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The Marstons: A California Family - Part 8
Five Little Marstons
By Robin Lakin
September/October 2023
After returning from their honeymoon in 1878, George and Anna Marston shared his mother’s “battened cottage” at 6th and C Streets with his sister Mary, while his mother, Harriett Marston, and sister Lilla took a trip back east.
George wrote to Lilla on May 24, 1879, to confide, “I don’t suppose it is news to you that we expect a little baby in our household sometime in August. How strange it will seem, or how wonderful rather!”
That little baby, Mary Gilman Marston, was born in her grandmother’s home on August 7, 1879. George beamed with pride as he walked to work the morning after her birth, and regularly amused Anna by leaning over the bassinet, calling Mary his “little fellow, little fellow.”
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Left Mary Gilman Marston (on left), born August 7, 1879, in her grandmother Harriett Marston’s home at 6th and C Streets, and sister Elizabeth Le Breton Marston (Beth), born June 13, 1884, in the Judge Thomas Bush home, also on 6th Street. Center Arthur Hamilton Marston, George and Anna’s only son, was born September 30, 1881, in the Gates home on 8th Street. Right Harriet White Marston (on left) was born on January 4, 1889, and Helen Douglas Marston, the couple’s fifth and last child, followed on June 26, 1892. Both girls began life in the recently built Marston family home at 3rd and Ash Streets. |
 The George and Anna Marston family, c. 1897, at their Victorian home on 3rd and Ash Streets. Standing, left to right: Elizabeth (Beth), Mary, Harriet, and Arthur. Seated: Anna, George, and Helen. |
 The Marston family home at 3rd and Ash, c.1895. Standing on the porch at right is Anna Marston with Harriet. Helen is seated on the lower steps, and a playmate or cousin (possibly Katherine Burnham) is seated at left. All photos courtesy the Marston Family Collection |
The next year George rented the Gates home at 280 8th Street, where Arthur Hamilton Marston, the couple’s only son, made his debut on September 30, 1881.
Soon after, the family rented the Judge Thomas Bush home on Sixth Street, across the road from the homes of Anna’s parents, Lewis and Elizabeth Gunn, and Anna’s brother-in-law and sister, Charles and Elizabeth Hamilton, and their son, Tom. The little cousins Mary, Arthur, and Tom were constant companions.
Anna gave birth to her second daughter, Elizabeth Le Breton Marston (Beth), in the Bush home on June 13, 1884. George was now in the financial position to have a home of their own built at 1210 Ash Street, on Florence Hill. During the construction, the Marstons resided in the hilltop Florence Hotel, operated by W.W. Bowers, George’s peer who also moved to San Diego from Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.
The growing family’s inviting new Victorian home, with views of the city and San Diego Bay, was completed in 1885. Aside from San Diego’s economic bust in 1888, following a brief boom, the Marston’s domestic life was fairly blissful. The last two Marston children were born in this house. Harriet White Marston arrived on January 4, 1889, and Helen Douglas Marston on June 26, 1892. Baby Helen was almost 13 years younger than her oldest sibling, Mary.
According to Mary, “As children, we loved to watch the revolving light on Point Loma [lighthouse] at bedtime. Sometimes the sound of the bugle at the [Fort Rosecrans] barracks reached us.” The active Marston children played in the shade of a variety of trees in the yard, and climbed the pepper tree and the roof of their house, where they watched celebrations in Old Town and New Town. Aside from Helen’s bout with polio as an infant, the children enjoyed a charming childhood.
Little Beth had a favorite phrase that aptly sums up the Marston family’s experiences in their Victorian home, where they lived for 20 years: “Ain’t it good?”
Read the rest of the ongoing The Marstons: A California Story History Series.
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