NAME:        Rose J. (Mattos) Goulart

BIRTH:       March 9, 1921

PLACE:       Ignacio, California (now Novato)

PARENTS: John and Mary (Brazil) Mattos

SIBLINGS: John, Francis, and Anthony Mattos (deceased), Angelina Vierra, of McMinville, OR,      Mary Serpa, of San Francisco, CA

My dad was born in 1883 in the Azores on an island called St. George.  He never had a chance to go to school.  He came to California by himself at the age of 17 and couldn’t speak a word of English.  He started working at ranches in Inverness, CA; and at one time he even worked at the Inverness Hotel making the beds.

He also was a stage driver.  He would pick up women at Olema who would come from San Francisco to have a picnic at Inverness. He would drive them back to Inverness in the stage coach to have the picnic and then drive them back to Olema to go back to San Francisco.

He was working at a ranch in Inverness when the San Francisco earthquake hit where he saw the ground open and a cow fell in and then it closed up and all he could see was the cow’s tail.

My mother was born in 1893 in Tiburon, CA.   Mom only went to the eighth grade and had to quit school when her dad passed away.  I don’t know what grandmother and my mom and her sister did for a living after grandpa died.  Dad and mom were married in 1915.   They lived in Tiburon and dad worked at a ranch.

In 1919, my dad rented a big dairy ranch in Ignacio.  The owner sold half of it, which became Hamilton Air Force Base.