Guide to the Coon Family Diaries Collection (Unprocessed)

Sylvia Hanes (1886-1973), a native of Ohio, married Herbert Daniel (Dan) Coon (1887-1969), a carpenter and building contractor, in Pasadena, California, in 1908. Dan Coon was born in Soquel, California; he spent the first seventeen years of his life in Ben Lomond near the family timber claim, Coon Heights. Dan worked with his father in the timber operation. They cut madrone wood and hauled it by four-horse team to Powder Mill Flats, made barrel staves for the Cowell Lime Kiln, and furnished bark for the Kron Tannery. In 1904, his family moved to Los Angeles where he met Sylvia. Dan and Sylvia led an itinerant lifestyle, perhaps in an attempt to seek out the carpentry and building work that Dan developed into a long career. The couple lived throughout the state of California, including Pasadena, Santa Maria, Marina, Burlingame, Ben Lomond, and Yellowstone National Park, where Dan spent two years (1913-15) contributing to a hotel building project. The Coons moved to Ben Lomond in 1938, where they lived on Glen Arbor Road. Dan Coon died in Wenden, Arizona, and Sylvia, who survived him by several years, died in Los Angeles, California. The diaries in this collection are written by both Sylvia and Dan and narrate daily life and the couple’s sixty-one-year marriage.