It would be decades before the past caught up with the present. Yet her great-grandchildren were determined to make it happen.

Horrwarth was born in 1850 in Germany. She and her husband Jacob came from Europe to the United States.

The Horrwarth family moved to Willow Glen in 1880 and purchased land at the corner of Bird Avenue and Willow Glen Way, where they started a prune ranch.

Horrwarth, like most farmers' wives of the time, worked hard on the ranch. Her great-grandson, Roger Bibb recalls his mother, Wilma Peters-Bibb, telling him about his great-grandmother waking before the sun rose to get the household ready for the day.

"She would build a fire in the wood stove and prepare the meals from scratch," says Bibb, a retired San Jose deputy agricultural commissioner. "She would heat water for cooking, cleaning, bathing and laundry."

The family says Horrwarth was known as a tenacious woman, raising five children on the ranch, four of whom went on to become farmers. She outlived her husband by 16 years, dying in 1926.

In her San Jose Mercury Herald obituary, she was described as having "a natural buoyancy of spirit" and "a desire to stay busy."

That "buoyancy of spirit" was passed on to her daughter, Lena Marie, who married Sunnyvale rancher Jack Peters.

Both Bibb and his cousin, Jean Peters, spent time at Lena Marie's ranch during the picking seasons.

Bibb recalls breakfasts with his grandmother and waking up just after the sun rose.

"In the morning, she would cook fresh oatmeal and call out to us in German, 'Breakfast is ready'," Bibb says.

Peters also has fond memories of helping her grandmother.

"She was short and had gnarled hands, but was a very hard worker," Peters says. "She would work in the barn sorting cherries and always got everyone to work."

The pickers didn't sort the fruit, the farmers' wives did. Sometimes, the wives would help their husbands pack the fruit in crates. Sometimes, they helped load the boxes, which weighed about 45 pounds.

Her grandmother had a strong personality as well.

"If she didn't like something, she'd let you know about it," Peters says.

Lena Marie Peters was not the only Horrwarth to continue the family tradition.

Julia Horrwarth's oldest son, Charles, continued to farm his mother's land in Willow Glen until he died in 1961.

Julia Horrwarth's granddaughter, Wilma Peters-Bibb, was then deeded the family ranch through Charles, who never married and had no other heirs.

By then the prune ranch that his mother and father worked had apricots and cherries.

As both Bibb and his cousin dug further into their past, they realized the enormity of the amount of work the women in their family put into both their homes and ranches. They realized that this effort had gone largely unnoticed.

"Women are always in the background and rarely remembered," says Bibb's wife, Valraie. "His mother, Wilma, was the first to understand this and made it her quest to recognize Julia as a Willow Glen pioneer. We just picked up where she left off."

The effort began more than 40 years ago, in 1961, when Peters-Bibb petitioned the city of San Jose to change the name of Arbor Drive to Horrwarth or Julia Horrwarth Street. Her attempts failed.

Peters-Bibb reasoned that since Arbor Drive was one of the streets bordering the Horrwarth property, it was logical to name it after the landowners as had been done in the past for other Willow Glen pioneers, such as the Curtners and Cottles.

According to an 1887 Santa Clara Valley map of orchards, the Horrwarth property was adjacent to present-day River Glen Park and Arbor Drive, bordering Willow Glen Way, Pine and Bird avenues.

Deserving a place

Bibb's effort to have his great-grandmother remembered also encountered difficulties.

In 2002, Bibb turned in a nomination form to the San Jose Parks and Recreation Commission to rename Hummingbird Park Horrwarth Park.

The parks and recreation commission rejected his nomination, leaving Bibb frustrated.

He then attempted to have San Jose name the playground at River Glen Park after his great-grandmother.

"We try to discourage the naming of smaller parts within parks," says Steve Roemer, San Jose parks, recreation and neighborhood services parks manager.

Bibb was not dissuaded and sought help.

Bibb worked closely with Roemer as well as San Jose District 6 Councilman Ken Yeager's office to explore other options.

"I just wanted something appropriate for Willow Glen," Bibb says.

Roemer suggested to Bibb a commemorative plaque instead and District 6 council aides Tony Filice and Megan Doyle helped him with the paperwork.

"I never thought of a plaque and when it was approved, I was tickled pink," Bibb says.

In mid-September Bibb and his family saw their hopes realized. The city installed a bronze plaque at River Glen Park commemorating Julia Horrwarth as a Willow Glen pioneer.

Both Bibb and his wife, along with his cousin, came up with the text for the plaque.

The beginning of the text reads: "The original Horrwarth family farm, located very close to this site, was settled in 1880 by Julia and Jacob, natives of Germany. They cleared the land of willow trees and planted a prune orchard."

Peters, who traveled to Germany to unearth more information about her ancestors, says the journey was a "meaningful and fun."

"You find little pieces and put things together," she says. "In the end, you get a picture of what life must have been like."