On a warm spring evening in April 1907, nearly 700 people representing the cream of Southern California society packed into the flower-strewn rooms of the Hollywood Club. They had traveled to the small town of Hollywood to celebrate an elegant woman “becomingly attired in a Paris costume of ruby red chiffon and lace,” as the Los Angeles Times described her, who stood at the head of the receiving line to greet them. Her name was Daeida Wilcox c, although she was often simply called “the mother of Hollywood.”
Since 1887 she had worked tirelessly to build a temperate, cultured community in the wilds of the Cahuenga Valley. On this night, as “pretty misses in dainty frocks” waltzed to the music of the Hotel Hollywood orchestra, her “dream of beauty” reached its apex.
Daeida Hartell was born in 1861 in sleepy Hicksville, Ohio. Her father, a well-to-do landholder and farmer, was from one of the first pioneer families to settle the state. Her mother Amelia had travelled west from her home state of New York in a covered wagon.
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