John C. Schubert

Marine/Deputy/Historian/Author/Father/Grandfather/Friend

August 9,1938 – June 6, 2022

John C. Schubert boarded the Guerneville Branch Railroad on June 6, 2022 for his final ride after a courageous battle with cancer.

• Friends of Guerneville School
• Monte Rio School
• Santa Rosa Junior College Foundation
• Russian River Historical Society
• Sonoma County Historical Society
• Northwestern Pacific Railroad Historical Society
• Sonoma County Library
• Russian River Rotary
• Sonoma Land Trust
• Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods
• Montgomery School

Link to the article Retired journalist, Chris Smith – FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

County baliff, historian dies at 83

Colleagues remember Guerneville collector had a gift for storytelling

FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

As a kid, John Schubert found that he loved the Guerneville area more than any other. He grew up to become a fountain of lower Russian River history, and to go to work each day with a local artifact pinned to his shirt.

The easygoing, studious and perpetually intrigued Schubert was for almost 40 years a Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputy assigned primarily to courtroom security. He was proud of the vintage and rare badge that proclaimed him: Bailiff.

“Schubert was the only person I ever saw with one,” Sheriff Mark Essick said.

Schubert, who in addition to his law enforcement career served in the Marine Corps Reserve, died June 6. He was 83.

“He ended up being the go-to guy for history of the Russian River area,” said friend and colleague Gaye LeBaron, the Sonoma County history writer and retired Press Democrat columnist.

LeBaron added, “John was also extremely personable, and just great fun. What a gift he’s been to the region.”

A resident of Guerneville for 67 years, Schubert authored five books of local history. For decades he also shared tales of Russian River history in columns published in The Paper and the Sebastopol Times & News.

The Sonoma State University alumnus was dealing with advancing cancer when, just last year, he donated to the SSU library his massive collection of lower Russian River memorabilia and artifacts.

“He started collecting even before he knew quite why,” LeBaron said.

Among them: stacks of old postcards, photographs, posters, flyers, matchbook covers, menus, news clippings, tickets, playbills, ledgers, invoices, receipts, brochures, journals, manuscripts, court documents, letters, albums, stock certificates, books, maps, postmarked envelopes, scrapbooks, family histories and

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bumper stickers, you name it.

Sources of the collectibles included the annual Bohemian Club encampment in Monte Rio, Rio Nido big-band music venues, the railroads that hauled timber and tourists, the Slug Fest, the Quicksilver Mine, Stumptown Daze parades, Russian River Rodeo, Monte Rio Water Carnival, the Russian Chapel at Fort Ross and the various Russian River floods.

Schubert’s collection came to the college library in 88 boxes that when lined up ran for 53 feet. Lynn Prime, SSU’s special collections librarian, said the collection is a treasure trove that will appeal to students and others interested in myriad aspects of life in the region.

Schubert, Prime said, “never did anything in half measures.”

“He was such a Renaissance guy,” she said. “And it shows in his collection.”

The library’s John Schubert Russian River Collections is open to the public by appointment.

Historian and retired Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library staffer Katherine Rinehart counts herself fortunate to have witnessed Schubert as he conducted in-depth research, and to have helped him organize and process the collection in preparation for donation to SSU.

“There’s no better way to get to know a person,” she said, “than to go through everything he collected since 1959.”

Keeping history alive

Energetic and eager for opportunities to make history come alive, Schubert constructed in the backyard of his and longtime partner Sarah Brooks’ home in Guerneville a replica of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad, complete with a station and working signals.

“His fascination with history was something else,” said Doug Broberg of Guerneville, a friend and fellow history buff and retired deputy sheriff.

One of Broberg’s favorite pieces of John Schubert trivia: “He had a casket he kept in his house.”

Schubert used the coffin decades ago as a prop for an elaborate Halloween party and afterward simply kept it standing upright against the wall in his living room.

Beyond his lifetime of studying, collecting and sharing Russian River history, Schubert worked to save what he could of it. He played important roles in the conservation efforts that preserved the historic, downtown Guerneville bridge — built in 1922 — and the 1885 Marshall House that now graces the Russian River Senior Center.

Schubert would often don a top hat and tails, then entertain and enlighten visitors to the pioneer section of Guerneville’s Redwood Memorial Gardens cemetery. He was for decades a pillar of the Russian River Historical Society, which he co-founded, and other organizations of people who celebrate, share and preserve history.

For all that did for his community, Schubert was awarded a Spirit of Sonoma Award just last May. And in March the Sonoma County Historical Society presented him its Jeanne Thurlow Miller Award in recognition of his lifetime of historical work.

Helping the community

John C. Schubert was born Aug. 9, 1938 in San Francisco. From an early age, he spent summers on land at the Russian River’s Guernewood Park that a grandfather had owned since 1914.

Schubert was a teen living and attending high school in Southern California when he conducted his first piece of research into western Sonoma County history. He wrote a report on Fort Ross, the settlement the Russians established in the early 1800s on what would become the Sonoma Coast.

“Everybody in that class — with the exception of the teacher — though I was goofy, talking about Russians in California building a fort,” Schubert told The Press Democrat in 2018.

Following young Schubert’s graduation from Rosemead High School in 1956, he studied at the state Maritime Academy and worked for a time as a merchant mariner.

He would share that he was somewhat adrift when a well-known and revered deputy sheriff on the Russian River, Pete Bever, one day pulled up alongside him in his patrol car. Schubert recounted to columnist LeBaron in 2012 that Bever called out him, “You’re just bummin’ around, kid. Come and ride with me.”

Schubert liked what he saw, and not long later signed up as a summer deputy. He was hired fulltime in 1965.

One of his three sons, Keith Schubert of Redmond, Washington, said the new lawman figured out quickly that working patrol on the river was not for him. “He didn’t want to arrest his friends,” the younger Schubert said.

So John Schubert became a bailiff assigned to the Sonoma County courts, and he stayed.

The badge he received early on designated him a bailiff. Long ago, the sher-iff’s office stopped making any distinction between deputies who work in the courts and those who work the streets. But Schubert, ever an aficionado of old ways, kept wearing his keepsake badge.

In the early 1970s, while working the courts, he enrolled at Sonoma State University and earned a degree in anthropology. He also joined the Marine Corps Reserve, serving two stints and earning the rank of sergeant.

He worked as a bailiff until his retirement in 1998.

Until 2004, he was oncall and reported for duty when needed for tasks that included transporting suspects and standing guard over suspects undergoing hospital care.

The lawman and historian married and divorced twice, and he spent the last 38 years with life partner Brooks.

He is survived by her and by his son in Washington, his other sons, Hilmar Schubert and Preston Schubert, both of Santa Rosa, and by five grandchildren.

A memorial service is at 1 p.m. June 30 at Pleasant Hills Memorial Park in Sebastopol.

Before he died, Schubert asked that memorial contributions be considered to the Russian River Historical Society, russianriverhistory.org, or to his other favorite organizations: Friends of Guerneville School, Monte Rio School, Montgomery School, Santa Rosa Junior College Foundation, Sonoma County Historical Society, Northwestern Pacific Railroad Historical Society, Sonoma County Library, Russian River Rotary Club and Sonoma Land Trust.

John Schubert Among Old Graves

Bob Jones remembers a cemetery walk in Guerneville led by Russian River historian John C. Schubert, who passed away on June 6th.

Dale Dougherty

Jun 14

Born in San Francisco in 1938, John C. Schubert, the historian of Guerneville and the Russian River, died on June 6th. He wrote a column “Stumptown Stories” in local papers and published five books including “Guerneville Early Days” and “Tales of the Russian River. Here is his obituary on Legacy.com. Chris Smith wrote the Press Democrat’s obituary: “John Schubert, Sonoma County historian and court bailiff, dies at 83,” which captures the many roles Schubert played in the community. Below, Bob Jones shares a story about John Schubert leading a cemetery tour in Guerneville, which is adapted from Bob’s forthcoming book, “Proud to be a River Rat, Vol II.”

The death of John Schubert last week leaves Guerneville without its beloved historian-in-residence. Nobody cared for a place more than John cared for Guerneville and its people, past and present. For decades, he spent his spare hours setting down the history of this rough and ready lumber town that evolved into a lively resort community over the course of a century or so. His several books, all well researched and full of old pictures, are available in shops throughout the town. And John could be something of a showman. Dressed formally in top hat and tails in the manner of an old time undertaker, he took us on annual walking tours of the Guerneville Pioneer Cemetery. On a gray Saturday morning a few years ago, I was among those who followed John on a long circling stroll among the graves of our forebears who lie in peace beneath the redwoods on that sacred hillside. The first grave John stopped to tell us about was the one in which Sam Varner lies.  He was Roadmaster of the Redwood District, and died in 1890. We learned that in those days, since all roads were dirt roads, citizens were obliged to volunteer a required number of hours toward their upkeep. That is to say, the law said they had to do it, but they weren’t going to get paid. They either kept up their part of the road, hired someone to do it for them, or paid the county a fee to have it done.  The Roadmaster made sure of all this, so it was a big job.  There were those who felt their government had gotten too big and intrusive even then, John told us. Moving on, we were directed to Robert Gorski’s headstone that tells us he died in 1906, the year of the Great San Francisco Earthquake.  Records show that the shaking was even worse in Sonoma County than in San Francisco.  Gorski was a miner at the quicksilver mine north of Guerneville, and he was in the large bucket by which men were set down into the mine and lifted up out of it.  The bucket was being hoisted up the shaft right when the earthquake hit.  It dislodged a boulder from a nearby cliff, and that big rock made a perfect shot into the mineshaft where Gorski was standing in the lift bucket.  It killed Gorski and another miner on the spot.  “Talk about being in the wrong place and the wrong time,” John said. In a far corner by a huge redwood tree, there’s the grave of Lieutenant Albert Bierce who fought in the Union Army during the Civil War.  He died in 1914, and was buried in a two-grave plot, the other one reserved for his brother Ambrose, the famous San Francisco writer of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Ambrose Bierce was known for a caustic wit often directed against cherished notions.  His most famous book, The Devil’s Dictionary, is still widely read, and a new edition is soon to be published.  Many of Bierce’s definitions still apply.  A typical one goes like this:  “Politics:  Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.” Ambrose Bierce’s grave in the Guerneville cemetery still awaits him.  He became a war correspondent assigned to cover the Mexican Revolution, an assignment that put him with Poncho Villa’s army through many battles.  So far as anyone knows, Ambrose Bierce lost his life on that assignment and is buried in Mexico. Among Schubert’s favorite Guerneville pioneers was David Hetzel. He came to America from Germany about 1860, enlisted in the U. S. Army and was sent off to the Civil War.  In the course of his duties, it turns out that Hetzel was assigned to the honor guard for President Lincoln at Gettysburg. Live and in person, he heard the famous address Lincoln delivered there.  Schubert said he learned from David’s son Jack that, as his father remembered it, Lincoln did not emphasize the prepositions, “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as we say it today, but he emphasized the word people.   After the war, he came west to Guerneville where he grew some of the finest tobacco in the country right here along the Russian River.  He won the prize for best tobacco at the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904, won another prize in the Portland Exhibition, and took the Gold Medal in the California State Fair.  He died in 1930 at age ninety. David’s son Jack, whom many of us knew, learned to play the clarinet by practicing long hours in his father’s tobacco shop in Guerneville.  We were told that people stood by the shop to hear Jack play his clarinet even if they weren’t interested in buying tobacco.  Later, Jack wrote an important instruction book for clarinet and saxophone and went on to write and produce musical shows for the Bohemian Club.  Jack died in 1984, and is buried near his father. Schubert singled out John and Ellen Bagley for special praise.  Not only did John Bagley get the U. S. Postal Office established in Guerneville in 1870, but when Postal officials wanted to know what to call the new post office, Bagley told them to name it in honor of his friend and business partner George Guerne.  Had he been a more self serving man, the town might very well have been named Bagleyburg. Shubert let us know that Bagley ‘s wife Ellen wrote a column for the local newspaper for fifteen years, recording who was born, who died, who got crushed by a falling redwood tree, who got a hand cut off in the mill, who got gored by an ox, and so on, the tough stories of those tough times.  Without Ellen Bagley’s writings, Schubert said, his voice trembling with gratitude, it would be all but impossible to know the early history of the lower Russian River. And so we came to the final grave Schubert had time to tell about that day.  It is unmarked, and nobody knows who lies there.  But from a column by Ellen Bagley written in 1883, we know that a gray haired man of perhaps sixty years made himself a bed of twigs and blankets out in the woods, laid himself down for the night, and never woke up.  His body was discovered some months later, and in his pockets were cobbler’s tools.  He was buried in lot 190, plot number 3.  Schubert called him simply The Cobbler. John Schubert was a good guy, a good friend, and a great chronicler of “Yesterday and Yesteryear.”  For John it was a labor of love, and the way he went about it helped us realize that history can be both fascinating and fun.

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