Caroline Sherer became Glendale’s historian

Caroline Shaw Sherer, who has gone down in Glendale history as the wife of city pioneer J.C. Sherer, was a well-known personality in her own right.

Born in Boston in 1879, she lived briefly in California as a young girl and returned to Massachusetts with memories of the “mighty ocean” swirling in her head.

She graduated from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass., in 1901, and went to work in the college’s administrative office. Then, in 1915, she took another trip to California, this time to visit her mother’s friends, Elizabeth and John Sherer in Glendale. She stayed at their Somerset Farm, ate fresh fruit and took long buggy rides in the green Verdugo hills, she told News-Press reporter Jeannete Mazurki in 1971.

After Elizabeth Sherer died in 1919, John and Caroline began corresponding.

He was working on his book, “History of Glendale and Vicinity,” which was published in 1922. After six years of writing to each other, he proposed marriage. Perhaps Caroline, nearing 50, and having spent 24 years at the college, was ready for a new adventure. In 1925, John Sherer traveled to New England where he and Caroline were married. Sherer was 73 at the time.

When they arrived back in Glendale, they were welcomed with a housewarming party at the home of Mayor Spencer Robinson on Windsor Road. Caroline Sherer soon counted Glendale’s leading figures as friends. “Among our first visitors were Congressman and Mrs. W.E. Evans,” Sherer told the reporter.

She received invitations to Glendale Symphony concerts and to lecture teas at the home of Eleanor J. Toll and at “Brand Castle,” as she termed the Brand home in northwest Glendale. She joined the Glendale branch of the American Assn. of University Women and the Glendale Colony, National Society of New England Women.

She tasted avocados at the George Woodbury place off of North Verdugo Place and went to meetings with her husband to promote an airport in Glendale.

For many years, the Sherer home was the site of the Old Timer’s picnic, Glendale’s longest-running social event, still held annually at Casa Adobe de San Rafael.

She joined the Glendale Historical Society in 1927 and after her husband’s death in 1949 at the age of 96, she forged her own role as Glendale’s historian, writing numerous articles dealing with political history and speaking at gatherings.

She was the featured guest at a 1956 meeting of the society and, thanks to reader Marilyn Chrisman, we have the notes from that event. She discussed a few items that her husband had written about but had not included in his book.

She mentioned the roadwork then being done on Monterey Road, west of Verdugo Road. She said that Father Junipero Serra had blazed the way for the old Mission Road, which went from the mission in San Gabriel to Monterey in Northern California. As the road passed through Glendale, it went along the base of the hill and crossed Verdugo Road.

“Monterey Road,” she said, “is, no doubt, part of the oldest thoroughfare through the valley and is frequently referred to in inscriptions of land in Rancho San Rafael, the Verdugo property.”

“Another historic roadway, San Fernando Road, was laid out a short time afterwards,” she added.

In 1961, Sherer attended the 60th reunion of her 1901 college class. But 10 years later, when Mazurki interviewed her, she was content to stay at Casa Verdugo Convalescent Hospital, surrounded by newspapers and carrying on her with correspondence, which included frequent letters to the editor.