Madam Preston

All who came in contact with Madam Preston agreed that she was an exceptional woman. Letters from patients to their families at home often portrayed her as a veritable angel of mercy as she ministered to them in the long white robes she wore. A San Francisco reporter visited her in 1898 and came away wondering at ‘a woman who not only owns a townsite but runs every enterprise of importance in it; who is mayor and council and school board and preacher, who owns the water supply and provides work and wages for the inhabitants, who is their medical advisor and cemetery association and their spiritual guide, who develops their mental resources and directs their aesthetic tastes, who superintends the design and construction of the houses and plans all their amusements and recreation.’

So profound was her aura that when she died Preston residents kept her empty ‘mansion’ as a kind of shrine, although services continued in the Free Pilgrims Church.

— LeBaron, Gaye. “Emily Preston Owned the Town, Mocked Authority.” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, November 29, 1987.