XXIX. THE CHINESE MASSACRE
1871
H. Newmark & Company enjoyed associations with nearly all of the most important wool men and rancheros in Southern California, our office for many years being headquarters for these stalwarts, as many as a dozen or more of whom would ofttimes congregate, giving the store the appearance of a social center. They came in from their ranches and discussed with freedom the different phases of their affairs and other subjects of interest. Wheat, corn, barley, hay, cattle, sheep, irrigation and kindred topics were passed upon; although in 1871 the price of wool being out of all proportion to anything like its legitimate value, the uppermost topic of conversation was wool. These meetings were a welcome interruption to the monotony of our work. Some of the most important of these visitors were Jotham, John W. and Llewellyn Bixby, Isaac Lankershim, L. J. Rose, I. N. Van Nuys, R. S. Baker, George Carson, Manuel Dominguez, Domingo Amestoy, Juan Matías Sanchez, Dan Freeman, John Rowland, John Reed, Joe Bridger, Louis Phillips, the brothers Garnier, Remi Nadeau, E. J. Baldwin, P. Banning and Alessandro Repetto. There was also not a weather prophet, near or far, who did not manage to appear at these weighty discussions and offer his oracular opinions about the pranks of the elements; on which occasions, one after another of these wise men would step to the door, look at the sky and broad landscape, solemnly shake his head and then render his verdict to the speculating circle within. According as the moon emerged "so that one could hang something upon it," or in such a manner that "water would run off" (as they pictured it), we were to have dry or rainy weather; nor would volumes of talk shake their confidence. Occasionally, I added a word, merely to draw out these weather-beaten and interesting old chaps; but usually I listened quietly and was entertained by all that was said. Hours would be spent by these friends in chatting and smoking the time away; and if they enjoyed the situation half as much as I did, pleasant remembrances of these occasions must have endured with them. Many of those to whom I have referred have ended their earthly careers, while others, living in different parts of the county, are still hale and hearty.
A curious character was then here, in the person of the reputed son of a former, and brother of the then, Lord Clanmorris, an English nobleman. Once a student at Dr. Arnold's famous Rugby, he had knocked about the world until, shabbily treated by Dame Fortune, he had become a sheepherder in the employ of the Bixbys.
M. J. Newmark, who now came to visit us from New York, was admitted to partnership with H. Newmark & Company, and this determined his future residence.
As was natural in a town of pueblo origin, plays were often advertised in Spanish; one of the placards, still preserved, thus announcing the attraction for January 30th, at the Merced Theater:
TEATRO MERCED
LOS ANGELES
Lunes, Enero 30, de 1871
Primero Función de la Gran Compañia Dramática, De Don Tomás Maguire, El Empresario Veterano de San Francisco, VEINTE Y CUATRO Artistas de ambos sexos, todos conocidos como ESTRELLAS de primera clase.
In certain quarters of the city, the bill was printed in English.
Credit for the first move toward the formation of a County Medical Society here should probably be given to Dr. H. S. Orme, at whose office early in 1871 a preliminary meeting was held; but it was in the office of Drs. Griffin and Widney, on January 31st, that the organization was effected, my friend Griffin being elected President; Dr. R. T. Hayes, Vice-President; Dr. Orme, Treasurer; and Dr. E. L. Dow, Secretary. Thus began a society which, in the intervening years, has accomplished much good work.
Late in January, Luther H. Titus, one of several breeders of fast horses, brought from San Francisco by steamer a fine thoroughbred stallion named Echo, a half-brother of the celebrated trotter Dexter which had been shipped from the East in a Central Pacific car especially constructed for the purpose--in itself something of a wonder then. Sporting men came from a distance to see the horse; but interest was divided between the stallion and a mammoth turkey of a peculiar breed, also brought west by Titus, who prophesied that the bird, when full grown, would tip the beam at from forty-five to fifty pounds.
Early in February, the first steps were taken to reorganize and consolidate the two banking houses in which Downey and Hellman were interested, when it was proposed to start the Bank of Los Angeles, with a capital of five hundred thousand dollars. Some three hundred and eighty thousand dollars of this sum were soon subscribed; and by the first week in April, twenty-five per cent. of the capital had been called in. John G. Downey was President and I. W. Hellman was Cashier; their office was in the former rooms of Hellman, Temple & Company. On the tenth of April the institution was opened as the Farmers & Merchants Bank; and on July 10th, J. G. Downey, Charles Ducommun, O. W. Childs, I. M. Hellman, George Hansen, A. Glassell, J. S. Griffin, José Mascarel and I. W. Hellman were chosen Trustees. From the first the Bank prospered, so that when the crisis of 1875 tested the substantiability of the financial institutions here, the Farmers & Merchants rode the storm. In April, 1871, Hellman inaugurated a popular policy when he offered to pay interest on time deposits, for it brought many clients who had previously been accustomed to do their banking in San Francisco; and before long the Bank advertised one hundred thousand dollars to lend on good security.
On February 14th, Stephen Samsbury, known as Buckskin Bill, and a man named Carter murdered the twin brothers Bilderback who had taken up some land very close to Verdugo--now incorporated in Glendale--and were engaged in chopping wood; the murderers coveting the land and planning to sell the fuel. Deputy Sheriff Dunlap went in pursuit of the desperadoes, and noticing some loose earth in the roadbed near by, he thrust a stick into the ground and so uncovered the blood-stained end of a blanket which led to the finding of the bodies.
J. F. Burns, who, at eighty-three years of age, still manifests his old time spirit, being then Sheriff, pursued Buckskin Bill until the twenty-fourth of June. A young soldier on the way to Fort Yuma met Burns at San Pedro, and having agreed to sell him certain information about the fugitive, revealed the fact that Bill had been seen near Tecate, mounted on a horse, with his squaw and infant riding a mule. The chase had previously taken the Sheriff from Verdugo Cañon to White Pine, Nevada, and back to Los Angeles; and acting on this new clue, Burns obtained a requisition on the Mexican Governor from Judge Ygnácio Sepúlveda, and went to Lower California where, with Felipe Zarate, a Mexican officer, he located the man after two or three days' search. About twenty miles north of Real Castillo, the Sheriff found the fugitive, and in the ensuing fight Samsbury accidentally shot himself; and so terribly did the wounded man suffer that he begged Burns to finish him at once. The Sheriff, refusing, improved the opportunity to secure a full confession of Bill's numerous crimes, among which figured the killing of five other men--besides the Bilderback brothers--in different parts of California.
After Samsbury died, Burns cut off his foot--known to have six toes--and placed it in mescal, a popular and strongly-intoxicating beverage of the Mexicans; and when later the Sheriff presented this trophy to the good citizens of California, it was accepted as abundant proof that the man he had gone after had been captured and disposed of. The Legislature promptly paid Burns nearly five thousand dollars; but Los Angeles County, which had pledged two hundred dollars' reward, refused to recompense the doughty Sheriff and has never since made good its promise. In 1889, Burns was Chief of Police, with Emil Harris as his Captain.
The earliest move toward the formation of a Los Angeles Board of Trade was made, not in 1883, nor even in 1873--when the first Chamber of Commerce began--but in 1871, a fact that seems to be generally forgotten. Late in February of that year, a number of leading shippers came together to discuss Coast trade and other interests; and B. L. Peel moved that a Board of Trade be organized. The motion was carried and the organization was effected; but with the waning of enthusiasm for the improvements proposed or, perhaps, through the failure of its members to agree, the embryonic Board of Trade soon died.
In February, B. L. Peel & Company installed the telegraph in their commission office--probably the first instance of a private wire in local business history.
At the outset of the somewhat momentous decade of the seventies, Hellman, Haas & Company was established, with H. W. Hellman, Jacob Haas and B. Cohn partners; their first store being on the east side of Los Angeles Street opposite H. Newmark & Company's. Abraham Haas, who came in December, 1873, had a share in his brother's venture from the start; but it was not until 1875, when he bought out Cohn's interest, that he became a partner. Ten years after the firm commenced business, that is, in 1881, Jacob Baruch, who had come to California with J. Loew, and with him had made his start at Galatin, was admitted to partnership; and in 1889, a year after Jacob Haas's death, Haas & Baruch bought out H. W. Hellman. Then it was that Haas, Baruch & Company, a name so agreeably known throughout Southern California, first entered the field, their activity--immediately felt--permitting very little of the proverbial grass to grow under one's feet. On January 7th, 1909, Jacob Baruch died. Haas since December 12th, 1900 has been a resident of San Francisco.
This year the United States Government began the great work of improving Wilmington or San Pedro Harbor. The gap between Rattlesnake and Dead Man's islands was closed by means of a breakwater, creating a regular current in the channel; and dredging to a depth of seventeen or eighteen feet first made it possible for vessels of size to cross the bar at low tide. Among those active in preparing documents for Congress and securing the survey was Judge R. M. Widney, of whose public services mention has been made; while Phineas Banning, at his own expense, made trips to Washington in behalf of the project.
A genuine novelty was introduced in 1871, when Downs & Bent late in February opened a roller-skating rink at Teutonia Hall. Twenty-five cents was charged for admission, and an additional quarter demanded for the use of skates. Ladies and gentlemen flocked to enjoy the new sensation; a second rink was soon opened in Los Angeles and another in El Monte; and among those who became proficient skaters was Pancho Coronel, one of the social lions of his day. In time, however, the craze waned, and what had been hailed as fashionable because of its popularity in the great cities of the East, lost in favor, particularly among those of social pretensions.
In March, a call for a meeting to organize an Agricultural Society for the Counties of Los Angeles, Santa Bárbara, San Bernardino, Kern and San Diego brought together a large number of our citizens. L. J. Rose and his neighbor L. H. Titus, Dr. J. S. Griffin, Colonel J. J. Warner, Judge H. K. S. O'Melveny, Judge A. J. King, John G. Downey, F. N. Slaughter and many others including myself became actively interested, and then and there started the Southern District Agricultural Society which, for years, contributed so much to advance the agricultural interests of Southern California. Annual trotting races, lasting a week, lent impetus to the breeding of fine stock, for which this part of the State became famous. L. J. Rose was the moving spirit in this enterprise; and he it was who induced me and other friends to participate.
Even the first ice machine, in March, did not freeze the price below four cents per pound.
Edited by Henry C. Austin, the Evening Express made its first appearance on March 27th. It was started by the printers, George and Jesse Yarnell, George A. Tiffany, J. W. Paynter and Miguel Verelo; but James J. Ayers--in 1882 State Printer--who was one of the founders of the San Francisco Morning Call, succeeded Austin in 1875, and then the Yarnells and Verelo retired.
L. V. Prudhomme, better known as Victor Prudhomme--a name sometimes, but probably incorrectly, spelled Prudhon--who is said to have come from France about the middle of the thirties, died here on May 8th. His wife was a Spanish woman and for a while they resided on the east side of Main Street between Requena and First, not far from my brother's store. As a rather active member of the French Colony, he was a man in good standing, and was engaged, it seems to me, in the wine industry. He also owned some land near San Bernardino and was continually visiting that place.
On May 27th, S. J. Millington, announced as "the pioneer dancing master of California," opened a dancing academy at Stearns's Hall, and it at once sprang into social favor. He had morning classes for children and evening classes for adults. I happen to recall the circumstances more clearly for I was one of his committee of patrons. Dances, by the way, were given frequently, and were often attended in costume and even in disguise. I remember such an occasion in the early seventies when elaborate toilettes and variety of dress marked an advance in these harmless diversions. Conspicuous among the guests was John Jones, elderly and seldom given to frivolity, who appeared in the character of the Father of his Country.
In early June, a Chinese junk, cruising in search of abalones, attracted no little attention at San Pedro as a primitive and clumsy specimen of marine architecture.
The sudden and abnormal demand for the abalone shell offered such large returns as to tempt men to take desperate chances in hunting for them among the rocks. Sometime in the seventies, a Chinaman, searching near San Diego, thrust his hand into an open shell and the abalone closed upon his wrist with such an irresistible grip that the unfortunate shell-hunter was held fast until overtaken by the rising tide and drowned.
For many years Los Angeles booklovers were supplied by merchants who sold other things, or who conducted a limited loan library in conjunction with their business. Such a circulating collection Samuel Hellman displayed in February, 1871. The first exclusively book and periodical store was opened in the same year, by Brodrick & Reilly, adjoining the Post Office on Spring street.
Albert Fenner Kercheval, who took up his residence in 1871 on the west side of Pearl Street near the end of Sixth, on what was formerly known as the Gelcich Place, first came to California--Hangtown--in 1849 and experienced much the same kind of mining adventure as inspired Bret Harte. On his second visit to the Coast, Kercheval raised strawberries and early tomatoes, for which he found a ready sale in San Francisco; and in his spare moments he wrote poems--collected and published in 1883 under the title of Dolores--some of which rather cleverly reflect California life.
On June 19th, the Teutonia-Concordia society merged with the Los Angeles Turnverein, forming the Turnverein-Germania; and about the same time, the original home of the Verein, a frame building on South Spring Street, was erected. In that year, also, the first German school was founded--the sessions being conducted at the old Round House.
Having had no fitting celebration of the Fourth of July for years, a number of citizens in 1871 called a meeting to consider the matter, and A. J. Johnston, L. Lichtenberger, W. H. Perry, J. M. Griffith, John Wilson, O. W. Childs and myself were appointed to make arrangements. A list of forty or fifty leading merchants willing to close their places of business on Independence Day was drawn up; a program was easily prepared; and the music, display of flags and bunting, and the patriotic addresses awakened, after such a neglect of the occasion, new and edifying emotions.
Slight regard was formerly paid by officers to the safety or life of the Indian, who had a persistent weakness for alcohol; and when citizens did attend to the removal of these inebriates, they frequently looked to the Municipality for compensation. For instance: at a meeting of the Common Council, in July, Pete Wilson presented a bill of two dollars and a half "for the removal of a nuisance," which nuisance, upon investigation, was shown to have been a drunken squaw whom he had retired from the street! The Council, after debating the momentous question of reimbursement, finally reached a compromise by which the City saved just--twenty-five cents.
Alexander Bell died on July 24th, after a residence of twenty-nine years in Los Angeles.
Beginning with the seventies, attention was directed to Santa Monica as a possible summer resort, but it was some years before many people saw in the Bay and its immediate environment the opportunities upon which thousands have since seized. In the summer of 1871 less than twenty families, the majority in tents, sojourned there among the sycamore groves in the Cañon where J. M. Harned had a bar and "refreshment parlor." The attractions of beach and surf, however, were beginning to be appreciated, and so were the opportunities for shooting--at Tell's and elsewhere; and on Sundays two or three hundred excursionists frequently visited that neighborhood, Reynolds, the liveryman, doing a thriving business carrying people to the beach.
Speaking of this gradual awakening to the attractions of Santa Monica, I recall that school children of the late sixties held their picnics at the Cañon, going down on crowded stages where the choicest seats were on the box; and that one of the most popular drivers of that period was Tommy O'Campo. He handled the reins with the dexterity of a Hank Monk, and before sunrise Young America would go over to the corral, there to wait long and patiently in order to get an especially desirable seat on Tommy's stage.
With the completion of the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad, excursions to Catalina began to be in vogue; but as the local population was small, considerable effort was needed sometimes to secure enough patrons to make the trips pay. Thus an excursion for Sunday, August 13th, was advertised by the skipper of the steamer Vaquero, a couple of dollars for the round trip being charged, with half price for children; but by Saturday morning the requisite number of subscribers had not been obtained, and the excursion was called off.
Otto J. and Oswald F. Zahn, sons of Dr. Johann Carl Zahn who came here about 1871, were carrier-pigeon fanciers and established a service between Avalon and Los Angeles, fastening their messages, written on tissue paper, by delicate wire to the birds' legs. For some time the Catalina Pigeon Messengers, as they were called, left Avalon late in the afternoon, after the last steamer, bringing news that appeared in the Los Angeles newspapers of the following morning. Usually the birds took a good hour in crossing the channel; but on one occasion, Blue Jim, the champion, covered the distance of forty-eight miles in fifty minutes.
On the evening of August 23d, the announcement came over the wires of Don Abel Stearns's death in San Francisco, at five o'clock that afternoon, at the Grand Hotel. Late in October, his body was brought to Los Angeles for final interment, the tombstone having arrived from San Francisco a week or two previously. Awesome indeed was the scene that I witnessed when the ropes sustaining the eight hundred pound metallic casket snapped, pitching the coffin and its grim contents into the grave. I shall never forget the unearthly shriek of Doña Arcadia, as well as the accident itself.
With the wane of summer, we received the startling news of the death, through Indians, of Frederick Loring, the young journalist and author well known in Los Angeles, who was with the United States Exploring Expedition to Arizona as a correspondent of Appleton's Journal. "Bootless, coatless and everything but lifeless," as he put it, he had just escaped perishing in Death Valley, when the stage party was attacked by Apaches, and Loring and four other passengers were killed.
In September, during Captain George J. Clarke's administration as Postmaster, foreign money-orders began to be issued here for the first time, payable only in Great Britain and Ireland, twenty-five cents being charged for sending ten dollars or less; and shortly afterward, international money-orders were issued for Germany and some other Continental countries. Then five or six hundred letters for Los Angeles County were looked upon as rather a large dispatch by one steamer from San Francisco and the North; and the canceling of from twelve to fifteen dollars' worth of stamps a day was regarded as "big business."
Vincent Collyer--the Peace Commissioner sent out with General O. O. Howard by the Government in 1868--who eventually made himself most unpopular in Arizona by pleading the cause of the scalping Apaches in the fall of 1871, put up at the Pico House; when public feeling led one newspaper to suggest that if the citizens wished "to see a monster," they had "only to stand before the hotel and watch Collyer pass to and fro!"
In the fall, tidings of Chicago's awful calamity by fire reached Los Angeles, but strange to say, no public action was taken until the editor of the Los Angeles News, on October 12th, gave vent to his feelings in the following editorial:
Three days ago the press of this City called upon the public generally to meet at a stated hour last evening, at the County Courtroom, to do something towards alleviating the sufferings of the destitute thousands in Chicago. The calamity which has overtaken that unfortunate City has aroused the sympathy of the world, and the heart and pulse of civilized humanity voluntarily respond, extending assistance in deeds as well as in words. From all parts of the globe, where the name of Chicago is known, liberal donations flow into a common treasury. We had hoped to be able to add the name of Los Angeles among the list, as having done its duty. But in whatever else she may excel, her charity is a dishonorable exception. Her bowels are absolute strangers to sympathy, when called upon to practically demonstrate it. At the place of meeting, instead of seeing the multitude, we were astonished to find but three persons, viz: Governor Downey, John Jones, and a gentleman from Riverside, who is on a visit here. Anything more disgraceful than this apathy on the part of her inhabitants she could not have been guilty of. For her selfishness, she justly deserves the fearful fate that has befallen the helpless one that now lies stricken in the dust. Let her bow down her head in shame. Chicago, our response to your appeal is, Starve! What do we care?
This candid rebuke was not without effect; a committee was immediately formed to solicit contributions from the general public, and within an hour a tidy sum had been raised. By October 18th the fund had reached over two thousand dollars, exclusive of two hundred and fifty dollars given by the Hebrew Benevolent Society and still another hundred dollars raised by the Jewish ladies.
About the twenty-first of October a "war" broke out near Nigger Alley between two rival factions of the Chinese on account of the forcible carrying off of one of the companies' female members, and the steamer California soon brought a batch of Chinamen from San Francisco, sent down, it was claimed, to help wreak vengeance on the abductors. On Monday, October 23d some of the contestants were arrested, brought before Justice Gray and released on bail. It was expected that this would end the trouble; but at five o'clock the next day the factional strife broke loose again, and officers, accompanied by citizens, rushed to the place to attempt an arrest. The Chinese resisted and Officer Jesus Bilderrain was shot in the right shoulder and wrist, while his fifteen-year-old brother received a ball in the right leg. Robert Thompson, a citizen who sprang to Bilderrain's assistance, was met by a Chinaman with two revolvers and shot to death. Other shots from Chinese barricaded behind some iron shutters wounded a number of bystanders.
News of the attacks and counter-attacks spread like wildfire, and a mob of a thousand or more frenzied beyond control, armed with pistols, guns, knives and ropes, and determined to avenge Thompson's murder, assembled in the neighborhood of the disturbance. While this solid phalanx was being formed around Nigger Alley, a Chinaman, waving a hatchet, was seen trying to escape across Los Angeles Street; and Romo Sortorel, at the expense of some ugly cuts on the hand, captured him. Emil Harris then rescued the Mongolian; but a detachment of the crowd, yelling "Hang him! shoot him!" overpowered Harris at Temple and Spring streets, and dragged the trembling wretch up Temple to New High street, where the familiar framework of the corral gates suggested its use as a gallows. With the first suspension, the rope broke; but the second attempt to hang the prisoner was successful. Other Chinamen, whose roofs had been smashed in, were rushed down Los Angeles Street to the south side of Commercial, and there, near Goller's wagon shop, between wagons stood on end, were hung. Alarmed for the safety of their cook, Sing Ty, the Juan Lanfrancos hid the Mongolian for a week, until the excitement had subsided.
Henry T. Hazard was lolling comfortably in a shaving saloon, under the luxurious lather of the barber, when he heard of the riot; and arriving on the scene, he mounted a barrel and attempted to remonstrate with the crowd. Some friends soon pulled him down, warning him that he might be shot. A. J. King was at supper when word was brought to him that Chinese were slaughtering white people, and he responded by seizing his rifle and two revolvers. In trying one of the latter, however, it was prematurely discharged, taking the tip off a finger and putting him hors de combat. Sheriff Burns could not reach the scene until an hour after the row started and many Chinamen had already taken their celestial flight. When he arrived, he called for a posse comitatus to assist him in handling the situation; but no one responded. He also demanded from the leader of the mob and others that they disperse; but with the same negative result. About that time, a party of rioters started with a Chinaman up Commercial Street to Main, evidently bent on hanging him to the Tomlinson & Griffith gate; and when Burns promised to attempt a rescue if he had but two volunteers, Judge R. M. Widney and James Goldsworthy responded and the Chinaman was taken from his tormentors and lodged in jail. Besides Judge Widney, Cameron E. Thom and H. C. Austin displayed great courage in facing the mob, which was made up of the scum and dregs of the city; and Sheriff Burns is also entitled to much credit for his part in preventing the burning of the Chinese quarters. All the efforts of the better element, however, did not prevent one of the most disgraceful of all disturbances which had occurred since my arrival in Los Angeles. On October 25th, when Coroner Joseph Kurtz impanelled his jury, nineteen bodies of Chinamen alone were in evidence and the verdict was: "Death through strangulation by persons unknown to the jury." Emil Harris's testimony at the inquest, that but one of the twenty-two or more victims deserved his fate, about hits the mark and confirms the opinion that the slight punishment to half a dozen of the conspirators was very inadequate.
At the time of the massacre, I heard a shot just as I was about to leave my office, and learned that it had been fired from that part of Chinatown facing Los Angeles Street; and I soon ascertained that it had ended Thompson's life. Anticipating no further trouble, however, I went home to dinner. When I returned to town, news of the riot had spread, and with my neighbors, Cameron E. Thom and John G. Downey, I hurried to the scene. It was then that I became an eye-witness to the heroic, if somewhat comical parts played by Thom and Burns. The former, having climbed to the top of a box, harangued the crowd, while the Sheriff, who had succeeded in mounting a barrel, was also addressing the tumultuous rabble in an effort to restore order. Unfortunately, this receptacle had been coopered to serve as a container, not as a rostrum; and the head of the cask under the pressure of two hundred pounds or more of official avoirdupois suddenly collapsed and our Worthy Guardian of the Peace dropped, with accelerated speed, clear through to the ground, and quite unintentionally, for the moment at least, turned grim tragedy into grotesque comedy.
Following this massacre, the Chinese Government made such a vigorous protest to the United States that the Washington authorities finally paid a large indemnity. During these negotiations, Chinese throughout the country held lamentation services for the Los Angeles victims; and on August 2d, 1872, four Chinese priests came from San Francisco to conduct the ceremonies.
In 1870, F. P. F. Temple, who had seen constructed two sections of the building now known as Temple Block, made the fatal blunder of accepting the friendly advice that led him to erect the third section at the junction of Spring and Main streets, and to establish therein a bank under the name of Temple & Workman. The building, costing in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, was all that could have been desired, proving by long odds the most ornamental edifice in the city; and when, on November 23d, 1871, the bank was opened in its comfortable quarters on the Spring Street side of the block, nothing seemed wanting to success. The furnishings were elaborate, one feature of the office outfit being a very handsome counter of native cedar, a decided advance in decoration over the primitive bare or painted wood then common here. Neither Temple, who had sold his fine ranch near Fort Tejón to embark in the enterprise, nor Workman had had any practical experience in either finance or commerce; and to make matters worse, Workman, being at that time a very old man, left the entire management to his son-in-law, Temple, in whom he had full confidence. It soon became evident that anybody could borrow money with or without proper security, and unscrupulous people hastened to take advantage of the situation. In due season I shall tell what happened to this bank.
In the preceding spring when the Coast-line stage companies were still the only rivals to the steamers, a movement favoring an opposition boat was started, and by June leading shippers were discussing the advisability of even purchasing a competitive steamer; all the vessels up to that time having been owned by companies or individuals with headquarters in the Northern metropolis. Matthew Keller was then in San Francisco; and having been led to believe that a company could be financed, books were opened for subscriptions in Los Angeles, Santa Bárbara, San Luis Obispo and elsewhere. For lack of the necessary support, this plan was abandoned; but late in July a meeting was held in the Bella Union to further consider the matter. Among those present was George Wright, long engaged in coast shipping; and he proposed to sell the control of the Olympia.
H. Newmark & Company being considerably interested in the movement, declared themselves ready to coöperate in improving the situation; for which reason great surprise was expressed when, in December, 1871, B. L. Peel, the commission merchant, made an attack on us, openly charging that, although "the largest shippers in the city," we had revoked our pledge to sustain the opposition to high freight rates, and so had contributed toward defeating the enterprise! It is true that we finally discouraged the movement, but for a good and sufficient reason: Wright was in the steamship business for anything but his health. His method was to put on a tramp steamer and then cut passenger and freight rates ridiculously low, until the regular line would buy him out; a project which, on former occasions, had caused serious disturbances to business. When therefore Wright made this offer, in 1871, H. Newmark & Company forthwith refused to participate. I shall show that, when greater necessity required it, we took the lead in a movement against the Southern Pacific which, for lack of loyalty on the part of many of the other shippers, met not only with disastrous failure but considerable pecuniary loss to ourselves.
On December 18th, 1871, Judge Murray Morrison died. Three days later, his wife, Jennie, whom we knew as the attractive daughter of Dr. Thomas J. White, also breathed her last.
XXX. THE WOOL CRAZE
1872-1873
As already stated, the price of wool in 1871 was exceedingly high and continued advancing until in 1872 when, as a result, great prosperity in Southern California was predicted. Enough wool had been bought by us to make what at that time was considered a very handsome fortune. We commenced purchasing on the sheep's back in November, and continued buying everything that was offered until April, 1872, when we made the first shipment, the product being sold at forty-five cents per pound. As far as I am aware, the price of wool had never reached fifty cents anywhere in the world, it being ordinarily worth from ten to twelve cents; and without going into technicalities, which would be of no interest to the average reader, I will merely say that forty-five cents was a tremendously high figure for dirty, burry, California wool in the grease. When the information arrived that this sale had been effected, I became wool-crazy, the more so since I knew that the particular shipment referred to was of very poor quality.
Colonel R. S. Baker, who was living on his ranch in Kern County, came to Los Angeles about that time, and we offered him fifty cents a pound for Beale & Baker's clip amounting to one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. His reply was that it would be impossible to sell without consulting Beale; but Beale proved as wool-crazy as I, and would not sell. It developed that Beale & Baker did not succeed in effecting a sale in San Francisco, where they soon offered their product, and that they concluded to ship it to Boston; the New England metropolis then, as now, being the most important wool-center in the United States. Upon its arrival, the wool was stored; and there it remained until, as Fate would have it, the entire shipment was later destroyed in the great Boston fire of 1872. As a result of this tremendous conflagration, the insurance company which carried their policy failed and Beale & Baker met with a great loss.
The brothers Philip, Eugène and Camille Garnier of the Encino Ranch--who, while generally operating separately, clubbed together at that time in disposing of their product--had a clip of wool somewhat exceeding one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The spokesman for the three was Eugène, and on the same day that I made Colonel Baker the offer of fifty cents, I told Eugène that I would allow him forty-eight and a half cents for the Garnier product. This offer he disdainfully refused, returning immediately to his ranch; and now, as I look back upon the matter, I do not believe that in my entire commercial experience I ever witnessed anything demonstrating so thoroughly, as did these wool transactions, the monstrous greed of man. The sequel, however, points the moral. My offer to the Garnier Brothers was made on a Friday. During that day and the next, we received several telegrams indicating that the crest of the craze had been reached, and that buyers refused to take hold. On Monday following the first visit of Eugène Garnier, he again came to town and wanted me to buy their wool at the price which I had quoted him on Friday; but by that time we had withdrawn from the market. My brother wired that San Francisco buyers would not touch it; hence the Garnier Brothers also shipped their product East and, after holding it practically a full year, finally sold it for sixteen and a half cents a pound in currency, which was then worth eighty-five cents on the dollar. The year 1872 is on record as the most disastrous wool season in our history, when millions were lost; and H. Newmark & Company suffered their share in the disaster.
It was in March that we purchased from Louis Wolfskill, through the instrumentality of L. J. Rose, the Santa Anita rancho, consisting of something over eight thousand acres, paying him eighty-five thousand dollars for this beautiful domain. The terms agreed upon were twenty thousand dollars down and four equal quarterly payments for the balance. In the light of the aftermath, the statement that our expectations of prospective wool profits inspired this purchase seems ludicrous, but it was far from laughable at the time; for it took less than sixty days for H. Newmark & Company to discover that buying ranches on any such basis was not a very safe policy to follow and would, if continued, result in disaster. Indeed, the outcome was so different from our calculations, that it pinched us somewhat to meet our obligations to Wolfskill. This purchase, as I shall soon show, proved a lucky one, and compensated for the earlier nervous and financial strain. John Simmons, who drove H. Newmark & Company's truck and slept in a barn in my back yard on Main Street, was so reliable a man that we made him overseer of the ranch. When we sold the property, Simmons was engaged by Lazard Frères, the San Francisco bankers, to do special service that involved the carrying of large sums of money.
When we bought the Santa Anita, there were five eucalyptus or blue gum trees growing near the house. I understood at the time that these had been planted by William Wolfskill from seed sent to him by a friend in Australia; and that they were the first eucalyptus trees cultivated in Southern California. Sometime early in 1875, the Forest Grove Association started the first extensive tract of eucalyptus trees seen in Los Angeles, and in a decade or two the eucalyptus had become a familiar object; one tree, belonging to Howard & Smith, florists at the corner of Olive and Ninth streets, attaining,[31] after a growth of nineteen years, a height of one hundred and thirty-four feet.
On the morning of March 26th, Los Angeles was visited by an earthquake of sufficient force to throw people out of bed, many men, women and children seeking safety by running out in their night-clothes. A day or two afterward excited riders came in from the Owens River Valley bringing reports which showed the quake to have been the worst, so far as loss of life was concerned, that had afflicted California since the memorable catastrophe of 1812.
Intending thereby to encourage the building of railroads, the Legislature, on April 4th, 1870, authorized the various Boards of Supervisors to grant aid whenever the qualified voters so elected. This seemed a great step forward, but anti-railroad sentiment, as in the case of Banning's line, again manifested itself here. The Southern Pacific, just incorporated as a subsidiary of the Central Pacific, was laying its tracks down the San Joaquín Valley; yet there was grave doubt whether it would include Los Angeles or not. It contemplated a line through Teháchepi Pass; but from that point two separate surveys had been made, one by way of Soledad Pass via Los Angeles, through costly tunnels and over heavy grades; the other, straight to the Needles, over an almost level plain along the Thirty-fifth parallel, as anticipated by William H. Seward in his Los Angeles speech. At the very time when every obstacle should have been removed, the opposition so crystallized in the Legislature that a successful effort was made to repeal the subsidy law; but thanks to our representatives, the measure was made ineffective in Los Angeles County, should the voters specifically endorse the project of a railroad.
In April, 1872, Tom Mott and B. D. Wilson wrote Leland Stanford that a meeting of the taxpayers, soon to be called, would name a committee to confer with the railroad officials; and Stanford replied that he would send down E. W. Hyde to speak for the company. About the first of May, however, a few citizens gathered for consultation at the Board of Trade room; and at that meeting it was decided unanimously to send to San Francisco a committee of two, consisting of Governor Downey and myself, there to convey to the Southern Pacific Company the overtures of the City. We accordingly visited Collis P. Huntington, whose headquarters were at the Grand Hotel; and during our interview we canvassed the entire situation. In the course of this interesting discussion, Huntington displayed some engineer's maps and showed us how, in his judgment, the railroad, if constructed to Los Angeles at all, would have to enter the city. When the time for action arrived, the Southern Pacific built into Los Angeles along the lines indicated in our interview with Huntington.
On Saturday afternoon, May 18th, 1872, a public meeting was held in the Los Angeles Court-house. Governor Downey called the assembly to order; whereupon H. K. S. O'Melveny was elected President and Major Ben C. Truman, Secretary. Speeches were made by Downey, Phineas Banning, B. D. Wilson, E. J. C. Kewen and C. H. Larrabee; and resolutions were adopted pledging financial assistance from the County, provided the road was constructed within a given time. A Committee was then appointed to seek general information concerning railroads likely to extend their lines to Los Angeles; and on that Committee I had the honor of serving with F. P. F. Temple, A. F. Coronel, H. K. S. O'Melveny, J. G. Downey, S. B. Caswell, J. M. Griffith, Henry Dalton, Andrés Pico, L. J. Rose, General George Stoneman and D. W. Alexander. A few days later, Wilson, Rose and W. R. Olden of Anaheim were sent to San Francisco to discuss terms with the Southern Pacific; and when they returned, they brought with them Stanford's representative, Hyde. Temple, O'Melveny and I were made a special committee to confer with Hyde in drawing up ordinances for the County; and these statutes were immediately passed by the Supervisors. The Southern Pacific agreed to build fifty miles of its main trunk line through the County, with a branch line to Anaheim; and the County, among other conditions, was to dispose of its stock in the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad to the Southern Pacific Company.
When all this matter was presented to the people, the opposition was even greater than in the campaign of 1868. One newspaper--the Evening Express--while declaring that "railway companies are soulless corporations, invariably selfish, with a love for money," even maintained that "because they are rich, they have no more right to build to us than has Governor Downey to build our schoolhouses." Public addresses were made to excited, demonstrative audiences by Henry T. Hazard, R. M. Widney and others who favored the Southern Pacific. On the evening of November 4th, or the night before the election, the Southern Pacific adherents held a torchlight procession and a mass-meeting, at the same time illuminating the pueblo with the customary bonfires. When the vote was finally counted, it was found that the Southern Pacific had won by a big majority; and thus was made the first concession to the railroad which has been of such paramount importance in the development of this section of the State.
In 1872, Nathaniel C. Carter, who boasted that he made for the Government the first American flag woven by machinery, purchased and settled upon a part of the Flores rancho near San Gabriel. Through wide advertising, Carter attracted his Massachusetts friends to this section; and in 1874 he started the Carter excursions and brought train-loads of people to Los Angeles.
Terminating a series of wanderings by sea and by land, during which he had visited California in 1849, John Lang, father of Gustav J. (once a Police Commissioner), came to Los Angeles for permanent residence in 1872, bringing a neat little pile of gold. With part of his savings he purchased the five acres since known as the Laurel Tract on Sixteenth Street, where he planted an orchard, and some of the balance he put into a loan for which, against his will, he had to take over the lot on Spring Street between Second and Third where the Lang Building now stands. Soon after his advent here, Lang found himself one of four persons of the same name, which brought about such confusion between him, the pioneer at Lang's Station and two others, that the bank always labelled him "Lang No. 1," while it called the station master "Lang No. 2." In 1866, Lang had married, in Victoria, Mrs. Rosine Everhardt, a sister of Mrs. Kiln Messer; and his wife refusing to live at the lonesome ranch, Lang bought, for four hundred dollars, the lot on Fort Street on which Tally's Theater now stands, and built there a modest home from which he went out daily to visit his orchard. Being of an exceedingly studious turn of mind, Lang devoted his spare time to profitable reading; and to such an extent had he secluded himself that, when he died, on December 9th, 1900, he had passed full thirty years here without having seen Santa Monica or Pasadena. Nor had he entered the courtroom more than once, and then only when compelled to go there to release some property seized upon for taxes remaining unpaid by one of the other John Langs. Regarded by his family as idealistic and kind-hearted, John Lang was really such a hermit that only with difficulty were friends enough found who could properly serve as pall-bearers.
On June 2d, B. F. Ramirez and others launched the Spanish newspaper, La Cronica, from the control of which Ramirez soon retired to make way for E. F. de Celis. Under the latter's leadership, the paper became notable as a Coast organ for the Latin race. Almost simultaneously, A. J. King and A. Waite published their City Directory.
On the seventeenth of July our family circle was gladdened by the wedding festivities of Kaspare Cohn and Miss Hulda, sister of M. A. Newmark. The bride had been living with us for some time as a member of our family.
I have spoken of the attempt made, in 1859, to found a Public Library. In 1872, there was another agitation that led to a mass-meeting on December 7th, in the old Merced Theatre on Main Street; and among others present were Judge Ygnácio Sepúlveda, General George H. Stoneman, Governor John G. Downey, Henry Kirk White Bent, S. B. Caswell, W. J. Brodrick, Colonel G. H. Smith, W. B. Lawlor and myself. The Los Angeles Library Association was formed; and Downey, Bent, Brodrick, Caswell and I were appointed to canvas for funds and donations of books. Fifty dollars was charged for a life membership, and five dollars for yearly privileges; and besides these subscriptions, donations and loans of books maintained the Library. The institution was established in four small, dark rooms of the old Downey Block on Temple and Spring streets, where the Federal Building now stands, and where the Times, then the youngest newspaper in Los Angeles, was later housed; and there J. C. Littlefield acted as the first Librarian. In 1874, the State Legislature passed an enabling act for a Public Library in Los Angeles, and from that time on public funds contributed to the support of the worthy undertaking.
On January 1st, 1873, M. A. Newmark, who had come to Los Angeles eight years before, was admitted into partnership with H. Newmark & Company; and three years later, on February 27th, he married Miss Harriet, daughter of J. P. Newmark. Samuel Cohn having died, the associates then were: Kaspare Cohn, M. J. Newmark, M. A. Newmark and myself.
On February 1st, 1873, two job printers, Yarnell & Caystile, who had opened a little shop at 14 Commercial Street, began to issue a diminutive paper called the Weekly Mirror, with four pages but ten by thirteen inches in size and three columns to the page; and this miniature news-sheet, falling wet from the press every Saturday, was distributed free. Success greeted the advertising venture and the journal was known as the smallest newspaper on the Coast. A month later, William M. Brown joined the firm, thenceforth called Yarnell, Caystile & Brown. On March 19th, the publishers added a column to each page, announcing, rather prophetically perhaps, their intention of attaining a greatness that should know no obstacle or limit. In November, the Mirror was transferred to a building on Temple Street, near the Downey Block, erected for its special needs; and there it continued to be published until, in 1887, it was housed with the Times.
Nels Williamson, to whom I have referred, married a native Californian, and their eldest daughter, Mariana, in 1873 became the wife of António Franco Coronel, the gay couple settling in one of the old pueblo adobes on the present site of Bishop & Company's factory; and there they were visited by Helen Hunt Jackson when she came here in the early eighties. In 1886, they moved opposite to the home that Coronel built on the southwest corner of Seventh Street and Central Avenue. Educated here at the public and the Sisters' schools, Mrs. Coronel was a recognized leader in local society, proving very serviceable in the preparation of Ramona and receiving, in return, due acknowledgment from the distinguished authoress who presented her with the first copy of the book published.
Daniel Freeman, a Canadian who came in 1873, was one of many to be attracted to California through Nordhoff's famous book. After looking at many ranches, Freeman inspected the Centinela with Sir Robert Burnett, the Scotch owner then living there. Burnett insisted that the ranch was too dry for farming and cited his own necessity of buying hay at thirty dollars a ton; but Freeman purchased the twenty-five thousand acres, stocked them with sheep and continued long in that business, facing many a difficulty attendant upon the dry seasons, notably in 1875-76, when he lost fully twenty-two thousand head.
L. H. Titus, who bought from J. D. Woodworth the land in his San Gabriel orchard and vineyard, early used iron water-pipes for irrigation. A bold venture of the same year was the laying of iron water-pipes throughout East Los Angeles, at great expense, by Dr. John S. Griffin and Governor John G. Downey. About the same time, the directors of the Orange Grove Association which as we shall later see founded Pasadena, used iron pipe for conducting water, first to a good reservoir and then to their lands, for irrigating. In 1873 also, the Alhambra Tract, then beginning to be settled as a fashionable suburb of Los Angeles, obtained its water supply through the efforts of B. D. Wilson and his son-in-law, J. De Barth Shorb, who constructed large reservoirs near the San Gabriel Mission, piped water to Alhambra and sold it to local consumers.
James R. Toberman, destined to be twice rechosen Mayor of Los Angeles, was first elected in 1873, defeating Cristóbal Aguilar, an honored citizen of early days, who had thrice been Mayor and was again a candidate. Toberman made a record for fiscal reform by reducing the City's indebtedness over thirty thousand dollars and leaving a balance of about twenty-five thousand in the Treasury; while, at the same time, he caused the tax-rate during his administration to dwindle, from one dollar and sixty cents per hundred to one dollar. Toberman Street bears this Mayor's name.
In 1873, President Grant appointed Henry Kirk White Bent, who had arrived in 1868, Postmaster of Los Angeles.
The several agitations for protection against fire had, for a long time no tangible results--due most probably to the lack of water facilities; but after the incorporation of the Los Angeles Water Company and the introduction of two or three hydrants, thirty-eight loyal citizens of the town in April organized themselves into the first volunteer fire company, popularly termed the 38's, imposing a fee of a dollar a month. Some of the yeomen who thus set the ball a-rolling were Major Ben C. Truman, Tom Rowan, W. J. Brodrick, Jake Kuhrts, Charley Miles, George Tiffany, Aaron Smith, Henry T. Hazard, Cameron E. Thom, Fred Eaton, Matthew Keller, Dr. J. S. Crawford, Sidney Lacey, John Cashin and George P. McLain; and such was their devotion to the duty of both allaying and producing excitement, that it was a treat to stand by the side of the dusty street and watch the boys, bowling along, answer the fire-bell--the fat as well as the lean hitched to their one hose-cart. This cart, pulled by men, was known as the jumper--a name widely used among early volunteer firemen and so applied because, when the puffing and blowing enthusiasts drew the cart after them, by means of ropes, the two-wheeled vehicle jumped from point to point along the uneven surface of the road. The first engine of the 38's, known as Fire Engine No. 1, was housed, I think, back of the Pico House, but was soon moved to a building on Spring Street near Franklin and close to the City Hall.
About 1873, or possibly 1874, shrimps first appeared in the local market.
In 1873, the Los Angeles Daily News suspended publication. A. J. King had retired on the first of January, 1870, to be succeeded by Charles E. Beane; on October 10th, 1872, Alonzo Waite had sold his interest and Beane alone was at the helm when the ship foundered.
To resume the narrative of the Daily Star. In July, Henry Hamilton sold both the paper and the job-printing office for six thousand dollars to Major Ben C. Truman, and the latter conducted the Star for three or four years, filling it brimful of good things just as his more fiery predecessor had done.
John Lang--"number two"--the cultivator of fruit on what was afterward Washington Gardens, who established Lang's Station and managed the sulphur springs and the hotel there, in July killed a bear said to have been one of the grizzliest grizzlies ever seen on the Coast. Lang started after Mr. Bruin and, during an encounter in the San Fernando range that nearly cost his life, finally shot him. The bear tipped the beam--forbid it that anyone should question the reading of the scales!--at two thousand, three hundred and fifty pounds; and later, as gossip had it, the pelt was sold to a museum in Liverpool, England. This adventure, which will doubtless bear investigation, recalls another hunt, by Colonel William Butts, later editor of the Southern Californian, in which the doughty Colonel, while rolling over and over with the infuriated beast, plunged a sharp blade into the animal's vitals; but only after Butts's face, arms and legs had been horribly lacerated. Butts's bear, a hundred hunters in San Luis Obispo County might have told you, weighed twenty-one hundred pounds--or more.
Dismissing these bear stories, some persons may yet be interested to learn of the presence here, in earlier days, of the ferocious wild boar. These were met with, for a long time, in the wooded districts of certain mountainous land-tracts owned by the Ábilas, and there wild swine were hunted as late as 1873.
In the summer, D. M. Berry, General Nathan Kimball, Calvin Fletcher and J. H. Baker came to Los Angeles from Indianapolis, representing the California Colony of Indiana, a coöperative association which proposed to secure land for Hoosiers who wished to found a settlement in Southern California. This scheme originated with Dr. Thomas Balch Elliott of Indianapolis, Berry's brother-in-law and an army surgeon who had established the first grain elevator in Indiana and whose wife, now ill, could no longer brave the severe winters of the middle West.
Soon after their arrival, Wall Street's crash brought ruin to many subscribers and the members of the committee found themselves stranded in Los Angeles. Berry opened a real estate office on Main Street near Arcadia, for himself and the absent Elliott; and one day, at the suggestion of Judge B. S. Eaton, Baker visited the San Pasqual rancho, then in almost primeval glory, and was so pleased with what he saw that he persuaded Fletcher to join Dr. Elliott, Thomas H. Croft of Indianapolis and himself in incorporating the San Gabriel Orange Grove Association, with one hundred shares at two hundred and fifty dollars each. The Association then bought out Dr. J. S. Griffin's interest, or some four thousand acres in the ranch, paying about twelve dollars and a half per acre, after which some fifteen hundred of the choicest acres were subdivided into tracts of from fifteen to sixty acres each.
The San Pasqual settlement was thus called for a while the Indiana Colony, though but a handful of Hoosiers had actually joined the movement; and Dr. and Mrs. Elliott, reaching Los Angeles on December 1st, 1874, immediately took possession of their grant on the banks of the Arroyo Seco near the Frémont Trail. On April 22d, 1875, The Indiana Colony was discontinued as the name of the settlement; it being seen that a more attractive title should be selected. Dr. Elliott wrote to a college-mate in the East for an appropriate Indian name; and Pasadena was adopted as Chippewa for "Crown of the Valley." Linguists, I am informed, do not endorse the word as Indian of any kind, but it is a musical name, and now famous and satisfactory. Dr. Elliott threw all his energy into the cultivation of oranges, but it was not long before he saw, with a certain prophetic vision, that not the fruit itself, but the health-giving and charming qualities of the San Pasqual climate were likely to prove the real asset of the colonists and the foundation of their prosperity. Pasadena and South Pasadena, therefore, owe their existence largely to the longing of a frail Indiana woman for a less rigorous climate and her dream that in the sunny Southland along the Pacific she should find health and happiness.
M. J. Newmark was really instrumental, more than anyone else, in first persuading D. M. Berry to come to California. He had met Berry in New York and talked to him of the possibility of buying the Santa Anita rancho, which we were then holding for sale; and on his return he traveled homeward by way of Indiana, stopping off at Indianapolis in order to bring Berry out here to see the property. Owing to the high price asked, however, Berry and his associates could not negotiate the purchase, and so the matter was dropped.
Lawson D. Hollingsworth and his wife, Lucinda, Quakers from Indiana, opened the first grocery at the crossroads in the new settlement, and for many years were popularly spoken of as Grandpa and Grandma Hollingsworth. Dr. H. T. Hollingsworth, their son, now of Los Angeles, kept the Post Office in the grocery, receiving from the Government for his services the munificent sum of--twenty-five cents a week.
The summer of 1873 was marked by the organization of a corporation designed to advance the general business interests of Los Angeles and vicinity. This was the Chamber of Commerce or, as it was at first called, the Board of Trade; and had its origin in a meeting held on August 1st in the old Court-House on the site of the present Bullard Block. Ex-Governor John G. Downey was called to the chair; and J. M. Griffith was made Secretary pro tem. Before the next meeting, over one hundred representative merchants registered for membership, and on August 9th, a constitution and by-laws were adopted, a board of eleven Directors elected and an admission fee of five dollars agreed upon. Two days later, the organization was incorporated, with J. G. Downey, S. Lazard, M. J. Newmark, H. W. Hellman, P. Beaudry, S. B. Caswell, Dr. J. S. Griffin, R. M. Widney, C. C. Lips, J. M. Griffith and I. W. Lord, as Directors; and these officers chose Solomon Lazard as the first President and I. W. Lord as the first Secretary. Judge Widney's office in the Temple Block was the meeting-place. The Chamber unitedly and enthusiastically set to work to push forward the commercial interests of Southern California; and the first appropriation by Congress for the survey and improvement of San Pedro Harbor was effected mainly through the new society's efforts. Descriptive pamphlets setting forth the advantages of our locality were distributed throughout the East; and steps were taken to build up the trade with Arizona and the surrounding territory. In this way the Chamber of Commerce labored through the two or three succeeding years, until bank failures, droughts and other disasters, of which I shall speak, threw the cold blanket of discouragement over even so commendable an enterprise and for the time being its activities ceased.
On October 3d, C. A. Storke founded the Daily and Weekly Herald, editing the paper until August, 1874 when J. M. Bassett became its editor. In a few months he retired and John M. Baldwin took up the quill.
In the autumn of 1873, Barnard Brothers set in operation the first woolen mill here, built in 1868 or 1869 by George Hansen and his associates in the Canal and Reservoir Company. It was located on the ditch along the cañon of the Arroyo de Los Reyes--now Figueroa Street; and for fifteen years or more was operated by the Barnards and the Coulters, after which it was turned into an ice factory.
In March of the preceding year, I sent my son Maurice to New York, expecting him there to finish his education. It was thought best, however, to allow him, in 1873, to proceed across the ocean and on to Paris where he might also learn the French language, at that time an especially valuable acquisition in Los Angeles. To this latter decision I was led when Zadoc Kahn, Grand Rabbi of Paris and afterward Grand Rabbi of France, and a brother-in-law of Eugene Meyer, signified his willingness to take charge of the lad; and for three years the Grand Rabbi and his excellent wife well fulfilled their every obligation as temporary guardians. How great an advantage, indeed, this was will be readily recognized by all familiar with the published life of Zadoc Kahn and his reputation as a scholar and pulpit orator. He was a man of the highest ideals, as was proved in his unflinching activity, with Émile Zola, in the defense and liberation of the long-persecuted Dreyfus.
Sometime in December, L. C. Tibbetts, one of the early colonists at Riverside, received a small package from a friend at Washington, D. C., after having driven sixty-five miles to Los Angeles to get it; and he took it out of the little express office without attracting any more attention than to call forth the observation of the clerk that some one must care a lot about farming to make so much fuss about two young trees. "'Tis nothing, says the fool!" The package in question contained two small orange trees from Bahia, Brazil, brought to the United States by the Agricultural Department and destined to bestow upon Tibbetts the honor of having originated the navel orange industry of California.
In 1873, Drum Barracks at Wilmington were offered by the Government at public auction; and what had cost a million dollars or so to install, was knocked down for less than ten thousand dollars to B. D. Wilson, who donated it for educational purposes.
During the winter of 1873-74, the Southern Pacific commenced the construction of its Anaheim branch; and the first train from Los Angeles to the thriving, expectant German settlement made the run in January, 1875.
Max Cohn, a nephew, arrived in Los Angeles in 1873 and clerked for H. Newmark & Company for a number of years. In December, 1885, when I retired from the wholesale grocery business, Max became a full partner. In 1888, failing health compelled him, although a young man, to seek European medical advice; and he entered a sanatorium at Falkenstein, in the Taunus Mountains where, in 1889, he died.
FOOTNOTE:
[31] Blown down, in a wind-storm, on the night of April 13th, 1915.
XXXI. THE END OF VASQUEZ
1874
Although a high school had been proposed for Los Angeles as early as 1860, it was not until 1873, during Dr. W. T. Lucky's superintendency and under his teaching, that high-school courses were inaugurated here. Then the more advanced students were accommodated in the schoolhouse on Pound Cake Hill, where the Court-house now stands; and from this humble beginning the present high-school system of Los Angeles has been evolved. Later, under Dr. T. H. Rose's leadership, the grammar departments were removed to the other school buildings and the High School was conducted as an independent institution.
In 1874, S. Lazard & Company dissolved, Eugene and Constant Meyer succeeding, on June 15th, under the firm name of Eugene Meyer & Company or, as the store was better known, the City of Paris.
Charles H., or Charley White, long prominent in the passenger department of the Southern Pacific, entered the service of the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad in 1874, as John Milner's assistant, and soon became the regular ticket-agent here. After forty years of invaluable service, he is still with the Southern Pacific occupying the important position of Chief Clerk of the General Passenger Office.
George H. Peck, County Superintendent of Schools between 1874 and 1876, was a Vermonter who came in 1869 and bought five hundred acres of land near El Monte. On his first visit to the Coast, Peck handled hay in San Francisco when it was worth two hundred dollars a ton; then he mined a little; and subsequently he opened the first public school in Sacramento and the first industrial school in San Francisco.
Andrew A. Weinschank, a veteran of the Battle of Vera Cruz who came to Los Angeles in 1856, died on February 16th, 1874. For a while, he sold home-made sauerkraut, pickles and condiments, and was one of a well-known family in the German pioneer group here. Carrie, one of Weinschank's daughters, married a circus man named Lee who made periodical visits to Los Angeles, erecting a small tent, at first somewhere in the neighborhood of the present Times Building, in which to conduct his show. Later, Polly Lee became a rider in the circus and with her father electrified the youth of the town when Lee, in the character of Dick Turpin, and mounted on his charger, Black Bess, carried off the weeping Polly to his den of freebooters. A son, Frank A. Weinschank, was a pioneer plumber.
In the early seventies, while the Southern Pacific Railway was building from San Francisco to San José, some twelve or fifteen bandits, carousing at a country dance in the Mexican settlement, Panamá (about six miles south of Bakersfield) planned to cross the mountains and hold up the pay-car. They were unsuccessful; whereupon, they turned their attention to the village of Tres Pinos, robbed several store-keepers and killed three or four men. They were next heard of at little Kingston, in Tulare County, where they plundered practically the whole town. Then they once more disappeared.
Presently various clues pointed to the identity of the chief bandido as one Tibúrcio Vasquez, born in Monterey in the thirties, who had taken to the life of an outlaw because, as he fantastically said, some Gringos had insolently danced off with the prettiest girls at fandangos, among them being his sweetheart whom an American had wronged. With the exception of his Lieutenant, Chavez, he trusted no one, and when he moved from place to place, Chavez alone accompanied him. In each new field he recruited a new gang, and he never slept in camp with his followers.
Although trailed by several sheriffs, Vasquez escaped to Southern California leading off the wife of one of his associates--a bit of gallantry that contributed to his undoing, as the irate husband at once gave the officers much information concerning Vasquez's life and methods. One day in the spring of 1874, Vasquez and three of his companions appeared at the ranch of Alessandro Repetto, nine miles from town, disguised as sheep-shearers. The following morning, while the inmates of the ranch-house were at breakfast, the highwaymen entered the room and held up the defenceless household. Vasquez informed Repetto that he was organizing a revolution in Lower California and merely desired to borrow the trifling sum of eight hundred dollars. Repetto replied that he had no money in the house; but Vasquez compelled the old man to sign a check for the sum demanded, and immediately dispatched to town a boy working for Repetto, with the strict injunction that if he did not return with the money alone, and soon, his master would be shot.
When the check was presented at the Temple & Workman Bank, Temple, who happened to be there, became suspicious but could elicit from the messenger no satisfactory response to his questions. The bank was but a block from the Courthouse; and when Sheriff Rowland hurriedly came, in answer to a summons, he was inclined to detain the lad. The boy, however, pleaded so hard for Repetto's life that the Sheriff agreed to the messenger's returning alone with the money. Soon after, Rowland and several deputies started out along the same trail; but a lookout sighted the approaching horsemen and gave the alarm. Vasquez and his associates took to flight and were pursued as far as Tejunga Pass; but as the cutthroats were mounted on fresh horses, they escaped. Even while being pursued, Vasquez had the audacity to fleece a party of men in the employ of the Los Angeles Water Company who were doing some work near the Alhambra Tract. The well-known Angeleño and engineer in charge, Charles E. Miles, was relieved of an expensive gold watch.
In April, 1874, Sheriff Rowland heard that Vasquez had visited the home of "Greek George"--the Smyrniot camel-driver to whom I have referred--and who was living about ten miles from Los Angeles, near the present location of Hollywood. Rowland took into his confidence D. K. Smith and persuaded him to stroll that way, ostensibly as a farmer's hand seeking employment; and within two weeks Smith reported to Rowland that the information as to Vasquez's whereabouts was correct. Rowland then concluded to make up a posse, but inasmuch as a certain element kept Vasquez posted regarding the Sheriff's movements, Rowland had to use great precaution. Anticipating this emergency, City Detective Emil Harris--four years later Chief of Police--had been quietly transferred to the Sheriff's office; in addition to whom, Rowland selected Albert Johnson, Under Sheriff; B. F. Hartley, a local policeman; J. S. Bryant, City Constable; Major Henry M. Mitchell, an attorney; D. K. Smith; Walter Rodgers, proprietor of the Palace Saloon; and G. A. Beers, a correspondent of the San Francisco Chronicle. All these were ordered to report, one by one with their horses, shortly after midnight, at Jones's Corral on Spring Street near Seventh. Arms and ammunition, carefully packed, were likewise smuggled in. Whether true or not that Vasquez would speedily be informed of the Sheriff's whereabouts, it is certain that, in resolving not to leave his office, Rowland sacrificed, for the public weal, such natural ambition that he cannot be too much applauded; not even the later reward of eight thousand dollars really compensating him for his disappointment.
By half-past one o'clock in the morning, the eight members of the posse were all in the saddle and silently following a circuitous route. At about daybreak, in dense fog, they camped at the mouth of Nichols's Canyon--two miles away from the house of Greek George--where Charles Knowles, an American, was living. When the fog lifted, Johnston, Mitchell, Smith and Bryant worked their way to a point whence they could observe Greek George's farm; and Bryant, returning to camp, reported that a couple of gray horses had been seen tied near the ranch-house. Shortly thereafter, a four-horse empty wagon, driven by two Mexicans, went by the cañon and was immediately stopped and brought in. The Mexicans were put in charge of an officer, and about the same time Johnston came tearing down the ravine with the startling statement that Vasquez was undoubtedly at Greek George's!
A quick consultation ensued and it was decided by the posse to approach their goal in the captured vehicle, leaving their own horses in charge of Knowles; and having warned the Mexicans that they would be shot if they proved treacherous, the deputies climbed into the wagon and lay down out of sight. When a hundred yards from the house, the officers stealthily scattered in various directions. Harris, Rodgers and Johnston ran to the north side, and Hartley and Beers to the west. Through an open door, Vasquez was seen at the breakfast table, and Harris, followed by the others, made a quick dash for the house. A woman waiting on Vasquez attempted to shut the officers out; but Harris injected his rifle through the half-open door and prevented her. During the excitement, Vasquez climbed through a little window, and Harris, yelling, "There he goes!" raised his Henry rifle and shot at him. By the time Harris had reached the other side of the house, Vasquez was a hundred feet away and running like a deer toward his horse. In the meantime, first Hartley and then the other officers used their shotguns and slightly wounded him again. Vasquez then threw up his hands, saying: "Boys, you've done well! but I've been a damned fool, and it's my own fault!" The identity of the bandit thus far had not been established; and when Harris asked his name, he answered, "Alessandro Martinez."[32] In the meantime, captors and prisoner entered the house; and Vasquez, who was weakened from his wounds, sat down, while the young woman implored the officers not to kill him. At closer range, a good view was obtained of the man who had so long terrorized the State. He was about five feet six or seven inches in height, sparely built, with small feet and hands--in that respect by no means suggesting the desperado--with a low forehead, black, coarse hair and mustache, and furtive, cunning eyes.
By this time, the entire posse, excepting Mitchell and Smith (who had followed a man seen to leave Greek George's), proceeded to search the house. The first door opened revealed a young fellow holding a baby in his arms. He, the most youthful member of the organization, had been placed on guard. There were no other men in the house, although four rifles and six pistols, all loaded and ready for use, were found. Fearing no such raid, the other outlaws were afield in the neighborhood; and being warned by the firing, they escaped. One of Vasquez's guns, by the way, has been long preserved by the family of Francisco Ybarra and now rests secure in the County Museum.
Underneath one of the beds was found Vasquez's vest containing Charley Miles's gold watch, which Harris at once recognized. The prisoner was asked whether he was seriously hurt and he said that he expected to die, at the same time admitting that he was Vasquez and asking Harris to write down some of his bequests. He said that he was a single man, although he had two children living at Elizabeth Lake; and he exhibited portraits of them. He protested that he had never killed a human being, and said that the murders at Tres Pinos were due to Chavez's disobedience of orders.
The officers borrowed a wagon from Judge Thompson--who lived in the neighborhood--into which they loaded Vasquez, the boy and the weapons, and so proceeded on their way. When they arrived near town, Smith and Mitchell caught up with them. Mitchell was then sent to give advance notice of Vasquez's capture and to have medical help on hand; and by the time the party arrived, the excitement was intense. The City Fathers, then in session, rushed out pellmell and crowds surrounded the Jail. Dr. K. D. Wise, Health Officer, and Dr. J. P. Widney, County Physician, administered treatment to the captive. Vasquez, in irons, pleaded that he was dying; but Dr. Widney, as soon as he had examined the captive, warned the Sheriff that the prisoner, if he escaped, would still be game for a long day's ride. Everybody who could, visited him and I was no exception. I was disgusted, however, when I found Vasquez's cell filled with flowers, sent by some white women of Los Angeles who had been carried away by the picturesque career of the bandido; but Sheriff Rowland soon stopped all such foolish exuberance.
Vasquez admitted that he had frequently visited Mexicans in Los Angeles, doing this against the advice of his lieutenant, Chavez, who had warned him that Sheriff Rowland also had good friends among the Mexicans.
Among those said to have been in confidential touch with Vasquez was Mariano G. Santa Cruz, a prominent figure, in his way, in Sonora Town. He kept a grocery about three hundred feet from the old Plaza Church, on the east side of Upper Main Street, and had a curiously-assorted household. There on many occasions, it is declared, Vasquez found a safe refuge.
Five days after the capture, Signor Repetto called upon the prisoner, who was in chains, and remarked: "I have come to say that, so far as I am concerned, you can settle that little account with God Almighty!" Vasquez, with characteristic flourishes, thanked the Italian and began to speak of repayment, when Repetto replied: "I do not expect that. But I beg of you, if ever you resume operations, never to visit me again." Whereupon Vasquez, placing his hand dramatically upon his breast, exclaimed: "Ah, Señor, I am a cavalier, with a cavalier's heart!"--¡Señor Repetto, yo soy un caballero, con el corazón de un caballero!
As soon as Vasquez's wounds were healed, he was taken by Sheriff Rowland to Tres Pinos and there indicted for murder. Miller & Lux, the great cattle owners, furnished the money, it was understood, for his defense--supposedly as a matter of policy. His attorneys asked for, and obtained, a change of venue, and Vasquez was removed to San José. There he was promptly tried, found guilty and, in March, 1875, hanged.
Many good anecdotes were long told of Vasquez; one of which was that he could size up a man quickly, as to whether he was a native son or not, by the direction in which he would roll a cigarette--toward or away from himself! As soon as the long-feared bandit was in captivity, local wits began to joke at his expense. A burlesque on Vasquez was staged late in May at the Merced Theater; and the day the outlaw was captured, a merchant began his advertisement: "VASQUEZ says that MENDEL MEYER has the Finest and Most Complete Stock of Dry Goods and Clothing, etc."
In the spring of 1874, Charles Maclay, with whom were associated George K. and F. B. Porter, purchased the San Fernando rancho which consisted of fifty-six thousand acres and embraced the old Spanish Mission; and on April 20th, Maclay invited fifty of his friends to a picnic on his newly-acquired possession. During the day some one suggested founding a town there. The name of the new settlement was to be decided by a vote of the participants, and almost unanimously they selected the title of San Fernando. Within a couple of weeks, hundreds of lots were sold and the well-known colony was soon on the way to prosperity. Boring for petroleum commenced in the San Fernando Mountains about that time, and the new town became the terminus of the Southern Pacific until the long tunnel was completed. Maclay, who was a native of Massachusetts, came to California at about the same time as I did; he was at first a tanner in Santa Cruz, but later came south and, entering into politics in addition to his other activities, became State Senator, in which position he attained considerable local prominence.
A charming home of the seventies was that of Dr. and Mrs. Shaw, pioneers situated, as I recollect, on San Pedro Street perhaps as far south as what is now Adams. They conducted a diversified nursery, including some orange trees, to obtain which Shaw had journeyed all the way to Nicaragua.
Toward the end of April, 1874, General E. F. Beale and Colonel R. S. Baker, representing themselves and New York capitalists, sought support for a new railroad project--a single-track line to run from this city to Shoo-Fly Landing, located, I think, near the present Playa del Rey and considerably north of San Pedro; where a town, Truxton--doubtless named after the General's son--was to be founded. The proposed railway was to be known as the Los Angeles & Truxton Railroad, with a route from the western part of the city in the direction of Ciénega and the Rincon de los Bueyes, and along a corner of the Ballona. The estimated length of the line was fourteen miles, and the projectors claimed that it would enable the Angeleño to reach San Francisco within thirty hours, with but one night at sea, and so add to the comfort, convenience and cheapness of passenger travel. A new harbor and an additional pier stretching far into the ocean were to be features of the enterprise; but for some reason or other, nothing grew out of the movement. As late as the following September, the promoters were still interviewing councilmen and ranch-owners; but the Los Angeles & Truxton Railroad remained a mere fancy of the financier and engineer.
For a resort that never came to be settled by a community, Truxton acquired some fame in the early seventies, a rumor also being current in the summer of 1874 that a fine sea-shore hotel was to be built there. A clipping before me of the same date even says that "the roads to Santa Monica, Truxton and Will Tell's are in splendid order--the former being the finest natural highway on the Pacific Coast."
F. X. Eberle and wife, Marsetes, came here in 1874, bought six or seven acres on the corner of San Pedro and the present Eighth streets, and fitted up the City Gardens, with bowling alleys, swings, lawns and bowers, erecting there also a picturesque windmill.
I have expressed the surprise that I felt, when, upon my return from New York in 1868, I observed that the approaches to the hills were dotted here and there with little homes. This extension of the residence area, together with the general lack of street and sidewalk improvements making travel to and from the town somewhat inconvenient, suggested, I have no doubt, the need of the first street railroad here. In 1869, Judge R. M. Widney, together with his associates, obtained a fifty-year franchise; and by 1874, the little Spring and Sixth Street line--in time bought by S. C. Hubbell and J. E. Hollenbeck--had been built and was in operation. It is my recollection that this line (partly paid for by subscriptions from property owners along the selected route, each of whom contributed fifty cents per running foot) began at the Plaza and extended as far out as Pearl and Sixth streets by way of Main, Spring, First, Fort, Fourth, Hill, Fifth and Olive; and that it was at the Sixth and Pearl Street terminus that the almost miniature wooden barn was put up. For the convenience of the traveling public, two bob-tailed, one-horse cars with a small platform at each end were used over a single track approximately but two and a half miles in length; and to permit these cars to pass each other when they met halfway along the line, a turnout or side-track was constructed. Many a time at such a siding have I wasted precious minutes awaiting the arrival of the other, belated car; and the annoyance of these delays was accentuated when, in winter, the cars stuck in the mud and often required an hour or more to make the run from one end of the line to the other. Indeed, the ties having been laid almost on the surface of the streets, service in bad weather was sometimes suspended altogether. Each car was in charge of a driver who also acted as conductor and was permitted to stop as often as he pleased to take on or let off passengers; and while the single horse or mule jogged along slowly, the driver, having wound his reins around the handle of the brake, would pass through the never-crowded vehicle and take up the fares. Single rides cost ten cents; four tickets were sold for two bits; and twenty tickets were given for a dollar. So provincial was the whole enterprise that passengers were expected to purchase their tickets either at W. J. Brodrick's book store or of Dr. Fred. P. Howard, the druggist. At a later period, a metal box with a glass front was installed, into which the passenger was required to drop his coin or ticket.
In those modest days, small compensation in public utility enterprises--if such they could be called--was quite acceptable; and since the Spring and Sixth Street line had proven rather profitable, it was not long before W. J. Brodrick, Governor Downey, O. W. Childs, Dave Waldron, I. W. Hellman and others inaugurated a second horse-railway. This was popularly known as the Main Street line and extended straight down Main Street from Temple Block to Washington Gardens. Much the same kind of equipment was used, one horse or mule poking along with a bob-tailed car in tow, seating at most eight or ten passengers; but the fare for adults was ten cents, and for children five. At night, the motor power and the couple of cars were housed in a barn at either Main or Washington Street.
Soon after this line was in running order, it was extended from Washington south to Jefferson, out Jefferson to Wesley (now University) Avenue, and thence to the race-track at Agricultural Park; and there the shed for this section was erected. Still later, a branch was built out Washington Street to Figueroa, and down Figueroa to Jefferson, where it connected with the first extension. No formal transfers were made, transfer-tickets first coming into vogue in Los Angeles about 1889. Two routes for the cars were arranged, both running between Temple Block and the race-track. The entire system was controlled by the Main Street & Agricultural Park Railroad Company, with which W. J. Brodrick was associated as its first President, continuing in that office until his death in 1898. In 1877, Colonel John O. Wheeler, the quondam journalist, was Manager. Later, E. M. Loricke was Superintendent--the same Loricke who built the line between Oakland and Berkeley, and was finally killed by one of his own cars. James Gallagher, who went to work for the Main Street & Agricultural Park Railroad Company in October, 1888, and who had charge also of one of the first electric cars run here, is still a street-car conductor pleasantly known, with the longest record for service of any conductor in the city. As I have said, travel in winter was anything but expeditious and agreeable; and it was not uncommon for passengers, when a car left the track, to get out and assist in the operation of putting it back. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, however, the mule-car novelty became popular with some; and one Spanish girl in particular, whose father amply supplied her with pocket-money, was a frequent passenger, riding back and forth, from hour to hour, for months. As late as 1887, there were no cars before six o'clock in the morning or after ten o'clock at night; and in that same year, serious complaint was made that, despite a city ordinance forbidding any street railway company to carry more than forty persons in a car drawn by a single horse, the ordinance was shamefully disregarded. Another regulation then frequently disobeyed was supposed to limit smoking to the rear end of street cars.
The same year, D. V. Waldron bought about thirty-five acres on the southwest corner of Main and Washington streets, soon known as the Washington Gardens, later Chute's Park. These Gardens, among the most popular pleasure resorts here, were served by the Main Street cars which ran direct to the gate. In addition to a Sunday afternoon variety show that held forth in a small pavilion and secured most of its talent from Wood's Opera House, there was also dancing for those who wished to indulge. I may add that this so-called opera house was nothing more than a typical Western song and dance resort, the gallery being cut up into boxes where the actresses, between the acts, mingled with the crowd. Patrons indulged in drinking and smoking; and the bar in front did a thriving business. An insignificant collection of animals--one of which, an escaping monkey, once badly bit Waldron--attracted not only the children, but their elders as well; and charmingly-arranged walks, amid trees and bowers, afforded innocent and healthful means of recreation. Waldron later went to Alaska, where a tragic death closed his career: alone and in want, he was found, in May, 1911, dead in his hut.
Waldron and Eberle's prosperity may have influenced George Lehman's fortunes; but however that was, he always maintained his popularity. Many a joke was cracked at his expense; yet everybody had a good word for him. Here is a newspaper note of '74:
Round House George is making great improvements in his property at Fort and Sixth streets. He has already, at great expense, set out a post and whitewashed a cactus plant!
The popularity of the 38's Fire Company soon inspired a second group of the good men of Los Angeles; and in 1874 or 1875, George Furman, George E. Gard, Joe Manning, John R. Brierly, Bryce McClellan and others started Confidence Engine Company No. 2, obtaining a steamer known as an Amoskeag, which they installed in a building on Main Street near First, on what was later the site of Childs' Opera House. It soon developed, as in the days of the San Pedro stages when the most important feature of the trip was the race to town, that a conflagration was a matter of secondary importance, the mad dash, in rivalry, by the two companies being the paramount object. This was carried to such an extent that the day following a fire was largely given to discussing the race, and the first thing that everybody wished to know was, who got there first? Indeed, I believe that many an alarm was sounded to afford the boys around town a good chance to stake their bets! All this made the fire-laddies the most popular groups in the pueblo; and in every public parade for years the volunteer fire companies were the chief attraction. In 1876, Walter S. Moore, an arrival of 1875, became the Confidence Engine Company's Secretary, that being the commencement of his career as a builder of the department. In 1877, Moore was elected President, occupying that office till 1883 when he was made Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Fire Department.
On May 13th, 1874, the Los Angeles Daily Star contained the following reference to Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Newmark and an event of particular interest to me and my family:
Mr. Newmark, père and wife, were among the passengers for San Francisco by the Senator yesterday. This well-known and highly-esteemed couple go to attend the marriage of their son, Judge M. J. Newmark, which event occurs on the seventh proximo, as announced in the Star some time ago.
Eugene Meyer and myself attended the wedding, leaving Los Angeles by stage and completely surprising the merry company a few moments before the groom's father performed the ceremony. The fair bride was Miss Sophie Cahen, and the occasion proved one of the very agreeable milestones in an interesting and successful career. The first-born of this union, Henry M. Newmark, now of Morgan & Newmark, has attained civic distinction, being President of the Library Board.
The reason we journeyed north by stage was to escape observation, for since the steamer-service had been so considerably improved, most of our friends were accustomed to travel by water. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company at that time was running the Senator, the Pacific, the Orizaba and the Mohongo, the latter being the gunboat sold by the Government at the end of the War and which remained on the route until 1877; while the line controlled by Goodall, Nelson & Perkins or Goodall, Nelson & Company had on their list the Constantine, the Kalorama, the Monterey and the San Luis, sometimes also running the California, which made a specialty of carrying combustibles. A year later, the Ancon commenced to run between San Francisco and San Diego, and excepting half a year when she plied between the Golden Gate and Portland, was a familiar object until 1884.
The Farmers & Merchants Bank, on June 15th, 1874, moved to their new building on the west side of Main Street, opposite the Bella Union.
On July 25th, 1874, Conrad Jacoby commenced in the old Lanfranco Building the weekly Sued-Californische Post; and for fifteen years or more it remained the only German paper issued in Southern California. Jacoby's brother, Philo, was the well-known sharpshooter.
Henry T. Payne, the early photographer, was probably the first to go out of town to take views in suburbs then just beginning to attract attention. Santa Monica was his favorite field, and a newspaper clipping or two preserve the announcements by which the wet-plate artist stimulated interest in his venture. One of these reads:
Mr. Payne will be at Santa Monica next Sunday, and take photographic views of the camp, the ocean, the surrounding scenery, and such groups of campers and visitors as may see fit to arrange themselves for that purpose;
while another and rather contradictory notice is as follows:
To make photographs of moving life, such as Mr. Payne's bathing scenes at Santa Monica next Sunday, it is absolutely necessary that everybody should keep perfectly still during the few seconds the plate is being exposed, for the least move might completely spoil an otherwise beautiful effect. Santa Monica, with its bathers in nice costume, sporting in the surf, with here and there an artistically-posed group basking in the sunshine, ought to make a beautiful picture.
As late as 1874, Fort Street--not yet called Broadway--was almost a plain, except for the presence of a few one-story adobe houses. J. M. Griffith, the lumberman, put up the first two-story frame dwelling-house between Second and Third streets, and Judge H. K. S. O'Melveny the second; shortly after which Eugene Meyer and myself built our homes in the same block. These were put upon the lots formerly owned by Burns & Buffum. Within the next two or three years, the west side of Fort Street between Second and Third was the choicest residence neighborhood in the growing city, and there was certainly not the remotest idea at that time that this street would ever be used for business purposes. Sometime later however, as I was going home one day, I met Griffith and we walked together from Spring Street down First, talking about the new County Bank and its Cashier, J. M. Elliott--whom Griffith had induced four years previously to come to Los Angeles and take charge of Griffith, Lynch & Company's lumber yard at Compton. We then spoke of the city's growth, and in the course of the conversation he said: "Newmark, Fort Street is destined to be the most important business thoroughfare in Los Angeles." I laughed at him, but Time has shown the wisdom of Griffith's prophecy.
The construction of this Fort Street home I commenced in the spring, contracting with E. F. Keysor as the architect, and with Skinner & Small as the builders. In September, we moved in; and I shall never forget a happy compliment paid us the first evening. We had already retired when the sound of music and merriment made it unmistakable that we were being serenaded. Upon opening the door, we saw a large group of friends; and having invited them into the house, the merrymakers remained with us until the early morning hours.
In July, 1874, the Los Angeles County Bank was started with a capital of three hundred thousand dollars, its first directors being R. S. Baker, Jotham Bixby, George S. Dodge, J. M. Griffith, Vincent A. Hoover, Jonathan S. Slauson and H. B. Tichenor, with J. M. Elliott as Cashier. Its first location was the room just rented by the Farmers & Merchants Bank adjoining the Bella Union, the County Bank's step in that direction being due, no doubt, to a benevolent desire to obtain some of its predecessor's business; and in July, 1878, it moved into the Temple & Workman banking-room, after the latter's failure. For a while the County Bank did both a commercial and a savings business; but later it forfeited the savings clause of its charter, and its capital was reduced to one hundred thousand dollars. In time, John E. Plater, a well-known Angeleño, became a controlling factor.
About the end of 1874, Edward F. Spence, who had come to California by way of the Nicaragua route a year earlier than myself, reached Los Angeles. In 1884, Spence was elected Mayor on the Republican ticket. In the course of time, he withdrew somewhat from activity in Los Angeles and became a heavy investor in property at Monrovia.
In 1874 or 1875, there appeared on the local scene a man who, like his second cousin, United States Senator Mallory of Florida, was destined to become a character of national renown; a man who as such could and, as a matter of fact, did serve his constituents faithfully and well. That man was Stephen M. White. He was born in San Francisco a few weeks before I saw that harbor city, and was, therefore, a Native Son, his parents having come to the Coast in 1849. While a youth, he was sent to Santa Clara where, in June, 1871, he graduated from the well-known college; he read law at Watsonville and later at Santa Cruz; and having been admitted to the Bar in 1874, he shortly afterward came to the Southland.
Arriving in Los Angeles, White studied law with John D. Bicknell, who afterward took him into partnership; and he soon proved to be a brilliant lawyer. He was also an orator of the first magnitude; and this combination of talent made him not only prominent here, but attracted great attention to him from beyond the confines of city and county. Standing as a Democrat in 1882, he was elected District Attorney by a large majority and in that capacity served with distinction, in the end declining renomination. In 1886 he was elected State Senator and soon became President of the Senate, and then acting Lieutenant Governor. After a phenomenal career both in his profession and in the public service--during which he was one of three counsel elected by the California Legislature to maintain the Scott Exclusion Act before the United States Supreme Court and thus conclude the controversy in the Chae Chan Ping case--he was elected to the United States Senate, and there, too, his integrity and ability shone resplendent.
The zeal with which White so successfully entered the conflict against C. P. Huntington in the selection of a harbor for Los Angeles was indefatigable; and the tremendous expenditures of the Southern Pacific in that competition, commanding the best of legal and scientific service and the most powerful influence, are all well known. Huntington built a wharf--four thousand six hundred feet long--at Port Los Angeles, northwest of Santa Monica, after having obtained control of the entire frontage; and it was to prevent a monopoly that White made so hard a fight in Congress in behalf of San Pedro. The virility of his repeated attacks, his freedom from all contaminating influence and his honesty of purpose--these are some of the elements that contributed so effectively to the final selection of San Pedro Harbor. On February 21st, 1901, Senator White died. While at his funeral, I remarked to General H. G. Otis, his friend and admirer, that a suitable monument to White's memory ought to be erected; and on December 11th, 1908, the statue in front of the County Courthouse was unveiled.[33]
Hotel competition was lively in 1874. Charles Knowlton concluded his advertisement of the Pico House with a large index-finger and the following assurance:
The unpleasant odor of gas has entirely disappeared since the building of the new sewer!
Hammel & Denker announced for the United States (commonly known as the U. S.):
We have all Spring Beds at this Hotel!
Fluhr & Gerson--the latter long a popular chap about town--claimed for the Lafayette:
The Eating Department will be conducted with especial care;
and this was some of the bait displayed by the Clarendon, formerly the Bella Union:
Carriages are kept standing at the door for the use of the guests, and every effort is being made by COL. B. L. BEAL, the Present Manager, to render the guests comfortable and happy.
A couple of years later, the name of the Clarendon was changed to the St. Charles; next to which, during the Centennial year, the Grand Central, pretentious of name though small of dimension, opened with a splurge. Hammel & Denker continued to manage the United States Hotel. The Lafayette in time became, first the Cosmopolitan and then the St. Elmo.
Octavius Morgan, a native of the old cathedral town of Canterbury, England, came to Los Angeles in 1874 and associated himself with the architect, E. F. Keysor, the two forming the firm of Keysor & Morgan. They were charter members of the Southern California Architects Association, and for many years Morgan and his associates have largely influenced the architectural styles of Los Angeles.
A really picturesque old-timer even now at the age of nearly seventy, and one who, having withstood the lure of the modern automobile, is still daily driving a "one-hoss" buggy to the office of the Los Angeles Soap Company, is J. A. Forthman. In 1874, he brought a small stock of groceries from San Francisco and started a store at what is now Sixth and Olive streets; but at the end of three months, having sold out at a loss, he bought a quarter interest in a little soap plant conducted by C. W. Gibson. Soon thereafter, vats and fat were moved to their present site on First Street. In 1875, W. B. Bergin and in 1879, Gideon Le Sage joined Forthman and Gibson; and in 1887, the latter sold out to his associates. J. J., a brother of W. B. Bergin, was added to the force in 1895. For many years the concern dealt in hides, and this brought us into close business relations. I have referred to the death of four children. Edith, a child of six, was taken from us on October 15th, 1874.
While William F. Turner, son of the miller, was busy in his little store near the Puente Mills about three miles from El Monte, on the third of June, 1874, a Californian named Romo, who lived at Pio Pico's Ranchito, entered and bought some goods, also asking to be shown a pair of boots. Turner stooped to reach the articles, when the stranger drew a pruning-knife across his throat. In defense, the storekeeper caught hold of the sharp blade with both hands and thereby crippled himself for the rest of his days.
Turner had been in the habit of closing before dark on account of the rough element near by; and when he did not return home at the accustomed hour, Mrs. Turner, taking with her a little five-shooter, set out to find him and arrived in the midst of the murderous assault. Her pistol missed fire, but she succeeded in seizing the assassin and dragging him away from her husband; after which, the Mexican shot her just as Turner, bleeding, fell in the road. The explosion aroused a neighbor who reached the scene after Romo had fled with some boots--mostly for one foot!--and seventy dollars in cash.
When the news passed from mouth to mouth in El Monte, a posse started out to hunt for the Mexican; but after two days' unsuccessful search, they gave up the job. Then Fred Lambourn, who had a share in Turner's business, rushed in on Jake Schlesinger, shouting excitedly, "By God, Jake, I know where the fellow is!" and Jake and others responded by saddling their horses and hurrying to a rendezvous at Durfee's farm. The party of nineteen, including John Broaded and Bill Cooper, broke up into divisions of one or two and in time found themselves wading in and out of the San Gabriel River and the Puente Creek. Soon old Dodson spied their quarry floundering across stream; and when Schlesinger took a pop at him, the culprit cried out, "Don't shoot!" and agreed to come ashore. Of the money stolen, all but a few dollars was found on the prisoner; nevertheless, the captors told him that, as soon as Turner should identify him, he would be hung and that there was not much time for foolishness. Romo said that he had assaulted the storekeeper in order to get money with which, on the following Sunday, to marry; that his immediate need was a cigar; and that, if he must die, he would like to have his friends notified, that they might bury him. Jake handed the doomed man his only weed; and soon after, five or six masked men rode up and announced that they would care for the criminal. Then they drove under a tree on the bank of the river and there, in short order, the cutthroat was hanged.
Pio Pico soon heard of the lynching and sent Jake and the El Monte boys word that he would come over and "kill the whole damned lot" of them; in reply to which, El Monte forwarded to the last of the Mexican governors a cordial invitation to come, at the same time pledging to receive him in true California style--with due hospitality and warmth. This was contemporaneous with the Vasquez excitement, and Romo was probably bent on imitating the outlaw.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] Not the Spanish Alejandro; a variation doubtless suggested by the Italian Repetto's forename.
[33] Executive Committee of the Memorial Fund: M. P. Snyder, Chairman; Joseph Scott, Secretary; James C. Kays, Treasurer; F. W. Braun, A. B. Cass, R. F. Del Valle, I. B. Dockweiler, W. J. Hunsaker, M. H. Newmark and H. G. Otis.
XXXII. THE SANTA ANITA RANCHO
1875
Until near the end of the seventies, there was very little done toward the laying of sewers, although the reader will remember that a private conveyor connected the Bella Union with the zanja running through Mellus's Row. Los Angeles Street from First to Second, in 1873, had one of brick and wood; and in 1875, a brick sewer was built from the corner of Main and Arcadia streets down to Winston and thence to Los Angeles Street. It must have been in the early seventies that a wooden sewer was constructed on Commercial Street from Los Angeles to Alameda, and another on New High Street for about one block. In 1879, one of brick was laid from Los Angeles and Commercial as far north as Arcadia, and connecting with the Main Street sewer. At about the same time, vitrified clay was used on a portion of Temple Street. My impression is that there was no cloaca laid on Spring Street until after 1880, while it was still later that Fort, Hill and Olive streets were served. As late as 1887, Hope Street had no sewer and very little conduit-building, if any, had been undertaken south of Seventh or west of Flower.
In January, 1875, the Commercial Bank, that was to change five years later into the First National, began business. Most of the incorporators were San Diego men--among them being Captain Henry Wilcox--although four--L. J. Rose, S. H. Mott, R. M. Town and Edward Bouton--were from Los Angeles. M. S. Patrick, of Chicago, was President; and Edward F. Spence was Cashier. Their room was on Main Street between Commercial and Requena. J. E. Hollenbeck, who was succeeded by Spence, was the first President of the National Bank. J. M. Elliott, made Cashier in 1885, has for years well filled the office of President. A pillar of strength in this institution is Vice-president Stoddard Jess.
Captain Wilcox, owner of the Colorado Steam Navigation Company, who finally sold out to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, brought to California, on his own vessel in 1848, the first light-houses. He married Señorita María Antónia Arguello, the granddaughter of an early Governor of California. One of his daughters became the wife of Lieutenant Randolph Huntington Miner, and another married Lieutenant J. C. Drake. Captain Wilcox had induced E. F. Spence to come from San Diego to Los Angeles, and thereby gave a decided impetus to the starting of the Commercial Bank.
Milton Lindley, formerly an Indiana saddle-maker and Treasurer of Los Angeles County in 1879, arrived here in 1875, accompanied by Walter, the physician; Henry, the banker, who settled at Whittier; Albert, an attorney; and Miss Ida B., a teacher. In the eighties, he was twice Supervisor. Dr. Walter Lindley, once a Minnesota schoolmaster, so soon established himself that in 1878 he was elected health officer and, in 1880, a member of the Board of Education. The following year, he was President of the County Medical Society. With Dr. Widney, he contributed to the literature setting forth California's natural attractions; and with his brother-in-law, Dr. John R. Haynes, he took a leading part in organizing the California Hospital. Both Lindley and Haynes have identified themselves with many other important local institutions and movements.
Madame Caroline Severance, already distinguished as the founder, in 1868, of the first woman's club in America--the New England, of Boston--took up her residence in Los Angeles in 1875 and soon made her home, El Nido, the center of many notable sociological and philanthropic activities. Especially active was she in promoting the free kindergarten, working in coöperation with Mrs. Grover Cleveland and Kate Douglas Wiggin, the California author who was her protégée and resided for some time at El Nido when she was first becoming famous as a story-writer.
On March 27th, the Weekly Mirror was again enlarged and a subscription rate of one dollar a year was charged. By the beginning of 1876, a bindery was established in connection with the printery; and a Potter cylinder press--one of the first operated west of the Rockies--was installed.
E. J. Baldwin bought the Santa Anita rancho, in April, from H. Newmark & Company--a transaction recalled thirty-eight years later when, in 1913, the box which had been sealed and placed in the corner-stone of the Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, at about the time of the sale, was brought forth from its long burial. Baldwin had just sold his controlling interest in the Ophir mine of the Comstock district for five million, five hundred thousand dollars. In the same year, we purchased of the Vejar estate the splendid vineyard of fifty acres commencing at Washington Street, on the south and a little east of Main Street, and taking in many important sections of to-day; selling it, in the early eighties, to Kaspare Cohn who, in turn, disposed of it during the boom of that decade. George Compère, somewhat noted as a local entomologist, cared for this vineyard while we owned it. Baldwin died on March 1st, 1909.
The sale of the Santa Anita is not without an incident or two, perhaps, of exceptional interest. On "Lucky" Baldwin's first visit, he offered us one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the property; but learning that we wanted two hundred thousand dollars, he started off in a huff. Then Reuben Lloyd, the famous San Francisco attorney who accompanied him, said on reaching the sidewalk, "Lucky, go back and buy that ranch, or they'll raise the price on you!" and Baldwin returned, carrying under his arm a tin-box (containing several million dollars) from which he drew forth twelve thousand, five hundred, tendering the same as a first payment.
One can hardly refer to Baldwin without recalling H. A. Unruh, in the late sixties in the employ of the Central Pacific. It is my impression that I first met him at the Baldwin Hotel in San Francisco. This meeting may have occurred nearly thirty-five years ago; and after his removal to the Santa Anita Ranch, where he took charge of Baldwin's interests in the Southland, he transacted a large amount of business with H. Newmark & Co. In 1887, Unruh was also in partnership at La Puente with a man named Carroll, the firm advertising as "Agents for Baldwin's Grain Warehouse, Wells Fargo & Co.'s Express and Postmaster." When Baldwin died, his will named Unruh executor; Bradner W. Lee being the attorney.
Ravenna, on the Southern Pacific, was a town of the middle seventies, at whose start James O'Reilly, an Irishman of medium build, with reddish hair and a pug nose decidedly indented at the bridge, turned up with a happy-go-lucky air. Always slovenly, he wore a big, black slouch hat on the back of his head, as well as a good-natured expression, in days of prosperity, on his comical face. He had a grocery, famed for a conglomeration of merchandise not at all improved by age and hard usage; and this he sold to a none too fastidious clientele. He also cooked for himself, bragging that he was sufficiently adroit to throw a slapjack up the chimney and catch it in the pan, outside the shanty on its flop or turn! When Jim took to working a couple of claims known as the New York and Parnell Mines, his tribulations began: he spent more in the development of his property than he ever recovered, and claim-jumpers bothered him to death. In truth, once ascribing debatable motives to a man prowling there, he took aim at the intruder and--shot off an ear! Later, he married; but his wife soon divorced him. In time, his troubles affected his mind; and having lost everything and come to fancy himself an alchemist, he would sit for hours in the burning sun (his temples plastered with English mustard) industriously stirring a pestle and convinced that he could bring about a transmutation of the mortarful of mud. In the end, this good-natured Son of Erin was one day found dead in his little shanty.
J. A. Graves arrived in Los Angeles on June 5th and soon entered the office of Brunson & Eastman, lawyers. The following January he was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court and then became a member of the firm of Brunson, Eastman & Graves, dissolved in 1878. Practicing alone for a couple of years, Graves, in 1880, formed a partnership with J. S. Chapman. On the dissolution of this firm, in 1885, Graves joined, first H. W. O'Melveny and then J. H. Shankland; Graves, O'Melveny & Shankland continuing until January, 1904. On June 1st, 1903, Graves became Vice-president of the Farmers & Merchants National Bank. In the fall of 1879, the young attorney married Miss Alice H., daughter of J. M. Griffith, and for nine years they lived at the corner of Fort and Third streets. In 1888 they removed to Alhambra, where they still live. In 1912, Graves published some entertaining reminiscences entitled, Out of Doors California and Oregon.
Colonel W. E. Morford, a native of New Jersey and, late in the eighties, Superintendent of Streets, returned to Los Angeles in 1875, having previously been here. Morford had been assistant to Captain Sutter; and when he left San Francisco on March 14th, 1849, to return East, he carried the first gold taken from the diggings in the exciting era of 1848. This gold was sent by Frank Lemon, a member of Stevenson's Regiment, to his brother William, a partner of John Anderson, the New York tobacco merchant; and Morford liked to tell how, when the strange find was displayed on August 22d, in a little window of the well-known jewelry store of Benedict at 7 Wall Street near a high-hatted guard, the narrow thoroughfare was soon beyond hope of police control, thousands of curious, excited people struggling to get a glimpse of the California treasure.
Moses Langley Wicks was a Mississippian who for some years had a law office at Anaheim until, in 1877 or 1878, he removed to Los Angeles and soon became an active operator in real estate. He secured from Jonathan S. Slauson--who organized the Azusa Land and Water Company and helped lay out the town--the Dalton section of the San José Ranch. Wicks was also active in locating the depot of the Santa Fé Railroad, carrying through at private expense the opening of Second Street from Main almost to the river. A brother, Moye Wicks, long an attorney here, later removed to the State of Washington.
Southern California was now prospering; in fact, the whole State was enjoying wonderful advantages. The great Comstock mines were at the height of their prosperity; the natural resources of this part of the country were being developed; land once hard to sell, at even five dollars an acre, was being cut up into small tracts; new hamlets and towns were starting up; money was plentiful and everybody was happy.
About this time my brother, J. P. Newmark, and I made a little tour, visiting Lake Tahoe--an unusual trip in that day--as well as the mines of Nevada. Virginia City, Gold Hill and other mining-camps were the liveliest that I had ever seen. My friend, General Charles Forman, was then Superintendent of the Overman and Caledonia Mines, and was engaged in constructing a beautiful home in Virginia City. After the collapse of the Nevada boom in the early eighties, he transported this house to Los Angeles, at a freight expense of eleven hundred and thirty-five dollars and a total cost of over six thousand, and located it on ten acres of land near the present site of Pico and Figueroa streets, where Mr. and Mrs. Forman, still residents of Los Angeles, for years have enjoyed their home.
Miners were getting high wages and spending their money lavishly, owners of buildings in Virginia City receiving from four to eight per cent. a month on their investments. W. C. Ralston, President of the Bank of California at San Francisco, was largely responsible for this remarkable excitement, for he not only lent money freely but he lent it regardless of conservative banking principles. He engaged in indiscriminate speculation, for a time legitimatizing illegitimacy, and people were so incited by his example that they plunged without heed. All of Nevada's treasure was shipped to San Francisco, whose prosperity was phenomenal. From San Francisco the excitement spread throughout the State; but these conditions, from the nature of things, could not endure. From Bull to Bear is but a short step when the public is concerned, and it happened accordingly, as it so frequently does, that the cry of "Save yourself, if you can!" involved California in a general demoralization. One day in October, 1875, when Ralston's speculation had indeed proven disastrous, the Bank of California closed its doors; and a few days after this, Ralston, going a-swimming in the neighborhood of the North Beach at San Francisco, was drowned--whether a suicide or not, no one knows. In the meantime, the recessional frenzy extended all over the State, and every bank was obliged to close its doors. Those of Los Angeles were no exception to the rule; and it was then that Temple & Workman suspended. I. W. Hellman, who was on a European trip at the time, forthwith returned to Los Angeles, re-opened the doors of the Farmers & Merchants Bank and resumed business just as if nothing had happened. Following this panic, times became dreadfully bad; from greatest prosperity, we dropped to the depths of despair. Specie disappeared from circulation; values suffered, and this was especially true of real estate in California.
Temple & Workman's Bank, for reasons I have already specified, could not recover. Personally, these gentlemen stood well and had ample resources; but to realize on these was impossible under conditions then existing. They applied to E. J. Baldwin, a Monte Cristo of that period, for a loan. He was willing to advance them two hundred and ten thousand dollars, but upon two conditions: first, that they would give him a blanket-mortgage on their combined real estate; secondly, that their intimate friend, Juan Matías Sanchez, would include in the mortgage his splendid tract consisting of twenty-two hundred acres of the finest land around the Old Mission. Sanchez, who transacted a good deal of business with H. Newmark & Company, came to me for advice. I felt convinced that Temple & Workman's relief could be at best but temporary, although I am sure that they themselves believed it would be permanent, and so I strenuously urged Sanchez to refuse; which he finally promised me to do. So impressive was our interview that I still vividly recall the scene when he dramatically said: "¡No quiero morir de hambre!"--"I do not wish to die of hunger!" A few days later I learned, to my deep disappointment, that Sanchez had agreed, after all, to include his lands. In the course of time, Baldwin foreclosed and Sanchez died very poor. Temple also, his pride shattered --notwithstanding his election in 1875 to the County Treasurership --died a ruined man; and Workman soon committed suicide. Thus ended in sorrow and despair the lives of three men who, in their day, had prospered to a degree not given to every man, and who had also been more or less distinguished. Baldwin bought in most of the land at Sheriff's sale; and when he died, in 1909, after an adventurous career in which he consummated many transactions, he left an estate of about twenty millions. A pathetic reminder of Sanchez and his one-time prosperity is an asador or meat toaster, from the old Sanchez homestead, now exhibited at the County Museum.
In 1874, Senator John P. Jones came south and engaged with William M. Stewart, his senatorial colleague (once an obscure lawyer in Downieville, and later a Nevada Croesus), in mining at Panamint, purchasing all their supplies in Los Angeles. About the same time, Colonel R. S. Baker, who had shortly before bought the San Vicente rancho, sold a two-thirds interest in the property to Jones; and one of their first operations was the laying out of the town of Santa Monica. After the hotel and bath-houses had been built, an auction sale of lots took place on July 16th, 1875, and was attended by a large number of people, including myself; prospective buyers coming from as far as San Francisco to compete with bidders from the Southland. Tom Fitch, already known as the "Silver-tongued Orator," was the auctioneer and started the ball rolling with one of his most pyrotechnical efforts. He described the place about to be founded as "The Zenith City by the Sunset Sea," and painted a gorgeous vista of the day when the white sails of commerce would dot the placid waters of the harbor, and the products of the Orient would crowd those of the Occident at the great wharves that were to stretch far out into the Pacific!
Then Tom turned his attention and eloquence to the sale of the lots, which lay along Ocean Avenue, each sixty by one hundred and fifty feet in size. Calling for a bid, he announced the minimum price of three hundred dollars for sites along the ocean front. Several friends--I. M. Hellman, I. W. Hellman, Kaspare Cohn, Eugene Meyer and M. J. Newmark--had authorized me to act for them; and I put in the first bid of three hundred dollars. Fitch accepted, and stated that as many more of these lots as I wanted could be had at the same price; whereupon I took five, located between Utah and Oregon avenues. These we divided among us, each taking fifty feet front, with the expectation of building summer homes; but strange to say, none of us did so, and in the end we sold our unimproved ground. Some years later, I bought a site in the next block and built a house which I still occupy each year in the summer season.
Three early characters of Santa Monica had much to do with the actual starting of the place. The one, L. G. Giroux, a Canadian, walked out to Santa Monica one day in 1875, to get a glimpse of the surf, and came back to town the owner of a lot on which he soon built the second permanent house there--a small grocery and liquor shop. In the eighties, Giroux did good public service as a Supervisor. The second, Billy Rapp, also came in 1875 and built a small brick house on the west side of Second Street somewhere between Utah and Arizona avenues. There, after marrying a German Frau, he opened a saloon; and pleasure-seekers visiting Santa Monica on Sundays long remembered Billy's welcome and how, on the arrival of the morning train from Los Angeles, he always tapped a fresh keg of lager. After a while, he closed his saloon and sold the little building for a town hall. Hard times in later years rapped at Billy's door, forcing him to work on the public streets until 1899, when he died. The third settler was George Boehme, who landed with the first steamer and, within an hour or two, invested in lots. His family is there to-day.
Another pioneer Santa Monica family was that of William D. Vawter who, with his sons, W. S. and E. J., originally members of the Indiana Colony at Pasadena, removed to the beach in 1875. My relations with these gentlemen were quite intimate when they conducted a general merchandise business, that being but one of their numerous enterprises. Of late years, W. S. Vawter has twice been Postmaster at Santa Monica.
In 1875, Paul Kern, who had come to Los Angeles in 1854 and was for years a baker, set to work to improve a piece of property he owned at the junction of South Main and Spring streets, between Eighth and Ninth. At the end of this property he erected a two-story brick building--still to be seen--in the lower part of which he had a grocery and a saloon, and in the upper part of which he lived.
Toward the middle of the seventies, A. Ulyard, the baker, embarked in the carrying of passengers and freight between Los Angeles and Santa Monica, sending a four-horse stage from here at half-past seven every morning, and from Santa Monica at half-past three in the afternoon, and calling at all four Los Angeles hotels as well as at the private residences of prospective patrons. One dollar was the fare charged.
Ralph Leon had the only regular cigar store here in the late sixties, occupying a part of the United States Hotel; and he was very prosperous until, unable to tolerate a nearby competitor--George, a brother of William Pridham--he took up a new stand and lost much of his patronage. Pridham opened the second cigar store, about 1872 or 1873, next to the hotel; and Leon moved to a shop near the Farmers & Merchants Bank.
The names of these early dealers remind me of an interesting custom especially popular with Captain Thom, Billy Workman and other lovers of the aromatic weed. Instead of buying cigars by the piece, each of these inveterate smokers purchased a box at a time, wrote his name on the lid and left it on a shelf of the dealer; and from time to time they would slip in by a rear door and help themselves--generally from their own or, occasionally, from their neighbor's supply. When Leon discovered that the patron's box was empty, he would have it refilled.
In the autumn, Temple & Workman were obliged to suspend. After closing temporarily, they made an effort to resume, but a run on the Bank deprived them of all reserves and they finally had to close their doors. It was the worst of all bank failures here, the creditors losing everything. Some idea of the disaster may be gathered from the fact that the Receiver finally sold worthless securities to the extent of about three hundred thousand dollars for the paltry sum of thirty dollars.
On the sixth of November, 1875, Mrs. Joseph Newmark, my wife's mother, died here surrounded by her nearest of kin.
During the construction of the Southern Pacific Railway, Sisson, Wallace & Company, who furnished both labor and supplies, brought M. Dodsworth to Los Angeles and like many of their employees, he remained here after the railroad was completed. He engaged in the pork-packing business, for a long period prospered and built a residence on the southwest corner of Sixth and Main streets, opening it with a large reception. He was an honorable man and had a host of friends; but about 1887, when the Santa Fé had been built to Los Angeles, the large Eastern packers of hog products sent agents into Southern California and wiped Dodsworth out of business.
S. J. Mathes came in 1875, helped enlarge the Mirror and was identified with the Times; but failing health, forcing him to abandon office work, led him in the eighties to conduct Pullman excursions, in which undertaking he became a pioneer, bringing thousands of tourists to the Southland. He also toured the country with a railway car exhibit known as "California on Wheels," pointing the way of exploitation to later Chambers of Commerce.
Toward the end of the year, when attention was being centered on the coming exposition at Philadelphia, I was asked by the Chamber of Commerce to assist in editing a report on the resources, conditions, population, climatic advantages and mercantile interests of the city and county of Los Angeles. The aim of the Board was to make the report truthful and helpful, and to distribute it gratis, particularly at the Centennial. Ben C. Truman wrote about cities, towns and climate; Judge R. M. Widney reported on railroads; H. McClellan, the steamship agent (who preceded Willis Parris, the present representative and once a competent bill-clerk in the employ of H. Newmark & Company) and brother of Bryce and George F. McClellan, told of ocean navigation; Dr. J. E. Fulton, of Fulton Wells, discussed farming; Dr. J. P. Widney described our harbor; D. M. Berry argued for real estate; Governor Downey presented banks and banking; M. Keller and L. J. Rose treated of vine culture; J. de B. Shorb looked after semi-tropical fruits and nuts, and T. A. Garey--himself the owner of a charming place on San Pedro Street, where his spiritualistic tendencies kept him up at night awaiting the arrival of spooks--considered other fruits and nurseries; W. J. Brodrick stated our advance in trades, professions, churches and societies; E. C. French summed up about stock; Captain Gordon recounted our prospects for beet culture; while H. D. Barrows and I prepared data as to the commerce of Southern California. Thus compactly put together, this booklet certainly led many Easterners to migrate West and to settle in Los Angeles and vicinity.
In the early seventies, Grange Stores, brought into existence by a craze for coöperation, were scattered throughout the State, and Milton H. La Fetra in February, 1875 helped to organize one here. In time, this establishment became known, first as Seymour & Company and then as Seymour, Johnson & Company, their location being on Main Street near First.
W. H. Northcraft's activity as an auctioneer began about the middle of the seventies. For a while, he had an office in Temple Block, but about 1880 moved to the east side of Los Angeles Street near Requena; later to the Signoret Building, and still later to the Baker Block. In 1879, Thomas B. Clark, still well known "in the profession," came to Los Angeles and, marrying Northcraft's daughter, joined his father-in-law in partnership. C. L. Northcraft, a son, was added to the firm. Alonzo B. Cass came to Los Angeles in 1888, accompanied by his brothers, and soon after, as Cass Brothers' Stove Company, they started a hardware store on Third Street, purchasing some of Northcraft & Clark's stock of merchandise. A. B. Cass, who served as President of the Chamber of Commerce in 1901, has freely given of his time to public movements. As President of the Home Telephone & Telegraph Company, he has had much to do with their local success. E. W. Noyes was also a popular, old-time auctioneer, remaining in harness until he was seventy-five years old or more.
The mention of these names recalls the auction of past decades, such a familiar feature of Los Angeles life. In few respects were the methods of early days at all like those of our own: there were no catalogues, no neatly-arranged store-rooms and but little expert service; noise and bluff constituted a good, even important portion of the necessary auctioneering talent; household effects were usually offered at homes; horses--and these constituted the objects of most early auctioneering activities--were trotted up and down Los Angeles Street for display and sale.
XXXIII. LOS ANGELES & INDEPENDENCE RAILROAD
1876
Once Santa Monica's boom had been launched, the town developed as had few other suburbs of Los Angeles. Within nine or ten months a thousand inhabitants pointed with satisfaction to one hundred and sixty houses and perhaps half as many tents. Senator Jones built a wharf and pushed to completion the Los Angeles & Independence Railroad; and the road was opened to the public on Wednesday, December 1st, 1875, with a depot on San Pedro Street near Wolfskill Lane. Two trains a day were run--one leaving Los Angeles for Santa Monica at half-past nine in the morning and another at a quarter after four in the afternoon; the trains from Santa Monica for Los Angeles departing at half-past seven in the morning and half-past two in the afternoon. On January 5th, 1876, the Railroad Company offered sixty single commutation tickets for ten dollars; and a few days later, the conductor and other train employees appeared in uniform, each wearing on his cap what was then considered an innovation, the badge of his office. Captain Joseph U. Crawford was Superintendent and Chief Engineer.
From the start the Road did a thriving freight business, although passenger traffic was often interfered with. Early in January, 1876, for instance, the train from Santa Monica failed to make its appearance, the engineer having spied a bit of ground suspiciously soft in the ciénaga--locally spelled ciénega--refused, despite the protests of passengers, to proceed!
There were also inconveniences of travel by steamer such as arose from the uncertainty whether a vessel running between San Francisco and San Diego would put in at San Pedro or Santa Monica. According to conditions, or perhaps through the desire to throw a little trade one way or the other, the captain might insist on stopping at one port, while friends had assembled to greet the traveler at the other. A single car, with such objects of wonder as air brakes and Miller couplers drew Sunday crowds; and when, about the middle of January, the Company carried down ten car-loads of people on a single day and brought them back safely, substantial progress, it was generally felt, had been made.
In February, the Santa Monica Land Company was pushing its sales of real estate, and one of its announcements began with the headlines:
SANTA MONICA! The Wonderful Young City and Seaport of Southern California! The Future Terminus of the Union & Texas Pacific Railroad!
the advertisement winding up with the declaration that several hundred vessels, including the largest boats of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, had already loaded and discharged at the wharf in all weathers!
My memory is obscure as to just when Senator Jones built his splendid mansion at the corner of Ocean and Nevada avenues, but I think it was about 1890. I certainly recollect that it was then considered the most extensive and elaborate home in the vicinity of Los Angeles.
Rather late in January, H. Newmark & Company had their first experience with burglars who scaled the wall behind the store one Saturday night, cut away enough brick to enable them to throw back the bolt of the door, then barricaded the front doors by means of crowbars and proceeded to open the safe, which was of the old Tilton & McFarland pattern. The face was forced off, but the eight hundred dollars in the safe remained intact and undisturbed, the burglars making a total haul of only five dollars. Other merchants also suffered at this time from the depredations of cracksmen.
Following this futile attack, we sent for a new safe of the Hall type. Scarcely had a month elapsed, however, when a second attempt was made in much the same way. Then the burglars went to work in real earnest and soon effected an entrance into the money-drawers. But, alas! the entire contents secured would not have provided half a dozen tamales! This fact, probably, aroused the ire of the rascals, for they mutilated the front of the prettily-decorated safe before leaving, and tried to destroy the combination. The best excuse--and perhaps not such a bad one--that the police had to offer for not furnishing Los Angeles Street better protection, was that the night was dark, the street and sidewalks flooded and that a policeman, who had tried the beat, had been nearly drowned!
In February, trains on the Los Angeles & Independence Railroad began to leave Los Angeles at ten o'clock in the morning and five o'clock in the afternoon, and Santa Monica at eight and four o'clock, the Company deeming it a sufficient inducement to allow excursionists five or six hours to bathe, fish or picnic. Round-trip tickets, good for the day and date only, were sold at a dollar each; and the management reserved the right, on steamer days, to change the schedule to fit the sailings. When a fourth passenger coach was added to the equipment, the Company declared that the accommodations between this city and Santa Monica were "equal to those on any road along the entire Coast;" but the high-water mark of effort was reached when it was announced that the "splendid palace car dubbed Santa Monica, which had carried Senator Jones to Washington," was then being sent south from San Francisco for the convenience of the Company's patrons. In March, while the San Pedro Street Railway was being built, another official announcement said that "in the course of a few days the people of this city will have the honor and delight of seeing a palace car standing on a railroad track near the Pico House;" and about the end of March printer's ink displayed this appeal to the expectant public:
Go, by all means, to the grand seaside excursion to Santa Monica on Friday, for among the objects of interest will be Senator Jones's magnificent new palace-car now being completed by the tailors (sic) which will have three salons, supplied with tables and all the usual comforts, and two private compartments, the whole sumptuously furnished and partly upholstered with crimson velvet!
On February 14th, General Andrés Pico died at his residence, 203 Main Street, and was buried from his home on the following day.
On March 1st, work was commenced on the San Pedro Street Railway, which in time was extended from the Santa Monica station to the Plaza, via San Pedro, Los Angeles, Arcadia and Sanchez streets. The gauge was that of the Los Angeles & Independence Railway, thus permitting freight cars to be hauled to the center of the city; on which account business men looked upon the new road as a boon. Passenger cars soon ran from the depot to the Pico House; and as the fare was but five cents, or thirty tickets for a dollar, this line was rewarded with a fair patronage. At the end of 1876, four street railways were in operation here.
In March, also, two hundred pleasure-seekers, then considered a generous outpouring, went down to Santa Monica on a single Sunday; and within the first three months of the year, the Land Company there gathered in about seventy-three thousand dollars--selling a lot almost every day. South Santa Monica was then looked upon as the finer part of the growing town, and many of my friends, including Andrew Glassell, Cameron E. Thom, General George Stoneman, E. M. Ross, H. M. Mitchell, J. D. and Dr. Frederick T. Bicknell and Frank Ganahl, bought sites there for summer villas.
Micajah D. Johnson, twice City Treasurer, was a Quaker who came here in 1876. He built at Santa Monica a hotel which was soon burned; and later he became interested in the colony at Whittier, suggesting the name of that community.
In 1876, the City purchased a village hook-and-ladder truck in San Francisco which, drawn by hand in the vigorous old-fashioned way, supplied all our needs until 1881.
In 1876, the Archer Freight and Fare Bill, which sought to regulate railroad transportation, engrossed the attention of commercial leaders, and on March 9th, President S. Lazard called together the Directors of the Chamber of Commerce at the office of Judge Ygnácio Sepúlveda. Besides President Lazard, there were present R. M. Widney, W. J. Brodrick, M. J. Newmark, E. E. Hewitt and I. W. Lord. Little time was lost in the framing of a despatch which indicated to our representatives how they would be expected to vote on the matter. Several speeches were made, that of M. J. Newmark focusing the sentiment of the opposition and contributing much to defeat the measure. Newmark expressed surprise that a bill of such interest to the entire State should have passed the Lower House apparently without discussion, and declared that Southern Californians could never afford to interfere with the further building of railroads here. Our prosperity had commenced with their construction, and it would be suicidal to force them to suspend.
In a previous chapter I have spoken of the rate--ten dollars per thousand--first charged for gas, and the public satisfaction at the further reduction to seven dollars and a half. This price was again reduced to six dollars and seventy-five cents; but lower rates prevailing elsewhere, Los Angeles consumers about the middle of March held a public meeting to combat the gas monopoly. After speeches more lurid, it is to be feared, than any gas flame of that period, a resolution was passed binding those who signed to refrain from using gas for a whole year, if necessary, beginning with the first of April. Charles H. Simpkins, President of the Los Angeles Gas Company, retorted by insisting that, at the price of coal, the Company could not possibly sell gas any cheaper; but a single week's reflection, together with the specter of an oil-lamp city, led the Gas Company, on March 21st, to grant a reduction to six dollars a thousand.
Will Tell was a painter in 1869 and had his shop in Temple Block, opposite the Court House. Early in 1876 he opened a lunch and refreshment house at the corner of Fourth Street and Utah Avenue in Santa Monica, where he catered to excursionists, selling hunting paraphernalia and fishing tackle, and providing "everything, including fluids." Down at what is now Playa del Rey, Tell had conducted, about 1870, a resort on a lagoon covered with flocks of ducks; and there he kept eight or ten boats for the many hunters attracted to the spot, becoming more and more popular and prosperous. In 1884, however, raging tides destroyed Tell's happy hunting grounds; and for fifteen or twenty years, the "King's Beach" was more desert than resort. Tell continued for a while at Santa Monica and was an authority on much that had to do with local sport.
On Sunday, April 9th, the Cathedral of Sancta Vibiana, whose corner-stone had been laid in 1871 on the east side of Main Street south of Second, was opened for public service, its architecture (similar to that of the Puerto de San Miguel in Barcelona, Spain) at once attracting wide attention. As a matter of fact, the first corner-stone had been placed, on October 3d, 1869, on the west side of Main Street between Fifth and Sixth, when it was expected that the Cathedral was to extend to Spring Street. The site, however (and oddly enough,) was soon pronounced, "too far out of town," and a move was undertaken to a point farther north. In more recent years, efforts have been made to relocate the bishop's church in the West End. A feature of the original edifice was a front railing, along the line of the street, composed of blocks of artificial stone made by Busbard & Hamilton who in 1875 started a stone factory, the first of its kind here, in East Los Angeles.
Victor Dol, who arrived here in the Centennial year and became the Delmonico of his day, kept a high-grade restaurant, known as the Commercial in the old Downey Block, about one hundred and fifty feet north of the corner of Spring and Temple streets. The restaurant was reached through a narrow passageway that first led into an open court paved with brick, in the center of which a fountain played. Crossing this court, the interested patron entered the main dining-room, where an excellent French dinner was served daily at a cost of but fifty cents, and where the popular chef furnished many of the notable banquets of his time. Dol also had a number of private dining-rooms, where the epicures of the period were wont to meet, and for the privilege of dining in which there was an additional charge. Dol's Commercial was a popular institution for more than a quarter of a century.
Dol then had in his employ an uncle, who was a rather mysterious individual, and who proved to be a French anarchist. It was said that his pet scheme for regulating the government of Louis Philippe met with such scant approval that, one fine day, he found himself in jail. Escaping in course of time from the anxious and watchful authorities, he made his way to the outside world and finally located here. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, he was supposed to have returned to his native land, where he once more satisfied his peculiar propensity for patriotic activity by tearing down and burning, in company with other so-called Communists, some of the most beautiful buildings in all Paris.
In the spring of 1876, Los Angeles boasted of another French restaurant, a dining place called the Oriental and conducted by a Frenchman, C. Casson and a German, H. Schmitt. It was on Main Street opposite the Pico House, and much ado was made of the claim that everything was "in European style" and that it was "the largest and most commodious restaurant south of San Francisco."
Human nature--at least of the feminine type--was much the same, thirty-five or forty years ago, as it is to-day. Such a conclusion, at least, the reader may reach after scanning an Easter advertisement of Miss Hammond, an 1876 milliner who had a little shop at 7 North Spring Street and who then made the following announcement to those of her fashion-loving sex:
Miss Hammond, who has just received a splendid lot of new styles of hats, bonnets, silks, ribbons, etc., invites the ladies of Los Angeles to call at her place of business before purchasing elsewhere. One glance into her show-window will be enough to project any modern heart into a state of palpitation.
Elsewhere I have mentioned the salt works near Redondo's site. Dr. H. Nadeau (who came here in 1876, had an office in the Grand Central Hotel and was soon elected Coroner) was once called there and started with a constable and an undertaker--the latter carrying with him a rough board coffin for the prospective "subject." Losing their way, the party had to camp for the night on the plains; whereupon the Coroner, opening the coffin, crawled in and "slept like a brick!"
John Edward Hollenbeck, who in 1888 built the Hollenbeck Hotel, returned to Los Angeles in the spring of 1876--having been here in 1874, when he made certain realty investments--secured land on the east side of the Los Angeles River, spent a large sum of money for improvements and soon built a residence exceptionally fine for that time. And in this beautiful home, in close proximity to Boyle Avenue, he lived until his death, on September 2d, 1885, at the age of fifty-six years. Succeeding A. C. Bilicke in 1903, John S. Mitchell, long a prominent Angeleño, is still controlling this busy hostelry.
I have spoken of an adobe on ten acres of land I once purchased to secure water for my flock of sheep. After Hollenbeck had built his home on Boyle heights, he was so disturbed by a company of Mexicans who congregated in this adobe that, in sheer desperation, he asked me in 1882 to sell him the land. I did so, and we agreed upon six hundred and twenty-five dollars as a price for the entire piece.
Hollenbeck then made another noteworthy investment. H. C. Wiley owned a lot, one hundred and twenty feet by one hundred and sixty-five, on the southeast corner of Fort and Second streets, where he lived in a small cottage. He had mortgaged this property for six thousand dollars; but since, under his contract, Wiley was not required to pay interest, the mortgagee tired of the loan. Hollenbeck bought the mortgage and made a further advance of four thousand dollars on the property. He finally foreclosed, but at the same time did the handsome thing when he gave Mrs. Wiley, a daughter of Andrés Pico, a deed for the forty feet on Fort Street upon which the cottage stood. These forty feet are almost directly opposite Coulter's dry goods store.
So many ranchers had again and again unsuccessfully experimented with wheat in this vicinity that when I. N. Van Nuys, in 1876, joined Isaac Lankershim in renting lands from the company in which they were interested, and in planting nearly every acre to that staple grain, failure and even ruin were predicted by the old settlers. Van Nuys, however, selected and prepared his seed with care and the first season rewarded them with a great harvest, which they shipped to Liverpool. Thus was inaugurated the successful cultivation of wheat in Southern California on a large scale. In 1878, the depot of the Southern Pacific at the corner of Alameda and Commercial streets had become too small for the Company's growing business, compelling them to buy on San Fernando Street; and Lankershim and his associates purchased the old structure from the Company for the sum of seventeen thousand, five hundred dollars, and there erected a flour mill which they conducted until the ranch was sold, a few years ago.
One of the very interesting cases in the Los Angeles courts was that which came before Judge H. K. S. O'Melveny on May 15th when Mrs. Eulalia Perez Guillen, one hundred and thirty years old according to the records of the church at San Gabriel, claimed the right to exhibit herself at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia as a California curiosity. She was accompanied to court by a daughter, Mariana and their counsel, F. P. Ramirez; but there was also present another daughter, Mrs. de White, who brought Attorney Stephen M. White to assist in opposing the visionary scheme. Mariana admitted that she had not the means to humor the old lady in her hobby, while Mrs. de White objected that her mother was in her dotage and could not travel as far as Philadelphia. The Judge granted the old lady liberty to live with either daughter, but required of Mariana a bond of five hundred dollars as a guarantee that she would not take her mother out of the county.
On May 17th, William Workman was gathered to his fathers, later being buried near the little chapel at La Puente, side by side with John Rowland, his early comrade and life-long friend.
An early and popular educator here was Miss E. Bengough who, about 1870, had started her "Select School for Young Ladies and Children," and who on June 5th had one of her "commencements" in the Spring Street school house. At the beginning of the eighties, the Bengough school was at No. 3 Third Street. Miss Bengough died, a number of years ago, after having been for some years at the Hollenbeck Home.
Glowing descriptions of the Centennial Exposition first attracted the attention of Madame Helena Modjeska, the Polish lady eventually so famous, and the presence here of a small Polish colony finally induced her and her husband, Charles Bozenta Chlapowski, to make the dubious experiment of abandoning the stimulation of Old World culture and committing themselves to rustic life near the bee ranch of J. E. Pleasants in Santiago Cañon. Heaps of cigarettes, books and musical instruments were laid in to help pass the hours pleasantly; but disaster of one kind or another soon overtook the idealists who found that "roughing it" in primeval California suggested a nightmare rather than a pleasant dream. Forced to take up some more lucrative profession, Madame Modjeska, in July, 1877, made her début in San Francisco as Adrienne Lecouvreur and was soon starring with Booth. This radical departure, however, did not take the gifted lady away for good; her love for California led her to build, near the site of their first encampment and in what they called the Forest of Arden, a charming country home to which she repaired when not before the footlights. Still later, she lived near Newport. More than one public ovation was tendered Madame Modjeska in Los Angeles, the community looking upon her as their own; and I remember a reception to her at O. W. Childs's home when I had a better opportunity for noting her unostentatious and agreeable personality. Modjeska Avenue is a reminder of this artist's sojourn here.
In June, W. W. Creighton started the Evening Republican; but during the winter of 1878-79 the paper, for lack of support, ceased to be published.
Andrew W. Ryan, a Kilkenny Irishman commonly called Andy, after footing it from Virginia City to Visalia, reached Los Angeles on horseback and found employment with Banning as one of his drivers. From 1876 to 1879, he was County Assessor, later associating himself with the Los Angeles Water Company until, in 1902, the City came into control of the system.
XXXIV. THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC
1876
Before the completion of the San Fernando tunnel, a journey East from Los Angeles by way of Sacramento was beset with inconveniences. The traveler was lucky if he obtained passage to San Fernando on other than a construction train, and twenty to twenty-four hours, often at night, was required for the trip of the Telegraph Stage Line's creaking, swaying coach over the rough road leading to Caliente--the northern terminal--where the longer stretch of the railroad north was reached. The stage-lines and the Southern Pacific Railroad were operated quite independently, and it was therefore not possible to buy a through-ticket. For a time previously, passengers took the stage at San Fernando and bounced over the mountains to Bakersfield, the point farthest south on the railroad line. When the Southern Pacific was subsequently built to Lang's Station, the stages stopped there; and for quite a while a stage started from each side of the mountain, the two conveyances meeting at the top and exchanging passengers. Once I made the journey north by stage to Tipton in Tulare County, and from Tipton by rail to San Francisco. The Coast Line and the Telegraph Line stage companies carried passengers part of the way. The Coast Line Stage Company coaches left Los Angeles every morning at five o'clock and proceeded via Pleasant Valley, San Buenaventura, Santa Bárbara, Guadalupe, San Luis Obispo and Paso de Robles Hot Springs, and connected at Soledad with the Southern Pacific Railroad bound for San Francisco by way of Salinas City, Gilroy and San José; and this line made a speciality of daylight travel, thus offering unusual inducements to tourists. There was no limit as to time; and passengers were enabled to stop over at any point and to reserve seats in the stage-coaches by giving some little notice in advance.
In 1876, I visited New York City for medical attention and for the purpose of meeting my son, Maurice, upon his return from Paris. I left Los Angeles on the twenty-ninth of April by the Telegraph Stage Line, traveling to San Francisco and thence east by the Central Pacific Railroad; and I arrived in New York on the eighth of May. My son returned, June 29th, on the steamer Abyssinia; and a few days later we started for home. While in Brooklyn, on June 4th, I attended Plymouth Church and heard Henry Ward Beecher preach on "Serve Thy Master with a Will." His rapid transition from the pathetic to the humorous, and back to the pathetic, was most effective.
Our itinerary brought us to the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, on the Fourth of July; and aside from the peculiar satisfaction at being present on historic ground upon that anniversary, I recall, with pleasure, many experiences and impressions new and interesting, notwithstanding the inconvenience caused by the great crowds. At the Exhibition, which had a circumference of only three and a half miles, I saw California's small but very creditable display; and I remember my astonishment at seeing a man seated before an apparatus, apparently in the act of printing letters. He was demonstrating an early typewriter, and I dictated to my wife half a dozen lines which he rapidly typed upon paper. Of the various nations, the Japanese and the Chinese attracted me most. Machinery Hall, with its twelve hundred machines all run by one huge Corliss engine, was as noisy as it was interesting. The New York Herald and the Times were printed there daily. In the Art Gallery there was one marble figure so beautifully draped that a young lady, passing by, said: "Father, why don't they remove that lace shawl from the statue?" During the evening, on the balconies of the Union League Club, we enjoyed a torchlight parade never to be forgotten.
On our way West we stopped at Salt Lake City; and as we had been informed that Brigham Young would be at the Opera House that evening, we attended the performance. I have forgotten the name of the play, but Rose Eytinge was the star. Brigham sat in his private box with two of his wives; and as it was a very hot night in July and the building was packed with people, his wives were both fanning him assiduously and otherwise contributing to his comfort. The following day we called at his residence to see him, expecting to renew an acquaintanceship established years before; but to our regret he was ill and could not receive us. A few months later, he died.
Leaving Salt Lake City early in August, we traveled by the Central Pacific to San Francisco where several days were very pleasantly spent with my brother and his family, and from there we left for Los Angeles, taking the Southern Pacific to its terminus at Lang's Station. Proceeding over the mountain by stage, we arrived at what is now the south end of the long tunnel and there boarded the train for this city.
Among others who went from Los Angeles to the Philadelphia Centennial was Ben C. Truman. He took with him specimens of choice California plants, and wrote letters, from various stations on the way, to his paper, the Star. Governor and Mrs. Downey, whom I met in New York in June, were also at the Exhibition.
Ben Truman's visit recalls the enterprise of preparing a booklet for circulation at the exposition setting forth the advantages of Los Angeles, and the fact that the Star was the first to propose sending copies of the local newspapers to Philadelphia, at the same time agreeing to contribute its share. In that connection, it also referred to a previous, similar experiment, endorsed by Truman, in these words:
This City has never been so prosperous as when the Chamber of Commerce sent fifty papers each week for one year of the Herald, Express and Star, to the leading hotels and libraries throughout the country, a movement inaugurated and carried out by Mr. M. J. Newmark. Those few papers, distributed where they would do the most good, filled our hotels and boarding houses, and sent joy to the hearts of the real estate dealers. It's a most trifling thing to do, and "there's millions in it."
Another interesting experiment in early advertising, by means of the stereopticon, was made in 1876 when the Los Angeles photographer, Henry T. Payne, exhibited at Philadelphia a fine selection of views designed to inform the spectator about Southern California and to attract him hither. Toward the end of May, Payne left for the East, taking with him a first-class stereopticon and nearly a thousand lantern slides of the old wet-plate process, the views being the product of Payne's own skill and labor.
For some time prior to 1876, the suitable observance here of the anniversary of the Nation's independence had been frequently discussed, and when James J. Ayers called a meeting of citizens in the County Court House, on the evening of April 29th, and another on May 6th, it was decided to celebrate the Fourth of July in a manner worthy of the occasion. Committees were appointed to arrange the details; and when the eventful day arrived, the largest throngs in the City's history assembled to give vent to their patriotism.
The procession--led by Grand Marshal H. M. Mitchell, assisted by Marshals Eugene Meyer, Francisco Guirado, John F. Godfrey and Otto von Ploennies, mounted on the best-groomed steeds of the Fashion Stables--formed towards ten o'clock and was half an hour in passing the corner of Temple, Spring and Main streets. The Woods Opera House Band, the Los Angeles Guard and the Los Angeles Rifleros assisted. The parade wended its tortuous way from the Aliso Mills in the northeast to the Round House in the south.
An interesting feature of the march was the division of Mexican War Veterans. Forty-two of these battle-scarred soldiers, a number of whom had become prominent in civic life, lined up, among them General George Stoneman, Captain William Turner, Dr. J. S. Griffin, Major Henry Hancock, S. C. Foster, John Schumacher, L. C. Goodwin, D. W. Alexander and A. W. Timms. Another feature worthy of note was the triumphal chariot of the French Benevolent Society, in which three young ladies represented respectively the Goddess of Liberty, France and America. Fire Engine Company No. 38, Confidence Engine Company No. 2 and the Hook and Ladder Company formed another division, followed by several societies and secret orders. In one float thirteen young ladies represented the thirteen original colonies and in another twenty-five damsels portrayed the rest of the States. There were also the Forty-niners, the butchers and the other tradesmen; while George and Martha Washington accompanied the Philadelphia Brewery!
For this local celebration of the Centennial, streets, public buildings, stores and private residences were beautifully decorated, portraits of Washington being everywhere. Hellman, Haas & Company, S. C. Foy, the Los Angeles Social Club and H. Newmark & Company were among those who especially observed the day. There was a triple arch on Main Street, with a center span thirty feet wide and thirty feet high, and statues of Washington, Grant and others. The railroad depots and trains were also fittingly adorned; and at the residence and grounds of Consular Agent Moerenhaut, the Stars and Stripes, with the French tricolor, were displayed under the legend, "Friends Since One Hundred Years." The Pico House was perhaps the most elegantly adorned, having a column, a flagstaff and a Liberty cap, with the enthusiastic legends:
1776. 1876. Now for 1976! To the patrons of the Pico House: May you live 100 years! No North, no South, no East, no West!
The Round House gardens having been reached, the literary and musical program began. The band played Hail Columbia! and General Phineas Banning, the presiding officer, introduced the Rev. T. T. Packard who delivered the opening prayer. Banning then made a short patriotic address; America was sung by several church choirs of the city; Professor Thomas A. Saxon read the Declaration of Independence; the choirs sang the Red, White and Blue; and J. J. Ayers, as poet of the occasion, read an original poem. Yankee Doodle came after that; and then James G. Eastman, as orator of the day, delivered the address, reviewing the civilization and wonders of every age, and tickling the hearers' vanity with perorations such as this:
When the mournful zephyrs, passing the plain where Marathon once stood, shall find no mound to kiss; when the arch of Titus shall have been obliterated; the Colosseum crumbled into antique dust; the greatness of Athens degenerated into dim tradition; Alexander, Cæsar and Napoleon forgotten; the memories of Independence Hall shall still bloom in imperishable freshness!
At the conclusion of the oration, Jacob A. Moerenhout, the venerable French representative, spoke very appropriately of the relation of France to America in our great Revolutionary struggle; after which the Rev. A. W. Edelman concluded the exercises by pronouncing the benediction. The celebration had a soul in it and no doubt compensated in patriotic sincerity for what it may have lacked in classical elegance.
Incidental to this commemoration, the Literary Committee having in charge the exercises had named Don J. J. Warner, Judge Benjamin Hayes and Dr. J. P. Widney a sub-committee to compile the most interesting data about the old town from the Spanish occupancy by the founding of the Mission at San Gabriel; and on the Fourth of July, or within less than two months after their appointment, the historians produced their report--to which I have already referred--a document, known as An Historical Sketch of Los Angeles County, California, which, in spite of the errors due to the short period allotted the editors, is still interesting and valuable; portraying, as it does, various characteristics of early life in the Southland and preserving to posterity many names and minor facts.
In the summer of 1875, fifteen hundred men began to dig their way into the San Fernando Mountains; and about the end of the first week in September, 1876, the long tunnel was completed--a bore six thousand nine hundred and forty feet in length, beginning twenty-seven miles from Los Angeles. During the course of construction, vast quantities of candles, generally the best, were employed to furnish light for the workmen, H. Newmark & Company supplying most of the illuminants.
Some of the facts concerning the planning, building and attendant celebration of this now famous tunnel should be peculiarly interesting to the Angeleño of to-day, as also to his descendants, for not only do they possess intrinsic historical importance, but they exemplify as well both the comparative insignificance of Los Angeles at the time when this great engineering feat was so successfully undertaken and the occasional futility of human prophecies, even when such prophecies are voiced by those most fitted at the time to deliver them.
I have already mentioned the interview which Governor Downey and I had with Collis P. Huntington, in San Francisco, when we presented the arguments of Los Angeles for the extension of the Southern Pacific Railroad to this point. The greatest difficulty, from an engineering standpoint, was the boring and finishing of the San Fernando tunnel, and the then small town of Los Angeles was compelled to pass through much discouragement before she became the Southern terminus of the road, a selection of the most vital importance to her future prosperity and growth. In the first place, a Mr. Rice, whose office was in Temple Block, represented the Railroad Company in telling the citizens of Los Angeles that if they did not appropriate toward the undertaking two hundred and fifty thousand dollars--then an enormous sum of money--Los Angeles would be left out of the line of travel and the railroad would be built so as to pass several miles inland, compelling our city to make a choice between putting in a branch to connect with the main line or resigning any claim she might have to become a railroad center. In fact, this is precisely what occurred in the case of Visalia and a number of other towns; that is to say: they are to-day the termini of railroad feeders, instead of a part of the main line as they perhaps might have been.
When this threat or warning was delivered, an agitation immediately set in, both to collect the money that the Company demanded and to influence its management to include Los Angeles on the main line. Judge R. M. Widney was one of the prominent figures in the local campaign. The Chamber of Commerce, through its President, Solomon Lazard, also buckled on its armor in behalf of Los Angeles and entered the lists. Notably it sent a telegram to the United States Senate--the railroad, as is well known, having received land-grants of inestimable value from Congress and being considered, therefore, susceptible to influence; and this telegram was penned with such classical eloquence that it poured seventy-five dollars into the coffers of the telegraph company. The net result of the campaign was the decision of the Railroad Company to include Los Angeles among the favored stations.
The politics of the situation having thus been satisfactorily settled, the engineering problems began to cast their shadows. General Stoneman stated that the tunnel bore could not be effected, an opinion which was by no means uncommon at that time. Others again said that people would never be induced to travel through so long a tunnel; still another set of pessimists stated that the winter rains would cause it to cave in, to which Senator Stanford laconically replied that it was "too damned dry in Southern California for any such catastrophe." This railroad and the tunnel, however, were fortunately to become one of those happy instances in which the proposals of man and the disposals of the Lord are identical, for in course of time both found their completion under the able direction of railroad genius, assisted in no small way by the gangs of thousands of Orientals who did the hard road-work.
As in the case with practically every Southern Californian enterprise, the finishing of this great undertaking was accompanied by a rather elaborate celebration. A delegation of San Francisco citizens, one of whom was my brother, met at Newhall a delegation from Los Angeles including S. Lazard[34] and myself, and I thus have the pleasant recollection of having been among the very first who went through the tunnel on that initial trip. Having arrived at Newhall, the citizens of the Northern and Southern cities symbolized, by fraternal handshaking, the completion of this new and strongest bond between them. Amidst general rejoicing, and with thousands of Chinamen lined up on either side of the track, each at full attention and all presenting their--shovels!--General D. D. Colton drove the golden spike which bound the rails from the North with the rails from the South. After considerable speech-making and celebrating, most of the company boarded the train for Los Angeles, where the jollification was concluded with a banquet, a ball, illuminations and other festivities. Possibly due to the great increase in Chinese brought to Southern California through railroad work, repeated demonstrations against the Mongolians were made here at meetings during the summer.
Shortly after the completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad the people of Los Angeles became very much dissatisfied with the Company's method of handling their business, and especially with the arbitrary rulings of J. C. Stubbs in making freight rates. On one occasion, for example, a shipper approached Stubbs and asked for a rate on a carload of potatoes from San Francisco to Tucson. Stubbs asked him how much he expected to pay for the potatoes and what he would get for them; and having obtained this information, he allowed the shipper a small profit and took the balance for freight. This dissatisfaction on the part of an enterprising community accustomed to some liberality found in time such an open expression that Charles F. Crocker, one of the original promoters of the Central, and one of the owners of the Southern Pacific, who had occasionally visited Los Angeles, came down to confer with the City Council at a public meeting.
Crocker, as President of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, was a very important man, and I felt at the time that he was most discourteously received by those with whom he had come to discuss the situation. The meeting, which I attended, was held in the small Council Room, and I well remember the oppressive closeness. The place was, indeed, packed; people were smoking and chewing tobacco; and the reader may perhaps imagine the extreme condition of both the atmosphere and the floor. This, however, was not all: when one of the Councilmen--out of regard, I suppose, for the railroad President's other engagements--asked that Mr. Crocker be permitted to address the City Fathers, J. S. Thompson, a revolutionary Councilman, stood up and declared that the San Francisco magnate would be heard when his time came and--not before! How this lack of consideration impressed the visitor may be seen from the conclusion of my story.
After a while, Crocker was allowed to speak; and in the course of his remarks he stated that the Southern Pacific Railroad Company had invested a great amount of money, and that it was necessary to realize proper interest on their expenditure. Thereupon, Isaac W. Lord, one of the spectators, after whom Lordsburg was named, arose and begged to tell a little story. An ambitious individual, he said, who had once built a hotel on the desert at a cost of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, was without a guest until, one day, a lone traveler rode across the burning sands and put up for the night at the hostelry. Next morning, the stranger was handed a bill for seventy-five dollars; and upon inquiring why so much had been charged, the proprietor explained that he had spent one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in building the hotel; that the stranger was, thus far, the first and only guest; and that, therefore, he must pay his part of the interest on the investment.
The story, to Mr. Crocker's discomfiture, brought a loud laugh; and it was then, before the laughter had died out, that the famous railroad man, resuming the debate, made his memorable threat:
"If this be the spirit in which Los Angeles proposes to deal with the railroad upon which the town's very vitality must depend, I will make grass to grow in the streets of your city!"
And, considering the fate that has befallen more than one community which coldly regarded the proposals of these same California railroads, Crocker's warning was not without significance.
The Crocker incident having left matters in a worse state than before, Colonel Eldridge E. Hewitt, agent for the Southern Pacific, brought Governor Stanford to my office and introduced him. Stanford stated that his road would soon be in operation and expressed the hope that H. Newmark & Company would patronize it. I told Stanford that our relations with the steamship company had always been very pleasant, but that we would be very glad to give his line a share of our business, if rates were made satisfactory. At the same time, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, having secured control of the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad, issued circulars announcing that steamer freight would henceforth be classified. As this was a violent departure from established precedents, it foreshadowed trouble; and, sure enough, rates moved upward from eight to as high as thirty dollars a ton, according to classification.
H. Newmark & Company and Hellman, Haas & Company, who were the heaviest shippers in Los Angeles, together with a number of other merchants, decided to charter a steamer or sailing vessel. James McFadden, of Santa Ana, owned the tramp steamboat Newport which plied between San Francisco and Newport Landing, in an irregular lumber-trade; and this, after some negotiations, we engaged for three years, on the basis of three dollars per ton. Having made this contract, we entered valiantly into the contest; and, in order suitably to impress the Southern Pacific Railroad Company with our importance, we loaded the vessel, on her initial trip, to the gunwales. Now cargo, on arriving at Wilmington at that time, used to be loaded into cars, brought to Los Angeles and left in the freight shed until we removed it at our convenience; but when the Newport arrived, the vessel was unloaded and the merchandise put into the warehouse at Wilmington, where it was held several days before it was reshipped. On its arrival in Los Angeles, the Railroad Company gave notice that removal must be effected within twenty-four hours, or demurrage would be charged; and since, with the small facilities in those days at our command, so prompt a withdrawal of an entire cargo was a physical impossibility, our expenses were straightway heavily increased.
Subsequent to this first shipment, we adopted a more conservative policy, in spite of which our troubles were to multiply. The Southern Pacific Railroad Company named a rate of three dollars a ton in less than carload lots between San Francisco and way-stations, and this induced many of our country customers to trade in that city. At the same time, the Company carried many lines between San Francisco and Los Angeles free of charge, potatoes and other heavy items being favored. The mask was now discarded, and it became evident that we were engaged in a life-and-death struggle.
Had there been a united front, the moral effect might have sustained us in the unequal contest; but unfortunately, H. Newmark & Company were abandoned by every shipper in Los Angeles except Hellman, Haas & Company, and we soon found that fighting railroad companies recalled the adage, "The game's not worth the candle." At the end of ten months of sacrifices, we invoked the assistance of my former partner and friend, Phineas Banning, who was then associated with the Southern Pacific; and he visited the officials in San Francisco in our behalf. Stanford told him that the Railroad Company, rather than make a single concession, would lose a million dollars in the conflict; but Banning finally induced the Company to buy the Newport, which brought to a close the first fight in Los Angeles against a railroad.
In the winter of 1876-77, a drought almost destroyed the sheep industry in Southern California. As a last resort, the ranchers, seeing the exhausted condition of their ranges, started to drive their sheep to Arizona, New Mexico or Utah; but most of them fell by the way.
Again, we had the coincidence of drought and a fatal epidemic of smallpox, not only leaving death in its wake, but incidentally damaging business a good deal. Mrs. Juan Lanfranco was one of those who died; Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Lazard lost a son, and a grocer by the name of Henry Niedecken, who had a little frame store where the Angelus Hotel now stands, as well as many others, succumbed.
FOOTNOTE:
[34] Died, January 13, 1915, in the ninetieth year of his age.
XXXV. THE REVIVAL OF THE SOUTHLAND
1877-1880
The late seventies were marked by an encouraging awakening of national energy and a growing desire on the part of the Angeleño, notwithstanding the excessive local dullness, to bring the outside world a pace or two nearer; as a result of which, things began to simmer, while there was an unmistakable manifestation on the part of those at places more or less remote to explore the almost unknown Southwest, especially that portion bordering on the Pacific.
I have already noted, with varying dates, the time when patents to land were issued. These dates remind me of the long years during which some of the ranch owners had to wait before they received a clear title to their vast estates. Although, as I have said, the Land Commission was in session during the first decade of my residence here, it was a quarter of a century and more, in some cases, after the Commissioners had completed their reports before the Washington authorities issued the desired patents confirming the Mexican grants; and by that time, not a few of those who had owned the ranches at the beginning of the American occupancy were dead and buried.
William Mulholland, who was really trained for navigation and had followed the sea for four or five years, steered for Los Angeles in 1877 and associated himself with the Los Angeles Water Company, giving his attention especially to hydraulic engineering and passing as it were in 1902, with the rest of the water-plant, to the City when it bought the Company out.
On March 22d, the Common Council changed the name of Nigger Alley, in the adobe days known as Calle de los Negros, to that of Los Angeles Street; and thus faded away a designation of Los Angeles' early gambling district long familiar to old settlers. The same year, the City marshalship, which J. J. Carrillo had held during 1875-76, was discontinued, and J. F. Gerkins was appointed the first Chief of Police.
Part of the property included in the blanket mortgage given by Temple & Workman to E. J. Baldwin was Temple Block; and when this was sold at sheriff's sale in 1877, H. Newmark & Company decided to acquire it if they could. Dan Freeman, acting for Baldwin, was our only competitor; and after a somewhat spirited contest, the property was knocked down to us. In 1909, we sold Temple Block to the City of Los Angeles. Quite a large contribution of money was then made by adjoining landowners, with the understanding that the site would form the nucleus for a civic center; but thus far this solemn promise remains unfulfilled --more's the shame, especially since the obligation is precisely coincidental with the City's needs.
In 1877, Colonel R. S. Baker erected the block bearing his name on the site of the historic adobe home of Don Abel Stearns, the walls of which structure, when demolished, killed two of the workmen. This building, the most modern of that period, immediately became the scene of much retail activity; and three wide-awake merchants--Eugène Germain, George D. Rowan and Rev. B. F. Coulter--moved into it. Germain was the first of these to arrive in Los Angeles, coming in 1870 and, soon after, establishing several trading posts along the line of the Southern Pacific during its construction through Arizona. One day, while inspecting branches in this wild and woolly region, Germain ran into a party of cowboys who were out gunning; and just for a little diversion, they took to peppering the vicinity of his feet, which attention persuaded him into a high-step less graceful than alert. Germain came to occupy many positions of trust, being appointed, in 1889, Commissioner from California to the Paris Exposition, and later American Consul at Zurich, Switzerland. Next among the tenants was George D. Rowan, who opened a grocery store in the Strelitz Block, opposite the old Jail, remaining there until the completion of Baker's building; thus supplying another illustration of the tendency then predominating to gravitate toward the extreme northern end of the town. In several enterprises, Rowan was a pioneer: he brought from Chicago the first phaeton seen on our streets; and in conjunction with Germain, he inaugurated the shipping of California products, in carload lots, to the Eastern market. He was also one of the first to use pennies here. Withdrawing from the grocery trade, in 1882, he busied himself with real estate until 1892, when he retired. A public-spirited man, he had the greatest confidence in the future of Los Angeles, and was instrumental in subdividing much important acreage, including the block between Sixth, Seventh, Hill and Olive streets, which he sold in sixty-foot lots at prices as low as six hundred dollars each. He was a prime mover in having the name of Fort Street altered to that of Broadway, certainly a change of questionable propriety considering the origin of the old name. Rowan died on September 7th, 1901. His sons, R. A. and P. D. Rowan, constitute the firm of R. A. Rowan & Company. Reverend Coulter, father of Frank M. Coulter,[35] brought his family to Los Angeles on September 17th, 1877, and after a short association in the hardware firm of Harper & Coulter, he entered the dry goods field as B. F. Coulter, now the Coulter Dry Goods Company. In 1878, Coulter bought the woolen mills on Pearl Street near Fifth. Coulter was a man of genial temperament and great integrity; and I shall have occasion to speak of him again.
R. F. Del Valle was born in December, 1854, at the Plaza ancestral home, where, before the family's removal to Camulos rancho, I frequently saw him playing when I attended the political councils at his father's home. By the by, I believe that J. L. Brent had his law office there, which may account for those gatherings. Del Valle's boyhood days were spent in and around Los Angeles. He studied law in San Francisco and returned to Los Angeles in 1877, a promising young orator and attorney. Since that period he has been in public life practically all of the time. For some time past he has been a member of the Water Board. He has been frequently honored by the Democratic party, especially in 1880, when as elector he was instructed to vote for our former fellow-townsman, General W. S. Hancock. In 1890, Del Valle married Mrs. Helen Caystile, widow of Thomas Caystile and daughter of Caleb E. White, a Pomona horticulturist and sheepman.
A murder case of the late seventies was notable on account of the tragic fate of two indirect participants. On October 10th, G. M. Waller, custodian of the land company's bath-house at Santa Monica, detected Victor Fonck, who had been warned to keep off the premises, in the act of erecting a private bath-house on the beach, and shot him in the leg, from which wound, after two days, Fonck died. In his defense, Waller claimed that, as watchman, he was acting under orders from E. S. Parker, the land company's agent. Waller was found guilty of involuntary homicide and sentenced on January 25th, 1878, to one year in the Penitentiary. Parker, on the other hand, was convicted of murder in the second degree, and on March 8th was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. This severe and unexpected punishment caused a mental excitement from which Parker soon died; and, but a few days later, his broken-hearted wife fell dead.
Annual public fairs were centers of social life as late as the middle of the seventies, one being held, about 1876 or 1877, in the old Alameda Street depot, which, decorated with evergreens and flowers, had been transformed into a veritable garden. With succeeding years, these displays, for some time in Horticultural Hall on Temple Street, came to be more and more enchanting. Still later, one or more flower festivals were held in Hazard's Pavilion on Fifth Street, near Olive, that of 1889 in particular attracting, in the phraseology of a local newspaper, "one of the largest and most brilliant gatherings in the history of the city." It is indeed a pity that these charming exhibitions, requiring but the mere bringing together of some of the flowers so bountifully supplied us, have been abandoned.
On February 1st, 1878, twenty-three years after the Odd Fellows first organized here, their newly-constructed hall in the Oxarart Block at 108 North Spring Street was dedicated with elaborate ceremonies.
About 1878, Captain George J. Clarke, who had been Postmaster from 1866 to 1873, and who lived well out of town, offered me sixty feet adjoining my home on Fort Street, a site now occupied by the J. W. Robinson Company. He asked one hundred dollars a foot for the Fort Street frontage alone, but as only sixteen dollars a foot had been paid for the full depth to Hill Street of the piece I already owned, I refused to purchase; nor was I persuaded even when he threatened to erect a livery stable next to my house.
Another item respecting land values, and how they impressed me: in 1878, Nadeau purchased, for twenty thousand dollars, the site of the Nadeau Hotel, whereupon I told him that he was crazy; but later events proved him to have been a better judge than I.
Sometime in the late seventies, Jerry Illich started a chop-house on North Main Street and prospered so well that in time he was able to open a larger and much finer establishment which he called the Maison Dorée. This restaurant was one of the best of the time, and became the rendezvous of men about town. In 1896, Jerry moved again, this time to Third Street opposite the Bradbury Block; and thither went with him his customers of former days. When Illich died in December, 1902, he had the finest restaurant in the city.
In April the Public Library was transferred to the care of the City. In the beginning, as I have stated, a fee of five dollars was charged to patrons; somewhat later, it is my recollection, a legislative enactment permitted a small addition to the tax-rate for the partial support of this worthy enterprise, and this municipal assistance enabled the directors to carry the work along even though the annual membership fee was reduced to four dollars, payable quarterly.
On September 25th, General John C. Frémont arrived in Los Angeles on his way to Arizona, of which Territory he had been appointed Governor; and accompanied by his wife and daughter, he was driven at once to the St. Charles Hotel. There, in response to a demonstration by the citizens, he referred to the great changes which had taken place here during his absence of thirty years. Two days later, General Frémont and family left for Yuma, the explorer traveling that route by means of the iron horse for the first time.
Benjamin Franklin Taylor, the lecturer and author, visited Los Angeles, in 1878, and wrote the sympathetic book, Between the Gates, full of just discrimination and hopeful views respecting the Southland.
Some new ordinances regulating vegetable venders having been passed in the winter of 1878-79, the Chinese peddlers went on a strike, and for some time refused, to the inconvenience of their dependent customers, to supply any truck-farm products.
During the Postmastership of Colonel Isaac R. Dunkelberger, the Post Office was moved, in 1879, to the Oxarart Block on North Spring Street near First. There it continued for eight years, contributing much toward making the neighborhood an important commercial center.
M. J. Newmark, having sold to his partners his interest in the firm of H. Newmark & Company, left Los Angeles, in 1879, for San Francisco, after building a residence on Spring Street next to the southwest corner of Spring and Seventh and adjoining the dwellings owned by Kaspare Cohn and M. A. Newmark. Each of these houses stood on a sixty-foot lot; and to protect themselves from possibly unpleasant neighbors, the holders had bought the corner of Seventh and Spring streets for four hundred and twenty-five dollars. On his departure, M. J. Newmark committed his affairs to my care, desiring to dispose of his place; and I offered it to I. N. Van Nuys for seven thousand five hundred dollars, which represented the cost of the house alone. Times were quite hard in Los Angeles at this period; and when Van Nuys said that he would give six thousand five hundred dollars for it, I accepted his offer and induced the owners to sell to him the corner lot for four hundred and seventy-five dollars. This is the earlier history of the corner now occupied by the I. N. Van Nuys Building, in which the First National Bank conducts its affairs.
Long before there was any necessity for cutting Sixth Street through, east of Main, George Kerckhoff (who, in 1879, had brought his family from Indiana) bought the six acres formerly belonging to the intrepid pioneer, J. J. Warner, and, in the midst of this pretty orchard, built the home in which he continued to reside until 1896, when he died. William G. Kerckhoff, a son, came with his father and almost immediately engaged in the lumber business with James Cuzner. An ordinary man might have found this enterprise sufficient, especially as it expanded with the building up of our Southland communities; but this was not so with the younger Kerckhoff, who in 1892 entered the ice business, after which effort, within ten years, he evolved the San Gabriel Electric Company. Henry E. Huntington then associated himself with this enterprise, somewhat later buying that part of the Kerckhoff property on which the Huntington Building, opposite the Kerckhoff, now stands; and as a result of the working together of two such minds, huge electrical enterprises culminated in the Pacific Light and Power Company.
The year 1879 was tragic in my family. On the 20th of January, our son Philip, only nine years of age, died of diphtheria; and a trifle more than three weeks later, on February 11th, Leo, a baby of three years, succumbed to the same treacherous disease. Barely had the grave closed on the second, when a daughter became seriously ill, and after her recovery, in a fit of awful consternation we fled the plague-infected house and the city, taking with us to San Francisco, Edward, a son of five years. But alas! hardly had we returned to town, when he also died, on March 17th, 1879.
In May, Judge R. M. Widney broached to the Rev. A. M. Hough, Rev. M. M. Bovard, E. F. Spence, Dr. J. P. Widney and G. D. Compton his project for the first Protestant institution of higher learning in Southern California; and meeting with their encouragement, certain land in West Los Angeles, consisting of three hundred and eight acres, was accepted in trust as a gift from I. W. Hellman, J. G. Downey and O. W. Childs, forty acres being later added. In 1880, the first building was put up on Wesley Avenue; and on the sixth of October the college was opened. Most of the projectors were Methodists; and the institution, since known as the University of Southern California, became a Methodist college. The beginning of the institution has been odd: its first department of arts was built, in 1883, at Ontario; while two years later its theological school was opened at San Fernando. Recently, under the energetic administration of President F. D. Bovard, the University has made much progress.
A. B. Chapman, about 1879, joined C. T. Paul in opening a hardware store at 12 Commercial Street, with a little tin-shop opposite; and they soon introduced here the first gasoline stoves, to which the insurance companies at once seriously objected.
Probably the earliest Los Angeles newspaper published in French was a weekly, L'Union Nouvelle, which commenced in 1879 with P. Ganée as editor.
Exceeding the limits of animated editorial debate into which the rival journalists had been drawn in the heated campaign of 1879, William A. Spalding, a reporter on the Evening Express, waited for Joseph D. Lynch, the editor of the Herald, at about eleven o'clock in the morning of August 16th, and peppered away with a bull-dog pistol at his rival, as the latter, who had just left the Pico House, was crossing Spring Street from Temple Block to go to the Herald office. Lynch dropped his cane, and fumbled for his shooting-iron; but by the time he could return the fire, A. de Celis and other citizens had thrust themselves forward, making it doubly perilous to shoot at all. Spalding sent the bullet which wounded, not his adversary, but a bystander, L. A. Major of Compton.
Colonel G. Wiley Wells arrived in 1879, after a Civil War career in which his left arm was permanently crippled. He also served as United States District Attorney in Mississippi, where he prosecuted many of the Ku-Klux Klan, and as United States Consul-General to China, where he had a varied experience with men and affairs. With A. Brunson, he formed the law partnership of Brunson & Wells, having offices in the Baker Block. The next year, Bradner W. Lee, a nephew of Wells, who had arrived here in 1879, was added to the firm. After fifteen years' practice in the local courts, during which time Wells became a noted figure, he retired to private life at Santa Monica, disposing of his extensive law library, consisting of some six thousand volumes, to his successors, Works & Lee.
Henry Milner Mitchell, to whom I have referred as assisting to run down Vasquez, reached Los Angeles by way of Nicaragua in 1868, and was successively a surveyor, a reporter, a law student and, finally, from 1878 to 1879, Sheriff. In 1879, he was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of California, and in the same year, he married the eldest daughter of Andrew Glassell. Eventually he met a very tragic death: while hunting near the scene of Vasquez's capture, he was shot by a friend who mistook him for a deer.
Colonel Henry Harrison Markham, a New Yorker, pitched his tent in Los Angeles and Pasadena in 1879, and was elected to Congress from the Sixth District, defeating R. F. Del Valle. He succeeded in getting one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a public building and appropriations for Wilmington and other harbors; and he also aided in establishing army headquarters at Los Angeles for Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California.
Carl Seligman left Germany for America in 1879 and spent a year in San Francisco, after which he removed to Tucson, Arizona. And there he remained, engaged in the wholesale and retail grocery business until, on December 6th, 1885, he married my daughter Ella, following which event he bought an interest in the firm of M. A. Newmark & Company.
The early eighties witnessed a commercial development so marked as to remind one of the proverbial grass that could be heard to grow. During an entire century, business (centered, like social life, more or less about the Plaza) had crawled southward to First Street, a distance of but three or four blocks; and now, in five or six years, trade passed First, extended along both Main and Spring streets and reached almost to, or just beyond Second. At this time, the Baker Block, at the corner of North Main and Arcadia streets, which contained the first town ticket-office of the Southern Pacific Railroad, was still the center of the retail trade of Los Angeles.
And yet some idea of the backwardness of the city, even then, may be obtained from the fact that, in 1880, on the southwest corner of Spring and Second streets where the Hollenbeck Hotel was later built, stood a horse corral; while the old adobe on the lot at the corner of First and Spring streets, which was torn down later to make room for the Hotel Nadeau, was also still there.
Obadiah Truax Barker settled in Los Angeles in 1880 and, with Otto Mueller, started a furniture and carpet business, known as Barker & Mueller's, at 113 North Spring Street. Strange as it seems, however, the newcomers found themselves too far from the business district; and, on Mueller's retiring, O. T. Barker & Sons moved to a store near the Pico House. Now the firm is Barker Brothers.
In fond recollection, the homely cheerfulness of the old-time adobe recurs again and again. The eighties, however, were characterized by another form of dwelling, fashionable and popular; some examples of which, half-ruined, are still to be seen. This was the frame house, large and spacious with wide, high, curving verandas, semicircular bay-windows, towers and cupolas. Flower-bordered lawns generally encircled these residences; there were long, narrow hallways and more spare bedrooms than the less intimate hospitality of to-day suggests or demands.
On January 1st, 1880, the District Court of Los Angeles was abolished to give way to the County Court; on which occasion Don Ygnácio Sepúlveda, the last of the District Court judges, became the first County Judge.
The first cement pavement in the city was laid on Main Street north of First by a man named Floyd. Having bought Temple Block, we were thinking of surrounding it with a wooden sidewalk. Floyd recommended cement, asking me, at the same time, to inspect a bit of pavement which he had just put down. I did so, and took his advice; and from this small beginning has developed the excellent system of paving now enjoyed by Los Angeles.
In 1880, there visited Southern California a man who not only had a varied and most interesting past, but who was destined to have an important future. This was Abbot Kinney, a blood relation of Emerson, Holmes and old General Harrison, and a student of law and medicine, commission merchant, a botanical expert, cigarette manufacturer and member of the United States Geological Survey; a man, too, who had traveled through, and lived long in Europe, Asia and Africa; and who, after seeing most of our own Northwest, was on his way to settle in Florida in search of health. While in San Francisco he heard of the recently-formed Sierra Madre Colony, whither he made haste to go; and after a month or two there, he liked it so well that he decided to remain on the gentle slope, found there a home and lay out a farm. At that time we had a customer by the name of Seabury, who owned one hundred and sixty acres along the foothills; and this land he had mortgaged to us to secure a note. When Kinney came, he bought a place adjoining Seabury's, and this led him to take over the mortgage. In due season, he foreclosed and added the land to his beautiful property, which he named Kinneloa.
All Kinney's combined experience was brought to bear to make his estate pleasurable, not only to himself but for the casual visitor and passer-by; and in a short time he became well known. He also was made a Special Commissioner of the United States to examine into the condition of the Mission Indians of Southern California; and on this commission he served with Helen Hunt Jackson, so famous as H. H. or, especially in California, as the author of Ramona, visiting with her all the well-known Indian rancherías between San Diego and Monterey, in addition to the twenty-one Franciscan Missions.
Toward the end of April, F. P. F. Temple passed away at the Merced Ranch and was buried in the family burying-ground at La Puente. This recalls to mind that, in early days, many families owned a hallowed acre where, as summoned one by one, they were laid side by side in rest eternal.
On May 16th, John W. Bixby died, at his Long Beach estate. About 1871 he had entered his brother Jotham's service, supervising the sheep ranch; and to John Bixby's foresight was attributed, first the renting and later the purchase of the great ranch controlled, through foreclosure of mortgage, by Michael Reese. A year or two before Bixby's death, five thousand acres were set aside for the town of Los Alamitos, but John never saw the realization of his dream to establish there a settlement.
It was on the eighteenth of the same month that my brother found it necessary to visit Carlsbad for the benefit of his health, and the decision occasioned my removal to San Francisco to look after his affairs. What was expected to be a brief absence really lasted until September, 1882, when he and his family returned to America and San Francisco, and I came back to Los Angeles, with which, of course, I had continued in close communication. During our absence, my wife's father, Joseph Newmark, died rather suddenly on October 19th, 1881.
Reference has been made to the movement, in 1859, for the division of California into two states. In the spring of 1880, John G. Downey republished the original act and argued that it was still valid; and Dr. J. P. Widney contended that the geographical, topographical, climatic and commercial laws were all working for the separation of California into two distinct civil organizations. Not long after, at a mass-meeting in Los Angeles called to forward the improvement of Wilmington harbor, an Executive Committee consisting of J. G. Downey, W. H. Perry, E. F. Spence, Dr. J. P. Widney, A. B. Moffitt and J. G. Estudillo was named to see what could be done; and this Committee appointed a Legal Committee, consisting of Henry T. Hazard, R. M. Widney, George H. Smith, C. E. Thom, A. Brunson, S. C. Hubbell and H. A. Barclay. The latter Committee endorsed Downey's view that Congress could admit the new State; and it arranged for a convention which met on September 8th, 1881. There the gist of the sentiment was that State division was a necessity, but that the time was not yet ripe!
In 1880, Jotham Bixby & Company sold four thousand acres of their celebrated Cerritos Ranch to an organization known as the American Colony, and in a short time Willmore City, named after W. E. Willmore and the origin of Long Beach, was laid out and widely advertised. Willmore, a teacher, had been fairly successful as a colonizer in Fresno County; but after all his dreaming, hard work and investments, he lost all that he had, like so many others, and died broken-hearted. The earliest recollection I have of a storekeeper at Long Beach was my customer, W. W. Lowe.
At an early period in the development of Santa Monica, as we have seen, Senator Jones built a wharf there; but the Los Angeles & Independence Railroad, expected to become the outlet on the Pacific Coast of a supposedly great mining district in Inyo County, never reached farther east than Los Angeles. The Southern Pacific Railroad Company, desiring to remove this competition, obtained possession of the new road, razed the warehouse and condemned and half dismantled the wharf; and by setting up its terminus at Wilmington, it transferred there the greater part of its shipping and trade. By 1880, Santa Monica, to-day so prosperous, had shrunk to but three hundred and fifty inhabitants.
Competition compelled us, in 1880, to put traveling salesmen into the field--an innovation we introduced with reluctance, involving as it did no little additional expense.
Near the end of August, a Citizens' Committee was appointed to receive and entertain President Rutherford B. Hayes, whose visit to Los Angeles, as the first President to come here, caused quite a stir. His stay was very brief. During the few hours that he was here, he and his party were driven around the neighborhood in open hacks.
In the midst of his successive Greenback campaigns, General Ben. F. Butler sojourned for a few days, in 1880, in Los Angeles and was the recipient of many attentions.
At the beginning of this decade, the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railway was extended to Timms' Landing, the well-known old shipping point; and San Pedro then began to grow in earnest, both on the bluff and in the lowlands bordering on the bay. Wharves were projected; and large vessels, such as would have startled the earlier shippers, yet none too large at that, made fast to their moorings. But the improvement of yesterday must make way for that of to-day, and even now the Harbor Commissioners are razing historic Timms' Point. Penning again this familiar cognomen, I am reminded of what, I dare say, has been generally forgotten, that the Bay of Avalon was also once called Timms' Landing or Cove--after A. W. Timms, under-officer in the United States Navy--and that the name was changed prior to the Bannings' purchase of Catalina.
Frequent reference has been made to those who, in one way or another, sought to infuse new commercial life here and more rapidly to expand the city; but, after all, George Lehman, of whom I have already spoken, was perhaps the pioneer local boomer before that picturesque word had become incorporated in the Angeleño's vocabulary. Nor were his peculiarities in this direction entirely confined to booming, for he did considerable buying as well. Lehman's operations, however, most unfortunately for himself, were conducted at too early a period, and his optimism, together with his extensive, unimproved holdings, wrought his downfall. Besides the Round House and gardens, he owned real estate which would now represent enormous value, in proof of which I have only to mention a few of his possessions at that time: the southwest corner of Sixth and Spring streets; the northeast corner of Sixth and Hill streets; large frontages and many other corners on Main, Spring, Fort and Hill streets. Practically none of this property brought any income, so that when the City began to grade and improve the streets, Lehman's assessments compelled him to give a fifteen thousand dollar blanket mortgage to Lazard Frères of San Francisco.
Lehman soon found himself beyond his depth and defaulted in the payment of both principal and interest. Not only that, but with a complacency and a confidence in the future that were sublime, he refused to sell a single foot of land, and Lazard Frères with a worthy desire, natural to bankers, to turn a piece of paper into something more negotiable, foreclosed the mortgage, in 1879, and shut the gates of the Garden of Paradise forever; and a sheriff's sale was advertised for the purpose of concluding this piece of financial legerdemain. I attended the sale, and still distinctly remember with much amusement some of the incidents.
The vociferous auctioneer mounted the box or barrel provided for him and opened the program by requesting an offer for the corner of Hill and Second streets, a lot one hundred and twenty by one hundred and sixty feet in size. Nor did he request in vain.
One of the heroes of the occasion was Louis Mesmer, a friend of Lehman, whose desire it was to take a talking part in the proceedings, force up the prices and so help the latter. Amidst the familiar, "Going, going, going!" accordingly, the bidding began and, under the incentive of Mesmer's bullish activities, the figures soon reached four hundred dollars, the last bidder being Eugene Meyer, local agent for the mortgagee. At this juncture Mesmer, in his enthusiasm, doubled the bid to eight hundred dollars, expecting, of course, to induce someone to raise the price, already high for that day, still higher.
But "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley." How eagerly Mesmer awaited the fruition of his shrewd manipulation! how he listened in hopeful anticipation to the repeated, "Going, going, going!" of the auctioneer! In vain, however, he waited, in vain he listened. To his mortification and embarrassment, his astounded ear was greeted with the decisive, "Gone!--for eight hundred dollars! Sold to Louis Mesmer!"
Mesmer had bought, for more than it was worth, a piece of property which he did not want, a catastrophe realized as well by all the others present as it was patent to the victim himself. The crowd relished keenly the ludicrous situation in which Mesmer found himself, encumbered as he was with an investment which he had had no intention of making; and throughout the remainder of the contest he was distinguished only by his silence.
Poor old George! His vision was accurate: Los Angeles was to become great, but her splendid expansion was delayed too long for him to realize his dreams. When Lehman died, he was buried in a pauper's grave; and toward the end of the eighties, the adobe Round House, once such a feature of George Lehman's Garden of Paradise, was razed to make way for needed improvements.
I have spoken of the intolerable condition of the atmosphere in the Council Chamber when Charles Crocker made his memorable visit to Los Angeles to consult with the City Fathers. In the eighties, when the Common Council met in the southeast corner of the second floor of Temple Block, the same objectionable use of tobacco prevailed, with the result that the worthy Aldermen could scarcely be distinguished twenty-five feet away from the rough benches on which sat the equally beclouded spectators.
Doubtless the atmosphere of the court room was just as foul when the Mayor, as late at least as 1880, passed judgment each morning, sitting as a Justice, on the crop of disorderlies of the preceding night. Then not infrequently some neighbor or associate of the Mayor himself, caught in the police dragnet, appeared among the drowsy defendants!
FOOTNOTE:
[35] Died on October 27th, 1915.