Lasting legacies: O.C.’s trailblazing women given the spotlight in special cemetery tour
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Though some Orange County residents may recognize Nellie Gail Moulton’s name — or even parts of it — most may not truly know who she was.
Moulton Parkway and Nellie Gail Ranch are named after her. Following the death of her husband, Lewis Moulton, she managed Moulton Ranch until 1950. She also enjoyed art and donated to various local artists and art groups.
“I knew nothing of Nellie’s legacy until much later, after I had graduated college, lived in France for eight years and returned,” said Scott T. Barnes, of Lake Forest, who is chief financial officer at the Moulton Company, treasurer for Moulton Museum and also Nellie Gail Moulton’s great-grandson. “It was only when I moved to Orange County to marry my wife, Grace, that I became familiar with her legacy.”
In an effort to raise awareness about and honor historical women, Fairhaven Memorial Park & Mortuary in Santa Ana recently launched a Women in History Tour as part of Women’s History Month in March. Tour guides sought to educate the public about the female trailblazers now resting in the cemetery.
Accomplished early Orange County landowner Gail Moulton, who lived from 1878 to 1972, was one of them. But there are many others — a total of 14 trailblazing women were featured in the 45-minute tour.
“Everybody, or most everyone [featured] on the tour, either was a first in the field or a first to accomplish something back when things weren’t being accomplished by women,” said Cynthia Adair, Fairhaven Memorial Park campaign coordinator, who ran the Women in History tour.
Plenty of research was involved — including rounding up information from previous tours, local historical groups and even from a previous memorial service.
“One of my favorite additions was Dorothy Alice Chandler, and we just did her service two years ago,” Adair said. “I learned about her when we were getting items for her memorial service, and that’s when I found out that she was the first Orange County sheriff deputy, female sheriff deputy, and all about her life. And I was able to actually go to her memorial service, so that was such an honor to hear people actually speak about her and learn about her through firsthand stories.”
Chandler, who lived between 1928 and 2023, became Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s first female deputy on Aug. 1, 1949. She grew up on a ranch in Irvine, where she learned to ride horses and shoot guns. She also raised and trained German shepherds.
“My favorite is Bessica Raiche,” Adair said. “She was the first woman to fly solo [17] years prior to Amelia Earhart, but she did not do transatlantic. She only did continental. So yes, Amelia Earhart does have the transcontinental claim to fame, but we have our own. And she was very scandalous because she went out in public in pants. So all of her neighbors thought, ‘Who is this woman?’ She was the talk of the town.”
Bessica “Bessie” Raiche, who was born in 1875 and died in 1932. She was a musician, painter and linguist. Raiche and her husband built a Wright brothers-type biplane in their living room. Her first solo airplane flight in the U.S. was on Sept. 16, 1910.
There’s also Cornelia “Corrie” Ten Boom, who lived between 1892 and 1983, and wrote “The Hiding Place,” her autobiography about her family’s experience during the Holocaust.
“They were Dutch. But the effects of the Nazis and the Holocaust affected them and as a Christian family, they saved and gave refuge to hundreds of Jews and their families to the point that their family was finally caught,” Adair said. “She was the only surviving member of her family, and it was found out later that she was released from a concentration camp due to a clerical error and the entire group that she was in was killed like a week later.”
After World War II, she came to the U.S. and ended up in Fullerton. She is now buried at Fairhaven.
“It’s so wonderful. You go to her grave marker at any time and there’s always fresh flowers and it’s people who have just read the book or know that she’s here,” Adair said. “She is the person that people stop in our office and are always asking where is she located because they’ve been so affected by reading her book.”
Clara Cushman, who died in 1972, was the first female attorney in Orange County. She was admitted to the Bar Association in 1922.
“There is the first female who passed the bar, but then we have the first female attorney that was practicing,” Adair said. “So she started practicing before the other one did. So Clara Cushman, her biggest problem when she decided she wanted to practice after passing the bar is nobody wanted to hire her because, heaven forbid, they didn’t want a female attorney. So she decided to be a solo practitioner. Her second problem became keeping a sign out — because it was such a novelty to have a female lawyer, people kept stealing her sign.”
Dr. Hester Olewiler, who lived from 1895 to 1986, was one of Orange County’s first female doctors. She delivered more than 3,000 babies in a time when there were few hospital births. Her first payment for delivering a baby was a rooster.
“So it’s kind of a thing in Santa Ana — if you’re like third generation, there’s a chance that one of your ancestors were delivered by Dr. Olewiler,” Adair said.
There were some pretty familiar names on the tour as well — including Renee Mary Segerstrom, who lived between 1928 and 2000, and Virginia Maurine Knott Bender, who lived between 1913 and 2003.
“Renee Segerstrom: She’s obviously the wife of [the late] Henry Segerstrom. She just brought so much to Orange County. She handpicked some of the South Coast Plaza stores and restaurants and then was instrumental in bringing performing arts to Orange County,” Adair said.
“Virginia Knott: She is the daughter of Walter and Cordelia Knott, Knott’s Berry Farm, and she came to her dad when she was 19 years old with an idea that Knott’s Berry Farm needed a gift shop. And that was her thought as a high school student. And so Virginia’s Gift Shop came to be at the amusement park, and then she served as director until it was sold in 1997, after her dad retired. I was impressed. I know what I was thinking about at 19 and it wasn’t entrepreneurial.”
Adair said the list of prominent women laid to rest at the cemetery is like a who’s who of Orange County history.
“Looking at it from today’s standards, these things that they accomplished don’t seem that impressive — but when you go back and you think of the time that they accomplished it in, it really was groundbreaking,” she said.
Donna Marsh Peery, office manager for the Tustin Area Historical Society, attended the tour.
“I love history and think it’s important to honor and remember these women trailblazers,” she said. “Now if we tell people a lady doctor, woman pilot or woman attorney, people think nothing of it. The women buried at Fairhaven were the first. They broke down the barriers to make those careers commonplace today.”
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