Wanda Muir-Hanna

Wanda Muir-Hanna, seated at top left, along with her sister Helen, parents John Muir and Louise Strentzel Muir, and dog Keeny, at the family home.

John Muir National Historic Site photograph.

Article Written By Emma Chapman

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Wanda Muir-Hanna was one of the longest residents of the land that is now the John Muir Historic Site. She was the oldest child of Louisa “Louie” Strentzel and John Muir. She not only grew up in the Muir house, but raised her own family on the Strentzel/Muir property. A nature lover and a scholar, she was instrumental in creating a positive public image of John Muir that only started to come under scrutiny in the twenty-first century for his racist views.¹

Muir-Hanna was born March 25, 1881 and spent her childhood in the Martinez, California house her wealthy maternal grandparents gave to her parents.² In the nineteenth century, many middle- and upper-class parents took an extremely active interest in the upbringing of their young children, and John and Louisa Muir were no different. Together, they provided their two daughters a good education in comfortable circumstances at home.³ During his frequent trips away, John Muir wrote detailed letters to his wife and in-laws concerning his daughters’ care and education.⁴ When he was home, he hiked, practiced art, and discussed the natural world with his children.⁵ Louisa Muir drew upon her formal education at a ladies’ seminary to instill in her daughters a love of music, astronomy, poetry, and farming as she helped run the lucrative Strentzel fruit farm that provided financially for the Muir family.⁶

Despite his desire to provide his daughters a good private education, John Muir refused to pay tuition for Muir-Hanna to go out and attend high school. Muir-Hanna used her own inheritance from her maternal grandfather to enroll.⁷ She then completed at least three years of study at the University of California, Berkeley before withdrawing early to care for her ill sister and aging mother.⁸ At the age of twenty-five, Muir-Hanna married mining engineer Thomas Rea Hanna and moved into an adobe house on the Strentzel-Muir property.⁹ While raising six children, Muir-Hanna and her husband ran the family fruit farm that her aging father and ailing sister needed help with after her mother’s death.¹⁰

After John Muir’s death in 1914, Muir-Hanna fought to control her father’s legacy. She successfully obtained a court order stopping a man who obtained and threatened to publish some of Muir’s personal correspondence. She and her sister hired a literary executor, William Frederic Badè, and collaborated with him in editing out personal parts of their father’s writings. Badè, often with the sisters’ consent, even added sentences, corrected grammatical mistakes, and removed informal language. His work created some of the earliest public impressions of John Muir after his death in a way that Muir-Hanna and her sister could guide and approve of.¹¹

Despite her relation to her famous father and wealthy mother, Muir-Hanna’s family’s financial prospects fluctuated throughout her adult life. Her husband worked her family’s farm for many years, but also found jobs as a fur grader and an operator of the Lundy Mine while she ran a real estate business during the Great Depression.¹² Some of Muir-Hanna’s children attended college, but some withdrew for some years because of the economic strain of the Depression.¹³ The whole family spent time in Yosemite, where Muir-Hanna had accompanied her father as a young woman.¹⁴

Muir-Hanna died on July 29, 1942. She was buried in the Muir-Strentzel Hanna Cemetery on the family’s land in Martinez, California. The heavily curated image that she created of her father defined public perception of the famed conservationist during the twentieth century and long after her death.¹⁵

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¹ - Ronald H. Limbaugh, “Pride, Prejudice, and Patrimony: The Dispute Between George Wharton James and the Family and Friends of John Muir,” in John Muir: Family, Friends, and Adventures, edited by Sally M. Miller and Daryl Morrison (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 83-104.

² - Daniel J. Philippon, “Domesticity, Tourism, and the National Parks in John Muir’s Late Writings,” in John Muir: Family, Friends, and Adventures, edited by Sally M. Miller and Daryl Morrison (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 154; Daryl Morrison, “John Muir and the Bairns: Muir and His Relationship with Children,” in John Muir: Family, Friends, and Adventures, edited by Sally M. Miller and Daryl Morrison (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 55.

³ - Morrison, “John Muir and the Bairns,” 47-48, 55-59.

⁴ - Morrison, “John Muir and the Bairns,” 34, 55-59.

⁵ - Morrison, “John Muir and the Bairns,” 47-48, 55-59.

⁶ - Harriet Burt, “Louie Strentzel Muir Through the Eyes of Her Daughter, Helen,” Patch, April 20, 2012, https://patch.com/california/martinez/bp--louie-strentzel-muir-through-the-eyes-of-her-daughter-helen; Steve Pauly and Patty Pauly, “Louie Strentzel Muir,” Louie Strentzel Muir Biography - People - John Muir Exhibit (Sierra Club), accessed September 30, 2020, https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/people/louie_muir_bio.aspx.

⁷ - Wisconsin Historical Society, “Odd Wisconsin: John Muir’s Rebellious Daughters,” Wisconsin State Journal, October 23, 2013, https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/odd-wisconsin-john-muirs-rebellious-daughters/article_7e7a9270-d682-59ee-bebd-4630dbdc64c1.html

⁸ - “U.S., School Yearbooks, 1880-2012,” University of California, 1905, Ancestry.com. U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-1999 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1265/images/31916_b031527-00345?treeid=&personid=&hintid=&usePUB=true&usePUBJs=true&_ga=2.200248234.502680306.1599260562-607525790.1588376189&pId=3028716; Morrison, “John Muir and the Bairns,” 58.

⁹ - Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006, Year: 1910; Census Place: Township 1, Contra Costa, California; Roll: T624_75; Page: 8B; Enumeration District: 0161; FHL microfilm: 1374088;

¹⁰ - “Places,” John Muir National Historic Site, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/jomu/learn/historyculture/places.htm; Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002, Year: 1930; Census Place: Township 1, Contra Costa, California; Page: 19A; Enumeration District: 0005; FHL microfilm: 2339848

¹¹ - Limbaugh, “Pride, Prejudice, and Patrimony,” 83-104.

¹² - “Funeral Services Held on Coast for Thomas Hanna,” The Mason Valley News (Yerington, NV), November 14, 1947, Newspapers.com, https://img6.newspapers.com/clip/56375256/thomas-hanna-obituary-1947-nevada/; Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012, Year: 1940; Census Place: Contra Costa, California; Roll: m-t0627-00195; Page: 5B; Enumeration District: 7-9

¹³ - “John Hanna Obituary,” Napa Valley Register (Napa, CA), December 4, 2007, https://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/obituaries/john-hanna/article_763ef6ec-9ee8-5ac9-90c6-c10a82e49ee7.html

¹⁴ - “John Hanna Obituary,” Napa Valley Register (Napa, CA), December 4, 2007, https://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/obituaries/john-hanna/article_763ef6ec-9ee8-5ac9-90c6-c10a82e49ee7.html; Daniel J. Philippon, “Domesticity, Tourism, and the National Parks in John Muir’s Late Writings,” in John Muir: Family, Friends, and Adventures, edited by Sally M. Miller and Daryl Morrison (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 158-159.

¹⁵ - Limbaugh, “Pride, Prejudice, and Patrimony,” 83-104.

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Acknowledgements:

This project was made possible in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation.

This project was conducted in Partnership with the University of California Davis History Department through the Californian Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, CA# P20AC00946