Harris Newmark, when (about) Thirty-four Years Old
In the beginning of 1857, we had a more serious earthquake than any in recent years. At half-past eight o'clock on the morning of January 9th, a tremor shook the earth from North to South; the first shocks being light, the quake grew in power until houses were deserted, men, women and children sought refuge in the streets, and horses and cattle broke loose in wild alarm. For perhaps two, or two and a half minutes, the temblor continued and much damage was done. Los Angeles felt the disturbance far less than many other places, although five to six shocks were noted and twenty times during the week people were frightened from their homes; at Temple's rancho and at Fort Tejón great rents were opened in the earth and then closed again, piling up a heap or dune of finely-powdered stone and dirt. Large trees were uprooted and hurled down the hillsides; and tumbling after them went the cattle. Many officers, including Colonel B. L. Beall—well known in Los Angeles social circles—barely escaped from the barracks with their lives; and until the cracked adobes could be repaired, officers and soldiers lived in tents. It was at this time, too, that a so-called tidal wave almost engulfed the Sea Bird, plying between San Pedro and San Francisco, as she was entering the Golden Gate. Under the splendid seamanship of Captain Salisbury Haley, however, his little ship weathered the wave, and he was able later to report her awful experience to the scientific world.
This year also proved a dry season; and, consequently, times became very bad. With two periods of adversity, even the richest of the cattle-kings felt the pinch, and many began to part with their lands in order to secure the relief needed to tide them over. The effects of drought continued until 1858, although some good influences improved business conditions.
Due to glowing accounts of the prospects for conquest and fortune given out by Henry A. Crabb, a Stockton lawyer who married a Spanish woman with relatives in Sonora, a hundred or more filibusters gathered in Los Angeles, in January, to meet Crabb at San Pedro, when he arrived from the North on the steamer Sea Bird. They strutted about the streets here, displaying rifles and revolvers; and this would seem to have been enough to prevent their departure for Sonita, a little town a hundred miles beyond Yuma, to which they finally tramped. The filibusters were permitted to leave, however, and they invaded the foreign soil; but Crabb made a mess of the undertaking, even failing in blowing up a little church he attacked; and those not killed in the skirmish were soon surrounded and taken prisoners. The next morning, Crabb and some others who had paraded so ostentatiously while here, were tied to trees or posts, and summarily executed. Crabb's body was riddled with a hundred bullets and his head cut off and sent back in mescal; only one of the party was spared—Charley Evans, a lad of fifteen years, who worked his way to Los Angeles and was connected with a somewhat similar invasion a while later.
In January, also, when threats were made against the white population of Southern California, Mrs. Griffin, the wife of Dr. J. S. Griffin, came running, in all excitement, to the home of Joseph Newmark, and told the members of the family to lock all their doors and bolt their windows, as it was reported that some of the outlaws were on their way to Los Angeles, to murder the white people. As soon as possible, the ladies of the Griffin, Nichols, Foy, Mallard, Workman, Newmark and other families were brought together for greater safety in Armory Hall, on Spring Street near Second, while the men took their places in line with the other citizens to patrol the hills and streets.
A still vivid impression of this startling episode recalls an Englishman, a Dr. Carter, who arrived here some three years before. He lived on the east side of Main Street near First, where the McDonald Block now stands; and while not prominent in his profession, he associated with some estimable families. When others were volunteering for sentry-work or to fight, the Doctor very gallantly offered his services as a Committee of One to care for the ladies—far from the firing line!
On hearing of these threats by native bandidos, James R. Barton, formerly a volunteer under General S. W. Kearny and then Sheriff, at once investigated the rumors; and the truth of the reports being verified, our small and exposed community was seized with terror.
A large band of Mexican outlaws, led by Pancho Daniel, a convict who had escaped from San Quentin prison, and including Luciano Tapía and Juan Flores, on January 22d had killed a German storekeeper named George W. Pflugardt, in San Juan Capistrano, while he was preparing his evening meal; and after having placed his body on the table, they sat around and ate what the poor victim had provided for himself. On the same occasion, these outlaws plundered the stores of Manuel Garcia, Henry Charles and Miguel Kragevsky or Kraszewski; the last named escaping by hiding under a lot of wash in a large clothes-basket. When the news of this murder reached Los Angeles, excitement rose to fever-heat and we prepared for something more than defense.
Jim Barton, accompanied by William H. Little and Charles K. Baker, both constables, Charles F. Daley, an early blacksmith here, Alfred Hardy and Frank Alexander—all volunteers—left that evening for San Juan Capistrano, to capture the murderers, and soon arrived at the San Joaquín Ranch, about eighteen miles from San Juan. There Don José Andrés Sepúlveda told Barton of a trap set for him, and that the robbers outnumbered his posse, two to one; and urged him to send back to Los Angeles for more volunteers. Brave but reckless Barton, however, persisted in pushing on the next day, and so encountered some of the marauders in Santiago Canyon. Barton, Baker, Little and Daley were killed; while Hardy and Alexander escaped.
When Los Angeles was apprised of this second tragedy, the frenzy was indescribable, and steps were taken toward the formation of both a Committee of Safety and a Vigilance Committee—the latter to avenge the foul deed and to bring in the culprits. In meeting this emergency, the El Monte boys, as usual, took an active part. The city was placed under martial law, and Dr. John S. Griffin was put in charge of the local defenses. Suspicious houses, thought to be headquarters for robbers and thieves, were searched; and forty or fifty persons were arrested. The State Legislature was appealed to and at once voted financial aid.
Although the Committee of Safety had the assistance of special foot police in guarding the city, the citizens made a requisition on Fort Tejón, and fifty soldiers were sent from that post to help pursue the band. Troops from San Diego, with good horses and plenty of provisions, were also placed at the disposition of the Los Angeles authorities. Companies of mounted Rangers were made up to scour the country, American, German and French citizens vying with one another for the honor of risking their lives; one such company being formed at El Monte, and another at San Bernardino. There were also two detachments of native Californians; but many Sonorans and Mexicans from other States, either from sympathy or fear, aided the murdering robbers and so made their pursuit doubly difficult. However, the outlaws were pursued far into the mountains; and although the first party sent out returned without effecting anything (reporting that the desperadoes were not far from San Juan and that the horses of the pursuers had given out) practically all of the band, as will be seen, were eventually captured.
Not only were vigorous measures taken to apprehend and punish the murderers, but provision was made to rescue the bodies of the slain, and to give them decent and honorable burial. The next morning, after nearly one hundred mounted and armed men had set out to track the fugitives, another party, also on horseback, left to escort several wagons filled with coffins, in which they hoped to bring back the bodies of Sheriff Barton and his comrades. In this effort, the posse succeeded; and when the remains were received in Los Angeles on Sunday about noon, the city at once went into mourning. All business was suspended, and the impressive burial ceremonies, conducted on Monday, were attended by the citizens en masse. Oddly enough, there was not a Protestant clergyman in town at the time; but the Masonic Order took the matter in hand and performed their rites over those who were Masons, and even paid their respects, with a portion of the ritual, to the non-Masonic dead.
General Andrés Pico, with a company of native mounted Californians, who left immediately after the funeral, was especially prominent in running down the outlaws, thus again displaying his natural gift of leadership; and others fitted themselves out and followed as soon as they could. General Pico knew both land and people; and on capturing Silvas and Ardillero, two of the worst of the bandidos, after a hard resistance, he straightway hung them to trees, at the very spot where they had tried to assassinate him and his companions.
In the pursuit of the murderers, James Thompson (successor, in the following January, to the murdered Sheriff Getman) led a company of horsemen toward the Tejunga; and at the Simi Pass, high upon the rocks, he stationed United States soldiers as a lookout. Little San Gabriel, in which J. F. Burns, as Deputy Sheriff, was on the watch, also made its contribution to the restoration of order and peace; for some of its people captured and executed three or four of Daniels's and Flores's band. Flores was caught on the top of a peak in the Santiago range; all in all, some fifty-two culprits were brought to Los Angeles and lodged in jail; and of that number eleven were lynched or legally hung.
When the Vigilance Committee had jailed a suspected murderer, the people were called to sit in judgment. We met near the veranda of the Montgomery, and Judge Jonathan R. Scott having been made Chairman, a regular order of procedure, extra-legal though it was, was followed; after announcing the capture, and naming the criminal, the Judge called upon the crowd to determine the prisoner's fate. Thereupon some one would shout: "Hang him!" Scott would then put the question somewhat after the following formula: "Gentlemen, you have heard the motion; all those in favor of hanging So-and-So, will signify by saying, Aye!"
And the citizens present unanimously answered, Aye!
Having thus expressed their will, the assemblage proceeded to the jail, a low, adobe building behind the little Municipal and County structure, and easily subdued the jailer, Frank J. Carpenter, whose daughter, Josephine, became Frank Burns's second wife. The prisoner was then secured, taken from his cell, escorted to Fort Hill—a rise of ground behind the jail—where a temporary gallows had been constructed, and promptly despatched; and after each of the first batch of culprits had there successively paid the penalty for his crime, the avengers quietly dispersed to their homes to await the capture and dragging in of more cutthroats.
Among those condemned by vote at a public meeting in the way I have described, was Juan Flores, who was hanged on February 14th, 1857, well up on Fort Hill, in sight of such a throng that it is hardly too much to say that practically every man, woman and child in the pueblo was present, not to mention many people drawn by curiosity from various parts of the State who had flocked into town. Flores was but twenty-one years of age; yet, the year previous he had been sent to prison for horse-stealing. At the same time that Flores was executed, Miguel Blanco, who had stabbed the militiaman, Captain W. W. Twist, in order to rob him of a thousand dollars, was also hanged.
Espinosa and Lopez, two members of the robber band, for a while eluded their pursuers. At San Buenaventura, however, they were caught, and on the following morning, Espinosa was hung. Lopez again escaped; and it was not until February 16th that he was finally recaptured and despatched to other realms.
Two days after Juan Flores was sent to a warmer clime, Luciano Tapía and Thomas King were executed. Tapía's case was rather regrettable, for he had been a respectable laborer at San Luis Obispo until Flores, meeting him, persuaded him to abandon honest work. Tapía came to Los Angeles, joined the robber band and was one of those who helped to kill Sheriff Barton.
In 1857, the Sisters of Charity founded the Los Angeles Infirmary, the first regular hospital in the city, with Sister Ana, for years well known here, as Sister Superior. For a while, temporary quarters were taken in the house long occupied by Don José María Aguilar and family, which property the Sisters soon purchased; but the next year they bought some land from Don Luis Arenas, adjoining Don José Andrés Sepúlveda's, and were thus enabled to enlarge the hospital. Their service being the best, in time they were enabled to acquire a good-sized, two-story building of brick, in the upper part of the city; and there their patients enjoyed the refreshing and health-restoring environment of garden and orchard.
It was not until this year that, on the corner of Alameda and Bath streets, Oscar Macy, City Treasurer in 1887-88, opened the first public bath house, having built a water-wheel with small cans attached to the paddles, to dip water up from the Alameda zanja, as a medium for supplying his tank. He provided hot water as well as cold. Oscar charged fifty cents a bath, and furnished soap and towels.
In 1857, the steamship Senator left San Francisco on the fifth and twentieth of each month and so continued until the people wanted a steamer at least once every ten days.
Despite the inconvenience and expense of obtaining water for the home, it was not until February 24th that Judge W. G. Dryden—who, with a man named McFadden, had established the nucleus of a system—was granted a franchise to distribute water from his land, and to build a water-wheel in the zanja madre. The Dryden, formerly known as the Ábila Springs and later the source of the Beaudry supply, were near the site selected for the San Fernando Street Railway Station; and from these springs water was conveyed by a zanja to the Plaza. There, in the center, a brick tank, perhaps ten feet square and fifteen feet high, was constructed; and this was filled by means of pumps, while from the tank wooden pipes distributed water to the consumer.
So infrequently did we receive intelligence from the remoter parts of the world throughout the fifties that sometimes a report, especially if apparently authentic, when finally it reached here, created real excitement. I recall, more or less vividly, the arrival of the stages from the Senator, late in March, and the stir made when the news was passed from mouth to mouth that Livingstone, the explorer, had at last been heard from in far-off and unknown Africa.
Los Angeles schools were then open only part of the year, the School Board being compelled, in the spring, to close them for want of money. William Wolfskill, however, rough pioneer though he was, came to the Board's rescue. He was widely known as an advocate of popular education, having, as I have said, his own private teachers; and to his lasting honor, he gave the Board sufficient funds to make possible the reopening of one of the schools.
In 1857, I again revisited San Francisco. During the four years since my first visit a complete metamorphosis had taken place. Tents and small frame structures were being largely replaced with fine buildings of brick and stone; many of the sand dunes had succumbed to the march of improvement; gardens were much more numerous, and the uneven character of streets and sidewalks had been wonderfully improved. In a word, the spirit of Western progress was asserting itself, and the city by the Golden Gate was taking on a decidedly metropolitan appearance.
Notwithstanding various attempts at citrus culture in Southern California, some time elapsed before there was much of an orange or lemon industry in this vicinity. In 1854, a Dr. Halsey started an orange and lime nursery, on the Rowland place, which he soon sold to William Wolfskill, for four thousand dollars; and in April, 1857, when there were not many more than a hundred orange trees bearing fruit in the whole county, Wolfskill planted several thousand and so established what was to be, for that time, the largest orange orchard in the United States. He had thrown away a good many of the lemon trees received from Halsey, because they were frost-bitten; but he still had some lemon, orange and olive trees left. Later, under the more scientific care of his son, Joseph Wolfskill, who extended the original Wolfskill grove, this orchard was made to yield very large crops.
In 1857, a group of Germans living in San Francisco bought twelve hundred acres of waste, sandy land, at two dollars an acre, from Don Pacífico Onteveras, and on it started the town of Anaheim—a name composed of the Spanish Ana, from Santa Ana, and the German Heim, for home; and this was the first settlement in the county founded after my arrival. This land formed a block about one and a quarter miles square, some three miles from the Santa Ana River, and five miles from the residence of Don Bernardo Yorba, from whom the company received special privileges. A. Langenberger, a German, who married Yorba's daughter, was probably one of the originators of the Anaheim plan; at any rate, his influence with his father-in-law was of value to his friends in completing the deal. There were fifty shareholders, who paid seven hundred and fifty dollars each, with an Executive Council composed of Otmar Caler, President; G. Charles Kohler, Vice-President; Cyrus Beythien, Treasurer; and John Fischer, Secretary; while John Fröhling, R. Emerson, Felix Bachman, who was a kind of Sub-treasurer, and Louis Jazyinsky, made up the Los Angeles Auditing Committee. George Hansen, afterward the colony's Superintendent, surveyed the tract and laid it out in fifty twenty-acre lots, with streets and a public park; around it a live fence of some forty to fifty thousand willow cuttings, placed at intervals of a couple of feet, was planted. A main canal, six to seven miles long, with a fall of fifteen to twenty feet, brought abundant water from the Santa Ana River, while some three hundred and fifty miles of lateral ditches distributed the water to the lots. On each lot, some eight or ten thousand grape vines were set out, the first as early as January, 1858. On December 15th, 1859, the stockholders came south to settle on their partially-cultivated land; and although but one among the entire number knew anything about wine-making, the dream of the projectors—to establish there the largest vineyard in the world—bade fair to come true. The colonists were quite a curious mixture—two or three carpenters, four blacksmiths, three watchmakers, a brewer, an engraver, a shoemaker, a poet, a miller, a bookbinder, two or three merchants, a hatter and a musician; but being mostly of sturdy, industrious German stock, they soon formed such a prosperous and important little community that, by 1876, the settlement had grown to nearly two thousand people. A peculiar plan was adopted for investment, sale and compensation: each stockholder paid the same price at the beginning, and later all drew for the lots, the apportionment being left to chance; but since the pieces of land were conceded to have dissimilar values, those securing the better lots equalized in cash with their less lucky associates. Soon after 1860, when Langenberger had erected the first hotel there, Anaheim took a leading place in the production of grapes and wine; and this position of honor it kept until, in 1888, a strange disease suddenly attacked and, within a single year, killed all the vines, after which the cultivation of oranges and walnuts was undertaken. Kohler and Fröhling had wineries in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, the latter being adjacent to the present corner of Central Avenue and Seventh Street; and this firm purchased most of Anaheim's grape crop, although some vineyard owners made their own wine. Morris L. Goodman, by the way, was here at an early period, and was one of the first settlers of Anaheim.
Hermann Heinsch, a native of Prussia, arrived in Los Angeles in 1857 and soon after engaged in the harness and saddlery business. On March 8th, 1863, he was married to Mary Haap. Having become proficient at German schools in both music and languages, Heinsch lent his time and efforts to the organization and drill of Germans here, and contributed much to the success of both the Teutonia and the Turnverein. In 1869, the Heinsch Building was erected at the corner of Commercial and Los Angeles streets; and as late as 1876 this was a shopping district, a Mrs. T. J. Baker having a dressmaking establishment there. After a prosperous career, Heinsch died on January 13th, 1883; his wife followed him on April 14th, 1906. R. C. Heinsch, a son, survives them.
Major Walter Harris Harvey, a native of Georgia once a cadet at West Point, but dismissed for his pranks (who about the middle of the fifties married Eleanor, eldest full sister of John G. Downey, and became the father of J. Downey Harvey, now living in San Francisco), settled in California shortly after the Mexican War. During the first week in May, 1857, or some four years before he died, Major Harvey arrived from Washington with an appointment as Register of the Land Office, in place of H. P. Dorsey. At the same time, Don Agustin Olvera was appointed Receiver, in lieu of General Andrés Pico. These and other rotations in office were due, of course, to national administration changes, President Buchanan having recently been inaugurated.
One of the interesting legal inquiries of the fifties was conducted in 1857 when, in the District Court here, António María Lugo, crowned with the white of seventy-six winters, testified, at a hearing to establish certain claims to land, as to what he knew of old ranchos hereabouts, recalling many details of the pueblo and incidents as far back as 1785. He had seen the San Rafael Ranch, for example, in 1790, and he had also roamed, as a young man, over the still older Dominguez and Nietos hills.
Charles Henry Forbes, who was born at the Mission San José, came to Los Angeles County in 1857 and, though but twenty-two years old, was engaged by Don Abel Stearns to superintend his various ranchos, becoming Stearns's business manager in 1866, with a small office on the ground-floor of the Arcadia Block. In 1864, Forbes married Doña Luisa Olvera, daughter of Judge Agustin Olvera, and a graduate of the Sisters' school. On the death of Don Abel, in 1871, Forbes settled up Stearns's large estate, retaining his professional association with Doña Arcadia, after her marriage to Colonel Baker, and even until he died in May, 1894.
As I have intimated, the principal industry throughout Los Angeles County, and indeed throughout Southern California, up to the sixties, was the raising of cattle and horses—an undertaking favored by a people particularly fond of leisure and knowing little of the latent possibilities in the land; so that this entire area of magnificent soil supported herds which provided the whole population in turn, directly or indirectly, with a livelihood. The live stock subsisted upon the grass growing wild all over the county, and the prosperity of Southern California therefore depended entirely upon the season's rainfall. This was true to a far greater extent than one might suppose, for water-development had received no attention outside of Los Angeles. If the rainfall was sufficient to produce feed, dealers came from the North and purchased our stock, and everybody thrived; if, on the other hand, the season was dry, cattle and horses died and the public's pocket-book shrank to very unpretentious dimensions. As an incident in even a much later period than that which I here have in mind, I can distinctly remember that I would rise three or four times during a single meal to see if the overhanging clouds had yet begun to give that rain which they had seemed to promise, and which was so vital to our prosperity.
As for rain, I am reminded that every newspaper in those days devoted much space to weather reports or, rather, to gossip about the weather at other points along the Coast, as well as to the consequent prospects here. The weather was the one determining factor in the problem of a successful or a disastrous season, and became a very important theme when ranchers and others congregated at our store.
And here I may mention, à propos of this matter of rainfall and its general effects, that there were millions of ground-squirrels all over this country that shared with other animals the ups and downs of the season. When there was plenty of rain, these squirrels fattened and multiplied; but when evil days came, they sickened, starved and perished. On the other hand, great overflows, due to heavy rainfalls, drowned many of these troublesome little rodents.
The raising of sheep had not yet developed any importance at the time of my arrival; most of the mutton then consumed in Los Angeles coming from Santa Cruz Island, in the Santa Bárbara Channel, though some was brought from San Clemente and Santa Catalina islands. On the latter, there was a herd of from eight to ten thousand sheep in which Oscar Macy later acquired an interest; and L. Harris, father-in-law of H. W. Frank, the well- and favorably-known President and member of the Board of Education, also had extensive herds there. They ran wild and needed very little care, and only semi-yearly visits were made to look after the shearing, packing and shipping of the wool. Santa Cruz Island had much larger herds, and steamers running to and from San Francisco often stopped there to take on sheep and sheep-products.
Santa Catalina Island, for years the property of Don José María Covarrúbias—and later of the eccentric San Francisco pioneer James Lick, who crossed the plains in the same party with the Lanfranco brothers and tried to induce them to settle in the North—was not far from San Clemente; and there, throughout the extent of her hills and vales, roamed herd after herd of wild goats. Early seafarers, I believe it has been suggested, accustomed to carry goats on their sailing vessels, for a supply of milk, probably deposited some of the animals on Catalina; but however that may be, hunting parties to this day explore the mountains in search of them.
Considering, therefore, the small number of sheep here about 1853, it is not uninteresting to note that, according to old records of San Gabriel for the winter of 1828-29, there were then at the Mission no less than fifteen thousand sheep; while in 1858, on the other hand, according to fairly accurate reports, there were fully twenty thousand sheep in Los Angeles County. Two years later, the number had doubled.
George Carson, a New Yorker who came here in 1852, and after whom Carson Station is named, was one of the first to engage in the sheep industry. Soon after he arrived, he went into the livery business, to which he gave attention even when in partnership successively with Sanford, Dean and Hicks in the hardware business, on Commercial Street. On July 30th, 1857, Carson married Doña Victoria, a daughter of Manuel Dominguez; but it was not until 1864 that, having sold out his two business interests (the livery to George Butler and the hardware to his partner), he moved to the ranch of his father-in-law, where he continued to live, assisting Dominguez with the management of his great property. Some years later, Carson bought four or five hundred acres of land adjoining the Dominguez acres and turned his attention to sheep. Later still, he became interested in the development of thoroughbred cattle and horses, but continued to help his father-in-law in the directing of his ranch. When rain favored the land, Carson, in common with his neighbors, amassed wealth; but during dry years he suffered disappointment and loss, and on one occasion was forced to take his flocks, then consisting of ten thousand sheep, to the mountains, where he lost all but a thousand head. It cost him ten thousand dollars to save the latter, which amount far exceeded their value. In this movement of stock, he took with him, as his lieutenant, a young Mexican named Martin Cruz whom he had brought up on the rancho. Carson was one of my cronies, while I was still young and single; and we remained warm friends until he died.
Almost indescribable excitement followed the substantiated reports, received in the fall of 1857, that a train of emigrants from Missouri and Arkansas, on their way to California, had been set upon by Indians, near Mountain Meadow, Utah, on September 7th, and that thirty-six members of the party had been brutally killed. Particularly were the Gentiles of the Southwest stirred up when it was learned that the assault had been planned and carried through by one Lee, a Mormon, whose act sprang rather from the frenzy of a madman than from the deliberation of a well-balanced mind. The attitude of Brigham Young toward the United States Government, at that time, and his alleged threat to "turn the Indians loose" upon the whites, added color to the assertion that Young's followers were guilty of the massacre; but fuller investigation has absolved the Mormons, I believe, as a society, from any complicity in the awful affair. Some years later the two Oatman girls were rescued from the Indians (by whom they had been tattooed), and for a while they stayed at Ira Thompson's, where I saw them.
In 1857, J. G. Nichols was reëlected Mayor of Los Angeles, and began several improvements he had previously advocated, especially the irrigating of the plain below the city. By August 2d, Zanja No. 2 was completed; and this brought about the building of the Aliso Mill and the further cultivation of much excellent land.
One of the passengers that left San Francisco with me for San Pedro on October 18th, 1853, who later became a successful citizen of Southern California, was Edward N. McDonald, a native of New York State. We had sailed from New York together, and together had finished the long journey to the Pacific Coast, after which I lost track of him. McDonald had intended proceeding farther south, and I was surprised at meeting him on the street, some weeks after my arrival, in Los Angeles. Reaching San Pedro, he contracted to enter the service of Alexander & Banning, and remained with Banning for several years, until he formed a partnership with John O. Wheeler's brother, who later went to Japan. McDonald, subsequently raised sheep on a large scale and acquired much ranch property; and in 1876, he built the block on Main Street bearing his name. Sixteen years later, he erected another structure, opposite the first one. When McDonald died at Wilmington, on June 10th, 1899, he left his wife an estate valued at about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars which must have increased in value, since then, many fold.
N. A. Potter, a Rhode Islander, came to Los Angeles in 1855, bringing with him a stock of Yankee goods and opening a store; and two years later he bought a two-story brick building on Main Street, opposite the Bella Union. Louis Jazynsky was a partner with Potter, for a while, under the firm name of Potter & Company; but later Jazynsky left Los Angeles for San Francisco. Potter died here in 1868.
Possibly the first instance of an Angeleño proffering a gift to the President of the United States—and that, too, of something characteristic of this productive soil and climate—was when Henry D. Barrows, in September, called on President Buchanan, in Washington and, on behalf of William Wolfskill, Don Manuel Requena and himself, gave the Chief Executive some California fruit and wine.
I have before me a Ledger of the year 1857; it is a medium-sized volume bound in leather, and on the outside cover is inscribed, in the bold, old-fashioned handwriting of fifty-odd years ago, the simple legend,
NEWMARK, KREMER & COMPANY
Each page is headed with the name of some still-remembered worthy of that distant day who was a customer of the old firm; and in 1857, a customer was always a friend. According to the method of that period the accounts are closed, not with balancing entries and red lines but, in the blackest of black ink, with the good, straightforward and positive inscription, Settled.
The perusal of this old book carries me back over the vanished years. As the skull in the hand of the ancient monk, so does this antiquated volume recall to me how transitory is this life and all its affairs. A few remain to tell a younger generation the story of the early days; but the majority, even as in 1857 they carefully balanced their scores in this old Ledger, have now closed their accounts in the great Book of Life. They have settled with their heaviest Creditor; they have gone before Him to render their last account. With few or no exceptions, they were a manly, sterling race, and I have no doubt that He found their assets far greater than their liabilities.
In January, 1858, I engaged, in the sheep business. After some investigation, I selected and purchased for an insignificant sum, just west of the present Hollenbeck Home on Boyle Avenue, a convenient site, which consisted of twenty acres of land, through which a ditch conducted water to Don Felipe Lugo's San António rancho—a flow quite sufficient, at the time, for my herd. These sheep I pastured on adjacent lands belonging to the City; and as others often did the same, no one said me Nay. Everything progressed beautifully until the first of May, when the ditch ran dry. Upon making inquiry, I learned that the City had permitted Lugo to dig a private ditch across this twenty-acre tract to his ranch, and to use what water he needed during the rainy season; but that in May, when the authorities resumed their irrigation service, the privilege was withdrawn. I was thus deprived of water for the sheep.
Despite the fact that there was an adobe on the land, I could not dispose of the property at any price. One day a half-breed known as the Chicken Thief called on me and offered a dozen chickens for the adobe, but—not a chicken for the land! Stealing chickens was this man's profession; and I suppose that he offered me the medium of exchange he was most accustomed to have about him.
Sheriff William C. Getman had been warned, in the tragic days of 1858, to look out for a maniac named Reed; but almost courting such an emergency, Getman (once a dashing Lieutenant of the Rangers and bearing grapeshot wounds from his participation in the Siege of Mexico) went, on the seventh of January, with Francis Baker to a pawnbroker, whose establishment, near Los Angeles and Aliso streets, was popularly known as the Monte Pio. There the officers found Reed locked and barricaded in a room; and while the Sheriff was endeavoring to force an entrance, Reed suddenly threw open the door, ran out and, to the dismay of myself and many others gathered to witness the arrest, pulled a pistol from his pocket, discharged the weapon, and Getman dropped on the spot. The maniac then retreated into the pawnbroker's from which he fired at the crowd. Deputy Baker—later assistant to Marshal Warren, who was shot by Dye—finally killed the desperado, but not before Reed had fired twenty to thirty shots, four or five of which passed through Baker's clothing. When the excited crowd broke into the shop, it was found that the madman had been armed with two derringers, two revolvers and a bowie knife—a convenient little arsenal which he had taken from the money-lender's stock. The news of the affray spread rapidly through the town and everywhere created great regret. Baker, who had sailed around the Horn a couple of years before I arrived, died on May 17th, 1899, after having been City Marshal and Tax Collector.
Such trouble with men inclined to use firearms too freely was not confined to maniacs or those bent on revenge or robbery. On one occasion, for example, about 1858, while passing along the street I observed Gabriel Allen, known among his intimates as Gabe Allen, a veteran of the War with Mexico—and some years later a Supervisor—on one of his jollifications, with Sheriff Getman following close at his heels. Having arrived in front of a building, Gabe suddenly raised his gun and aimed at a carpenter who was at work on the roof. Getman promptly knocked Allen down; whereupon the latter said, "You've got me, Billy!" Allen's only purpose, it appeared, was to take a shot at the innocent stranger and thus test his marksmanship.
This Gabe Allen was really a notorious character, though not altogether bad. When sober, he was a peaceable man; but when on a spree, he was decidedly warlike and on such occasions always "shot up the town." While on one of these jamborees, for example, he was heard to say, "I'll shoot, if I only kill six of them!" In later life, however, Allen married a Mexican lady who seems to have had a mollifying influence; and thereafter he lived at peace with the world.
During the changing half-century or more of which I write, Los Angeles has witnessed many exciting street scenes, but it is doubtful if any exhibition here ever called to doors, windows and the dusty streets a greater percentage of the entire population than that of the Government camels driven through the town on January 8th, 1858, under the martial and spectacular command of Ned, otherwise Lieutenant, and later General and Ambassador E. F. Beale, and the forbear of the so-called hundred million dollar McLean baby; the same Lieutenant Beale who opened up Beale's Route from the Rio Grande to Fort Tejón. The camels had just come in from the fort, having traveled forty or more miles a day across the desert, to be loaded with military stores and provisions. As early as the beginning of the fifties, Jefferson Davis, then in Congress, had advocated, but without success, the appropriation of thirty thousand dollars for the purchase of such animals, believing that they could be used on the overland routes and would prove especially serviceable in desert regions; and when Davis, in 1854, as Secretary of War, secured the appropriation for which he had so long contended, he despatched American army officers to Egypt and Arabia to make the purchase. Some seventy or seventy-five camels were obtained and transported to Texas by the storeship Supply; and in the Lone Star State the herd was divided into two parts, half being sent to the Gadsden Purchase, afterward Arizona, and half to Albuquerque. In a short time, the second division was put in charge of Lieutenant Beale who was assisted by native camel-drivers brought from abroad. Among these was Philip Tedro, or Hi Jolly—who had been picked up by Commodore Dave Porter—and Greek George, years afterward host to bandit Vasquez; and camels and drivers made several trips back and forth across the Southwest country. Once headquartered at Fort Tejón, they came to Los Angeles every few weeks for provisions; each time creating no little excitement among the adult population and affording much amusement, as they passed along the streets, to the small boy.
To return to Pancho Daniel, the escaped leader of the Barton murderers. He was heard from occasionally, as foraging north toward San Luis Obispo, and was finally captured, after repeated efforts to entrap and round him up, by Sheriff Murphy, on January 19th, 1858, while hiding in a haystack near San José. When he was brought to Los Angeles, he was jailed, and then released on bail. Finally, Daniel's lawyers secured for him a change of venue to Santa Bárbara; and this was the last abuse that led the public again to administer a little law of its own. Early on the morning of November 30th, Pancho's body was found hanging by the neck at the gateway to the County Jail yard, a handful of men having overpowered the keeper, secured the key and the prisoner, and sent him on a journey with a different destination from Santa Bárbara.
On February 25th, fire started in Childs & Hicks's store, on Los Angeles Street, and threatened both the Bella Union and El Palacio, then the residence of Don Abel Stearns. The brick in the building of Felix Bachman & Company and the volunteer bucket-brigade prevented a general conflagration. Property worth thousands of dollars was destroyed, Bachman & Company alone carrying insurance. The conflagration demonstrated the need of a fire engine, and a subscription was started to get one.
Weeks later workmen, rummaging among the débris, found five thousand dollars in gold, which discovery produced no little excitement. Childs claimed the money as his, saying that it had been stolen from him by a thieving clerk; but the workmen, undisturbed by law, kept the treasure.
A new four-page weekly newspaper appeared on March 24th, bearing the suggestive title, the Southern Vineyard, and the name of Colonel J. J. Warner, as editor. By December, it had become a semi-weekly. Originally Democratic, it now favored the Union party; it was edited with ability, but died on June 8th, 1860.
On March 24th, I married Sarah, second daughter of Joseph Newmark, to whom I had been engaged since 1856. She was born on January 9th, 1841, and had come to live in Los Angeles in 1854. The ceremony, performed by the bride's father, took place at the family home, at what is now 501 North Main Street, almost a block from the Plaza, on the site of the Brunswig Drug Company; and there we continued to live until about 1860.
At four o'clock, a small circle of intimates was welcomed at dinner; and in the evening there was a house-party and dance, for which invitations printed on lace-paper, in the typography characteristic of that day, had been sent out. Among the friends who attended, were the military officers stationed at Fort Tejón, including Major Bell, the commanding officer, and Lieutenant John B. Magruder, formerly Colonel at San Diego and later a Major General in the Civil War, commanding Confederate forces in the Peninsula and in Texas, and eventually serving under Maximilian in Mexico. Other friends still living in Los Angeles who were present are Mr. and Mrs. S. Lazard, Mrs. S. C. Foy, William H. Workman, C. E. Thom and H. D. Barrows. Men rarely went out unarmed at night, and most of our male visitors doffed their weapons—both pistols and knives—as they came in, spreading them around in the bedrooms. The ladies brought their babies with them for safe-keeping, and the same rooms were placed at their disposal. Imagine, if you can, the appearance of this nursery-arsenal!
It was soon after we were married that my wife said to me one day, rather playfully, but with a touch of sadness, that our meeting might easily have never taken place; and when I inquired what she meant, she described an awful calamity that had befallen the Greenwich Avenue school in New York City, which she attended as a little girl, and where several hundred pupils were distributed in different classrooms. The building was four stories in height; the ground floor paved with stones, was used as a playroom; the primary department was on the second floor; the more advanced pupils occupied the third; while the top floor served as a lecture-room.
On the afternoon of November 20th, 1851, Miss Harrison, the Principal of the young ladies' department, suddenly fell in a faint, and the resulting screams for water, being misunderstood, led to the awful cry of Fire! It was known that the pupils made a dash for the various doors and were soon massed around the stairway, yet a difference of opinion existed as to the cause of the tragedy. My wife always said that the staircase, which led from the upper to the first floor, en caracole, gave way, letting the pupils fall; while others contended that the bannister snapped asunder, hurling the crowded unfortunates over the edge to the pavement beneath. A frightful fatality resulted. Hundreds of pupils of all ages were precipitated in heaps on to the stone floor, with a loss of forty-seven lives and a hundred or more seriously crippled.
My wife, who was a child of but eleven years, was just about to jump with the rest when a providential hand restrained and saved her.
News of the disaster quickly spread, and in a short time the crowd of anxious parents, kinsfolk and friends who had hastened to the scene in every variety of vehicle and on foot, was so dense that the police had the utmost difficulty in removing the wounded, dying and dead.
From Geneva, Switzerland, in 1854, a highly educated French lady, Mlle. Theresa Bry, whose oil portrait hangs in the County Museum, reached Los Angeles, and four years later married François Henriot, a gardener by profession, who had come from la belle France in 1851. Together, on First Street near Los Angeles, they conducted a private school which enjoyed considerable patronage; removing the institution, in the early eighties, to the Arroyo Seco district. This matrimonial transaction, on account of the unequal social stations of the respective parties, caused some little flurry: in contrast to her own beauty and ladylike accomplishments, François's manners were unrefined, his stature short and squatty, while his full beard (although it inspired respect, if not a certain feeling of awe, when he came to exercise authority in the school) was scraggy and unkempt. Mme. Henriot died in 1888, aged eighty-seven years, and was followed to the grave by her husband five years later.
In 1858, the outlook for business brightened in Los Angeles; and Don Abel Stearns, who had acquired riches as a ranchero, built the Arcadia Block, on the corner of Los Angeles and Arcadia streets, naming it after his wife, Doña Arcadia, who, since these memoirs were commenced, has joined the silent majority. The structure cost about eighty thousand dollars, and was talked of for some time as the most notable business block south of San Francisco. The newspapers hailed it as an ornament to the city and a great step toward providing what the small and undeveloped community then regarded as a fire-proof structure for business purposes. Because, however, of the dangerous overflow of the Los Angeles River in rainy seasons, Stearns elevated the building above the grade of the street and to such an extent that, for several years, his store-rooms remained empty. But the enterprise at once bore some good fruit; to make the iron doors and shutters of the block, he started a foundry on New High Street and soon created some local iron-casting trade.
On April 24th, Señora Guadalupe Romero died at the age, it is said, of one hundred and fifteen years. She came to Los Angeles, I was told, as far back as 1781, the wife of one of the earliest soldiers sent here, and had thus lived in the pueblo about seventy-seven years.
Some chapters in the life of Henry Mellus are of more than passing interest. Born in Boston, he came to California in 1835, with Richard Henry Dana, in Captain Thompson's brig Pilgrim made famous in the story of Two Years before the Mast; clerked for Colonel Isaac Williams when that Chino worthy had a little store where later the Bella Union stood; returned to the East in 1837 and came back to the Coast the second time as supercargo. Settling in San Francisco, he formed with Howard the well-known firm of Howard & Mellus, which was wiped out, by the great fire, in 1851. Again Mellus returned to Massachusetts, and in 1858 for a third time came to California, at length casting his fortune with us in growing Los Angeles. On Dana's return to San Pedro and the Pacific Coast in 1859, Mellus—who had married a sister of Francis Mellus's wife and had become a representative citizen—entertained the distinguished advocate and author, and drove him around Los Angeles to view the once familiar and but little-altered scenes. Dana bore all his honors modestly, apparently quite oblivious of the curiosity displayed toward him and quite as unconscious that he was making one of the memorable visits in the early annals of the town. Dana Street serves as a memorial to one who contributed in no small degree to render the vicinity of Los Angeles famous.
Just what hotel life in Los Angeles was in the late fifties, or about the time when Dana visited here, may be gathered from an anecdote often told by Dr. W. F. Edgar, who came to the City of the Angels for the first time in 1858. Dr. Edgar had been ordered to join an expedition against the Mojave Indians which was to start from Los Angeles for the Colorado River, and he put up at the old Bella Union, expecting at least one good night's rest before taking to the saddle again and making for the desert. Dr. Edgar found, however, to his intense disgust, that the entire second story was overcrowded with lodgers. Singing and loud talking were silenced, in turn, by the protests of those who wanted to sleep; but finally a guest, too full for expression but not so drunk that he was unable to breathe hoarsely, staggered in from a Sonora Town ball, tumbled into bed with his boots on, and commenced to snort, much like a pig. Under ordinary circumstances, this infliction would have been grievous enough; but the inner walls of the Bella Union were never overthick, and the rhythmic snoring of the late-comer made itself emphatically audible and proportionately obnoxious. Quite as emphatic, however, were the objections soon raised by the fellow-guests, who not only raised them but threw them, one after another—boots, bootjacks and sticks striking, with heavy thud, the snorer's portal; but finding that even these did not avail, the remonstrants, in various forms of deshabille, rushed out and began to kick at the door of the objectionable bedroom. Just at that moment the offender turned over with a grunt; and the excited army of lodgers, baffled by the unresisting apathy of the sleeper, retreated, each to his nest. The next day, breathing a sigh of relief, Edgar forsook the heavenly regions of the Bella Union and made for Cajón Pass, eventually reaching the Colorado and the place where the expedition found the charred remains of emigrants' wagons, the mournful evidence of Indian treachery and atrocity.
Edgar's nocturnal experience reminds me of another in the good old Bella Union. When Cameron E. Thom arrived here in the spring of 1854, he engaged a room at the hotel which he continued to occupy for several months, or until the rains of 1855 caused both roof and ceiling to cave in during the middle of the night, not altogether pleasantly arousing him from his slumbers. It was then that he moved to Joseph Newmark's, where he lived for some time, through which circumstance we became warm friends.
Big, husky, hearty Jacob Kuhrts, by birth a German and now living here at eighty-one years of age, left home, as a mere boy, for the sea, visiting California on a vessel from China as early as 1848, and rushing off to Placer County on the outbreak of the gold-fever. Roughing it for several years and narrowly escaping death from Indians, Jake made his first appearance in Los Angeles in 1858, soon after which I met him, when he was eking out a livelihood doing odd jobs about town, a fact leading me to conclude that his success at the mines was hardly commensurate with the privations endured. It was just about that time, when he was running a dray, that, attracted by a dance among Germans, Jake dropped in as he was; but how sorry an appearance he made may perhaps be fancied when I say that the door-keeper, eyeing him suspiciously, refused him admission and advised him to go home and put on his Sunday go-to-meetings. Jake went and, what is more important, fortunately returned; for while spinning around on the knotty floor, he met, fell in love with and ogled Fräulein Susan Buhn, whom somewhat later he married. In 1864, Kuhrts had a little store on Spring Street near the adobe City Hall; and there he prospered so well that by 1866 he had bought the northwest corner of Main and First streets, and put up the building he still owns. For twelve years he conducted a grocery in a part of that structure, living with his family in the second story, after which he was sufficiently prosperous to retire. Active as his business life has been, Jake has proved his patriotism time and again, devoting his efforts as a City Father, and serving, sometimes without salary, as Superintendent of Streets, Chief of the Fire Department and Fire Commissioner.
In 1858, John Temple built what is now the south wing of the Temple Block standing directly opposite the Bullard Building; but the Main Street stores being, like Stearns's Arcadia Block, above the level of the sidewalk and, therefore, reached only by several steps, proved unpopular and did not rent, although Tischler & Schlesinger, heading a party of grain-buyers, stored some wheat in them for a while or until the grain, through its weight, broke the flooring, and was precipitated into the cellar; and even as late as 1859, after telegraph connection with San Francisco had been completed, only one little space on the Spring Street side, in size not more than eight by ten feet, was rented, the telegraph company being the tenants. One day William Wolfskill, pointing to the structure, exclaimed to his friends: "What a pity that Temple put all his money there! Had he not gone into building so extravagantly, he might now be a rich man." Wolfskill himself, however, later commenced the construction of a small block on Main Street, opposite the Bella Union, to be occupied by S. Lazard & Company, but which he did not live to see completed.
Later on, the little town grew and, as this property became more central, Temple removed the steps and built the stores flush with the sidewalk, after which wide-awake merchants began to move into them. One of Temple's first important tenants on Main Street was Daniel Desmond, the hatter. His store was about eighteen by forty feet. Henry Slotterbeck, the well-known gunsmith, was another occupant. He always carried a large stock of gunpowder, which circumstance did not add very much to the security of the neighborhood.
On the Court Street side, Jake Philippi was one of the first to locate, and there he conducted a sort of Kneipe. His was a large room, with a bar along the west side. The floor was generously sprinkled with sawdust, and in comfortable armchairs, around the good, old-fashioned redwood tables, frequently sat many of his German friends and patrons, gathered together to indulge in a game of Pedro, Skat or whist, and to pass the time pleasantly away. Some of those who thus met together at Jake Phillippi's, at different periods of his occupancy, were Dr. Joseph Kurtz, H. Heinsch, Conrad Jacoby, Abe Haas, C. F. Heinzeman, P. Lazarus, Edward Pollitz, A. Elsaesser and B. F. Drackenfeld, who was a brother-in-law of Judge Erskine M. Ross and claimed descent from some dwellers on the Rhine. He succeeded Frank Lecouvreur as bookkeeper for H. Newmark & Company, and was in turn succeeded, on removing to New York, by Pollitz; while the latter was followed by John S. Stower, an Englishman now residing in London, whose immediate predecessor was Richard Altschul. Drackenfeld attained prominence in New York, and both Altschul and Pollitz in San Francisco. Of these, Drackenfeld and Pollitz are dead.
Most of these convivial frequenters at Phillipi's belonged to a sort of Deutscher Klub which met, at another period, in a little room in the rear of the corner of Main and Requena streets, just over the cool cellar then conducted by Bayer & Sattler. A stairway connected the two floors, and by means of that communication the Klub obtained its supply of lager beer. This fact recalls an amusing incident. When Philip Lauth and Louis Schwarz succeeded Christian Henne in the management of the brewery at the corner of Main and Third streets, the Klub was much dissatisfied with the new brew and forthwith had Bayer & Sattler send to Milwaukee for beer made by Philip Best. Getting wind of the matter, Lauth met the competition by at once putting on the market a brand more wittily than appropriately known as "Philip's Best." Sattler left Los Angeles in the early seventies and established a coffee-plantation in South America where, one day, he was killed by a native wielding a machete.
The place, which was then known as Joe Bayer's, came to belong to Bob Eckert, a German of ruddy complexion and auburn hair, whose good-nature brought him so much patronage that in course of time he opened a large establishment at Santa Monica.
John D. Woodworth, a cousin, so it was said, of Samuel Woodworth, the author of The Old Oaken Bucket, and father of Wallace Woodworth who died in 1883, was among the citizens active here in 1858, being appointed Postmaster, on May 19th of that year, by President Buchanan. Then the Post Office, for a twelvemonth in the old Lanfranco Block, was transferred north on Main Street until, a year or two later, it was located near Temple and Spring streets.
In June, the Surveyor-General of California made an unexpected demand on the authorities of Los Angeles County for all the public documents relating to the County history under Spanish and Mexican rule. The request was at first refused; but finally, despite the indignant protests of the press, the invaluable records were shipped to San Francisco.
I believe it was late in the fifties that O. W. Childs contracted with the City of Los Angeles to dig a water-ditch, perhaps sixteen hundred feet long, eighteen inches wide and about eighteen inches deep. As I recollect the transaction, the City allowed him one dollar per running foot, and he took land in payment. While I cannot remember the exact location of this land, it comprised in part the wonderfully important square beginning at Sixth Street and running to Twelfth, and taking in everything from Main Street as far as and including the present Figueroa. When Childs put this property on the market, his wife named several of the streets. Because of some grasshoppers in the vicinity, she called the extension of Pearl Street (now Figueroa) Grasshopper or Calle de los Chapules[17]; her Faith Street has been changed to Flower; for the next street to the East, she selected the name of Hope; while as if to complete the trio of the Graces, she christened the adjoining roadway—since become Grand—Charity. The old Childs home place sold to Henry E. Huntington some years ago, and which has been subdivided, was a part of this land.
None of the old settlers ever placed much value on real estate, and Childs had no sooner closed this transaction than he proceeded to distribute some of the land among his own and his wife's relatives. He also gave to the Catholic Church the block later bounded by Sixth and Seventh streets, between Broadway and Hill; where, until a few years ago, stood St. Vincent's College, opened in 1855 on the Plaza, on the site now occupied by the Pekin Curio Store. In the Boom year of 1887, the Church authorities sold this block for one hundred thousand dollars and moved the school to the corner of Charity and Washington streets.
Andrew A. Boyle, for whom the eastern suburb of Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, was named by William H. Workman, arrived here in 1858. As early as 1848, Boyle had set out from Mexico, where he had been in business, to return to the United States, taking with him some twenty thousand Mexican dollars, at that time his entire fortune, safely packed in a fortified claret box. While attempting to board a steamer from a frail skiff at the mouth of the Rio Grande, the churning by the paddle-wheels capsized the skiff, and Boyle and his treasure were thrown into the water. Boyle narrowly escaped with his life; but his treasure went to the bottom, never to be recovered. It was then said that Boyle had perished; and his wife, on hearing the false report, was killed by the shock. Quite as serious, perhaps, was the fact that an infant daughter was left on his hands—the same daughter who later became the wife of my friend, William H. Workman. Confiding this child to an aunt, Boyle went to the Isthmus where he opened a shoe store; and later coming north, after a San Francisco experience in the wholesale boot and shoe business, he settled on the bluff which was to be thereafter associated with his family name. He also planted a small vineyard, and in the early seventies commenced to make wine, digging a cellar out of the hill to store his product.
The brick house, built by Boyle on the Heights in 1858 and always a center of hospitality, is still standing, although recently remodeled by William H. Workman, Jr. (brother of Boyle Workman, the banker), who added a third story and made a cosy dwelling; and it is probably, therefore, the oldest brick structure in that part of the town.
Mendel was a younger brother of Sam Meyer, and it is my impression that he arrived here in the late fifties. He originally clerked for his brother, and for a short time was in partnership with him and Hilliard Loewenstein. In time, Meyer engaged in business for himself. During a number of his best years, Mendel was well thought of socially, with his fiddle often affording much amusement to his friends. All in all, he was a good-hearted, jovial sort of a chap, who too readily gave to others of his slender means. About 1875, he made a visit to Europe and spent more than he could afford. At any rate, in later life he did not prosper. He died in Los Angeles a number of years ago.
Thomas Copley came here in 1858, having met with many hardships while driving an ox-team from Fort Leavenworth to Salt Lake and tramped the entire eight hundred miles between the Mormon capital and San Bernardino. On arriving, he became a waiter and worked for a while for the Sisters' Hospital; subsequently he married a lady of about twice his stature, retiring to private life with a competence.
Another arrival of the late fifties was Manuel Ravenna, an Italian. He started a grocery store and continued the venture for some time; then he entered the saloon business on Main Street. Ravenna commissioned Wells Fargo & Company to bring by express the first ice shipped to Los Angeles for a commercial purpose, paying for it an initial price of twelve and a half cents per pound. The ice came packed in blankets; but the loss by melting, plus the expense of getting it here, made the real cost about twenty-four cents a pound. Nevertheless, it was a clever and profitable move, and brought Ravenna nearly all of the best trade in town.
John Butterfield was originally a New York stage-driver and later the organizer of the American Express Company, as well as projector of the Morse telegraph line between New York and Buffalo. As the head of John Butterfield & Company, he was one of my customers in 1857. He contracted with the United States, in 1858, as President of the Overland Mail Company, to carry mail between San Francisco and the Missouri River. To make this possible, sections of the road, afterward popularly referred to as the Butterfield Route, were built; and the surveyors, Bishop and Beale, were awarded the contract for part of the work. It is my recollection that they used for this purpose some of the camels imported by the United States Government, and that these animals were in charge of Greek George to whom I have already referred.
Butterfield chose a route from San Francisco coming down the Coast to Gilroy, San José and through the mountain passes; on to Visalia and Fort Tejón, and then to Los Angeles, in all some four hundred and sixty-two miles. From Los Angeles it ran eastward through El Monte, San Bernardino, Temécula and Warner's Ranch to Fort Yuma, and then by way of El Paso to St. Louis. In this manner, Butterfield arranged for what was undoubtedly the longest continuous stage-line ever established, the entire length being about two thousand, eight hundred and eighty miles. The Butterfield stages began running in September, 1858; and when the first one from the East reached Los Angeles on October 7th, just twenty days after it started, there was a great demonstration, accompanied by bon-fires and the firing of cannon. On this initial trip, just one passenger made the through journey—W. L. Ormsby, a reporter for the New York Herald. This stage reached San Francisco on October 10th, and there the accomplishment was the occasion, as we soon heard, of almost riotous enthusiasm.
Stages were manned by a driver and a conductor or messenger, both heavily armed. Provender and relief stations were established along the route, as a rule not more than twenty miles apart, and sometimes half that distance. The schedule first called for two stages a week, then one stage in each direction, every other day; and after a while this plan was altered to provide for a stage every day. There was little regularity, however, in the hours of departure, and still less in the time of arrival, and I recollect once leaving for San Francisco at the unearthly hour of two o'clock in the morning.
So uncertain, indeed, were the arrival and departure of stages, that not only were passengers often left behind, but mails were actually undelivered because no authorized person was on hand, in the lone hours of the night, to receive and distribute them. Such a ridiculous incident occurred in the fall of 1858, when bags of mail destined for Los Angeles were carried on to San Francisco, and were returned by the stage making its way south and east, fully six days later! Local newspapers were then more or less dependent for their exchanges from the great Eastern centers on the courtesy of drivers or agents; and editors were frequently acknowledging the receipt of such bundles, from which, with scissors and paste, they obtained the so-called news items furnished to their subscribers.
George Lechler, here in 1853, who married Henry Hazard's sister, drove a Butterfield stage and picked up orders for me from customers along the route.
B. W. Pyle, a Virginian by birth, arrived in Los Angeles in 1858, and became, as far as I can recall, the first exclusive jeweler and watchmaker, although Charley Ducommun, as I have said, had handled jewelry and watches some years before in connection with other things. Pyle's store adjoined that of Newmark, Kremer & Company on Commercial Street, and I soon became familiar with his methods. He commissioned many of the stage-drivers to work up business for him on the Butterfield Route; and as his charges were enormous, he was enabled, within three or four years, to establish himself in New York. He was an exceedingly clever and original man and a good student of human affairs, and I well remember his prediction that, if Lincoln should be elected President, there would be Civil War. When the United States Government first had under consideration the building of a trans-isthmian canal, Pyle bought large tracts of land in Nicaragua, believing that the Nicaraguan route would eventually be chosen. Shortly after the selection of the Panamá survey, however, I read one day in a local newspaper that B. W. Pyle had shot himself, at the age of seventy years.
In 1857, Phineas Banning purchased from one of the Dominguez brothers an extensive tract some miles to the North of San Pedro, along the arm of the sea, and established a new landing which, in a little while, was to monopolize the harbor business and temporarily affect all operations at the old place. Here, on September 25th, 1858, he started a community called at first both San Pedro New Town and New San Pedro, and later Wilmington—the latter name suggested by the capital of Banning's native State of Delaware. Banning next cultivated a tract of six hundred acres, planted with grain and fruit where, among other evidences of his singular enterprise, there was soon to be seen a large well, connected with a steam pump of sufficient force to supply the commercial and irrigation wants of both Wilmington and San Pedro. Banning's founding of the former town was due, in part, to heavy losses sustained through a storm that seriously damaged his wharf, and in part to his desire to outdo J. J. Tomlinson, his chief business rival. The inauguration of the new shipping point, on October 1st, 1858, was celebrated by a procession on the water, when a line of barges loaded with visitors from Los Angeles and vicinity, and with freight, was towed to the decorated landing. A feature of the dedication was the assistance rendered by the ladies, who even tugged at the hawser, following which host and guests liberally partook of the sparkling beverages contributing to enliven the festive occasion.
In a short time, the shipping there gave evidence of Banning's wonderful go-ahead spirit. He had had built, in San Francisco, a small steamer and some lighters, for the purpose of carrying passengers and baggage to the large steamships lying outside the harbor. The enterprise was a shrewd move, for it shortened the stage-trip about six miles and so gave the new route a considerable advantage over that of all competitors. Banning, sometimes dubbed "the Admiral," about the same time presented town lots to all of his friends (including Eugene Meyer and myself), and with Timms Landing, the place became a favorite beach resort; but for want of foresight, most of these same lots were sold for taxes in the days of long ago. I kept mine for many years and finally sold it for twelve hundred dollars; while Meyer still owns his. As for Banning himself, he built a house on Canal Street which he occupied many years, until he moved to a more commodious home situated half a mile north of the original location.
At about this period, three packets plied between San Francisco and San Diego every ten days, leaving the Commercial Street wharf of the Northern city and stopping at various intermediate points including Wilmington. These packets were the clipper-brig Pride of the Sea, Captain Joseph S. Garcia; the clipper-brig Boston, Commander W. H. Martin; and the clipper-schooner Lewis Perry, then new and in charge of Captain Hughes.
In the fall of 1858, finding that our business was not sufficiently remunerative to support four families, Newmark, Kremer & Company dissolved. In the dissolution, I took the clothing part of the business, Newmark & Kremer retaining the dry goods.
In November or December, Dr. John S. Griffin acquired San Pasqual rancho, the fine property which had once been the pride of Don Manuel Garfias. The latter had borrowed three thousand dollars, at four per cent. per month, to complete his manorial residence, which cost some six thousand dollars to build; but the ranch proving unfavorable for cattle, and Don Manuel being a poor manager, the debt of three thousand dollars soon grew into almost treble the original amount. When Griffin purchased the place, he gave Garfias an additional two thousand dollars to cover the stock, horses and ranch-tools; but even at that the doctor drove a decided bargain. As early as 1852, Garfias had applied to the Land Commission for a patent; but this was not issued until April 3d, 1863, and the document, especially interesting because it bore the signature of Abraham Lincoln, brought little consolation to Garfias or his proud wife, née Ábila, who had then signed away all claim to the splendid property which was in time to play such a rôle in the development of Los Angeles, Pasadena and their environs.
On November 20th, Don Bernardo Yorba died, bequeathing to numerous children and grandchildren an inheritance of one hundred and ten thousand dollars' worth of personal property, in addition to thirty-seven thousand acres of land.
Sometime in December, 1858, Juan Domingo—or, as he was often called, Juan Cojo or "Lame John," because of a peculiar limp—died at his vineyard on the south side of Aliso Street, having for years enjoyed the esteem of the community as a good, substantial citizen. Domingo, who successfully conducted a wine and brandy business, was a Hollander by birth, and in his youth had borne the name of Johann Groningen; but after coming to California and settling among the Latin element, he had changed it, for what reason will never be known, to Juan Domingo, the Spanish for John Sunday. The coming of Domingo, in 1827, was not without romance; he was a ship's carpenter and one of a crew of twenty-five on the brig Danube which sailed from New York and was totally wrecked off San Pedro, only two or three souls (among them Domingo) being saved and hospitably welcomed by the citizens. On February 12th, 1839, he married a Spanish woman, Reymunda Feliz, by whom he had a large family of children. A son, J. A. Domingo, was living until at least recently. A souvenir of Domingo's lameness, in the County Museum, is a cane with which the doughty sailor often defended himself. Samuel Prentiss, a Rhode Islander, was another of the Danube's shipwrecked sailors who was saved. He hunted and fished for a living and, about 1864 or 1865, died on Catalina Island; and there, in a secluded spot, not far from the seat of his labors, he was buried. As the result of a complicated lumber deal, Captain Joseph S. Garcia, of the Pride of the Sea, obtained an interest in a small vineyard owned by Juan Domingo and Sainsevain; and through this relation Garcia became a minor partner of Sainsevain in the Cucamonga winery. Mrs. Garcia is living in Pomona; the Captain died some ten years ago at Ontario.
