Achieving Flight: The Life and Times of John J. Montgomery

By John G. Burdick and Bernard J. Burdick

Most Americans are aware that the Wright brothers had been the first to fly a powered Flying Machine in 1903. But John J. Montgomery was the first to fly a glider of his own design in 1883, a full twenty years before the Wright brothers.

Achieving Flight, by John G. Burdick and Bernard J. Burdick, provides an historic and scientific assessment of the role of John J. Montgomery (1858-1911), one of Californias own, in the early years of flight in America. It tells the story of Montgomery, an eminent scientist whose achievements in aeronautics and electricity have largely been forgotten. This biography narrates how, during his days as a student at St. Ignatius College, he was fortunate to be instructed by some of the most renowned Jesuit scientists ousted from Europe, earning a masters of science degree in 1880. The Burdicks also provide a critical analysis of Montgomerys prescient understanding of aeronautics relative to other practitioners and researchers prior to, during, and after his time.

Noting Montgomerys importance in aeronautical history, Achieving Flight reviews his significant accomplishments in having his pilots fly successfully in high air (up to 4,000 feet, being lofted there by a hot-air balloon), but also evaluates the scientific correctness of his ideas, which were decades ahead of the times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480850811

John G. Burdick

John G. Burdick earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Santa Clara University. He’s a retired US Army counterintelligence officer who served in Vietnam and a high school teacher at Watsonville, California. He lives in Pacific Grove, California.     Bernard J. Burdick earned a PhD in high energy physics from Case Western Reserve University and worked as a research scientist for MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Nichols Research Corp., and Torch Concepts. Retired, he lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts.   Visit them online at www.AchievingFlight.com.

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Copyright © 2017 John G. Burdick and Bernard J. Burdick.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Images courtesy of Archives & Special Collections, Santa Clara University Library

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the publisher makes no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5080-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5079-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5081-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017953983

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/03/2017

CONTENTS

Preface

John Burdick:

A Note To The Reader:

Prologue

CHAPTER 1   An Education: 1858–1882

California: The Promised Land

Progress In The Science Of Electricity

CHAPTER 2   The First Flights In The United States: 1883–1885

The Fruitland Ranch

Montgomery’s First Flight

The First Montgomery Aeroplane

Date And Length Of First Flight

The Second Montgomery Aeroplane

The Third Montgomery Aeroplane

Progress In The Pursuit Of Flight

CHAPTER 3   Toward An Understanding Of Aerodynamics: 1886–1892

Montgomery’s Experiments

Value Of The Parabolic Wing

Explanation Of Soaring Flight

Extension To Sailboat Tacking4

The Reynolds Number

Advances In Theoretical Aerodynamics

CHAPTER 4   A Manuscript For Octave Chanute: 1893–1895

John Montgomery’s Trip To Chicago

The Chicago Conference

Octave Chanute

Molecular Theory

Montgomery’s Discoveries

Elastic Scattering20

CHAPTER 5   At Santa Clara College: 1896–1904

Experiments At Mt. St. Joseph’s College

Santa Clara College Hospitality7

Gold Concentrator Machine

Fr. Richard Bell

Encounters With Thomas Baldwin

CHAPTER 6   The First Flights From High Air: 1905–Mid-1906

Flights At Santa Cruz

Flights At Santa Clara

The Montgomery–Chanute–Wright Connection

CHAPTER 7   Hiatus In Flights: Mid-1906–1910

The Great Earthquake

Chanute And The Wrights

The Telautoprint Machine

CHAPTER 8   The Evergreen Flights: 1910–1911

Montgomery’s Plans

Tuesday, October 31, 191118

The Funeral

CHAPTER 9   The Family’s Lawsuit: 1911–1928

The Family’s Decisions

The Great War

The Road To Court

The Lawsuit28

The Effort To Remove Montgomery From The History Of Flight

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

APPENDIX A.   Family And People In Montgomery’s Life

APPENDIX B.   Soaring Flight

APPENDIX C.   Discussion On The Various Papers On Soaring Flight.

APPENDIX D.   Montgomery’s Aeroplane Patent

APPENDIX E.   The Personality Of The Man

APPENDIX F.   The Aeroplane: A Scientific Study

APPENDIX G.   New Principles In Aerial Flight

APPENDIX H.   Principles Involved In The Formation Of Wing Surfaces And The Phenomenon Of Soaring

APPENDIX I.   The Early Development Of The Warping Principle

APPENDIX J.   Some Early Gliding Experiments In America

APPENDIX K.   The Origin Of Warping. Professor Montgomery’S Experiments

APPENDIX L.   Our Tutors In The Art Of Flying

About The Authors

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Montgomery Obelisk, University of Santa Clara Mission Gardens.

Watsonville HS students assembling John Burdick’s Santa Clara replica

Depiction of John Montgomery in his 1883 Glider.

Fig I. First Montgomery craft, plan view.

Fig II. Second Montgomery craft, plan view.

Fig. III. Second Montgomery craft, front view.

Montgomery’s drawing of his ²nd machine.

Fig. VII. Third Montgomery craft, plan view.

Fig. VIII. Third Montgomery craft, front view.

Montgomery’s drawing of his ³rd machine.

Lilienthal gliding in his machine.

Chanute’s biplane glider, 1896–1897.

Chanute’s triplane glider, 1896–1897.

Langley’s tandem-wing machine.

Montgomery’s water tables, from his 1893 manuscript.

Montgomery’s Fig. 11 from his 1893 manuscript.

Montgomery’s Fig. 12 from his 1893 manuscript.

Montgomery’s Fig. 29 from his 1893 manuscript.

Montgomery’s Fig. 37 from his 1893 manuscript.

Montgomery’s depiction of the airflow about a parabolic wing,

Elastic Scattering Example.

Montgomery’s depiction of airflow from his 1893 manuscript.

John Burdick’s copy of Montgomery’s Pink Maiden.

Montgomery’s depiction of air circulation under gravity from his 1893 manuscript.

Montgomery’s Workshop at Santa Clara College.

Montgomery’s Santa Clara glider being tested as a kite in 1904.

Montgomery with two of his pilots at the training site on Peter Cox’s ranch, 1904.

John Montgomery’s 1905 Santa Clara aeroplane.

Frank Hamilton’s hot-air balloon being held as it fills with hot air, April 29, 1905.

Maloney aboard the Santa Clara.

Maloney being carried aloft in the Santa Clara, May 21, 1905.

Montgomery’s 1906 Santa Clara modified to include a motor.

The Evergreen being tested before being shipped to Chicago.

John Montgomery in his Evergreen glider, October 1911.

The Montgomery Evergreen airborne at Ramonda Ranch, 1911.

The overturned Evergreen glider after Montgomery’s fatal crash, October 31, 1911.

John Joseph Montgomery at age 22 and 45.

01ObelliskQuotes.jpg

Montgomery Obelisk, University of Santa Clara Mission Gardens.

PREFACE

LIKE MOST AMERICANS SCHOOLED IN THE 1950S AND 1960S, WE WERE well aware that the Wright brothers had been the first to fly successfully what they called a Flying Machine in 1903. And that was that!

We first became aware of John Montgomery’s exploits in the air when we attended Santa Clara University in the early 1960s. Of the two of us, it was John who developed a keen interest in John Montgomery that now spans a period of over fifty years.

JOHN BURDICK:

During my first semester there (August 1962), while exploring a campus new to me, I wandered into the Mission Gardens. Santa Clara University is named after an original mission established by Fr. Junipero Serra in 1777, with a replica of the first Mission on its grounds. While exploring the Gardens, I noticed an obelisk near some observatory buildings and went over to see what it was about.¹ There, chiseled in granite, I saw the name of John J. Montgomery, someone I had never heard of. Also chiseled in the granite were some remarks by Octave Chanute and Alexander Graham Bell, both of whom I had heard of, praising his successful flight from high air in 1905. Who was this guy? I asked around, but nobody seemed to know much about him. Eventually, I was referred to one of the Jesuits: Arthur Dunning Spearman, S.J.

It was not until early spring of the following year that I finally met Fr. Spearman and was able to ask him who John J. Montgomery was and what was the story behind the obelisk in the Mission Gardens, with praises acknowledging his early flight. It turned out that Fr. Spearman had been gathering information for a book on Montgomery that he was in the process of writing.² He eagerly showed me some of his discoveries and told me the story, as he knew it. He told me that the flight at Santa Clara, commemorated on the obelisk, was actually from 4,000 feet, having been lofted there by a hot-air balloon. I was immediately hooked on the story of a man I knew nothing about and spent a good year of my free time talking and working with Fr. Spearman.

After meeting with Fr. Spearman, I managed to persuade some of my friends to walk the neighborhood near the University where Montgomery once flew to see if there was anyone who might have seen the flight. We actually found an elderly lady who told us that she was not allowed to see the flight because her mother feared it was too dangerous for a young girl to view. Her older sister, however, did go to the College’s field and relayed to her what she had witnessed. Meeting someone who actually had memory of the flight encouraged me to explore more about the story, though I was unable to at the time. By my next year at college, I changed my major from physics to political science. It was the ‘60s, after all.

After college, I enrolled in graduate school in Mexico City but soon lost my student deferment and joined the Army, eventually serving a tour in Vietnam.³ After my Army service I did various things and finally ended up teaching at a high school in Watsonville, California (from which I am now retired). I introduced some of my students to the story of one of California’s own, John J. Montgomery, and his aeroplane. They were surprised that they had never heard of him and did not really believe me. I showed them Fr. Spearman’s book and took them on a field trip to the Santa Clara University Archives, showing them pictures and affidavits of his flights.⁴ As a result of that trip, we decided to build a copy of Montgomery’s tandem-wing Santa Clara aeroplane to see if it would fly. On a return trip to the University we collectively explored all the information available describing Montgomery and his plane. I figured, How hard could it be? The students and I spent several months in further searching those archives.

We were very methodical in our reconstruction of the plane, carefully following the photographs we had obtained from the archives, including some blueprints drawn up by the Lockheed Corporation. We rejected some of their drawings inasmuch as the engineers, being engineers, could not help themselves and made modifications of their own that were not depicted on any Montgomery craft.⁵ We used spruce for all parts of the plane except the place where the pilot sat, and for that we used Philippine mahogany that we discovered was used by Montgomery on his gliders for added strength. To warp his wings, he used, at times, a straight piece of wood where a pilot could push down on one side or the other to turn or brake his plane. In several photographs, though, we noticed stirrups being used and relied on those photographs to make our stirrups. One of my students built them from scratch.

In 1988, after several months on the project, with the assistance of several other enthused teachers, we succeeded in building a full-scale, working model of Montgomery’s Santa Clara. We built it to fly, but only managed to fly it like a kite twice, discovering that it floated well in the wind. However, the school district was reluctant to give us permission to fly it until I obtained insurance coverage, since students were involved in the construction.

02WatsonvilleMontgomeryGlider.jpg

Watsonville HS students assembling John Burdick’s Santa Clara replica

before its accidental flight.

The two times it flew were accidental. The first time it flew was during its first assembly. We had rested it on two bales of hay, front and back, on top of a small hill outside of Watsonville. There was a gentle breeze blowing, barely enough to make my Hawaiian shirt flutter. I adjusted the tail and wings into what I thought was a neutral position so that it would fly straight if we let it loose. The backs of the wings were naturally dipped down and would only reach a neutral position in a stronger wind. After we got it balanced, I positioned a student at each end of the front wing and stood back near the tail to examine it. I had some concerns about the tail and wanted to see it in relation to the rest of the plane. The full-size glider was indeed a beautiful craft!

The students holding the wings thought they didn’t need to hold it any longer since it seemed to be stable to them, and moved back to admire it as it sat there in a light breeze. Suddenly, the breeze picked up, blowing directly into the front of the plane—and it took off. It was flying into the wind! Momentarily startled, we took off after it. It flew perfectly straight and lifted off the ground a little. We caught it after it had gone twenty or thirty feet. If we had not caught it, it would have been gone, as the hill dropped off at a greater angle there. How much weight could it have carried I don’t know. It took four of us to get it back on the ground and hold it there while we took it apart for storage.

When we built it, the only thing we did differently from Montgomery was to use standard aircraft cables with clips crimped at the ends of the wires so that we could easily disassemble and reassemble the craft. We also added handmade stirrups to control the warp of the wings, one stirrup for the two right halves of the wing, and one stirrup for the two left halves. The movement of the tail was controlled by a device in front of the pilot.

The second accidental flight occurred when we were displaying it at The Watsonville Fly-In,⁶ again with students assisting me. This time I constructed a large stand out of two-by-fours. Think of two Xs connected at the center, with the rear X smaller than the front X, allowing people to observe the underside of the wings and the control devices. We were out in the open on the side of the runway and secured the aeroplane to the X-frame with ropes, both front and back—or so I thought. I wanted no problems with the school district still having issues with insurance.

It was a windy day and the wind started to pick up, not so much that your eyes would tear, but strong enough to make you turn your head a little. Several pilots came by to look at one of the earliest gliders they had ever seen, and we did a lot of explaining. Mid-afternoon, one of the pilots said something about the display being unusual and asked, How do you get the plane to float like that? I turned around to discover that the ropes had slipped and the plane was floating in the air while still being tied to the stand—and was beginning to lift! We grabbed the plane and my students held it down while I found some concrete blocks to weigh down the stand. I also released the tension on the wing controller to reduce the warp of the wings to a more neutral position—and everything then settled down.

Since we knew our plane could fly, we began working with a group of glider enthusiasts to truly test it out. But when the leader of the group died in an accident, my attention turned elsewhere. We were very close to doing it, though. My belief was that it could very easily have carried a person of 145 to 155 lbs. I never did weigh the plane. I guess that was a mistake, but I know that one person, standing where the pilot sat, could easily pick it up and hold the plane—except if there were a wind!

We had originally planned to test our glider the same way Montgomery had. First, by tying a cable between two telephone poles and pulling the plane up without a pilot, then cutting it loose to let it fly down a hill. Next, we planned to put a person in it and have a hot-air balloon pull it into the sky to be released and fly to the ground, the same as Montgomery had done in 1905. As our plans were moving ahead, nature intervened when we suffered the Loma Prieta earthquake.⁷ The main building of the high school was destroyed, as was much of the town. Any thought of flight after that proved futile. What was it about Montgomery’s Santa Clara? After he flew it in 1905, San Francisco was destroyed a year later in the 1906 earthquake and fire.⁸ I imagined the school was going to blame me and Montgomery’s plane for all the destruction. The students and I did have a good laugh at the coincidence, though.⁹

During our research I uncovered some information about Montgomery’s very early flights, from 1883 through 1885—but with blank periods from that time to his 1905 flight, commemorated in Santa Clara University’s Mission Gardens. You certainly wouldn’t fly a craft like The Santa Clara from 4,000 feet without some prior training and practice. Fr. Spearman’s book provided some information, but there were things that I did not understand. At that time, while I was aware of Montgomery’s early manuscript on airflow, explaining how flight is possible, it was beyond what I felt I needed to understand, and I actually ignored it. I just wanted to build a full-scale copy of his plane that worked.

When I retired from teaching, I began thinking about researching and writing a book about this man: who he was, what he did, and what happened to him. I was also curious why he is so unknown or ignored by almost everyone now. If he actually flew a glider in the 1880s, why does no one recognize this first successful glider flight? It seemed to me, that if he were the first to fly in America, it would deserve some recognition. What I wanted to do was bridge the gaps in his life that I had noticed. I also wanted to learn more about this man and his family. When I had researched The Santa Clara, I noticed several other things that made little sense but had nothing to do with the plane itself. I ignored them at the time, but they stuck in my mind.

I was aware that my science knowledge was limited, so I searched for help. In particular, Montgomery’s manuscript that I had previously ignored now had to be read and understood—and I was not the person who could do that. So, I broached my idea with my cousin, Bernard Burdick, who had also been a student at Santa Clara for some of the time when I was there. Bernard had continued his studies and received a Ph.D. in physics from Case Western Reserve University. He agreed to join me in this quest. Neither of us believed it would take so long or be so all-encompassing—or so interesting. This book is the result of that quest.

A NOTE TO THE READER:

The intent of our book is to provide an historic and scientific assessment of the role of one of California’s own in the early years of flight in America. All dates, facts and scientific achievements of Montgomery have been thoroughly researched and are factual and accurate.

The Appendices provide more detail than is covered in the text. Appendix A, Family and People in Montgomery’s Life, provides a list of family members and important people in John Montgomery’s life. Appendix E, The Personality of the Man, provides an engaging interview of Montgomery by Helen Dare in 1905. The other appendices provide published papers of John Montgomery (one posthumously) and his early unpublished manuscript, in the order they were written or published. All figures in those documents have been redrawn using Canvas™ Draw 3. We include these to aid others who may be interested in researching Montgomery’s achievements.

We have a Website (AchievingFlight.com) that provides additional information and analyses concerning John Montgomery’s discoveries, achievements, and aeroplanes.

1 The Mission Gardens is located next to the Ricard Observatory, named for Jerome Ricard, S.J., Santa Clara University meteorologist whose sunspot theory of weather forecasting won him the title of Padre of the Rains in the early 1900s. The granite obelisk has several carved inscriptions on its sides:

ERECTED BY THE CITIZENS OF SANTA CLARA IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR JOHN J. MONTGOMERY THE FATHER OF AVIATION WHO FROM THIS SPOT SENT ALOFT ON APRIL 29, 1905 THE FIRST HEAVIER-THAN-AIR GLIDER IN CONTROLLED FLIGHT AND MAINTAINED EQUILIBRIUM. APRIL 29, 1946.

ALL SUBSEQUENT ATTEMPTS IN AVIATION MUST BEGIN WITH THE MONTGOMERY MACHINE. – ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

THIS FLIGHT OF MONTGOMERY’S WAS THE MOST DARING FEAT EVER ATTEMPTED. – OCTAVE CHANUTE.

‘EYE WITNESSES OF THE CALIFORNIA FLIGHTS AS A RULE SEEMED TO IMAGINE THAT SOMETHING AKIN TO A PARACHUTE JUMP WAS IN PROGRESS, FEW REALIZING THAT THE GREAT PROBLEM OF AERIAL NAVIGATION FROM THE BEGINNING HAD BEEN THAT OF CONTROLLED FLIGHT AND MAINTAINED EQUILIBRIUM, WHICH HERE, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY, IT WAS THEIR PRIVILEGE TO WITNESS." – VICTOR LOUGHEED.

2 Arthur Dunning Spearman, S.J., author of John J. Montgomery: Father of Basic Flying. Santa Clara: University of Santa Clara, 1967; 1977 (2nd edition). Hereafter simply referred to as Spearman.

"Spearman was a prolific writer, producing books, essays and articles on the history of Mission Santa Clara and Santa Clara College, family history, religion, and Indians. His first major book was The Five Franciscan Churches of Mission Santa Clara, 1777-1825, published in 1963; in 1967 he published a biography titled John Joseph Montgomery, Father of Basic Flying. … ADS suffered a stroke in 1971, which sharply curtailed his involvement in local history and research, although he continued as archivist. Spearman died at Santa Clara on April 9, 1977." Inventory of Papers of Arthur Dunning Spearman, S.J., 1899-1977, Online Archive of California.

3 John Burdick was a Counterintelligence Agent in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He published a chronicle of his experiences in A Sphinx: The Memoirs of a Reluctant Spy in Vietnam (New York: iUniverse, 2008). From the dust jacket: "In A Sphinx, author John Burdick recounts a powerful and emotional narrative following his duty in the Vietnam War in the 1960s. It uncovers behind-the-scenes footage of a military intelligence agent and his quest to help more American soldiers come home alive."

4 The Montgomery Collection in the Santa Clara University Archives contains the personal papers of John J. Montgomery, some of his family members and associates and biographers; court materials from the patent battles waged by his family; and published materials related to Montgomery or to aviation history. Also included are Montgomery’s gyroscope and a few other artifacts, films related to Montgomery or aviation, plans for glider reconstructions, and aviation society newsletters.

Inventory of John J. Montgomery Collection. Online Archive of California.

5 Richard B. Campi, B.M.E., together with Harold Bitner, Paul Woods, Romeo Fontaine, Maynard Guilford, W. D. Alexander, Stanley Hall and L. R. Anderson reconstructed the 1911 Montgomery monoplane The Evergreen at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation, Sunnyvale, California in September-October 1961. Executive Vice President Herschel J. Brown, in a tribute to his friend Bernard R. Hubbard, S.J., made possible the reconstruction of the 1910-1911 Montgomery aeroplane-glider and presented it to Arthur D. Spearman, S.J. for the Santa Clara University Museum on November 11, 1961.

Spearman, 218-219.

The Lockheed plane was originally displayed at the San Jose International Airport. John Burdick would see it there whenever he flew out of that airport until it eventually disappeared. He followed several leads but they all led nowhere.

6 The Watsonville Fly-In is a local air show now over 50 years old, featuring older airplanes. This event began in 1964, as an airport Fly-In and by the early 1970s evolved into the very popular West Coast Antique Fly-in. By the 1990s the event’s popularity further morphed into the current Watsonville Fly-in & Air Show. The constant theme has been a line-up of classic and vintage aircraft that are displayed and judged, resulting in a Grand Champion award. The show has had working models of the Wright aeroplane and other early planes. John Burdick’s Montgomery glider was shown twice, once in1989 and again in 1996.

7 "The Loma Prieta earthquake, also known as the Quake of ‘89 and the World Series Earthquake, was a major earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area of California on October 17, 1989, at 5:04 pm local time. Caused by a slip along the San Andreas Fault, the quake lasted 10–15 seconds and measured 6.9 … on the … Richter Scale. The quake killed 63 people throughout northern California, injured 3,757 and left some 3,000–12,000 people homeless.

The earthquake occurred during the warm-up practice for the third game of the 1989 World Series …The epicenter of the quake was in the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, an unpopulated area in the Santa Cruz Mountains … approximately 10 mi northeast of Santa Cruz.

Wikipedia contributors, Loma Prieta Earthquake, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Loma_Prieta_Earthquake&oldid=207506759

8 The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is … 7.9 … The main shock epicenter occurred offshore about 2 miles from the city, near Mussel Rock. It ruptured along the San Andreas Fault both northward and southward for a total of 296 miles … The death toll from the earthquake and resulting fire, estimated to be above 3,000, is the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California’s history.

Wikipedia contributors, San Francisco Earthquake, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=San_Francisco_Earthquake&oldid=16789059

9 In 1996 the plane was loaned to the Regional Occupational Program class at Watsonville High School to demonstrate how early flying planes were constructed. It went missing when the class was terminated by the county several years later.

PROLOGUE

JOHN JOSEPH MONTGOMERY (1858–1911) BENEFITED GREATLY FROM two pivotal events in the world that took place before his time, in both the United States and in far-flung corners of the world. Those events affected not only his native California and its inhabitants, but—more significantly—the colleges where he would eventually be educated.

These events were: (1) The United States’ acquisition of California from Mexico, and (2) The ouster of Jesuit educators from Catholic principalities throughout Europe, leading to their subsequent emigration to the New World and the development of colleges in California. John Montgomery was indeed fortunate to be a beneficiary of this seemingly unrelated confluence of events, enabling him to pursue and become proficient in several emerging scientific fields, leading to his discovery of the secret of flight in the nascent days of aviation.

In 1848 the United States went to war with Mexico over the accession of Texas as a new territory. When the war was over, the United States was the big winner, acquiring a large part of Mexico, all the way from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Ocean. This meant that the US now controlled all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, fulfilling a dream of many. Most of this territory was empty, with the exception of California that then had a population of about 90,000. In the next ten years, precipitated by the discovery of gold at Sutter’s mill in 1848, the population would quadruple and California would be admitted to the Union as the 31st state in 1850.

As for the Jesuits’ plight, they had set up missions in southern Mexico to convert the native Indians to the Catholic faith and teach them how to grow crops they could sell, retaining the profits for themselves. The Spaniards who ran Mexico, however, believed they were due the profits the Indians earned. Since the Jesuits had created their missions without the support of the government, they saw no reason to share in the profits. The Spaniards appealed to the Pope to settle the dispute. In 1767 Pope Clement XIII—having his own problems with the Jesuits—resolved the dispute by ordering all the Jesuits in all the Spanish territories throughout the world (including Mexico) to leave all their possessions behind and walk to the nearest port with just the clothes on their backs, where ships would take them back to Europe where they were held on the island of Elba until they could find a new place to work and teach. That was going to be a difficult task since most principalities that were Catholic preferred not to have the Jesuits within their realms, as they might be as troublesome as they were for Spain. The Protestant countries certainly did not want them because they were Catholic. Given the Jesuits’ proficiency in science, some nations did come to realize that it would be to their benefit to find them homes.

In California it was the Franciscans, not the Jesuits, who ran the missions for the benefit of Spain, all the while trying to protect the local Indians from the Spanish landowners who wanted them as slaves. When Spain lost California in 1848, the Franciscans returned to Spain, deserting the native Indians. Inasmuch as the United States then controlled California and accepted all religions, the Jesuits were able to return as soon as they could—with the intention of setting up schools wherever practicable.

At that time the capital of Spanish California was in the small city of Monterey, 100 miles south of San Francisco, on the coast. San Francisco was a small port city opening onto a large bay that extended to Oakland. To the south was the city of Los Angeles and further south was the city of San Diego, with a large port. California was a large territory and mostly unexplored when the United States took control. Some of the land, especially in the south, had been divided up into large rancheros under land grants from the Mexican government. When California became a US territory, those land grants had to be reviewed, often not to the benefit of the Spanish landowners. John Montgomery’s lawyer father, Zachariah Montgomery, would play a role in this.

As soon as the Franciscans left California, the Jesuits, who had been restricted to the Oregon territory to the north that was ruled by England and thus not honoring the Papal order, immediately began moving south into California. This was now American land and not subject to the Papal order. The Jesuits, of course, were not interested in gold but rather in the souls that could be converted and saved in the new US territory—and the children who could be educated in their new faith. On December 8, 1849, the first two Jesuits arrived in San Francisco. One of them, Fr. Michael Accolti, provided a vivid description (in a memorial) of what greeted them on their arrival: The next day we were able to set foot on the longed-for shores of what goes under the name of San Francisco but which, whether it should be called a mad house or Babylon, I am at a loss to determine—so great in those days was the disorder, the brawling, the open immorality, the reign of crime which, brazen faced, triumphed on a soil not yet brought under the sway of human laws.¹

After witnessing the chaos in San Francisco, the two Jesuits, Michael Accolti and John Nobili, realized they needed a different place where they could start a school. San Francisco was clearly not suitable. They made a deal with the Catholic bishop who remained in California and had taken over the abandoned Franciscan Mission in Santa Clara, about 60 miles south of San Francisco.

Their goal was to develop their own, unique, Jesuit schools and colleges. Now all they needed were teachers. Blessedly, through the grace of God (or Providence), there were now many teachers available. Due to circumstances in Europe and elsewhere, there were many well-educated Jesuits to call upon for that purpose. In a little over a year after their arrival, these Jesuits acquired teachers and, by 1851, were successful in opening Santa Clara College at the abandoned Santa Clara Mission—a remarkable feat.

More Jesuits from all over the world slowly began arriving to teach these new students. The College (which would become a University one year after John Montgomery’s death) remains there to this day. The teachers that Santa Clara was able to attract were some of the most advanced educators and scientists in the world, or at any American college at that time. Most of these early teachers came from Europe and, in addition to their normal school subject skills, were fully knowledgeable of the strides being made there in the fledgling sciences of aeronautics and electricity. While controlled flight had not yet been successful, balloon technology was well known to them and some had likely read about or were aware of other methods of flight while in England.²

In 1855, after things had calmed down somewhat after the Gold Rush, the Jesuits opened another college, St. Ignatius College in San Francisco, which would become the University of San Francisco we know today.

The College of California would also be founded in 1855 and the University of California at Berkeley, a merger of that college and the Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College would be founded in 1868. Stanford University would be founded in 1885. The speed of development in California was phenomenal. In thirty-six short years a new state was born and four major colleges were founded. California was no longer The Wild West and would challenge and eventually lead the rest of the United States in science and technology.

1 Michael Accolti, S.J., A Memorial of the Journey to California. Original in the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus (RAS).

Quoted by John Bernard McGloin, S.J., Jesuits by the Golden Gate, The Society of Jesus in San Francisco, 1849–1969, 1.

Also quoted slightly differently by Paul Totah in Spiritus Magis, 150 years of Saint Ignatius College Preparatory, 5.

2 Notably, the English engineer, Sir George Cayley (1773–1857), considered by many to be the father of aviation, had published papers on aeronautics and flew model and larger gliders in the first half of the nineteenth century (see Chapter 2, Progress in the Pursuit of Flight).

CHAPTER 1

AN EDUCATION: 1858–1882

CALIFORNIA: THE PROMISED LAND

PEOPLE FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD CAME TO CALIFORNIA, MOSTLY from the East Coast of the United States, hoping to find a piece of land where they could grow crops or find work that would enable them to feed their families. The glowing descriptions of the new state and the lure of gold also brought thousands of families by wagon trains over the treacherous and unforgiving Great Plains.

Bridget Miranda Shannon Evoy (John Montgomery’s maternal grandmother) would lead one of these families when her husband died just before their wagon train was to leave Independence, Missouri. Many of the trains had eager but incompetent leaders; the train she was on was no different. Halfway to California, its leader was dismissed and Bridget Evoy was elected leader. She was probably the only woman to lead a covered wagon train across the Great Plains in 1849–1850.¹ The trip took eight months. When they reached California, after a harrowing trip across the Sierra Nevada mountains, Mrs. Bridget Miranda Shannon Evoy, her six children and invalid sister, Mrs. Margaret McCourtney, went to the gold country near Bear Valley. The sons dug for gold and the widow Evoy opened a boarding house and restaurant with the help of the Evoy girls.²

The man who would become John Montgomery’s father, Zachariah Montgomery, arrived in California about the same time from Kentucky. In Kentucky he had been a lawyer, but the lure of gold was too strong for the young man. Like most who made the journey, he was unsuccessful in finding gold and resumed his career as an attorney and became active in politics.

In the mid-1850s a new political party was being formed in the East with the goal of purifying American politics by insisting that all new arrivals be white and non-Catholic. It also attempted to limit or lessen the influence of Irish Catholics and other Catholic immigrants who were already there. This party was originally referred to as the Know-Nothings³ but later renamed itself the American Party. This anti-immigrant, anti-Irish, and anti-Catholic group brought about the demise of the Whig Party. Regarding the contentious issue of slavery, the Know-Nothings had little concern, whereas the Democratic Party supported slavery as a state’s right. A new party, to be called the Republican Party, was formed as an antislavery party. Its first candidate to run for president was Abraham Lincoln. He would win the election and the drums of war would begin to beat.

California was not immune to this political disputation, though there was one striking difference. The Know-Nothings, or American Party as they came to be known, wanted to halt the immigration of Catholics and other minorities from entering America and send them back to Europe or wherever they came from. In California, however, Catholics predominated and it was now Americans of other faiths who were invading a Catholic country, as it were. Indeed, while there was some discrimination and the Know-Nothing Party became active in California, it never reached the level of support it did in the East.

Zachariah Montgomery, a Catholic, was a member of the Democratic Party and supported his party’s views publicly on the slavery issue prior to the Civil War. As a Southerner, he supported the South’s right to secede from the Union—an unpopular view in California.

During all this political unrest, Zachariah Montgomery married a woman by the name of Helen Frances Graham in 1855, and they had a son they named Thomas. Several months after Thomas’s birth, his mother died from an unknown illness. Within a year after her death, on a trip to Yuba City, Zachariah met Ellen Evoy, who had come across the Great Plains and the Sierras five years earlier with her mother, Bridget Miranda Shannon Evoy. They were soon married, on April 28, 1857, and about a year later, on February 15, 1858, they had twin boys. One son was named John Joseph and the other Zachariah, after his father. In 1859 another child, Mary Clotilda, was born to the family.

Zachariah’s law firm was very successful during this period and he ran for a position as a member of the California Legislature. He won and became the representative of the 15th District (Sutter County). While one of his major concerns was education reform, the war was on everyone’s mind and the Legislature was about to make a decision on California’s position regarding the Civil War.

In 1861 another child was expected to join the Montgomery family, but to everyone’s surprise and joy it was another set of twins, Margaret Helena and Rose Ellen. But 1861 would also bring tragedy to the Montgomery family. In December of 1861 Mrs. Montgomery, to add something special to a meal, sent her young sons, Zachariah and Thomas, out to pick mushrooms. They had been told never to eat any until their mother checked them out, but being hungry little boys, they ate a few. It turned out that the mushrooms were poisonous and both little boys died on December 29, 1861. John Montgomery lost his twin brother and his father lost his first son.

By this time the Civil War had begun in earnest and brutal battles were killing and maiming thousands of men. Despite the efforts of Southern supporters, including Zachariah Montgomery, the State of California remained within the Union.

During the first years of the Civil War, Zachariah specialized in land dispute issues. Some Californians were attempting to usurp large land holdings of the Mexican rancheros by any means possible. Under the Homestead Act of 1862, a head of household was allowed 40 acres of land if they lived on it for five years and improved it. Of course, the land was not supposed to be owned by someone else. That did not stop some people from claiming the best parts of land held by many Mexican rancheros. Zachariah Montgomery vigorously worked to see that the Homestead Act’s principles were followed, but his ability to participate in this endeavor would soon be thwarted.

In 1863 the California Legislature passed a law that required all lawyers and members of the California Assembly to swear allegiance to the Union or lose their law license or their position as an Assemblyman. Zachariah, being from Kentucky and supporting his state and the South’s right to leave the Union, turned in his law license and gave up his position on the California Assembly.

The Montgomerys then had another child, born on April 3, 1863, who they named Richard Joseph. With Zachariah unable to earn a livelihood as an attorney, and having lost his position as an Assemblyman, the family’s future looked bleak. To substitute for his lost income, he founded a newspaper that supported the South. This was a difficult time for the Montgomery family and tragedy would continue to follow them. In 1864 Rose Ellen died from the flu. They lost yet another child. The following year, on February 28, 1865, though, another son, James Patrick, was welcomed to the family.

By this time, the Civil War was coming to an end. On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to General Ulysses S. Grant. On April 15, 1865, a disgruntled Southerner assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Because of Zachariah’s known Southern leanings, an angry mob, distraught and overwhelmed by Lincoln’s assassination, attacked Zachariah’s newspaper office and destroyed it.

Three years later, in 1868, the last Montgomery child was born: Jane Elizabeth. By then Zachariah had his law license back, and he continued his struggle over land improperly seized by rich landholders or squatters for the next several years.

In 1874 the time came for Zachariah to consider a college education for his oldest son, John Joseph, who was now sixteen years old. Where would he have him be educated? He remembered that, in 1869, when John was a child of eleven, he had taken him to see Frederick Marriot’s exhibition of a balloon flight at Emeryville, California. His son was very excited about what he saw and asked his father question after question about it: How did it fly? Why did it fly? What holds it up? He had also asked questions when observing the sky: How do the clouds, so full of heavy water, stay up in the sky? What causes lightning? Zachariah must have realized that his son had more questions than he himself had answers.⁴ Where better to send him to study than with the Jesuits at Santa Clara College? A natural choice, plus it was close to their home in Oakland.

The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) has always attracted men of science. While their vows of obedience and poverty were paramount, they were free to study and research anything their minds could grasp. While such an attitude is common today, before the twentieth century it was not so. Your religion dictated what your beliefs should be—and that included science. If you had a new idea that seemed to challenge a statement in the Bible or a tenet of your faith, the results could be disastrous for you. Both Catholics and Protestants reacted the same way when science threatened their beliefs. Whether it was the Inquisition or some other institution dictating what a man could believe, it was dangerous to your health to publicly avow or assert new theories. The Jesuits, however, respected men who had different ideas and nurtured them. This was probably why they were always getting into trouble with the leaders of their religion or the state in which they lived. Almost every state leader disliked ideas that challenged their beliefs or antiquated notions. These new teachers and thinkers would eventually bring the new ideas discussed in Europe to the New World, particularly those ideas that would be of most interest to the young John Montgomery, namely anything related to flight and the new science of electricity.

Americans as a whole desired education for their children. For many, that meant studying Latin, Greek, the Bible, and the classics of the Greeks and Romans. In the 1800s, sciences were just beginning to be taught in some schools. The Jesuit Order believed that science and mathematics strengthened the faith of their students, and they made it a prominent part of their curriculum, as did all colleges that followed Santa Clara College in the state. Parents approved this type of education. While this may seem an obvious inclination today, it was not always so. In Europe, a negative attitude towards science was one of the reasons that most of the rulers did not want the Jesuits in their principalities. That attitude did not stop the Jesuits.

The predilection of the Jesuits to study and teach science dates back centuries. One of the earliest of those new thinkers was Roger Joseph Boscovich, S.J. (1711–1787, Croatian: Ruđer Josip Bošković).⁵,⁶ He was a theologian, physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, and polymath from the city of Dubrovnik in the Republic of Ragusa (today part of the Republic of Croatia). He studied and lived in Italy and France where he published many of his works. He made many important contributions to astronomy, including the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature and a method for computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position. In 1753 he also discovered the absence of an atmosphere on the Moon.⁷ Many of the discoveries that he published were difficult for many to accept, as most still believed the Earth was the center of the Universe.

Boscovich is most famous for his atomic theory, a precisely formulated system incorporating the principles of Newtonian mechanics, that is said to have inspired Michael Faraday to develop field theory for electromagnetic interactions. He was the first to propose a mathematical theory of all the forces of nature, the first scientific theory of everything. Some even claimed that Boscovich atomism was a basis for Albert Einstein’s attempts for a unified field theory. It was the scientist Nikola Tesla, a critic of Einstein, who claimed this in an unpublished interview that Einstein’s theory of Relativity was the creation of Boscovich:

…the relativity theory, by the way, is much older than its present