North County Nuggets
By Eloise Perkins
Frazee family history
“I immediately fell in love with
the grand old oaks and sheltering hills and knew I could be happy there.”
That is the way that Mrs. Isaac J.
Frazee, then 83 and totally blind, looked back in memory to her first view of
what now is known as Old Castle Rand in Moosa Canyon. At the time, she dictated
a manuscript to her daughter, Helen Frazee Bower, which was printed privately
in a small booklet.
During the recent dedication of
the Escondido Mini-Museum and Library, another of Mrs. Frazee’s daughters,
Elizabeth Frazee Worsley, presented one of the booklets to the Escondido
Historical Society for inclusion on the shelves there. The Escondido Public Library
also has a copy of the booklet, as do several local friends of the family.
“We came into the valley by
descending a long winding grade, at the foot of which a magnificent a
magnificent orchard lay spread out, with great ditches of water running here
and there among the trees, and cool green alfalfa fields beyond.” She wrote.
This was the home of Washington
Irving, nephew and namesake of the noted author.
Irving, the first postmaster when
the post office was established at Moosa on Feb. 17, 1881, had come to the
Pamoosa Valley in 1870. The area took its name from a rock formation in Moosa
Creek resembling a face. In those days of more plentiful rain, the water
falling below the formation game the appearance of a long beard.
The Indian word for “long beard”
was Pamoosa. The settlers used this name until 1881, when the post office was
established. The postal authorities in Washington D. C. believed that the
address Pamoosa often would become mistaken for Pomona. So they changed its
name to Moosa and today, even though the post office is gone, the canyon and
the creek bear the shortened title.
The abandonment which the Frazees
had purchased was near the Irving ranch. At the time the new owners arrived
there was only a small one-room cabin in the area of the ranch where the spacious
country home of Orpha Lien is located today.
First made home in tent
Mr. and Mrs. Irving (Frazee) and their
little son and daughter did not move into the cabin, preferring to live in a
tent while they built their first home, a frame house at Moosa. The stone
house, which was to become known as Woreland Castle, wasn’t built until 1893.
The first two Frazee children had
been born during the few years the parents lived on a 160 acre homestead on a
hill overlooking the San Luis Rey Valley.
After Mr. and Mrs. Frazee proved up on the government claim, they rented
it and purchased the land in Moosa Canyon.
In her booklet, which she titled “Journeying
Through the Years” Mrs. Frazee said, “We pitched our tent under a lovely oak
tree having a spread of 105 feet. We
named it the Lanier Oak, after our Southern poet, Sidney Lanier.
In 1893, Frazee engaged a Scotch
mason and they began to build the stone house. The tower part of the house was
three stories high and circular in shape.
When the parapets surmounted the roof, an English neighbor dubbed it “The
Castle.” That name has clung to the tower over the years and it is incorporated
in the modern Lien home.
Both Old Castle Road, which runs
through part of Moosa Canyon, and the Old Castle Ranch take their names from
the stone tower build(t) by the Frazees almost 80 years ago.
One of the Frazees’ guests at
their home was Robert Todd of Kentucky, a cousin of Mary Todd, who had married
Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Frazee repeats one of the stories Todd told about his
cousins.
“A Mr. B. was once chiding my
cousin Mary for having married Lincoln, the rail-splitter, whereupon she rose
and said, ‘I want you to know the grandeur of Abraham Lincoln’s soul will live
forever and nations will still be doing him honor when anything you may have
ever hoped to achieve will be forgotten!’ And subsequent events have proved
that my cousin Mary was just about right.”
Another anecdote Mrs. Frazee tells
concerns Arthur Collins, who later became a folk singer whose record, “The
Preacher and the Bear,” made him famous. The song still is sung by many
vocalists today – including Jimmy Dean and Phil Harris.
Here’s the way Mrs. Frazee tells
it.
Noted singer got start in Moosa
“In the early days there were
quite a few English boys living in our valley, and they decided once to put on
a minstrel show. The trustees gave them permission to hold the performance in
the schoolhouse if they would do their practicing elsewhere. So Grandfather
(Mr. Frazee) invited them up to our place and one afternoon, while rehearsing
under the big oaks, one of the boys said that one of the actors had been called
away and they would have to get someone to take his place.
“It was suggested that they get
the Collins kid, who lived a couple of miles down the valley. He proved to be a natural born minstrel. That was the Arthur Collins who became the
famous coon-song singer. Grandfather one
of our oak trees the ‘Collins Oak.’” Others were named for various celebrities,
such as Luther Burbank, Madam Ellen Beach Yaw, Dr. George Wharton James,
Charles F. Lummis, William Wendt, and others.
Some of these oak trees still
stand on Old Castle Ranch and the tower and the parapets are visible from Old
Castle Road as it winds up the grade to Lilac.
The road leaves Highway 395 about 10 miles north of Escondido, near the
Circle R Golf Course, and wanders eastward through Moosa Canyon, up the grade
to Lilac Road.
Mrs. Frazee’s husband was a poet,
artist and philosopher. He was author of the “Peace Pipe Pageant,” which was
produced in 1915 and 1916 in a natural out-of-doors setting near his home in
Moosa Canyon.
The play was a drama in three acts
and its printed title was “Kitshi Manido,” but it generally was known as the “Peace
Pipe Pageant.” In fact, none of the Escondidans taking part in the program whom
I talked to more than half a century later knew it by any name but the latter.
All costumes, wigs and other
paraphernalia used in the pageant were made by the inhabitants of Moosa Canyon.
Escondido Times-Advocate - Oct 7, 1971
