Edward Abbott Plaskett was born November 18, 1881, at Gorda on the Big Sur coast, a son of Byron Gianavil Plaskett — Pacific Valley’s first postmaster — and Martha Bennett Plaskett, and a grandson of the patriarch William Lucas Plaskett. He grew up among the fifty children of the Plaskett valley, and grew up bold: family memory keeps him as the coast’s daredevil horseman, a cowboy who would ride at a full gallop down hills that made grown men dismount and walk. Like most Plaskett men he also tried his hand at the family dream of gold in the home hills, prospecting with his brother Lawson in the Santa Lucias.
His courtship became the family’s favorite story. Riding to school in a two-horse buckboard beside fifteen-year-old Mabel Sans of Mill Creek, Ed — twice her age — turned and asked: “Well Mabel, isn’t it about time we got married?” Her father consented, and on September 28, 1911, they were married at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Jolon — the church Ed’s own uncles, Reason, Robert, and Marion Plaskett, had built.
Ed and Mabel raised seven children — Gordon, Cyril, Amy Belle, Peggy, Gilbert, Byron Carl, and Marianne — first on the coast, and after 1922 in the Westlake and Jolon country: it was Edward who signed the family’s Pacific Valley acres over to William Randolph Hearst’s agent that year, closing fifty-three years of Plaskett life in the valley. He outlived his son Gordon, lost in a plane crash at King City, and his wife Mabel, whose 1964 obituary still placed him “of the Jolon area” — the country he never really left.
He died March 10, 1973, at ninety-one — the same great age his grandfather William Lucas had reached, from the other end of the family’s California century.
Parents: Byron Gianavil Plaskett · Martha Corrine Bennett Plaskett
Married: Mabel Eva Sans Plaskett
Children: Gordon Laurence Plaskett Sr · Cyril Edward Plaskett · Ethyl Margarette Plaskett Horn · Gilbert Atherton Plaskett · Marianne Ellen Plaskett Draper Alderson
Brothers & sisters: Dorsett Plaskett · William Dudley Plaskett · Charles Plaskett · Charles Henry Plaskett · Albert T Plaskett · Albert Allen Plaskett · Laura Dorsett Plaskett · Frances Marion Plaskett · Mary M Plaskett · Mary Elizabeth Plaskett · Lawson McKern Plaskett · Lucy Elizabeth Plaskett · Fannie Harriet Plaskett · Fanny Harriet Plaskett Mansfield · Wesley Barnes Plaskett
Parents: Byron Gianavil Plaskett · Martha Corrine Bennett Plaskett
Grandparents: William Lucas Plaskett · Stephen Dudley Bennett · Ann Dorsett Appling · Sarah May Barnes Plaskett · William E. Plaskett
Great-grandparents: James A. Barnes · Samuel Plaskett (1784-1858) · Sarah Prewitt · Stephen Bennett · Maria Rush Plaskett · Elizabeth Barnett · William Vittortha Appling · Martha Ann Nunnally · William Lucas Plaskett · Sarah May Barnes Plaskett
2× great-grandparents: Elizabeth [--] Plaskett · William Plaskett Jr. · William Appling · Thomas Barnett · Susan Nunnally · Nancy Price · Ann (Nancy) Price Barnes · Sarah Barrett · James A. Barnes · Samuel Plaskett (1784-1858) · Maria Rush Plaskett · Elizabeth Barnett · Leonard Barnes
3× great-grandparents: William Allen Burton · Elizabeth [--] Plaskett · William Plaskett (d. 1748) · Margaret Lucas Plaskett · Thomas E. Barnett · Martha Grubbs · John Appling · Mary Walthall (Burton) · Mordecai Price · William Plaskett Jr. · Arthur Barrett · Thomas Barnett · Nancy Price · Ann (Nancy) Price Barnes · Sarah Barrett · Leonard Barnes
4× great-grandparents: Bridget Stott Lucas · Edward Lucas · John Plascatt of Whitehaven · Richard Walthall · John Price · William Plaskett (d. 1748) · Rebecca MERRYMAN · Margaret Lucas Plaskett · Thomas E. Barnett · Thomas Barrett, Quaker · Hannah Oldham · Mordecai Price · Arthur Barrett
story
Jerry Lewis's Yacht Pussycat Wrecked Near Gorda
The 1966 Lopez Point wreck and the debris remembered at Willow Creek — what the record proves, and what a ten-year-old on the beach saw.
place history
The Schoolteacher Brides of Pacific Valley
The county kept sending young women to teach the coast's children — and the Plaskett boys kept marrying them. How two brothers married two sisters, and the schoolhouse became the town.
story
The Rattlesnake on the Mail Trail
A rattlesnake struck Ed Plaskett's horse on the mountain mail trail. The horse left the county. The story has a happy ending — eventually.
story
The Guano Harvest: Farming the Top of Plaskett Rock
Ed Plaskett and his brothers built a way to the top of Plaskett Rock — where centuries of seagulls had left a crown of first-rate fertilizer, free for the scraping.
story
The Buckboard Proposal — A Fifteen-Year-Old Bride
'Well Mabel, isn't it about time we got married?' She said her father would never allow it. She was wrong — and the family got its chronicler.
story
Sale to Hearst — The End of an Era
Ten dollars on paper for 1,523 acres: the 1922 deed to Hearst's agent that scattered the families and ended 53 Plaskett years in Pacific Valley.
gold mines
The Los Burros Mining District and the Lost Town of Manchester
Organized 1876, transformed by Willey Cruikshank's Last Chance strike in 1887 — and gone by 1897, burned and grown over. The rise and fall of the coast's gold district, and the lost town of Manchester.
gold mines
Ed and Lawson Plaskett - Gold Mining Dreams
Ed and Lawson Plaskett chased the rumor every coast man heard — that gold waited in the home hills.
mabel article
South Monterey County Writers Part II
A 2007 appreciation of Mabel herself — 'Belle' Sans Plaskett with her horse Cleo — by historian Susan Raycraft.
story
Ed Plaskett the Daredevil Horseman
Ed Plaskett rode at a gallop along cliff edges that made grown men dismount and walk.
story
The Mabel Plaskett Columnist
How a coast pioneer's wife became the beloved historian of the Big Sur country in the pages of The Land.
story
Coast Road Opens - 1937
In 1937 the pavement finally reached the coast the Plasketts had settled 68 years earlier.
story
The Postman Incident - Mabel Accused of Affair
Mabel loved chatting with the postman — and the valley's gossips made her pay for it.
story
Gordon Plaskett Dies in Plane Crash
Gordon Plaskett, one of Ed and Mabel's sons, died in a plane crash at King City in 1953.
- birth 1881-11-18 · Gorda — Born in Gorda, Monterey County (per family records)
- residence 1890 · Pacific Valley — Boyhood in Pacific Valley among the valley's fifty children
- marriage 1911-09-28 · Jolon — Married Mabel Eva Sans at St. Luke's Episcopal Church (one record gives 1912-09-27)
- residence 1922 · Jolon — Moved to the Westlake and Jolon country after the sale to Hearst
- death 1973-03-10 — Died March 10, 1973 at age 91
- occupation — Sold hundreds of acres of Plaskett family land to William Randolph Hearst through Barbee broker
- 1922 Edward & Mabel Plaskett → Joseph K. Barbree (agent for W.R. Hearst) · 1523.3 acres · $10
- 1925 Edward & Mabel Plaskett → Hearst Corporation
- 1926 Edward & Mabel Plaskett → Joseph K. Barbree · 1523.3 acres · $10
born life events land died