Since our recent saga of Snafu, the yellow crested cockatoo, included Jackosnville’s 1893 DeRoboam house, we thought we would tell you more about the house itself. After Henrietta Schmidling DeRoboam used her own fortune to rescue the U.S. Hotel from foreclosure following her husband’s mismanagement, she decided she wanted her own residence. She commissioned the Queen Anne style home at 390 E. California Street in Jacksonville, replacing an 1855 pioneer wood frame structure. Although not from the same George Barber catalog of house plans that inspired the Nunan House and 2 other structures in town (which have since burned), its style and features indicate that its design did come from an architectural pattern book. It’s one of the few houses in town with a “jerkin head” roof—a combination of gable and hip roofs.