Frank Griffin Desmond (1888- 1963) and Lucile Heiskell Desmond (1891-1967)

Frank Griffin Desmond was the youngest son of Thomas F. and Mary A. Desmond (née Griffin), both of whom were Irish immigrants. Frank was born in Merced, California on 22 April 1888, and died at the age of 75 on 9 May 1963 in Madera. The US census for 1900 shows that he had two sisters, Mary A. (born October 1873) and Regina J. (born January 1892), and three brothers, Thomas E. (born May 1881), Henry F. (born April 1883), and John W. (born February 1886)

Frank's World War I draft registration card (1917-1918)

Frank was a grain farmer, and the following scenes, taken around 1915, show his mule-drawn harvester. His farm was located at the intersection of Avenue 19 and the Santa Fe Railroad tracks, near the present-day Country Club Golf Course on Road 26.

Frank Desmond

The census for 1910 shows Lucile and her three older sisters (Isabel, Mary, and Naomi) living at 2337 Haste St, Berkeley, California. It was during the same year that Lucile entered the California State Normal School, where she qualified to become an elementary school teacher. She graduated in December 1911. Her first teaching position was in San Mateo, after which she returned to teach in Madera1. In 1913, she was responsible for overseeing a branch of Madera County Free Library, which was housed in the schoolhouse of Easton School.2

On 12 September 1914, Frank married Lucile Heiskell, the daughter of William King Heiskell and Agnes Daulton. Frank and Lucile were married for nearly 50 years. The Polk Directory (1962) shows them living at 123 North J Street in Madera.

1The story of an inspiring past; historical sketch of the San Jose´ State teachers college from 1862 to 1928, with an alphabetical list of matriculates and record of graduates by classes, by Sarah Estelle Hammond Greathead. San Jose, 1928, pp. 224 & 407.
2News Notes of California Libraries (vol. 8, no. 3) 1913, p. 351.

Photographs courtesy of Gregory Heiskell Desmond