Emily Elliott was born March 3, 1853 in Kane County, Ill., daughter of Wilson and Maria J. Elliot Edmund and Sarah (Smith) Elliott [corrected per comment below], both born in New Hampshire. Her family left Illinois and moved to a farm in California’s Central Valley when Emily was six; it seems likely that the family traveled overland on the Oregon Trail or the California Trail. In 1860 she and her parents were living in Elkhorn Township, San Joaquin County; her father was working as a farmer, and the Elliot family shared their home with another farmer and three farm laborers.
Though not listed as a graduate, she studied at the California State Normal School c. 1870. In 1870, she was living in San Francisco and “attending school”; the State Normal School was then in San Francisco. Emily taught school in Oakland for seven years.
She married Dr. Enoch H. Pardee on July 19, 1879, when she was 26 and he was 52; Enoch’s 22 year old son George was not pleased when his father remarried. Enoch was mayor of Oakland and a co-founder of the Unitarian church in Oakland. Enoch and Emily had one child, a daughter Eleanor (“Nellie”), born in 1880. Enoch died in 1896, and four months Nellie, then age 15, also died. After a legal battle with Enoch’s son, Emily received a third of Enoch’s substantial estate. Enoch’s estate was valued at approx. $275,000, or roughly $8 million in 2016 dollars; so Emily received the equivalent of $2.6 million.
For the next few years, she traveled extensively. She married William A. Karns, a lawyer, in Baltimore on March 21, 1898. The couple moved to San Jose where William practiced law.
Emily settled in Palo Alto in 1903. In August, 1906, William filed suit for divorce on the grounds of desertion. A bitter legal battle ensued, during which Emily revealed that she had indeed left her husband, but had done so on advice of a physician. William was denied a decree of divorce. Then in 1913, Emily filed for divorce on the grounds of desertion and failure to provide. This time, William did not appear at the trial because he was a fugitive from justice, and Emily received a divorce decree under which she retained control of extensive property interests.
Emily supported woman suffrage, and in 1911 was the president of the Palo Alto Suffrage League. She was one of the early members of the Woman’s Club of Palo Alto. and served as president. She was active with the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the local chapter was organized at her house in 1924.
In 1916, she married a third time, to James Leroy Dixon, who was some twenty years younger than she (b. c. 1874). Leroy was a Stanford graduate, and in 1916 was principal of the high school in Lakeport, Calif.; by 1919 he was teaching at San Francisco Polytechnic High School. Their marriage lasted only three years.
She was an early member and later president of the Women’s Alliance of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto, and was active in the national Unitarian Women’s Alliance. In 1908, she hosted the Sunday school picnic on the ten-acre grounds of her Palo Alto house. She later gave the house grounds to the City of Palo Alto as a park to memorialize her daughter Nellie. In 1909, Emily was a delegate to the Pacific Unitarian Conference in Seattle.
She died on Feb. 5, 1940, in Palo Alto.
Notes: 1860, 1870, 1880, 1920 U.S. Census; John W. Leonard, Woman’s Who’s Who of America, New York: American Commonwealth Co., 1914; Historical Sketch of the State Normal School at San José, Sacramento: State Office, 1889; “How Palo Alto’s Pardee Park Came To Be,” Pardee Home Museum Newsletter, Nov., 1999, pp. 2-3; “The Pardee Home Histo-ry,” Pardee Home Museum, www.pardeehome.org/history.htm, accessed May 23, 2017; Emily Karns Dixon, Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine, 1948, p. 758; San Francisco Call, July 9, 1913, p. 2; Stanford University Alumni Directory, 1921; Calif. State Board of Education, Directory of Secondary and Normal Schools, Sacramento: Calif. State Printing Office, 1916, p. 33; Calif. State Board of Education, Directory of Secondary and Normal Schools, Sacramento: Calif. State Printing Office, 1919, p. 117; Pacific Unitarian, Aug., 1909 p. 294. N.B.: In early records of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto, she appears as Emily S. Karns, later as Emily Karns Dixon.
I took a walk to and through Pardee Park on Saturday after reading this. Some is community gardens and the rest regular neighborhood park with playgrounds, playing field, picnic tables and barbecue stands. It is a relatively large park, just under 10 acres.
I am the great-great-grand niece of Emily Sophia Elliott Pardee Karns Dixon.
Her parents were not Wilson and Maria J. Elliott. They were her siblings. Her parents were Edmund and Sarah (Smith) Elliott.
Barbara, thank you for the correction!
I would like to get in touch with Barbara Nebeker. I am the Regent of the Gaspar de Portola Chapter, DAR, the chapter founded by Emily Dixon. The chapter will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding soon and it would be interesting to communicate with her. Thank you!
Linda, I’m forwarding your request to the email address I have for Barbara Nebeker.
As an elementary school kid my favorite place of refuge was on the covered porch of the Pardee House at Eleanor park. To the right face of the porch there was a small formal sitting room with gilded furniture. To the left face of the entry door was a large library off the center hall.
The porch was wide, with a symmetrically central covered extension jutting out to give arriving carriages cover. There were still some of the original trees. The City was neglecting it even then, because bees nested in one of the neo-classical columns.
But I could sit, feel, and dream there.
There was a plaque on the house stating its dedication to the memory of Eleanor Pardee. Even if I was just a child, I could feel the loss of a child, Eleanor Pardee.
One day the caretakers let me come inside. I didn’t go upstairs (too shy) but got to see the kitchen, hallway and the staircase. I was only 10, but in thanking them told them THIS PLACE MUST BE SAVED!
We moved away for several years, and on one Summer’s return I ran to see the porch. The entire house was gone. The footprint was barren ground. A big generic “nothing” which once held so very much. Everything inside had been sold at auction by the City.
Hurt badly – so much history lost by incompetence and ingratitude.
My Elementary School was gone too.
Jean, Palo Alto is notorious for not saving some of its magnificent old buildings. In another example, they allowed a Bernard Maybeck building to be torn down for completely anonymous apartment buildings. No sense of history.