by John Neiuber

“I’ve a sagebrush garden, walled in by a mountain range.”

Those are the opening lines of the poem “My Sagebrush Garden” by Sarah Bixby-Smith, from the book of poems of the same title published in 1924. She would write five books of poems, most while living in Claremont, in addition to three non-fiction books, chief among those the 1925, “Adobe Days: A Book of California Memories.” After its re-release in 1987, the Los Angeles Times called it, “the classic among California’s informal historical and personal narratives. Written in simple, liquid prose, this fascinating account of our pastoral period will be read with appreciation as long as the golden romance of the West lays hold on the hearts and imagination of mankind.”

“Adobe Days,” Bixby-Smith’s memoir of growing up in Southern California, is considered a classic of the genre. Photo courtesy of Claremont Heritage

She was born Sarah Hathaway Bixby at Rancho San Justo near the mission village of San Juan Bautista, California in 1871, during the rancho era of California history. Her parents, Llewellyn Bixby, a rancher, and Mary Hathaway Bixby, had come to California from Maine in 1852, driving sheep and cattle from the east. Llewellyn, together with his brother Jotham and three cousins, formed the Flint-Bixby Company in 1855 to buy land for their livestock. By the 1880s they had acquired large landholdings. Besides Rancho San Justo they held Rancho Los Cerritos and Rancho Los Alamitos in Long Beach, Rancho San Juan Cajon de Santa Ana, and part of Rancho de Los Palos Verde. Sarah spent her childhood on the San Justo, Los Cerritos, and Los Alamitos ranches.

At the age of 5, her mother wrote her a letter: “Sarah the strangest child I ever saw, so affectionate, but never to be coaxed. Super abundance of spirit. She tries to remember all the new rules of life. Brown eyes, I hope those eyes will not hold a shadow caused by her mother misunderstanding her and crushing out in her by sternness anything sweet and beautiful. I do not want to love her so fondly as to make a foolish, conceited woman of her, but I don’t know that that is any worse than to give her life a gloomy start.”

When Sarah was writing “Adobe Days” she recalled the correspondence: “I love this letter. It delights me that my mother, a high-bred New England lady, to her women foolishness and frivolity were anathema, should prefer them to harshness and a broken spirit for her daughter”

Sarah Bixby grew to be a well-educated, independent woman who advocated for women’s education. She certainly did not have a broken spirit, as she pursued her studies, authored several books, was a landscape painter, became Claremont’s first female elected official, serving on the school board, helped to create the community of Padua Hills, became a founding member of the Scripps College Board of Trustees, was elected president of the prestigious Friday Morning Club, raised five children and three step-children, and became the matriarch of the Bixby family.

Her aunt, Martha Hathaway, became a mother to her when her own mother died when Sarah was 10. Martha had received a college education and had been an English teacher for several years. Sarah’s connection with Claremont came soon after a visit she made with her Aunt Martha in 1889 when she enrolled in the Pomona College Preparatory School. While she only remained at the school for one year, before leaving to attend and graduate from Wellesley College, she helped found the school newspaper, for which she wrote poems and articles. It was also at the school that Sarah met Arthur Maxon Smith, her first husband.

“Erewhon,” the 14-room Bixby-Smith mansion on 20 acres at Amherst Avenue and Eighth Street, was later lost to a fire. Photo courtesy of Claremont Heritage

After graduation from Wellesley, Sarah returned to California where she and Arthur were married in 1896. It was then that they commissioned Arthur B. Benton, the architect of the Mission Inn in Riverside, to design a 14-room mansion in Claremont that was built on 20 acres on Amherst Avenue near Eighth Street. Often cited as one of the finest homes ever built in Claremont, it boasted three stories, a ballroom on the third floor, and an indoor swimming pool. Her sagebrush garden was the inspiration for the poem and book of the same name.

The couple then moved to Berkeley, where Arthur took a position with the First Unitarian Church. When Sarah discovered his affair with their au pair, she divorced and married Paul Jordan Smith. They moved back to Claremont and remodeled her home, which had been converted into a boy’s school. They would name the home “Erewhon” (“nowhere” scrambled), after the title of the Samuel Butler book.

The couple moved to a home on Los Feliz Boulevard in 1930 and divorced in 1934. Erewhon eventually became the first building on the Claremont Men’s College campus. However, it was lost to a fire.

Sarah Bixby Smith died in Los Angeles in 1935 after contracting trichinosis.