ROUND ABOUT THE PLAZA
1853-1854
At the time of my arrival, the Plaza, long the nucleus of the original
settlement, was the center of life in the little community, and around
it clustered the homes of many of those who were uppermost in the
social scale, although some of the descendants of the finest Spanish
families were living in other parts of the city. This was particularly
so in the case of José Andrés Sepúlveda, who had a beautiful old adobe
on some acreage that he owned northwest of Sonora Town, near the place
where he constructed a stone reservoir to supply his house with water.
Opposite the old Plaza Church dwelt a number of families of position
and, for the most part, of wealth--in many cases the patrons of less
fortunate or dependent ones, who lived nearby. The environment was not
beautiful, a solitary pepper, somewhat north of the Plaza, being the
only shade-tree there; yet the general character of the homes was
somewhat aristocratic, the landscape not yet having been seriously
disturbed by any utilitarian project such as that of the City Fathers
who, by later granting a part of the old square for a prosaic water
tank, created a greater rumpus than had the combative soldiers some
years before. The Plaza was shaped much as it is at present, having
been reduced considerably, but five or six years earlier, by the
Mexican authorities: they had planned to improve its shape, but had
finished their labors by contracting the object before them. There was
no sign of a park; on the contrary, parts of the Plaza itself, which
had suffered the same fate as the Plaza in San Francisco, were used
as a dumping-ground for refuse. From time to time many church and
other festivals were held at this square--a custom no doubt traceable
to the Old World and to earlier centuries; but before any such affair
could take place--requiring the erecting of booths and banks of
vegetation in front of the neighboring houses--all rubbish had to be
removed, even at the cost of several days' work.
Among the distinguished citizens of Los Angeles whose residences added
to the social prestige of the neighborhood was Don Ygnácio Del Valle,
father of R. F. Del Valle. Until 1861, he resided on the east side of
the square, in a house between Calle de los Negros and Olvera Street,
receiving there his intimate friends as well as those who wished to
pay him their respects when he was _Alcalde_, Councilman and member of
the State Legislature. In 1861, Del Valle moved to his ranch, Camulos.
Ygnácio Coronel was another eminent burgher residing on the east side
of the Plaza, while Cristóbal Aguilar's home faced the South.
Not far from Del Valle's--that is, back of the later site of the Pico
House, between the future Sanchez Street and Calle de los
Negros--lived Don Pio Pico, then and long after a striking figure, not
merely on account of his fame as the last of the Mexican governors,
but as well because of his physique and personality. I may add that as
long as he lived, or at least until the tide of his fortune turned and
he was forced to sell his most treasured personal effects, he
invariably adorned himself with massive jewelry of much value; and as
a further conceit, he frequently wore on his bosom Mexican decorations
that had been bestowed upon him for past official services. Don Pio
really preferred country life at the _Ranchito_, as his place was
called; but official duties and, later, illness and the need of
medical care, kept him in town for months at a time. He had three
sisters, two of whom married in succession José António Carrillo,
another resident at the Plaza and the then owner of the site of the
future Pico House; while the third was the wife of Don Juan Forster,
in whose comfortable home Don Pio found a retreat when distressing
poverty overtook him in old age. Sanchez Street recalls still another
don of the neighborhood, Vicente Sanchez, grandfather of Tomás A.
Sanchez, who was domiciled in a two-story and rather elaborate
dwelling near Carrillo, on the south side of the Plaza. Sanchez Hall
stood there until the late seventies.
The Beau Brummel of Los Angeles in the early fifties was Don Vicente
Lugo, whose wardrobe was made up exclusively of the fanciest patterns
of Mexican type; his home, one of the few two-story houses in the
pueblo, was close to Ygnácio Del Valle's. Lugo, a brother of Don José
María, was one of the heavy taxpayers of his time; as late as 1860, he
had herds of twenty-five hundred head of cattle, or half a thousand
more than Pio and Andrés Pico together owned. María Ballestero, Lugo's
mother-in-law, lived near him.
Don Agustin Olvera dwelt almost opposite Don Vicente Lugo's, on the
north side of the Plaza, at the corner of the street perpetuating his
name. Don Agustin arrived from Mexico, where he had been _Juez de
Paz_, in 1834, or about the same time that Don Ygnácio Coronel came,
and served as Captain in the campaign of Flores against Frémont, even
negotiating peace with the Americans; then he joined Dr. Hope's
volunteer police, and was finally chosen, at the first election in Los
Angeles, Judge of the First Instance, becoming the presiding officer
of the Court of Sessions. Five or six years later, he was School
Commissioner. He had married Doña Concepción, one of not less than
twenty-two children of Don Santiago Arguello, son of a governor of
both Californias, and his residence was at the northeast end of the
Plaza, in an adobe which is still standing. There, while fraternizing
with the newly-arrived Americans, he used to tell how, in 1850, when
the movement for the admission of California as a State was under way,
he acted as secretary to a meeting called in this city to protest
against the proposal, fearing lest the closer association with
Northern California would lead to an undue burden of taxes upon the
South. Olvera Street is often written by mistake, Olivera.
Francisco O'Campo was another man of means whose home was on the east
side of the Plaza. Although he was also a member of the new
_Ayuntamiento_, inaugurated in 1849, and although he had occupied
other offices, he was very improvident, like so many natives of the
time, and died, in consequence, a poor man. In his later years, he
used to sit on the curbstone near the Plaza, a character quite
forlorn, utterly dejected in appearance, and despondently recalling
the by-gone days of his prosperity.
Don Cristóbal Aguilar, several times in his career an _Alcalde_,
several times a City Councilman beginning with the first organization
of Los Angeles, and even twice or thrice Mayor, was another resident
near the Plaza. His adobe on upper Main Street was fairly spacious;
and partly, perhaps, for that reason, was used by the Sisters of
Charity when they instituted the first hospital in Los Angeles.
A short distance from the Plaza, on Olvera Street, had long stood the
home of Don José María Ábila, who was killed in battle in the early
thirties. It was there that Commodore Stockton made his headquarters,
and the story of how this was brought about is one of the entertaining
incidents of this warlike period. The widow Ábila, who had scant love
for the Americans, had fled with her daughters to the home of Don
Luis[7] Vignes, but not before she placed a native boy on guard,
cautioning him against opening either doors or windows. When the young
custodian, however, heard the flourishes of Stockton's brass band, he
could not resist the temptation to learn what the excitement meant; so
he first poked his head out of a window, and finally made off to the
Plaza. Some of Stockton's staff, passing by, and seeing the tasteful
furniture within, were encouraged to investigate, with the result that
they selected the widow Ábila's house for Stockton's abode. Another
Ábila--Francisco--had an adobe at the present southeast corner of San
Fernando and Alpine streets.
Francisca Gallardo, daughter of one of the Sepúlvedas, lived in the
vicinity of the Plaza.
The only church in Los Angeles at this time was that of _Nuestra
Señora la Reyna de los Angeles_, known as Our Lady, the Queen of the
Angels, at the Plaza; and since but few changes were made for years in
its exterior, I looked upon the edifice as the original adobe built
here in the eighties of the preceding century. When I came to inquire
into the matter, however, I was astonished to learn that the Church
dated back no farther than the year 1822, although the first attempt
at laying a corner-stone was made in 1815, probably somewhat to the
east of the old Plaza and a year or two after rising waters frustrated
the attempt to build a chapel near the river and the present Aliso
Street. Those temporary foundations seem to have marked the spot where
later the so-called Woman's Gun--once buried by Mexicans, and
afterward dug up by women and used at the Battle of Dominguez
Ranch--was long exposed to view, propped up on wooden blocks. The
venerable building I then saw, in which all communicants for want of
pews knelt on the floor or stood while worshiping, is still admired by
those to whom age and sacred tradition, and the sacrifices of the
early Spanish Fathers, make appeal. In the first years of my residence
here, the bells of this honored old pile, ringing at six in the
morning and at eight in the evening, served as a curfew to regulate
the daily activities of the town.
Had Edgar Allan Poe lived in early Los Angeles, he might well have
added to his poem one more stanza about these old church bells, whose
sweet chimes, penetrating the peace and quiet of the sleepy village,
not alone summoned the devout to early mass or announced the time of
vespers, but as well called many a merchant to his day's labor and
dismissed him to his home or the evening's rendezvous. That was a time
of sentiment and romance, and the memory of it lingers pleasantly in
contrast with the rush and bustle of to-day, when cold and
chronometrical exactitude, instead of a careless but, in its time,
sufficient measure of the hours, arranged the order of our comings and
our goings.
Incidental to the ceremonial activity of the old Church on the Plaza,
the _Corpus Christi_ festival was one of the events of the year when
not the least imposing feature was the opening procession around the
Plaza. For all these occasions, the square was thoroughly cleaned,
and notable families, such as the Del Valles, the Olveras, the Lugos
and the Picos erected before their residences temporary altars,
decorated with silks, satins, laces and even costly jewelry. The
procession would start from the Church after the four o'clock service
and proceed around the Plaza from altar to altar. There the boys and
girls, carrying banners and flowers, and robed or dressed in white,
paused for formal worship, the progress through the square, small as
the Plaza was, thus taking a couple of hours. Each succeeding year the
procession became more resplendent and inclusive, and I have a
distinct recollection of a feature incidental to one of them when
twelve men, with twelve great burning candles, represented the
Apostles.
These midwinter festivities remind me that, on Christmas Eve, the
young people here performed pastoral plays. It was the custom, much as
it still is in Upper Bavaria, to call at the homes of various friends
and acquaintances and, after giving little performances such as _Los
Pastores_, to pass on to the next house. A number of the Apostles and
other characters associated with the life of Jesus were portrayed, and
the Devil, who scared half to death the little children of the hamlet,
was never overlooked. The _buñuelo_, or native doughnut, also added
its delight to these celebrations.
[Illustration: John Jones]
[Illustration: Captain F. Morton]
[Illustration: Captain and Mrs. J. S. Garcia]
[Illustration: Captain Salisbury Haley]
[Illustration: El Palacio, Home of Abel and Arcadia Stearns
From a photograph of the seventies]
[Illustration: The Lugo Ranch-house, in the Nineties]
And now a word about the old Spanish Missions in this vicinity. It was
no new experience for me to see religious edifices that had attained
great age, and this feature, therefore, made no special impression. I
dare say that I visited the Mission of San Gabriel very soon after I
arrived in Los Angeles; but it was then less than a century old, and
so was important only because it was the place of worship of many
natives. The Protestant denominations were not as numerous then as
now, and nearly all of the population was Catholic. With the passing
of the years, sentimental reverence for the Spanish Fathers has grown
greater and their old Mission homes have acquired more and more the
dignity of age. Helen Hunt Jackson's _Ramona_, John S. McGroarty's
_Mission Play_ (in which, by the by, Señorita Lucretia, daughter of
R. F. and granddaughter of Don Ygnácio Del Valle, so ably portrays the
character of _Doña Josefa Yorba_) and various other literary efforts
have increased the interest in these institutions of the past.
The missions and their chapels recall an old Mexican woman who had her
home, when I came to Los Angeles, at what is now the southeast corner
of San Pedro and First streets. She dwelt in a typical adobe, and in
the rear of her house was a vineyard of attractive aspect. Adjoining
one of the rooms of her dwelling was a chapel, large enough, perhaps,
to hold ten or twelve people and somewhat like those on the Dominguez
and Coronel estates; and this chapel, like all the other rooms, had an
earthen floor. In it was a gaudily-decorated altar and crucifix. The
old lady was very religious and frequently repaired to her sanctuary.
From the sale of grapes, she derived, in part, her income; and many a
time have I bought from her the privilege of wandering through her
vineyard and eating all I could of this refreshing berry. If the
grape-season was not on, neighbors were none the less always welcome
there; and it was in this quiet and delightful retreat that, in 1856,
I proposed marriage to Miss Sarah Newmark, my future wife, such a mere
girl that a few evenings later I found her at home playing
jackstones--then a popular game--with Mrs. J. G. Downey, herself a
child.
But while Catholics predominated, the Protestant churches had made a
beginning. Rev. Adam Bland, Presiding Elder of the Methodists in Los
Angeles in 1854, had come here a couple of years before, to begin his
work in the good, old-fashioned way; and, having bought the barroom,
El Dorado, and torn down Hughes's sign, he had transformed the place
into a chapel. But, alas for human foresight, or the lack of it: on at
least a part of the new church lot, the Merced Theater later stood!
Two cemeteries were in existence at the time whereof I write: the
Roman Catholic--abandoned a few years ago--which occupied a site on
Buena Vista Street, and one, now long deserted, for other
denominations. This cemetery, which we shall see was sadly neglected,
thereby occasioning bitter criticism in the press, was on Fort Hill.
Later, another burial-ground was established in the neighborhood of
what is now Flower and Figueroa streets, near Ninth, many years before
there was any thought of Rosedale or Evergreen.
As for my co-religionists and their provision of a cemetery, when I
first came to Los Angeles they were without a definite place for the
interment of their dead; but in 1854 the first steps were taken to
establish a Jewish cemetery here, and it was not very long before the
first Jewish child to die in Los Angeles, named Mahler, was buried
there. This cemetery, on land once owned and occupied by José Andrés
Sepúlveda's reservoir, was beautifully located in a recess or little
pocket, as it were, among the hills in the northwest section of the
city, where the environment of nature was in perfect harmony with the
Jewish ideal--"Home of Peace."
Mrs. Jacob Rich, by the way, had the distinction of being the first
Jewess to settle in Los Angeles; and I am under the impression that
Mrs. E. Greenbaum became the mother of the first Jewish child born
here.
Sam Prager arrived in 1854, and after clerking a while, associated
himself with the Morrises, who were just getting nicely established.
For a time, they met with much success and were among the most
important merchants of their day. Finally they dissolved, and the
Morris Brothers bought the large tract of land which I have elsewhere
described as having been refused by Newmark, Kremer & Company in
liquidation of Major Henry Hancock's account. Here, for several years,
in a fine old adobe lived the Morris family, dispensing a bountiful
hospitality quite in keeping with the open-handed manner of the times.
In the seventies, the Morris Brothers sold this property--later known
as Morris Vineyard--after they had planted it to vines, for the
insignificant sum of about twenty thousand dollars.
Following Sam Prager, came his brother Charles. For a short time they
were associated, but afterward they operated independently, Charles
Prager starting on Commercial Street, on May 19th, 1869. Sam Prager,
long known as "Uncle Sam," was a good-natured and benevolent man,
taking a deep interest in Masonic matters, becoming Master of 42, and
a regular attendant at the annual meetings of the Grand Lodge of
California. He was also Chairman of the Masonic Board of Relief until
the time of his death. Charles Prager and the Morrises have all gone
to that
undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns.
In the summer of 1853, a movement was inaugurated, through the
combined efforts of Mayors Nichols and Coronel, aided by John T.
Jones, to provide public schools; and three citizens, J. Lancaster
Brent, Lewis Granger and Stephen C. Foster, were appointed School
Commissioners. As early as 1838, Ygnácio Coronel, assisted by his wife
and daughter, had accepted some fifteen dollars a month from the
authorities--to permit the exercise of official supervision--and
opened a school which, as late as 1854, he conducted in his own home;
thereby doubtless inspiring his son António to take marked interest in
the education of the Indians. From time to time, private schools,
partly subsidized from public funds, were commenced. In May, 1854,
Mayor Foster pointed out that, while there were fully five hundred
children of school age and the pueblo had three thousand dollars
surplus, there was still no school building which the City could call
its own. New trustees--Manuel Requena, Francis Mellus and W. T. B.
Sanford--were elected; and then happened what, perhaps, has not
occurred here since, or ever in any other California town: Foster,
still Mayor, was also chosen School Superintendent. The new energy put
into the movement now led the Board to build, late in 1854 or early in
1855, a two-story brick schoolhouse, known as School No. 1, on the
northwest corner of Spring and Second streets, on the lot later
occupied, first by the old City Hall and secondly by the Bryson Block.
This structure cost six thousand dollars. Strange as it now seems, the
location was then rather "out in the country;" and I dare say the
selection was made, in part, to get the youngsters away from the
residential district around the Plaza. There school was opened on
March 19th, 1855; William A. Wallace, a botanist who had been sent
here to study the flora, having charge of the boys' department and
Miss Louisa Hayes directing the division for girls. Among her pupils
were Sarah Newmark and her sisters; Mary Wheeler, who married William
Pridham; and Lucinda Macy, afterward Mrs. Foy, who recalls
participating in the first public school examination, in June, 1856.
Dr. John S. Griffin, on June 7th, 1856, was elected Superintendent.
Having thus established a public school, the City Council voted to
discontinue all subsidies to private schools.
One of the early school-teachers was the pioneer, James F. Burns.
Coming with an emigrant train in 1853, Burns arrived in Los Angeles,
after some adventures with the Indians near what was later the scene
of the Mountain Meadow Massacre, in November of the same year. Having
been trained in Kalamazoo, Michigan, as a teacher, Burns settled, in
1854, in San Gabriel; and there with Cæsar C. Twitchell, he conducted
a cross-roads school in a tent. Later, while still living at San
Gabriel, Burns was elected County School Superintendent. Before
reaching here--that is, at Provo, Utah, on September 25th--the young
schoolmaster had married Miss Lucretia Burdick, aunt of Fred Eaton's
first wife. Burns, though of small stature, became one of the fighting
sheriffs of the County.
Among others who conducted schools in Los Angeles or vicinity, in the
early days, were Mrs. Adam Bland, wife of the missionary; H. D.
Barrows and the Hoyts. Mrs. Bland taught ten or twelve poor girls, in
1853, for which the Common Council allowed her about thirty-five
dollars. Barrows was one of several teachers employed by William
Wolfskill at various times, and at Wolfskill's school not merely were
his own children instructed but those of the neighboring families of
Carpenter, Rowland and Pleasants as well. Mrs. Gertrude Lawrence Hoyt
was an Episcopal clergyman's wife from New York who, being made a
widow, followed her son, Albert H. Hoyt, to Los Angeles in 1853.
Young Hoyt, a graduate of Rutgers College and a teacher excited by the
gold fever, joined a hundred and twenty men who chartered the bark
_Clarissa Perkins_ to come around the Horn, in 1849; but failing as a
miner, he began farming near Sacramento. When Mrs. Hoyt came to Los
Angeles, she conducted a private school in a rented building north of
the Plaza, beginning in 1854 and continuing until 1856; while her son
moved south and took up seventy or eighty acres of land in the San
Gabriel Valley, near El Monte. In 1855, young Hoyt came into town to
assist his mother in the school; and the following year Mrs. Hoyt's
daughter, Mary, journeyed West and also became a teacher here. Later,
Miss Hoyt kept a school on Alameda Street near the site of the Los
Angeles & San Pedro Railroad depot. Mrs. Hoyt died in Los Angeles in
1863. Other early teachers were William McKee, Mrs. Thomas Foster and
Miss Anna McArthur.
As undeveloped as the pueblo was, Los Angeles boasted, in her very
infancy, a number of physicians, although there were few, if any,
Spanish or Mexican practitioners. In 1850, Drs. William B. Osburn, W.
W. Jones, A. W. Hope, A. P. Hodges and a Dr. Overstreet were here;
while in 1851, Drs. Thomas Foster, John Brinckerhoff and James P.
McFarland followed, to be reënforced, in 1852, by Dr. James B. Winston
and, soon after, by Drs. R. T. Hayes, T. J. White and A. B. Hayward.
Dr. John Strother Griffin (General Albert Sidney Johnston's
brother-in-law and the accepted suitor of Miss Louisa Hayes) came to
Los Angeles in 1848, or rather to San Gabriel--where, according to
Hugo Reid, no physician had settled, though the population took drugs
by the barrel; being the ranking surgeon under Kearney and Stockton
when, on January 8th, they drove back the Mexican forces. He was also
one of the hosts to young W. T. Sherman. Not until 1854, however,
after Griffin had returned to Washington and had resigned his
commission, did he actually settle in Los Angeles. Thereafter, his
participation in local affairs was such that, very properly, one of
our avenues is named after him. Dr. Richard S. Den antedated all of
these gentlemen, having resided and practiced medicine in Los Angeles
in 1843, 1844 and again in the early fifties, though he did not dwell
in this city permanently until January, 1866. Den I knew fairly well,
and Griffin was my esteemed physician and friend. Foster and Griffin
were practitioners whom I best recall as being here during my first
years, one or two others, as Dr. Osburn and Dr. Winston, having
already begun to devote their time to other enterprises.
Dr. Richard S. Den, an Irishman of culture and refinement, having been
for awhile with his brother, Nicholas Den, in Santa Bárbara, returned
to Los Angeles in 1851. I say, "returned," because Den had looked in
on the little pueblo before I had even heard its name. While in the
former place, in the winter of 1843-44, Den received a call from Los
Angeles to perform one or two surgical operations, and here he
practiced until drawn to the mines by the gold excitement. He served,
in 1846-47, as Chief Physician and Surgeon of the Mexican forces
during the Mexican War, and treated, among others, the famous American
Consul Larkin, whose surety he became when Larkin was removed to
better quarters in the home of Louis Vignes. Den had only indifferent
luck as a miner, but was soon in such demand to relieve the sufferers
from malaria that it is said he received as much as a thousand dollars
in a day for his practice. In 1854, he returned to Santa Bárbara
County, remaining there for several years and suffering great loss, on
account of the drought and its effects on his cattle. Nicholas Den,
who was also known in Los Angeles, and was esteemed for both his
integrity and his hospitality, died at Santa Bárbara in 1862.
Old Dr. Den will be remembered, not only with esteem, but with
affection. He was seldom seen except on horseback, in which fashion he
visited his patients, and was, all in all, somewhat a man of mystery.
He rode a magnificent coal-black charger, and was himself always
dressed in black. He wore, too, a black felt hat; and beneath the hat
there clustered a mass of wavy hair as white as snow. In addition to
all this, his standing collar was so high that he was compelled to
hold his head erect; and as if to offset the immaculate linen, he tied
around the collar a large black-silk scarf. Thus attired and seated on
his richly-caparisoned horse, Dr. Den appeared always dignified, and
even imposing. One may therefore easily picture him a friendly rival
with Don Juan Bandini at the early Spanish balls, as he was on
intimate terms with Don and Doña Abel Stearns, acknowledged social
leaders. Dr. Den was fond of horse-racing and had his own favorite
racehorses sent here from Santa Bárbara, where they were bred.
Dr. Osburn, the Postmaster of 1853, had two years before installed a
small variety of drugs on a few shelves, referred to by the
complimentary term of drug store. Dr. Winston also kept a stock of
drugs. About the same time, and before Dr. A. W. Hope opened the third
drug store in September, 1854, John Gately Downey, an Irishman by
birth, who had been apprenticed to the drug trade in Maryland and
Ohio, formed a partnership with James P. McFarland, a native of
Tennessee, buying some of Winston's stock. Their store was a long,
one-story adobe on the northwest corner of Los Angeles and Commercial
streets, and was known as McFarland & Downey's. The former had been a
gold-miner; and this experience intensified the impression of an
already rugged physique as a frontier type. Entering politics, as
Osburn and practically every other professional man then
did--doubtless as much as anything else for the assurance of some
definite income--McFarland secured a seat in the Assembly in 1852, and
in the Senate in 1853-54. About 1858, he returned to Tennessee and in
December, 1860, revisited California; after which he settled
permanently in the East. Downey, in 1859, having been elected
Lieutenant-Governor, was later made Governor, through the election of
Latham to the United States Senate; but his suddenly-revealed
sympathies with the Secessionists, together with his advocacy of a
bill for the apprenticing of Indians, contributed toward killing him
politically and he retired to private life. Dr. H. R. Myles, destined
to meet with a tragic death in a steamboat disaster which I shall
narrate, was another druggist, with a partner, Dr. J. C. Welch, a
South Carolinian dentist who came here in the early fifties and died
in August, 1869. Their drug store on Main Street, nearly opposite the
Bella Union, filled the prescriptions of the city's seven or eight
doctors. Considerably later, but still among the pioneer druggists,
was Dr. V. Gelcich, who came here as Surgeon to the Fourth California
Infantry.
Speaking of druggists, it may be interesting to add that medicines
were administered in earlier days to a much greater extent than now.
For every little ailment there was a pill, a powder or some other
nostrum. The early _botica_, or drug store, kept only drugs and things
incidental to the drug business. There was also more of home treatment
than now. Every mother did more or less doctoring on her own account,
and had her well-stocked medicine-chest. Castor oil, ipecac, black
draught and calomel were generally among the domestic supply.
The practice of surgery was also very primitive; and he was
unfortunate, indeed, who required such service. Operations had to be
performed at home; there were few or none of the modern scientific
appliances or devices for either rendering the patient immune or
contending with active disease.
Preceded by a brother, Colonel James C. Foy--who visited California in
1850 and was killed in 1864, while in Sherman's army, by the bursting
of a shell--Samuel C. Foy started for San Francisco, by way of New
Orleans and the Isthmus, when he was but twenty-two years old and,
allured by the gold-fever, wasted a year or two in the mines. In
January, 1854, he made his way south to Los Angeles; and seeing the
prospect for trade in harness, on February 19th of that year opened an
American saddlery, in which business he was joined by his brother,
John M. Foy. Their store was on Main Street, between Commercial and
Requena. The location was one of the best; and the Foy Brothers
offering, besides saddlery, such necessities of the times as tents,
enjoyed one of the first chances to sell to passing emigrants and
neighboring _rancheros_, as they came into town. Some spurs, exhibited
in the County Museum, are a souvenir of Foy's enterprise in those
pioneer days. In May, 1856, Sam Foy began operating in cattle and
continued in that business until 1865, periodically taking herds
north and leaving his brother in charge of the store.
In the course of time, the Foys moved to Los Angeles Street, becoming
my neighbors; and while there, in 1882, S. C. Foy, in a quaint
advertisement embellished with a blanketed horse, announced his
establishment as the "oldest business house in Los Angeles, still at
the old stand, 17 Los Angeles Street, next to H. Newmark & Company's."
John Foy, who later removed to San Bernardino, died many years ago,
and Sam Foy also has long since joined the silent majority; but one of
the old signs of the saddlery is still to be seen on Los Angeles
Street, where the son, James Calvert Foy, conducts the business. The
Foys first lived on Los Angeles Street, and then on Main. Some years
later, they moved to the corner of Seventh and Pearl streets, now
called Figueroa, and came to control much valuable land there, still
in possession of the family. A daughter of Samuel C. Foy is Miss Mary
Foy, formerly a teacher and later Public Librarian. Another daughter
married Thomas Lee Woolwine, the attorney.
Wells Fargo & Company--formerly always styled Wells, Fargo &
Company--were early in the field here. On March 28th, 1854, they were
advertising, through H. R. Myles, their agent, that they were a joint
stock company with a capital of five hundred thousand dollars!
FOOTNOTE:
[7] Often spoken of as Don Louis.