Ahlquist Edward Fenn
I recently had an occasion to attend an online presentation about the redwoods of California, presented by researcher Mark Vande Pol. One of his slides was the picture below of Glenwood, California, bearing the name of Edward Fenn.
I happened to have met Eward Fenn, and I am pretty sure he did not take the picture, because he would have been 12 years old in 1922, but I suspect that his father, Albert Fenn, might have been the photographer. The Fenn family lived in the Patchen area and had decided to move to Glenwood at about that time, leaving young Edward at Patchen to live with the Widow Laddick for the balance of that school year. Seeing that picture reminded me of the afternoon, more than a decade earlier, that Edward visited Patchen for the last time.
One day in the early Spring of 2011, I received an email from an address containing the words “Old Man”. His message asked whether I knew anything about the Northwest corner of where Mt. Charlie Road dead-ends into, what he referred to as “The County Road.” I was aware of that name being used in the past to describe what is now the Old Santa Cruz Highway, so I answered that I had lived on that corner for over 40 years. When he asked if he and his family could visit, I said, “Of course”, and we settled on a date and time.
A few weeks passed, and on the appointed day, a car pulled into our parking lot, and the “Old Man” of the email got out and introduced himself as Norman Fenn. He was probably in his early 60s at the time, but not someone whom we might think of as being a particularly old man. No sooner than he and I had finished our pleasantries, the real “Old Man” emerged from the back seat. He stood tall and proud in his tailored wool tweed sports coat with hat and tie to match, having been born in 1910, made him 102 at the time. We spent the next few hours enjoying his company and listening to Mr. Fenn describe his memories of growing up in these mountains, remembering Harry Ryan and others who had been legendary pioneers in this area. He reminisced about his fondness for the Widow Laddick, who in 1923 lived in what is now one of my many workshops. Edward, being 13 years old at the time, stayed in that house with her until the school year had finished.
We think that there were four buildings on the property at the time – one being a large two-story house next to the road, where the Laddick family lived prior to Mr. Laddick’s passing. Immediately adjoining that house on the north side was another smaller single-story house where The Widow lived, and where Edward stayed with her in 1923. It seems that she had moved there earlier to avoid the cost of heating the larger house in the winter. The third building was the Post Office, but I don’t think Edward had any memory of that building. The fourth was barn located some 20 yards behind the two houses to the West, but Edward’s memory was not clear about the barn building either, so it is possible it was actually built by Claud Castor, after he purchased the land, sometime between 1923 and 1940. The Post Office, having been built in 1874, burned to the ground in 1958 along with the big house. [i]A current neighbor, Karl Von Ahnen, remembers that event as a teenager.
Edward passed away a year later, so we are all delighted to have been fortunate enough to spend that afternoon with him.
By: Jim
Written: December 20, 2023
Published: pending
Revised: July 2025
footnotes
| ↑i | A current neighbor, Karl Von Ahnen, remembers that event as a teenager. |
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