Eliza Tibbets (born Eliza Maria Lovell; 1823–1898) was among early American settlers and founders of Riverside, California; she was an activist in Washington, D.C., for progressive social causes, including freedmen's rights and universal suffrage before going to the West Coast. A spiritualist, she led seances in Riverside. She became known for successfully growing the first two hybrid Washington navel orange trees in California.
Married three times, she had a relationship with Luther C. Tibbets, living with him in Virginia and moving with him from Washington, D.C., to California in the early 1870s. They married there and lived by agriculture. Her success with the navel orange contributed to adoption by farmers of this variety of orange tree and rapid expansion of the citrus industry and the historic cultural landscape of orange groves in California.California State Parks, California Citrus State Historic Park. (Sacramento: 2002)U.S. Congress. House, Congressman Ketnner of CA Remarks on the Washington Navel Orange Anniversary Celebration, Cong. Rec. 63rd Cong. 2d Sess. (3 Sep. 1914), 3.
Early years Born in Cincinnati on August 5, 1823, Eliza Maria Lovell was the youngest child of Oliver and Clarissa Downes Lovell.May Lovell Rhodes and Thomas D. Rhodes, 1924 A Biographical Genealogy of the Lovell Family in England and America, Asheville, N.C.: Biltmore Press, 75. Pioneers to early Ohio, the Lovells had migrated to Cincinnati from Boston in 1812, traveling by covered wagon, then by river boat.Rhodes and Rhodes, 1924, pp. 202–06. The Lovell family became prominent in the frontier town. Eliza's father was elected to several positions; as a town councilman, city councilman, and President of the Fire Wardens' Association; he was called as a New Jerusalem minister, and selected as a trustee of the city water works, the Woodward School,Charles Theodore Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati and Representative Citizens, Vol 1, (Chicago: Biographical Pub., 1904), passimSee also Charles Cist, Cincinnati in 1841, (Cincinnati: The Author, 1841)The Cincinnati directory containing the names, profession and occupation of the inhabitants ..., (Cincinnati, Ohio: Oliver Farnsworth, 1819)Annals of the New Church, (Philadelphia: Academy of the New Church, 1898), 396, 412. and the Academy of Fine Arts.Ophia D. Smith, "Frederick Eckstein: The Father of Cincinnati Art," Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, 9 (October 1951): 274.
Her maternal uncle "Commodore" John Downes was a well-known and highly decorated officer of the War with Tripoli and the War of 1812.John Downes, Naval Historical Center website. Accessed 4 March 2008. He commanded the Mediterranean Squadron and later the Pacific Squadron. Downes’s ship became the first U.S. naval vessel to circumnavigate the globe.'Potomac', Hazegray Online. Accessed 4 March 2008.
The Lovells were members of the Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem in Cincinnati; it was based on the writings of Swedish scientist and mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. Their congregation included intelligent, cultured, and influential people who loved good literature, music, painting, the theater and other arts.Smith, "Adam Hurdus", p. 113. Cincinnati church members included inventors Jacob, William & R. P. Resor, publisher Benjamin and sculptor Hiram Powers, clockmaker Luman Watson, artist Mary Menessier Beck, educators Alexander Kinmont, Frederic Eckstein, and M. M. Carll, and theatrical agent Sol Smith.Smith, "Adam Hurdus", p. 120
Marriages and family At age 18, Eliza Lovell married James Summons, a steam boat captain, in the Cincinnati Swedenborgian church. Their son James B. Summons was her only child to survive into adulthood.Esther H. Klotz, "Eliza Tibbets And Her Washington Navel Orange Trees," in Riverside Municipal Museum, A History of Citrus In the Riverside Area, rev. ed. (San Bernardino: Franklin Press), pp. 13–14.
Eliza Lovell Summons later became a spiritualist.Klotz, 14 citing Illustrated History of Southern California, (Chicago: Lewis, 1890). When Spiritualism spread throughout the nation and the globe during the mid-19th century, her father Oliver Lovell became President of the spiritualist society in Cincinnati. Her sister Clara Lovell Smith's sealed letter was divined by spiritualist physician John Redmond, who discussed the family in one of his books.G. A. Redman, M.D., Mystic Hours; Or, Spiritual Experiences (New York: Charles Partridge, and Boston: Bela Marsh), 1859, 284–89. Tibbets was considered an accomplished medium.Emma Hardinge Britten, Modern American spiritualism, (New York: The author, 1870) 352–53. See also Redman, 284–89.
Tibbets's second husband, James Neal, was a commerce merchant who became a well-known healing medium.Britten, 355. Noted Spiritualist lecturer Thomas Gales Forster and his family lived with James and Eliza Lovell Neal in Clifton, Ohio, in 1860.United States. 1860 Federal Census, 8th Ward Cincinnati, Hamilton, Ohio, p. 164, lines 34–40.
In 1861 the Neals moved to New York City with her father. There her son James Summons enlisted in the New York State infantry at 17 under the name James B. Lovell.Klotz, 14Film Number M551 roll 85 Service Record card 683b-684. Service Card James B. Lovell, Civil War Soldiers and Sailors, National Park Service, Accessed 4 March 2008. He completed his three-year enlistment and was honorably discharged as the regimental postmaster.Log book of the 132nd Infantry, 1864, available at NARA, College Park, Maryland.
Southern United States After the war, Eliza Reveal became involved with merchant Luther C. Tibbets, who had been married twice before and had several children.Klotz, 15. He was an abolitionist. Her son James Summons married Luther's eldest daughter Harriet, and moved with their parents.
The Tibbets moved into the South in Tennessee but were driven out by unwelcoming locals who considered them carpetbaggers.
In 1867 the family moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia, and opened a local store.'Luther C. Tibbets,' Spirit of the South; or, Persecution in the name of law, as administered in Virginia, (Washington, D.C.: 1869). Text online at Library of Congress, American Memory Luther campaigned for office as a Radical Republican. He also worked as a land agent and ran a Sabbath School for freedmen and their children at a black Baptist Church, as freedmen were eager for education.
Tibbets was working on a land development plan for what he proposed to be a 30,000-acre colony outside Fredericksburg. He intended to allow people of any race to buy property. When the Tibbets were driven from Fredericksburg, a freedwoman persuaded them to take her young daughter Nicey with them, as she believed other areas would be better for the girl.Tom Patterson, 'Whatever Became of Nicey, Riverside's First Black Resident?,' Riverside Sun A 21st century account suggested that Nicey was the daughter of Eliza's son James and a young black woman in Virginia.
In Washington, D.C., Eliza and Luther Tibbets worked with Josephine S. Griffings, Congressman Benjamin F. Butler and other progressives on universal suffrage, freedmen's rights and other social issues.E. C. Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joselyn Gage, History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 3, 808 – 113.
Luther Tibbets left Washington in 1870 for California, where he settled in what became Riverside. She continued her activism, especially in the area of women's suffrage. Woman suffrage activists argued that the U.S. Constitution already enfranchised women citizens.Angela G Ray, Cindy Koenig Richards. "Inventing Citizens, Imagining Gender Justice: The Suffrage Rhetoric of Virginia and Francis Minor", Quarterly Journal of Speech, 93, 4, November 1, 2007, 375–402. For a brief time in the 1870s, citizens of the District of Columbia were enfranchised. DC woman suffrage activists argued that they were citizens and therefore enfranchised under that law."The Ladies Hold A Meeting", National Republican, April 19, 1871.
In 1871 seventy women tested the law in Washington, D.C. They marched to the registrar's office to register to vote, but were rejected.Women Who Voted, 1868 to 1873, Cady and Stanton online, accessed 4 Mar 2008Ann D. Gordon, ed. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers, 1997), 649. Frederick Douglass had accompanied the group, which included Tibbets, Belva Lockwood, the first woman admitted to the Supreme Court Bar; educator Sara Spencer, Dr. Susan A. Edson, physician to President Garfield, pioneer Julia Archibald Holmes; author E. D. E. N. Southworth, and founder of the Freedmen's Bureau, Josephine S. Griffing.Voter Names, Cady and Stanton online, accessed 4 Mar 2008"Justice For Women", (Washington, D.C.) Daily Morning Chronicle (April 15, 1871)Gordon, 650.
At the election, they tried to vote but were rejected at the polls."The Ladies Hold A Meeting;" Gordon, 649. Their test cases, Spencer v. Board of Registration, and Webster v. Judges of Election, were heard in the Supreme court of the District of Columbia.Spencer v. Board of Registration, 1 McA. 369. Stanton, et al. 1997, The Selected Papers, p. 813. Women throughout the United States, including Susan B. Anthony and Virginia Minor demonstrated in this way, testing the law with civil disobedience.Ray & Richards, 375. In the Minor v. Happersett decision of 1875, however, the Court formally dissociated citizenship from voting rights.
California Eliza moved to California and was among pioneers in Riverside, where she lived first with her son and his wife Harriet, Luther Tibbets's eldest daughter.'Eliza Tibbets' , Evergreen Memorial Historic Cemetery, accessed 13 October 2014 Among the pioneers in the 1870s were a group of "spiritualists and free thinkers."Klotz, 13, quoting Robert Hornbeck, 1913, Robidoux's Ranch in the '70's (Riverside, California: Press, 1904). Eliza and Luther finally had a justice of the peace regularize their relationship.
Tibbets accomplished much in her years in Riverside and Southern California, including successfully cultivating two grafted navel orange trees. When their fruit appeared at agricultural fairs, it attracted immediate attention. The hybrid came to dominate agricultural citrus orchards, as described below.
Their fortunes rose and fell, and they went bankrupt in 1878. Continuing to work on their small property, they built up their lives again but were never wealthy.
Tibbets died in 1898 while visiting the spiritualist colony in Summerland, on the coast near Santa Barbara. She was buried at Riverside's Evergreen Cemetery.Tom Patterson, 1984, "Spiritualist Introduced Seances, Navel Orange Farming to Riverside", Press-Enterprise, July 14, 1984.'Founders' Stories' , Evergreen Memorial Historic Cemetery
Legacy and honors A statue of Tibbets produced by artist Guy Angelo Wilson was dedicated on August 5, 2011, at the pedestrian mall beside the historic Mission Inn in Riverside. The Tibbets memorial is the first statue in Riverside to commemorate a woman. The California Citrus State Historic Park and the Orcutt Ranch Horticulture Center preserve the history of navel oranges in Riverside.
Tibbets and the Washington navel orange
Washington navel orange history