Rest is easy in comparison.

Innumerable Jameses must have died about that time, to say nothing of all the way along the line, but while some of the records were saved in 1906, most went up in smoke.
Moreover, there's just the chance that he didn't die here.

But that's going on the supposition that the man died when she left California, which don't fit our theory.

I still think he died not so very long before her return to California, and that she probably came to collect a legacy he had left her.

Otherwise, I should think it's about the last place she would have come to.