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Cecile Clarke was born in 1885 and raised
on the Clarke family sheep ranch in Mendocino County. Her
mother, a former teacher, home schooled all the Clarke
children for their early years. Cecile then attended high
school in Ukiah and went on to get a history degree from
UC Berkeley. After teaching in Ukiah she moved to Eureka
in 1915 to teach high school history. She developed a
reputation as a good but strict teacher. From childhood, Cecile was a collector. She believed that people learned best about the past and other cultures through cultural artifacts. She established the Eureka City Museum at the high school and in 1950 retired as a teacher to devote herself to the museum. In 1960 after her parents death, she used her inheritance to buy the former Bank of Eureka building and move her museum there, naming it as a memorial to her parents, Joseph and Annie Clarke. |