Barbara Black, Sonoma Coast rancher, historian and sharp shot, dies at 96

Barbara Black

Barbara Black was rooted for nearly a century to her family’s hilltop ranch overlooking the Sonoma Coast, where she raised livestock and tended the land as her forebears had done since the late 1800s.

A local historian and lifelong rancher, Black, who died Sunday at the age of 96, was born into two pioneer families. Her paternal grandparents, George and Elizabeth Charles, raised sheep by the Gualala River, where they settled in the mid-1860s after moving from Missouri. Her maternal grandfather, George Washington Call, purchased Fort Ross and the surrounding land a decade later.

Although born in San Francisco, Black grew up on the Meyers Grade Road ranch her parents established in 1907. They raised cattle and sheep on the sweeping pasture overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and Black, who later raised champion quarter horses, had no desire to ever leave.

“She was like the matriarch of the Ridge. She kept tabs of everything that was going on up there,” said her nephew, Anthony Guiliano, who said he spent many summers and weekends on the ranch.

Black did go to live on a ranch in the Dry Creek Valley after she married George Black in 1945. His family raised prunes. She returned to her family homestead five years later to help her aging mother care for the sheep.

Black and her husband established their business, Munez Ranch Quarter Horses, in the 1960s. They bred, showed and sold quarter horses across the United States, at times having up to 40 horses on the ranch, niece Sylvia Andreis said.

“She was a country girl, through and through, and she loved the ranch and her horses,” she said.

Jane Strode recalled that she had just finished high school when she first went up to the Blacks’ ranch to look at their horses and formed a friendship.

“She had a really good breeding program. I can’t tell you how many horses I bought from her,” said Strode, 67, of Guerneville.

She said Black and her husband were well-respected in the horse business, as they were in the sheep industry.

“Those people who bought horses would come back a year or so later and want another one,” Strode said.

Guiliano, 66, of Santa Rosa said his aunt worked as hard as any of the men on the ranch. And she could hunt and shoot as well as they did, if not better.

“She seldom ever missed,” Guiliano said about his aunt, who liked to use a .250-caliber rifle. “If you heard her gun go off, you’d better get ready to get the deer.”

Born Nov. 6, 1918, Barbara Mercedes Charles went to grade school in Fort Ross and graduated from Santa Rosa High School.

Her father, Oscar Charles, served as a Sonoma County supervisor.

Black, who lived on the ranch alone after her husband died in 1974, was known to keep a shotgun propped behind her front door.

“You better not come unannounced because you would have it in your face,” Andreis said in jest.

She added, “She was 96 years old, doing it her way. And she was in charge.”

Despite her rugged life on the ranch, Black kept up her appearance and was a striking woman, family members said.

“She could dress to the nines,” Guiliano said. “She would be the most attractive woman at the dance.”

She’d share stories about going down to the Druids Hall in Plantation and having picnics at places such as Clark’s Crossing and Valley Crossing.

Black was proud of her family’s history and always willing to share it, particularly with young people, Strode said.

Her memory never failed her, even in her last years.

“She was sharp as a tack,” Andreis said. “She was like an encyclopedia. If you wanted to know something, you went to her.”

Survivors include numerous nieces, nephews and cousins.

A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Oct. 3 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Sebastopol.

Eloísa Ruano González