By Maureen Elliott

(photos courtesy of Georgiana Hazelton Neel Hari)

 

Cedar Center is a busy area of Arnold but it was originally the home of the Hazelton family. Montague and Nellie Hazelton ventured up to the area five months after Berniece Arnold purchased her 40 acres. The Hazelton’s 40 acre purchase was adjacent to the Arnold ’s property and was purchased from Ida Fugitt Ralph on 1/26/1929 . The legal description of their new land was the NW ¼ of the SE ¼ of Section 30, 5N, 15E. A portion of the Hazelton’s 40 acres, where the original 6 room and 3 room houses were built, was turned into a retail shopping center called Cedar Center. The rear of what is now Cedar Center has a row of retail store fronts and the rest are separate buildings. The land at the back of the original 40 acres is still mostly vacant land.

Montague Hazelton was born in Cambridge, England and arrived in Maine at the age of 13, accompanied by 29 other young boys who were chaperoned by a Dr. Barbados. He worked as a farm laborer in Canada until 1913 when he crossed the border into Michigan with his final destination given as Oakland. Montague and Nellie had six children, the oldest Charles Montague was 12 when they made the move up the hill and the youngest Frederick was only 3, which would have bumped up the population of the little Avery School, the closest school for the children to attend. The children were Charles born 8/9/1916; Margaret Elinor born 5/6/1918; George Edward born 3/2/1920; Dorothy Elizabeth, born 2/9/1922; Albert Stanley born 1/14/1924 who died in the 2nd WW in Burma on 7/2/1944, the year he would have graduated from high school, and Frederick born 7/9/191925. Both of the parents and their son George are buried in the Buena Vista Cemetery in Murphys, CA.

Albert Hazelton was remembered years later by school mates. Russell Pettit wrote: “We didn’t get many haircuts back then and Albert Hazelton was a resourceful boy who invented a hair dressing that kept the hair out of your eyes. It was made of sugar and water for the most part, and it really controlled your hair. In fact if you combed in a goodly amount of that stuff and let it dry, you could rap your knuckles on the top of your head and it felt just like you were wearing a helmet.” Pettit also remembered Albert for something else: “I remember Albert Hazelton ’s skill at marbles. He could hold a ‘shooter’ at belt level, fire it and split your marble at ten feet away. He was good at so many things. He could take apart and repair your old pocket watch and he could run like a deer. He used to turn on the speed jut to show off and I once heard Mi ss Fischer remark with a certain amount of awe, ‘My just look at him go!’ ”

The Hazelton family intended to live on the land they had purchased full time and built a 6 room house on the front of the land, along with a garage. They added more buildings to the property and by 1936 another house was there, this time with 3 rooms that was intended for their oldest son Charles and his family. A third cabin was added about 1945 for their youngest son Frederick and his wife Pansy and finally a fourth building for Margaret Elinor Hazelton and her husband Winton Hicks. 

The original house, built at the front of the property was the largest and the Hazeltons added gas pumps in front of it near the highway and used the back part of the property as a small snow play area that they named “Monty’s Winter Sports ”. That house later became a restaurant and flower shop. The small house in front of it was a beauty shop for many years but was removed when the new El Dorado Bank building was built. The old El Dorado Bank is now a real estate office.
 
There was a spring on the property that provided water to the buildings in the early years and where the kids picked water cress from the small stream fed by the spring.

Comments written by Louise Dolley, who moved to the area when the Blagen Mill was built, were: “Wildy and Herma Small, Bill and Joe, a baby, were the first ones here, living in the log house that is now the Card Shop. The bigger house was where the Hazelton family lived; they had gas pumps out on the highway that were there ‘til the new road was built. There were two other places. One is now the beauty shop and the other is the little cabin in back, where Dillie Mae and Ray Hollingsworth lived ‘til the company house was built.”

 

Footnotes

1. 1/26/1929 in Deed Bk. 83, page 57: Ida Fugitt Ralph to M. & Nellie Hazelton of Alameda for $10: NW 1/4 of the SE 1/4 of Sec. 30, 5N, 15E. Deed Book 83, Page 537
2. Property tax 1932: M & Nellie Hazelton: NE 1/4 of SE 1/4 of Sec 30, 5N, 15E being 40 acres. 6 room house, garage $350
3. Property tax 1933: M. & Nellie Hazelton: 6 rm. unfinished house, garage $200. 1935: same as above but now valued at $350 4. Property Tax 1936 M. & Nellie Hazelton: 6 rm unfinished house, garage $350; 3 rm unfinished house $250
5. Property Tax 1944-46 Hazelton: 6 room house, garage $600, 3 room house & 2 room cabin $600
6. Prospect 11/26/1949:Monty’s Winter Sports

All photos courtesy of Georgiana Hazelton Neel Hari.