Herman Whitaker was a California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

n writer.

Whitaker and his family moved to the Piedmont

Piedmont, California

Piedmont is a small, affluent city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is surrounded by the city of Oakland. The population was 10,667 at the 2010 census. Piedmont was incorporated in 1907 and was developed significantly in the 1920s and 1930s...

 hills in 1902 and took up residence in "The Bug House," which is now Blair Avenue.

His family became part of the Bohemian group including Jack

Jack London

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...

 and Bess London and George

George Sterling

George Sterling was an American poet based in California who, during his time, was celebrated in Northern California as one of the greatest American poets, although he never gained much fame in the rest of the United States.-Biography:Sterling was born in Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, the...

 and Carrie Sterling.

His daughter, Elsie Whitaker, was the subject of photographs and paintings. She married Mexican-American artist Xavier Martinez

Xavier Martinez

Xavier Timoteo Martínez was a California artist active in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was born in the Mexican city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, and, after becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States, died in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California...

in October 1907.

His books include: 'The Probationer' (1905), 'The Settler' (1906), 'The Planter' (1909), and 'The Mystery of the Barranca' (1913) among many others.