Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Mountain View California-Florodora Connection


There had to be a Mountain View-Florodora connection, and there is: Delphin Michael Delmas (right).

Who you may ask was Delphin Michael Delmas? He was a farmer, dam builder, district attorney, defense attorney, Regent of the University of California, presidential nominator, who was born in France in 1844 but moved to Santa Clara in 1854. A graduate of Santa Clara, and Yale, he came to own 600 acres in Mountain View near El Camino and Bernardo (before it was Sunnyvale).

The Florodora connection? One of the most prominent attorney's of his day, he was the defense attorney in the "crime of the century" defending Harry K Thaw in the murder of Stanford White in New York. The case was the notorious Florodora Girl Evelyn Nesbit love triangle made famous in the movie and musical Ragtime. (Delphin got Harry acquitted by reason of insanity!)

You can read all about Delphin M, Delmas at the Rengstoff House website.

Oh, well there is another Mountain View connection, though more tenuous: San Francisco native Edna May Wallace who played Lady Holyrood in the original New York production of Florodora is one of the notables buried in the Mountain View Cemetery - in Oakland.

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