FROM A 2000 PIONEER PAGES ARTICLE BY ANGUS MACLEAN
AND BILL DELLARD

 

Birma Still MacLean
DABIRMA STILL
MACLEAN IN 1904

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BACK TO PIONEER PAGES

 

PAGE 2

IN 1904 Birma Still married John MacLean, a local ranch hand. As a wedding present, Mr. Upham gave Birma a new folding Kodak camera which made postcard size prints. This inspired Birma to photograph various country scenes, print them on postcard size paper and tint them with transparent water colors. She placed them on display in the La Panza post office and store. Many travelers and neighbors purchased her pictures to mail as postcards.

Birma also experimented with taking photos of California wild flowers growing in the neighboring area from the Carrisa Plains to Santa Margarita. Birma met Miss Alice Eastwood, and authority on plants native to California, when she visited friends on the Carrisa Plains. Birma sent prints of the flowers she had photographed to Miss Eastwood to identify. Birma wrote this identification on the negatives to insure a more permanent record of some 130 flowers and plants native to the area.


Miner's Rose

John and Birma MacLean moved to the Santa Rosa/Petaluma area in 1908 and one of their neighbors was the brother of noted naturalist Luther Burbank. Through this brother, the MacLeans met Burbank who became quite interested in Birma's wild flower photographs. As a result, the folks back at La Panza gathered seeds, roots and bulbs of native plants for Burbank, who in return sent to La Panza various plants he was experimenting on in Santa Rosa. He needed to test these plants under the hot, dry conditions of La Panza. The plants included early versions of the "plumcot," several varieties of plums and prunes, spineless cactus and assorted vegetables and flowers including an early version of the Shasta daisy.

While her husband Jack MacLean worked as a Certified Public Accountant for the cities of Santa Rosa and Petaluma, Birma once again her attention to photography. She took photos of public buildings and local scenes of interest, printing them on postcard paper and coloring some of them. She placed these photographic postcards on display in local stores and sold a fairly large number. She also went door to door, taking photos of people, their houses, children and pets, making prints to order. During this time in Petaluma, Birma took over 500 photographs of public buildings in the area. Many of Birma's photos were printed in the Petaluma newspaper at the time of the Petaluma centennial celebration.

In 1908 Petaluma was a sprawling, rural community with homes on small acreage for large gardens or orchards and space for chickens, pigs, horses and even cows. This meant that Birma, going from house to house, would cover several miles in seeking customers for her photographic skills. We can see that her door-to-door photography was only sporadically successful from her diary of daily happenings. Her entry for November 26, 1908, states: "Walked eight or ten miles. Took a few pictures." But she loved photography and kept at it, for it did provide a small income.


CONTINUE TO PAGE 3