LUKA GRGUREVICH ON
BROOK’S ISLAND
Croatian
Fisherman-Sheep-Brooks Island, 1870
Most
people in the San Francisco Bay Area are familiar with Yerba Buena, Treasure
Island, Angel Island and, of course, Alcatraz, but only a handful know about
the other islands-The Brothers, The Sisters, east and West Marin Islands, Brooks Island and red Rock. Tiny
outcroppings in the Bay, they range in size from Brooks Island, 45 acres of
forest, to West Sister, little more than a rock. Two are privately owned, one
is opened as a park this year. The rest are accessible by boat; in some cases
permission from the Coast Guard is necessary. South of The Brothers, three
quarters of a mile off Point Richmond, lies Brooks island a lush 45 acres with
two fresh-water springs. East Bay Regional Parks bought the land for $625,000
in 1968 and plans to open it to the public this summer.
The
island was the site of several Indian villages from about 3000 B.C. to 70 A.D.,
according to George Coles, an anthropologist at Contra Costa College who has
been excavating on the island for many years. The first piece of Indian rope
found in California was on Brooks. The fresh water has crated a marsh that is
the home for cormorants, mallards, Canadian geese and mourning doves. Mussels,
clams and oysters can still be gathered along some parts of the two miles of
shoreline.
Records
show a Mr. Brooks lived on the island in the middle of the 19th century. He
constructed a four-room house and raised goats, then left the Bay Area around
1870.
A
Croatian immigrant, Luccas Gargurevich, and his wife moved
in and raised sheep and 10 children. His son Anton claimed, in a short history
of the island he wrote in 1965, that his father was cheated out of the land by
one of the Big Four railroad companies. The family then moved to Berkeley.
Luka
Gargurevich died in West Berkeley, November 30, 1919, Luke Gargurevich born in
1841, dearly beloved husband of the late Domencia Gargurevich, and loving
father of Antone, Mitchell, Luke and Victor Gargurevich, Mrs. Annie S. Illich
and Sophie E. Haiens, a native of the Island
of Lastovo, Dalmatia, Croatia, aged 80 years and 10 months. A member of Croatian-Slavonic Illyric M. B. Society of San Francisco. Friends
and acquaintances respectfully invited to attend the funeral tomorrow
(Wednesday), Dec. 3, 1919, from the parlors of Ferrari & Alison 1548
Stockton, at 1 p.m.; thence to K. P. Hall, 115 Valencia st., where services
will be held under Slavonic I. M. B. Society, commencing at 2 p.m., thence to Croatian Church of Nativity for
blessing. Internment, Holy Cross,
Croatian-Slavonic Plot.
Luka
probably was a 49er as he is found fishing in San Francisco Bay in the early
1850’s. Gio Grgurevich, probably a brother, was buried in historic Mission
Dolores Cemetery in 1855. Ivan, Marko and Michael Grgurevich were
volunteers in Cognevich’s Company,
Slavonian Rifles, Confederate Army
of 1861 out of Louisiana.
Source
Adam
S Eterovich
BROOKS
ISLAND - SF
By
Dennis Drabelle