July 2025 - History Corner

The History Corner

#190 in an ongoing series about the history of the Hillside Club

Number 32 in a series of articles profiling notable Hillside Club members of the past.

Adella D. Gay (1859-1962)

Club member for 58 years (1905-63)

The Hillside Club’s first civic improvement project was advocating for the construction of Hillside School, at the corner of Virginia and Le Roy. One of the few acceptable occupations for a woman in 1900 was teaching. Female educators were almost always unmarried, as society expected a bride to immediately quit her job in order to raise a family. Such career teachers were therefore called “Miss,” whatever their age. The Hillside Club’s early roster included a number of respected educators: Miss Annie Woodall, Miss Jeanette Barrows, and the subject of this month’s spotlight, Miss Adella Gay.

Adella Desdemona Gay was born in Two Rock, Sonoma County, in 1859, the daughter of a pioneer family who crossed the plains from Illinois during the Gold Rush in 1849. She began her teaching career at the age of fifteen in the city of Williams in Colusa County. She also taught in several rural schools until 1906, when she joined the faculty of Whittier Elementary School in Berkeley. Later she taught at Garfield Junior High.

Adella Gay joined the Hillside Club immediately upon arriving in Berkeley, and was a member for the next 58 years, one of the longest tenures in the Club’s history. She became a life member in 1929, and was granted honorary membership in 1955.

Adella never married and had no children. She retired in 1936 at the age of 77, and passed away in June 1962 at her home in Berkeley, at the age of 103. She is buried next to her parents at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Red Bluff, California.