James and Mary Jordan’s 2nd eldest daughter was named Ethel.
Children of James and Mary Jordan Annabelle Jordan, b. 5-12-1858, Jacksonville, Or. William Henry Jordan, b. 3-17-1860, Whisky Gulch, Josephine County, Or. Walter H Jordan, b. 1-24-1862, Homestead, East Fork Williams Creek, Or. Alice Jordan, b. 3-12-1864, Homestead, East Fork Williams Creek, Or. Ethel Jordan, b. 3-9-1865, Homestead, East Fork Williams Creek, Or. George (Frank) Jordan, b. 3-29-1867, Homestead, East Fork Williams Creek, Or. Isadora Jordan, b. -1869, Homestead, East Fork Williams Creek, Or. Hattie Julia Jordan, b. 10-26-1872, Homestead, East Fork Williams Creek, Or. Edward D. Jordan, b.12-14-1874, Homestead, East Fork Williams Creek, Or. Morris Jordan, died young Marvin Jordan, b. 11-20-1879, Homestead, East Fork Williams Creek, Or. Roy Jordan, b. 10-26-1885, Grants Pass, Or. Ethel Jordan married Fremont Stackpole and they had a son named Ralph (b. May 1, 1885 – d. December 13, 1973).
Fremont Stackpole, lured by the tales of opportunity that California held forth, Fremont Stackpole, a millwright, the son of John and Caroline Stackpole of Maine, sailed via the "Horn" in 1875 to San Francisco. The transient nature of his work eventually led him to Happy Camp, an historical mining center of Oregon. In 1884 he met and married 19 year old Ethel Jordan in Grants Pass.
Sawmill work covers much territory. The newlyweds settled in Williams where Fremont Stackpole combined ranching with the occupation of millwright. In this small community situated on Williams Creek, in Josephine County, in southwest Oregon, Ralph Stackpole was born on May 1, 1885. At six years of age, Ralph Stackpole was enrolled in the Williams grammar school. Two years before this, a strong inclination to draw possessed him. This penchant, aided and abetted by his father, considerably interfered with Ralph's acquisition of the "three R's."
One evening in 1895, with dinner prepared and awaiting the arrival of Fremont Stackpole, a workman from the mill brought news to Mrs. Stackpole that her husband had been killed by falling across a circular saw. Freemont Stackpole carried no life insurance, and left his family little in the way of worldly goods. Employment for women in the "gay nineties" was seldom selective. Williams and its vicinity had little to offer. Domestic work with its meager wages or to cook for sawmill camps at better wages, comprised the lot. Mrs. Stackpole decided upon the latter.
Ethel's work often shifted so that Ralph and his sister Abigail attended several different schools in southwestern counties of Oregon. Drawing occupied much of Ralph's school hours and most of his leisure. One reason for his desire, was that every boy of Oregon who drew a little during the '90's aspired to become a famous cartoonist like Homer Davenport, an Oregonian.
In 1899 Mrs. Stackpole and her two children moved to Grant's Pass, Oregon. Here, Mrs. Stackpole opened a small restaurant. In the year 1900 there entered one day a solicitor for the San Francisco Chronicle. His sales talk to Mrs. Stackpole had fallen upon deaf ears until he stressed the qualities of the section devoted to art. To this she be came attentive, and confided that her son although untrained, did similar work. He asked if she had a sample of Ralph's work. When he saw the work, whether through flattery in the hope of securing another subscription, or whether in sincere appraisal, he did San Francisco's art world a favor. He praised highly, and advised that Ralph be sent to study in San Francisco. Needless to remark, Mrs. Stackpole signed for the newspaper on the dotted line and Ralph now determined more than ever to become an artist.
Sculptor Ralph Stackpole Ralph was best known for integrating monumental paintings and sculpture representing the working class, along with architectural elements, his works can still be seen at the San Francisco Stock Exchange, the City Club of San Francisco, the Coit Tower, and the proscenium arch (the arch that separates the stage from the auditorium) in the Paramount Theater on Oakland, CA. In the 1930′s he was part of a Depression Era program dubbed the Federal Arts Project for the Works Progress Administration. He was also one of the early instructors at the Calif. School of Fine Arts. It was during this decade that Stackpole worked on many projects with famed San Francisco architect Timothy L. Pflueger, most notably the San Francisco Stock Exchange Building. Ralph Stackpole was always concerned about social realist causes, especially during the Depression era of the 1930s and was able convince Pflueger to commission Diego Rivera for an interior mural. This would be a controversial selection considering the Rivera's well documented leftist communist beliefs, a contradiction to the Stock Exchange's capitalist foundation. As a gesture of gratitude, Rivera painted a figure of Stackpole and his son Peter into the mural. During his stay, Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo lived and worked at the studio, becoming in the process lifelong friends with Stackpole and Ginette (Ralph's wife). They met tennis champion Helen Wills Moody, an avid painter-hobbyist, who soon agreed to model for Rivera at the studio.
Pflueger had Ralph design and construct Pacifica, which was photographed for the cover of Life Magazine and became the iconic symbol of the 1939-40 World’s Fair. Pacifica was a statue created by Ralph Stackpole for the 1939–1940 Golden Gate International Exposition held on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay. Stackpole's largest sculpture, it towered 81 feet (25 m) over the entrance to the Cavalcade of the Golden West in the Court of Pacifica. Ironically, the United States Navy purchased the island as a naval base in 1941, and Pacifica was demolished along with most other exposition structures.
Ralph's sizable San Francisco studio at 716 Montgomery Street, served as a social center for San Francisco's artist community and the Bohemian Club. Photographer Dorothea Lange rented upstairs studio space there in 1926, and Helen Clark and Otis Oldfield, both artists, married there the same year. Lange's husband Maynard Dixon had his studio next door, and the Stackpole and Dixon families were very close—both men were members of the Bohemian Club. The Bohemian Club is a private gentlemen's club. Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journalists, artists and musicians, it soon began to accept businessmen and entrepreneurs as permanent members, as well as offering temporary membership to university presidents and military commanders who were serving in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of it’s members was Jack London who is best remembered as the author of The Call of the Wild and White Fang. London was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers. Other noted members of the Bohemian Club during this time included Ambrose Bierce, John Muir, Gelett Burgess, and Frank Norris. The group quickly relaxed its rules for membership to permit some people to join who had little artistic talent, but enjoyed the arts and had greater financial resources. Eventually, the original "bohemian" members were in the minority and the wealthy and powerful controlled the club. The Bohemian Club has since been reported to have become the “behind-the-curtain” power-brokers club of the rich and famous, hand picking past California Governors and US Presidents, and has been visited by numerous U.S. Presidents dating back to Teddy Roosevelt up to G.W. Bush.
Peter Stackpole, Ralph’s son, was an accomplished photographer. Along with Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, and Thomas McAvoy, they were Life Magazine's first staff photographers. Born June 13, 1913, San Francisco CA. Father; Ralph Stackpole, Mother; Adele Barnes Stackpole Education: Ecole Alsacienne, Paris 1923, Technical High School. Oakland CA. Photograph the building of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge 1934-1936 Became one of the first four staff photographers for LIFE Magazine in 1936. Worked for 13 years in LIFE'S Los Angeles bureau 1938-1951. Became war correspondent covering the Saipan invasion 1944. Transferred to the New York office in 1951 where he remained until 1961. In the early 1930s, Ralph Stackpole took his son Peter to visit their photographer friend Edward Weston in Carmel, and the two older men spent the day discussing photography, “the difference between making and taking a photograph, between the intended and the random”. This conversation, and the 1932 exhibit by Group f/64, a collection of innovative photographers such as Weston and Ansel Adams, was later seen as foundational to Peter Stackpole’s conception of photography.