Eva May ROBERTS was born in 1887 in Ukiah, California to Thomas Burton Roberts of Missouri and Lola Montez Pulliam of Indiana. Her father died while she was a young girl, leaving her mother to care for her and her brothers and sisters (Clara, James, Ernest, Bessie and Helen).  In 1900, Lola and her children lived on Hudson Street in Healdsburg, just six blocks from the Reardon family.

Eva's brothers James and Ernest were about the same age as her future husband, so perhaps they went to school together in Healdsburg.  In any event, since their families were neighbors, it's very likely that William and Eva knew each other for many years before they were married.

When the disaster struck, Eva was a 19-year-old single woman living in San Francisco. Was she attending school? Was she working? Was 23-year-old William Reardon also in San Francisco in April 1906? Had they been courting?

According to their granddaughter Marta Starr, her grandmother Eva talked about being a refugee in the days after the disaster. Marta says, "As we would ride by on a streetcar she [Grandmother Eva] would point to a park or hospital grounds and tell me how they camped out on the lawn."  The camp Eva mentioned may have been Mission Camp (pictured right), which is now Mission Dolores Park.

There are many unanswered questions, but what is definitely known is that William Homer Reardon and Eva May Roberts were married in San Franicsco on the 7th of May 1906.  The ceremony was performed by Rev. Benjamin F. Sargent, Pastor of Olivet Congregational Church at Noe and 17th Street.

The newlyweds soon returned to Healdsburg where William, like his father, became a carpenter. William and Eva became parents on the 1st of January 1908 when their daughter Eleanor Madelynn Reardon was born. Eleanor eventually married Martin Stephen O'Keefe, Jr. in Alameda on December 22, 1928. Eleanor and Martin had a daughter, Marta.

Eva May (Roberts) Reardon passed away on May 4, 1954 in Healdsburg. William Homer Reardon died in Santa Rosa on July 21, 1959.

Information graciously supplied by Marta (Reardon) Starr. Other sources of information gathered from  San Francisco Recorder's Office, Document #1-226; 1900 Federal Census, California, Sonoma County, Mendocino Township, Healdsburg City, Enumeration District 163, Sheets 4B and 16A;  1910 Federal Census, California, Sonoma County, Mendocino Township, Healdsburg City, Enumeration District 146, Sheet 15A.

Photographs of William H. Reardon and Eva M. Roberts courtesy of their granddaughter, Marta Starr.

Refugee Camp 29, Mission Park. Bear Photo Co. no. 686. 
Available from the Online Archive of California; http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb9779p3wg.