Carlsbad Time Lines
Q4 2025 Carlsbad, California, Historical Society
President’s letter
Unbelievable that we are preparing to celebrate all of our end of the year holidays.
Our Annual Meeting and Holiday Open House will be celebrated Sunday, December 7, 2025 at Magee House from 2-4 pm. We hope you will plan to attend. This year Ken Langen and friends will start off our holiday celebrations with a musical performance. Light refreshments will be served. Election of a slate of candidates to serve on our board will be part of our agenda. If you’d like to volunteer, please let us know.
The past quarter we’ve had numerous requests for archival information from professional researchers. Our museum displays are just one part of what we have at Magee House. One request from Canada was based on our E.C. Hummel material mentioned in a previous newsletter, another from Washington State, working on a 400 page manuscript researching the San Diego - Kelly connection with their ancestors in Utah.
All of these requests have come about due to our newsletters and our website. Treasurer Germán Gutierrez deserves recognition and a round of applause for maintaining both of these venues.
As a participating member of CINCH, Council for Interpreting North County History, an organization of North County Historical Organizations, we contributed to the creation and purchase of trifold flyers listing historical sites in north San Diego. We have them available at Magee House. Stop in and pick up a few, and share with your friends and family. There are so many wonderful places to visit.
Many of our organizations have overlapping history, and add to your understanding of our past. One such place is the Oceanside Historical Society.
We took a busman’s holiday and visited the recently opened new location of the Oceanside Historical Museum and Archive. Kristi Hawthorne and organization have done a wonderful job of setting up their space. It’s a great place to do any research, containing written and photographic images. We were fortunate in having a behind the scenes tour of their archives. It is spacious and well maintained. Kristi pulled out a scrap book created by a Borden Family member. Inside were articles from the Plain Truth newspaper (one of the first newspapers in North County) written, printed and published by William Webster (W.W.) Borden, who married Minnie Kelly of the Matthew Kelly Family. Photos of their family and a photograph of the Borden structure built by Oscar Borden, father of William Webster, were presented. Oscar Borden was a founding member of the La Costa Land and Water Company, just south of our Carlsbad Land and Water Company.
It is with deep regret we mention the passing of Ed Kentner, known by family and friends as Bup. He was a dedicated historian of his family and the Twin Inns and provided us with many images for our collection. Please see the obituary below.
Pictures found in publication notes from The Plain Truth newspaper - Minnie Kelly, young WW Borden, Borden family and house. On the right, an unseen picture of Robert Kelly in an article outline about his passing.
William Kelly - Brother of Robert, Mathew and John
The Kelly brothers came to California after its annexation following the Mexican-American War. John ended up living in San Francisco. Mathew went to the gold mines in the Sacramento area, and later came to what is now Carlsbad. Robert inherited the Rancho Agua Hedionda Ranch. But William, who had come out with the Mormon Battalion, ended up in Utah. He had three wives, simultaneously we think, and 13 kids. It is not clear if Robert and Mathew kept any correspondence with William. Anyhow, there is a large branch of Kellys in Utah.
Native American Heritage Month
Native American Heritage Month is celebrated every November to honor the history, culture, and contributions of Indigenous peoples in the United States. It is a time to recognize their achievements, traditions, and languages, as well as to educate the public about the unique challenges they have faced and continue to overcome. The month was officially established in 1990 by President George H. W. Bush, who designated November as "National American Indian Heritage Month".
Pandemics in the New World
After first contact between Europeans and people of the “New World”, the transmission of plagues was one way. There were NO plagues that Europeans got in the “Americas”. However, the plagues that arrived in the American continent were many: smallpox, typhus, tuberculosis, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, mumps, measles and more. The only diseases, but not pandemics, exported from the Americas were Syphilis, Chagas disease, and Intestinal parasites. Also, Yellow Fever and Malaria went from Africa to Europe, via the Americas.
It is believed that ALL pandemics started with the transmission from an animal to a human. As humans started living in denser and denser cities, these places became very filthy due to the lack of sewers, lack of clean water, and soap, and because people lived with herd animals and birds. For example, some pandemics came after the domestication of pigs; some came from cows or from chickens. At one time London was the filthiest and most unsanitary place in the world. On the other hand, people that lived in the country, or in small villages separated from each other, did not get or sustain the plagues.
The first people in the Americas did not have any domesticated animals, except for maybe the llama, but this is a very independent animal. Even if they had, they did not live in dense and filthy cities. This is why there were no pandemics that we know of in the new world.
Contrary to popular belief, the high technology of the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors did not overwhelm the native populations. It was mostly the high mortality rate due to the pandemics spread by the Europeans. In some cases the Spanish conquistadors timed their invasions to give the diseases time to work. For example, by the time Hernán Cortés carried out his final attack on Mexico City, the population had been largely exterminated. Another example is that the Inka in South America, Huayna Capac, had died from smallpox before Francisco Pizarro and his conquistadors got there, because the pandemic got there first. The death of the Inka started a civil war between his two sons, and this greatly benefited the Spanish.
The death rate amongst the indigenous people throughout the Americas, north and south, is believed to have been between 70% and 90%! And some of the pandemics repeated over the centuries. However, because of the huge distances between tribes in the United States, and their low density, it is not clear when and how the pandemics spread. By the time of the Sacred Mission to create the Alta California missions, the people coming up from Baja California may have been a lot cleaner and healthier. Also, there are tribes in the Amazon jungle that may have never been exposed to any pandemics, and therefore need to be protected.
(Another false popular story is that the indigenous population believed that the white people on their horses were gods. There is no support for this legend amongst the native population.)
New Oceanside Museum of History
Calling itself now the Robert A. and Bessie J. Weese Oceanside History Center, the new museum opened in August this year. It is housed in a 3000 square feet building that was bought and renovated by the son of the Weese’s couple. The museum is modern looking with lots of posters explaining the main historical events in Oceanside, and it has a large storage area in the back. There are some offices and a small conference room. There are plans to add more facilities to allow for lectures and meetings to take place there.
The Weese Oceanside History Center is open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., but closed Thursdays and holidays. Admission is free.
For information on donating to support the historical society, visit www.OceansideHistoricalSociety.org or contact Director Kristi Hawthorne at (760) 390-4192 or kristihawthorne@cox.net.
Passing of Edward George Kentner Jr. January 15, 1929 – September 20, 2025
Bup Kentner
Edward G. Kentner, Jr. passed away peacefully at home on Saturday evening, September 20th, surrounded by family. He lived 96 full, remarkable years. He leaves behind a large family who loved him dearly and will keep his memory alive in their hearts and in the traditions that he passed on to them.
Ed, aka “Bup,” was born in 1929 in the Twin Inns in Carlsbad, California, to parents who had purchased the iconic Inn in 1919 and turned it into a center of community life in Carlsbad. He was the fourth of six children born to Eddie Kentner, Sr. and Neva Sayre Kentner. They were an adventurous and close-knit family and Bup passed these qualities on to his five children, ten grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. He was especially close with his sister Jackie, who made frequent visits from Hawaii. Bup always looked forward to these visits and seemed to mark time by them.
He was a founding member of the Oilers Car Club in the 1940s. Members would meet in the basement of the Twin Inns and would take their carefully modified cars (“lakesters”) out to El Mirage for land speed racing competitions on the dry lakes on weekends. His love of cars never faded and he restored a 1928 Model A in recent years, even bringing it to compete in a race!
Bup loved to learn. He held a Masters of Science in Chemistry and taught at both the high school level in Los Angeles, at Punahou in Hawaii, and at several area community colleges. Even while running the Twin Inns in the late 1960s and into the 1980s, he would make time for teaching chemistry because he enjoyed it so much.
New Short Videos of Carlsbad Historical Sites
Joe Hamili, presenter of interesting historical architectural sites Best Address, visited Magee House and Carrillo Ranch during his Visit Carlsbad experience.
You'll find the links below.
https://youtube.com/shorts/OXCvUpzvFPI?si=FKWuCyaCl5D90iaK
https://youtube.com/shorts/6eluQUunZGk?si=DskHWTuH0WDy6ZIr
Annual Open House and Concert On The Deck
On Sunday December 07, from 2 to 4 pm, we will have an open house at the Shipley-Magee House and History Center. All members and friends are welcome. There will be tours of the house and barn.
Additionally, there will be live music provided by the family and friends of one of our board members, Ken Langen. Folk tunes and Christmas songs will be shared on the front and side decks of the house.
Refreshments will be provided.
Dues/donations request
It is time to renew your membership if you are not already a Life Member. Family membership is $35 and individual membership is $25. Please consider upgrading to Life Membership for only $250.
We also welcome any year end donation that you can give us. Your support goes towards scanning new material, maintaining our files, indexing them, maintaining our popular web site, and supporting a docent. With more income we can do more.
HELP !!! Volunteers Needed
We have a great need for volunteers at Magee House, please consider spending a few hours a month supporting YOUR historic organization.
Contact us at cbadhistory@ gmail.com for more information
Opportunities Available Now!
Negative Scanning - we recently received a huge donation of 1990s newspaper negatives that need scanning. Each set of negatives are labeled on event and date. We have a dedicated negative scanner that you simply run the negative strip through, and it is stored on a drive. We will then add it to our photo collection.
Adding information to our files. - Some of our digital files need helpful information added to each entry. Photologs are completed, the information needs to be added to accompany each image
Docent Volunteers - often our lone paid docent is overwhelmed with visitors, the house is large, sometimes it is unavoidable that guests are left wandering. Additional unpaid volunteers are needed to lend a hand and make our visitors have the best experience possible. Training is available.
New Members
Brian and Gwendolyn Ruff
Duane Kelly
Carlsbad Historical Society
258 Beech Ave. Carlsbad CA 92008
(442) 500-4471
www.carlsbadhistoricalsociety.com
*Open Saturday and Sunday, 11 am to 3 pm
*Private Tours by appointment
*School, Scouts and Families welcome
