Georgiana Wallman Dolcini Matsuyama bio

Georgiana Wallman (Dolcini) Matsuyama

Georgiana is the central character of this research project. All essays and biographies relate back to her. She is the hub; various essays and supporting materials are the spokes of the wheel of her story. Essays related to Georgiana include biographies of her Prussian immigrant father, George Wallman and Japanese immigrant second husband, Frank Atsuo Matsyuama. The bio of her son George Dolcini includes an exploration of the exact identity of her first husband, who we know was a Dolcini just not which one. There are also essays on the Dolcini adobe, Japanese internment and its effect on members of the half-Japanese Matsuyama family, German immigrants to the Bay Area and Sonoma, a cast of characters and a list of references.

Georgiana Wallman was born in California in 11/28/1886 and lived most of her adult life in Sonoma. She died in Sebastopol 2/ 3/1978 at 91 years old. Her obituary states “she was the matriarch of the Wallman and Dolcini families, longtime ranchers on Broadway in Sonoma.” The obit goes on to say: “For many years the families shipped their fruit and produce to the Bay Area and cities throughout the U.S. The high quality of these products gave the cultivators the reputation of being outstanding farmers. When she was younger Mrs. Matsuyama actively participated in the operation of the Broadway ranch.”

obit: survived by daughters Anna Towata, Alameda, Alice Kemper, Sonoma, Ginger Masouka, SF; sons George Dolcini, Sonoma, Frank Wallman, SF, George Wallman, Sonoma, Lewis Charles Wallman, Santa Rosa, Alvin J. Wallman, Sonoma and brother George Wallman, Sonoma; 20 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.

Services held in the chapel of Bates, Evans and Fehrensen. Private inurnment was at Chapel of the Chimes, Santa Rosa.

Georgiana was an interesting and dynamic woman at the crossroads of the largest wave of immigration in US history, 1880- 1920. Her father was a German speaking Prussian immigrant (see George Wallman bio) and her first husband was Swiss Italian or first generation Swiss Italian (see George Dolcini bio) and her second husband was a Japanese immigrant (see Frank A. Matsuyama bio). California’s frontier era was drawing to a close just as Georgiana was born. (see Germans in CA essay)

Georgiana had her first child by a man with Dolcini as a surname. This man’s exact identity is unknown. Her first son George Dolcini (see George Dolcini bio) was conceived at about the time of her marriage to Mr. Dolcini.

At six years past George Dolcini’s birth, in 1912, Georgiana divorced, separated from or survived Mr. Dolcini and married Frank Atsuo Matsuyama. The local paper took note: “SONOMA WOMAN MARRIES JAPANESE”, Mrs. Georgiana Wallman Dolcini, daughter of George Wallman, Sonoma Valley farmer, married (Frank) Atsuo Matsuyama (married out of town), formerly of Sonoma and brother of Atsuo Matsuyama, “well known fruit dryer residing off Broadway in the southern limits of town”. (see Frank A. Matsuyama bio) Said Georgiana, “I tried a white man first and did not like him and will now try the Japanese”.

Far away from 1912 and not knowing all relevant details, there remain pertinent unknowns concerning Frank’s ‘brother’ and a number of other dates, facts and figures about Georgiana’s life. The best that can be done is to note where there is conjecture and to try not to impute details.

The Certificate of Marriage shows Georgiana and Frank being married in Vancouver, WA on 1/17/1912, just across the Columbia River from Portland, OR. Atsuo Matsuyama marries Georgiana Dolcini.

The next twenty years of Georgiana’s life after her 1912 marriage to Frank led her through World War One, Prohibition, the Roaring Twenties, the Dustbowl, the Great Depression and World War Two. During this time all of the seven Matsuyama children were born. (see Alvin J. Wallman essay)

The 1930 Census shows Georgiana as married, head of household, parents born in Germany, home value at $7000, household with a radio, 19 years old at first marriage, no college education, no occupation, can read and write, born in California. Frank’s census and other records show Frank as residing in San Francisco from at least 1917 to 1942. He probably commuted back to Sonoma on weekends. Georgiana was listed as head of household in Sonoma probably because the California Alien Land Laws of 1913 and 1920 prohibited the Japanese Frank from owning land and that Georgiana was actually running the farm while Frank pursued a professional career in the Bay Area urban core.

In 1942 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and everything changed for Japanese Americans, immigrants and their families. (See Matsuyama internment essay).

In 1942, prior to the internment order, at the urging of daughter Alice, Frank went to Denver to avoid internment; he worked there with the Denver Police Department. Georgiana stayed in Sonoma with the two youngest, Virginia and Alvin and also older son George F. Matsuyama, who was trying to enlist in the military. The upshot, even though Georgiana was a US citizen, her half-Japanese children were taken away and made to stay in horse stalls at Tanforan Racetrack in San Mateo. The kids were able to get out in a few months and the local community was supportive, nevertheless, the internment was a shocking turn of events, a body blow to multiple immigrant dreams in the process of being realized.

After WW2 came the Korean war, 1950s conformity, the post war economic boom, 1960s civil rights, labor, women’s, environmental and union movements, the Vietnam war, Watergate, and with the 1970s the beginning of Americas’ decline during the Carter presidency.

Here you have one person bridging a dynamic period of US and world history, the first and second Industrial Revolutions, the Gilded Age, the technological and territorial flowering of Western civilization; these changes were profound and substantial. Georgiana’s life spanned horse and buggy to a man on the moon. (see Dolcini Adobe essay) The technological changes alone have been astounding.  She looked back on California’s frontier and pioneer eras and ended up in modern California, one of the world’s biggest economies and cutting edge cultural forces.

Sonoma itself went through many changes in the course of Georgiana’s life, transportation-wise from horse, wagon and sailboat to steamboat, railroad, car, truck, the Golden Gate, Carquinez Strait and Bay Bridges. She came of age during the local Resort Era and the ascendance of mixed agriculture in the valley. As Prohibition and the Depression put a damper on artisanal farming, trends in industrial agriculture worked to diminish the role of family farming nationwide. Georgiana lived these changes, bridged these gaps.

Sonoma Valley went from successful small farmstead holdings and agricultural suppliers to the Bay Area urban core, to not being able to compete with industrial agriculture from the Central Valley. The dam and water delivery system developed in California between the Sierra Nevada and the Great Central Valley turned the state into a world-class economic powerhouse but left Sonoma in a backwater of small-scale means of production.

Sonoma was located off main transportation routes, crops of fruit and nuts were labor intensive and Sonoma’s economy did not reap the benefits of the overall post WW 2 economic boom.

Georgiana’s family and ranch was perfectly positioned to survive and perhaps thrive in an era otherwise characterized in Sonoma by economic doldrums. By one decade she missed the vineyard industry’s ascendance in Sonoma Valley and wine tourism rising as the prime driver of the economy. Who would have thought Sonoma would go on to become the country’s most popular tourist destination? Being off the beaten track turned out to be a plus.

Georgiana saw Sonoma Valley go from 100% reliance on surface and ground water to valley groundwater depletion, the planning and construction of Warm Springs dam and Lake Sonoma. She must have noted this process of western water politics but didn’t quite live to see Russian River water pumped into Sonoma Valley. She grew up with windmills and water towers. Luckily for her ranch, the proximity of Nathanson Creek provided access to surface water.

Her father George Wallman migrated from Prussia to California in the mid 1860’s, during a frontier era still fresh with Gold Rush buzz. As Richard Henry Dana presciently observed in the 1830s, ‘what an enterprising people could do with this land.’ The word was out and Germanic people fused with the Protestant work ethic came at once for opportunity and to escape war and economic doldrums.

California had gone in the previous five decades from being controlled by Spain and Mexico to the United States. The Mexican Revolution gave way to the Mexican-American War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, mountain men, the Bear Fag revolt, Fremont’s battalion, Stevenson’s Regiment, the Gold Rush and finally California statehood in the USA. Just prior to Georgiana’s birth was the US Civil War.

Through it all I get the sense Georgiana was a force to be reckoned with, a strong woman of spunk and character. Men get most of the attention in Sonoma’s history and it is only right that a character such as Georgiana gets some recognition. She was a pioneer daughter, property owner, a successful farm/ ranch manager, head of household, mother of eight, wife of two different immigrant men, matriarch of a multicultural, multiracial family; a special and interesting person of note in Sonoma and California history.

During Georgiana’s life there are more than a number of Index-Tribune ads, notes, blurbs and random details about Georgiana and her family. For example: 12/10/21 I-T For sale Ford auto body with top complete, one turkey gobbler, one nanney goat, one pair Goodyear rubber hip boots, one week-old Jersey bull calf (Burris stock), Mrs. Matsuyama. Broadway, Sonoma    

Many items like this can be found in the Sonoma Index-Tribune historical archives. The process of finding these details is cumbersome and time consuming. After the low hanging fruit is taken further search feels like looking for a needle in a haystack. There are certainly I-T diamonds in the rough waiting to be found.

I hope to find pictures, stories and much more information as I pursue an interest in Georgiana’s family. The project essays completed to this point will serve as a baseline to which to add anything new.  

This is an open source project.  Anyone can chip in. My purpose is to serve Georgiana’s story. At this point I’m up against a wall many historians and biographers get to: no more information. The past is so quiet! No one remains to speak and fill in critical bits of info. All that is left are the sands of time slipping though my fingers, a detail here or there left as the only representation of full days and lives in a dynamic and interesting period of California history.

Georgiana’s Family:

George Wallman, immigrant father, 1851 - 3/3/1922

Catherine Wallman, immigrant mother 1860- @ 1902

Annie S. Wallman, step mother, born @ 1868 in CA

Georgiana Wallman, 11/28/1886- 2/3/1978

George J. Wallman, brother, 1892-1981

Lena Osterheft Wallman, in-law aunt, 7/22/1889 – 5/5/1955

Frances Rubke, niece; daughter of George J. and Lena

Ella Wallman Skinner, sister, 1888- 1969; John and Milfred, children of Ella

______ Dolcini, 1^st husband: Joseph, Arnold, Alvino, Emedio are likely candidates

Frank Atsuo Matsuyama, 2^nd husband, 9/28/1886 - 2/10/1957

George Dolcini, son, 8/28/1906 - 9/25/1988

Frank Matsuyama Wallman, son 1913 - 6/26/1989

Alice Hana Matsuyama Kemper, daughter 1915-1985

Charles Kemper, son-in-law, Alice’s husband, German immigrant

Georgiana (‘Ana’) U. Matsuyama Towata, daughter in between Alice and ‘Little George’ George F. (‘Little George’) Matsuyama Wallman, son b. 1919 (11/20/1918 – 4/17/2002)

Louis (Lewis) Charles Matsuyama Wallman, son b. 1920

Alvin Joseph (Matsuyama) Wallman, son 1927- 2005

Virginia ‘Ginger’ Matsuyama Masuoka, daughter b. 1932

Mountain Cemetery head stone markers:

Georgiana W. Matsuyama, mother 1886-1978, (41 years old at birth of Alvin J.)

Frank Atsuo Matsuyama, husband, 1886-1957

George Wallman, brother, 1892-1981, WW1

George Dolcini, son, 1906-1988, (born 6 years before marriage to Frank)

Alvin Joseph Wallman, son 1927-2005, (born 15 years after marriage to Frank, 15 years old at time of move to Denver prior to Relocation)

George Wallman, grandfather, 1851-1922, (age 35 at time of Georgiana’s birth)

Lena Wallman 1889-1955 is buried in the Mountain Cemetery as Lena Heilman; since her first husband George J. Wallman lived until 1981 and her presumed 2nd husband Ludwig Heilman lived from1889-1936, then Lena had left George J. Wallman by at least 1936

Annie L. Wallman 1886-1959 this person could be related to the George Wallman family; she was the same age as Georgiana, could be an illegitimate daughter of George or a niece

Valley Cemetery headstones:

Alice and Charles Kemper

Frank, Louis, Little George, Georgiana (Anna Towata), Virginia, Ginger Masuoka) are buried somewhere else. Their lives seem to have passed away from Sonoma although Frank, as eldest appeared to settle the estate at the end. Frank the son was killed in a 6/26/1989 car accident near Bakersfield.

Georgiana’s social security number: 567-78-1091

Project references:

see the accompanying list