Southwest Sierra #107 – Rohrig Plaza

Two weeks ago, in SS #105, I mentioned the pink rose that I named Frieda after Doc Hardie’s wife. Her full name was Frieda Minnie (Holmes) Hardie. She was born in Alleghany on June 30, 1900. Her father was Albert Holmes (a Swedish immigrant), and her mother was Minnie D. (Rohrig) Holmes. Minnie D. was the oldest of the four Rohrig children with three younger brothers. Her brothers were born in Alleghany, but she was born in Chippewa County, Michigan, in June of 1873. The eldest boy, Martin Jr., was born the following year in Alleghany.

It seems likely that Minnie D.’s parents, Martin Sr. and his wife Christina, were working their way west to California when Minnie D. was born. Martin Sr. shows up on the 1880 census in Alleghany with all four children listed. Paul, the youngest Rohrig, was 2 years old in 1880. I found quite a bit of conflicting information between census records, voter registration records, and other documents. Both Martin Sr. and Christina immigrated from Germany. Per his immigration document, Martin arrived in the US in 1854 at the age of 18. His birthplace is listed as Denmark, but on all other documents, it is listed as Germany.

I couldn’t locate Christina’s immigration record (ran out of time), but she is listed on several ship manifestos that evidence several trips between America and Europe. The earliest voyage that I found was in 1868. On the census records, it says that she immigrated in 1869, 15 years after her husband.

The Rohrig family has the grandest cemetery plot in Alleghany with a terrace and tombstones made of dark gray granite, much of it polished. The last Rohrig to be buried there was Pauline (Rohrig) Russell, Paul’s daughter. I was fortunate enough to know her in her later years. She called me “Alleghany”. She donated this week’s picture to the Underground Gold Miners Museum before I joined the museum and prior to our acquaintance.

But back to Martin Sr. and Christina: he was born in 1836 in either Denmark or Germany and died at the age of 84 in 1920. Christina was born in Germany in 1842. If the census information is correct, then she was 27 years old when she immigrated. She died on February 26, 1914, at the age of 72 six years before her husband died.

That grand cemetery plot is a testament to Martin Sr.’s success as a gold miner. He located the Morning Glory and Minnie D claims, where he did quite well. The scale that weighed Martin’s gold is on display at the museum. It was donated by museum supporter extraordinaire Bud Munck. Bud, once a local gold miner himself, purchased the scale at an auction. A red plastic ticker tape label with white lettering inside the scale drawer reads: “Pauline Russell’s grandfather used this scale to weigh over $450,000 worth of gold. Martin Rohrig owner Morning Glory Mine Alleghany”. In the 1880s, the price of gold was $20.67 per ounce. This means that old Martin found at least 22,000 ounces of gold. At today’s gold price of about $3,300 per ounce, that would come to 72.6 million dollars!

The Rohrig house, seen in the background of the family photo, was located next to the firehouse in the Plaza. The house burned down probably in the late 1950s and the Rohrig family donated the lot for community use.

When my family moved into the nearby Kanaka Club in 1977, a sweet little park was located there. Near the flagpole, a wooden sign painted dark brown with white lettering read: Rohrig Park. The sloping lot had been laid out with black asphalt pathways outlined by white quartz rocks. Iris, roses, and periwinkle filled in the spaces between the pathways, and a little drinking fountain with a mortared rock pedestal was located near the center where the pathways joined together. At the lowest level of the park there was a flat area where an outdoor cookstove made of mortared stone sides, with a flat iron top and chimney invited folks to cook, but I don’t remember it ever being used. An older man named Cal Peterson maintained the park.

Those black asphalt pathways looked just like miniature paved roads to us kids. We spent hours “driving” our invisible cars all around the park, making car noises. The only problem was that we couldn’t sustain the steady hum of the engine very long without inhaling. The inhale was when we made the shifting gear noise. As a result, we had to shift gears way more often than you would in real life. We also made blinker noises at each turn in the road.

To my mind, the Plaza was “Rohrig Plaza,” and I’d swear that it was called that. In recent years, I asked a few people who were adults in the 1970s if they recalled the Plaza being called Rohrig Plaza. They all said: “no”. Was it the wooden sign? Did I see Rohrig Plaza instead of Rohrig Park? Guess we’ll never know, but I remember feeling indignant when it was named Plaza Court in the 1990s. Funny how change, real or imagined, is sometimes hard to swallow.