable prices at the library. Let’s preserve the rich history of the past, here in Anza, at the Hamilton Museum.

We would not have the places we have called home if it wasn’t for those who made history before us. We would not have an Anza Valley to be proud of and to live in.