10 thoughts on “Bit o’ California History”

1. Hyrum’s daughter, I presume?

2. Don Carlos’ daughter. His widow married Joseph as one of his plural wives. She later married William Pickett who then moved his family to California.

3. Was Don Carlos murdered? I don’t recall that.

4. Nope. Died of malaria a few months after Josephine’s birth. The reference to her father in the newspaper article is either a reference to her step-father or a simple mistake.

5. INA COOLBRITH WAS DON CARLOS’ DAUGHTER??? Holy moley.

6. Thanks for fielding the questions, JR. Yeah, I’m sure it was a simple mistake on the cartoonist’s part — he should have called them both uncles.

   Unexpected, isn’t it, Jean, if you knew of Ina as a poet before knowing her family connection. 🙂

7. Jean: my mind was blown, too, when I found out– but then I figured that all the cool kids must have known before I did. It’s nice to have company. 😉

8. At the time of the martyrdom, Hyrum was her uncle and Joseph was her stepfather. Maybe that’s what Parks was referring to.

9. Except that I would not expect polygamous relationships to be well enough known to appear in a source like this, or, if they were known, to have been dignified by identifying Joseph ask “father” and not “so-called father” or worse.

10. There was a session on Ina at this year’s AML Conference. Aleta George, her latest biographer, concludes that the name change was not an attempt to distance herself from identification with Mormons, but a personal redefinition following a painful divorce from a controlling and physically abusive husband at the age of 20, since she continued to go by Josephine Smith until her marriage (long after the martyrdom and her family settling in CA) and then switched to Ina Coolbrith following the divorce.

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