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Jackie asked me to post this addition to the background information about Schmidt's Smooth Yellow.
4 blocks from my house is Third St. in San Rafael. Third used to be a residential street, and later became a major one way arterial, with commercial buildings. Left over from the prior era, there were still a few little houses along one side of Third near my house. Here is a pic of the house where Mr. and Mrs. Horvath lived for over 50 years which I got from the City archives - it came with a newspaper article about Mr. Horvath, who was touted as having the largest ham radio antenna in Northern CA - you can see the base of the antenna in this picture (I would guess these houses were built in the 1920s & 30s).
Fast forward to around the turn of the 21st century, Mrs. Horvath, who had survived her husband by several decades, was still tending her rose garden at this house in her mid 90s - I talked with a neighbor who knew her. When she died, the large grocery store across the street purchased the property, and was asking San Rafael's permission to build a small office building and parking lot there. I heard of this because our neighborhood association was involved with the discussion. It got approved, but then 2-3 years went by with nothing happening. One Spring I walked over there, and the house was empty, but I could see lots of rose bushes blooming, and recognized several well known, such as Cecil Brunner, Peace, etc. It was the ones I did not recognize which intrigued me, so the next day I went back with my clippers. I took cuttings of what is now in commerce as Schmidt's Smooth Yellow, which was growing near the front porch, and was obviously an ancient bush with a huge trunk. I liked the little yellow blooms. I also took a cutting of a climber which was growing up a tree, which turned out to be Crimson Glory.
I got in touch with another Mrs. Horvath, who lived in a town nearby and turned out to be the daughter-in-law of the original couple. She told me that, just before the house was torn down, the grocery store nursery manager helped her husband dig up the roses, and they moved them to their house. Cass Bernstein and I went to visit her, and looked at the surviving (at least a dozen) roses, which had been planted in her back yard. As I recall, they were all mid 20th century HTs, and the yellow rose was not there. Mrs. Horvath told us that it had been dug up and moved, but "it did not make it". I offered her a rooted cutting of it, but she said her husband had bee the one interested in the roses, and she thought she already had "too many roses".
(Per Redfin, a real estate site, 522 Third St. San Rafael, CA was built in 1927. It is now a modern business mall.)
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