The friendship of Parkie and Aunt Bessie grows

In April 1879, a weary doctor delivered Ysabel Grace Gonzalez, the first non-Native female born in Temecula. Her new life and the blossoming of spring infused him with much needed hope. He had just passed through a worrisome winter recovering from tuberculosis and had just buried his precious 1-year-old daughter on a hillside overlooking Temecula. Attending the birth of the healthy baby Ysabel encouraged him. He wrote euphorically to relatives in New York State, saying he had just made it in time to deliver the "very pretty and plump girl."

The name of the doctor and the site of his child's grave are long forgotten, but the legacy of the healthy baby lives. And, because of Ysabel and her friendship with a lonely boy named Horace, residents can understand what Temecula was like during her lifetime.

Ysabel joined her family which consisted of her mother, father and her 2-year-old brother Ormiston. Her mother, Grace Street Gonzalez, was an English governess for a rancher's children in Lake Elsinore when Ysabel's father Jose Maria Gonzalez met her. Jose was a businessman and accountant from Spain who came to the area with Juan Murrieta, a fellow Spaniard, in the early 1870s.

The Gonzalez' Temecula home was made from adobe and was surrounded by open land of the Temecula Rancho. Ysabel, or "Bessie," attended the one-room school in Temecula, before going to live with relatives in Mexico for high school where she was taught in what her father called the "old Spanish way." Ysabel became an accomplished pianist and a teacher. She returned to Temecula, and in 1905 she married her Temecula neighbor Ben Barnett, who became the local judge. Their home doubled as a courthouse for Judge Barnett.

Horace "Parkie" Parker came to town in 1924 when his father was assigned to the post of stationmaster for the Temecula train depot. Horace Parker loved going to Ben and "Aunt Bessie" Barnett's ranch to play with their boys Chester and Francis. The boys enjoyed their freedom and built tree houses, dammed the creek and did the fun and messy things that boys liked to do. Parkie savored the beans Bessie kept at a simmer on her stove for the ravenous boys. He later said Bessie welcomed him into their home when he was the "lonely, only child" of the stationmaster.

In time, Horace opened a successful veterinary practice in Costa Mesa, but his heart never left Temecula. In 1960, the middle-aged veterinarian started to visit the aging Bessie. Horace's parents had died and when he returned to the town of his boyhood, it was therapeutic to talk to Aunt Bessie about old times and old-timers of Temecula.

"Before I could open the door, I'd hear her cheery hail, 'Come in Horace...well, how's my boy today?'" he said.

Their visits provided a welcome distraction from the consuming responsibilities of his veterinary practice. Bessie regaled him for hours as he took copious notes from which he eventually published several booklets. Horace eventually quit his veterinary practice to write and research full time. Horace credited Bessie with being "a historical bridge between present day events and those that happened almost a century ago" and said she was the inspiration for his interest in Temecula history.

During their long talks, Bessie told Parker about her early memories of Old Town Temecula, when Front Street was a dirt road and there were only a few stores, a livery stable and a hotel. She told him about the granite quarry south of town that supplied stone for important buildings in Riverside, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Her stories would have entailed transportation of livestock and goods by rail and about Parkie's father, the station agent.

Bessie remembered when the Temecula Bank was built in 1914 and when it was robbed in 1930. She knew Louis and Ramona Wolf, Mac and Alice Machado, Juan and Adele Murrieta, the Weltys who owned the hotel, author Erle Stanley Gardner, his sidekick Sam Hicks and Joe Winkles who ran the bootleg bar.

She remembered when the Vails bought four Mexican ranchos in 1905 and how the Vail Ranch cattle dominated the area. Bessie's told stories about cowboys, businessmen and Hollywood friends who visited the Vail Ranch and hunted game throughout the area, while others vacationed at the Guenther's Murrieta Hot Springs Resort where Juan Murrieta once washed his sheep.

As Bessie talked, Parker passed through time and saw Temecula through her eyes. "... (The) plump baby girl was my old friend ... and it was she who inspired my research on the Temecula country ..."

Horace and his wife Leverne decided to move to Temecula. They bought the old Welty Hotel in 1960, a rundown, dirty, mouse-infested place that once catered to people who came to Temecula by train. It connected Parkie to his past. The Parkers and their two teen daughters renovated the circa 1890 building and its 24 rooms, making it into their home.

He wrote the Brush Country Journal syndicated newspaper column and several little books from the1950s through 1970s, sharing Bessie's memories and his research. By the time Bessie's days in Temecula ended, the lonely little stationmaster's son had made her proud. And now, the Barnetts and Parkers all reside near each other in the Temecula Cemetery.

The Parker's Hotel Temecula home is now a bed & breakfast. Ysabel's childhood home is the Molly Maids business in the center of the Adobe Plaza on Jefferson Avenue. Temecula's Ysabel Barnett Elementary School is named in honor of Bessie. The one-room school she attended has been lovingly restored and is located on Santiago Road.

Rebecca Marshall Farnbach is an author and co-author of several history books about the Temecula area. The books are available for purchase at the Little Temecula History Center or online from booksellers and at http://www.temeculahistoricalsociety.org. Horace Parker's books are also available online. Visit Rebecca's Amazon author page at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B01JQZVO5E. For more information, contact Rebecca Marshall Farnbach at [email protected].