After years of working in museums I have found that sometimes the most ordinary objects are the ones that tell the most extraordinary stories. On the beige paint-speckled surface, this rocking chair at the Historic Courthouse Museum is indeed rather ordinary, if finely crafted. Despite its threadbare appearance, this chair provides us with one of the last remaining connections we have to an eccentric family of early Lake County: the Floyds.
From a swashbuckling captain in the Confederate Navy to a penniless miner at Borax Lake in Lake County, by the age of 25 Dick Floyd had already lived a full life. The recent war and its aftermath had taken him around the world and had finally deposited him in San Francisco in 1866. Dick worked for a few short years in the borax mine until he finally returned to San Francisco and to the sea he so loved. Instead of carting illicit cargo stolen from Union frigates, he now ferried passengers up and down the Pacific coast to Victoria as the captain of a ship. While on one of these voyages, he met a young Cora Lyons, the daughter of Henry Augustus Lyons, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court of California. Dick’s verve for life and boundless energy—not to mention his swarthy good looks—entranced Cora and in September of 1871, the two were married at Trinity Church in San Francisco.
Just two years after leaving Lake County an unemployed bachelor, Dick returned as a honeymooner—on his arm a lovely young bride. Back home in San Francisco, he had a large house and a bank account of $20,000 given to him as a wedding present from Cora’s father. By 1874 Cora had given birth to a baby girl, whom Dick insisted they name Harry — after her now late grandfather. With his death, Cora’s father had left his rather large estate to Cora and Dick, who decided to invest some of it into 300 acres along the northeastern shores of Clear Lake, near modern-day Lucerne.
Over the next few years Dick would meticulously sculpt the land into a veritable paradise, creating a flamboyant reflection of himself. He surrounded a concrete fountain capable of sending a plume of water 75 feet in the air with trees imported from around the world. Monkey, magnolia, acacia, palm, pepper and pomegranate trees intermingled with the native oaks and manzanitas to create a dense, if artificially arranged, jungle. Within this garden Dick built a sprawling house, designed in the shape of a ship. Such a wonderland of amusement and repose needed an equally fanciful name: Kono Tayee, or Mountain Point.
From 1874 until Dick’s death in 1890, Kono Tayee provided the Floyds a retreat from the congestion of San Francisco. Summers were spent sipping mint juleps on the covered porch, strolling through the expansive gardens, boating on Clear Lake and playing host to the elite of Lake County. Dying herself only months after her husband, Cora left 17 year old Harry the entire Floyd estate in the spring of 1891. As a child, Harry had spent her summers enacting theatricals to the delight of her family and friends; she was a lover of Dumas and would spend hours, even as a teenager, playing fantasy among the thickets of the estate. Now as an adult, Harry continued to enjoy summers at Kono Tayee, until her own death in 1904
We will never know what it was like to walk among the magnolias of Kono Tayee, or to sit gazing out at Mt. Konocti from the shaded porch of their home; the entire estate was bulldozed in 1965. The few items to survive, like this rocking chair, were bought at auction and donated to the museum in the 1960’s. This is why museums are so important: we collect objects not for their aesthetic appeal, but for their tangible connection to history. With them, we are able to delve into the otherwise murky waters of the past, with the hopes of glimpsing—if even for just the span of a news article—the colorful characters of history.
Tony Pierucci is Curator of Museums for Lake County
