near the Hagmaier Ranch. Seaver, 35, was a dairyman with $1000 worth of 

 assets, and lived on the southern portion of his sister's land with his wife Annie 

 and infant daughter Charlotte. By this time the Randalls had improved 740 

 acres of land, with the entire ranch valued at $18,000. The Randall dairy 

 produced 5000 pounds of butter that year, and Seaver made 3000 pounds. 

 Between the two dairy ranches on the property, there were 72 milk cows, 50 

 other cattle, 52 pigs and 11 horses. Mrs. Randall's farm produced 65 bushels of 

 winter wheat, 600 bushels of oats and 75 tons of hay; Seaver grew 100 pounds 

 of potatoes. The figures show that Mrs. Randall, with the help of her family, 

 had indeed developed a prosperous dairy farm. 60 



The five Randall children grew up in a sort of idyll at the ranch, the 

 death of their father notwithstanding, riding to the nearby Olema School at 

 Five Brooks on horseback, gathering huckleberries in the surrounding woods 

 and then drying and preserving them by the bushel. The children were no 

 doubt a large factor in their mother's prosperity in the dairy business. Oldest 

 son William, known as Willie and later W. J., was born at Murphy's Camp, 

 California on April 1, 1852. He attended boarding school in Petaluma and was 

 eight years old when his father was killed; he then attended local schools and 

 graduated from Heald's Business College in San Francisco in 1873. He 

 apparently ran his uncle Daniel Seaver's ranch up the road for many years, and 

 married Abbie Perham in 1879. William left the ranch around 1881 to run his 

 own dairy businesses on Point Reyes, including the famous Pierce Ranch and O. 

 L. Shafter's L Ranch. Raymond Randall, born at Angel's Camp in the Oregon 

 gold country while his father was mining there, took over the Randall business 

 in the 1870s after his marriage to Harriet "Hattie" Weeks, a neighbor to the 

 south. The couple had six daughters while living on the ranch, Lottie, Myra, 

 Elizabeth, Helen, Sadie, Fanny and Aileen. The family referred to the place as 

 the Bell Ranch, because the cows wore bells. Raymond's sister Mary became a 

 schoolteacher, beginning at the Garcia School in Olema in 1879 and then 

 teaching at the nearby Olema School at Five Brooks in 1883. Mary was 

 married to M. H. Clifford of San Francisco in her mother's house in 1885. 

 Oldest sister Elizabeth married P. Tripp of San Francisco in 1886. 61 



60 



'Population and Agricultural Schedules, 9th U. S. Census, 1870. 



61 Letter to "Dear Cousin Mary" from Fannie Randall, October 1863, in the Randall Papers at 

 Bancroft Library; Marin County Journal. July 17, 1879, September 20 and November 1, 1883 and 

 April 10, 1884; Marin Journal. November 26, 1885 and November 26, 1886; letter to Jack Mason 



150 



