XV. SHERIFF BARTON AND THE BANDIDOS…

XV. SHERIFF BARTON AND THE BANDIDOS

1857

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.

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XVI. MARRIAGE--THE BUTTERFIELD STAGES

1858

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.

A propos of the three Louis, referred to--Breer, Lichtenberger and Roeder--all of that sturdy German stock which makes for good American citizenship, I do not suppose that there is any record of the exact date of Breer's arrival, although I imagine that it was in the early sixties. Lichtenberger, who served both as a City Father and City Treasurer, arrived in 1864, while Roeder used to boast that the ship on which he sailed to San Francisco, just prior to his coming to Los Angeles, in 1856 brought the first news of Buchanan's election to the Presidency. Of the three, Breer--who was known as Iron Louis, on account of his magnificent physique, suggesting the poet's smith, "with large and sinewy hands," and muscles as "strong as iron bands,"--was the least successful; and truly, till the end of his days, he earned his living by the sweat of his brow. In 1865, Lichtenberger and Roeder formed a partnership which, in a few years, was dissolved, each of them then conducting business independently until, in comfortable circumstances, he retired. Roeder, an early and enthusiastic member of the Pioneers, is never so proud as when paying his last respects to a departed comrade: his unfeigned sorrow at the loss apparently being compensated for, if one may so express it, by the recognition he enjoyed as one of the society's official committee. Two of the three Louis are dead.[18] Other early wheelwrights and blacksmiths were Richard Maloney, on Aliso Street, near Lambourn & Turner's grocery, and Page & Gravel, who took John Goller's shop when he joined F. Foster at his Aliso Street forge.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Mexican corruption of the Aztec chapollin, grasshopper. Cf. Chapultepec, Grasshopper Hill.--CHARLES F. LUMMIS.

[18] Louis Roeder died on February 20, 1915

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XVII. ADMISSION TO CITIZENSHIP

1859

In 1858, my brother, to whom the greater opportunities of San Francisco had long appealed, decided upon a step that was to affect considerably my own modest affairs. This was to remove permanently to the North, with my sister-in-law; and in the Los Angeles Star of January 22d, 1859, there appeared the following:

Mr. Joseph P. Newmark has established a commission-house in San Francisco, with a branch in this city. From his experience in business, Mr. Newmark will be a most desirable agent for the sale of our domestic produce in the San Francisco market, and we have no doubt will obtain the confidence of our merchants and shippers.

This move of my brother's was made, as a matter of fact, at a time when Los Angeles, in one or two respects at least, seemed promising. On September 30th, the building commenced by John Temple in the preceding February, on the site of the present Bullard Block, was finished. Most of the upper floor was devoted to a theater, and I am inclined to think that the balance of the building was leased to the City, the court room being next to the theater, and the ground floor being used as a market. To the latter move there was considerable opposition, affecting, as the expenditures did, taxes and the public treasury; and one newspaper, after a spirited attack on the "Black Republicans," concluded its editorial with this patriotic appeal:

Citizens! Attend to your interests; guard your pocketbooks!

This building is one of the properties to which I refer as sold by Hinchman, having been bought by Dr. J. S. Griffin and B. D. Wilson who resold it in time to the County.

A striking feature of this market building was the town clock, whose bell was pronounced "fine-toned and sonorous." The clock and bell, however, were destined to share the fate of the rest of the structure which, all in all, was not very well constructed. At last, the heavy rains of the early sixties played havoc with the tower, and toward the end of 1861 the clock had set such a pace for itself regardless of the rest of the universe that the newspapers were full of facetious jibes concerning the once serviceable timepiece, and many were the queries as to whether something could not be done to roof the mechanism? The clock, however, remained uncovered until Bullard demolished the building to make room for the present structure.

Elsewhere I have referred to the attempt, shortly after I arrived here, or during the session of the Legislature of 1854-55, to divide California into two states--the proposition, be it added of a San Bernardino County representative. A committee of thirteen, from different sections of the commonwealth, later substituted a bill providing for three states: Shasta, in the North; California, at the middle; Colorado, in the South; but nothing evolving as a result of the effort, our Assemblyman, Andrés Pico, in 1859 fathered a measure for the segregation of the Southern counties under the name of Colorado, when this bill passed both houses and was signed by the Governor. It had to be submitted to the people, however, at the election in September, 1859; and although nearly twenty-five hundred ballots were cast in favor of the division, as against eight hundred in the negative, the movement was afterward stifled in Washington.

Damien Marchessault and Victor Beaudry having enthusiastically organized the Santa Anita Mining Company in 1858, H. N. Alexander, agent at Los Angeles for Wells Fargo & Company, in 1859 announced that the latter had provided scales for weighing gold-dust and were prepared to transact a general exchange business. This was the same firm that had come through the crisis with unimpaired credit when Adams & Company and many others went to the wall in the great financial crash of 1855.

I have mentioned the Mormon Colony at San Bernardino and its connection, as an offshoot, with the great Mormon city, Salt Lake; now I may add that each winter, for fifteen or twenty years, or until railroad connection was established, a lively and growing trade was carried on between Los Angeles and Utah. This was because the Mormons had no open road toward the outside world, except in the direction of Southern California; for snow covered both the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas, and closed every other highway and trail. A number of Mormon wagon-trains, therefore, went back and forth every winter over the seven hundred miles or more of fairly level, open roadways, between Salt Lake and Los Angeles, taking back not only goods bought here but much that was shipped from San Francisco to Salt Lake via San Pedro. I remember that in February, 1859, these Mormon wagons arrived by the Overland Route almost daily.

The third week in February witnessed one of the most interesting gatherings of rancheros characteristic of Southern California life I have ever seen. It was a typical rodeo, lasting two or three days, for the separating and re-grouping of cattle and horses, and took place at the residence of William Workman at La Puente rancho. Strictly speaking, the rodeo continued but two days, or less; for, inasmuch as the cattle to be sorted and branded had to be deprived for the time being of their customary nourishment, the work was necessarily one of despatch. Under the direction of a Judge of the Plains--on this occasion, the polished cavalier, Don Felipe Lugo--they were examined, parted and branded, or re-branded, with hot irons impressing a mark (generally a letter or odd monogram) duly registered at the Court House and protected by the County Recorder's certificate. Never have I seen finer horsemanship than was there displayed by those whose task it was to pursue the animal and throw the lasso around the head or leg; and as often as most of those present had probably seen the feat performed, great was their enthusiasm when each vaquero brought down his victim. Among the guests were most of the rancheros of wealth and note, together with their attendants, all of whom made up a company ready to enjoy the unlimited hospitality for which the Workmans were so renowned.

Aside from the business in hand of disposing of such an enormous number of mixed-up cattle in so short a time, what made the occasion one of keen delight was the remarkable, almost astounding ability of the horseman in controlling his animal; for lassoing cattle was not his only forte. The vaquero of early days was a clever rider and handler of horses, particularly the bronco--so often erroneously spelled broncho--sometimes a mustang, sometimes an Indian pony. Out of a drove that had never been saddled, he would lasso one, attach a halter to his neck and blindfold him by means of a strap some two or three inches in width fastened to the halter; after which he would suddenly mount the bronco and remove the blind, when the horse, unaccustomed to discipline or restraint, would buck and kick for over a quarter of a mile, and then stop only because of exhaustion. With seldom a mishap, however, the vaquero almost invariably broke the mustang to the saddle within three or four days. This little Mexican horse, while perhaps not so graceful as his American brother, was noted for endurance; and he could lope from morning till night, if necessary, without evidence of serious fatigue.

Speaking of this dexterity, I may add that now and then the early Californian vaquero gave a good exhibition of his prowess in the town itself. Runaways, due in part to the absence of hitching posts but frequently to carelessness, occurred daily; and sometimes a clever horseman who happened to be near would pursue, overtake and lasso the frightened steed before serious harm had been done.

Among the professional classes, J. Lancaster Brent was always popular, but never more welcomed than on his return from Washington on February 26th, 1859, when he brought the United States patent to the Dominguez rancho, dated December 18th, 1858, and the first document of land conveyance from the American Government to reach California.

In mercantile circles, Adolph Portugal became somewhat prominent, conducting a flourishing business here for a number of years after opening in 1854, and accumulating, before 1865, about seventy-five thousand dollars. With this money he then left Los Angeles and went to Europe, where he made an extremely unprofitable investment. He returned to Los Angeles and again engaged in mercantile pursuits; but he was never able to recover, and died a pauper.

Corbitt, who at one time controlled, with Dibblee, great ranch areas near Santa Bárbara, and in 1859 was in partnership with Barker, owned the Santa Anita rancho, which he later sold to William Wolfskill. From Los Angeles, Corbitt went to Oregon, where he became, I think, a leading banker.

Louis Mesmer arrived here in 1858, then went to Fraser River and there, in eight months, he made twenty thousand dollars by baking for the Hudson Bay Company's troops. A year later he was back in Los Angeles; and on Main Street, somewhere near Requena, he started a bakery. In time he controlled the local bread trade, supplying among others the Government troops here. In 1864, Mesmer bought out the United States Hotel, previously run by Webber & Haas, and finally purchased from Don Juan N. Padilla the land on which the building stood. This property, costing three thousand dollars, extended one hundred and forty feet on Main Street and ran through to Los Angeles, on which street it had a frontage of about sixty feet. Mesmer's son Joseph is still living and is active in civic affairs.

William Nordholt, a Forty-niner, was also a resident of Los Angeles for some time. He was a carpenter and worked in partnership with Jim Barton; and when Barton was elected Sheriff, Nordholt continued in business for himself. At length, in 1859, he opened a grocery store on the northwest corner of Los Angeles and First streets, which he conducted for many years. Even in 1853, when I first knew him, Nordholt had made a good start; and he soon accumulated considerable real estate on First Street, extending from Los Angeles to Main. He shared his possessions with his Spanish wife, who attended to his grocery; but after his death, in perhaps the late seventies, his children wasted their patrimony.

Notwithstanding the opening of other hotels, the Bella Union continued throughout the fifties to be the representative headquarters of its kind in Los Angeles and for a wide area around. On April 19th, 1856, Flashner & Hammell took hold of the establishment; and a couple of years after that, Dr. J. B. Winston, who had had local hotel experience, joined Flashner and together they made improvements, adding the second story, which took five or six months to complete. This step forward in the hostelry was duly celebrated, on April 14th, 1859, at a dinner, the new dining-room being advertised, far and wide, as "one of the finest in all California."

Shortly after this, however, Marcus Flashner (who owned some thirty-five acres at the corner of Main and Washington streets, where he managed either a vineyard or an orange orchard), met a violent death. He used to travel to and from this property in a buggy; and one day--June 29th, 1859--his horse ran away, throwing him out and killing him. In 1860, John King, Flashner's brother-in-law, entered the management of the Bella Union; and by 1861, Dr. Winston had sole control.

Strolling again, in imagination, into the old Bella Union of this time, I am reminded of a novel method then employed to call the guests to their meals. When I first came to Los Angeles the hotel waiter rang a large bell to announce that all was ready; but about the spring of 1859 the fact that another meal had been concocted was signalized by the blowing of a shrill steam-whistle placed on the hotel's roof. This brought together both the "regulars" and transients, everyone scurrying to be first at the dining-room door.

About the middle of April, Wells Fargo & Company's rider made a fast run between San Pedro and Los Angeles, bringing all the mail matter from the vessels, and covering the more than twenty-seven miles of the old roundabout route in less than an hour.

The Protestant Church has been represented in Los Angeles since the first service in Mayor Nichols' home and the missionary work of Adam Bland; but it was not until May 4th, 1859, that any attempt was made to erect an edifice for the Protestants in the community. Then a committee, including Isaac S. K. Ogier, A. J. King, Columbus Sims, Thomas Foster, William H. Shore, N. A. Potter, J. R. Gitchell and Henry D. Barrows began to collect funds. Reverend William E. Boardman, an Episcopalian, was invited to take charge; but subscriptions coming in slowly, he conducted services, first in one of the school buildings and then in the Court House, until 1862 when he left.

Despite its growing communication with San Francisco, Los Angeles for years was largely dependent upon sail and steamboat service, and each year the need of a better highway to the North, for stages, became more and more apparent. Finally, in May, 1859, General Ezra Drown was sent as a commissioner to Santa Bárbara, to discuss the construction of a road to that city; and on his return he declared the project quite practicable. The Supervisors had agreed to devote a certain sum of money, and the Santa Barbareños, on their part, were to vote on the proposition of appropriating fifteen thousand dollars for the work. Evidently the citizens voted favorably; for in July of the following year James Thompson, of Los Angeles, contracted for making the new road through Santa Bárbara County, from the Los Angeles to the San Luis Obispo lines, passing through Ventura--or San Buenaventura, as it was then more poetically called--Santa Bárbara and out by the Gaviota Pass; in all, a distance of about one hundred and twenty-five miles. Some five or six months were required to finish the rough work, and over thirty thousand dollars was expended for that alone.

Winfield Scott Hancock, whom I came to know well and who had been here before, arrived in Los Angeles in May, 1859, to establish a depot for the Quartermaster's Department which he finally located at Wilmington, naming it Drum Barracks, after Adjutant-General Richard Coulter Drum, for several years at the head of the Department of the West. Hancock himself was Quartermaster and had an office in a brick building on Main Street near Third; and he was in charge of all Government property here and at Yuma, Arizona Territory, then a military post. He thus both bought and sold; advertising at one time, for example, a call for three or four hundred thousand pounds of barley, and again offering for sale, on behalf of poor Uncle Sam, the important item of a lone, braying mule! Hancock invested liberally in California projects, and became interested, with others, in the Bear Valley mines; and at length had the good luck to strike a rich and paying vein of gold quartz.

Beaudry & Marchessault were among the first handlers of ice in Los Angeles, having an ice-house in 1859, where, in the springtime, they stored the frozen product taken from the mountain lakes fifty miles away. The ice was cut into cubes of about one hundred pounds each, packed down the cañons by a train of thirty to forty mules, and then brought in wagons to Los Angeles. By September, 1860, wagon-loads of San Bernardino ice--or perhaps one would better say compact snow--were hawked about town and bought up by saloon-keepers and others, having been transported in the way I have just described, a good seventy-five miles. Later, ice was shipped here from San Francisco; and soon after it reached town, the saloons displayed signs soliciting orders.

Considering the present popularity of the silver dollar along the entire Western Coast, it may be interesting to recall the stamping of these coins, for the first time in California, at the San Francisco mint. This was in the spring of 1859, soon after which they began to appear in Los Angeles. A few years later, in 1863, and for ten or fifteen years thereafter, silver half-dimes, coined in San Francisco, were to be seen here occasionally; but they were never popular. The larger silver piece, the dime, was more common, although for a while it also had little purchasing power. As late as the early seventies it was not welcome, and many a time I have seen dimes thrown into the street as if they were worthless. This prejudice against the smaller silver coins was much the same as the feeling which even to-day obtains with many people on the Coast against the copper cent. When the nickel, in the eighties, came into use, the old Californian tradition as to coinage began to disappear; and this opened the way for the introduction of the one-cent piece, which is more and more coming into popular favor.

In the year 1859, the Hellman brothers, Isaias W. and Herman W., arrived here in a sailing-vessel with Captain Morton. I. W. Hellman took a clerkship with his cousin, I. M. Hellman, who had arrived in 1854 and was established in the stationery line in Mellus's Row, while H. W. Hellman went to work in June, 1859, for Phineas Banning, at Wilmington. I. W. Hellman immediately showed much ability and greatly improved his cousin's business. By 1865, he was in trade for himself, selling dry-goods at the corner of Main and Commercial streets as the successor to A. Portugal; while H. W. Hellman, father of Marco H. Hellman, the banker, and father-in-law of the public-spirited citizen, Louis M. Cole, became my competitor, as will be shown later, in the wholesale grocery business.

John Philbin, an Irishman, arrived here penniless late in the fifties, but with my assistance started a small store at Fort Tejón, then a military post necessary for the preservation of order on the Indian Reservation; and there, during the short space of eighteen months, he accumulated twenty thousand dollars. Illness compelled him to leave, and I bought his business and property. After completing this purchase, I engaged a clerk in San Francisco to manage the new branch. As John Philbin had been very popular, the new clerk also called himself "John" and soon enjoyed equal favor. It was only when Bob Wilson came into town one day from the Fort and told me, "That chap John is gambling your whole damned business away; he plays seven-up at twenty dollars a game, and when out of cash, puts up blocks of merchandise," that I investigated and discharged him, sending Kaspare Cohn, who had recently arrived from Europe, to take his place.

It was in 1859, or a year before Abraham Lincoln was elected President, that I bought out Philbin, and at the breaking out of the War, the troops were withdrawn from Fort Tejón, thus ending my activity there as a merchant. We disposed of the stock as best we could; but the building, which had cost three thousand dollars, brought at forced sale just fifty. Fort Tejón, established about 1854, I may add, after it attained some fame as the only military post in Southern California where snow ever fell, and also as the scene of the earthquake phenomena I have described, was abandoned altogether as a military station on September 11th, 1864. Philbin removed to Los Angeles, where he invested in some fifty acres of vineyard along San Pedro Street, extending as far south as the present Pico; and I still have a clear impression of the typical old adobe there, so badly damaged by the rains of 1890.

Kaspare remained in my employ until he set up in business at Red Bluff, Tehama County, where he continued until January, 1866. In more recent years, he has come to occupy an enviable position as a successful financier.

Somewhat less than six years after my arrival (or, to be accurate, on the fifteenth day of August, 1859, about the time of my mother's death at Loebau), and satisfying one of my most ardent ambitions, I entered the family of Uncle Sam, carrying from the District Court here a red-sealed document, to me of great importance; my newly-acquired citizenship being attested by Ch. R. Johnson, Clerk, and John O. Wheeler, Deputy.

On September 3d, the Los Angeles Star made the following announcement and salutation:

CALLED TO THE BAR--At the present term of the District Court for the First Judicial District, Mr. M. J. Newmark was called to the bar. We congratulate Mr. Newmark on his success, and wish him a brilliant career in his profession.

This kindly reference was to my brother-in-law, who had read law in the office of E. J. C. Kewen, then on Main Street, opposite the Bella Union, and had there, in the preceding January, when already eleven attorneys were practicing here, hung out his shingle as Notary Public and Conveyancer--an office to which he was reappointed by the Governor in 1860, soon after he had been made Commissioner for the State of Missouri to reside in Los Angeles. About that same time he began to take a lively interest in politics; being elected, on October 13th, 1860, a delegate to the Democratic County Convention. A. J. King was also admitted to the Bar toward the end of that year.

We who have such praise for the rapid growth of the population in Los Angeles must not forget the faithful midwives of early days, when there was not the least indication that there would ever be a lying-in hospital here. First, one naturally recalls old Mrs. Simmons, the Sarah Gamp of the fifties; while her professional sister of the sixties was Lydia Rebbick, whose name also will be pleasantly spoken by old-timers. A brother of Mrs. Rebbick was James H. Whitworth, a rancher, who came to Los Angeles County in 1857.

Residents of Los Angeles to-day have but a faint idea, I suppose, of what exertion we cheerfully submitted to, forty or fifty years ago, in order to participate in a little pleasure. This was shown at an outing in 1859, on and by the sea, made possible through the courtesy of my hospitable friend, Phineas Banning, details of which illustrate the social conditions then prevailing here.

Banning had invited fifty or sixty ladies and gentlemen to accompany him to Catalina; and at about half-past five o'clock on a June morning the guests arrived at Banning's residence where they partook of refreshments. Then they started in decorated stages for New San Pedro, where the host (who, by the way, was a man of most genial temperament, fond of a joke and sure to infuse others with his good-heartedness) regaled his friends with a hearty breakfast, not forgetting anything likely to both warm and cheer. After ample justice had been done to this feature, the picknickers boarded Banning's little steamer Comet and made for the outer harbor.

There they were transferred to the United States Coast Survey ship Active, which steamed away so spiritedly that in two hours the passengers were off Catalina; nothing meanwhile having been left undone to promote the comfort of everyone aboard the vessel. During this time Captain Alder and his officers, resplendent in their naval uniforms, held a reception; and unwilling that the merrymakers should be exposed without provisions to the wilds of the less-trodden island, they set before them a substantial ship's dinner. Once ashore, the visitors strolled along the beach and across that part of the island then most familiar; and at four o'clock the members of the party were again walking the decks of the Government vessel. Steaming back slowly, San Pedro was reached after sundown; and, having again been bundled into the stages, the excursionists were back in Los Angeles about ten o'clock.

I have said that most of the early political meetings took place at the residence of Don Ygnácio del Valle. I recall, however, a mass meeting and barbecue, in August, 1859, in a grove at El Monte owned by inn-keeper Thompson. Benches were provided for the ladies, prompting the editor of the Star to observe, with characteristic gallantry, that the seats "were fully occupied by an array of beauty such as no other portion of the State ever witnessed."

On September 11th, Eberhard & Koll opened the Lafayette Hotel on Main Street, on the site opposite the Bella Union where once had stood the residence of Don Eulógio de Celis. Particular inducements to families desiring quiet and the attraction of a table "supplied with the choicest viands and delicacies of the season" were duly advertised; but the proprietors met with only a moderate response. On January 1st, 1862, Eberhard withdrew and Frederick W. Koll took into partnership Henry Dockweiler--father of two of our very prominent young men, J. H. Dockweiler, the civil engineer and, in 1889, City Surveyor, and Isidore B. Dockweiler, the attorney--and Chris Fluhr. In two years, Dockweiler had withdrawn, leaving Fluhr as sole proprietor; and he continued as such until, in the seventies, he took Charles Gerson into partnership with him. It is my recollection, in fact, that Fluhr was associated with this hotel in one capacity or another until its name was changed, first to the Cosmopolitan and then to the St. Elmo.

Various influences contributed to causing radical social changes, particularly throughout the county. When Dr. John S. Griffin and other pioneers came here, they were astonished at the hospitality of the ranch-owners, who provided for them, however numerous, shelter, food and even fresh saddle-horses; and this bounteous provision for the wayfarer continued until the migrating population had so increased as to become something of a burden and economic conditions put a brake on unlimited entertainment. Then a slight reaction set in, and by the sixties a movement to demand some compensation for such service began to make itself felt. In 1859, Don Vicente de la Osa advertised that he would afford accommodation for travelers by way of his ranch, El Encino; but that to protect himself, he must consider it "an essential part of the arrangement that visitors should act on the good old rule and--pay as one goes!"

In 1859, C. H. Classen, a native of Germany, opened a cigar factory in the Signoret Building on Main Street, north of Arcadia; and believing that tobacco could be successfully grown in Los Angeles County, he sent to Cuba for some seed and was soon making cigars from the local product. I fancy that the plants degenerated because, although others experimented with Los Angeles tobacco, the growing of the leaf here was abandoned after a few years. H. Newmark & Company handled much tobacco for sheep-wash, and so came to buy the last Southern California crop. When I speak of sheep-wash, I refer to a solution made by steeping tobacco in water and used to cure a skin disease known as scab. It was always applied after shearing, for then the wool could not be affected and the process was easier.

Talking of tobacco, I may say that the commercial cigarette now for sale everywhere was not then to be seen. People rolled their own cigarettes, generally using brown paper, but sometimes the white, which came in reams of sheets about six by ten inches in size. Kentucky leaf was most in vogue; and the first brand of granulated tobacco that I remember was known as Sultana. Clay pipes, then packed in barrels, were used a good deal more than now, and brier pipes much less. There was no duty on imported cigars, and their consequent cheapness brought them into general consumption. Practically all of the native female population smoked cigarettes, for it was a custom of the country; but the American ladies did not indulge. While spending an enjoyable hour at the County Museum recently, I noticed a cigarette-case of finely-woven matting that once belonged to António María Lugo, and a bundle of cigarettes, rolled up, like so many matches, by Andrés Pico; and both the little cigarillos and the holder will give a fair understanding of these customs of the past.

Besides the use of tobacco in cigar and cigarette form, and for pipes, there was much consumption of the weed by chewers. Peachbrand, a black plug saturated with molasses and packed in caddies--a term more commonly applied to little boxes for tea--was the favorite chewing tobacco fifty years or more ago. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that nine out of ten Americans in Los Angeles indulged in this habit, some of whom certainly exposed us to the criticism of Charles Dickens and others, who found so much fault with our manners.

The pernicious activity of rough or troublesome characters brings to recollection an aged Indian named Polonia, whom pioneers will easily recollect as having been bereft of his sight, by his own people, because of his unnatural ferocity. He was six feet four inches in height, and had once been endowed with great physical strength; he was clad, for the most part, in a tattered blanket, so that his mere appearance was sufficient to impress, if not to intimidate, the observer. Only recently, in fact, Mrs. Solomon Lazard told me that to her and her girl playmates Polonia and his fierce countenance were the terror of their lives. He may thus have deserved to forfeit his life for many crimes; but the idea of cutting a man's eyes out for any offense whatever, no matter how great, is revolting in the extreme. The year I arrived, and for some time thereafter, Polonia slept by night in the corridor of Don Manuel Requena's house. With the aid of only a very long stick, this blind Indian was able to find his way all over the town.

Sometime in 1859, Daniel Sexton, a veteran of the battles of San Bartolo and the Mesa, became possessed of the idea that gold was secreted in large sacks near the ruins of San Juan Capistrano; and getting permission, he burrowed so far beneath the house of a citizen that the latter, fearing his whole home was likely to cave in, frantically begged the gold-digger to desist. Sexton, in fact, came near digging his own grave instead of another's, and was for a while the good-natured butt of many a pun.

Jacob A. Moerenhout, a native of Antwerp, Belgium, who had been French Consul for a couple of years at Monterey, in the latter days of the Mexican régime, removed to Los Angeles on October 29th, 1859, on which occasion the Consular flag of France was raised at his residence in this city. As early as January 13th, 1835, President Andrew Jackson had appointed Moerenhout "U. S. Consul to Otaheite and the Rest of the Society Islands," the original Consular document, with its quaint spelling and signed by the vigorous pen of that President, existing to-day in a collection owned by Dr. E. M. Clinton of Los Angeles; and the Belgian had thus so profited by experience in promoting trade and amicable relations between foreign nations that he was prepared to make himself persona grata here. Salvos of cannon were fired, while the French citizens, accompanied by a band, formed in procession and marched to the Plaza. In the afternoon, Don Louis Sainsevain in honor of the event set a groaning and luxurious table for a goodly company at his hospitable residence. There patriotic toasts were gracefully proposed and as gracefully responded to. The festivities continued until the small hours of the morning, after which Consul Moerenhout was declared a duly-initiated Angeleño.

Surrounded by most of his family, Don Juan Bandini, a distinguished Southern Californian and a worthy member of one of the finest Spanish families here, after a long and painful illness, died at the home of his daughter and son-in-law, Doña Arcadia and Don Abel Stearns, in Los Angeles, on November 4th, 1859. Don Juan had come to California far back in the early twenties, and to Los Angeles so soon thereafter that he was a familiar and welcome figure here many years before I arrived.

It is natural that I should look back with pleasure and satisfaction to my association with a gentleman so typically Californian, warm-hearted, genial and social in the extreme; and one who dispensed so large and generous a hospitality. He came with his father--who eventually died here and was buried at the old San Gabriel Mission--and at one time possessed the Jurupa rancho, where he lived. Don Juan was a lawyer by profession, and had written the best part of a history of early California, the manuscript of which went to the State University. The passing glimpse of Bandini, in sunlight and in shadow, recorded by Dana in his classic Two Years before the Mast, adds to the fame already enjoyed by this native Californian.

Himself of a good-sized family, Don Juan married twice. His first wife, courted in 1823, was Dolores, daughter of Captain José Estudillo, a comandante at Monterey; and of that union were born Doña Arcadia, first the wife of Abel Stearns and later of Colonel R. S. Baker; Doña Ysidora, who married Lieutenant Cave J. Coutts, a cousin of General Grant; Doña Josefa, later the wife of Pedro C. Carrillo (father of J. J. Carrillo, formerly Marshal here and now Justice of the Peace at Santa Monica), and the sons, José María Bandini and Juanito Bandini. Don Juan's second wife was Refúgio, a daughter of Santiago Arguello and a granddaughter of the governor who made the first grants of land to rancheros of Los Angeles. She it was who nursed the wounded Kearny and who became a friend of Lieutenant William T. Sherman, once a guest at her home; and she was also the mother of Doña Dolores, later the wife of Charles R. Johnson, and of Doña Margarita whom Dr. James B. Winston married after his rollicking bachelor days. By Bandini's second marriage there were three sons: Juan de la Cruz Bandini, Alfredo Bandini and Arturo Bandini.

The financial depression of 1859 affected the temperament of citizens so much that little or no attention was paid to holidays, with the one exception, perhaps, of the Bella Union's poorly-patronized Christmas dinner; and during 1860 many small concerns closed their doors altogether.

I have spoken of the fact that brick was not much used when I first came to Los Angeles, and have shown how it soon after became more popular as a building material. This was emphasized during 1859, when thirty-one brick buildings, such as they were, were put up.

In December, Benjamin Hayes, then District Judge and holding court in the dingy old adobe at the corner of Spring and Franklin streets, ordered the Sheriff to secure and furnish another place; and despite the fact that there was only a depleted treasury to meet the new outlay of five or six thousand dollars, few persons attempted to deny the necessity. The fact of the matter was that, when it rained, water actually poured through the ceiling and ran down the court-room walls, spattering over the Judge's desk to such an extent that umbrellas might very conveniently have been brought into use; all of which led to the limit of human patience if not of human endurance.

In 1859, one of the first efforts toward the formation of a Public Library was made when Felix Bachman, Myer J. Newmark, William H. Workman, Sam Foy, H. S. Allanson and others organized a Library Association, with John Temple as President; J. J. Warner, Vice-President; Francis Mellus, Treasurer; and Israel Fleishman, Secretary. The Association established a reading-room in Don Abel Stearns's Arcadia Block. An immediate and important acquisition was the collection of books that had been assembled by Henry Mellus for his own home; other citizens contributed books, periodicals and money; and the messengers of the Overland Mail undertook to get such Eastern newspapers as they could for the perusal of the library members. Five dollars was charged as an initiation fee, and a dollar for monthly dues; but insignificant as was the expense, the undertaking was not well patronized by the public, and the project, to the regret of many, had to be abandoned.

This effort to establish a library recalls an Angeleño of the fifties, Ralph Emerson, a cousin, I believe, though somewhat distantly removed, of the famous Concord philosopher. He lived on the west side of Alameda Street, in an adobe known as Emerson's Row, between First and Aliso streets, where Miss Mary E. Hoyt, assisted by her mother, had a school; and where at one time Emerson, a strong competitor of mine in the hide business, had his office. Fire destroyed part of their home late in 1859, and again in the following September. Emerson served as a director on the Library Board, both he and his wife being among the most refined and attractive people of the neighborhood.

It must have been late in November that Miss Hoyt announced the opening of her school at No. 2 Emerson Row, in doing which she followed a custom in vogue with private schools at that time and published the endorsements of leading citizens, or patrons.

Again in 1861, Miss Hoyt advertised to give "instruction in the higher branches of English education, with French, drawing, and ornamental needlework," for five dollars a month; while three dollars was asked for the teaching of the common branches and needlework, and only two dollars for teaching the elementary courses. Miss Hoyt's move was probably due to the inability of the Board of Education to secure an appropriation with which to pay the public school teachers. This lack of means led not only to a general discussion of the problem, but to the recommendation that Los Angeles schools be graded and a high school started.

Following a dry year, and especially a fearful heat wave in October which suddenly ran the mercury up to one hundred and ten degrees, December witnessed heavy rains in the mountains inundating both valleys and towns. On the fourth of December the most disastrous rain known in the history of the Southland set in, precipitating, within a single day and night, twelve inches of water; and causing the rise of the San Gabriel and other rivers to a height never before recorded and such a cataclysm that sand and débris were scattered far and wide. Lean and weakened from the ravaging drought through which they had just passed, the poor cattle, now exposed to the elements of cold rain and wind, fell in vast numbers in their tracks. The bed of the Los Angeles River was shifted for, perhaps, a quarter of a mile. Many houses in town were cracked and otherwise damaged, and some caved in altogether. The front of the old Church, attacked through a leaking roof, disintegrated, swayed and finally gave way, filling the neighboring street with impassable heaps.

I have spoken of the Market House built by John Temple for the City. On December 29th, there was a sale of the stalls by Mayor D. Marchessault; and all except six booths were disposed of, each for the term of three months. One hundred and seventy-three dollars was the rental agreed upon; and Dodson & Company bid successfully for nine out of thirteen of the stalls. By the following month, however, complaints were made in the press that, though the City Fathers had "condescended to let the suffering public" have another market, they still prevented the free competition desired; and by the end of August, it was openly charged that the manner in which the City Market was conducted showed "a gross piece of favoritism," and that the City Treasury on this account would suffer a monthly loss of one hundred dollars in rents alone.

About 1859, John Murat, following in the wake of Henry Kuhn, proprietor of the New York Brewery, established the Gambrinus in the block bounded by Los Angeles, San Pedro and First and what has become Second streets. The brewery, notwithstanding its spacious yard, was anything but an extensive institution, and the quality of the product dispensed to the public left much to be desired; but it was beer, and Murat has the distinction of having been one of the first Los Angeles brewers. The New York's spigot, a suggestive souvenir of those convivial days picked up by George W. Hazard, now enriches a local museum.

These reminiscences recall still another brewer--Christian Henne--at whose popular resort on Main Street, on the last evening of 1859, following some conferences in the old Round House, thirty-eight Los Angeles Germans met and formed an association which they called the Teutonia-Concordia. The object was to promote social intercourse, especially among Germans, and to further the study of German song. C. H. Classen was chosen first President; H. Hammel, Vice-President; H. Heinsch, Secretary; and Lorenzo Leck, Treasurer.

How great were the problems confronting the national government in the development of our continent may be gathered from the strenuous efforts--and their results--to encourage an overland mail route. Six hundred thousand dollars a year was the subsidy granted the Butterfield Company for running two mail coaches each way a week; yet the postal revenue for the first year was but twenty-seven thousand dollars, leaving a deficit of more than half a million! But this was not all that was discouraging: politicians attacked the stage route administration, and then the newspapers had to come to the rescue and point out the advantages as compared with the ocean routes. Indians, also, were an obstacle; and with the arrival of every stage, one expected to hear the sensational story of ambushing and murder rather than the yarn of a monotonous trip. When new reports of such outrages were brought in, new outcries were raised and new petitions, calling on the Government for protection, were hurriedly circulated.

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XVIII. FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH THE TELEGRAPH

1860

In 1860, Maurice Kremer was elected County Treasurer, succeeding H. N. Alexander who had entered the service of Wells Fargo & Company; and he attended to this new function at his store on Commercial Street, where he kept the County funds. I had my office in the same place; and the salary of the Treasurer at the time being but one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, with no allowance for an assistant, I agreed to act as Deputy Treasurer without pay. As a matter of fact, I was a sort of Emergency Deputy only, and accepted the responsibility as an accommodation to Kremer, in order that when he was out of town there might be someone to take charge of his affairs. It is very evident, however, that I did not appreciate the danger connected with this little courtesy, since it often happened that there were from forty to fifty thousand dollars in the money-chest. An expert burglar could have opened the safe without special effort, and might have gone scot-free, for the only protector at night was my nephew, Kaspare Cohn, a mere youth, who clerked for me and slept on the premises.

Inasmuch as no bank had as yet been established in Los Angeles, Kremer carried the money to Sacramento twice a year; nor was this transportation of the funds, first by steamer to San Francisco, thence by boat inland, without danger. The State was full of desperate characters who would cut a throat or scuttle a ship for a great deal less than the amount involved. At the end of five or six years, Kremer was succeeded as County Treasurer by J. Huber, Jr. I may add, incidentally, that the funds in question could have been transported north by Wells Fargo & Company, but their charges were exorbitant. At a later period, when they were better equipped and rates had been reduced, they carried the State money.

On January 2d, Joseph Paulding, a Marylander, died. Twenty-seven years before, he came by way of the Gila, and boasted having made the first two mahogany billiard tables constructed in California.

The same month, attention was directed to a new industry, the polishing and mounting of abalone shells, then as now found on the coast of Southern California. A year or so later, G. Fischer was displaying a shell brooch, colored much like an opal and mounted in gold. By 1866, the demand for abalone shells had so increased that over fourteen thousand dollars' worth was exported from San Francisco, while a year later consignments valued at not less than thirty-six thousand dollars were sent out through the Golden Gate. Even though the taste of to-day considers this shell as hardly deserving of such a costly setting, it is nevertheless true that these early ornaments, much handsomer than many specimens of quartz jewelry, soon became quite a fad in Los Angeles. Natives and Indians, especially, took a fancy to the abalone shell, and even much later earrings of that material were worn by the Crow scout Curley, a survivor of the Custer Massacre. In 1874, R. W. Jackson, a shell-jeweler on Montgomery Street, San Francisco, was advertising here for the rarities, offering as much as forty and fifty dollars for a single sound red, black or silver shell, and from fifty to one hundred dollars for a good green or blue one. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that the Chinese consumed the abalone meat in large quantities.

Broom-making was a promising industry in the early sixties, the Carpenters of Los Nietos and F. W. Gibson of El Monte being among the pioneers in this handiwork. Several thousand brooms were made in that year; and since they brought three dollars a dozen, and cost but eleven cents each for the handles and labor, exclusive of the corn, a good profit was realized.

Major Edward Harold Fitzgerald, well known for campaigns against both Indians and bandits, died on January 9th and was buried with military honors.

On January 10th, Bartholomew's Rocky Mountain Circus held forth on the Plaza, people coming in from miles around to see the show. It was then that the circus proprietor sought to quiet the nerves of the anxious by the large-lettered announcement, "A strict Police is engaged for the occasion!"

The printing of news, editorials and advertisements in both English and Spanish recalls again not only some amusing incidents in court activities resulting from the inability of jurists and others to understand the two languages, but also the fact that in the early sixties sermons were preached in the Catholic Church at Los Angeles in English and Spanish, the former being spoken at one mass, the latter at another. English proper names such as John and Benjamin were Spanished into Juan and Benito, and common Spanish terms persisted in English advertisements, as when Don Juan Ávila and Fernando Sepúlveda, in January, announced that they would run the horse Coyote one thousand varas, for three thousand dollars. In 1862, also, when Syriaco Arza was executed for the murder of Frank Riley, the peddler, and the prisoner had made a speech to the crowd, the Sheriff read the warrant for the execution in both English and Spanish. Still another illustration of the use of Spanish here, side by side with English, is found in the fact that in 1858 the Los Angeles assessment rolls were written in Spanish, although by 1860 the entries were made in English only.

A letter to the editor of the Star, published on January 28th, 1860, will confirm my comments on the primitive school conditions in Los Angeles in the first decade or two after I came. The writer complained of the filthy condition of the Boys' Department, School No. 1, in which, to judge by the mud, "the floor did not seem to have been swept for months!" The editor then took up the cudgel, saying that the Board formerly paid a man for keeping the schoolroom clean, but that the Common Council had refused any longer to pass the janitor's bills; adding that, in his opinion, the Council had acted wisely! If the teacher had really wished the schoolroom floor to be clean, contended the economical editor, he should have appointed a pupil to swing a broom each day or, at least, each week, and otherwise perform the necessary duties on behalf of the health of the school.

The year 1860 witnessed the death of Don António María Lugo--brother of Don José Ygnácio Lugo, grandfather of the Wolfskills--uncle of General Vallejo and the father-in-law of Colonel Isaac Williams, who preceded Lugo to the grave by four years. For a long time, Lugo lived in a spacious adobe built in 1819 near the present corner of East Second and San Pedro streets, and there the sons, for whom he obtained the San Bernardino rancho, were born. In earlier days, or from 1813, Don António lived on the San António Ranch near what is now Compton; and so well did he prosper there that eleven leagues were not enough for the support of his cattle and flocks. It was a daughter of Lugo who, having married a Perez and being made a widow, became the wife of Stephen C. Foster, her daughter in turn marrying Wallace Woodworth and becoming María Antónia Perez de Woodworth; and Lugo, who used to visit them and the business establishments of the town, was a familiar figure as a sturdy caballero in the streets of Los Angeles, his ornamental sword strapped in Spanish-soldier fashion to his equally-ornamental saddle. Don António died about the first of February, aged eighty-seven years.

About the middle of February, John Temple fitted up the large hall over the City Market as a theater, providing for it a stage some forty-five by twenty feet in size--in those days considered an abundance of platform space--and a "private box" on each side, whose possession became at once the ambition of every Los Angeles gallant. Temple brought an artist from San Francisco to paint the scenery, Los Angeles then boasting of no one clever enough for the work; and the same genius supervised the general decoration of the house. What was considered a record-breaking effort at making the public comfortable was undertaken in furnishing the parquet with armchairs and in filling the gallery with two tiers of raised benches, guaranteeing some chance of looking over any broad sombreros in front; and to cap the enterprise, Temple brought down a company of players especially to dedicate his new house. About February 20th, the actors arrived on the old Senator; and while I do not recall who they were or what they produced, I believe that they first held forth on Washington's Birthday when it was said: "The scenery is magnificent, surpassing anything before exhibited in this city."

The spring of 1860 was notable for the introduction of the Pony Express as a potent factor in the despatch of transcontinental mail; and although this new service never included Los Angeles as one of its terminals, it greatly shortened the time required and, naturally if indirectly, benefited the Southland. Speed was, indeed, an ambition of the new management, and some rather extraordinary results were attained. About April 20th, soon after the Pony Express was started, messages were rushed through from St. Louis to San Francisco in eight and a half days; and it was noised about that the Butterfields planned a rival pony express, over a route three hundred miles shorter, that would reach the Coast in seven days. About the end of April, mail from London and Liverpool reached Los Angeles in twenty or twenty-one days; and I believe that the fastest time that the Pony Express ever made was in March, 1861, when President Lincoln's message was brought here in seven days and seventeen hours. This was somewhat quicker than the passage of the report about Fort Sumter, a month afterward, which required twelve days, and considerably faster than the transmission, by the earlier methods of 1850, of the intelligence that California had been admitted to the Union--a bit of news of the greatest possible importance yet not at all known here, I have been told, until six weeks after Congress enacted the law! Which reminds me that the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the poet, although occurring in Italy on June 29th, 1861, was first announced in Los Angeles on the seventeenth of the following August!

In February or March, the sewer crossing Los Angeles Street and connecting the Bella Union with the zanja (which passed through the premises of Francis Mellus) burst, probably as the result of the recent rains, discharging its contents into the common yard; and in short order Mellus found himself minus two very desirable tenants. For a while, he thought of suing the City; and then he decided to stop the sewer effectually. As soon as it was plugged up, however, the Bella Union found itself cut off from its accustomed outlet, and there was soon a great uproar in that busy hostelry. The upshot of the matter was that the Bella Union proprietors commenced suit against Mellus. This was the first sewer--really a small, square wooden pipe--whose construction inaugurated an early chapter in the annals of sewer-building and control in Los Angeles.

Competition for Government trade was keen in the sixties, and energetic efforts were made by merchants to secure their share of the crumbs, as well as the loaves, that might fall from Uncle Sam's table. For that reason, Captain Winfield Scott Hancock easily added to his popularity as Quartermaster, early in 1860, by preparing a map in order to show the War Department the relative positions of the various military posts in this district, and to emphasize the proximity of Los Angeles.

One day in the Spring a stranger called upon me with the interesting information that he was an inventor, which led me to observe that someone ought to devise a contrivance with which to pluck oranges--an operation then performed by climbing into the trees and pulling the fruit from the branches. Shortly after the interview, many of us went to the grove of Jean Louis Sainsevain to see a simple, but ingenious appliance for picking the golden fruit. A pair of pincers on a light pole were operated from below by a wire; and when the wire was pulled, the fruit, quite unharmed by scratch or pressure, fell safely into a little basket fastened close to the pincers. In the same year, Pierre Sainsevain established the first California wine house in New York and bought the Cucamonga vineyard, where he introduced new and better varieties of grapes. But bad luck overtook him. In 1870, grasshoppers ate the leaves and destroyed the crop.

Small as was the population of Los Angeles County at about this time, there was nevertheless for a while an exodus to Texas, due chiefly to the difficulty experienced by white immigrants in competing with Indian ranch and vineyard laborers.

Toward the middle of March, much interest was manifested in the welfare of a native Californian named Serbo--sometimes erroneously given as Serbulo and even Cervelo--Varela who, under the influence of bad whiskey, had assaulted and nearly killed a companion, and who seemed certain of a long term in the State prison. It was recalled, however, that when in the fall of 1846, the fiendish Flores, resisting the invasion of the United States forces, had captured a number of Americans and condemned them to be dragged out and shot, Varela, then a soldier under Flores, and a very brave fellow, broke from the ranks, denounced the act as murder, declared that the order should never be carried out except over his dead body, and said and did such a number of things more or less melodramatic that he finally saved the lives of the American prisoners. Great sympathy was expressed, therefore, when it was discovered that this half-forgotten hero was in the toils; and few persons, if any, were sorry when Varela was induced to plead guilty to assault and battery, enabling the court to deal leniently with him. Varela became more and more addicted to strong drink; and some years later he was the victim of foul play, his body being found in an unfrequented part of the town.

A scrap-book souvenir of the sixties gives us an idyllic view of contemporaneous pueblo life, furnishing, at the same time, an idea of the newspaper English of that day. It reads as follows:

With the exception of a little legitimate shooting affair last Saturday night, by which some fellow had well-nigh the top of his head knocked off, and one or two knock-downs and drag-outs, we have had a very peaceful week indeed. Nothing has occurred to disturb the even tenor of our way, and our good people seem to be given up to the quiet enjoyment of delicious fruits and our unequalled climate,--each one literally under his own vine and fig tree, revelling in fancy's flights, or luxuriating among the good things which he finds temptingly at hand.

The demand for better lighting facilities led the Common Council to make a contract, toward the end of March, with Tiffany & Wethered, who were given a franchise to lay pipes through the streets and to establish gas-works here; but the attempt proved abortive.

In this same year, the trip east by the Overland Stage Route, which had formerly required nearly a month, was accomplished in eighteen or nineteen days; and toward the end of March, the Overland Company replaced the "mud-wagons" they had been using between Los Angeles and San Francisco with brightly-painted and better-upholstered Concord coaches. Then the Los Angeles office was on Spring Street, between First and Second--on the lot later bought by Louis Roeder for a wagon-shop, and now the site of the Roeder Block; and there, for the price of two hundred dollars, tickets could be obtained for the entire journey to St. Louis.

Foreign coin circulated in Los Angeles, as I have said, for many years, and even up to the early sixties Mexican money was accepted at par with our own. Improved facilities for intercourse with the outside world, however, affected the markets here, and in the spring of that year several merchants refused to receive the specie of our southern neighbor at more than its actual value as silver. As a result, these dealers, though perhaps but following the trend elsewhere, were charged openly with a combination to obtain an illegitimate profit.

In 1860, while Dr. T. J. White was Postmaster, a regulation was made ordering all mail not called for to be sent to the Dead Letter Office in Washington, within a week after such mail had been advertised; but it was not until the fall of 1871 that this order was really put into operation in our neighborhood. For some time this worked great hardship on many people living in the suburbs who found it impossible to call promptly for their mail, and who learned too late that letters intended for them had been returned to the sender or destroyed.

Political enthusiasm was keen in early days, as is usual in small towns, and victorious candidates, at least, knew how to celebrate. On Monday, May 7th, 1860, Henry Mellus was elected Mayor; and next day, he and the other City officers paraded our streets in a four-horse stagecoach with a brass band. The Mayor-elect and his confrères were stuffed inside the hot, decorated vehicle, while the puffing musicians bounced up and down on the swaying top outside, like pop-corn in a frying-pan.

More than a ripple of excitement was produced in Los Angeles about the middle of May, when Jack Martin, Billy Holcomb and Jim Ware, in from Bear Valley, ordered provisions and paid for the same in shining gold dust. It was previously known that they had gone out to hunt for bear, and their sudden return with this precious metal, together with their desire to pick up a few appliances such as are not ordinarily used in trapping, made some of the hangers-on about the store suspicious. The hunters were secretly followed, and were found to return to what is now Holcomb Valley; and then it was learned that gold had been discovered there about the first of the month. For a year or two, many mining camps were formed in Holcomb and Upper Holcomb valleys, and in that district the town of Belleville was founded; but the gold, at first apparently so plentiful, soon gave out, and the excitement incidental to the discovery subsided.

While some men were thus digging for treasure, others sought fortune in the deep. Spearing sharks, as well as whales, was an exciting industry at this period; sharks running in large numbers along the coast, and in the waters of San Pedro Bay. In May, Orin Smith of Los Angeles, with the aid of his son, in one day caught one hundred and three sharks, from which he took only the livers; these, when boiled, yielding oil which, burned fairly well, even in its crude state. During the next year, shark-hunting near Rattlesnake Island continued moderately remunerative.

Sometime in the spring, another effort was made to establish a tannery here and hopes were entertained that an important trade might thus be founded. But the experiment came to naught, and even to-day Los Angeles can boast of no tannery such as exists in several other California cities.

With the approach of summer, Elijah and William H. Workman built a brick dwelling on Main Street, next to Tom Rowan's bakery, and set around it trees of several varieties. The residence, then one of the prettiest in town, was built for the boys' mother; and there, with her, they dwelt.

That sectarian activity regarding public schools is nothing new in Los Angeles may be shown from an incident, not without its humorous side, of the year 1860. T. J. Harvey appeared with a broadside in the press, protesting against the reading of the Bible in schoolrooms, and saying that he, for one, would "never stand it, come what may." Some may still remember his invective and his pyrotechnical conclusion: "Revolution! War!! Blood!!!"

During Downey's incumbency as Governor, the Legislature passed a law, popularly known as the Bulkhead Bill, authorizing the San Francisco Dock and Wharf Company to build a stone bulkhead around the water-front of the Northern city, in return for which the company was to have the exclusive privilege of collecting tolls and wharfage for the long period of fifty years, a franchise the stupendous value of which even the projectors of that date could scarcely have anticipated. Downey, when the measure came before him for final action, vetoed the bill and thus performed a judicious act--perhaps the most meritorious of his administration.

Whether Downey, who on January 9th had become Governor, was really popular for any length of time, even in the vicinity of his home, may be a question; but his high office and the fact that he was the first Governor from the Southland assured him a hearty welcome whenever he came down here from the capital. In June Downey returned to Los Angeles, accompanied by his wife, and took rooms at the Bella Union hotel, and besides the usual committee visits, receptions and speeches from the balcony, arranged in honor of the distinguished guests, there was a salute of thirteen guns, fired with all ceremony, which echoed and re-echoed from the hillsides.

In 1860, a number of delegates, including Casper Behrendt and myself, were sent to San Francisco to attend the laying of the corner-stone, on the twenty-fifth of June, of the Masonic Temple at the corner of Post and Montgomery streets. We made the trip when the weather was not only excessively hot, but the sand was a foot deep and headway very slow; so that, although we were young men and enjoyed the excursion, we could not laugh down all of the disagreeable features of the journey. It was no wonder, therefore, that when we arrived at Visalia, where we were to change horses, Behrendt wanted a shave. While he was in the midst of this tonsorial refreshment, the stage started on its way to San Francisco; and as Behrendt heard it passing the shop, he ran out--with one side of his face smooth and clean, while the other side was whiskered and grimy--and tried to stop the disappearing vehicle. Despite all of his yelling and running, however, the stage did not stop; and finally, Behrendt fired his pistol several times into the air. This attracted the attention of the sleepy driver, who took the puffing passenger on board; whereupon the rest of us chaffed him about his singular appearance. Behrendt[19] did not have much peace of mind until we reached the Plaza Hotel at San Juan Bautista ("a relic," as someone has said, "of the distant past, where men and women played billiards on horseback, and trees bore human fruit"), situated in a sweet little valley, mountain-girdled and well watered; where he was able to complete his shave and thus restore his countenance to its normal condition.

In connection with this anecdote of the trip to San Francisco, I may add another story. On board the stage was Frederick J. McCrellish, editor of the Alta California--the principal Coast paper, bought by McCrellish & Company in 1858--and also Secretary of the telegraph company at that time building its line between San Francisco and Los Angeles. When we reached a point between Gilroy and Visalia, which was the temporary terminus of the telegraph from San Francisco, McCrellish spoke with some enthusiasm of the Morse invention and invited everybody on the stage to send telegrams, at his expense, to his friends. I wrote out a message to my brother in San Francisco, telling him about the trip as far as I had completed it, and passed the copy to the operator at the clicking instrument. It may be hard for the reader to conceive that this would be an exciting episode in a man's life; but since my first arrival in the Southland there had been no telegraphic communication between Los Angeles and the outside world, and the remembrance of this experience at the little wayside station was never to be blotted from my mind. I may also add that of that committee sent to the Masonic festivities in San Francisco, Behrendt and I are now the only surviving members.

It has been stated that the population of Los Angeles in 1850 was but sixteen hundred and ten. How true that is I cannot tell. When I came to the city in 1853, there were some twenty-six hundred people. In the summer of 1860 a fairly accurate census was made, and it was found that our little town had four thousand three hundred and ninety-nine inhabitants.

Two distinguished military men visited Los Angeles in the midsummer of 1860. The first was General James Shields who, in search of health, arrived by the Overland Route on the twenty-fourth of July, having just finished his term in the Senate. The effect of wounds received at the battle of Cerro Gordo, years before, and reports as to the climate of California started the General westward; and quietly he alighted from the stage at the door of the Bella Union. After a while, General Shields undertook the superintending of a Mexican mine; but at the outbreak of the Civil War, although not entirely recovered, he hastened back to Washington and was at once appointed a Brigadier-General of volunteers. The rest of his career is known.

A week later, General, or as he was then entitled, Colonel John C. Frémont drew up at the Plaza. His coming to this locality in connection with the Temescal tin mine and Mariposa forestry interests had been heralded from Godey's ranch some days before; and when he arrived on Tuesday, July 31st, in company with Leonidas Haskell and Joseph C. Palmer, the Republicans were out in full force and fired a salute of twenty-five guns. In the evening, Colonel Frémont was waited upon in the parlors of the Bella Union by a goodly company, under the leadership of the Republican Committee, although all classes, irrespective of politics, united to pay the celebrated California pioneer the honors due him.

Alexander Godey, to whose rancho I have just referred, was a man of importance, with a very extensive cattle-range in Kern County not far from Bakersfield, where he later lived. He occasionally came to town, and was an invariable visitor at my store, purchasing many supplies from me. These and other provisions, which Godey and his neighbors sent for, were transported by burro- or mule-train to the ranches in care of Miguel Ortiz, who had his headquarters in Los Angeles. Loading these so-called pack-trains was an art: by means of ropes and slats of wood, merchandise was strapped to the animal's sides and back in such a fashion that it could not slip, and thus a heavy, well-balanced load was conveyed over the plain and the mountain trails.

By 1860, the Germans were well-organized and active here in many ways, a German Benevolent Society, called the Eintracht, which met Tuesday and Friday evenings in the Arcadia Block for music drill under Director Heinsch, affording stimulating entertainment and accomplishing much good. The Turnverein, on the other hand, took an interest in the success of the Round House, and on March 12th put up a liberty pole on top of the oddly-shaped building. Lager beer and other things deemed by the Teutonic brethren essential to a Garden of Paradise and to such an occasion were freely dispensed; and on that day Lehman was in all his glory.

A particular feature of this Garden of Paradise was a cabbage, about which have grown up some traditions of the Brobdingnagian sort that the reader may accept in toto or with a grain of salt. It was planted when the place was opened, and is said to have attained, by December, 1859, a height of twelve feet, "with a circumference" (so averred an ambiguous chronicler of the period, referring doubtless to crinolines) "equal to that of any fashionably-attired city belle measuring eight or ten feet." By July, 1860, the cabbage attained a growth, so the story goes, of fourteen feet four inches although, George always claimed, it had been cropped twenty or more times and its leaves used for Kohlslau, Sauerkraut and goodness knows what. I can afford the modern reader no better idea of Lehman's personality and resort than by quoting the following contemporaneous, if not very scholarly, account:

THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. Our friend George of the Round House, who there keeps a garden with the above captivating name, was one of the few who done honor to the Fourth. He kept the National Ensign at the fore, showed his fifteen-foot cabbage, and dealt Lager to admiring crowds all day.

Among the popular pleasure-resorts of 1860 was the Tivoli Garden on the Wolfskill Road, conducted by Charles Kaiser, who called his friends together by placarding the legend, "Hurrah for the Tivoli!" Music and other amusements were provided every Sunday, from two o'clock, and dancing could be enjoyed until late in the night; and as there was no charge for admission, the place was well patronized.

When the Fourth of July, 1859, approached and no preparation had been made to observe the holiday, some children who were being instructed in calisthenics by A. F. Tilden began to solicit money, their childish enthusiasm resulting in the appointing of a committee, the collecting of four hundred dollars, and a picnic in Don Luis Sainsevain's enclosed garden. A year later, Tilden announced that he would open a place for gymnastic exercises in "Temple's New Block;" charging men three dollars for the use of the apparatus and the privilege of a shower-bath, and training boys at half rates. This was the origin of systematic physical culture in Los Angeles.

FOOTNOTE:

[19] Died November 19th, 1913.

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XIX. STEAM-WAGON--ODD CHARACTERS

1860

Early in 1860, Phineas Banning and J. J. Tomlinson, the energetic rivals in lighterage and freighting at San Pedro, embarked as lumber merchants, thereby anticipating the enormous trade that has flowed for years past from the North through Los Angeles to Southern California and Arizona. Having many teams, they hauled lumber, when traffic was not sufficient to keep their wagon-trains busy, from the harbor to the city or even, when there was need, to the ranchos. It must have been in the same year that F. P. F. Temple, at a cost of about forty thousand dollars for lumber alone, fenced in a wide acreage, at the same time building large and substantial barns for his stock. By the summer of that year, Banning was advertising lumber, delivered in Los Angeles; and from October 1st, Banning & Hinchman had an office near the northern junction of Main and Spring streets. A couple of years before, Banning in person had directed the driving of seventeen mule teams, from San Pedro to Fort Yuma, covering, in twelve or thirteen days, the two hundred and thirty miles of barely passable road. The following March, Banning and Tomlinson, who had so often opposed each other even in the courts, came to an understanding and buried the hatchet for good.

At this time, Joseph Everhardt, who, with Frederick W. Koll, had conducted the Lafayette Hotel, sold out and moved to San Francisco, marrying Miss R. Mayer, now John Lang's widow, sister-in-law of Kiln Messer. Later, Everhardt went to Sonoma and then to Victoria, B. C., in each place making his mark; and in the latter city he died.

Like both Messer and Lang, Everhardt had passed through varied and trying experiences. The owner of the Russ Garden restaurant in 1849, in lively San Francisco, he came to Los Angeles and took hold of the hotel Lafayette. With him was a partner named Fucht; but a free fight and display of shooting irons, such as often enlivened a California hotel, having sent the guests and hangers-on scurrying to quarters, induced Fucht to sell out his interests in very short order, whereupon Everhardt took in with him Frederick W. Koll, who lived on a site now the southeast corner of Seventh and Spring streets where he had an orange-grove.

Pursuing Indians was dangerous in the extreme, as Robert Wilburn found when he went after some twenty head of cattle stolen from Felix Bachman by Pi-Ute or Paiute Indians in January, 1860, during one of their marauding expeditions into California. Wilburn chased the red men but he never came back; and when his body was found, it was pierced with three or four arrows, probably shot at him simultaneously by as many of the cattle-thieves.

Don Tomás A. Sanchez, Sheriff from 1860 to 1867, had a record for physical courage and prowess, having previously been an officer under Pico in the Mexican War days, and having later aided Pico in his efforts to punish Barton's murderers. Sanchez had property; and in 1887 a patent was granted his estate for four thousand or more acres in the ranch known as Ciénega ó Paso de la Tijera.

Destructive fires in the open country, if not as common as now, still occasionally stirred our citizens. Such a fire broke out in the San Fernando Valley in the middle of July, and spread so rapidly that a square mile and a half of territory was denuded and charred. Not only were there no organized means to fight such fires, but men were compelled to sound the alarm through couriers on horseback; and if the wind happened to be blowing across the plains, even the fleetest horseman had all he could do to avoid the flames and reach in time the widely-separated rancheros. Here I may add that as late as the sixties all of the uninhabited parts of Los Angeles, especially to the of Main Street, were known as plains, and "crossing the plains" was an expression commonly used with a peculiarly local significance.

So wretched were the roads in the early decades after my arrival, and so many were the plans proposed for increasing the rapidity of travel, that great curiosity was excited in 1860 when it was announced that Phineas Banning had bought a "steam-wagon" and would soon introduce a kind of vehicle such as Los Angeles, at least, had never before seen. This steam-wagon was a traction engine built by J. Whitman & Sons, at Leeds, England, and was already on its way across the ocean. It had been ordered by Richard A. Ogden, of San Francisco, for the Patagonia Copper Mining Company, a trial before shipping having proved that, with a load of thirty-eight tons, the engine could attain a speed of five miles an hour; and Banning paid handsomely for the option of purchasing the vehicle, on condition that it would ultimately prove a success.

The announcement was made in April, and by early June the engine had reached San Francisco where it made the run to Mission Dolores in three-quarters of an hour. All the San Francisco papers told of "the truly wonderful machine," one reporter averring that "the engineer had so perfect control that a visit was made to various parts of the city, to the astonishment and gratification of the multitude;" and since these accounts were immediately copied by the Los Angeles papers (which added the official announcement that Captain Hughes had loaded the engine on board his schooner, the Lewis Perry, and was bringing it south as fast as he could), popular excitement rose like the mercury in summer, and but one more report was needed to make it the absorbing talk of the hour. That came on the twenty-eighth of July, when the Star announced: "The steam-wagon has arrived at San Pedro;" and it was not long before many persons went down to the port to get a sight of the wonderful object.

And wait they did. Although the Star said that "all our citizens were anxiously, hourly, expecting to see Major Banning heave in sight at the foot of Main Street," no Banning hove! Instead, on the fourth of August, the same Star broke forth with this lament: "The steam-wagon is at San Pedro, and we regret to learn that it is likely to remain there. So far, all attempts to reach this city with freight have failed." And that was the end of the steam-wagon experiment here.

In every community there are characters who, for one reason or another, develop among their fellows a reputation for oddity. We have all seen the good-natured, rather stout old gentleman, whose claim to dignity is his old-fashioned Prince Albert and rather battered-looking silk hat, but who, although he boasts many friends, is never successful in the acquisition of this world's goods. We have seen, too, the vender of ice-cream, tamales or similar commodity, who in his youth had been an opera singer or actor, but whose too intensive thirst rendered him impossible in his profession and brought him far down in the world. Some were dangerous criminals; some were harmless, but obnoxious; others still were harmless and amusing. Many such characters I have met during my sixty years in Los Angeles; and each filled a certain niche, even those whose only mission was to furnish their fellows with humor or amusement having thus contributed to the charm of life.

Viejo Cholo, or Old Half-breed, a Mexican over sixty years of age who was never known by any other name, was such an eccentric character. He was half blind; wore a pair of white linen pantaloons, and for a mantle used an old sheet. This he threw over his shoulders; and thus accoutered, he strutted about the streets like a Spanish cavalier. His cane was a broom-handle; his lunch-counter, the swill-bucket; and when times were particularly bad, Viejo begged. The youngsters of the pueblo were the bane of Cholo's existence and the torment of his infirmity and old age.

Cholo was succeeded by Pinikahti, who was half Indian and half Mexican. He was not over four feet in height and had a flat nose, a stubby beard and a face badly pockmarked; and he presented, altogether, as unkempt and obnoxious an appearance as one might imagine. Pinikahti was generally attired in a well-worn straw hat, the top of which was missing, and his long, hair stuck out in clumps and snarls. A woolen undershirt and a pair of overalls completed his costume, while his toes, as a rule, protruded from his enormous boots. Unlike Viejo Cholo, Pinikahti was permitted to go unmolested by the juvenile portion of the population, inasmuch as, though half-witted, he was somewhat of an entertainer; for it was natural for him to play the flute and--what was really interesting--he made his own instruments out of the reed that grew along the river banks. Pinikahti cut just the holes, I suppose, that produced what seemed to him proper harmony, and on these home-made flutes performed such airs as his wandering fancy suggested. He always played weird tunes and danced strange Indian dances; and through these crude gifts he became, as I have said, sufficiently popular to enjoy some immunity. Nevertheless, he was a professional beggar; and whatever he did to afford amusement, was done, after all, for money. This was easily explained, for money alone would buy aguardiente, and Pinikahti had little use for anything else. Aguardiente, as the word was commonly used in Southern California, was a native brandy, full of hell fire; and so the poor half-breed was always drunk. One day Pinikahti drank a glass too much, and this brought about such a severance of his ties with beautiful Los Angeles that his absorption of one spirit released, at last, the other.

Sometime in the eventful sixties, a tall, angular, muscular-looking woman was here, who went by the singular sobriquet of Captain Jinks, a title which she received from a song then very popular, the first couplet of which ran something like this:

I'm Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, I feed my horse on pork and beans!

She half strode, half jerked her way along the street, as though scanning the lines of that ditty with her feet. She was strong for woman's rights, she said; and she certainly looked it.

Chinamen were not only more numerous by 1860, but they had begun to vary their occupations, many working as servants, laundrymen or farm hands. In March, a Chinese company was also organized to compete for local fish trade.

In 1860, Émile Bordenave & Company opened the Louisiana Coffee Saloon as a French restaurant. Roast duck and oysters were their specialty, and they charged fifty cents a meal. But they also served "a plate at one bit."[20] Some years later, there was a two-bit restaurant known as Brown's on Main Street, near the United States Hotel, where a good, substantial meal was served.

James, often called Santiago Johnson, who, for a short time prior to his death about 1860 or 1861, was a forwarder of freight at San Pedro, came to Los Angeles in 1833 with a cargo of Mexican and Chinese goods, and after that owned considerable ranch property. In addition to ranching, he also engaged extensively in cattle-raising.

Peter, popularly known as Pete or Bully Wilson, a native of Sweden, came to Los Angeles about 1860. He ran a one horse dray; and as soon as he had accumulated sufficient money, he bought, for twelve hundred dollars, the southeast corner of Spring and First streets, where he had his stable. He continued to prosper; and his family still enjoy the fruits of his industry.

The same year, George Smith started to haul freight and baggage. He had four horses hitched to a sombre-looking vehicle nicknamed the Black Swan.

J. D. Yates was a grocer and provision-dealer of 1860, with a store on the Plaza.

I have referred to Bishop Amat as presiding over the Diocese of Monterey and Los Angeles; but Los Angeles was linked with Monterey, for a while, even in judicial matters. Beginning with 1860 or 1861 (when Fletcher M. Haight, father of Governor H. H. Haight, was the first Judge to preside), the United States Court for the Southern District of California was held alternately in the two towns mentioned, Colonel J. O. Wheeler serving as Clerk and the Court for the Southern term occupying seven rooms of the second story of John Temple's Block. These alternate sessions continued to be held until about 1866 when the tribunal for the Southern District ceased to exist and Angeleños were compelled to apply to the court in San Francisco.

For years, such was the neglect of the Protestant burial ground that in 1860 caustic criticism was made by each newspaper discussing the condition of the cemetery: there was no fence, headstones were disfigured or demolished, and there was little or no protection to the graves. As a matter of fact, when the cemetery on Fort Hill was abandoned, but few of the bodies were removed.

By 1860, the New England Fire Insurance Company, of Hartford, Connecticut, was advertising here through its local agent, H. Hamilton--our friend of the Los Angeles Star. Hamilton used to survey the applicants' premises, forward the data to William Faulkner, the San Francisco representative, who executed the policy and mailed the document back to Los Angeles. After a while, Samuel Briggs, with Wells Fargo & Co., represented the Phoenix Insurance Company.

H. Newmark & Company also sold insurance somewhat later, representing the Commercial Union Insurance Company. About 1880, however, they disposed of their insurance interests to Maurice Kremer, whose main competitor was W. J. Brodrick; and from this transaction developed the firm of Kremer, Campbell & Company, still in that business. Not only in this connection but elsewhere in these memoirs it may be noted how little specialization there was in earlier days in Los Angeles; in fact it was not until about 1880 that this process, distinctive of economic progress, began to appear in Los Angeles. I myself have handled practically every staple that makes up the very great proportion of merchandising activity, whereas my successors of to-day, as well as their competitors, deal only in groceries and kindred lines.

Two brothers, Émile and Théophile Vaché, in the fall of 1860, started what has become the oldest firm--Vaché Frères--in the local wine business, at first utilizing the Bernard residence at Alameda and Third streets, in time used by the Government as a bonded warehouse. Later, they removed to the building on Aliso Street once occupied by the Medical College, where the cellars proved serviceable for a winery. There they attempted the manufacture of cream of tartar from wine-crystals, but the venture was not remunerative. In 1881, the Vachés, joined by their brother Adolphe, began to grow grapes in the Barton Vineyard in San Bernardino County, and some time afterward they bought near-by land and started the famous Brookside Vineyard. Émile is now dead; while Théophile, who retired and returned to Europe in 1892, retaining an interest in the firm of T. Vaché & Company, passes his hours pleasantly on the picturesque island of St. George d'Oléron, in the Charente Inférieure, in his native France.

On September 21st, Captain W. S. Hancock, who first came to Los Angeles in connection with the expedition against the Mojave Indians in 1858, sought to establish a new kind of express between Los Angeles and Fort Mojave, and sent out a camel in charge of Greek George to make the trial trip. When they had been gone two and a half days, the regular express messenger bound for Los Angeles met them at Lane's Crossing, apparently in none too promising a condition; which later gave rise to a report that the camel had died on the desert. This occasioned numerous newspaper squibs à propos of both the speed and the staying powers of the camel as contrasted with those of the burro; and finally, in October, the following announcement appeared placarded throughout the town:

BY POULTERER, DE RO &. ELDRIDGE ----OFFICE AND SALESROOM, CORNER CALIFORNIA & FRONT STREETS, SAN FRANCISCO.

PEREMPTORY SALE OF BACTRIAN CAMELS IMPORTED FROM THE AMOOR RIVER EX CAROLINE E. FOOTE.

ON WEDNESDAY, OCT. 10, 1860, WE WILL SELL AT PUBLIC AUCTION IN LOTS TO SUIT PURCHASERS, FOR CASH, 13 BACTRIAN CAMELS,

From a cold and mountainous country, comprising 6 males and 7 females, (5 being with young,) all in fine health and condition.

* * * For further particulars, inquire of the Auctioneers.

In 1858, Richard Garvey came to Los Angeles and entered the Government service as a messenger, between this city and New Mexico, for Captain W. S. Hancock. Later, he went to the Holcomb Valley mines, where he first met Lucky Baldwin; and by 1872 he had disposed of some San Bernardino mine properties at a figure which seemed to permit his retirement and ease for the rest of his life. For the next twenty years, he was variously employed, at times operating for Baldwin. Garvey is at present living in Los Angeles.

What was one of the last bullfights here, toward the end of September, when a little child was trodden upon in the ring, reminds me not only of the succeeding sports, including horse-racing, but as well that Francis Temple should be credited with encouraging the importation and breeding of good horses. In 1860 he paid seven thousand dollars, then considered an enormous sum, for Black Warrior; and not long afterward he bought Billy Blossom at a fancy figure.

A political gathering or two enlivened the year 1860. In July, when the local sentiment was, to all appearances, strongly in favor of Breckenridge and Lane, the Democratic candidates for President and Vice-President, one hundred guns were fired in their honor; and great was the jubilation of the Democratic hosts. A later meeting, under the auspices of the Breckenridge Club, was held in front of the Montgomery saloon on Main Street. Judge Dryden presided, and Senator Milton S. Latham was the chief speaker. A number of ladies graced the occasion, some seated in chairs near by and others remaining in their vehicles drawn up in a semicircle before the speaker's stand. As a result of all this effort, the candidates in question did lead in the race here, but only by four votes. On counting the ballots the day after election, it was found that Breckenridge had two hundred and sixty-seven votes, while Douglas, the Independent Democratic nominee, had polled two hundred and sixty-three. Of permanent interest, perhaps, as showing the local sentiment on other questions of the time, is that Lincoln received in Los Angeles only one hundred and seventy-nine votes.

Generally, a candidate persuaded his friends to nominate and endorse him, but now and then one came forward and addressed the public directly. In the fall of 1860, the following announcement appeared in the Southern News:

TO THE VOTERS OF LOS ANGELES TOWNSHIP:

I am a candidate for the office of Justice of the Peace, and I desire to say to you, frankly, that I want you all to vote for me on the 6th of November next. I aspire to the office for two reasons,--first, because I am vain enough to believe that I am capable of performing the duties required, with credit to myself and to the satisfaction of all good citizens; second, because I am poor, and am desiring of making an honest living thereby.

WILLIAM G. STILL.

During my first visit to San Francisco, in the fall of 1853, and while en route to Los Angeles, my attention was called to a line of electric telegraph, then just installed between the Golden Gate and the town, for use in reporting the arrival of vessels. About a month later a line was built from San Francisco to Sacramento, Stockton and around to San José. Nothing further, however, was done toward reaching Southern California with the electric wire until the end of May or the beginning of June, 1860, when President R. E. Raimond and Secretary Fred. J. McCrellish (promoters of the Pacific & Atlantic Telegraph Company, organized in 1858 to reach San António, Texas, and Memphis, Tennessee) came to Los Angeles to lay the matter before our citizens. Stock was soon subscribed for a line through the city and as far as Fort Yuma, and in a few days Banning had fifty teams ready to haul the telegraph poles, which were deposited in time along the proposed route. In the beginning, interest was stimulated by the promise that the telegraph would be in operation by the Fourth of July; but Independence Day came and went, and the best that the telegraph company could do was to make the ambiguous report that there were so and so many "holes in the ground." Worse than that, it was announced, toward the end of July, that the stock of wire had given out; and still worse, that no more could be had this side of the Atlantic States! That news was indeed discouraging; but by the middle of August, twenty tons of wire were known to be on a clipper bound for San Francisco, around the Horn, and five tons were being hurried here by steamer. The wire arrived, in due season, and the most energetic efforts were made to establish telegraphic communication between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It was while McCrellish was slowly returning to the North, in June, that I met him as narrated in a previous chapter.

Finally, at eight o'clock on October 8th, 1860, a few magic words from the North were ticked out in the Los Angeles office of the telegraph company. Two hours later, as those familiar with our local history know, Mayor Henry Mellus sent the following memorable message to H. F. Teschemacher, President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors:

Allow me, on behalf of the citizens of Los Angeles, to send you greeting of fellowship and good-feeling on the completion of the line of telegraph which now binds the two cities together.

Whereupon, the next day, President Teschemacher (who, by the way, was a well-known importer, having brought the first almond seed from the Mediterranean in the early fifties) replied to Mayor Mellus:

Your despatch has just been received. On behalf of the citizens of San Francisco, I congratulate Los Angeles, trusting that the benefit may be mutual.

A ball in Los Angeles fittingly celebrated the event, as will be seen from the following despatch, penned by Henry D. Barrows, who was then Southern California correspondent of the Bulletin:

LOS ANGELES, October 9, 1860, 10.45 A. M.

Here is the maiden salutation of Los Angeles to San Francisco by lightning! This despatch--the first to the press from this point--the correspondent of the Bulletin takes pleasure in communicating in behalf of his fellow-citizens. The first intelligible communication by the electric wire was received here last night at about eight o'clock, and a few hours later, at a grand and brilliant ball, given in honor of the occasion, despatches were received from San Francisco announcing the complete working of the entire line. Speeches were made in the crowded ball-room by E. J. C. Kewen and J. McCrellish. News of Colonel Baker's election in Oregon to the United States Senate electrified the Republicans, but the Breckenridges doubted it at first. Just before leaving yesterday, Senator Latham planted the first telegraph pole from this point east, assisted by a concourse of citizens.

Barrows' telegram concluded with the statement, highly suggestive of the future commercial possibilities of the telegraph, that the steamer Senator would leave San Pedro that evening with three thousand or more boxes of grapes.

On October 16th, the steamer J. T. Wright, named after the boat-owner and widely advertised as "new, elegant, and fast," arrived at San Pedro, in charge of Captain Robert Haley; and many persons professed to see in her appearance on the scene new hope for beneficial coastwise competition. After three or four trips, however, the steamer was withdrawn.

Leonard John Rose, a German by birth, and brother-in-law of H. K. S. O'Melveny, arrived with his family by the Butterfield Stage Route in November, having fought and conquered, so to speak, every step of his way from Illinois, from which State, two years before, he had set out. Rose and other pioneers tried to reach California along the Thirty-fifth parallel, a route surveyed by Lieutenant Beale but presenting terrific hardships; on the sides of mountains, at times, they had to let down their wagons by ropes, and again they almost died of thirst. The Mojave Indians, too, set upon them and did not desist until seventeen Indians had been killed and nine whites were slain or wounded, Rose himself not escaping injury. With the help of other emigrants, Rose and his family managed to reach Albuquerque, where within two years in the hotel business he acquired fourteen thousand dollars. Then, coming to Los Angeles, he bought from William Wolfskill one hundred and sixty acres near the old Mission of San Gabriel, and so prospered that he was soon able to enlarge his domain to over two thousand acres. He laid out a splendid vineyard and orange grove, and being full of ambition, enterprise and taste, it was not long before he had the show-place of the county.

Apparently, Temple really inaugurated his new theater with the coming to Los Angeles in November of that year of "the Great Star Company of Stark & Ryer," as well as with the announcement made at the time by their management: "This is the first advent of a theatrical company here." Stark & Ryer were in Los Angeles for a week or two; and though I should not vouch for them as stars, the little hall was crowded each night, and almost to suffocation. There were no fire ordinances then as to filling even the aisles and the window-sills, nor am I sure that the conventional fire-pail, more often empty than filled with water, stood anywhere about; but just as many tickets were sold, regardless of the seating capacity. Tragedy gave way, alternately, to comedy, one of the evenings being devoted to The Honeymoon; and as this was not quite long enough to satisfy the onlookers, who had neither trains nor boats to catch, there was an after-piece. In those days, when Los Angeles was entirely dependent on the North for theatrical and similar talent, it sometimes happened that the steamer was delayed or that the "star" failed to catch the ship and so could not arrive when expected; as a result of which patrons, who had journeyed in from the ranches, had to journey home again with their curiosity and appetite for the histrionic unsatisfied.

Prisoners, especially Indians, were employed on public works. As late as November, 1860, the Water Overseer was empowered to take out any Indians who might be in the calaboose, and to use them for repairing the highways and bridges.

About 1860, Nathan Jacoby came to Los Angeles, on my invitation, as I had known him in Europe; and he was with me about a year. When I sold out, he entered the employ of M. Kremer and later went into business for himself. As the senior partner of Jacoby Brothers, he died suddenly in 1911. Associated with Nathan at different periods were his brothers, Herman, Abraham, Morris, Charles and Lesser Jacoby, all of them early arrivals. Of this group, Charles and Lesser, both active in business circles in their day, are also dead.

Toward the end of 1860, Solomon Lazard returned to France, to visit his mother; but no sooner had he arrived at his old home and registered, according to law, with the police, than he was arrested, charged with having left his fatherland at the age of seventeen, without having performed military duty. In spite of his American citizenship, he was tried by court-martial and sentenced to a short imprisonment; but through the intervention of the United States Minister, Charles J. Faulkner--the author of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850--and the clemency of the Emperor Napoleon III., he was finally released. He had to furnish a substitute, however, or pay a fine of fifteen hundred francs; and he paid the fine. At length, notwithstanding his unpleasant experience, Lazard arrived in Los Angeles about the middle of March, 1861.

Tired of the wretched sidewalks, John Temple, in December, 1860, set to work to introduce an improvement in front of his Main Street block, an experiment that was watched with interest. Bricks were covered with a thick coating of asphalt brought from La Brea Ranch, which was smoothed while still warm and then sprinkled with sand; the combination promising great durability. In the summer season, however, the coating became soft and gluey, and was not comfortable to walk upon.

I have already spoken of the effect of heat and age on foodstuffs such as eggs and butter, when brought over the hot desert between San Bernardino and Los Angeles. This disadvantage continued for years; nor was the succeeding plan of bringing provisions from San Francisco and the North by way of the ocean without its obstacles. A. Ulyard, the baker, realized the situation, and in December advertised "fresh crackers, baked in Los Angeles, and superior to those half spoiled by the sea voyage."

Previous to the days of warehouses, and much before the advent of railroads, the public hay-scale was an institution, having been constructed by Francis Mellus in the dim past. Exposed to the elements, it stood alone out in the center of Los Angeles Street, somewhat south of Aliso; and in the lawless times of the young town was a silent witness to the numerous crimes perpetrated in the adjacent Calle de Los Negros. Onto its rough platform the neighboring farmers drove their heavy loads, often waiting an hour or two for the arrival of the owner, who alone had the key to its mysterious mechanism. Speaking of this lack of a warehouse brings to my mind the pioneer of 1850, Edouard Naud, who first attracted attention as a clever pastryman with a little shop on Commercial Street where he made a specialty of lady-fingers--selling them at fifty cents a dozen. Engaging in the wool industry, he later become interested in wool and this led him in 1878 to erect Naud's warehouse on Alameda Street, at present known as the Union Warehouse.[21] Naud died in 1881. His son, Edward, born in Los Angeles, is famous as an amateur chef who can prepare a French dinner that even a professional might be proud of.

In May, as elsewhere stated, Henry Mellus was elected Mayor of Los Angeles; and on the twenty-sixth of December he died--the first to yield that office to the inexorable demands of Death. The news of his demise called forth unfeigned expressions of regret; for Mellus was not only a man of marked ability, but he was of genial temperament and the soul of honor.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] Twelve and one-half cents.

[21] Destroyed by fire on September 22d, 1915.

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XX. THE RUMBLINGS OF WAR

1861

The year 1861 dawned dark and foreboding. On the twentieth of the preceding December, South Carolina had seceded, and along the Pacific, as elsewhere, men were anxiously wondering what would happen next. Threats and counter-threats clearly indicated the disturbed state of the public mind; and when, near Charleston Harbor, a hostile shot was fired at the Star of the West, the certainty of further trouble, particularly with the coming inauguration of Lincoln, was everywhere felt.

Aside, however, from these disturbing events so much affecting commercial life, the year, sandwiched between two wet seasons, was in general a prosperous one. There were evil effects of the heavy rains, and business in the spring was rather dull; but cattlemen, upon whose success so many other people depended, took advantage of the favoring conditions and profited accordingly.

During the period of the flood in 1859-60, the river, as we have seen, was impassable, and for months there was so much water in the bed, ordinarily dry, that foot-passage was interrupted. In January, 1861, therefore, the Common Council, under the influence of one of its members, E. Moulton, whose dairy was in East Los Angeles, provided a flimsy foot-bridge in his neighborhood. If my memory serves me, construction was delayed, and so the bridge escaped the next winter's flood, though it went down years later.

On January 9th, the schooner Lewis Perry arrived at anchorage, to be towed across the bar and to the wharf by the little steamer[22] Comet. This was the first sea-going vessel that had ever visited New San Pedro with a full cargo, and demonstrated, it was thought by many, that the port was easily navigable by vessels drawing eleven feet of water or less! Comments of all kinds were made upon this event, one scribe writing:

We expect to see coasting steamers make their regular trips to New Town, discharging freight and loading passengers on the wharf, safe from the dangers of rough weather, instead of lying off at sea, subjecting life and property to the perils of southeast gales and the breakers. The Senator even, in the opinion of experienced persons, might easily enter the channel on the easterly side of Dead Man's Island, and thence find a safe passage in the Creek. It will yet happen!

John M. Griffith came to Los Angeles in 1861, having four years previously married a sister of John J. Tomlinson. With the latter he formed a partnership in the passenger and freight-carrying business, their firm competing with Banning & Company until 1868, when Tomlinson died.

This same year, at the age of about eighteen, Eugene Meyer arrived. He first clerked for Solomon Lazard, in the retail dry-goods business; and in 1867 he was admitted into partnership. On November 20th of that year Meyer married Miss Harriet, the youngest daughter of Joseph Newmark--who officiated.

Felix Bachman, who came in 1853, was at various times in partnership with Philip Sichel (after whom Sichel Street is named, and Councilman in 1862), Samuel Laubheim and Ben Schloss, the firm being known as Bachman & Company; and on Los Angeles Street near Commercial they carried on the largest business in town. Bachman secured much Salt Lake trade and in 1861 opposed high freight rates; but although well off when he left here, he died a poor man in San Francisco, at the age of nearly one hundred years.

In 1861, Adolph Junge arrived and established a drug-store in the Temple Block, his only competitor being Theodore Wollweber; and there he continued for nearly twenty years, one of his prescription books, now in the County Museum, evidencing his activity. For a while, F. J. Gieze, the well-known druggist for so many years on North Main Street, and an arrival of '74, clerked for Junge. At the beginning of the sixties, Dr. A. B. Hayward practiced medicine here, his office being next to Workman Brothers' saddlery, on Main Street. Wollweber's name recalls a practical joke of the late sixties, when some waggish friend raised the cry that there was a bear across the river, and induced my Teutonic neighbor to go in hot pursuit. After bracing himself for the supreme effort, Wollweber shot the beast dead; only to learn that the bear, a blind and feeble animal, was a favorite pet, and that it would take just twenty-five dollars to placate the irate owner!

The absence in general of shade trees was so noticeable that when John Temple, on January 31st, planted a row facing Temple Building there was the usual town gossip. Charley Ducommon followed Temple's example. Previously, there had been several wide-spreading trees in front of the Bella Union hotel, and it came to pass within the next five years that many pepper-trees adorned the streets.

In 1861, the Post Office was removed from North Spring Street to a frame building on Main Street, opposite Commercial. About the same time when, owing to floods, no mail arrived for three or four weeks and someone facetiously hung out a sign announcing the office "To Let!" the Washington postal authorities began issuing stamped envelopes, of the values of twelve and twenty-four cents, for those business men of Los Angeles and the Pacific Coast who were likely to use the recently-developed Pony Express.

Matthew Keller, or Don Mateo, as he was called, who died in 1881, was a quaint personality of real ability, who had a shop on the northwest corner of Los Angeles and Commercial streets, and owned the adjoining store in which P. Beaudry had been in business. His operations were original and his advertising unique, as will be seen from his announcement in the Star in February:

M. KELLER, TO HIS CUSTOMERS

You are hereby notified that the time has at last arrived when you must pay up, without further delay, or I shall be obliged to invoke the aid of the law and the lawyers.

Your most ob't servant, M. KELLER.

Which warning was followed, in the next issue, by this:

M. KELLER, TO HIS CUSTOMERS

The Right of Secession Admitted!

You are hereby notified that the time has arrived when you must pay up, without further delay, or I shall be obliged to invoke the aid of the law and the lawyers.

After such settlement, slow-payers are requested to secede.

M. KELLER.

(to be augmented next week)

This later advertisement, with the line in parenthesis, continued to be printed, week after week, without change, for at least twelve months.

The following year, Keller, in flaring headlines, offered for sale the front of his Los Angeles vineyard, facing on Aliso Street, in building lots of twenty by one hundred feet, saying, in his prospectus:

Great improvements are on the tapis in this quarter. Governor Downey and the intrepid Beaudry propose to open a street to let the light of day shine in upon their dark domains. On the Equerry side of Aliso Street, "what fine legs your master has," must run to give way for more permanent fixtures. Further on, the Prior estates are about to be improved by the astute and far-seeing Templito; and Keller sells lots on the sunny side of Aliso Street. The map is on view at my office; come in and make your selections,--first come, first served! Terms will be made handy!

M. KELLER.

Nathaniel Pryor--sometimes known as Don Miguel N. Pryor or Prior--is the pioneer referred to by Keller. At the age of thirty, it is said, in 1828, he came here, and fifteen or twenty years later, about the time that he was a Regidor or Councilman, was one of eight or ten Easterners who had farms within the pueblo district. His property, in part a vineyard, included what is now Commercial to First streets and possibly from Los Angeles Street to the river; on it was an adobe which is still standing on Jackson Street, and is the only mud-brick structure in that section. For a while, and probably because he had loaned Pryor some money, F. P. F. Temple had an interest in the estate. Pryor was twice married, having a son, Charles, by his first wife, and a son, Nathaniel, Jr., by his second. Pablo Pryor of San Juan was another son. The first Mrs. Pryor died about 1840, and is one of the few--with the mother of Pio Pico--buried inside of the old church at the Plaza. The second Mrs. Pryor, who inherited the property, died about 1857. A granddaughter, Mrs. Lottie Pryor, is a surviving member of this family.

During the administration of Padre Blas Raho, a genial, broad-minded Italian, several attempts were made, beginning with 1857 or 1858, to improve the old church at the Plaza; and in 1861, the historic edifice, so long unchanged, was practically rebuilt. The front adobe wall, which had become damaged by rains, was taken down and reconstructed of brick; some alterations were made in the tower; and the interesting old tiled roof was replaced--to the intense regret of later and more appreciative generations--with modern, less durable shingles. A fence was provided, and trees, bushes and plants were set out. The church was also frescoed, inside and out, by Henri Penelon, the French pioneer artist and photographer, who painted upon the wall the following inscription:

Los Fieles de Esta Parroquia á la Reina de los Angeles, 1861.[23]

Early in March, Sanchez Street was opened by the Common Council. It was opposite the northern section of Arcadia Block, passed through the properties of Sanchez, Pico, Coronel and others, and terminated at the Plaza.

The Los Angeles Mounted Rifles, part of the five thousand militia wanted by California, was organized on March 6th at a meeting in the Court House presided over by George W. Gift, with M. J. Newmark, who became an officer in the company, as Secretary.

Late in March, John Fröhling rented from the City Fathers a space under the Temple Market building for a wine cellar; and in December, 1860, at the close of his vintage, when he had conducted a hearty harvest-home celebration, he filled the vault with pipes and other casks containing twenty thousand or more gallons of native wines. In a corner, a bar was speedily built; and by many Angeleños that day not associated with at least one pilgrimage to Fröhling's cool and rather obscure recesses was considered incomplete.

Few who witnessed the momentous events of 1861 will forget the fever-heat of the nation. The startling news of the attack on Fort Sumter took twelve days by Pony Express to reach the Coast, the overland telegraph not being completed until six months later; but when, on the twenty-fourth of April, the last messenger in the relay of riders dashed into San Francisco with the story, an excited population was soon seething about the streets. San Francisco instantly flashed the details south, awakening here much the same mingled feelings of elation and sorrow.

When the war thus broke out, Albert Sidney Johnston, a fellow-townsman who had married a sister of Dr. J. S. Griffin, and who, in 1857, had successfully placed Utah under Federal control, resigned from his command as head of the Department of the Pacific--General Edwin V. Sumner succeeding him--and, being a Southerner, left for the South, by way of Warner's Ranch and the Overland Route, with about a hundred companions, most of whom were intercepted at Fort Yuma through the orders of Captain W. S. Hancock. According to Senator Cornelius Cole, Sumner arrived at Johnston's headquarters in San Francisco after dark; and in spite of Johnston's protest, insisted on assuming command at once. Johnston took up arms for the Confederacy, and was made a Brigadier-General; but at Shiloh he was killed, the news of his death causing here the sincerest regret. I shall speak of the loss of one of General Johnston's sons in the disaster to the Ada Hancock; another son, William Preston, became President of Tulane University.

Others of our more enthusiastic Southerners, such as Cameron E. Thom and J. Lancaster Brent, also joined the Rebellion and proceeded to the seat of war. Thom, who has since attained much distinction, returned to Los Angeles, where he is still living[24]. Brent never came back here, having settled near New Orleans; and there I again met him, while I was attending the Exposition. He had fought through the War, becoming a General before its close; and he told me that he had been arrested by Federal officers while on his way to the South from Los Angeles, but had made his escape.

Among the very few who went to the front on the Union side and returned here was Charles Meyrs Jenkins, already referred to as a city Zanjero. Owing to the possible need of troops here, as well as to the cost of transportation, volunteers from the Pacific slope were not called for and Jenkins joined an Eastern cavalry battalion organized in October, 1862. Even then, he and his comrades were compelled to pay their own way to the Atlantic seaboard, where they were incorporated into the Second Massachusetts Cavalry. Jenkins engaged in twenty battles, and for fifteen months was a prisoner of war confined at both Andersonville and Libby; suffering such terrible hardships that he was but one of three, out of a hundred and fifty of his battalion, who came out alive.

Not everyone possibly even among those familiar with the building of the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad, knows that an effort was made, as far back as 1861, to finance a railroad here. About the middle of February in that year, Murray Morrison and Abel Stearns, Assemblymen, learned of the willingness of Eastern capitalists to build such a road within eighteen months, providing the County would subscribe one hundred thousand dollars toward the undertaking, and the City fifty thousand. The Legislature therefore on May 17th, 1861, granted the franchise; but important as was the matter to our entire district, nothing further was done until 1863 to give life to the movement.

For almost a decade after I came here, St. Valentine's Day was seldom observed in Los Angeles; but about 1861 or 1862, the annual exchange of decorated cards, with their sentimental verses, came to be somewhat general.

Phineas Banning was a staunch Republican and an ardent Abolitionist; and it was not extraordinary that on May 25th, at a grand Union demonstration in Los Angeles, he should have been selected to present to the Union Club, in his characteristically vigorous manner, an American flag made for the occasion. Columbus Sims, as President, accepted the emblem, after which there was a procession, led by the First Dragoons' band, many participants being on horseback. In those days such a procession had done its duty when it tramped along Main Street and around the Plaza and back, by way of Spring Street, as far as First; and everyone was in the right frame of mind to hear and enjoy the patriotic speeches made by Captain Winfield Scott Hancock, General Ezra Drown and Major James Henry Carleton, while in the distance was fired a salute of thirty-four guns--one for each State in the Union.

Senator William McKendree Gwin was another man of prominence. Following his search for gold with the Forty-niners--due, he used to say, to advice from John C. Calhoun, who, probably taking his cue from Dana's prophecy in Two Years Before the Mast, one day put his finger on the map and predicted that, should the bay now called San Francisco ever be possessed by Americans, a city rivaling New York would spring up on its shores--Gwin came to Los Angeles occasionally, and never forgot to visit me at my home. In 1861, he was arrested by the Federal Government for his known sympathy with the South, and was kept a prisoner for a couple of years; after which he went to France and there planned to carry through, under force of arms, the colonization of Sonora, Mexico, depending in vain on Napoleon III. and Maximilian for support. Notwithstanding this futile effort, Gwin became a leader in national Democratic councils, and was an intimate adviser of Samuel J. Tilden in his historic campaign.

Oscar Macy, son of Dr. Obed Macy, having as a newspaper man enthusiastically advocated the election of Frémont in 1856, was appointed, on Lincoln's inauguration, to the Collectorship of Customs at San Pedro; a post which he continued to fill even after the office had been reduced to an inspectorship, later resigning in favor of George C. Alexander. This recalls another appointment by Lincoln--that of Major António María Pico, a nephew of Pio Pico, to the Receivership of Public Moneys at Los Angeles. Pico lived at San José; and finding that his new duties exiled him from his family, he soon resigned the office.

Old-time barbers, as the reader may be aware, were often surgeons, and the arrival in Commercial Street, in the early sixties, of J. A. Meyer, "late of San Francisco," was announced in part as follows:

Gentlemen will be waited on and have Shaving, Hair-Dressing, and Shampooing prepared in the most luxurious manner, and in the finest style of the art; while Cupping, Bleeding, and Teeth-Extracting will also be attended to!

Fort Tejón had been pretty well broken up by June, when a good deal of the army property was moved to Los Angeles. Along with Uncle Sam's bag and baggage, came thirty or more of the camels previously mentioned, including half a dozen "young uns." For some months they were corralled uncomfortably near the genial Quartermaster's Main Street office; but in October they were removed to a yard fixed up for them on D. Anderson's premises, opposite the Second Street schoolhouse.

Starting with the cook brought to Los Angeles by Joseph Newmark, the Chinese population in 1861 had increased to twenty-one men and eight women--a few of them cooks and servants, but most of them working in five or six laundries. About the middle of June of that year, Chun Chick arrived from San Francisco and created a flurry, not merely in Chinatown, but throughout our little city, by his announcement that he would start a store here; and by the thirteenth of July, this pioneer Chinese shop, a veritable curiosity shop, was opened. The establishment was on Spring Street, opposite the Court House; and besides a general assortment of Chinese goods, there was a fine display of preserves and other articles hitherto not obtainable in town. Chun Chick was clever in his appeals of "A Chinese Merchant to the Public;" but he nevertheless joined the celebrities advertised for delinquent taxes. Chun Chick--or, as he appeared on the tax collector's list, Chick Chun--was down for five hundred dollars in merchandise, with one dollar and twenty-five cents for City, and the same amount for school taxes. Sing Hop, Ching Hop and Ah Hong were other Chinamen whose memory failed at the critical tax time of that year.

For years, until wharves made possible for thousands the pleasures of rod and reel, clams, since used for bait, were almost a drug on the market, being hawked about the streets in 1861 at a dollar a bucket--a price not very remunerative considering that they came from as far north as San Buenaventura.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] A term locally applied to tugs.

[23] "The Faithful of this Parish, to the Queen of the Angels."

[24] Captain Thom died on February 2d, 1915.

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XXI. HANCOCK--LADY FRANKLIN--THE DELUGE

1861

When the Civil War began, California and the neighboring territory showed such pronounced Southern sympathies that the National Government kept both under close surveillance, for a time stationing Major, afterward General James Henry Carleton--in 1862 sent across the Colorado River when the Government drove out the Texans--with a force at Camp Latham, near Ballona, and dispatching another force to Drum Barracks, near Wilmington. The Government also established a thorough system of espionage over the entire Southwest. In Los Angeles and vicinity, many people, some of whom I mention elsewhere, were arrested; among them being Henry Schaeffer who was taken to Wilmington Barracks but through influential friends was released after a few days. On account of the known political views of their proprietors, some of the hotels also were placed under watch for a while; but beyond the wrath of the innkeepers at the sentinels pacing up and down their verandas, nothing more serious transpired. Men on both sides grew hot-headed and abused one another roundly, but few bones were broken and little blood was shed. A policy of leniency was adopted by the authorities, and sooner or later persons arrested for political offenses were discharged.

The ominous tidings from beyond the Colorado, and their effect, presaging somewhat the great internecine conflict, recalls an unpublished anecdote of Winfield Scott Hancock, who was a graduate of West Point, an intense patriot and a "natural born" fighter. One day in 1861, coincident with the Texan invasion, and while I was visiting him in his office on Main Street near Third (after he had removed from the upstairs rooms adjoining the Odd Fellows' Hall in the Temple Building), John Goller dropped in with the rumor that conspirators, in what was soon to become Arizona, were about to seize the Government stores. Hancock was much wrought up when he heard the report, and declared, with angry vehemence, that he would "treat the whole damned lot of them as common thieves!" In the light of this demonstration and his subsequent part as a national character of great renown, Hancock's speech at the Fourth of July celebration, in 1861, when the patriotic Angeleños assembled at the Plaza and marched to the shady grove of Don Luis Sainsevain, is worthy of special note. Hancock made a sound argument for the preservation of the Union, and was heartily applauded; and a few days afterward one of the local newspapers, in paying him a deserved tribute, almost breathed an augury in saying:

Captain Hancock's loyalty to the Stars and Stripes has never for a moment been doubted, and we hope he may be advanced in rank and honors, and live to a green old age, to see the glorious banner of our country yet waving in peaceful glory over a united, prosperous, and happy people.

Few of us, however, who heard Hancock speak on that occasion, dreamed to what high position he would eventually attain.

Soon after this episode, that is, in the early part of August, 1861, Hancock left for the front, in company with his wife; and taking with him his military band, he departed from San Pedro on the steamer Senator. Some of my readers may know that Mrs. Hancock--after whom the ill-fated Ada Hancock was named--was a Southern woman, and though very devoted to her husband, had certain natural sympathies for the South; but none, I dare say, will have heard how she perpetrated an amusing joke upon him on their way north. When once out upon the briny deep, she induced the musicians to play Dixie, to the great amusement of the passengers. Like many Southerners, Mrs. Hancock was an Episcopalian and frequently contributed her unusual musical talent to the service of the choir of St. Athanasius Church, the little edifice for a while at the foot of Pound Cake Hill--first the location of the Los Angeles High School and now of the County Courthouse--and the forerunner of the Episcopal Pro-Cathedral, on Olive Street opposite Central Park.

Having in mind the sojourn in Los Angeles for years of these representative Americans, the following editorial from the Los Angeles Star on the departure of the future General and Presidential nominee, seems to me now of more than passing significance:

While resident here, Captain Hancock took great interest in our citizens, the development of our resources, and the welfare of this section of the country; and as a public-spirited, enterprising gentleman, he will be missed from among us, and his most estimable lady will long live in the hearts of her many friends. We desire their prosperity, happiness, and long life, wherever their lot may be cast.

The establishing of Drum Barracks and Camp Drum at Wilmington was a great contribution to the making of that town, for the Government not only spent over a million dollars in buildings and works there, and constantly drew on the town for at least part of its supplies, but provisions of all kinds were sent through Wilmington to troops in Southern California, Utah, Yuma, Tucson and vicinity, and New Mexico.

P. H., popularly known as Major Downing, was employed by Banning for some time during the War to take charge of the great wagon-trains of Government supplies sent inland; and later he opened a general merchandise store in Wilmington, after which he transacted a large volume of business with H. Newmark & Company.

At the breaking out of the War, the Southern Overland Mail Route was discontinued and a contract was made with Butterfield for service along a more central course, by way of Great Salt Lake. There was then a stage six times a week; and a branch line ran to Denver, the terminus having been changed from St. Joseph to Omaha. Twenty days was the time allowed the company to get its stages through during eight months of the year, and twenty-three days for the more uncertain winter months. This contract was made for three years, and one million dollars a year was the compensation allowed the Butterfields. After the War, the old route was resumed.

J. De Barth Shorb came to Los Angeles at the commencement of the War, as Assistant Superintendent of the Philadelphia & California Oil Company; and in 1867 he bought the Temescal grant and began to mine upon the property. The same year he married a daughter of B. D. Wilson, establishing a relationship which brought him a partnership in the San Gabriel Wine Company, of which he eventually became manager. His position in this community, until he died in 1895, was important, the little town of Shorb testifying to one of his activities.

Not only were the followers of the indefatigable padres rather tardy in taking up the cultivation of olives, but the olive-oil industry hereabouts was a still later venture. As an illustration, even in 1861 somewhat less than five hundred gallons of olive oil was made in all Los Angeles County, and most of that was produced at the San Fernando Mission.

How important was the office of the Zanjero, may be gathered from the fact that in 1861 he was paid twelve hundred dollars a year, while the Mayor received only eight hundred dollars and the Treasurer two hundred dollars less than the Mayor. At the same time, the Marshal, owing to the hazardous duties of his office, received as much as the Mayor; the City Attorney one hundred dollars less than the Treasurer; and the Clerk but three hundred and fifty.

By 1861, there were serious doubts as to the future of cattle-raising in Southern California, but Banning & Company came forward proposing to slaughter at New San Pedro and contracted with John Temple, John Rains and others, to do their killing. For a while, the enterprise was encouraged; Temple alone having six hundred head so disposed of and sold.

In September, Columbus Sims, the popular attorney of unique personality who from 1856 to 1860 had been Clerk of the United States District Court, was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel in the United States Army and placed in charge of Camp Alert, at the Pioneer Race Course, San Francisco, where twelve companies were soon assembled; and a month or two later he was made Colonel in the Second Cavalry. Late in December of that year, however, he had an altercation with D. D. Colton, in San Francisco, when blows were exchanged and Sims drew "a deadly weapon." For this, the doughty Colonel was arrested and held to await the action of the Grand Jury; but I am under the impression that nothing very serious befell the belligerent Sims as a result.

On September 11th, H. Stassforth, after having bought out A. W. Schulze, announced a change in the control of the United States Hotel, inviting the public, at the same time, to a "free lunch," at half-past four o'clock the following Sunday. Stassforth was an odd, but interesting character, and stated in his advertisement that guests were at liberty, when they had partaken of the collation, to judge if he could "keep a hotel." Whether successful or otherwise, Stassforth did not long continue in control, for in November, 1862, he disposed of the business to Webber & Haas, who in turn sold it to Louis Mesmer.

In the fall, an atrocious murder took place here, proving but the first in a series of vile deeds for which, eventually, the culprit paid with his own life at the hands of an infuriated populace. On Sunday evening, September 30th, some Frenchmen were assembled to sit up with the body of one of their recently-deceased countrymen; and at about eleven o'clock a quarrel arose between two of the watchers, A. M. G., or Michel Lachenais--a man once of good repute, who had cast some slurs at the French Benevolent Society--and Henry Delaval, a respected employee of the Aliso Mills who spiritedly defended the organization. Lachenais drew a weapon, approached Delaval and tried to shoot him; but the pistol missed fire. Thereupon Lachenais, enraged, walked toward a lamp, adjusted two other caps, and deliberately shot Delaval through the body. The next day his victim died. Lachenais made his escape and so eluded the authorities that it was not until the middle of February, 1866, that he surrendered himself to Deputy Sheriff Henderson. Then he was tried, but was acquitted.

About October, Remi Nadeau, a Canadian, after whom Nadeau Street is named and father of George A. Nadeau, came across the Plains to Los Angeles, having spent the previous winter, en route, in Salt Lake City; and for a while he teamed between here and Montana. Within the year, believing that San Francisco offered a larger field, he moved to that city and continued his operations there.

In the front part of a little building on Main Street, between Second and Third, Lorenzo Leck, whom I have already mentioned, conducted a grocery, living with his family in the rear. He was a plain, unassuming, honest Dane of the old school, who attended scrupulously to his business and devoted his Sundays and holidays to modest amusements. On such days, he would put his wife, Caroline, and their children on a little wagon that he owned and take them to his vineyard on the outskirts of the town; and there he would enjoy with them those rural pastimes to which he had been accustomed in the Fatherland, and which to many early-comers here were a source of rest and delight.

On the afternoon of Saturday, October 17th, Francisco Cota, a Mexican boy fifteen years of age, entered Leck's store while he was out, and, taking advantage of the fact that Frau Leck was alone, whipped out a knife, stabbed her to death, stole what cash was in sight and then escaped to a vineyard, where he hid himself. John W. Henderson, the son of A. J. Henderson, a Deputy Sheriff here still living in Los Angeles, came in soon after and finding Mrs. Leck horribly disfigured, he gave the alarm. Neighbors and friends at once started in pursuit and caught Cota; and having tied a rope around the murderer's neck during the excitement they dragged him down to Alameda Street, where I witnessed the uproar. As they proceeded by way of Aliso Street, the mob became more and more infuriated, so that before it reached the spot which had been selected for his execution, the boy had been repeatedly stabbed and was nearly dead. At length, he was strung up as a warning to other malefactors.

A short time after this melancholy event, I was driving with my wife to the Cerritos rancho and, missing our road, we stopped at a Mexican home to inquire the way. The woman who answered our summons proved to be one who knew, and was known by all Los Angeles merchants on account of her frequent excursions to town; she was, in fact, the mother of the Mexican boy who had been mobbed and hung for the murder of poor Leck's wife! The sight of Gringos kindled anew her maternal wrath; and she set up such a hue and cry as to preclude any further intelligible conversation.

California being so far removed from the seat of war did not awake to its full significance until the credit of the Government began to decline. Four weeks were required, it is well to remember, to complete the trip from New York to San Francisco via Panamá, and our knowledge of events in the East was far from perfect. Until the completion of the continental telegraph in October, 1861, the only immediate news that reached the Coast came privately and we were, therefore, pretty much in the dark until the arrival of Eastern papers, and even after that telegraphing was so expensive that our poorly-patronized little news-sheets could not afford the outlay. A few of us therefore made up a purse of one hundred dollars a month, which small sum enabled us to allay our anxiety at least in the case of very important happenings.

It must not be forgotten, though, that we then had a little relief from San Francisco, whose newspapers, containing some telegraphic despatches, arrived in town perhaps three to four days after their publication. I may add, in fact, that it was not until about the beginning of the eighties that Los Angeles dailies could afford the luxury of regular direct telegrams.

In other respects as well, editing a local newspaper during the War was apt to entail financial loss. The Los Angeles News, for instance, was outspoken for the Union and so escaped the temporary eclipse suffered by the Star through Government censorship; but the Unionists being in a decided minority in the community, pickings for the News were mighty poor. Perhaps this want of patronage suggested the advisability, in 1863 (when that paper was published by C. R. Conway and Alonzo Waite, on Main Street, opposite the express office), of reducing the subscription rate to five dollars a year.

Probably one of the most interesting visits to Los Angeles ever made by a well-known personage was the sudden call with which Lady Franklin, the wife of the eminent, lost Arctic explorer, honored our little town far back in 1861. The distinguished lady, accompanied by Mrs. Cracroft, her niece, Commodore and Madame Watkins and Collector and Mrs. Rankin, arrived at San Pedro on the Golden State during the first week in November and was driven, with her companions, to the Bella Union hotel, from which she made such short excursions about the city as were then possible; and as sympathy for her in her sorrow, and admiration for her long years of plucky though vain search for her husband were still general, every courtesy possible was afforded her. During Lady Franklin's stay Benjamin D. Wilson arranged a delightful garden party at his hospitable mansion at Lake Vineyard in her ladyship's honor, and Phineas Banning also entertained her with a reception and collation at his San Pedro home; and these receptions and collations were as enjoyable as they were notable. After a day or two, Lady Franklin and her party left on the Senator for San Francisco, being accorded, as the vessel weighed anchor, a marked ovation.

For many years funerals were attended by men on horseback and by women on foot, as hacks were unknown in early days; and while the good citizens were doubtless then conducted to their last resting-place in a manner just as satisfactory to themselves as are their descendants who are buried according to present-day customs, those who followed in the train were very seriously inconvenienced by the melancholy, dusty processions to the old and now-forgotten burial-grounds; for in those days the trip, in summer exceedingly hot and in winter through rain and mud, was a long, fatiguing one.

Speaking of funerals, a strange sight was witnessed in our streets about the end of November, 1861, attending the burial of a child. The father and mother, both native Californians, were seated in a wagon, in which was also placed the strikingly plain little coffin or box containing the dead. Beside the wagon walked an old man, playing a fiddle. Two or three persons followed in the deep mud; the whole forming a weird picture, said to be the relic of an almost obsolete back-woods custom.

Banning & Hinchman's Comet proving insufficient, the Gondolier was put on in the fall of 1861 and became a familiar craft in the conveying of passengers and freight between New San Pedro and the ships lying off the harbor.

Two years previous to the completion of the telegraph from San Francisco to Los Angeles--that is, in 1858--the first continental telegraph was undertaken; and by October, 1861, Governor Downey of California sent a congratulatory message to President Lincoln. On November 7th, the line was open to the public. Several months before, all the companies in the State had consolidated into the California State Telegraph Company. Banning & Hinchman having succeeded, for a short season, Phineas Banning, the sub-contractor for the building of the first telegraph, they made an effort, following the establishment of communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific, to secure a line to New San Pedro; and at the end of October, 1861, the first telegraph pole in the long row from Los Angeles to the harbor was formally set. About the middle of November, this line was completed; and though it was widely proclaimed as "working like a charm," the apparatus soon got out of order and by the following January there were many complaints that both poles and wire had fallen to the ground, blocking the thoroughfares and entangling animals in such a way as to become a nuisance. Indeed, there was soon a public demand either to repair the telegraph or to remove it altogether and throw the equipment away. Soon after the first of February, 1862, the line was working again; but by that time the telegraph to San Francisco had gotten out of order! And so great were the difficulties in repairing that line, that Los Angeles was not again talking uninterruptedly over the wire with its neighbor until July.

On November 15th, the first number of El Amigo del Pueblo, printed in Spanish, appeared from the shop of José E. Gonzales & Company; but native support being withheld, "The Friend of the People" starved to death in the following May.

Whaling, like shark-hunting, continued brisk in 1861 and 1862, and many vessels were fitted out at San Pedro; Los Angeles merchants selling them most of their supplies. The sea-monsters usually moved up the coast about the first of the year, the males keeping in toward the shore going up, and the females hugging the coast, coming down; and small boats such as Captain W. Clark's Ocean, used to take from four hundred and fifty to five hundred barrels of oil in five or six weeks. For six days, in March, 1862, San Pedro whalers harpooned a whale a day, bringing to the landing over two hundred barrels of oil as a result of the week's labor.

The bitter fight between Abolitionists and Southern sympathizers was immediately reflected in the public schools. Defenders of the Union worked for a formal oath of allegiance to the National Government, as a preliminary to granting teachers' certificates; while the Confederates, incensed at what they deemed a violation of personal rights, assailed the institutions. The result was that attendance at the public schools gradually fell off until, in the winter of 1865-66, only about three hundred and fifty children of school age were being instructed by public teachers; another third of a thousand was in private schools, while some three hundred and sixty-nine were not on any roster.

The gloom naturally caused by the outbreak of war was sometimes penetrated by the brightness of social life, and among the happier occasions of the winter of 1861 was the marriage, on December 23d, in the presence of a large circle of friends, of Tom D. Mott to Ascención, daughter of Don José Andrés and Doña Francisca Ábila Sepúlveda.

The winter of 1861-62 recorded the greatest of all floods, especially in the North where, in December and January, something like thirty-five inches of rain was precipitated. In Los Angeles County the rivers soon rose and overflowed the lowlands; but the rise was gradual, causing the loss of but few or no lives and permitting the stock to reach the neighboring hills in safety. In Anaheim the water was four feet deep in the streets and people had to seek flight to the uplands or retreat to the roofs of their little houses. Vineyards were sometimes half-ruined with the layers of deep sand; banks of streams were lined for miles with driftwood; and ranchers saw many a clod of their farms carried off and deposited to enrich their neighbors, miles away. For a month it rained so steadily that the sun peeped out for scarcely an hour.

I witnessed this inundation in Los Angeles, where much damage was done to business buildings, especially to Mellus's Row, and saw merchants in water up to their waists, trying to save their goods. The wall of the room occupied by Sam Meyer fell first, whereupon Hellman & Brother became intensely interested in the removal of their stock, while poor Sam, knee-deep in water, sadly contemplated his losses. Before the Hellmans had made much headway, they observed a tendency on the part of their walls to crumble, and their exit was neither graceful nor delayed. After that the store occupied by Meyer & Breslauer caved in, smashing show cases and shelves, and ruining a large amount of merchandise. The ludicrous picture of this rush for "safety first" is not a fit reflection of the feelings of those pioneers who saw the results of years of labor obliterated in a moment. Friends and neighbors lent assistance to the unfortunate, and helped to save what they could. After this flood, Hellman & Brother and Sam Meyer removed to the Arcadia Block, while Meyer & Breslauer secured accommodations north of the Plaza Church.

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