Memorial Day ceremony held at Estrella Adobe Church
Historic adobe was built 150 years ago
– Several dozen people gathered Sunday afternoon at the historic Estrella Adobe Church on Airport Road in Paso Robles. The Annual Memorial Service was sponsored by Friends of the Adobe, Inc. and Pleasant Valley Cemetery board. The service was not unlike previous Memorial Day services held at the Adobe since it was built 150 years ago.
The Estrella Adobe Church was built in 1878 on the Estrella Plains by early settlers. It served as a non-denominational church for a few years. Different denominations used the church on different days, and at different times on Sunday.
Around 1900, the itinerant Scottish Presbyterian Minister William Douglas preached at the adobe. His son, William Orville Douglas later described his childhood memories of the Estrella Plains in his memoirs. The senior Douglas died in Portland in 1904. William O. Douglas graduated from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and Columbia School of Law, He later taught at Yale Law School. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed William O. Douglas to the US Supreme Court, Douglas served 36 years on the US Supreme Court.
A graveyard near the Estrella Adobe includes the graves of early settlers to the Estrella Plains including Veterans of the Civil War.
