Humboldt County Historical Society

Before personal washing machines became available-which is to say, for most of history-laundry was at the bottom of the totem pole of desirable jobs. Historically regarding it as women's work, men in the 19th century who lived alone, without mothers, sisters, or wives, had to find some way to get their clothes washed. White shirts, linens, and underclothes required scrubbing, whitening and ironing, and a commercial laundry industry began to develop in the 1830s.

Entrenched and generally unquestioned attitudes of sexism and racism made arduous laundry work one of the only opportunities for employment available to many women, immigrants, and people of color. This was the case in the early mining and port towns of Northern California. When whites forced the Chinese out of the mine fields, many found work as cooks and launderers, filling a niche left empty by the absence of women on the frontier.

Weaver's Laundry staff, Eureka

In a 1986 Humboldt Historian, Glen Nash writes that Fred Weaver built "a fine large laundry building on the corner of First and F Streets in the 1880s." Weaver was known by the nickname of "China" or "Chinee," assigned to him by his competitors because he apparently hired Chinese laborers, and then, after the Chinese were expelled, allegedly continued to pay "Chinese" wages to his workers.

Nash notes that Weaver was "a large man," and in one of his "Old Timer" columns of 1931, Will Speegle describes Weaver as "omnipresent." According to Speegle, Weaver made daily visits to his friend Ed Hall's candy and fruit store on F Street, between 2nd and 3rd, where he would help his large self to the candy jars and then turn his attention to the fruits and nuts. Hall put up with this for a long time, but one day Weaver opened his mail to find a sizeable bill from Hall charging him with every item in the store. Weaver protested that he had never bought a single thing in Hall's store, and Hall declared that to be the exact truth. Weaver finally agreed to settle the account when Hall threatened to take over his laundry.

An auxiliary benefit of Weaver's steam laundry accrued to one Charles Hull Krider, well-know to Eurekans as Hamburger Charlie, or One-Armed Charlie. "Charley was never in the top spots," writes Speegle in a 1942 tribute after Charlie's death, "but you don't have to go to the top spots to find all of the great characters." The loss of his arm early in life had diminished Charlie's chances for employment, but he and his wife raised their family of five "without advantages of social, political, or financial aid."

For many years Charlie successfully made and sold hamburgers from a cart. Before that, however, he had a big crab cooker in back of Weaver's Laundry. Charlie ran a pipe into the back of the laundry and used the steam from its boilers to cook his crabs.

Women started out as the laborers in laundries, but in 1921 Mrs. Minnie Steppes, who had worked for Humboldt Laundry, became a business owner. She established Troy Laundry at 506 S Street, after purchasing machinery from Troy, New York. Her daughters Freda and Alice and son Charles Jr. helped run this successful business.