Chattleton

In The Beginning

Catherine and Constant became residents of San Pablo in 1876. The Chattletons operated a hay-baling business and also had a dairy farm. Their land bordered San Pablo Avenue and they lived in a three-story Victorian. The private road to their farm, accessible from Church Lane was later named Chattleton Lane. The maps below, courtesy of Chattleton family archives show the location of the property and entrance to the home, barn, etc.

Victor Westman, Contra Costa County’s former county counsel and great grandson to the Chattletons, has spent hundreds of hours tracing the multiple roots of his family since his retirement in 2001. He says he is not going to write a book, but he is going to record all the dead ends he encountered so his nephews and nieces won’t have to go down the same fruitless path.

His great-grandmother Catherine "Kate" Chattleton must have been a remarkable woman. She became a widow left with seven children several years after coming to San Pablo. A native of Ireland, 14-year-old Catherine left her home in 1863 with her older sister Mary and brother James Nolan to come to California. Westman hasn’t found out yet how or where his great-grandmother, Catherine met her husband. His name was Constant Chattleton, who was born in New York. His parents had been born in France. Constant and Catherine were married sometime in 1872 at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in San Pablo, but a disastrous fire destroyed those records. In 1874, the couple lived in San Jose, where Westman’s grandfather, John Chattleton, was born. The 1880 census show them back in San Pablo with five children: Annie, John, Mary, Kate and Constant, Jr.  After Catherine lost her husband in 1884, she took in laundry, ran the hay bailing business, and operated the dairy to support herself and now with seven children.

“It was incredibly hard work. Dairy farmers had to get up very early, milk the cows and then ferry it to San Francisco. There was no refrigeration in those days, no pasteurization. You had to sell the milk the same day,” says Westman. With great regularity, Catherine deposited the milk money at the Hibernia Bank. She not only supported her family, but she also acquired more property. When her daughter, Nellie, married Joseph Maloney, her son-in-law helped her operate the farm.

Westman’s grandfather John Chattleton didn’t care for the family business: He got a job with the powder company as an “acid roller,” and then worked for what was then the new Standard Oil Refinery in Richmond. Westman’s paternal grandfather also worked for Standard Oil. He had emigrated from Sweden in 1894 and was working for the oil company in New York when he heard about the new refinery in Richmond. His wife, Augusta, had also come from Sweden. She had signed a contract with a rich family in Buffalo to work as the downstairs maid in exchange for her passage. Besides the upstairs and downstairs maids, the family had a butler, several cooks, and a coachman. In time, Augusta was promoted to assistant cook, a job she liked better.

[From an April 22, 2007 article by Nilda Rego’s Days Gone appearing Sundays in the A&E section]

By that time, Catherine had seven children to support, and as noted in her great grandson's memoirs, she did it without hesitation and successfully. By 1900, Catherine's youngest daughter, Nellie and son-in-law, Joseph James Maloney (a butcher by trade) who married on 10 March 1900 moved in with her and helped her with the dairy farm. Joseph was the first milk man for the Richmond area. Catherine also helped raise their grandchildren.

San Pablo’s vision for West Contra Costa’s newest retail and entertainment destination.

The former 18-acre Chattleton property/Circle-S site until recently housed about 250 mobile homes. It also once contained a lumber yard and more recently a Salvation Army store, since razed. Contra Costa County has already built a health center on a 2.5-acre piece of the site. 

Proposed project for the former Chattleton property.

Project Title: San Pablo Police Headquarters and Training Facility

State Clearinghouse Number: 2010112062

Project location: Northwest corner of Gateway Avenue and Chattleton Lane, San Pablo, California

Project Applicant: City of San Pablo, 1000 Gateway Avenue, San Pablo, CA 94806 510-215-3036 

Project Description: The project activities involve construction and operation of a Police Headquarters and Training Facility (Project) on a 2.3-acre portion of a site known as Block "F" which was previously approved for high-density mixed-use development. The Project will be delivered through a design-build process and is projected to consist of a two-story building of approximately 42,000 square feet.