The Museum is open the first and third Sunday of each month (except for holidays) from 1:00-4:00 pm for a Progress Preview.
Entry is free while we continue to work on displays. Come and see a preview of Concord’s history.

Inaugural “Around Town”

Hitchcock Automotive owner and employees

We want to start a column in the Concord Historical Society Historian newsletter and on the Society website called “Around Town.” This snapshot is the first one regarding Concord families. It catches three generations of the George Baldocchi family enjoying lunch at Digger’s Diner in June 2015.

When you’re “around town” with your family, please send your picture with the location and the family name to the Concord Historical Society via mail or email. Mention “Around Town.” We’ll see you in print and on our website.

Note: By submitting your photo and description to the Concord Historical Society, it will be understood the Concord Historical Society has your permission to include these in the one, two or all three of the following locations: Historian, Society website, Society Facebook page – as space and circumstances permit.

Concord Museum and Event Center soft opening

CMEC Soft Opening was a “cool” hot event

CMEC 18Jun2015 CLong 02 1
CMEC Brubeck stage July 2015

Can you believe it?! Moved to its current site in May 2013 and here the Concord Museum and Event Center is ready for events beginning in September. Wow!

Can you believe it?! Some one hundred hearty souls braved the 100+ heat to view this gem last Sunday, July 16. The ice cream certainly was a “cool” part of this historic day, but so is the CMEC. From weary to bright, the CMEC has been transformed. Check out a “cool” video about the day by clicking here.

And once the final $500,000 is raised, the second floor will open with museum and resource center. Can you believe it?! With everyone pulling together, we can!

To book events at the CMEC, contact Event Center Coordinator Carol Longshore at (925) 326-7848.

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Cool ice cream
Betty Martin Barnes Hall
CMEC Brubeck stage July 2017
CMEC 31Oct2016 PSed jk
CMEC as of Oct 2016
Foskett Brown Fireplace Room
Brown room

Around Town – #3

Hitchcock Automotive owner and employees

Venerable Concord Business

Caught at Min’s Kitchen after lunch on June 10, 2015, this motley crew works for Mike Hitchcock Automotive – a Concord business for over 40 years – owned and operated by the man in the middle, Mike Hitchcock himself.

Around Town – #4

Piscovich, Adams and Saxton

Baseball greats

Here we see three of the greatest baseball players Mt. Diablo High School has ever had. Marty Piscovich, class of l960, Dwain Adams, 1962, and Rick Saxton, 1963, enjoying some reminiscing at the 2015 Mt. Diablo Red Devil Classic held the 26th of June.When you’re “around town” with your family, please send your picture with the location, date and name(s) to the Concord Historical Society via mail or email. Mention “Around Town.” We’ll see you in print and on our website.

Note: By submitting your photo and description to the Concord Historical Society, it will be understood the Concord Historical Society has your permission to include these in the one, two or all three of the following locations: Historian, Society website, Society Facebook page – as space and circumstances permit.

Wine tasting at the Salvio Pacheco Adobe

Fifth Annual Wine Tasting

A most pleasant afternoon on the lovely grounds of the historic Salvio Pacheco adobe was enjoyed by all on October 17, 2017.

Outstanding tank house

Replica tank house with authentic tank, completed August 2015

The Concord Historical Society’s historical campus–Galindo Home & Gardens and the Concord Museum and Event Center (CMEC)–continues to take shape! It now includes an outstanding tank house, not unlike the one that supplied the Galindo house with running water over 100 years ago.

In the days before municipal water companies and districts–especially in rural, agricultural regions like our Diablo Valley–indoor running water for sinks, toilets and bathtubs was supplied via a tank house. The tank served as an elevated reservoir of water, filled with well water by a windmill or an electric pump. When someone in the house opened a faucet, water flowed by gravity through a pipe connecting the tank to the home’s plumbing. The structure supporting the tank saw many uses: living quarters for a ranch hand, laundry equipment, storage, etc.

Our tank house sits over a well and pump that supply irrigation water for the CHS campus. The tank itself (empty) is an original one, once serving a Concord family that recently donated it to the Society.

August 2015

Concord Historical Society Campus progress

Concord Historical Society Campus progress (as of 9/17/17)

If you haven’t visited the Concord Historical Society campus lately, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by these photographs. There has been tremendous progress. Regular and scheduled tours of the Galindo Home continue, the Concord Museum and Event Center’s first floor is available for rent and its second floor museum is on the horizon, and a lovely gazebo has sprung up.
CHS Museum and Event Center address: 1928 Clayton Road, Concord, CA
LR Gazebo Galindo 01 17Sep2017
Galindo Home and gazebo
Betty Martin Barnes Hall
CMEC’s Betty Martin Barnes Hall, available for events
LR CMEC addition excavation 17Sep2017
Excavation for basement of CMEC addition, which will include catering kitchen, resource center and elevator
LR Gazebo Galindo match 17Sep2017
Gazebo features and color scheme match those of the Galindo Home

Car donations help CHS and Rotary

Charity Partner Program

Thinking of donating a car to charity? Do have a car sitting and rusting in your driveway? Donate to clunkers4charity.org. This website is run by Clayton Valley Concord Sunrise Rotary and they will give ½ of the proceeds from the sale of your used car to the Concord Historical Society. Or you can call 925-326-5868 for further information. The Rotary will provide you with all the necessary paperwork and will even pick up a car that is not running. Running or not, everyone wins.

medium 73 black white car

Galindo Home Museum & Gardens Open at Last

Kay Massone

The Galindo Home Museum opened for the holiday season beautifully decorated inside and out.  Hot apple cider and cookies were served to the many visitors on Sunday and Wednesday afternoons in December.

Members of the Galindo family lived in the house since it was built in 1854.  Ruth Galindo passed away in 1999 and left the house to the City of Concord and all the items in the house to the Concord Historical Society.  The Society kept everything in storage since that time and finally moved everything back in to the house after it was refurbished in 2012.

The Society obtained the Galindo property from the City in 2010 and immediately started refurbishing the house to bring it back to its former beauty.  The interior was painted & wallpapered, the floors refinished and plumbing and electrical systems brought up to date. Members cleaned and polished the furnishings and replaced them where they belonged.  An ADA lift was installed and the property made handicapped friendly.

The house is open for tours on Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m. To arrange a tour on a day other than Sunday, call 925-827-3380.

Remembering Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck img

DAVE BRUBECK
December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012

Dave Brubeck, our beloved friend and Honorary Board member, died on December 5, 2012, just short of his 92nd birthday. The world of music is smaller with his passing. Dave was born in Concord, California, in 1920, the son of Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck, Concord’s classical piano teacher, and Pete Brubeck, a cattle rancher. Dave spent his first 12 years in Concord sharing time with his mother’s music instruction and his dad’s love of ranching. At that time, his dad had a ranch in nearby Clayton, which is now the location of the Oakhurst Country Club and the Pavilion.

Dave was an esteemed member of the Concord Historical Society’s Honorary Board. He shared many of his memories of growing up in Concord with the Society. He liked to refer to Concord as his “cow town” and recalled that his mother liked to say she “lived in the shadow of Mount Diablo.” His mother taught music to many in Concord and presented performances in her own music studio, at the high school auditorium, and on the Masonic Temple stage, where Dave performed with his brothers and with his friend, Bob Skinner.

Dave recalled early bands in Concord: the Portuguese band in the Holy Ghost Parade, the Portland Cement Company band, and the Redmen. He mentioned that he was very proud of Concord’s music heritage, as carried on by the international champion Concord Blue Devils marching band. He also recalled that most of the players in several early bands of notoriety came from the Concord-Martinez-Clayton area, such as the Henry Brubeck Band, the Gil Evans Band, and the Del Courtney Band. As a boy, Dave was a Boy Scout, delivered the newspaper after picking them up at the O&A train station, played with the other kids in Todos Santos Plaza, swam at Russelman Park on Mount Diablo and roamed the hills of the Keller Ranch in Clayton where his father managed the property. When helping his dad with cattle roundups, he was only allowed to rope small yearlings because his mother was adamant that he not injure his fingers. (His uncle had lost a finger while roping.) She maintained hopes that Dave would make piano his life’s work.

Dave moved from Concord to join his father on a 45,000-acre cattle ranch in Ione, California, which his dad managed as its herdsman. Dave lived with his dad on their own smaller cattle ranch where Dave’s dad had given him a small herd of 4 cows. He aspired to be a large animal veterinarian all the while continuing his interest in music, playing a guitar and singing. He remembered the old cowboy western songs of that day and could sing them at the drop of a hat. After graduating from high school, he attended the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California, in the veterinary school but soon recognized, at the suggestion of a professor, his heart was in music. Dave transferred to that discipline. A story Dave liked to tell is that after almost completing the music program the dean discovered that Dave did not read music proficiently and told Dave he would not be graduated. Several music professors came to Dave’s defense pointing out that he was very good at counterpoint and harmony. The dean relented but conditioned his approval on Dave promising never to teach music! What an ironic and fortuitous outcome for us all, considering Dave became one of the jazz world’s greatest composers and musicians.

Following graduation Dave was drafted into the Army in 1942; he served in France. This was where he met his good friend and music collaborator, Paul Desmond. Following his discharge from the service, Dave and his new spouse, Iola Whitlock Brubeck, moved to Oakland where he studied at Mills College under Darius Milhaud, who encouraged Dave to explore his interest in new and different rhythms. Dave’s older brother was a teacher there under Mihaud and had asked Mihaud to accept Dave as a student.

Dave and Iola were married for 70 years and raised five sons and a daughter – a testament to them both. Iola was instrumental in creating the very successful college tour by the Brubeck Quartet in 1958, and the writing and presentation of the “Real Ambassadors,” a jazz musical commemorating the group’s journey around the world for the US State Department. Their relationship proves the old adage that behind every great man there is a great woman.

Dave often used his stature in music to oppose what he felt were the unjust actions of others. In 1958, at the peak of his early fame, he refused to perform in South Africa when officials there insisted that he perform with an all white band. Because Dave’s bassist, Eugene Wright, was African-American, he said, “No thanks.” He and his group also refused to play at colleges, universities, and jazz clubs that were not integrated.

Dave’s Quartet and Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, with a group of other American musicians, performed a world tour for the US State Department in 1958. They became known as the “Real Ambassadors” in recognition of the fact that their music performances broke all political barriers with the people, real or imagined, that were presented by the various government administrations. He was the recipient of many awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Advocacy, the California Hall of Fame, the Notre Dame Laetare Medal, the Downbeat Hall of Fame, the National Medal of Arts, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and culminating with the 2010 Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement in the Performing Arts Award. Beyond his music success, Dave was a gracious gentleman and a loving family man. We will miss him greatly. Fortunately, his music will live on as long as music is played.