The Fantastic City

Amelia Ransome Neville was the daughter of Colonel and Mrs. Leander Ransome, of Connecticut, who established their home in California in 1856. She was born on November 25, 1837, at Columbus, Ohio, when her father was resident engineer of the Ohio Canal. In 1851, with her mother, she visited England and was presented to Queen Victoria at a drawing-room in Saint James's Palace. At Lord Hawarden's castle she met the Duke of Wellington, and among her friends was the Earl of Cardigan, who led the famous charge of the Light Brigade.

In Dublin the pretty, spirited American girl became a favorite at the vice-regal court, and in Ireland she was married to Captain Thomas J. Neville, of the British Army, a son of Brent Neville, Esq., of Ashbrook. He resigned his commission to come to America with his bride, and, with her, to accompany the Ransome family to California. Mrs. Neville's home was in San Francisco for fifty years, through Vigilante times, the reign of the bonanza kings, and later days rich in color before the old metropolis of El Dorado was destroyed by earthquake and fire in 1906.

Romances of early days in California rarely portray the life Mrs. Neville knew, yet it was more significant than that of gambling-palaces and dance-halls; and not less dramatic; the life of pioneers who were builders and who, with the Vigilance Committee, brought law and order to the 'wickedest city in the world.'

Mrs. Neville's later years were spent in the homes of her grandsons S. D'Arcy Rickard and Brent Neville Rickard, and she died at the latter's house in Helena, Montana, June 15, 1927. A short time before her death she completed the book of her memoirs, much of it having been written by her own hand in the last years of her life. It was left to her grandson Greville Rickard.