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The Spurling Family

The Spurling Family

A Brief History

Hiram Spurling learned rigging in the Nova Scotia shipyards and sailed on coasting schooners before he came round to California. In 1862 he came north to build a lumber chute for the new mill of Hartwell Timber Co., and he ran the landing under it until he died. He married Esther Doane in San Francisco in 1869 and brought her to a house above the harbor.

For five generations the family has made its living off the same water in three ways: loading lumber, then fishing and building boats, and now running the harbor. The fishing years were the thin ones. Salmon were already scarcer when Gus Spurling bought his first boat, and by his grandson Wayne's time crab paid most of the bills.

Family Tree

  • Hiram Spurling (1835 to 1903), rigger and landing boss, married Esther Doane (1846 to 1920)
    • Augustus "Gus" Spurling (1871 to 1938), ran the landing, then fished
      • Earl Spurling (1904 to 1977), built boats at the creek mouth
        • Wayne Spurling (1943 to 2009), fished salmon and crab

Family Timeline

1862 - The Landing

Hiram built the chute below the mill on the bluffs and stayed on to run the landing. He was twenty-seven and had worked on ships since he was a boy.

1906 - The Earthquake

Gus had the landing by then. With San Francisco rebuilding, schooners waited off the cliff for a turn under the chute, and his crew loaded from first light until the fog came in.

1911 - Hartwell's Will

The landing was sold off with the rest of the company to pay its debts. Gus, who was forty, bought a boat and went fishing.

1918 - The Institute

Gus's catches had been falling for years, and the boat crews were among those in town asking for a proper study of the damage. The creek mouth where he set his nets was silting up from the same slopes whose redwood his father had sent down the chute.

1964 - The Christmas Flood

The creek came down full of mud and broken timber. It carried off Earl Spurling's boat shop at its mouth. He was sixty and did not build another.

2026 - Briarmont Today

Kristin Spurling is the harbormaster: the moorings, the fuel dock and the college's research boats.

The Spurling legacy across Briarmont

Most of what Briarmont has of the Spurling family is down at the harbor, where Kristin keeps the moorings. The chute came down after the company sale. The 1964 flood took Earl's shop.

Out of character. A player may play a descendant or in-law of the Spurling family with the owner's OK; ask staff first. Hiram, Esther, Gus, Earl, Wayne and Kristin Spurling are NPCs.

This is a family hub page. It brings the Spurling story together even though its people, places and institutions are filed under the shelves where readers would naturally look for them.