Who was Trella Foltz?

Trella Foltz (1866- c.a.1912) was the oldest child of Clara Shortridge Foltz (1849-1934), the first woman lawyer on the Pacific coast. Trella was born in Iowa, and grew up in the west, mainly in Northern California. When she was eleven, her father, Jeremiah Foltz deserted Clara Foltz, leaving her with four children in addition to Trella: David, 9, Samuel, 7, Bertha, 5 and Virginia 2.

In order to make a living sufficient to keep her family together, Clara Foltz decided to become a lawyer, and after a dramatic struggle, was admitted to the Bar in 1878. For full story, please visit --> here.

From an early age, Trella had theatrical ambitions, and she went on the stage in San Francisco in the early eighties, and was associated with the California Company. In 1888, she married Dr. Charles Gridley Toland and bore her only child-- William Gridley Toland, in 1889. Her husband died of an accidental overdose of laudanum, which he took for migraines, in 1890.

A year later Trella Toland was in New York, making the regular pilgrimage of western actors, to the theater-mecca (then as now). She remarried in 1900 to George Emmons White, a lawyer working as advertising manager of the New York World. Trella wrote in her book that she was "rich in a good man's love" in 1901, but by 1907, her second husband was dead of a heart condition. She died herself several years later, by 1912.