 | |
| Clara Siswaqi' Ashton | |
| Born | 1886 |
|---|---|
| Died | Unknown |
| Spouse | Benedict Ellery Ashton |
Clara Siswaqi' Ashton was a Wiyot woman who married Benedict Ellery Ashton in 1907; Siswaqi' was her own name, and Ashton she took from her husband. The Wiyot had known the creeks, bluffs, and forests around Briarmont long before the township was set on any map, and the early settlement had once survived through a working relationship with their nearby communities — a bond the Hartwell timber boom later strained as forest and shore passed into company hands.
That history sat uneasily against the family Clara married into. Benedict was the only son of Clarence Ashton, who ran the Hartwell Timber Co.'s operations for three decades, and the marriage deepened the long estrangement between father and son. Clara left the Ashton household with Benedict and made her life with him apart from the family into which she had married. Little else of her life was recorded, and the date and place of her death are unknown.