175th Anniversary Heritage Quilt: Historic Buildings
- Kathy Brown
- Sep 3
- 5 min read
By Kathy Brown, Groveland Yosemite Gateway Museum/Southern Tuolumne County Historical Society
Irene Clark’s drawing of the former Groveland School House is definitely an important choice for the Groveland Heritage Quilt. Easily recognizable as a community bank, the building was constructed in 1916 to replace the old one-room school. Once again San Francisco’s early 1900s Hetch Hetchy project affected the growth of Groveland. The huge influx of workers to build O’Shaughnessy Dam brought a boom time with families arriving along with the work crews.
The first Groveland School, often referred to as “The Little Red Schoolhouse”, was known to exist by 1876 on or very near the site of this present day building. The earlier school was described as “a one room, barn-like affair, spacious and cool. Three rows of double desks were nailed to the floor.” It was complete with outhouse and well. Until the 1910s it was large enough to serve Groveland’s three Rs needs when most children were lucky to educated to 8th grade. By the 1910s the wooden schoolhouse had also become very time-worn.
According to Tuolumne County Historian Carlo De Ferrari, the citizens of Groveland anticipated the increased need for a larger school due to the Hetch Hetchy population explosion. In 1914 they passed a $3000 bond issue to fund a new school building. A two-room school with twin entries and gables, a red tile roof and a bell tower was erected on the site of the former “Little Red Schoolhouse.” It opened for classes in 1916. When a Christmas Eve Ball was held to raise funds to purchase additional instructional materials the crowd was so large the affair had to be transferred to the Opera Hall across from the Groveland Hotel.
By the 1950s and 1960s the one-room school houses in the surrounding area had closed and the children were bussed to Groveland for their education. The 1916-built Groveland School ceased to function as a school when Tenaya Elementary was built on the far east side of town in 1964. In 1969 the former school became a promotional office for Boise Cascade during the development of Pine Mountain Lake. It was painted red though that school building was never known to be red when it functioned as a school. Information on the PML development and tours of the lots available were launched from the former school. Afterwards, and to present day, the over 100 year old building has helped serve the community’s banking needs.
The Groveland area is fortunate to have several Neoclassical Craftsman style homes, often called Queen Ann Victorians, grace its Main Street. They were constructed during the height of the area’s hard rock mining era in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The houses are credited to builder Edward Cobden who was only in his late 20s or early 30s when he was chosen by successful local families to construct their new homes. Skilled carpenters for many of Cobden’s homes were Ed and Charlie Harper aided by Thomas and Matthew Coyle.
This two-story Simmons Home has served as the All Seasons Inn Bed and Breakfast in recent years. Margaret Coyle Simmons was 60, had raised nine children, and was twice widowed when her loving sons Thomas and Walter Coyle had the home built for her in 1899 by Cobden.
Margaret Lenan, born in Ireland in 1839, came to New York in 1857 where she met and married Matthew Coyle c.1859. In 1863 the family was living in Moccasin Creek, and by 1866 they had five children. Sadly, in 1867, Margaret was left widowed when Matthew died of miner’s consumption, a common lung ailment caused by breathing mineral dust. Suddenly faced with supporting five children, Margaret took a job as housekeeper for Robert Simmons, a farmer, in nearby Deer Flat. Margaret and Robert married in 1869 and together they had four more children. They had been married 23 years when Robert passed away in 1892.
By 1900 she moved into the home her sons had built for her, which became known as the Simmons Home. She lived there until her death in 1929 at age 90. Her obituary in the Union Democrat read, “‘Grandma’ Simmons as she was familiarly known by neighbors and intimate friends, was noted for her kind disposition and her liberal hospitality. She often boarded school teachers of the Groveland School and always treated them with uniform courtesy. …all of her children loved their mother. A kind hearted and beloved woman has passed away.”
After Margaret’s death her home was a private family residence. In the 1980s it served for a while as offices. Restored in 1999, the two-story Simmons home was lovingly converted into an “artfully decorated inn.”
The Thomas Reid House of this Irene Clark print stands on Groveland’s main street near the historic Old Jail and its lovely garden. It is another example of Groveland’s turn of the century architecture homes built by Edward Cobden and the Coyle and Harper brothers. It was designed and built in 1903 for Thomas Rathburn Reid, a successful local miner who was born 1856 in Garrote. His father, Thomas C. Reid, came ‘around the horn’ in 1848, arriving in the Groveland area during the Gold Rush.
Thomas R. Reid grew up in Garrote and was guiding mule trains of tourists to Yosemite Valley at only 13. He worked at his father’s Rhode Island Mine, located north of Laveroni Park at a young age. As a successful pocket miner, he purchased the Washington Hotel in 1882 from Ben Savory for $1,000. That same year, Thomas R. Reid married Anna Jones, whose parents also arrived in Garrote during the Gold Rush. In 1884 he purchased the Groveland Hotel. By 1887 he had the run-down Savory Hotel dismantled and sold the property. Thomas and Anna ran the Groveland Hotel for only a few short years. In an interview at age 90 Anna stated, “My husband thought operating a hotel in those days was too hard for a woman.”
In 1903 Thomas had the Reid Home built for his family. Thomas and Anna’s oldest son Thomas Cameron Reid, lived in the house from an early age. Four other younger children were brought up in the house as well. The youngest, Eugene, was born in the house and lived in Groveland all his life. In her old age Anna proudly told interviewers, “The original Thomas C. Reid [her husband’s father] adobe house still stands just out of town and the orchard trees bear fruit. My son’s name is Thomas also. For over one hundred years now, there has been a Thomas Reid in Groveland.”
The Reid House looks dissimilar today from what it was 123 years ago when Thomas had it built. Originally the house had a balcony along the front and east side of the second floor. After the house was sold out of the family a square tower with a hip roof was added to the east side of the house in the 1980s. The Reid House served as a real estate office in 1980s, and a dental office and Serendipity’s original Groveland store in early 2000s.
