This is one of the ladies who drowned – Susie Elizabeth Crow Abshire. The little boy is her son, Francis Presley Abshire. Picture was taken in either 1892 or 1893.
By Mary Jo Winter
Cemeteries are history repositories, filled with real life stories, many of which have been lost or forgotten over the course of time. An obelisk shaped monument at Cloverdale’s Riverside Cemetery holds one such story.
On April 4, 1902, three women drowned while trying to cross the river in a light buggy. Sisters Susie Elizabeth Crow Abshire, 29, and 16-year old Violet Iantha Crow, together with their newlywed friend, 19-year old Etta Bean Daniels, were heading into town from a ranch on the east side of the river.
Newspaper accounts tout the bravery of a man called “Indian Dick,” the only eyewitness to the accident. He and some other Indians recovered the sisters’ bodies the same day but did not locate Etta’s until the following day. Wading in water up to their necks, one of the men nearly lost his own life, saved only by a rope thrown out to him.
All of the names are on there, but this particular shot only shows the name of Violet Crow, Susie’s 16 year old sister, and their friend, Mrs. Laura Daniels.
Susie and Violet had been the Crow family’s last living members. Their father died two months before their accident and their mother had died in 1891, the same year Susie married Farley Abshire. Two older sisters preceded them in death, one at the age of 26 and another at only 8 months.
Susie and Farley had three children, Francis Presley, Alfred Cecil and another who died in infancy.
Francis, their oldest, went on to become a California State Senator representing the 12th District from 1948 to 1958. He also served as a Sonoma County Deputy Assessor and was a member of the Geyserville School Board He died in 1965 and is buried at Oak Mound in Healdsburg.
