Introduction

My brothers and I were the third generation of our family born in San Francisco. My entry was on July 6, 1917, at I a.m. in Mount Zion Hospital. My parents named me Barbara Helen Grimes, Helen after my mother.

A year and a half later Phillip Stanford Grimes followed me into the world at the same hospital, on January 5, 1919. His middle name was our mother’s maiden name, while his first name came from Elizabeth Phillips Stanford, who was our great-great-grandmother (our mother’s father’s grandmother and the mother of Governor Leland Stanford).

Douglass Warneke Grimes, born September 18, 1920, at Children’s Hospi­ tal, was given the maiden names of both his grandmothers: Douglass after his maternal grandmother and Warneke after his paternal grandmother. He completed the Peter Warneke Grimes family.

Both Philip and Douglas dropped the double letters in their first names, much to the chagrin of Grandma Douglass Stanford. “It’s not the same name!” she declared with indignation.

It was a generation earlier, in San Francisco on April 22, 1897, that Clara Douglass Stanford and Jerome Bonaparte Stanford became the parents of my mother, Helen. Helen’s brother, Leland, was born in November, 1900, in San Francisco.

Their mother, Clara, began the three generation tradition of beginning life in San Francisco when she was born November 23, 1866, as the fourth child of Margaret Conner the Irish girl and the Scotchman William Featherstone Douglass.

The following pages tell the stories of the Barbara, Philip, and Douglas’ Grimes ascendents. The descendants are mentioned by name, but their stories will have to be written by another family historian.