Setting Foot on Ancestor’s Soil

This summer I made another pilgrimage to the land where my great grandparents farmed in Yolo, California from the mid-1850s to early 1900s. In the past twenty years, I’d driven past the location several times, following the hand drawn “treasure map” my Uncle John Kergel drew for me from memory in 1980. “Look for the two tall palm trees in front of the original Hoppin house site,” he had told me. I always found the palm trees, but the house was gone. Built in 1881, the house was torn down in 1935, as I would find out later.

Each time I drove past the site in the past, I never felt comfortable entering it. Leaning out my car window, I photographed from a distance the ramshackle wooden barn, old fencing, and piles of rubble, along with the surrounding furrowed rows of bare, brown earth. Through the weedy rubble, I tried to imagine the stately two-story white Victorian house , Great-grandma Emily fanning herself on the front porch, children playing in the yard, and a herd of black and white Holstein cows in the back pasture. I wanted to touch the earth, feel for any sense of my ancestors still present.

June 2024:  At last, I was going to walk the land with the current owner – Mr. Dhillon. With a folder of old photographs and maps tucked under my arm, I waited with excited anticipation along with my husband Richard. We were joined by Meg Sheldon from the town of Yolo’s small library, who had taken an interest in my story and did the research at the Yolo County Assessor’s Office to find the current property ownership records. I had written Mr. Dhillon a letter describing my desire to visit my ancestor’s property without trespassing. He had agreed to meet me when I was in Yolo doing research in June.

I watched as Mr. Dhillon’s white pick-up truck pulled up across the road. He and his father crossed over to greet us. His father was born in Punjab, India, and at age 17, left India for a better life to farm in America. 

They bought this parcel in 2020, with its two-year old almond orchard. All that remained today of the farmhouse was an old barn (most likely not the original), which they now rent out for storage. We talked about almond farming today, how difficult it is to grow organic, and the influx of rodents they experienced after switching from irrigation by flooding rows with water (which drowns out underground rodents), to drip irrigation which saves water and money, but gives rodents free run to dig underground burrows and damage their trees.

However, they didn’t have much to say about the original inhabitants. They may not have given any thought to the history of the land before they bought the almond orchard. I gave Mr. Dhillon the folder with photographs of my great-grandparent’s farmhouse, and for his wife, a description of Great-grandma Emily as the 1900s feminist activist who wrote speeches from her desk in the farmhouse.

To the land, the current people are but another wave of inhabitants who walk and work its soil – from the Indigenous peoples, Spanish, Mexicans, Europeans, and now farmers with roots in India. With a sigh, I picked up a small stone from the dirt and slipped it in my pocket – my only memento of what might have been.

Will They Remember?

Years ago, in my early days of searching for my ancestor’s land, I was moved to write these words of poetry. Although it is still a work in progress, it describes my realization that what we build will one day be a passing moment in time. As are we all.

Will They Remember?   


What will they say of us when they pass by here,
Centuries later, what will remain?
Will they remember the work of their ancestors 
Whose dreams had sought roots they could water forever?

We stand on our homesteads and watch seasons pass,
Who are we now in the flow of time?
We built fences and floors, stoked flames for the future,
Will only our whispered shadows remain?

What will they say of us when they pass by here?
Will they still know of our place in the mountains
Where our pole beans climbed as high as our dreams 
And children clambered in summer rivers and winter snow.

Do we remember who came here before us?
The Nisenan ground acorns to meal by these streams,
They built their shelters from gifts of the forest,
Feet danced out their stories, ‘til white man arrived.

The miners swarmed in with their pans and their shovels,
They cut down big oaks, and dammed up the streams
They scoped up the glitter, sent gold home in sacks 
For families to know that the wild west was won.

The miners stayed on then to stake out possession, 
Dividing the land, making tents into towns.
Did they remember the people before they
Took over their land and silenced their songs?

Where once stood a farmhouse, an old barn survives,
No trace of the farmer or furrowed golden wheat,
Or the farmwife’s fresh chickens, eggs and soft butter,
Only old photographs prove they were there. 

We are but sojourners, we too shall pass away
Our streets will grow over and our fences will fall,    
Deer and bear will come freely to eat of our apples, 
Climbing over our steel, glass and cement walls.

What will they say of us?  Will they remember?
What will remain after decades gone by?
When they walk past our place here in the mountains
What will they know of us?  What will they say?

-Shirley DicKard