Mrs. Helen Woodbury of Los Angeles

On 10 Dec 1907, Mrs. F. E. Woodbury of Milwaukee checked into the Hayward Hotel in Los Angeles, California (shown here).

Given our present concerns about privacy, it’s eye-opening to see that 120 years ago the Los Angeles Times was reporting all the new arrivals in the city for any local to read about. (The paper also reported the names of people from LA registered at New York hotels.)

Online newspaper databases also mean I can track Helen G. Woodbury traveling halfway across the country from her husband, the mining engineer Frederick E. Woodbury. That fact gives me yet more pause.

Helen must have enjoyed southern California because a year later the 10 November Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported that she had commissioned a one-story home at 1624 Van Ness Avenue (shown below).

The US Census for 1910 found Helen living in Los Angeles while Frederick continued to live in Milwaukee.

In March 1910 the Los Angeles Times listed “Mrs. Helen Woodbury” among the Angelenos checked into San Francisco hotels. In February 1911 the Los Angeles Examiner listed “Mrs. F. E. Woodbury…of Los Angeles” registered at the Casa Loma Hotel in Redlands.

In 1914, after Frederick Woodbury was killed at the Newport Mine, Milwaukee newspapers variously stated that “Mrs. Woodbury has been living in California because of her health, while Mr. Woodbury made his home in the Milwaukee club,” and Mrs. Woodbury was “spending the winter” in California.

Helen Woodbury may indeed have been spending only part of the year in California—all the newspaper mentions of her there come from the months November through March. But during these years, the name of “Mrs. F. E. Woodbury” stopped appearing in the Milwaukee papers at all.

Whether Helen initially went to California for her health, whether she was there for the whole year or merely a large part, whether Helen and Frederick had made an explicit agreement about their marriage, they definitely appear to have lived separately in the early 1910s.

TOMORROW: The drunken chauffeur.