Bachelor Thomas D. Carneal

The Independent, AUGUST 16,2007

When I first began learning about writing local history, I worked with a graduate student from Sonoma State University. One of her recommendations was to make a special effort at finding information about single men. Often their story is not passed down to others because they did not have children who kept their memories alive or descendants who cared about their family tree. So, I like to think that this column is dedicated to Karana, my mentor.

Thomas D. Carneal was born in the governor’s mansion in Jackson, Mississippi; his grandfather, lawyer and lawmaker Henry Stuart Foote, was governor, having defeated Jefferson Davis for the post on a Union ticket. In November 1854, when Tom was 17 months old, he came with his grandfather and mother to California. When he was four, his mother married again, to J. West Martin, who with his brother had bought Rancho Santa Rita, including its assets, at an administrator’s sale for $10,000. In his history of the county, William Halley wrote, “They got a great bargain, for it is said that there were cattle enough sold from it to provide the purchasing money.” Martin became a successful banker, popular mayor of Oakland, and regent of the University of California at Berkeley.

Tom Carneal graduated in 1874 from UC Berkeley, earning a bachelor of philosophy degree, and went on to law school at Columbia University in New York City. About 1880 he was involved in a railroad accident in which he lost part of an arm and the toes on one foot. For the rest of his life, he had a hook instead of a hand on that arm. A small volume, Our Constitutions, Federal and State, published in 1879, is owned by Dorothy Reinstein ; Lamee of Livermore. Inside the front cover, someone has written “Taken from Tom’s pocket after his injuries.”

After his stepfather’s death in 1899, Carneal gave up his law career and took over management of family ranch properties in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. In her will in 1907, his mother left him 2,357 acres of ranchland. Carneal was well known for his innovative agricultural methods. In 1900 he received a grand prize from the Paris Exposition for his wheat exhibit. The 1900 U.S. census listed him as farm manager on the ranch with a Chinese cook, “Joe.” The private road leading to his house was just north of the intersection of Highland and Carneal Roads, the site of the Reinstein ranch today. He worked hard and expected the same from his tenants, but he also helped by buying modem conveniences for their homes and by paying expensive medical bills.

Ernest Vargas, son of one tenant, described Carneal: “You just don’t find people like that anymore. They speak about ‘great men’—well, Mr. Carneal was a great man. It’s just too bad he’s not better known. Someone should write a book about him.” Carneal’s first car, according to Jack Jensen, was a Duryea Steamer, the biggest car around the valley. “You had to be a steam engineer to run ’em. You get bad water, and you have boiler trouble.” Later, Carneal drove a Franklin, and he had a ramp built in a car shed on his ranch so that he could start the car without cranking it because of his missing hand. He rolled his own Bull Durham cigarettes with one hand “as deftly as any Texan cowboy.” About 1911 he and several other ranchers brought in the first electric lines in the Highland area.

Highland School, now a private residence, stands at the southeast comer of Highland and Carneal Roads on three acres that Tom Carneal gave the school district. Carneal paid to have this fireproof concrete one-room school built after a new portion of Highland Road went through an earlier schoolyard. The first classes in the innovative school were held in August 1922. The initial estimated cost of the building had been $7,000, but Carneal continued to add amenities, and his final costs probably came close to $10,000. It had indoor bathrooms, a teacher’s office, and a small library. Carneal even gave the school a radio and a player piano. The schoolhouse had its own septic tank and water system; the rooms were lit by acetylene gas.

Tom Carneal never married, and before his death he gave his ranch properties to his four tenant farmers, Niels Banke, William Mitchell, Manuel Vargas, and Henry Reinstein. Vargas bought out Mitchell and much later sold the combined property, but the Banke and Reinstein ranches are still here today. At an interview in 1924, Carneal said, “I’yc left good roads here, and a school- house, and four modem homes for tenants, and 20 barns, and a civilized community. I have not lived altogether in vain. The Oakland Post-Enquirer’s obituary in February 1930 said in part: “The late T.D. Carneal was part of the old story, the old life, the old pioneer flavor of other days. But he was too vital, too intensely alive to be content with that. He was part of the new day, also— eagerly interested in new things, in aviation most of all."