Guests at the Belvedere Series #2

Lena Henrietta Ewert was born on Dec. 12, 1864, in the dusty gold mining town of Volcanoville, located in El Dorado County California. She was the sixth of nine children born to German immigrant parents, Charles and Martha Ewert. Her father sought his fortunes in the foothills as so many did during the Gold Rush of California. Lena would spend the majority of her childhood years living in Placerville, while her father mined and her mother kept the home. According to census records, Lena did not attend school but could read and write.

In 1883, at the age of 19, Lena married Joseph Fillmore Hart. She gave birth to eight children by 1900, with two children passing away in infancy. Her husband, Joseph also died of unknown causes in 1906 leaving Lena a widow with 6 children at 42. She made the decision to move on and married her second husband Rice D. Arnett in 1908. They had two additional children, the last being born in 1911, when Lena was 47 years old!

In 1909 the Placerville Mountain Democrat Newspaper reported the newly married Lena Arnett had made a deal with Chas. McCormick for his dairy business. It’s possible this was a barter between the two because according to the newspaper, Mr. McCormick “now owns the Hart place,” which was Lena’s former married name. Over the next few years, records show the local hospital sourcing their milk through Lena’s business.

In 1912, with 5 children under the age of 18, Lena filed for and was granted a divorce from Rice Arnett for unknown reasons. At the time, the divorce rate for the US was one per thousand couples. Lena would remain unmarried for the rest of her life.

Though women were allowed to vote in 1912 in California, it took the rest of the country another eight years to catch up with the ratification of the 19’th Amendment granting women the right to vote in 1920. At the age of 56, Lena’s name first appears in the 1920-1922 voting records with a Roseville address. Her name would continue to appear in these registers for the next 30 years at various addresses around Roseville. Many of her children married in the area. In 1922 The Press Tribune announced a double wedding at the “attractive home of Lena Arnett” for her two sons, Henry and Paul Hart who married sisters Ella and Leola Carr. Her two youngest children, James Duane and Rice Delos graduated from Roseville High School in 1928 and 1932.

For 30 years , Lena called Roseville home where she was active in local groups such as The Women’s Christian Temperance Union ("W.C.T.U) that campaigned for local, state, and national prohibition, woman suffrage, protective purity legislation, scientific temperance instruction in the schools, better working conditions for labor, anti-polygamy laws, Americanization, and a variety of other reforms. In addition, she was President of the Ladies Aid Society and the Beehive Sewing Club alongside influential Roseville women with long lineages in Roseville’s history. It was not unusual for Lena to host fundraisers for local college women in her home.

Towards the end of her life, in the early forties, she moved into her daughter's home and business venture, the Belvedere Boarding House and Hotel. Her daughter was Myrtle Sprague, one of the owners of the Belvedere, who would learn from her mother’s business sense to be an efficient business woman capable of taking care of herself and her family, as her mother had done before her.

Lena visited and lived with her children until her death in 1950 at the age of 85 and is buried back in her childhood home of Placerville. She had lived a full life, given birth to eight surviving children, been one of the few women to divorce in her time and one of the first to vote! She had taken pride in her community, offering assistance and kindness to those she encountered. We are lucky she was a part of our community.

James Duane in his graduating class of Roseville High School in 1928.

Rice Delos looking into the camera For his graduating class of RHS Photo in 1932