IN AND NEAR THE OLD PUEBLO
1853
About the time when I arrived, Assessor António F. Coronel reported an
increase in the City and County assessment of over eight hundred and
five thousand dollars, but the number of stores was really limited,
and the amount of business involved was in proportion. The community
was like a village; and such was the provincial character of the town
that, instead of indicating the location of a store or office by a
number, the advertiser more frequently used such a phrase as "opposite
the Bella Union," "near the Express Office," or "_vis-à-vis_ to Mr.
Temple's." Nor was this of great importance: change of names and
addresses were frequent in business establishments in those days--an
indication, perhaps, of the restless spirit of the times.
Possibly because of this uncertainty as to headquarters, merchants
were indifferent toward many advertising aids considered to-day rather
essential. When I began business in Los Angeles, most of the
storekeepers contented themselves with signs rudely lettered or
painted on unbleached cloth, and nailed on the outside of the adobe
walls of their shops. Later, their signs were on bleached cloth and
secured in frames without glass. In 1865, we had a painted wooden
sign; and still later, many establishments boasted of letters in gold
on the glass doors and windows. So too, when I first came here,
merchants wrote their own billheads and often did not take the trouble
to do that; but within two or three years afterward, they began to
have them printed.
People were also not as particular about keeping their places of
business open all day. Proprietors would sometimes close their stores
and go out for an hour or two for their meals, or to meet in a
friendly game of billiards. During the monotonous days when but little
business was being transacted, it was not uncommon for merchants to
visit back and forth and to spend hours at a time in playing cards. To
provide a substitute for a table, the window sill of the thick adobe
was used, the visitor seating himself on a box or barrel on the
outside, while the host within at the window would make himself
equally comfortable. Without particularizing, it is safe to state that
the majority of early traders indulged in such methods of killing
time. During this period of miserably lighted thoroughfares, and
before the arrival of many American families, those who did not play
cards and billiards in the saloons met at night at each other's stores
where, on an improvised table, they indulged in a little game of draw.
Artisans, too, were among the pioneers. William H. Perry, a carpenter
by trade, came to Los Angeles on February 1st, 1853, bringing with
him, and setting up here, the first stationary steam engine. In May,
1855, seeing an opportunity to expand, he persuaded Ira Gilchrist to
form a partnership with him under the name of W. H. Perry & Company. A
brief month later, however--so quickly did enterprises evolve in early
Los Angeles--Perry gave up carpentering and joined James D. Brady in
the furniture business. Their location was on Main Street between
Arcadia and the Plaza. They continued together several years, until
Wallace Woodworth--one of Tom Mott's horsemen who went out to avenge
the death of Sheriff Barton--bought out Brady's interest, when the
firm became Perry & Woodworth. They prospered and grew in importance,
their speciality being inside cabinet-work; and on September 6th,
1861, they established a lumber yard in town, with the first regular
saw- and planing-mills seen here. They then manufactured beehives,
furniture and upholstery, and contracted for building and
house-furnishing. In 1863, Stephen H., brother of Tom Mott, joined the
firm. Perry & Woodworth were both active in politics, one being a
Councilman, the other a Supervisor--the latter, a Democratic leader,
going as a delegate to the convention that nominated General Winfield
S. Hancock for the presidency. Their political affiliations indeed
gave them an influence which, in the awarding of contracts, was
sufficient to keep them supplied with large orders. Woodworth's demise
occurred in 1883. Perry died on October 30th, 1906.
Nels Williamson, a native of Maine and a clever fellow, was another
carpenter who was here when I arrived. He had come across the Plains
from New Orleans in 1852 as one of a party of twenty. In the
neighborhood of El Paso de Águila they were all ambushed by Indians,
and eighteen members of the party were killed; Williamson, and Dick
Johnson, afterward a resident of Los Angeles, being the two that
escaped. On a visit to Kern County, Nels was shot by a hunter who
mistook him for a bear; the result of which was that he was badly
crippled for life. So long as he lived--and he approached ninety
years--Nels, like many old-timers, was horribly profane.
Henri Penelon, a fresco-painter, was here in 1853, and was recognized
as a decorator of some merit. When the old Plaza Church was renovated,
he added some ornamental touches to it. At a later period, he was a
photographer as well as a painter.
Among the blacksmiths then in Los Angeles was a well-known German,
John Goller, who conducted his trade in his own shop, occupying about
one hundred feet on Los Angeles Street where the Los Angeles Saddlery
Company is now located. Goller was an emigrant who came by way of the
Salt Lake route, and who, when he set up as the pioneer blacksmith and
wagon-maker, was supplied by Louis Wilhart, who had a tannery on the
west side of the river, with both tools and customers. When Goller
arrived, ironworkers were scarce, and he was able to command pretty
much his own prices. He charged sixteen dollars for shoeing a horse
and used to laugh as he told how he received nearly five hundred
dollars for his part in rigging up the awning in front of a
neighboring house. When, in 1851, the Court of Sessions ordered the
Sheriff to see that fifty lances were made for the volunteer Rangers,
Goller secured the contract. Another commission which he filled was
the making for the County of a three-inch branding-iron with the
letters, _L. A._ There being little iron in stock, Goller bought up
old wagon-tires cast away on the plains, and converted them into
various utensils, including even horseshoes. As an early wagon-maker
he had rather a discouraging experience, his first wagon remaining on
his hands a good while: the natives looked upon it with inquisitive
distrust and still clung to their heavy _carretas_. He had introduced,
however, more modern methods, and gradually he established a good
sale. Afterward he extended his field of operations, the late sixties
finding him shipping wagons all over the State. His prosperity
increased, and Mullaly, Porter & Ayers constructed for him one of the
first brick buildings in Los Angeles. A few years later, Goller met
with heavy financial reverses, losing practically all that he had.
I have stated that no care was given to either the streets or
sidewalks, and a daily evidence of this was the confusion in the
neighborhood of John's shop, which, together with his yard, was one of
the sights of the little town because the blacksmith had strewn the
footway, and even part of the road, with all kinds of piled-up
material; to say nothing of a lot of horses invariably waiting there
to be shod. The result was that passers-by were obliged to make a
detour into the often muddy street to get around and past Goller's
premises.
John Ward was an Angeleño who knew something of the transition from
heavy to lighter vehicles. He was born in Virginia and took part in
the Battle of New Orleans. In the thirties he went to Santa Fé, in one
of the earliest prairie schooners to that point; thence he came to Los
Angeles for a temporary stay, making the trip in the first carriage
ever brought to the Coast from a Yankee workshop. In 1849, he returned
for permanent residence; and here he died in 1859.
D. Anderson, whose daughter married Jerry Newell, a pioneer of 1856,
was a carriage-maker, having previously been in partnership with a man
named Burke in the making of pack-saddles. After a while, when
Anderson had a shop on Main Street, he commenced making a vehicle
somewhat lighter than a road wagon and less elaborate than a carriage.
With materials generally purchased from me he covered the vehicle,
making it look like a hearse. A newspaper clipping evidences
Anderson's activity in the middle seventies--"a little shaky on his
pins, but cordial as ever."
Carriages were very scarce in California at the time of my arrival,
although there were a few, Don Abel Stearns possessing the only
private vehicle in Los Angeles; and transportation was almost entirely
by means of saddle-horses, or the native, capacious _carretas_. These
consisted of a heavy platform, four or five by eight or ten feet in
size, mounted on two large, solid wheels, sawed out of logs, and were
exceedingly primitive in appearance, although the owners sometimes
decorated them elaborately; while the wheels moved on coarse, wooden
axles, affording the traveler more jounce than restful ride. The
_carretas_ served, indeed, for nearly all the carrying business that
was done between the _ranchos_ and Los Angeles; and when in operation,
the squeaking could be heard at a great distance, owing especially to
the fact that the air being undisturbed by factories or noisy traffic,
quiet generally prevailed. So solid were these vehicles that, in early
wars, they were used for barricades and the making of temporary
corrals, and also for transporting cannon.
This sharp squeaking of the _carreta_, however, while penetrating and
disagreeable in the extreme, served a purpose, after all, as the
signal that a buyer was approaching town; for the vehicle was likely
to have on board one or even two good-sized families of women and
children, and the keenest expectation of our little business world was
consequently aroused, bringing merchants and clerks to the front of
their stores. A couple of oxen, by means of ropes attached to their
horns, pulled the _carretas_, while the men accompanied their families
on horseback; and as the roving oxen were inclined to leave the road,
one of the riders (wielding a long, pointed stick) was kept busy
moving from side to side, prodding the wandering animals and thus
holding them to the highway. Following these _carretas_, there were
always from twenty-five to fifty dogs, barking and howling as if mad.
Some of the _carretas_ had awnings and other tasteful trimmings, and
those who could afford it spent a great deal of money on saddles and
bridles. Each _caballero_ was supplied with a _reata_ (sometimes
locally misspelled _riata_) or leathern rope, one end of which was
tied around the neck of the horse while the other--coiled and tied to
the saddle when not in use--was held by the horseman when he went into
a house or store; for hitching posts were unknown, with the natural
result that there were many runaways. When necessary, the _reata_ was
lowered to the level of the ground, to accommodate passers-by. Riders
were always provided with one or two pistols, to say nothing of the
knife which was frequently a part of the armament; and I have seen
even sabers suspended from the saddles.
As I have remarked, Don Abel Stearns owned the first carriage in town;
it was a strong, but rather light and graceful vehicle, with a closed
top, which he had imported from Boston in 1853, to please Doña
Arcadia, it was said. However that may be, it was pronounced by Don
Abel's neighbors the same dismal failure, considering the work it
would be called upon to perform under California conditions, as these
wiseacres later estimated the product of John Goller's carriage shop
to be. Speaking of Goller, reminds me that John Schumacher gave him an
order to build a spring wagon with a cover, in which he might take his
family riding. It was only a one-horse affair, but probably because of
the springs and the top which afforded protection from both the sun
and the rain, it was looked upon as a curiosity.
It is interesting to note, in passing, that John H. Jones, who was
brought from Boston as a coachman by Henry Mellus--while Mrs. Jones
came as a seamstress for Mrs. Mellus--and who for years drove for Abel
Stearns, left a very large estate when he died, including such
properties as the northeast corner of Fifth and Spring streets, the
northwest corner of Main and Fifth streets (where, for several years,
he resided,) and other sites of great value; and it is my recollection
that his wage as coachman was the sole basis of this huge
accumulation. Stearns, as I mention elsewhere, suffered for years from
financial troubles; and I have always understood that during that
crisis Jones rendered his former employer assistance.
Mrs. Frémont, the General's wife, also owned one of the first
carriages in California. It was built to order in the East and sent
around the Horn; and was constructed so that it could be fitted up as
a bed, thus enabling the distinguished lady and her daughter to camp
wherever night might overtake them.
Shoemakers had a hard time establishing themselves in Los Angeles in the
fifties. A German shoemaker--perhaps I should say a _Schuhmachermeister_!
--was said to have come and gone by the beginning of 1852; and less
than a year later, Andrew Lehman, a fellow-countryman of John Behn,
arrived from Baden and began to solicit trade. So much, however, did
the general stores control the sale of boots and shoes at that time,
that Lehman used to say it was three years before he began to make
more than his expenses. Two other shoemakers, Morris and Weber, came
later. Slaney Brothers, in the late sixties, opened the first shoe
store here.
In connection with shoemakers and their lack of patronage, I am
reminded of the different foot gear worn by nearly every man and boy
in the first quarter of a century after my arrival, and the way they
were handled. Then shoes were seldom used, although clumsy brogans
were occasionally in demand. Boots were almost exclusively worn by the
male population, those designed for boys usually being tipped with
copper at the toes. A dozen pair, of different sizes, came in a case,
and often a careful search was required through several boxes to find
just the size needed. At such times, the dealer would fish out one
pair after another, tossing them carelessly onto the floor; and as
each case contained odd sizes that had proven unsalable, the none too
patient and sometimes irascible merchant had to handle and rehandle
the slow-moving stock. Some of the boots were highly ornamented at the
top, and made a fine exhibit when displayed (by means of strings
passing through the boot straps) in front of the store. Boot-jacks,
now as obsolete as the boots themselves, are also an institution of
that past.
Well out in the country, where the Capitol Milling Company's plant now
stands, and perhaps as successor to a still earlier mill built there
by an Englishman, Joseph Chapman (who married into the Ortega
family--since become famous through Émile C. Ortega who, in 1898,
successfully began preserving California chilis),--was a small mill,
run by water, known as the Eagle Mills. This was owned at different
times by Abel Stearns, Francis Mellus and J. R. Scott, and conducted,
from 1855 to 1868, by John Turner, who came here for that purpose, and
whose son, William, with Fred Lambourn later managed the grocery store
of Lambourn & Turner on Aliso Street. The miller made poor flour
indeed; though probably it was quite equal to that produced by Henry
Dalton at the Azusa, John Rowland at the Puente, Michael White at San
Gabriel, and the Theodore brothers at their Old Mill in Los Angeles.
The quantity of wheat raised in Southern California was exceedingly
small, and whenever the raw material became exhausted, Turner's supply
of flour gave out, and this indispensable commodity was then procured
from San Francisco. Turner, who was a large-hearted man and helpful to
his fellows, died in 1878. In the seventies, the mill was sold to J.
D. Deming, and by him to J. Loew, who still controls the corporation,
the activity of which has grown with the city.
Half a year before my coming to Los Angeles, or in April, 1853, nearly
twenty-five thousand square miles had been lopped off from Los Angeles
County, to create the County of San Bernardino; and yet in that short
time the Mormons, who had established themselves there in 1851 as a
colony on a tract of land purchased from Diego Sepúlveda and the three
Lugos--José del Carmen, José María and Vicente--and consisting of
about thirty-five thousand acres, had quite succeeded in their
agricultural and other ventures. Copying somewhat the plan of Salt
Lake City, they laid out a town a mile square, with right-angled
blocks of eight acres and irrigating _zanjas_ parallel with the
streets. In a short time, they were raising corn, wheat (some of it
commanding five dollars a bushel), barley and vegetables; and along
their route of travel, by way of the Mormon metropolis, were coming to
the Southland many substantial pioneers. From San Bernardino, Los
Angeles drew her supply of butter, eggs and poultry; and as three days
were ordinarily required for their transportation across what was then
known as the desert, these products arrived in poor condition,
particularly during the summer heat. The butter would melt, and the
eggs would become stale. This disadvantage, however, was in part
compensated for by the economical advantage of the industry and thrift
of the Mormons, and their favorable situation in an open, fertile
country; for they could afford to sell us their produce very
reasonably--fifteen cents a dozen for eggs, and three dollars a dozen
for chickens well satisfying them! San Bernardino also supplied all of
our wants in the lumber line. A lumber yard was then a prospect--seven
or eight years elapsing before the first yard and planing-mill were
established; and this necessary building material was peddled around
town by the Mormon teamsters who, after disposing of all they could in
this manner, bartered the balance to storekeepers to be later put on
sale somewhere near their stores.
But two towns broke the monotony of a trip between Los Angeles and San
Bernardino, and they were San Gabriel Mission and El Monte. I need not
remind my readers that the former place, the oldest and quaintest
settlement in the county, was founded by Father Junípero Serra and his
associates in 1771, and that thence radiated all of their operations
in this neighborhood; nor that, in spite of all the sacrifice and
human effort, matters with this beautifully-situated Mission were in a
precarious condition for several decades. It may be less known,
however, that the Mission Fathers excelled in the cultivation of
citrus fruits, and that their chief competitors, in 1853, were
William Wolfskill and Louis Vignes, who were also raising seedling
oranges of a very good quality. The population of San Gabriel was then
principally Indian and Mexican, although there were a few whites
dwelling some distance away. Among these, J. S. Mallard, afterward
Justice of the Peace and father of the present City Assessor, Walter
Mallard, carried on a small business; and Mrs. Laura Cecelia
Evertsen--mother-in-law of an old pioneer, Andrew J. King, whose wife
is the talented daughter, Mrs. Laura Evertsen King--also had a store
there. Still another early storekeeper at the quaint settlement was
Max Lazard, nephew of Solomon Lazard, who later went back to France.
Another pioneer to settle near the San Gabriel River was Louis
Phillips, a native of Germany who reached California in 1850, by way
of Louisiana, and for a while did business in a little store on the
Long Wharf at San Francisco. Then he came to Los Angeles, where he
engaged in trade; in 1853, he bought land on which, for ten years or
until he removed to Spadra (where Mrs. Phillips still survives him),
he tilled the soil and raised stock. The previous year, Hugo Reid, of
whom I often heard my neighbors speak in a complimentary way, had died
at San Gabriel where he had lived and worked. Reid was a cultured
Scotchman who, though born in the British Isles, had a part, as a
member of the convention, in making the first Constitution for
California. He married an Indian woman and, in his leisure hours,
studied the Indians on the mainland and Catalina, contributing to the
Los Angeles _Star_ a series of articles on the aborigines still
regarded as the valuable testimony of an eyewitness.
This Indian wife of the scholarly Reid reminds me of Nathan Tuch, who
came here in 1853, having formerly lived in Cleveland where he lost
his first wife. He was thoroughly honest, very quiet and genteel, and
of an affectionate disposition. Coming to California and San Gabriel,
he opened a little store; and there he soon married a full-blooded
squaw. Notwithstanding, however, the difference in their stations and
the fact that she was uneducated, Tuch always remained faithful to
her, and treated her with every mark of respect. When I last visited
Tuch and his shop, I saw there a home-made sign, reading about as
follows:
THIS STORE BELONGS TO NATHAN TUCH,
NOW 73 YEARS OLD.
When he died, his wife permitted his burial in the Jewish Cemetery.
Michael White was another pioneer, who divided his time between San
Gabriel and the neighborhood that came to be known as San Bernardino,
near which he had the rancho Muscupiabe. Although drifting hither as
long ago as 1828, he died, in the late eighties, without farm, home or
friends.
Cyrus Burdick was still another settler who, after leaving Iowa with
his father and other relatives in December, 1853, stopped for a while
at San Gabriel. Soon young Burdick went to Oregon; but, being
dissatisfied, he returned to the Mission and engaged in farming. In
1855, he was elected Constable; a year later, he opened a store at San
Gabriel, which he conducted for eight or nine years. Subsequently, the
Burdicks lived in Los Angeles, at the corner of First and Fort streets
on the site of the present Tajo Building. They also owned the
northeast corner of Second and Spring streets. This property became
the possession of Fred Eaton, through his marriage to Miss Helen L.
Burdick.
Fielding W. Gibson came early in the fifties. He had bought at Sonora,
Mexico, some five hundred and fifty head of cattle, but his _vaqueros_
kept up such a regular system of side-tracking and thieving that, by
the time he reached the San Gabriel Valley, he had only about
one-seventh of his animals left. Fancying that neighborhood, he
purchased two hundred and fifty acres of land from Henry Dalton and
located west of El Monte, where he raised stock and broom corn.
El Monte--a name by some thought to refer to the adjacent mountains,
but actually alluding to the dense willow forests then surrounding the
hamlet--the oldest American settlement in the county, was inhabited by
a party of mixed emigrants, largely Texans and including Ira W.
Thompson who opened the first tavern there and was the Postmaster when
its Post Office was officially designated Monte. Others were Dr. Obed
Macy and his son Oscar, of whom I speak elsewhere, Samuel M. Heath and
Charlotte Gray, who became John Rowland's second wife; the party
having taken possession, in the summer of 1851, of the rich farming
tract along the San Gabriel River some eleven or twelve miles east of
Los Angeles. The summer before I came, forty or fifty more families
arrived there, and among them were A. J. King, afterward a citizen of
Los Angeles; Dr. T. A. Hayes, William and Ezekiel Rubottom, Samuel
King--A. J. King's father--J. A. Johnson, Jacob Weil, A. Madox, A. J.
Horn, Thomas A. Garey, who acquired quite a reputation as a
horticulturist, and Jonathan Tibbets, spoken of in another chapter.
While tilling the soil, these farmer folks made it their particular
business to keep Whigs and, later, Republicans out of office; and slim
were the chances of those parties in El Monte and vicinity, but
correspondingly enthusiastic were the receptions given Democratic
candidates and their followers visiting there. Another important
function that engaged these worthy people was their part in the
lynchings which were necessary in Los Angeles. As soon as they
received the cue, the Monte boys galloped into town; and being by
temperament and training, through frontier life, used to dealing with
the rougher side of human nature, they were recognized disciplinarians.
The fact is that such was the peculiar public spirit animating these
early settlers that no one could live and prosper at the Monte who was
not extremely virile and ready for any dare-devil emergency.
David Lewis, a Supervisor of 1855, crossed the continent to the San
Gabriel Valley in 1851, marrying there, in the following year, a
daughter of the innkeeper Ira Thompson, just referred to. Thompson was
a typical Vermonter and a good, popular fellow, who long kept the
Overland Stage station. Sometime in the late fifties, Lewis was a
pioneer in the growing of hops. Jonathan Tibbets, who settled at El
Monte the year that I came to Los Angeles, had so prospered by 1871
that he left for the mines in Mohave County, Arizona, to inaugurate a
new enterprise, and took with him some twenty thousand pounds of cured
pork and a large quantity of lard, which had been prepared at El
Monte. Samuel M. Heath was another El Monte pioneer of 1851; he died
in 1876, kindly remembered by many poor immigrants. H. L., J. S. and
S. D. Thurman were farmers at El Monte, who came here in 1852. E. C.
Parish, who arrived in 1854 and became a Supervisor, was also a
ranchman there. Other El Monte folks, afterward favorably spoken of,
were the Hoyts, who were identified with early local education.
Dr. Obed Macy, father of Mrs. Sam Foy, came to Los Angeles from the
Island of Nantucket, where he was born, by way of Indiana, in which
State he had practiced medicine, arriving in Southern California about
1850 and settling in El Monte. He moved to Los Angeles, a year later,
and bought the Bella Union from Winston & Hodges; where were opened
the Alameda Baths, on the site of the building later erected by his
son Oscar. There Dr. Macy died on July 9th, 1857. Oscar, a printer on
the _Southern Californian_, had set type in San Francisco, swung a
miner's pick and afterward returned to El Monte where he took up a
claim which, in time, he sold to Samuel King. Macy Street recalls this
pioneer family.
The San Fernando and San Juan Capistrano missions, and Agua Caliente,
were the only other settlements in Los Angeles County then; the
former, famous by 1854 for its olives, passing into history both
through the activity of the Mission Fathers and also the renowned
set-to between Micheltorena and Castro when, after hours of
cannonading and grotesque swinging of the would-be terrifying _reata_,
the total of the dead was--_a single mule!_ Then, or somewhat
subsequently, General Andrés Pico began to occupy what was the most
pretentious adobe in the State, formerly the abode of the _padres_--a
building three hundred feet long, eighty feet wide and with walls four
feet thick.
In 1853, there was but one newspaper in the city--a weekly known as
_La Estrella de los Angeles_ or _The Los Angeles Star_, printed half
in Spanish, half in English. It was founded on May 17th, 1851, by John
A. Lewis and John McElroy, who had their printing office in the lower
room of a small wooden house on Los Angeles Street, near the corral of
the Bella Union hotel. This firm later became Lewis, McElroy & Rand.
There was then no telegraphic communication with the outside world,
and the news ordinarily conveyed by the sheet was anything but
important. Indeed, all such information was known, each week, by the
handful of citizens in the little town long before the paper was
published, and delays in getting mail from a distance--in one case the
post from San Francisco to Los Angeles being under way no less than
fifty-two days!--led to Lewis giving up the editorship in disgust.
When a steamer arrived, some little news found its way into the paper;
but even then matters of national and international moment became
known in Los Angeles only after the lapse of a month or so. The
admission of California to the Union in 1850, for example, was first
reported on the Coast six weeks after Congress had voted in
California's favor; while in 1852, the deaths of Clay and Webster were
not known in the West until more than a month after they had occurred.
This was a slight improvement, however, over the conditions in 1841
when (it used to be said) no one west of the Rockies knew of President
Harrison's demise until over three months and a half after he was
buried! Our first Los Angeles newspaper was really more of an
advertising medium than anything else, and the printing outfit was
decidedly primitive, though the printers may not have been as badly
off as were the typos of the _Californian_. The latter, using type
picked up in a Mexican cloister, found no _W_'s among the Spanish
letters and had to set double _V_'s until more type was brought from
the Cannibal or Sandwich Islands! Which reminds me of José de la Rosa,
born in Los Angeles about 1790, and the first journeyman to set type
in California, who died over one hundred years old. But if the
_Estrella_ made a poor showing as a newspaper, I have no doubt that,
to add to the editor's misfortunes, the advertising rates were so low
that his entire income was but small. In 1854, the _Star_ and its
_imprenta_, as it was then styled, were sold to a company organized by
James S. Waite, who, a year later, was appointed Postmaster of the
city. Speaking of the _Star_, I should add that one of its first
printers was Charles Meyrs Jenkins, later City _Zanjero_, who had come
to California, a mere stripling, with his stepfather, George Dalton,
Sr.
The Post Office, too, at this time, was far from being an important
institution. It was located in an adobe building on Los Angeles,
between Commercial and Arcadia streets, and Dr. William B. Osburn,
sometimes known as Osbourn--who came to California from New York in
1847, in Colonel Stevenson's regiment, and who had established a drug
store, such as it was, in 1850--had just been appointed Postmaster. A
man who in his time played many parts, Osburn had half a dozen other
irons in the fire besides politics (including the interests of a
floral nursery and an auction room), and as the Postmaster was
generally away from his office, citizens desiring their mail would
help themselves out of a soap box--subdivided like a pigeon house,
each compartment being marked with a letter; and in this way the
city's mail was distributed! Indifferent as Dr. Osburn was to the
postmastership (which, of course, could not have paid enough to
command anyone's exclusive services), he was rather a clever fellow
and, somewhat naturally perhaps for a student of chemistry, is said to
have made as early as August 9th, 1851, (and in connection with one
Moses Searles, a pioneer house and sign painter) the first
daguerreotype photographs produced in Los Angeles. For two years or
more, Dr. Osburn remained Postmaster, resigning his office on November
1st, 1855. While he was a notary public, he had an office in Keller's
Building on Los Angeles Street. J. H. Blond was another notary; he had
an office opposite the Bella Union on Main Street. Osburn died in Los
Angeles on July 31st, 1867.
No sooner had I arrived in San Francisco, than I became aware of the
excitement incidental to the search for gold, and on reaching Los
Angeles, I found symptoms of the same fever. That year, as a matter of
fact, recorded the highest output of gold, something like sixty-five
million dollars' worth being mined; and it was not many months before
all was bustle in and about our little city, many people coming and
going, and comparatively few wishing to settle, at least until they
had first tried their luck with the pick and pan. Not even the
discovery of gold in the San Feliciano Cañon, near Newhall, in the
early forties--for I believe the claim is made that Southern
Californians, while searching for wild onions, had the honor of
digging out, in the despised "cow-counties," the first lump of the
coveted metal--had set the natives so agog; so that while the rush to
the mines claimed many who might otherwise have become permanent
residents, it added but little to the prosperity of the town, and it
is no wonder that, for a while, the local newspapers refused to give
events the notice which they deserved. To be sure, certain
merchants--among them dealers in tinware, hardware and groceries, and
those who catered especially to miners, carrying such articles as
gold-washers, canteens and camp-outfits--increased their trade; but
many prospective gold-seekers, on their way to distant diggings,
waited until they got nearer the scene of their adventures before
buying tools and supplies, when they often exhausted their purses in
paying the exorbitant prices which were asked. Barring the success of
Francisco Garcia who used gangs of Indians and secured in the one year
1855 over sixty thousand dollars' worth of gold--one nugget being
nearly two thousand dollars in value--the placer gold-mining carried
on in the San Gabriel and San Francisquito _cañons_ was on the whole
unimportant, and what gold-dust was produced at these points came to
Los Angeles without much profit to the toiling miners; so that it may
be safely stated that cattle- and horse-raising, of which I shall
speak in more detail, were Southern California's principal sources of
income. As for the gold dust secured, San Francisco was the
clearing-house for the Coast, and all of the dust ultimately found its
way there until sometime later Sacramento developed and became a
competitor. Coming, as I did, from a part of the world where gold dust
was never seen, at least by the layman, this sudden introduction to
sacks and bottles full of the fascinating yellow metal produced upon
me, as the reader may imagine, another one of those strange
impressions fixing so indelibly my first experiences in the new, raw
and yet altogether romantic world.