The Toothpick by Henry Petroski

Author:Henry Petroski [Petroski, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49200-5
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

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The Tragic Heiress

AT THE TIME that things were coming to a head between trustee Oscar Hersey and the siblings who were the beneficiaries of the Estate of Charles Forster, Charlotte, the eldest, was living in San Diego, California. She had left Maine and relocated there most likely because of Nathan Watts, a bachelor member of local society who was sometimes described as a “capitalist” engaged in real estate transactions and other financial dealings. Nathan appears to have traveled east for an extended period in 1893, at which time he may have met Charlotte, who was then living in her father's handsome house on Park Street in Portland.1 As much as she may have liked the house that toothpicks bought, she also may have wished to distance herself from such a common business.

Charlotte's entree into southern California society might have been given a significant leg up by her surname, and its evocation of John Forster, who played a considerable role in the history of the region.2 He was born in England in 1815 and came to California at about the age of eighteen, settling at first in Los Angeles. He married Isadora Pico, sister of Pio Pico, who would become the last Mexican governor of California. After about ten years in Los Angeles, Forster moved down the coast to San Juan Capistrano. He acquired what had been the mission lands at that place and would live there for twenty years, coming by association to be known as Don Juan. In 1845 Don Juan Forster was granted by Mexico the twenty-six-thousand-acre Rancho de la Nation—the National Rancho, located just south of San Diego—making him one of the largest landowners in the area. (The National Rancho, consisting of forty-two square miles of land and six miles of waterfront, would eventually be developed into National City.) When Forster sold La Nation he bought the Santa Margarita Rancho from his brother-in-law. Though he would die relatively poor, Forster was “for many years a man of great wealth and lived and entertained in generous style.”3 He was someone to whom Charlotte would certainly not object to being linked.

Nathan Watts, who had a “deep interest” in local history and in preserving the recollections of its old settlers, would surely have known about John Forster, his extensive land holdings, and his erstwhile wealth.4 Perhaps it was Nathan who suggested to Charlotte that her surname would open doors to southern California society, and that prospect may have further encouraged her to go there in the first place. The misunderstanding that would later arise about her father's being an Englishman may have stemmed from a confusion, not abated by Charlotte, of the California Forster who emigrated from England in the early nineteenth century with the New England Forsters whose roots went back to colonial times.

Charlotte ostensibly moved to San Diego “to regain her strength after a severe attack of typhoid fever.” She was accompanied by a companion, who soon married a plumber; Charlotte's subsequent solitude may have intensified her dream of becoming married herself.

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