At first look the little white house on Russell Street seems unassuming. The one story house sits behind a classic and well-manicured front lawn. It looks similar to many other historic Winters homes. There is nothing to say that this was one of the first residences in Winters, built in 1876. There isn’t a banner proclaiming that this year marks a century of Gale family history.

Nevertheless the house is lovely, with a unique front porch and clean exterior. There’s a little piece of Winters history standing right beside the front door: A pew from the old St. Anthony’s Catholic Church. Laura Gale’s grandmother, Mary Gale, used to teach catechism classes on it.

Laura has always loved this house. Generations of her family’s history took place within it. From childbirth to heartbreak, from crisis to Christmas parties, this white house on Russell Street has been a home to the Gale family since 1919.

It’s a craftsman style house, ordered from a Sears-Roebuck catalogue, Laura suspects. Jeptha Jeans, a butcher from Vacaville and an early Winters citizen, built the house for his family in 1876.

In the beginning it was a simple house. It had only four rooms and was built without indoor plumbing. Though it was small by today’s standards it had high ceilings and walls lined with delicate wainscoting.

In 1911 the house was rented by four Winters school teachers. It was considered improper for single women to live alone, so Lillie Laugenaur, Ethel England, Margaret Ish and Lucy Lovett shared the house. They dubbed the house the Lil-Eth-Lu-Mar Club.

Laura’s grandparents, Archibald (who went by Art) and Mary Elizabeth Gale, bought the house in 1919. Art was born in South Dakota in 1885. He and Mary were living in Solano County when they decided to move to Winters.

They raised a family in the Jeans house. Laura’s father Robert was the eldest of Art and Mary’s seven children. Robert was born in the front room of the Jeans house, just as all his siblings were.

As the family grew Art remodeled the house to keep up with them. Rooms were added, plumbing was installed. Art had been a contractor for a time in Napa. He continued in the profession after moving to Winters.

“He was a good man, an honest man,” Laura says of her grandfather, “and he built many of the buildings in this town.”

To see an example of Art’s handiwork, just stroll down Main Street until you reach the Pizza Factory. Art had originally built the brick building to be a market place. Laura remembers cutting through a path from her grandparents’ house to the market and walking in the back door of the business. She explains that they were very casual at the time.

Art was also involved in politics. He was close with Earl Warren, who served as the Attorney General of California before becoming the governor. Laura remembers a story about Warren trying to buy her grandfather’s best hunting dog, an Irish Setter named King.

Art campaigned for Adlai Stevenson, who ran against Dwight D. Eisenhower. Art also ran his own campaign for mayor, which he won. Art served as the Mayor of Winters for four years.

Meanwhile the Gale family continued to grow and change through extraordinary times.

“After Pearl Harbor the whole completion of this house changed,” Laura says.

When their country called, each of the boys who could enlisted to fight in World War II. Robert, the eldest, served in the Army Air Force and fought on the Burma-India-China front. One of his younger brothers, too young to enlist legally, lied about his age. The youngest boy, Eugene, was left behind with his sisters.

Two of the brothers left pregnant wives in Winters when they went to serve overseas. Laura’s family says Eugene took his role as uncle seriously when tending to his newborn nieces. He would be seen walking up and down the streets, proudly pushing the two babies in a carriage.

Unlike many families, the Gale family made it through WWII unscathed.

The family wasn’t always so lucky. Laura can still clearly remember the day her cousin Stephen Henry Burton died.

She was a young girl at the time. She had gone along with her family to swim at Lake Berryessa. When the party returned they found the house in despair.

Stephen, only 8 months old, had died in his crib. Laura remembers the feeling in the house as each person started to become hysterical.

Her father, seeing that something had to be done, took Laura and the two other oldest cousins outside. He sat the three girls on the curb and brought them little cups of water.

Laura can still see the cups in her mind. Each was printed little nursery rhymes. They calmed the girls. She remembers looking at them as she sat on the curb with her cousins.

“We saw a lot of sorrow,” she says after she tells the story, then adds, “and at the same time we saw a lot of joy, too.”

The living room is comfortably warm on a damp January morning. It’s heated by a fireplace that was added during a remodel in the 1950s. Laura has a family photograph of a Christmas party out on the coffee table.

It was taken in this very room. The extended Gale family crowds the frame and a large, tinsel covered tree stands behind them, but it is possible to make out the same front window in the background that we looked through that morning.

Laura loves this picture. To her it truly captures her family. Laura is the light haired toddler sitting on her grandmother’s lap.

When they became grandparents Mary and Art were redubbed “Gadigee” and Papa. According to family stories, the names came about when one of the grandchildren couldn’t pronounce the word “grandma.” Laura says that the name stuck, and eventually Mary was even known around town as “Gadigee.”

Art died in 1968. Mary passed in 1994 at the age of 103. At that time Laura was living in Davis on Olive Drive.

When she told her father that she wanted to buy the family home, he told her to forget it. The house, now nearly 120 years old, needed repairs and upkeep. But Laura was determined, and he eventually agreed to help her.

Robert had followed in his father’s footsteps and become a contractor.

With her father’s help she was able to fix the place up and move in in the fall of 1996.

“It’s been fun,” Laura says.

She can describe almost the entire structural history of the house while walking through its rooms.

The front porch was originally a screened in room. The frosted glass in the entryway was added in the remodel that brought the oak floorboards and the fireplace. Laura points out where her grandfather lowered the ceiling to keep the rooms warmer.

Stepping out through the back door Laura points out the back porch that was built by her cousin. She has had to make some updates to preserve the historic building. On the advice of an expert she had the basement floor cemented.

Family memories are still being made in the Gale house. Laura hosts reunions, gatherings and rock ‘n’ roll parties with her family.

At the very first reunion in the family home, Robert presented his daughter with a mounted buck’s head. Laura had already named the buck Oscar. Now Oscar watches the family from above the fireplace.

Not many houses on the West Coast can boast a century of one family’s history. The Jeans house might someday be known as the Gale house by future Winters historians.

For Laura, it’s more important as a piece of living family history.

“I’m really fortunate because I look back on my childhood and all I can do is smile and be happy,” Laura says.

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