Author to sign copies of
‘Images of America – Morgan Hill’ today
If one picture is worth a thousand words, then Usha Sharma’s new book “Images of America – Morgan Hill” is worth an entire dictionary.
Dozens of photographs unearthed from the Historical Museum and from old-time families with her historical accounts give Sharma’s readers a peek into Morgan Hill’s past, proving that even a little town can have a history that resonates.
“As you turn the pages of the book, you can imagine you are turning the pages of history,” Sharma said.
She found portraits of the founding Murphy family; town namesake, Hiram Morgan Hill and his wife, Diana Murphy Hill; nurseryman Leonard Coates, who shaped the local prune industry so the fruit became a nationwide powerhouse for agriculture; George Edes, who founded the first newspaper – now The Morgan Hill Times; Sada Coe, who herded cattle with cowhands and gave us Henry Coe State Park, and many others.
Most still have descendants living in town.
“From the faces and images of the people of Morgan Hill and from their individual stories, I learned that they threaded into one another,” Sharma said. “Their stories run together in ways known and unknown, to weave the story of the whole town.”
Photos of downtown provide a timeline of development, from the earliest 1880s wooden buildings familiar to fans of Western movies, to the stucco construction of the Votaw building, built in 1905 on the corner of Monterey Road and East Second Street. Votaw, too, is an old family name.
Moving on from people and places to things, Sharma included a chapter called “Festivals, Fourths and Downtown Fun” to show an early rodeo and truly historic Fourth of July parades. As always, El Toro Mountain, still called Murphy’s Peak by some, hovers in the background, and the railroad – so critical to the town’s development – is ever present.
“The photographs astonished me,” Sharma said. “The Morgan Hill Historical Society had been saving them carefully for decades. We are fortunate to have images of the town that date to the late 1800s, revealing the faces and figures of early pioneers.”
Sharma said she was encouraged to write the book by the city’s upcoming 2006 centennial, and by Cinda Meister, co-owner of BookSmart, where Sharma was a staff member.
“I leaned on her,” Meister said. “I knew she had a book in her and I’m glad it turned out so well – for her and for Morgan Hill.”
But the idea to write about her community came even before Meister’s urging. Sharma began to explore the meaning of community while living near Washington, D.C. and experiencing the local effects of the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Both my heart and my community were impacted,” Sharma said. The longing to understand her community remained after she and her husband moved to Morgan Hill in 2002.
“I was intrigued by Morgan Hill’s mix of small town life juxtaposed with hundreds of acres of wilderness – that somehow this balance between the opposing forces of development and preservation was being impossibly held at the growing edge of burgeoning Silicon Valley,” she said. “… I felt the community had seen a lot of changes but had withstood time, somehow.”
As is common with such a book, Sharma was helped by a long list of people and sources: many Historical Society members, the Times’ archives – available at the library; former mayor Beth Wyman, who wrote the definitive book on “Hiram Morgan Hill,” plus Marjorie Pierce’s detailed “The Martin Murphy Family Saga.” Both books are available at BookSmart and in the library.
A book of old-timers’ memories by Anita Kell Mason, called “Through These Eyes” was helpful, Sharma said. Mason is a direct descendant of Martin Murphy, Sr.
Sharma said the Morgan Hill House at 17860 Monterey Road is also a fine place to discover the roots of Morgan Hill. The house is open for tours on Friday afternoons and Saturdays from 10am-1pm.
Meister said response to the book has been amazing.
“We’ve sold 337 copies since mid-July, not too many less than the latest Harry Potter and that’s saying something,” she said.
