One day, in about the year 1920, when I was attending the Marshall School in Eureka, in the fifth grade, we had a history lesson on the invention of the airplane and the Wright brothers.

Airplanes were not too plentiful in Humboldt County in those days. The class was really interested in the subject when one of the students, a small girl (I remember she had her hair in long dark curls), raised her hand for permission to speak and this is what she said: “My uncle invented the airplane and flew it before the Wright Brothers flew theirs and they stole the idea from him for their airplane.” This small girl’s name was Dorothy Montgomery. No one at the time seemed to pay attention to her, but to this day what she said has haunted me.

One day I saw an article in the San Francisco Examiner dated Thursday, July 14, 1960, which told of the Rev. Arthur D. Spearman, a university archivist, giving a lecture about a man named John J. Montgomery who had discovered the basic laws of aerodynamics and had made his flight in August 1883, eight years before the Wright brothers’ venture at Kitty Hawk. Father Spearman had “conclusive evidence” to back up his statement. His lecture was part of a series at the University of Santa Clara Campus held in the Saisset Art Gallery.

I wrote to the University of Santa Clara and I received an answer from their archivist, including information about Mr. John Joseph Montgomery.

From this information and other data which I have been able to obtain, I will attempt to write the history of the first airplane flights and experiments in Humboldt County by John Joseph Montgomery.

But first, I would like to give a history of the college of Saint Joseph at Rohnerville, where Montgomery served on the faculty.

In the year 1868, Father Patrick Henneberry CPPS, of the Precious Blood Fathers, was appointed pastor of Eureka, Calif. During this time. Father Henneberry was determined to build a residential school for boys and after a search a suitable site was found at Rohnerville. The owner of this property, James Degnan, donated 30 acres, 12 of which were flat and the remainder on a high bluff overlooking the countryside and the Eel River. The site was sometimes called College Heights.

A traveler on Highway 101, a few miles south of Fortuna, can look up to the bluff on the east overlooking Alton. This is where the Rohnerville airport is located and this was the site of Saint Joseph College.

Father Henneberry let the contract for the new building in 1869. It was designed by Rohnerville resident M.N. Lockington. The magnificent edifice was described as “Ionian style” architecture. The lumber was brought from Eureka but other materials were purchased in San Francisco, shipped by steamer to Humboldt Bay and hauled by wagon to the site. Construction was handled by contractors Masson and Campton.

The new building had two floors and an attic floor. It was 170 feet long and 46 feet wide, with the central portion wider than the two ends. A corridor eight feet wide ran 129 feet, almost the length of the building. There were 62 doors, 97 windows and eight skylights. The building was built of wood and plastered interior. It contained many fireplaces, needed because of the damp climate in the Humboldt area.

On the ground floor there were three parlors, the bishop’s room, two dining rooms, two recreation rooms and eleven bedrooms. The second floor included two piano rooms, six bedrooms, the infirmary, study hall, classrooms, library, chapel and rooms for the priests and professors. The third floor dormitory was topped by a promenade surrounded by an iron railing with a 20-foot cupola. Nine carpenters, three painters and two bricklayers, as well as a laborer, were kept busy all through 1870 and most of 1871 until the building was completed in September 1871 at a cost of $16,000.

The new school was widely advertised and when classes began on January 16, 1872, there were 100 students, both boarders and day pupils.

Father Patrick Henneberry founded the college at Rohnerville where Montgomery served on faculty.

When the college opened, the community of priests, brothers and seminarians moved from Eureka to the new building. Father Henneberry resigned as pastor of Eureka and was appointed superior of the new college. Father Dickman was appointed the new pastor of Eureka when the Precious Blood community moved from their building in Eureka to the new college in Rohnerville.

The Sisters of Mercy arrived in Eureka in May 1871 and took over the building in Eureka, which was located on the property where the Eureka Inn is located today. When I was a small boy I remember seeing this building on a full block on Seventh Street between F and G streets. A playground was on the Eighth Street side and there were always a lot of kids playing there. This block had cypress trees all around like a big hedge and the kids, including this writer, could go all around the block in these trees and our feet would not touch the ground.

From the day the college’s doors opened in January 1872, St. Joseph’s was plagued by never-ending financial problems. The school was materially aided by the Mother-house in Ohio, but the cost of operating in an isolated area was more than anticipated. Debts piled up against the college and Father Henneberry left his beloved school in the fall of 1875 to begin a ten-year fund raising crusade. Despite his efforts and those of the staff in charge at St. Joseph’s, the Mother-house ordered the school closed. The closure came on September 17, 1877.

Through Henneberry’s dedicated efforts, the college was reopened in January 1894, but finances were again a problem and Henneberry was forced to seek community aid. Rohnerville merchant L. Feiganbaum loaned Henneberry money on several occasions, as did the Ferndale Bank, Philip Brody and others. Father Henneberry died on December 19, 1897, in Virginia City, Nevada, while on a mission and he is buried there among the pioneers of the Comstock Lode.

Final disposition of the property came in the spring of 1899 when Joseph Feiganbaum purchased it from the Henneberry estate. The Degnan family, donors of the land to Henneberry in 1871, bought it back from the Feiganbaum estate in 1921 and the building was demolished shortly thereafter.

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John Joseph Montgomery flew a glider in 1883.

John Joseph Montgomery was born on February 15,1858, in Yuba City, Calif. His father, Zachariah Montgomery, was a lawyer, public servant and journalist. His mother, Ellen Envoy Montgomery, was the daughter of the celebrated Temescal pioneer, Bridget Shannon Evoy, “probably the only woman who led a covered wagon train across the plains in 1849-1850.”

In 1864 John moved to Oakland, Calif., where it is believed he began his study of bird’s flight and wing structure. He entered Santa Clara College in 1874 and transferred in 1875 to St. Ignatius College in San Francisco where he earned his B.S. Degree in 1879 and his M.S. Degree in 1880. In 1893 he presented his paper “Soaring Flight” at the Aeronautical Congress Conference on Aerial Navigation, in Chicago, having accomplished the first controlled flight of man in a heavier-than-air craft at Otay Mesa around 1883 or 1884. In 1882 he joined his family at their farm near Fruitland in San Diego County where he soon preempted their barn for a laboratory. The following year marked a milestone in aviation history — John Montgomery made man’s first controlled flight in a heavier-than-aircraft.

In 1894, Montgomery began teaching mathematics at St. Joseph’s College in Rohnerville. Father Spearman believes Montgomery constructed two small airplanes at Rohnerville — The Pink Maiden, a tandem wing model with a three-foot, six-inch wingspread, and The Buzzard, a four-foot wingspread model. Certainly the wind currents rising up the Eel River to sweep the bluff where the college stood were ample for observation and experimentation.

He returned to his family home in 1895 and began living at Santa Clara College in 1896, where he was awarded his Ph.D. in 1901. While at Santa Clara he worked with James E. Leonard, flying three and four-foot wingspread models. Montgomery tested these models at the Leonard Ranch near Aptos on Monterey Bay by flying them from a trestle.

It was from the Otay Mesa rim at Wheeler Hill, in San Diego County, that John Montgomery and his brother James, launched their first flight on August 28, 1883. The brothers had loaded the frail, 38-pound craft into a hayrack at their Fruitland ranch barn early in the morning to avoid prying eyes.

Neighbors knew about Montgomery’s experimenting and realized that he hoped to fly. The consensus was that he was a little crazy to be attempting such a fete. Therefore, the aircraft was covered with straw, and both men carried hunting rifles so that if they met any curious Questioners, they could explain their early start as the beginning of a hunting trip.

The brothers arrived at the rim and unloaded the craft. James Montgomery attached a light rope to the bottom of the craft to counteract any sudden strong gust of wind and took his place, rope in hand, 12 to 14 feet below the rim. John called “NOW!” His brother yanked the rope and the fragile craft rose off the cliff and immediately became airborne. From that moment Montgomery knew that he had begun the mastery of the air.

It was long before a printed account of Montgomery’s flight appeared. Octave Chanute recorded the flight in his “Progress in Flying Machines,” published as a book by the American Engineer and Railroad Journal at New York in 1894.

Daniel Maloney, daredevil balloonist and test pilot, is seen as he is about to release one of John J. Montgomery’s gliders for a flight to earth. Maloney was killed in 1905 during one of these tests when the glider crashed.

John Montgomery made many experiments with aircraft, including the use of a hot air balloon used to take the airplane up to thousands of feet, where the plane was cut loose to fly and glide back to the earth.

One daring young aeronaut, Daniel John Maloney, had performed this stunt many times to the amazement of many spectators. After successful plane demonstrations in March 1905, Montgomery wanted to take Hamilton’s balloon to Santa Clara College in July 1905.

It was a bright morning, July 18, 1905, the air was still and the sun bright. The balloon was filled with hot gases from a fire fed with kerosene and Maloney’s plane was fastened to it. It rose to 4,000 feet, Maloney cut loose but was entangled in a hold down line and could not maneuver the plane and it crashed to the ground, killing him.

Before this tragedy, Daniel Maloney, in 1905, was the first man in the world to loop-the-loop in an airplane.

Maloney’s death was a terrible blow to Montgomery who lost his most devoted friend and aeronaut.

During the years that followed, there were many experiments and flights by Montgomery. Montgomery’s work in perfecting his monoplane, the Evergreen, came at the time of his marriage to Regina M. Cleary of San Francisco on June 30,1910. Regina Cleary was a very beautiful woman and a talented pianist, as well as a writer of verse. The couple lived in a house at Santa Clara.

In October 1911, Montgomery, Regina, and his two mechanics, Cornelius Reinhardt and Joseph Vierra, took two tents, an assembly workbench and the new monoplane Evergreen to a site on the hill slopes of the Ramonda Ranch in Evergreen Valley, just south of San Jose. Here on a friendly rancher’s land, in a hollow slope within the high area east of the San Felipe Road, he laid simple wooden rails down from the crest. This launching site faced toward the prevailing northwest breeze for flight take-offs.

Reinhardt, a German, was an expert mechanic. He could make any part or gadget that Montgomery needed. During the preliminaries at Evergreen, when they were assembling the aircraft, Reinhardt was worried by the over-protrusion of stove bolts. These bolts were used to hold the main wing supports to the fuselage. The bolt ends protruded inward above the head of the pilot.

For two weeks, October 17 through 31,1911, Montgomery and Vierra alternated in accomplishing a total of some 55 successful flights. These included gliding, rising, manuvering, and then circling back to the hilltop. Occasional practice landings were made in the grassy bottom land.

After watching Vierra in flight, Montgomery thought some slight change in angle could result in some valuable information. On October 31, Montgomery changed the angle of incidence on the cambered horizontal stablizer. After making the adjustment, Montgomery got aboard the plane and shot down the wooden rails and quickly became airborne. Suddenly, when the aircraft was just off the rails, it pointed abruptly upward. Reinhardt said he saw Montgomery lean forward in his rocker seat, a puzzled look on his face as he tried hard to stablize the craft. Montgomery had moved to force the center of gravity forward and to reduce the angle of attack of the wing. Strong physical pull or push on the yoke control wheel and leaning forward or backward were still important elements in controlling his plane. While airborne at between 13 feet, as Reinhardt figured, and 23 feet as Vierra reckoned, the fragile craft stalled, side slipped and fell gently striking the right wing tip on the ground. The plane overturned.

Reinhardt rushed to the scene and gently lifted Montgomery from the fuselage. He saw blood and grey matter oozing from behind the inventor’s right ear where one of those stove bolts had pierced his head. Regina had seen the plane fall and hurried up the hill. Vierra sped to the Ramonda Ranch house to telephone for a doctor. The doctor took the wrong road and when he arrived two hours later, John J. Montgomery was dead.

Montgomery was described by his intimate friends as a very humble, secretive man when in the public eye, but at home among friends and family he was really very jolly, pleasant, and fond of humor. He liked to tell stories and entertain with electrical tricks. Montgomery had the fault of many inventors, he was stubborn. Fixedness of purpose both made and destroyed his life’s pattern.

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The story above was originally printed in the March-April 1989 issue of the Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society. It is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.