20 On the 20th of the preceding December, South Carolina had seceded, and along the Pacific, as elsewhere, men were anxiously wondering what would happen next. Threats and counter-threats clearly indicated the disturbed state of the public mind, and when, near Charleston Harbor, a hostile shot was fired at the Star of the West with the certainty of further trouble, particularly with the coming inauguration of Lincoln, was everywhere felt. Aside, however, from these disturbing events so much affecting commercial life, the year sandwiched between two wet seasons, was in general a prosperous one. There were evil effects of the heavy rains, and business in the spring was rather dull, but cattlemen, upon whose success so many other people depended, took advantage of the favoring conditions and profited accordingly. During the period of the flood in 1859 to 60, the river, as we have seen, was impassable, and for months there was so much water in the bed, ordinarily dry, that foot passage was interrupted. In January 1861, therefore, the Common Council, under the influence of one of its members, E. Molton, whose dairy was in East Los Angeles, provided a flimsy foot bridge in his neighborhood. If my memory serves me, construction was delayed, and so the bridge escaped the next winter's flood, though it went down years later. On January 9, the schooner, Louis Perry, arrived at Anchorage to be towed across the bar and to the wharf by the little steamer, Comet, footnote, a term locally applied to tugs, and footnote. This was the first sea-going vessel that had ever visited New San Pedro with a full cargo, and demonstrated, it was thought by many, that the port was easy navigable by vessels drawing eleven feet of water or less. Comments of all kinds were made upon this event, one scribe writing, We expect to see coasting steamers make their regular trips to Newtown, discharging freight and loading passengers on the wharf, safe from the dangers of rough weather, instead of lying off at sea, subjecting life and property to the perils of southeast gales and the breakers. The senator even, in the opinion of experienced persons, might easily enter the channel on the easterly side of Deadman's Island, and then find a safe passage in the creek. It will yet happen. John M. Griffith came to Los Angeles in 1861, having four years previously married a sister of John J. Tomlinson. With the latter he formed a partnership in the passenger and freight-carrying business, their firm competing with banning and company until 1868, when Tomlinson died. This same year, at the age of about 18, Eugene Meyer arrived. He first clerked for Solomon Lazard in the retail dry goods business, and in 1867 he was admitted into partnership. On November 20th of that year, Meyer married Miss Harriet, the youngest daughter of Joseph Newmark, who officiated. Felix Bachman, who came in 1853, was at various times in partnership with Philip Cycle, after whom Cycle Street is named, and Councilman in 1862. Samuel Lobheim and Ben Schloss, the firm being known as Bachman and Company. And on Los Angeles Street near commercial, they carried on the largest business in town. Bachman secured much Salt Lake trade, and in 1861 opposed high freight rates, but although well off when he left here, he died a poor man in San Francisco at the age of nearly one hundred years. In 1861 Adolf Jung arrived and established a drug store in the Temple Block, his only competitor being Theodore Wohlweiber, and there he continued for nearly twenty years, one of his prescription books now in the County Museum, evidencing his activity. For a while F. J. Geys, the well-known drugist for so many years on North Main Street, and an arrival of seventy-four, clerked for Jung. At the beginning of the sixties Dr. A. B. Hayward practiced medicine here, his office being next to Workman Brothers' Saddery on Main Street. Wohlweiber's name recalls a practical joke of the late sixties when some waggish friend raised the cry that there was a bear across the river, and induced my teutonic neighbor to go in hot pursuit. After bracing himself for the supreme effort, Wohlweiber shot the beast dead, only to learn that the bear, a blind and feeble animal, was a favorite pet, and that it would take just twenty-five dollars to placate the irate owner. The absence in general of shade trees was so noticeable that when John Temple, on January 31st, planted a row facing Temple Building, there was the usual town gossip. Charlie Ducomman followed Temple's example. Previously there had been several widespreading trees in front of the Bella Union Hotel, and it came to pass within the next five years that many peppered trees adorned the streets. In 1861 the post office was removed from North Spring Street to a frame building on Main Street opposite commercial. About the same time when owing to the flood no male arrived for three or four weeks and someone facetiously hung out a sign announcing the office to let, the Washington Postal authorities began issuing stamped envelopes of the values of twelve and twenty-four cents for those businessmen of Los Angeles and the Pacific Coast who were likely to use the recently developed Pony Express. Matthew Keller, Don Mateo, as he was called, who died in 1881, was a quaint personality of real ability who had a shop on the northwest corner of Los Angeles and commercial streets and owned the adjoining store in which P. Bodrie had been in business. His operations were original and his advertising unique as will be seen from his announcements in the star in February. M. Keller to his customers. You are hereby notified that the time has at last arrived when you must pay up without further delay, or I shall be obliged to invoke the aid of the law and the lawyers, your most obedient servant M. Keller. Which warning was followed in the next issue by this? M. Keller to his customers. The right of secession admitted. You are hereby notified that the time has arrived when you must pay up without further delay, or I shall be obliged to invoke the aid of the law and the lawyers. After such settlement, slow payers are requested to secede M. Keller to be augmented next week. This later advertisement with the line in parentheses continued to be printed week after week without change for at least 12 months. The following year Keller in flaring headlines offered for sale the front of his Los Angeles vineyard facing on Aliso Street in building lots of 20 by 100 feet, saying in his prospectus, great improvements are on the top piece in this quarter. Governor Downey and the Intrepid Bowdry proposed to open a street to let the light of day shine in upon their dark domains. On the aquary side of Aliso Street, what fine legs your master has, must run to give way for more permanent fixtures. Further on, the prior estates are about to be improved by the astute and far-seeing Templito, and Keller sells lots on the sunny side of Aliso Street. The map is on view at my office. Come in and make your selections. First come, first served. Terms will be made handy. M. Keller. Nathaniel Pryor, sometimes known as Don Miguel N. Pryor, or Pryor, is the pioneer referred to by Keller. At the age of 30, it is said, in 1820, he came here and 15 or 20 years later, about the time that he was a regidor or councilman, was one of eight or ten easterners who had farms within the Pueblo District. His property, in part a vineyard, included what is now commercial to First Streets, and possibly from Los Angeles Street to the river. On it was an adobe, which is still standing on Jackson Street, and is the only mud-brick structure in that section. For a while, and probably because he had loaned Pryor some money, F. P. F. Temple had an interest in the estate. Pryor was twice married, having a son, Charles, by his first wife, and a son, Nathaniel Jr., by his second. Poplo Pryor of San Juan was another son. The first Mrs. Pryor died about 1840, and is one of the few, with the mother of Pio Pico, buried inside of the old church at the plaza. The second Mrs. Pryor, who inherited the property, died about 1857. A granddaughter, Mrs. Lottie Pryor, is a surviving member of this family. During the administration of Padre Blasrajo, a genial, broad-minded Italian, several attempts were made, beginning with 1857 or 1858, to improve the old church at the plaza, and in 1861 the historic edifice, so long unchanged, was practically rebuilt. The front adobe wall, which had become damaged by rains, was taken down and reconstructed of brick. Some alterations were made in the tower, and the interesting old tiled roof was replaced, to the intense regret of later and more appreciative generations, with modern, less durable shingles. A fence was provided, and trees, bushes, and plants were set out. The church was also frescoed, inside and out, by Henri Penelon, the French pioneer artist and photographer, who painted upon the wall the following inscription. Los fieles de esta parroquía a la reina de Los Ángeles 1861 Footnote The faithful of this parish, to the queen of the angels. And footnote. Early in March, Sanchez Street was opened by the Common Council. It was opposite the northern section of Arcadia Block, passed through the properties of Sancho, Pico, Coronel, and others, and terminated at the plaza. The Los Angeles Mounted Rifles, part of the 5,000 militia wanted by California, was organized on March 6 at a meeting in the courthouse, presided over by George W. Gift, with M. J. Newmark, who became an officer in the company, as secretary. Late in March, John Frolling rented from the city fathers a space under the temple market for building a wine cellar. And in December 1860, at the close of his vintage, when he had conducted a hardy harvest home celebration, he filled the vault with pipes and other casks, containing 20,000 or more gallons of native wines. In a corner, a bar was speedily built, and many Angelenios, that day not associated with at least one pilgrimage to Frolling's cool and rather obscure recesses, was considered incomplete. Few who witnessed the momentous events of 1861 will forget the fever heat of the nation. The startling news of the attack on Fort Sumter took 12 days by Pony Express to reach the coast, the overland telegraph not being completed until six months later. But when, on the 24th of April, the last messenger in the relay of riders dashed into San Francisco with the story, an excited population was soon seething about the streets. San Francisco instantly flashed the details south, awakening here much the same mangled feelings of elation and sorrow. In the war thus broke out, Albert Sidney Johnston, a fellow townsman who had married a sister of Dr. J. S. Griffin, and who, in 1857, had successfully placed Utah under federal control, resigned from his command as head of the Department of the Pacific. General Edwin V. Summoner seething him, and, being a southerner left for the south, by way of Warner's ranch and the overland route, with about a hundred companions, most of whom were intercepted at Fort Yuma through the orders of Captain W. S. Hancock. According to Senator Cornelius Cole, Summoner arrived at Johnston's headquarters in San Francisco after dark, and in spite of Johnston's protest insisted on assuming command at once. Johnston took up arms for the Confederacy and was made a brigadier general, but at Shiloh he was killed, the news of his death causing here the sincerest regret. I shall speak of the loss of one of General Johnston's son in the disaster to the aid of Hancock. Another son, William Preston, became president of Tulane University. Others of our more enthusiastic southerners, such as Cameron E. Tom and J. Lancaster Brent, also joined the rebellion and proceeded to the seat of war. Tom, who has since attained much distinction, returned to Los Angeles where he is still living. Captain Tom died on February 2, 1915, and footnote. Brent never came back here having settled near New Orleans, and there I again met him while I was attending the exposition. He had fought through the war becoming a general before its close, and he told me that he had been arrested by federal officers while on his way to the south from Los Angeles, but had made his escape. Among the very few who went to the front on the Union side and returned here was Charles Myers Jenkins, already referred to as a city zaniero, owing to the possible need of troops here, as well as to the cost of transportation. Volunteers from the Pacific Slope were not called for, and Jenkins joined an eastern cavalry battalion organized in October 1862. Even then he and his comrades were compelled to pay their own way to the Atlantic Seaboard, where they were incorporated into the second Massachusetts cavalry. Jenkins engaged in twenty battles, and for fifteen months was a prisoner of war confined at both Andersonville and Libby, suffering such terrible hardships that he was but one of three out of a hundred and fifty of his battalion, who came out alive. Not everyone possibly, even among those familiar with the building of the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad, knows that an effort was made, as far back as 1861, to finance a railroad here. About the middle of February in that year, Murray Morrison and Abel Stearns, assemblymen, learned of the willingness of eastern capitalists to build such a road within eighteen months, providing the county would subscribe one hundred thousand dollars toward the undertaking, and the city fifty thousand. The legislature, therefore, on May 17, 1861, granted the franchise. But important as was the matter to our entire district, nothing further was done until 1863 to give life to the movement. For almost a decade after I came here, St. Valentine's Day was seldom observed in Los Angeles. But about 1861 or 1862, the annual exchange of decorated cards, with their sentimental verses, came to be somewhat general. Phineas Banning was a staunch Republican and an ardent abolitionist, and it was not extraordinary that on May 25, at a grand union demonstration in Los Angeles, he should have been selected to present to the Union Club in his characteristically vigorous manner, an American flag made for the occasion. Columbus Sims as president accepted the emblem, after which there was a procession, led by the first Dragoon's Band, many participants being on horseback. In those days, such a procession had done its duty when it tramped along Main Street and around the plaza and back by way of Spring Street, as far as first. And everyone was in the right frame of mind to hear and enjoy the patriotic speeches made by Captain Winnefield Scott Hancock, General Ezra Drowne, and Major James Henry Carlton, while in the distance was fired a salute of 34 guns, one for each state in the Union. Senator William McHenry Gwynne was another man of prominence, following his search for gold with the 49ers. Due, he used to say, to advice from John C. Calhoun, who, probably taking his cue from Dana's prophecy in two years before the mast, one day put his finger on the map and predicted, should the Bay, now called San Francisco, ever be possessed by Americans, a city rivaling New York would spring up on its shores. Gwynne came to Los Angeles occasionally and never forgot to visit me at my home. In 1861, he was arrested by the federal government for his known sympathy with the South and was kept a prisoner for a couple of years, after which he went to France and there planned to carry through under force of arms the colonization of Sonora, Mexico, depending in vain on Napoleon III and Maximilian for support. Notwithstanding this feudal effort, Gwynne became a leader in National Democratic Councils and was an intimate advisor of Samuel J. Tilden in his historic campaign. Oscar Macy, son of Dr. Obed Macy, having as a newspaper man enthusiastically advocated the selection of Freymont in 1856, was appointed on Lincoln's inauguration to the Collectorship of Customs at San Pedro, a post which he continued to fill even after the office had been reduced to an inspectorship, later resigning in favor of George C. Alexander. This recalls another appointment by Lincoln, that of Major Antonio Maria Pico, a nephew of Pio Pico, to the receivership of public monies at Los Angeles. Pico lived at San Jose at finding that his new duties exiled him from his family he soon resigned to the office. Old-time barbers, as the reader may be aware, were often surgeons and the arrival in commercial streets in the early sixties of J. A. Meyer, late of San Francisco, was announced in part as follows. Gentlemen will be waited on and have shaving, hairdressing, and shampooing prepared in the most luxurious manner and in the finest style of the art, while cupping, bleeding, and teeth extracting will also be attended to. Fort Téjon had been pretty well broken up by June when a good deal of the army property was moved to Los Angeles. Along with Uncle Sam's bag and baggage came thirty or more of the camels previously mentioned, including half a dozen youngins. For some months they were corralled uncomfortably near the genial quartermaster's main street office, but in October they were removed to a yard fixed up for them on D. Anderson's premises opposite the Second Street Schoolhouse. Starting with the cook brought to Los Angeles by Joseph Newmark, the Chinese population in 1861 had increased to twenty-one men and eight women, a few of them cooks and servants, but most of them working in five or six laundry's. About the middle of June of that year, Chun-Chik arrived from San Francisco and created a flurry, not merely in Chinatown, but throughout our little city by his announcement that he would start a store here. And by the thirteenth of July, this pioneered Chinese shop, a veritable curiosity shop, was opened. The establishment was on Spring Street opposite the courthouse, and besides a general assortment of Chinese goods, there was a fine display of preserves and other articles hitherto not obtainable in town. Chun-Chik was clever in his appeals of a Chinese merchant to the public, but he nevertheless joined the celebrities advertised for delinquent taxes. Chun-Chik, or as he appeared on the tax collector's list, was down for five hundred dollars in merchandise with one dollar and twenty-five cents for city and the same amount for school taxes. Sing-Hop, Qing-Hop, and Ah-Hong were other Chinamen whose memory failed at the critical tax time of that year. Four years until wharves made possible for thousands the pleasures of rod and reel, clams since used for bait, were almost a drug on the market, being hawked about the streets in eighteen sixty-one at a dollar a bucket, a price not very remunerative, considering that they came from as far north as San Buenaventura. End of Chapter 20 Chapter 21 of 60 years in Southern California, 1853 to 1913 by Harris Newmark. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand. Chapter 21 Hancock, Lady Franklin, The Deluge, 1861 When the Civil War began, California and the neighboring territory showed such pronounced southern sympathies that the national government kept both under close surveillance for a time stationing major, afterward General James Henry Carlton. In 1862 sent across the Colorado River when the government drove out the Texans with a force at Camp Latham near Bayona and dispatching another force to drum barracks near Wilmington. The government also established a thorough system of espionage over the entire southwest. In Los Angeles and vicinity, many people, some of whom I mention elsewhere, were arrested, among them being Henry Schaefer who was taken to Wilmington barracks, but through influential friends, was released after a few days. On account of the known political views of their proprietors, some of the hotels also were placed under watch for a while, but beyond the wrath of the innkeepers at the sentinels pacing up and down the verandas, nothing more serious transpired. Men on both sides grew hotheaded and abused one another roundly, but few bones were broken and little blood was shed. A policy of leniency was adopted by the authorities and sooner or later persons arrested for political offenses were discharged. The ominous tidings from beyond the Colorado and their effect, presaging somewhat the great interscene conflict, recalls an unpublished anecdote of Winfield Scott Hancock, who was a graduate of West Point, an intense patriot and a natural born fighter. One day in 1861, coincident with the Texan invasion, and while I was visiting him in his office on Main Street near Third, after he had removed from the upstairs rooms adjoining the Odd Fellows Hall in the Temple Building, John Goeller dropped in with the rumor that conspirators, in what was soon to become Arizona, were about to seize the government's stores. Hancock was much wrought up when he heard the report and declared with angry vehemence that he would treat the whole damned a lot of them as common thieves. In the light of this demonstration and his subsequent part as a national character of great renown, Hancock's speech at the Fourth of July celebration in 1861, when the patriotic Angelinios, assembled at the plaza and marched to the shady grove of Don Luis Sanseven, is worthy of special note. Hancock made a sound argument for the preservation of the Union and was heartily applauded, and a few days afterward one of the local newspapers, in paying him a deserved tribute, almost breathed inaugurie in saying, Captain Hancock's loyalty to the stars and stripes has never for a moment been doubted, and we hope he may be advanced in rank and honors, and live to a green old age, to see the glorious banner of our country yet waving in peaceful glory over a united, prosperous, and happy people. Few of us, however, who heard Hancock speak on that occasion, dreamed to what high position he would eventually attain. Soon after this episode, that is, in the early part of August 1861, Hancock left for the front, in company with his wife, and taking with him his military band, he departed from San Pedro on the steamer senator. Some of my readers may know that Mrs. Hancock, after whom the ill-fated Ada Hancock was named, was a southern woman, and though very devoted to her husband, had certain natural sympathies for the South. But none, I dare say, will have heard how she perpetrated an amusing joke upon him on their way north. When once out upon the briny deep, she induced the musicians to play Dixie, to the great amusement of the passengers. Like many Southerners, Mrs. Hancock was an Episcopalian and frequently contributed her unusual musical talent to the service of the choir of St. Athanasius Church, the Little Evidafis, for a while at the foot of Pound Cake Hill, first the location of the Los Angeles High School, and now of the County Courthouse, and the forerunner of the Episcopal Pro Cathedral, on Olive Street, opposite Central Park. Having in mind the sojourn in Los Angeles for years of these representative Americans, the following editorial from the Los Angeles Star on the Departure of the Future General and Presidential Nominee seems to me now of more than passing significance. While resident here, Captain Hancock, took great interest in our citizens, the development of our resources, and the welfare of this section of the country, and as a public-spirited, enterprising gentleman, he will be missed from among us, and his most estimable lady will long live in the hearts of her many friends. We desire their prosperity, happiness, and long life, wherever their lot may be cast. The establishing of drum, barracks, and camp drum at Wilmington was a great contribution to the making of that town, for the government not only spent over a million dollars in buildings and works there, and constantly drew on the town for at least part of its supplies, but provisions of all kinds were sent through Wilmington to troops in Southern California, Utah, Yuma, Tucson, and vicinity, and New Mexico. P.H., popularly known as major downing, was employed by banning for some time during the war to take charge of the great wagon trains of government supplies sent inland, and later he opened a general merchandise store in Wilmington, after which he transacted a large volume of business with H. Newmark and Company. At the breaking out of the war, the Southern Overland mail route was discontinued and a contract was made with Butterfield for service along a more central course by way of Great Salt Lake. There was then a stage six times a week, and a branch line ran to Denver, the terminus having been changed from St. Joseph to Omaha. Twenty days was the time allowed the company to get its stages through during eight months of the year, and twenty-three days for the more uncertain winter months. This contract was made for three years, and one million dollars a year was the compensation allowed at the Butterfields. After the war, the old route was resumed. J. DeBarth Shore became to Los Angeles at the commencement of the war as assistant superintendent of the Philadelphia and California Oil Company, and in 1867 he bought the Tecumsoil grant and began to mine upon the property. The same year he married a daughter of B. D. Wilson, establishing a relationship which brought him a partnership in the San Gabriel Wine Company, of which he eventually became manager. His position in this community, until he died in 1895, was important, the little town of Shoreb testifying to one of his activities. Not only were the followers of the indefatigable Padres rather tardy in taking up the cultivation of olives, but the olive oil industry hereabouts was a still later venture. As an illustration, even in 1861, somewhat less than five hundred gallons of olive oil was made in all Los Angeles County, and most of that was produced at the San Fernando Mission. How important was the office of the Gennaro may be gathered from the fact that in 1861 he was paid twelve hundred dollars a year, while the mayor received only eight hundred dollars and the treasurer two hundred dollars less than the mayor. At the same time, the Marshal, owing to the hazardous duties of his office, received as much as the mayor, the city attorney one hundred dollars less than the treasurer, and the clerk but three hundred and fifty. By 1861 there were serious doubts as to the future of cattle raising in Southern California, but banning and company came forward proposing to slaughter at New San Pedro and contracted with John Temple, John Reigns, and others to do their killing. For a while the enterprise was encouraged, Temple alone having six hundred heads so disposed of and sold. In September Columbus Sims, the popular attorney of unique personality, who from 1856 to 1860 had been clerk of the United States District Court, was appointed Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army and placed in charge of Camp Alert at the Pioneer Race Course San Francisco, where twelve companies were soon assembled, and a month or two later he was made Colonel in the Second Cavalry. Late in December of that year, however, he had an altercation with D.D. Colton in San Francisco when blows were exchanged and Sims drew a deadly weapon. For this the Doty Colonel was arrested and held to await the action of the grand jury, but I am under the impression that nothing very serious befell the belligerent Sims as a result. On September 11th, H. Stasforth, after having bought out A.W. Schultz, announced a change in the control of the United States Hotel, inviting the public at the same time to a free lunch at half past four o'clock in the following Sunday. Stasforth was an odd but interesting character and stated in his advertisement that guests were at liberty when they had partaken of the collation to judge if he could keep a hotel. Whether successful or otherwise Stasforth did not long continue in control. For in November 1862 he disposed of the business to Weber and Haas, who in turn sold it to Louis Messmer. In the fall an atrocious murder took place here, proving but the first in a series of vile deeds for which eventually the culprit paid with his own life at the hands of an infuriated populace. On Sunday evening September 30th some Frenchmen were assembled to sit up with the body of one of their recently deceased countrymen, and about eleven o'clock a quarrel arose between two of the watchers, AMG or Michel Le Cheney, a man once of good repute, who had cast some slurs at the French Benevolent Society, and Henry de Laval, a respected employee of the Eliso Mills, who spiritedly defended the organization. La Cheney drew a weapon, approached de Laval and tried to shoot him, but the pistol misfired. Thereupon La Cheney, enraged, walked toward a lamp, adjusted two other caps, and deliberately shot de Laval through the body. The next day his victim died. La Cheney made his escape, and so eluded the authority that it was not until the middle of February 1866 that he surrendered himself to Deputy Sheriff Henderson. Then he was tried, but was acquitted. About October, Remy Nadeau, a Canadian after whom Nadeau Street is named, and father of George A. Nadeau, came across the plains to Los Angeles, having spent the previous winter en route in Salt Lake City, and for a while he teamed between here and Montana. Within the year, believing that San Francisco offered a larger field, he moved to that city and continued his operations there. In the front part of a little building on Main Street between 2nd and 3rd, Lorenzo Lek, whom I have already mentioned, conducted a grocery, living with his family in the rear. He was a plain, unassuming, honest dane of the old school, who attended scrupulously to his business and devoted his Sundays and holidays to modest amusements. On such days he would put his wife, Caroline, and their children on a little wagon that he owned, and take them to his vineyard on the outskirts of the town. And there he would enjoy with them those rural pastimes to which he had been accustomed in the fatherland, and which, to many early comers here, were a source of rest and delight. On the afternoon of Saturday, October 17th, Francisco Cota, a Mexican boy fifteen years of age, entered Lek's store while he was out, and, taking advantage of the fact that Frow Lek was alone, whipped out a knife, stabbed her to death, stole what cash was in sight, and then escaped to a vineyard where he hid himself. John W. Henderson, the son of A. J. Henderson, a deputy sheriff still living in Los Angeles, came in soon after, and, finding Mrs. Lek horribly disfigured, he gave the alarm. Neighbors and friends at once started in pursuit and caught Cota, and, having tied a rope around the murderer's neck during the excitement, they dragged him down Alameda Street, where I witnessed the uproar. As they proceeded by way of Aliso Street, the mob became more and more infuriated, so that before it reached the spot which had been selected for his execution, the boy had been repeatedly stabbed and was nearly dead. At length he was strung up as a warning to other malfactors. A short time after this melancholy event, I was driving with my rife to the Salaritos Rancho, and, missing our road, we stopped at a Mexican home to inquire the way. The woman who answered our summons proved to be one who knew, and was known by all Los Angeles merchants on account of her frequent excursions to town. She was, in fact, the mother of the Mexican boy who had been mobbed and hung for the murder of poor Lex's wife. The sight of gringos kindled anew her maternal wrath, and she set up such a hue and cry as to preclude any further intelligible conversation. California, being so far removed from the seat of war, did not awake to its full significance until the credit of the government began to decline. Four weeks were required, it is well to remember, to complete the trip from New York to San Francisco via Panama, and our knowledge of events in the east was far from perfect. Until the completion of the Continental Telegraph in October, 1861, the only immediate news that reached the coast came privately, and we were, therefore, pretty much in the dark until the arrival of eastern newspapers, and even after that telegraphing was so expensive that our poorly patronized little news sheets could not afford the outlay. A few of us, therefore, made up a purse of one hundred dollars a month, which small sum enabled us to allay our anxiety, at least, in the case of very important happenings. It must not be forgotten, though, that we then had a little relief from San Francisco, whose newspapers containing some telegraphic dispatches arrived in town perhaps three to four days after their publication. I may add, in fact, that it was not until about the beginning of the eighties that Los Angeles dailies could afford the luxury of regular direct telegrams. In other respects as well, editing a local newspaper during the war was apt to entail financial loss. The Los Angeles news, for instance, was outspoken for the union, and so it escaped the temporary eclipse suffered by the star through government censorship. But the unionists being in a decided minority in the community, pickings for the news were mighty poor. Perhaps this want-to patronage suggested the advisability in 1863, when that paper was published by C. R. Conway and Alonzo Wait on Main Street opposite the Express office, of reducing the subscription rate to $5 a year. Probably one of the most interesting visits to Los Angeles ever made by a well-known personage was the sudden call with which Lady Franklin, the wife of the eminent lost Arctic explorer, honored our little town far back in 1861. The Distinguished Lady, accompanied by Mrs. Crickcroft, her niece, Commodore and Madame Watkins, and collector and Mrs. Rankin, arrived at San Pedro on the Golden State during the first week in November, and was driven with her companions to the Bella Union Hotel, from which she made such short excursions about the city as were then possible. And as sympathy for her in her sorrow, and admiration for her long years of plucky, though vain search for her husband were still general, every courtesy possible was afforded her. During Lady Franklin's stay, Benjamin D. Wilson arranged a delightful garden party at his hospitable mansion at Lake Vineyard in her Ladyship's honor, and Phineas Banning also entertained her with a reception and collation at his San Pedro home. And these receptions and collations were as enjoyable as they were notable. After a day or two, Lady Franklin and her party left on the senator for San Francisco, being accorded as the vessel weighed anchor, a marked ovation. For many years, funerals were attended by men on horseback and by women on foot, as hacks were unknown in early days. And while the good citizens were doubtless, then conducted to their last resting place in a manner just as satisfactory to themselves as are their descendants who are buried according to present day customs, those who followed in the train were very seriously inconvenienced by the melancholy, dusty processions to the old and now forgotten burial grounds. For in those days the trip, in summer exceedingly hot, and in winter, through rain and mud, was a long, fatiguing one. Speaking of funerals, a strange sight was witnessed in our streets about the end of November, 1861, attending the burial of a child. The father and mother, both native Californians, were seated in a wagon, in which was also placed the strikingly plain little coffin or box containing the dead. Beside the wagon walked an old man playing a fiddle. Two or three persons followed in the deep mud, the whole forming a weird picture, said to be the relic of an almost obsolete backwood's custom. Banning and Hitchman's Comet, proving insufficient, the gondolier was put on in the fall of 1861. It became a familiar craft in the conveying of passengers and freight between New San Pedro and the ships lying off the harbor. Two years previous to the completion of the telegraph from San Francisco to Los Angeles, that is, in 1858, the first continental telegraph was undertaken, and by October 1861, Governor Downey of California sent a congratulatory message to President Lincoln. On November 7th, the line was open to the public. Several months before, all the companies in the state had consolidated into the California State Telegraph Company. Banning and Hitchman, having succeeded for a short season, Phineas Banning, the subcontractor for building of the first telegraph, they made an effort following the establishment of communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific to secure a line to New San Pedro. And at the end of October 1861, the first telegraph pole in the long row from Los Angeles to the harbor was formally set. About the middle of November, this line was completed, and though it was widely proclaimed as working like a charm, the apparatus soon got out of order, and by the following January, there were many complaints that both poles and wire had fallen to the ground, blocking the thoroughfares and entangling animals in such a way as to become a nuisance. Indeed, there was soon a public demand either to repair the telegraph or to remove it all together and throw the equipment away. Soon after the first of February 1862, the line was working again, but by that time the telegraph to San Francisco had gotten out of order. And so great were the difficulties in repairing that line that Los Angeles was not again talking uninterruptedly over the wire with its neighbor until July. On November 15, the first number of El Amigo del Pueblo, printed in Spanish, appeared from the shop of José E. González and Company. But native support being withheld, the friend of the people starved to death in the following May. Whaling, like shark hunting, continued brisk in 1861 and 1862, and many vessels were fitted out at San Pedro, Los Angeles merchants selling them most of their supplies. The sea monsters usually moved up the coast about the first of the year, the males keeping in toward the shore going up and the females hugging the coast coming down. And small boats, such as Captain W. Clark's Ocean, used to take from 450 to 500 barrels of oil in five or six weeks. For six days in March 1862, San Pedro whalers harpooned a whale a day, bringing to the landing over 200 barrels of oil as a result of the week's labor. The bitter fight between abolitionists and southern sympathizers was immediately reflected in the public schools. Defenders of the Union worked for a formal oath of allegiance to the national government as a preliminary to granting teachers certificates, while the Confederates, incensed at what they deemed a violation of personal rights, assailed the institutions. The result was that attendance at the public schools gradually fell off until, in the winter of 1865 and 1966, only about 350 children of school age were being instructed by public teachers. Another third of a thousand was in private schools, while some 369 were not on any roster. The gloom naturally caused by the outbreak of war was sometimes penetrated by the brightness of social life, and among the happier occasions of the winter of 1861 was the marriage on December 23, in the presence of a large circle of friends of Tom D. Mott to Ascension, daughter of Don Jose Andres and Donia Francisco Abela Sepulveda. The winter of 1861 to 62 recorded the greatest of all floods, especially in the north, where in December and January something like 35 inches of rain was precipitated. In Los Angeles County the rivers soon rose and overflowed the lowlands, but the rise was gradual, causing the loss of but few or no lives and permitting the stock to reach the neighboring hills in safety. In Anaheim the water was four feet deep in the streets and people had to seek flight to the uplands or retreat to the roofs of their little houses. Vineyards were sometimes half ruined with the layers of deep sand. Banks of streams were lined for miles with driftwood, and ranchers saw many a clod of their farms carried off and deposited to enrich their neighbors miles away. For a month it rained so steadily that the sun peeped out for scarcely an hour. I witnessed this inundation in Los Angeles where much damage was done to business buildings, especially to Melissa's Row, and saw merchants in water up to their wastes trying to save their goods. The wall of the room occupied by Sam Meyer fell first, whereupon Helman and Brother became intensely interested in the removal of their stock, while poor Sam, knee-deep in water, sadly contemplated his losses. Before the Helmans had made much headway they observed a tendency in the part of their walls to crumble, and their exit was neither graceful nor delayed. After that, the store occupied by Meyer and Breastlour caved in, smashing, showcases, and shelves, and ruining a large amount of merchandise. The ludicrous picture of this rush for safety first is not a fit reflection of the feelings of those pioneers who saw the results of years of labor obliterated in a moment. Friends and neighbors lent assistance to the unfortunate, and helped to save what they could. After this flood, Helman and Brother and Sam Meyer removed to the Arcadia Block, while Meyer and Breastlour secured accommodations north of the Plaza Church. End of Chapter 21 Chapter 22 of Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913, by Harris Newmark. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kay Hand. Chapter 22 Droughts the Ada Hancock Disaster 1862-1863 On the 1st of January, 1862, after an experience of about five years, I retired from the selling of clothing, which was never congenial to me. And as I had been buying hides and wool on a small scale since the middle of the fifties, I forthwith devoted myself to the commission business. Frenchmen from the Basque country, among whom were Miguel Leonis, Gaston Oxarat, Domingo Amistoy, and Domingo Bastanchuri, had commenced to appear here in 1858 and to raise sheep, so that in 1859 large flocks were brought into Southern California, the sheep commanding a price of three dollars and a half per head. My own operations, exceedingly small in the beginning, increased in importance, and by 1862 I was fairly equipped for this venture. Corn, barley, and wheat were also then being raised, and I busied myself with these commodities as well. Most of the early sheepmen prospered, and in time bought large tracts of land for their flocks, and with all of them I had dealings of more or less importance. Amistoy's career is worthy of particular mention as exemplifying the three cardinal virtues of business—honesty, application, and frugality. He and his wife took in washing, and while the husband went from house to house, leading a horse with a large basket strapped to either side, to collect and deliver the clothes, the wife toiled at the tub. In the end, what they together had saved became the foundation of their important investments in sheep and land. Pedro La Ronde, another early sheepman, married the widow of his Basque fellow-countrymen Echimende, the Tipling Baker. Having regularly established a commission business, I brought consignment of varied merchandise from San Francisco on the semi-monthly steamer Goliah, whose captain at one time was Robert Haley, and at another, his brother Salisbury Haley, a brother-in-law of Tom Mott. And I disposed of them to small dealers, with whom I thus became pretty well acquainted. These consignments were sold almost as soon as they arrived. I was careful to bring in only staple articles in the grocery line, and it was long before I appreciated the advantage of carrying sufficient stock to supply a regular demand. On the return trips of the steamer to San Francisco, I forwarded such produce as I had accumulated. I do not recall any important changes in 1862, the declining months of which saw the beginning of the two years' devastating drought. The Civil War was in progress, but we were so far from the scene of strife that we were not materially affected. Sympathy was very general here for the Confederate cause, and the government therefore retained in Wilmington both troops and clerks who were paid in a badly depreciated currency, which they were obliged to discount at exorbitant rates, to get money at all. While other employees had to accept vouchers which were subject to a still greater discount. Notwithstanding these difficulties, however, Payday increased the resources of the Pueblo considerably. Hellman and Brother, a partnership consisting of I.M. and Samuel Hellman, dissolved on January 2nd, I.M. continuing in the dry goods business while Sam took the books in stationery. Another brother and associate, H.M. Hellman, a couple of years before had returned to Europe where he died. If my memory is accurate, I.W. remained with I.M. Hellman until the former, in 1865, bought out a Portugal. Samuel A. Whitney, who later had a Curio store, was in for a while with Sam Hellman in a partnership known as Hellman and Whitney. On January 17th, Don-Louis Vignet passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 91 years. January also witnessed one of those typical scenes in the fitting out of a mule and wagon train never likely to be seen in Los Angeles again. 200 wagons and 1200 mules mostly brought from San Francisco on steamers were assembled for a trip across the desert to convey government stores. M.J. Newmark became a partner on February 1st in the firm of Howard, Butterworth, and Newmark, federal and state attorneys with offices in the Temple Building, Los Angeles, and Armory Hall, San Francisco, and it was considered at the time a rapid advance for a man of but 23 years of age. The Los Angeles star of that date, in fact, added a word of good fellowship. We congratulate friend Newmark on the association. The intimate relations characteristic of a small community such as ours, in the much more general effect then, than nowadays of any tragical occurrence, have already been described. Deep sympathy was therefore awakened early in February on the arrival of the steamer senator and the rapid dissemination of the report that Dr. Thomas Foster, the ex-mayor, had been lost overboard on January 29th on the boat's trip northward. Just what happened to Foster will never be known, and San Francisco it was reported that he had thrown himself into the sea, though others who knew him while looked upon the cause of his death as accidental. But slight attention was paid to the report brought in by horsemen from San Bernardino on February 4th that an earthquake had occurred there in the morning until Captain Tom Seeley returned with the senator to San Pedro and told about a seismic disturbance at sea, during which he struck the wildest storm off Pointe Concepción in all his seafaring experience. Sailors were then better all around seaman than now, yet there was greater superstition in Jack Tarr's mind, and such a storm made a deep impression upon his imagination. I have alluded to the dependence of Los Angeles on the outside world, no better evidence of which, perhaps, can be cited than that on the 22nd of February. George W. Chapin and Company of San Francisco advertised here to furnish servants and other help to anyone in the Southland. About the same time San Bernardino parties, wishing to bore a little artist-in-well, had to send to the Northern Metropolis for the necessary machinery. In October 1860, as I have intimated, Phineas Banning took AF Hinchman into partnership, the firm being known as Banning and Hinchman, and they seemed to prosper, but on February 12th, 1862 the public was surprised at the announcement of the firm's dissolution. Banning continued as proprietor, and Hinchman became Banning's Los Angeles agent. Although cattle-raising was the mainstay of Southern California for many years, and gold mining never played a very important part here, Wells Fargo and Company, during the spring, frequently shipped thousands of dollars worth of gold at a time, gathered from Santa Anita, San Gabriel, and San Fernando placers, while probably an equally large amount was forwarded out through other channels. I have already pointed to the clever foresight shown by Abel Stearns when he built the Arcadia Block and profited by the unhappy experience of others, with rain that flooded their property. But I have not stated that in elevating his new building considerably above the grade of the street, somewhat regardless of the rights of others, he caused the surplus water to run off into neighboring streets and buildings. Following the great storm of 1861 to 62, the city sued Stearns for damages, but he won his case. More than that, the overflow was a godsend to him, for it induced a number of people to move from Mellis's Row to Arcadia Block at a time when the owner of vast ranches and some of the best town property was already feeling the pinch of the alternate dry and overwet seasons. The fact is, as I shall soon make clear, that before Stearns had seen the end of two or three successive dry seasons yet to come, he was temporarily bankrupt and embarrassed to the utmost. By April, the walls and roof for the little Protestant church at Temple and New High Streets had been built, and there the matter rested for two years, when the structure, on which the taxes were unpaid, was advertised for sale. We have seen that the first Jewish services here were held soon after the arrival of Joseph Newmark in 1854, under the same disadvantageous conditions as had hampered the Protestant denominations. Mr. Newmark volunteered to officiate on the principal holidays until 1862, when the Reverend Abraham Wolfe Edelman arrived. Born at Wolresaw in 1832, Rabbi Edelman came to America in 1851, immediately after he was married to Ms. Hannah Pesecone, and settled successively in New York, Patterson, and Buffalo. Coming to California in 1859, he resided in San Francisco until the 1862, when he was chosen Rabbi of the Orthodox Congregation Benai Brith of Los Angeles, and soon attained distinction as a Talmudic scholar and a preacher. The first services under Rabbi Edelman were held in Sternes' or Arcadia Hall. Next, the congregation worshipped in Lex Hall on Main Street between 2nd and 3rd, and finally through the courtesy of Judge Ignacio Sapoveda, the courtroom was used. In 1873, the Jews of Los Angeles erected their first synagogue, a brick building entered by a steep stairway leading to a platform, and located on the east side of Fort Street between 2nd and 3rd, on what is now the site of the cop building next to the city hall. In 1886, when local Jewry instituted a much more liberal ritual, Rabbi Edelman's convictions induced him to resign. The purchase of a lot for a home on the corner of 6th and Main Street proved a fortunate investment, later enabling him to enjoy a well-deserved comfort and to gratify his charitable inclinations. It is a strange coincidence that Reverend Edelman's first marriage ceremony was that which blessed Samuel Proger, while the last occasion on which he performed the solemn rites for the dead, shortly before his own death in 1907, was for the same friend. A. M. Edelman, the architect, and Dr. D. W. Edelman, both well known here, are sons of the Rabbi. As late in the season as April, hail and snow fell in and near Los Angeles. To the north of the city, the white mantle quite hid the mountains and formed a new, lower snow line, while within the city the temperature so lowered that at several intervals during the day, huge hail stones beat against the windowpanes, a very unusual experience for Angelenos. Because of political charges preferred against A. J. King, then under-sheriff of the county, the latter, on April 10, was arrested by Henry D. Barrows, United States Marshal, who had been appointed by President Lincoln the year previous. Colonel Carlton, commander of the Southern Military Division, however, soon liberated King. On the last day of the year, the under-sheriff married the estimable Miss Laura C. Evertson. Travelers to Europe have often suffered much annoyance through safe-conduct regulations, but seldom have Americans had their liberty thus restricted by their own authorities. Toward the middle of June, word was received in Los Angeles that owing to the suspicion lest disloyalists were embarking for Aspenwall, all passengers for California via the Isthmus would be required to take out passports. Anticipating, by forty years or more, Luther Burbank's work, attention was directed as early as 1862 to the possibility of eating the cactus, and thus finding, in this half-despised plant of the desert, relief both from hunger and thirst. Half a century later, in 1913, Los Angeles established the cactus-candy industry, through which the boiled pulp of the Bessinaga, often spoken of as the fish-hook, barrel, and nigger-head variety, is made deliciously palatable when syruped from ten to thirty days. Ignacio Sepolveda, declared by the Los Angeles Star, a young gentleman of liberal education and good natural endowments, already first in legal studies, on September 6, was admitted to the district court bar. On January 18, 1860, the first number of the semi-weekly Southern News appeared, containing advertisements in both English and Spanish. It was issued by C. R. Conway and Alonso Waite, who charged twenty-five cents a copy, or seven dollars a year. On October 8, 1862, the title was changed to the Los Angeles Semi-weekly News. In 1860, the Bella Union, as I have said, was under the management of John King, who came here in 1856, while in 1861 J.B. Winston and Company, who were represented by Henry Reed, controlled the hotel. In 1862 or 1863, John King and Henry Hamill were the managers. I have told of the purchase of the San Pasqual Rancho by Dr. J. S. Griffin. On December 11, Dr. and Mrs. Griffin, for $500, sold to B. D. Wilson and wife, some 640 acres of that property. In a few hours afterward, the Wilson's disposed of 262 acres for $1,000. The purchaser was Mrs. Eliza G. Johnston, wife of General Albert Sidney Johnston. Mrs. Johnston at once built a neat residence on the tract and called it Fair Oaks, after the plantation in Virginia on which she had been born. And from this circumstance, the name of the now well-known Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena is derived. At the time of her purchase, Mrs. Johnston had hoped to reside there permanently, but the tragic fate of her son in the Ada Hancock disaster, following the untimely death of her husband at Shiloh, and the apparent uselessness of the land, led her to sell to Judge B. S. Eaton what today would be worth far more than thousands of acres in many parts of the southern states. A curious coincidence in the relations of General Sumner, who superseded General Johnston to the hero of Shiloh, is that, later in the war, Sumner led a corps of Union troops at Fair Oaks, Virginia. Don Ignacio Coronel, father of Antonio Franco Coronel, and the early school patron to whom I have referred, died in Los Angeles on December 19, aged 70 years. He had come to California in 1834 and had long been eminent in political councils and social circles. I recall him as a man of strong intellect and sterling character, kind-hearted and popular. Another effort without success to use camels for transportation of the California and adjacent saiyans was made in January 1863 when a camel express was sent out from New San Pedro to Tucson. Elsewhere I have indicated the condition of the public cemetery, while an adobe wall enclosed the Roman Catholic burial-place, and a brick wall surrounded the Jewish resting-place for the dead. Nothing was done until 1863 to improve the Protestant cemetery, although desecration went so far that the little railing around the grave of poor Mrs. Lek, the grocer's wife who had been murdered, was torn down and burned. Finally the matter cried to heaven so audibly that in January Los Angeles mason's appropriated $150 to be added to some $500 raised by popular subscription, and the common council having appointed a committee to supervise the work, William H. Perry put up the fence, making no charge for his services. About the middle of January, word was received in Los Angeles of the death at Baltimore of Colonel B. L. Beal, commander for 40 years of the Fort Tejon Garrison, and active in the Mojave and Coon River campaigns. Death entered our home for the first time when an infant daughter, less than a month old, died this year on February 14. In February the editor of the news advertised the experiment of growing cotton as an additional activity for the Colorado Indians who were already cultivating corn, beans, and melons. Whether this suggestion led William Workman into cotton culture, I do not know. At any rate, late in November of the same year, F. P. F. Temple was exhibiting about town some well-matured bowls of cotton raised on Workman's ranch, and the next spring saw, in El Monte, a number of fields planted with cotton seed. A year later, J. Moranhout sent Los Angeles cotton to an exhibition in France and received from across the water official assurance that the French judges regarded our product as quite equal to that grown in the southern states. This gave a slight impetus to cotton culture here, and by January 1865 a number of immigrants had arrived, looking for suitable land for the production of this staple. They soon went to work, and in August of that year many fields gave promise of good crops, far exceeding the expectations of the experimenters. In the month of March a lively agitation on behalf of a railroad began in the public press, and some bitter things were set against those who, for the sake of a little trade in horses or drying, were opposed to such a forward step. And under the leadership of E. J. C. Qwin and J. A. Watson, our assemblyman at that session, the legislature of 1863 passed an act authorizing the construction of the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad. A public meeting was called to discuss the details and to further the project, but once more no railroad was built or even begun. Strange as it seems, the idea of a railroad for Los Angeles County in 1863 was much to advance for the times. Bill does one who had had the honor of appearing before King William IV and all the principal crowned heads of Europe. Professor Cordier held forth with an exhibition of magic in the Temple Theater, drawing the usual crowd of royalty haters. In 1863 Santa Cantalina was the scene of a gold mining boom which soon came to not, and through an odd enough occurrence. About April, Martin M. Kimberley and Daniel E. Way staked out a claim or two, and some miners agreed on a coat of lofts for operations in what was to be known as the San Pedro Mining District, the boundaries of which were to include all the islands of the county. Extensive claims, chiefly in Cherry and Jully valleys and on Mineral Hill, were recorded, and streets were laid out for a town to be known as Queen City. But just as the boom seemed likely to mature, the national government stepped in and gave a quietess to the whole affair. With or without foundation, reports had reached the federal authorities that the movement was but a cloak to establish their well-fortified Confederate headquarters for the fitting out and repair of privateers intended to pray upon the coast-wise traders. And on February 5, 1864, Captain B. R. West, commanding the Fourth California Infantry, ordered practically all of the miners and prospectors to leave the island at once. The following September the national troops were withdrawn, and after the war the federal authorities retained control of a point on the island deemed serviceable for lighthouse purposes. In the spring of 1863, feeling ill, I went to San Francisco to consult Dr. Toland who assured me that there was nothing serious to the matter with me. But wishing to satisfy myself more thoroughly, I resorted to the same means that I dare say many others have adopted, a medical examination for life insurance. Barenhard Gattel, General Agent of the Germania Life Insurance Company at 315 Montgomery Street, wrote out my application, and on March 20 a policy numbered 1472 was issued, making me, since the fall of 1913, the oldest living policyholder in the Southwest, and the 20th oldest of the Germania's patrons in the world. Californians, during that period of the war when the North was suffering a series of defeats, had little use for greenbacks. At one time a dollar in currency was worth but 35 cents, though early in April it was accepted at 65, late in August at 90, and about the first of October at 75 cents, even interest bearing gold notes being worth no more. This condition of the money market saw little change until some time in the 70s, and throughout the war greenbacks were handled like any other commodity. Frank LeClovrier, in one of these periods, after getting judgment in a suit against Deputy Surveyor William Moore for civil engineering services and being paid some $383 in greenbacks, was disconcerted enough when he found that his currency would command but $180 in gold. San Francisco merchants realized fortunes when a decline occurred as they bought their merchandise in the East for greenbacks and sold it on the coast for gold. Los Angeles people, on the other hand, enjoyed no such benefit as they brought their wares from San Francisco and were therefore obligated to liquidate in specie. Among the worst tragedies in the early annals of Los Angeles, and by far the most dramatic, was the disaster on April 27th to the little steamer, Ada Hancock. While on a second trip, in the harbor of San Pedro, to transfer the senator the remainder of the passengers bound for the North, the vessel careened, admitting cold water to the engine room, and exploding the boiler with such force that the boat was demolished to the water's edge, fragments being found on an island even half to three quarters of a mile away. Such was the intensity of the blast in the area of the devastation that of the 53 or more passengers known to have been aboard, 26 at least perished. Fortunate indeed were those, including Phineas Banning, the owner, who survived with minor injuries, after being hurled many feet into the air. Among the dead were Thomas W. Sealy, captain of the senator, Joseph Bryant, captain of the Ada Hancock, Dr. H.R. Miles, the drugist who had been in partnership opposite the Bella Union, with Dr. J.C. Welch, and a rival of the early 50s who died in 1869, Thomas H. Workman, Banning's chief clerk, Albert Sidney Johnston Jr., William T.B. Sanford, once postmaster, Louis Schlesinger, and William Richie, Wells Fargo's messenger, to whom was entrusted $10,000, which, as far as my memory goes, was lost. Two Mormon missionaries en route to the Sandwich Islands were also killed. Still another, who lost not only his treasure, but his life, was Fred E. Curlin of Fort Téhon. $30,000, which he carried with him in green backs, disappeared as mysteriously as did the jewelry on the persons of others, and from these circumstances it was concluded that, even in the presence of death, these bodies had been speedily robbed. Mrs. Banning and her mother, Mrs. Sanford, and a daughter of B.D. Wilson, were among the wounded, while Mrs. M. Herford, Mrs. Wilson's sister and the fiancee of Dr. Miles, was so severely injured that after long suffering she also died. Although the accident had happened about five o'clock in the afternoon, the awful news, casting a general and indescribable gloom, was not received in town until nearly eight o'clock, when Doctors Griffin and R.T. Hayes, together with an army surgeon named Todd, hastened in carriages to the harbor where soldiers from Camp Drum had already asserted their authority. Many of the victims were buried near the beach at New San Pedro, while I was calling upon Mrs. Johnston to express my sympathy, the body of her son was brought in, and words cannot describe the pathos of the scene when she addressed the departed as if he were but asleep. In June the government demanded a formal profession of loyalty from teachers when Miss Mary Hoyt and Miss Eliza Madigan took the oath, but Mrs. Thomas Foster and William McKee refused to do so. The incident provoked bitter criticism, and nothing being done to punish the recalcitrants, the Los Angeles Board of Education was charged with indifference as to the allegiance of its public servants. During 1863 sectional feeling had grown so bitter on account of the war that no attempt was made to celebrate the Fourth of July in town. At Fort Latham, however, on the Bayona Ranch, the soldiers observed the day with an appropriate demonstration. By the end of July troops had been sent from drum barracks to camp in the city for the protection, so it was asserted, of Union men whose lives were said to be in danger, although some people claimed that this movement was rather for the purposes of intimidating certain leaders with known sympathy for the South. This military display gave Northerners more backbone, and on the 26th of September a Union mass meeting was held on Main Street in front of the Lafayette Hotel. Eldridge Edward Hewitt, a Mexican war veteran who came to California in 1849 to search for gold, arrived in Los Angeles on July 31st, and soon went on a wild goose chase to the Weaver Diggings in Arizona, actually tramping with luggage over 500 miles of the way. After his return he did odd jobs for his board, working in a stationery and toy store on Main Street, kept by the Goldwater Brothers, Joe and Mike, who had arrived in the early 60s, and later he entered the employ of Phineas Banning at Wilmington, with whom he remained until the completion of the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad in 1870, when he became its superintendent. When the Southern Pacific obtained control of that road in 1873 Hewitt was made agent, and after the extension of the line from San Francisco he was appointed division superintendent. In that capacity he brought Senator Leland Standforth to me, as I shall elsewhere relate, to solicit H, Newmark, and Company's patronage. It was in 1863 that Dr. J. S. Griffin, father of East Los Angeles, purchased 2,000 acres in that section at 50 cents an acre, but even at that price he was only induced to buy it by necessity. Griffin wanted sheep pasture and had sought to secure some 800 acres of city land along the river, but as this would prevent other cattle or sheep from approaching the water to drink, the Common Council refused Griffin's bid on the smaller area of land, and he was compelled to buy the Mesa farther back. Seems to me that B. D. Wilson, J. G. Downey, and Hancock M. Johnston, General Johnston's son, also had something to do with this transaction. Both Downey and Griffin avenues derived their names from the association of these two gentlemen with that section. A smallpox epidemic which had started in the previous fall spread through Los Angeles in 1863, and owing possibly to the bad sanitary and climactic conditions, much vigilance and time were required to eradicate it, compulsory vaccination not having been introduced, as it finally was at the suggestion of Dr. Walter Lindley, until the summer of 1876. The dread disease worked its ravages especially among the Mexicans and Indians as many as a dozen of them dying in a single day, and these sufferers and their associates being under no quarantine, and even bathing at Lebetum in the Zonges, the pest spread alarmingly. For a time fatalities were so frequent, and the nature of the contagion so feared that it was difficult to persuade undertakers to bury the dead, even without funeral or other ceremony. Following the opening of the Owens River mines this year, Los Angeles merchants soon established a considerable trade with that territory. Banning inaugurated a system of wagon trains each guarded by a detachment of soldiers. The San Fernando Mountains, impassable for heavy teaming, were an obstacle to regular trade with the new country and compelled the use of a circuitous route over poor roads. It became necessary therefore to consider a means of overcoming the difficulty, much money having already been spent by the county in an abortive attempt to build a tunnel. This second plan likewise came to naught, and it was in fact more than a decade before the Southern Pacific finally completed the famous boar. Largely because of political mistakes, including a manifestation of sympathy for the Southern Confederacy that drew him against Northern resentment and opposition, John G. Downey, the Democratic nominee for governor, was defeated at the election in September, Frederick F. Low, a Republican, receiving a majority of over 20,000 votes. In October a peddler named Brun was murdered near Chino, Brun's brother, living at San Bernardino, and subsequently a merchant of prominence there, offered $200 of his slender savings as a reward for the capture of the slayer, but nothing ever came of the search. In November the stern necessities of war were at last driven home to Angelinos when, on the ninth of that summer month, Don Juan Warner, Deputy Provost Marshall, appeared with his big blank books and began to superintend the registering of all able-bodied citizens suitable for military service. To many the Inquisition was not very welcome, and had it not been for the Union soldiers decamped at Drumbarix, this first step towards compulsory enrollment would undoubtedly have resulted in riotous disturbances. I have frequently named Tom Mott, but I may not have said that he was one of the representative local Democratic politicians of his day. He possessed, indeed, such influence with all classes that he was not only elected clerk of Los Angeles County in 1863, but succeeded himself in 1865, 1867, and 1869, afterwards sitting in the State Assembly, and in 1876 he was appointed a delegate to the National Convention that nominated Samuel J. Tilden for the presidency. His relations in time with Stanford, Crocker, Huntington, and Hopkins were very close, and for at least 25 years he acted as their political advisor in all manners appertaining to Southern California. Tall erect and dignified, scrupulously attired and distinguished by his flowing beard, Tom was for more than half a century a striking figure in Los Angeles. A most brutal murder took place on November 15th on the desert not far from Los Angeles, but few days passing before it was avenged. A poor miner named R. A. Hester was fatally attacked by a border ruffian known as Boston Damewood, while some Confederates, including the criminals Chase, Yabara, and Olivas, stood by to prevent interference. In a few hours, officers and citizens were in the saddle in pursuit of the murderous band, for Damewood had boasted that Hester was but the first of several of our citizens to whom he intended to pay his respects. Damewood and his three companions were captured and lodged in jail, and on the 21st of November, two hundred or more armed vigilantes forced the jail doors, seized the scoundrels, and hung them to the portico of the old City Hall on Spring Street. Tomás Sánchez, the sheriff, talked of organizing a Posse Comitatus to arrest the committee leaders, but so positive was public sentiment, as reflected in the newspapers, in support of the summary executions, that nothing further was heard of the threat. An incident of value in the study of mob psychology accentuated the day's events. During the lynching, the clattering of horses hooves was heard, when the cry was raised that cavalry from drum barracks was rushing to rescue the prisoners, and in a twinkling, those but a moment before most demonstrative, were seen scurrying to cover in all directions. Instead, however, of federal soldiers, the horsemen were the usual contingent of El Monte boys, coming to assist in the necktie party. Besides the murderers lynched, there was an American boy named Wood of about 18 years, and although he had committed no offense more vicious than the theft of some chickens, he paid the penalty with his life, it having been the verdict of the committee that while they were at it, the jail might as well be cleared of every mal-factor. A large empty case was secured as a platform on which the victim was to stand, and I shall never forget the spectacle of the youth, apparently oblivious of his impending dune, as he placed his hands upon the box and vaulted lightly to the top.  The removal of the case a moment later, after the news had been thrown over and drawn about the lad's head, left the poor victim suspended beyond human aid. On that same day a sixth prisoner barely escaped. When the crowd was debating the lynchings, John P. Lee, a resident of El Monte who had been convicted of murder, was already under the sentence of death, and the vigilantes, having duly considered his case, decided that it would be just as well to permit the law to take its course. Some time later, J. Lancaster Brent, Lee's attorney, appealed the case and obtained for his client a new trial, finally clearing Lee of the charges against him, so that in the end he died a natural death. I frequently saw Lee after this episode, and vividly recall an unpleasant interview years later. The regularity of his visits had been interrupted, and when he reappeared to get some merchandise for a customer at El Monte, I asked him where he had been. He explained that a dog had bitten a little girl, and that while she was suffering from hydrophobia, she had in turn attacked him and so severely scratched his hands and face, that for a while he could not show himself in public. After that, whenever I saw Lee, I was aware of a lurking if ridiculous suspicion that the moment might have arrived for a new manifestation of the rabies. Speaking of the Civil War and the fact that in Southern California there was less pronounced sentiment for the Union than in the northern part of the state, I am reminded of a relief movement that emphasized the distinction. By the middle of November, San Francisco had sent over $130,000 to the United States Sanitary Commission, and an indignant protest was voiced in some quarters that Los Angeles, up to that date, had not participated. In time, however, the Friends of the Union here did make up a small purse. In 1863, interest in the old San Juan Capistrano mission was revived with the reopening of the historic structure, so badly damaged by the earthquake of 1812, and a considerable number of townspeople went out to the first services under the new roof. When I first saw the mission near Dol Juan Forster's home, there was, in its open doors, windows and cut stone and stucco ruins, its vines and wildflowers, much of the picturesque. On November 18, 1862, our little community was greatly stirred by the news that John Reigns, one of Colonel Isaac Williams' son-in-law, and well known in Los Angeles, had been waylaid and killed on the highway near the Asusa Rancho the night before. It was claimed that one Ramón Carrillo had hired the assassins to do the foul deed, and about the middle of February 1863, a Mexican by the name of Manuel Sarradel was arrested by Thomas Trafford, the city marshal, as a participant. In time, he was tried and sentenced to ten years in San Quentin Prison. On December 9, Sheriff Tomas Sanchez started to take the prisoner north, and at Wilmington bordered the little steamer cricket to go out to the senator, which was ready to sail. A goodly number of other passengers also bordered the tugboat, though nothing in particular was thought of the circumstance, but once out in the harbor, a group of vigilantes indignant at the light sentenced in post, seized the culprit at a prearranged signal, threw a news about his neck, and in a jiffy hung him to the flagstaff. When he was dead, the body was lowered and stones, brought aboard in packages by the committee, who had evidently considered every detail, were tied to the feet, and the corpse was thrown overboard before the steamer was reached. This was one of the acts of the vigilantes that no one seemed to deprecate. Toward the end of 1861, J. E. Pleasants, while overseeing one of Wolfskill's ranches, hit the trail of some horse thieves, and, assisted by city marshal William C. Warren, pursued and captured several, who were sent to the penitentiary. One, however, escaped. This was Charles Wilkins, a veritable scoundrel, who having stolen a pistol and a knife from the belly union, and put the same into the hands of young Wood, whose lynching I have described, sent the lad on his way to the gallows. A couple of years later, Wilkins waylade and murdered John Sanford, a rancher living near Fort Tejon, and a brother of Captain W. T. B. Sanford, the second postmaster of Los Angeles. And when the murderer had been apprehended and was being tried, an exciting incident occurred, to which I was an eye witness. On November 16, 1854, Phineas Banning had married Miss Rebecca Sanford, a sister of the unfortunate man. And as Banning caught sight of Wilkins, he rushed forward and endeavored to avenge the crime by shooting the culprit. Banning was then restrained. But soon after, on December 17, 1863, he led the Vigilance Committee, which strung up Wilkins on Tomlinson and Griffith's Corral Gateway, where nearly a dozen culprits had already forfeited their lives. End of Chapter 22 Chapter 23 of Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853 to 1913 by Harris Newmark. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by K. Hand. Chapter 22. Assassination of Lincoln. 1864 to 1865. Of all the years of adversity before, during, or since the Civil War, the seemingly interminable year of 1864 was for Southern California the worst. The varying moves in the great struggle, conducted mostly by Grant N. Lee, Sherman, and Farragut, buoyed now one, now the other side, but whichever way the tide of battle turned, business and financial conditions here altered but little and improved not a wit. The Southwest, as I have already pointed out, was more dependent for its prosperity on natural conditions, such as rain, than upon the victory of any army or fleet. And as this was the last of three successive seasons of annihilating drought, ranchmen and merchant everywhere became downhearted. During the entire winter of 1862 to 63 no more than four inches of rain had fallen, and in 1864 not until March was there a shower, and even then the earth was scarcely moistened. With a total assessment of something like two million dollars in the county, not a cent of taxes, at least in the city, was collected. Men were so miserably poor that confidence mutually weakened, and merchants refused to trust those who, as land and cattle-bearants, but a short time before had been so influential, and most of whom, in another and more favorable season or two, were again operators of affluence. How great was the depreciation in values may be seen from the fact that notes given by Francis Temple, and bearing heavy interest, were peddled at about fifty cents on the dollar, and even then found few purchasers. As a result of these very infrequent rains, grass started up only to wither away, a small district around Anaheim, independent of the rainfall on account of its fine irrigation system alone being green. And thither the lean and thirsty cattle came by thousands, rushing in their feverish state against the great willow fence I have elsewhere described. This stampede became such a menace, in fact, that the Anaheimers were summoned to defend their homes and property, and finally they had to place a mounted guard outside of the willow enclosures. Everywhere large numbers of horses and cattle died, as well as many sheep, the plains at length being strewn with carcasses and bleached bones, the suffering of the poor animals beggars description, and so distressed with hunger worthy that I saw famished cattle during the summer of 1864 while on a visit to the springs at Paso de Broles crowd around the Hotel Veranda for the purpose of devouring the discarded matting containers which had held Chinese rice. I may also add that with the approach of summer the drought became worse and worse, contributing in no small degree to the spread of smallpox, then epidemic here. Sterns lost forty or fifty thousand head of livestock and was much the greatest sufferer in this respect, and as a result he was compelled, about June 1865, to mortgage Los Alamitos Rancho with its twenty-six thousand acres to Michael Reese of San Francisco for the almost paltry sum of twenty thousand dollars. Even this sacrifice, however, did not save him from still greater financial distress. In 1864 two Los Angeles merchants Louis Schlesinger and Hyman Tischler, owing to the recent drought foreclosed a mortgage on several thousand acres of land known as the Ricardo Vejar property, lying between Los Angeles and San Bernardino. Shortly after this transaction Schlesinger was killed while on his way to San Francisco in the Ada Hancock explosion, after which Tischler purchased Schlesinger's interest in the ranch and managed it alone. In January Tischler invited me to accompany him on one of the numerous excursions which he made to his newly acquired possession, but though I was inclined to go, a business engagement interfered and kept me in town. Poor Edward Newman, another friend of Tischler's, took my place. On the way to San Bernardino from the rancho the travelers were ambushed by some Mexicans, who shot Newman dead. It was generally assumed that the bullets were intended for Tischler in revenge for his part in the foreclosure. At any rate he would never go to the ranch again, and finally sold it to Don Luis Phillips on credit for thirty thousand dollars. The inventory included large herds of horses and cattle, which Phillips, during the subsequent wet season, drove to Utah, where he realized sufficient from their sale alone to pay for the whole property. Pomona and other important places now mark the neighborhood where once roamed his herds. Phillips died some years ago at the family residence which he had built on the ranch near Spadra. James R. Toberman, after a trying experience with Texan Redskins, came to Los Angeles in 1864, President Lincoln having appointed him United States Revenue Assessor here, an office which he held for six years. At the same time, as an exceptional privilege for a government officer, Toberman was permitted to become agent for Wells Fargo and company. Again the Fourth of July was not celebrated here, the two factions in the communities still opposing each other with bitterness. Hatred of the national government had increased through an incident of the previous spring which stirred the town mightily. On the eighth or ninth of May a group stood discussing the Fort Pillow Massacre when J. F. Buildermack indiscreetly expressed the wish that the Confederates would annihilate every negro taken with arms and every white man as well who might be found in command of colored troops or some such equally dangerous and foolish sentiment. The indiscretion was reported to the government authorities and Buildermack was straight away arrested by a lieutenant of cavalry though he was soon released. Among the most rabid Democrats, particularly during the Civil War period, was Nigger Pete the Barber. One hot day in August, patriotic Biggs vociferously proclaimed his ardent attachment to the cause of secession, whereupon he was promptly arrested, placed in charge of half a dozen cavalrymen and made to foot it with an iron chain and ball attached to his ankle all the way from Los Angeles to drum barracks at Wilmington. Not in the least discouraged by his uncertain position, however, Pete threw his hat up into the air as he passed some acquaintances on the road and gave three hearty cheers for Jeff Davis thus bringing about the completion of his difficulty. For my part I have good reason to remember the drought and crisis of 1864, not alone because times were miserably hard and prosperity seemed to have disappeared forever, or that the important revenue from Uncle Sam, although it relieved the situation, was never sufficient to go around, but also because of an unfortunate investment. I bought and shipped many thousands of hides which owners had taken from the carcasses of their starved cattle, forwarding them to San Francisco by Schooner or Steumer, and thence to New York by sailing vessel. A large number had commenced to putrefy before they were removed, which fact escaped my attention, and on their arrival in the East the decomposing skins had to be taken out to sea again and thrown overboard, so that the net result of this venture were disastrous. However, we all met the difficulties of the situation as philosophically as we could. There were no railroads in California until the late sixties, and consequently there was no regular method of concentration nor any systematic marketing of products, and this had a very bad economic effect on the whole state. Prices were extremely high during her early history, and especially so in 1864. Barley sold at three and a half cents per pound, potatoes went up to twelve and a half cents, and flour reached fifteen dollars per barrel at wholesale. Much flour in wooden barrels was then brought from New York by sailing vessels, and my brother imported a lot during a period of inflation, some of which he sold at thirteen dollars. Isaac Friedlander, a San Francisco pioneer, who was not alone the tallest man in that city, but was as well a giant operator in grain and its products, practically monopolized the wheat and flour business of the town, and when he heard of this interference he purchased all the remainder of my brother's flour at thirteen dollars a barrel, and so secured control of the situation. Just before this transaction I happened to be in San Francisco, and noticing the advertisement of an approaching flour auction I attended the sale. This particular lot was packed in sacks which had been eaten into by rats and mice, and had in consequence to be re-sacked, sweepings, and all. I bought one hundred barrels and shipped the flour to Los Angeles, and B. de Bourdieu, the corbulent little French baker, considered himself fortunate in obtaining it at fifteen dollars per barrel. Speaking of foodstuffs I may note that red beans then commanded a price of twelve and a half cents per pound until a sailing vessel from Chile unexpectedly landed a cargo in San Francisco and sent the price dropping to a cent and a quarter, when commissioned men, among them myself, suffered heavy losses. In 1864 F. Bachmann and Company sold out. Their retirement was ascribed in a measure to the series of bad years, but the influence of their wives was a powerful factor in inducing them to withdraw. The firm had been compelled to accept large parcels of real estate and payment of accounts, and now, while preparing to leave, Bachmann and Company sacrificed their fine holdings at prices considered ridiculous even then. The only one of these sales that I remember was that of a lot with a frontage of one hundred and twenty feet on Fort Street, and a one-story adobe house which they disposed of for four hundred dollars. I've told of Don Juan Forster's possessions, the Santa Margarita Rancho, where he lived until his death, and also the Los Flores. These he obtained in 1864 when land was worth but the nearest song, buying the same from Pio Pico, his brother-in-law. The two ranches included over a hundred and forty thousand acres, and pastured some twenty-five thousand cattle, three thousand horses, and six or seven thousand sheep. Yet the transaction, on account of the season, was a fiscal operation of but minor importance. The hard times strikingly conduced to criminality, and since there were then probably not more than three or four policemen in Los Angeles, some of the desperados, here in large numbers and not confined to any particular nationality or color, took advantage of the conditions, even making several peculiar nocturnal assaults upon the guardians of the peace. The methods occasionally adopted satisfied the community that Mexican bandidos were at work. Two of these were these on horseback, while approaching a policeman, but suddenly dashed in opposite directions, bringing a rayata, in the use of which they were almost always proficient, taught to the level of their saddles, and striking the policeman with a hide or hair-rope, they would throw him to the ground with such force as to disable him. Then the ingenious robbers would carry out their well-planned dead predations in the neighborhood, and disappear with their booty. Jay Ross Brown, one of the active forty-niners in San Francisco, and author of Crusoe's Island, and various other volumes dealing with early life in California and along the coast, was on and off a visitor to Los Angeles, first passing through here in 1859 en route to the Washoe gold fields, and stopping again in 1864. Politics enlivened the situation somewhat in the fall of this year of depression. In September the troops were withdrawn from Catalina Island, and the following month most of the guard was brought in from Fort Tejon, and this, creating possibly a feeling of security, paved the way for still larger union meetings in October and November. Toward the end of November, Francisco P. Ramirez, formerly editor of El Clamor Público, was made postmaster, succeeding William G. Still upon whose life an attempt had been made while he was in office. As an illustration of how a fortunate plunger acquired property now worth millions, through the disinclination on the part of most people here to add to their taxes in this time of drought, I may mention two pieces of land included in the early Ord survey, 120 by 165 feet in size, one at the southwest corner of Spring and 4th Streets, the other at the southeast corner of Fort and 4th, which were sold on December 12, 1864 for $2.50 delinquent taxes. The tax on each lot was but $1.26, yet only one purchaser appeared. About that very time there was another end word the movement in favor of the establishment of a railroad between Los Angeles and San Pedro. In December committees from outside towns met here with our citizens to debate the subject, but by the end of several days' conference no real progress had been made. The year 1865 gave scant promise, at least in its opening, of better times to come. To be sure northern arms were more and more victorious, and with the approach of Lincoln's second inauguration the conviction grew that under the leadership of such a man national prosperity might return. Little did we dream that the most dramatic of all tragedies in our history was soon to be enacted. In Southern California the effects of the long drought continued, and the certainty that the cattle industry, once so vast and flourishing, was now but a memory, discouraged a people to whom the vision of a far more profitable use of the land had not yet been revealed. For several years my family, including three children, had been shifting from pillar to post, owing to the lack of residences such as are now built to sell or lease, and I could not postpone any longer the necessity of obtaining larger quarters. We had occupied, at various times, a little shanty on Franklin Street, owned by a carpenter named Wilson, a small one-story brick on Main Street near First, owned by Hennie, the brewer, and once we lived with the Kramer's in a one-story house none too large on Fort Street. Again we dwelt on Fort Street in a little brick house that stood on the site of the present chamber of commerce building, next door to Governor Downey's, before he moved to Main Street. The nearest approach to convenience was afforded by our occupancy of Henry Dalton's two-story brick on Main Street near Second. One day a friend told me that Jim Easton had an Adobe on Main Street near Third, which he wished to sell. In an inquiry I bought the place, paying him a thousand dollars for fifty-four feet, the entire frontage being occupied by the house. Main Street beyond First was practically in the same condition as at the time of my arrival, no streets running East having been opened South of First. After moving in we were inconvenienced because there was no driveway and everything needed for housekeeping had to be carried in consequence, through the front door of the dwelling. I therefore interviewed my friend and neighbor Ignacio Garcia, who owned a hundred feet adjoining me and asked him if he would sell or rent me twenty feet of his property, whereupon he permitted me the free use of twenty feet, thus supplying me with access to the rear of my house. A few months later Alfred B. Chapman, Garcia's legal advisor, who by the way is still alive, footnote, died January 22, 1915, and footnote, brought me a deed to the twenty feet of land, the only expense being a fee of twenty-five dollars to Chapman for making out the document, and later Garcia sold his remaining eighty feet to Tom Mott for five dollars a foot. This lot is still in my possession. In due time I put up a large old-fashioned wooden barn with a roomy hayloft, stalls for a couple of horses or mules, and space for a large flat truck, the first of the kind for years in Los Angeles. John Simmons had his room in the barn and was one of my first porters. I had no regular driver for the truck, but John usually served in that capacity. Incidentally to this story am I selecting a street on which to live? I may say that during the sixties, Maine and San Pedro streets were among the chief residential sections, and Spring Street was only beginning to be popular for homes. The fact that some people living on the west side of Main Street built their stables in backyards connecting with Spring Street retarded the latter's growth. Here I may well repeat the story of the naming of Spring Street, particularly as it exemplifies the influence that romance sometimes has upon affairs usually prosaic. Ord, the surveyor, was then more than prepossessed in favor of the delightful señorita Trinidad de la Guerra, for whose hand he was, in fact, a suitor, and to whom he always referred to as me primavera, my springtime. And when asked to name the new thoroughfare, he gallantly replied, primavera, of course, primavera. On February 3 a wind storm, the like of which the proverbial oldest inhabitant could scarcely recall, struck Los Angeles amid ships, unroofing many houses and blowing down orchards. Wolfskill lost heavily and banning in companies large barn at the northeast corner of Fort and Second Streets, near the old schoolhouse, was demolished, scarcely a post remaining upright. A curious sight soon after the storm began to blow was that of many citizens weighing down and lashing fast their roofs, just as they do in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, to keep them from being carried to unexpected, not to say inconvenient locations. In early days, steamers plying up and down the Pacific Coast, as I have pointed out, were so poor in every respect that it was necessary to make frequent changes in their names, to induce passengers to travel on them at all. As far back as 1860, one frequently heard the expression, the old tubs, and in 1865, even the best known boat on the southern run was publicly discussed as the rotten old senator, the old hulk, and the floating coffin. At this time there was a strong feeling against the steam navigation company for its arbitrary treatment of the public, its steamers, sometimes leaving a whole day before the date on which they were advertised to depart, and this criticism and dissatisfaction finally resulted in the putting on of the opposition steamer Pacific, which for the time became popular. In 1865, Judge Benjamin S. Eaton tried another agricultural experiment which many persons of more experience at first predicted would be a failure. He had moved into the cottage at Fair Oaks, built by the estimable lady of General Albert Sidney Johnston, and had planted five thousand or more grapevines in the good, though dry soil. But the lack of surface water caused vineyardists to shake their heads incredulously. The vines prospered so well that in the following year, Eaton planted five or six times as many more. He came to the conclusion, however, that he must have water, and so arranged to bring some from what is now known as Eaton's Canyon. I remember that, after his vines began to bear, the greatest worry of the judge was not the matter of irrigation, but the wild beasts that preyed upon the clustering fruit. The visitor to Pasadena and Altadena today can hardly realize that in those very localities both coyotes and bears were rampant, and that many a night the irate judge was roused by the barking dogs as they drove the intruders out of the vineyard. Tomlinson and company, always energetic competitors in the business of transportation in southern California, began running about the first of April, a new stage line between Los Angeles and San Bernardino, making three trips a week. On the fifteenth of April my family physician, Dr. John S. Griffin, paid a professional visit to my house on Main Street, which might have ended disastrously for him. While we were seated together by an open window in the dining room, a man named Cain ran by on the street shouting out the momentous news that Abraham Lincoln had been shot. Griffin, who was a staunch southerner, was on his feet instantly, cheering for Jeff Davis. He gave evidence indeed of great mental excitement, and soon seized his hat and rushed for the door, hurrying for the Confederacy. In a flash I realized that Griffin would be in awful jeopardy if he reached the street in that unbalanced condition, and by main force I held him back, convincing him at last of his folly. In the later years the genial doctor frankly admitted that I had undoubtedly saved him from certain death. This incident brings to mind another, associated with Henry Bear, whose father Abraham, a native of Bavaria, and one of the earliest tailors here, had arrived from New Orleans in 1854. When Lincoln's assassination was first known, Henry ran out of the house singing Dixie and shouting for the South, but his father overtaking him brought him back and gave him a sound whipping, an act nearly breaking up the Bear family in as much as Mrs. Bear was a pronounced secessionist. The news of Lincoln's assassination made a profound impression in Los Angeles, though it cannot be denied that some southern sympathizers, on first impulse, thought that it would be advantageous to the Confederate cause. There was, therefore, for the moment some ill-advised exultation, but this was promptly suppressed either by the military or by the firm stand of the more level-headed members of the community. Soon even radically inclined citizens, in an effort to hold up the fair name of the town, fell into line, and steps were taken fiddlyly to mourn the nation's loss. On the 17th of April the Common Council passed appropriate resolutions, and Governor Low having telegraphed that Lincoln's funeral would be held in Washington on the 19th at 12 o'clock noon, the Union League of Los Angeles took the initiative and invited the various societies of the city to join in a funeral procession. On April 19th all the stores were closed, business was suspended and soldiers as well as civilians assembled in front of Arcadia Block. There were present United States officers mounted cavalry under command of Captain Ledgird, the Mayor and Common Council, various lodges, the Hebrew congregation Benai Brith, the Titunia, the French Benevolent and the Junta Patriotica Societies, and numerous citizens. Under the marshalship of SF Lamson the procession moved slowly over what today would be regarded as an insignificantly short route, west on Arcadia Street to Main, down Main to Spring as far as 1st, east on 1st to Main and up Main Street proceeding back to the City Hall by way of Spring, at which point the parade disbanded. Later on the same day there were memorial services in the upper story of the Old Temple Courthouse where Reverend Elias Birdsell, the Episcopal clergyman, delivered a splendid oration and panagyric. And at the same time the members of the Hebrew congregation met at the house of Rabbi A. W. Edelman. Prayers for the martyred president were uttered and supplication was made for the recovery of Secretary of State Seward. The resolutions presented on this occasion concluded as follows. Resolved that with feelings of the deepest sorrow we deploy the loss our country has sustained in the untimely end of our late president. But as it has pleased the Almighty to deprive this country of its chief and great friend we bow with submission to the all wise will. I may add that soon after the assassination of the president the federal authorities sent an order to Los Angeles to arrest anyone found rejoicing in the foul deed and that several persons soon in the toils were severely dealt with. In San Francisco two when the startling news was flashed over the wires Unionist mobs demolished the plants of the Democratic press the newsletter and a couple of other journals very abusive toward the martyred emancipator. The editors and publishers themselves escaping with their lives only by flight and concealment. Nowwithstanding the strong secessionist sentiment in Los Angeles during much of the Civil War period the city election resulted in a Unionist victory. Jose Mascarel was elected mayor William C. Warren Marshall J. F. Burns treasurer J. H. Lander attorney and J. W. B. B. assessor. The triumph of the federal government doubtless at once began to steady and improve affairs throughout the country but it was some time before any noticeable progress was felt here. Particularly unfortunate were those who had gone east or south for actual service and who were obliged to make their way finally back to the coast. Among such volunteers was Captain Cameron E. Tom who on landing at San Pedro was glad to have J. M. Griffith advance him money enough to reach Los Angeles and begin life again. Outdoor restaurant gardens were popular in the 60s. On April 23rd the Tevioli Garden was reopened by Henry Soames and thither on holidays and Sundays many pleasure lovers gravitated. Sometime in the spring and during the incumbency of Reverend Elias Birdsell as rector the right reverend William Ingram Kipp who had come to the Pacific Coast in 1853 made his first visit to the Episcopal Church in Los Angeles as Bishop of California although really elevated to that high office seven years before. Bishop Kipp was one of the young clergy who pleaded with the unresponsive culprits strung up by the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 and later he was known as an author. The Reverend Birdsell by the way was rector of St. Paul's school on Olive Street between 5th and 6th as late as 1887. John G. Downey subdivided the extensive Santa Gay Trudis Rancho on the San Gabriel River in the spring and the first deed was made out to J. H. Burke a son-in-law of Captain Jesse Hunter. Burke, a man of splendid physique, was a blacksmith whose main street shop was next to the site of the present Van Nuys Hotel. Downey and he exchanged properties the ex-governor building a handsome brick residence on Burke's lot and Burke removing his blacksmith business to Downey's new town where by remaining until the property had appreciated he became well to do. I have alluded to the Dominguez Rancho known as the San Pedro but I have not said that in 1865 some 4,000 acres of this property were sold to Temple and Gibson at 35 cents an acre and on that a portion of this land G. D. Compton founded the town named after him and first called Comptonville. It was really a Methodist church enterprise planned from the beginning as a pledge to T. Totalism and is of particular interest because it is one of the oldest towns in Los Angeles County and certainly the first dry community. Compton paid Temple and Gibson five dollars an acre. Toward the end of the war that is in May Major General Irwin McDowell the unfortunate commander of the army of the Potomac who had been nearly a year in charge of the Department of the Pacific made Los Angeles a long announced visit coming on the government steamer Saginaw. The distinguished officer his family and sweet were speedily whirled to the Bella Union the competing drivers shouting and cursing themselves hoarse in their efforts to get the general or the general's wife in different stages there first. As was customary in those simpler days most of the town's folk whose politics would permit called upon the guest and editor Conway and other Unionists were long closeted with him. After 36 hours or more during which the general inspected the local government headquarters and the ladies were driven to and entertained at various homes the party accompanied by collector James and Attorney General McCullough boarded the cutter and made off for the north. Anticipating this visit of General McDowell due preparations were made to receive him. It happened however as I have indicated that Jose Mascarrel was then mayor and since he had never been able to express himself freely in English though speaking Spanish as well as French it was feared that embarrassment must follow the meaning of the civil and military personages. Luckily however like many scions of early well-to-do American families McDowell had been educated in France and the two chiefs were soon having a free and easy talk in Mascarrel's native tongue. An effort on May 2nd to better establish Saint Vincent's College as the one institution of higher learning here was but natural at the time. In the middle of the 60s quite as many children attended private academies in Los Angeles as were in the public schools while three-fifths of all children attended no school at all. At the beginning of the 20th century two- thirds of all the children in the county attended public schools. End of chapter 23