ORCHARDS AND VINEYARDS
1856
During 1856, I dissolved with my partners, Rich and Laventhal, and
went into business with my uncle, Joseph Newmark, J. P. Newmark and
Maurice Kremer, under the title of Newmark, Kremer & Company. Instead
of a quasi wholesale business, we now had a larger assortment and did
more of a retail business. We occupied a room, about forty by eighty
feet in size, in the Mascarel and Barri block on the south side of
Commercial Street (then known as Commercial Row), between Main and Los
Angeles streets, our modest establishment being almost directly
opposite the contracted quarters of my first store and having the
largest single storeroom then in the city; and there we continued with
moderate success, until 1858.
To make this new partnership possible, Kremer had sold out his
interest in the firm of Lazard & Kremer, dry goods merchants, the
readjustment providing an amusing illustration of the manner in which
business, with its almost entire lack of specialization, was then
conducted. When the stock was taken, a large part of it consisted, not
of dry goods, as one might well suppose, but of--cigars and tobacco!
About the beginning of 1856, Sisters of Charity made their first
appearance in Los Angeles, following a meeting called by Bishop Amat
during the preceding month, to provide for their coming, when Abel
Stearns presided and John G. Downey acted as Secretary. Benjamin
Hayes, Thomas Foster, Ezra Drown, Louis Vignes, Ygnácio del Valle and
António Coronel coöperated, while Manuel Requena collected the
necessary funds. On January 5th, Sisters María Scholastica, María
Corzina, Ana, Clara, Francisca and Angela arrived--three of them
coming almost directly from Spain; and immediately they formed an
important adjunct to the Church in matters pertaining to religion,
charity and education. It was to them that B. D. Wilson sold his Los
Angeles home, including ten acres of fine orchard, at the corner of
Alameda and Macy streets, for eight thousand dollars; and there for
many years they conducted their school, the Institute and Orphan
Asylum, until they sold the property to J. M. Griffith, who used the
site for a lumber-yard. Griffith, in turn, disposed of it to the
Southern Pacific Railroad Company. Sister Scholastica, who celebrated
in 1889 her fiftieth anniversary as a sister, was long the Mother
Superior.
The so-called First Public School having met with popular approval,
the Board of Education in 1856 opened another school on Bath Street.
The building, two stories in height, was of brick and had two rooms.
On January 9th, John P. Brodie assumed charge of the _Southern
Californian_. Andrés Pico was then proprietor; and before the
newspaper died, in 1857, Pico lost, it is said, ten thousand dollars
in the venture.
The first regular course of public lectures here was given in 1856
under the auspices of a society known as the Mechanics' Institute, and
in one of Henry Dalton's corrugated iron buildings.
George T. Burrill, first County Sheriff, died on February 2d, his
demise bringing to mind an interesting story. He was Sheriff, in the
summer of 1850, when certain members of the infamous Irving party were
arraigned for murder, and during that time received private word that
many of the prisoners' friends would pack the little court room and
attempt a rescue. Burrill, however, who used to wear a sword and had a
rather soldierly bearing, was equal to the emergency. He quickly sent
to Major E. H. Fitzgerald and had the latter come post-haste to town
and court with a detachment of soldiers; and with this superior,
disciplined force he overawed the bandits' _compañeros_ who, sure
enough, were there and fully armed to make a demonstration.
Thomas E. Rowan arrived here with his father, James Rowan, in 1856,
and together they opened a bakery. Tom delivered the bread for a short
time, but soon abandoned that pursuit for politics, being frequently
elected to office, serving in turn as Supervisor, City and County
Treasurer and even, from 1893 to 1894, as Mayor of Los Angeles.
Shortly before Tom married Miss Josephine Mayerhofer in San Francisco
in 1862--and a handsome couple they made--the Rowans bought from Louis
Mesmer the American Bakery, located at the southwest corner of Main
and First streets and originally established by August Ulyard. When
James Rowan died about forty years ago, Tom fell heir to the bakery;
but as he was otherwise engaged, he employed Maurice Maurício as
manager, and P. Galta, afterward a prosperous business man of
Bakersfield, as driver. Tom, who died in 1899, was also associated as
cashier with I. W. Hellman and F. P. F. Temple in their bank. Rowan
Avenue and Rowan Street were both named after this early comer.
The time for the return of my brother and his European bride now
approached, and I felt a natural desire to meet them. Almost
coincident, therefore, with their arrival in San Francisco, I was
again in that growing city in 1856, although I had been there but the
year previous.
On April 9th, occurred the marriage of Matilda, daughter of Joseph
Newmark, to Maurice Kremer. The ceremony was performed by the bride's
father. For the subsequent festivities, ice, from which ice cream was
made, was brought from San Bernardino; both luxuries on this occasion
being used in Los Angeles, as far as I can remember, for the first
time.
To return to the Los Angeles _Star_. When J. S. Waite became
Postmaster, in 1855, he found it no sinecure to continue even such an
unpretentious and, in all likelihood, unprofitable news-sheet and at
the same time attend to Uncle Sam's mail-bags; and early in 1856 he
offered "the entire establishment at one thousand dollars less than
cost." Business was so slow at that time, in fact, that Waite--after,
perhaps, ruefully looking over his unpaid subscriptions--announced
that he would "take wood, butter, eggs, flour, wheat or corn" in
payment of bills due. He soon found a ready customer in William A.
Wallace, the Principal of the boys' school who, on the twelfth of
April, bought the paper; but Waite's disgust was nothing to that of
the schoolteacher who, after two short months' trial with the
editorial quill, scribbled a last doleful _adiós_. "The flush times of
the pueblo, the day of large prices and pocket-books, are past,"
Wallace declared; and before him the editor saw "only picayunes, bad
liquor, rags and universal dullness, when neither pistol-shots nor
dying groans" could have any effect, and "when earthquakes would
hardly turn men in their beds!" Nothing was left for such a destitute
and discouraged quillman "but to wait for a _carreta_ and get out of
town." Wallace sold the paper, therefore, in June, 1856, to Henry
Hamilton, a native of Ireland who had come to California in 1848 an
apprenticed printer, and was for some years in newspaper work in San
Francisco; and Hamilton soon put new life into the journal.
In 1856, the many-sided Dr. William B. Osburn organized a company to
bore an artesian well west of the city; but when it reached a depth of
over seven hundred feet, the prospectors went into bankruptcy.
George Lehman, early known as George the Baker (whose shop at one time
was on the site of the Hayward Hotel), was a somewhat original and
very popular character who, in 1856, took over the Round House on Main
Street, between Third and Fourth, and there opened a pleasure-resort
extending to Spring Street and known as the Garden of Paradise. The
grounds really occupied on the one hand what are now the sites of the
Pridham, the Pinney and the Turnverein, and on the other the Henne,
the Breed and the Lankershim blocks. There was an entrance on Main
Street and one, with two picket gates, on Spring. From the general
shape and appearance of the building, it was always one of the first
objects in town to attract attention; and Lehman (who, when he
appeared on the street, had a crooked cane hanging on his arm and a
lemon in his hand), came to be known as "Round House George." The
house had been erected in the late forties by Raimundo, generally
called Ramón, or Raymond Alexander, a sailor, who asserted that the
design was a copy of a structure he had once seen on the coast of
Africa; and there Ramón and his native California wife had lived for
many years. Partly because he wished to cover the exterior with vines
and flowers, Lehman nailed boards over the outer adobe walls and thus
changed the cylinder form into that of an octagon. An ingenious
arrangement of the _parterre_ and a peculiar distribution of some
trees, together with a profusion of plants and flowers--affording cool
and shady bowers, somewhat similar to those of a typical beer or wine
garden of the Fatherland--gave the place great popularity; while two
heroic statues--one of _Adam_ and the other of _Eve_--with a
conglomeration of other curiosities, including the _Apple Tree_ and
the _Serpent_--all illustrating the world-old story of Eden--and a
moving panorama made the Garden unique and rather famous. The balcony
of the house provided accommodation for the playing of such music,
perhaps discordant, as Los Angeles could then produce, and nearby was
a framework containing a kind of swing then popular and known as
"flying horses." The bar was in the Garden, near a well-sweep; and at
the Main Street entrance stood a majestic and noted cactus tree which
was cut down in 1886. The Garden of Paradise was opened toward the end
of September, 1858, and so large were the grounds that when they were
used, in 1876, for the Fourth of July celebration, twenty-six hundred
people were seated there.
This leads me to say that Arthur McKenzie Dodson, who established a
coal- and wood-yard at what was later the corner of Spring and Sixth
streets, started there a little community which he called
Georgetown--as a compliment, it was said, to the famous Round House
George whose bakery, I have remarked, was located on that corner.
On June 7th, Dr. John S. Griffin, who had an old fashioned, classical
education, and was a graduate, in medicine, of the University of
Pennsylvania, succeeded Dr. William B. Osburn as Superintendent of the
Los Angeles City Schools.
In these times of modern irrigation and scientific methods, it is hard
to realize how disastrous were climatic extremes in an earlier day: in
1856, a single electric disturbance, accompanied by intense heat and
sandstorms, left tens of thousands of dead cattle to tell the story of
drought and destruction.
During the summer, I had occasion to go to Fort Tejón to see George C.
Alexander, a customer, and I again asked Sam Meyer if he would
accompany me. Such a proposition was always agreeable to Sam; and,
having procured horses, we started, the distance being about one
hundred and fifteen miles.
We left Los Angeles early one afternoon, and made our first stop at
Lyons's Station, where we put up for the night. One of the brothers,
after whom the place was named, prepared supper. Having to draw some
thick blackstrap from a keg, he used a pitcher to catch the treacle;
and as the liquid ran very slowly, our sociable host sat down to talk
a bit, and soon forgot all about what he had started to do. The
molasses, however, although it ran pretty slowly, ran steadily, and
finally, like the mush in the fairy-tale of the enchanted bowl,
overflowed the top of the receptacle and spread itself over the dirt
floor. When Lyons had finished his chat, he saw, to his intense
chagrin, a new job upon his hands, and one likely to busy him for some
time.
Departing next morning at five o'clock we met Cy Lyons, who had come
to Los Angeles in 1849 and was then engaged with his brother Sanford
in raising sheep in that neighborhood. Cy was on horseback and had two
pack animals, loaded with provisions. "Hello, boys! where are you
bound?" he asked; and when we told him that we were on our way to Fort
Tejón, he said that he was also going there, and volunteered to save
us forty miles by guiding us over the trail. Such a shortening of our
journey appealed to us as a good prospect, and we fell in behind the
mounted guide.
It was one of those red-hot summer days characteristic of that region
and season, and in a couple of hours we began to get very thirsty.
Noticing this, Cy told us that no water would be found until we got to
the Rancho de la Liebre, and that we could not possibly reach there
until evening. Having no _bota de agua_ handy, I took an onion from
Lyons's pack and ate it, and that afforded me some relief; but Sam,
whose decisions were always as lasting as the fragrance of that
aromatic bulb, would not try the experiment. To make a long story
short, when we at last reached the ranch, Sam, completely fagged out,
and unable to alight from his horse, toppled off into our arms. The
chewing of the onion had refreshed me to some extent, but just the
same the day's journey proved one of the most miserable experiences
through which I have ever passed.
The night was so hot at the ranch that we decided to sleep outdoors in
one of the wagons; and being worn out with the day's exposure and
fatigue, we soon fell asleep. The soundness of our slumbers did not
prevent us from hearing, in the middle of the night, a snarling bear,
scratching in the immediate neighborhood. A bear generally means
business; and you may depend upon it that neither Sam, myself nor even
Cy were very long in bundling out of the wagon and making a dash for
the more protecting house. Early next morning, we recommenced our
journey toward Fort Tejón, and reached there without any further
adventures worth relating.
Coming back, we stopped for the night at Gordon's Station, and the
next day rode fully seventy miles--not so inconsiderable an
accomplishment, perhaps, for those not accustomed to regular saddle
exercise.
A few months later, I met Cy on the street. "Harris," said he, "do you
know that once, on that hot day going to Fort Tejón, we were within
three hundred feet of a fine, cool spring?" "Then why in the devil," I
retorted, "didn't you take us to it?" To which Cy, with a chuckle,
answered: "Well, I just wanted to see what would happen to you!"
My first experience with camp meetings was in the year 1856, when I
attended one in company with Miss Sarah Newmark, to whom I was then
engaged, and Miss Harriet, her sister--later Mrs. Eugene Meyer. I
engaged a buggy from George Carson's livery stable on Main Street; and
we rode to Ira Thompson's grove at El Monte, in which the meeting was
held. These camp meetings supplied a certain amount of social
attraction to residents, in that good-hearted period when creeds
formed a bond rather than a hindrance.
It was in 1856 that, in connection with our regular business, we began
buying hides. One day a Mexican customer came into the store and,
looking around, said: "_¿Compra cueros?_" (Do you buy hides?) "_Sí,
señor_," I replied, to which he then said: "_Tengo muchos en mi
rancho_" (I have many at my ranch). "Where do you live?" I asked.
"Between Cahuenga and San Fernando Mission," he answered. He had come
to town in his _carreta_, and added that he would conduct me to his
place, if I wished to go there.
I obtained a wagon and, accompanied by Samuel Cohn, went with the
Mexican. The native jogged on, _carreta_-fashion, the oxen lazily
plodding along, while the driver with his ubiquitous pole kept them in
the road by means of continual and effective prods, delivered first on
one side, then on the other. It was dark when we reached the ranch;
and the night being balmy, we wrapped ourselves up in blankets, and
slept under the adobe veranda.
Early in the morning, I awoke and took a survey of the premises. To my
amazement, I saw but one little kipskin hanging up to dry! When at
length my Mexican friend appeared on the scene, I asked him where he
kept his hides? (_¿Donde tiene usted los cueros?_) At which he pointed
to the lone kip and, with a characteristic and perfectly indifferent
shrug of the shoulders, said: "_¡No tengo más!_" (I have no more!)
I then deliberated with Sam as to what we should do; and having
proceeded to San Fernando Mission to collect there, if possible, a
load of hides, we were soon fortunate in obtaining enough to
compensate us for our previous trouble and disappointment. On the way
home, we came to a rather deep ditch preventing further progress.
Being obliged, however, to get to the other side, we decided to throw
the hides into the ditch, placing one on top of the other, until the
obstructing gap was filled to a level with the road; and then we drove
across, if not on dry land, at least on dry hides, which we reloaded
onto the wagon. Finally, we reached town at a late hour.
In this connection, I may remind the reader of Dana's statement, in
his celebrated _Two Years before the Mast_, that San Pedro once
furnished more hides than any other port on the Coast; and may add
that from the same port, more than forty years afterward, consignments
of this valuable commodity were still being made, I myself being
engaged more and more extensively in the hide trade.
Colonel Isaac Williams died on September 13th, having been a resident
of Los Angeles and vicinity nearly a quarter of a century. A
Pennsylvanian by birth, he had with him in the West a brother, Hiram,
later of San Bernardino County. Happy as was most of Colonel Williams'
life, tragedy entered his family circle, as I shall show, when both of
his sons-in-law, John Rains and Robert Carlisle, met violent deaths at
the hands of others.
Jean Louis Vignes came to Los Angeles in 1829, and set out the Aliso
Vineyard of one hundred and four acres which derived its name, as did
the street, from a previous and incorrect application of the Castilian
_aliso_, meaning alder, to the sycamore tree, a big specimen of which
stood on the place. This tree, possibly a couple of hundred years old,
long shaded Vignes' wine-cellars, and was finally cut down a few years
ago to make room for the Philadelphia Brew House. From a spot about
fifty feet away from the Vignes adobe extended a grape arbor perhaps
ten feet in width and fully a quarter of a mile long, thus reaching to
the river; and this arbor was associated with many of the early
celebrations in Los Angeles. The northern boundary of the property was
Aliso Street; its western boundary was Alameda; and part of it was
surrounded by a high adobe wall, inside of which, during the troubles
of the Mexican War, Don Louis enjoyed a far safer seclusion than many
others. On June 7th, 1851, Vignes advertised El Aliso for sale, but
it was not subdivided until much later, when Eugene Meyer and his
associates bought it for this purpose. Vignes Street recalls the
veteran viticulturist.
While upon the subject of this substantial old pioneer family, I may
give a rather interesting reminiscence as to the state of Aliso Street
at this time. I have said that this street was the main road from Los
Angeles to the San Bernardino country; and so it was. But in the
fifties, Aliso Street stopped very abruptly at the Sainsevain
Vineyard, where it narrowed down to one of the willow-bordered,
picturesque little lanes so frequently found here, and paralleled the
noted grape-arbor as far as the river-bank. At this point, Andrew
Boyle and other residents of the Heights and beyond were wont to cross
the stream on their way to and from town. The more important travel
was by means of another lane known as the Aliso Road, turning at a
corner occupied by the old Aliso Mill and winding along the Hoover
Vineyard to the river. Along this route the San Bernardino stage
rolled noisily, traversing in summer or during a poor season what was
an almost dry wash, but encountering in wet winter raging torrents so
impassable that all intercourse with the settlements to the east was
disturbed. For a whole week, on several occasions, the San Bernardino
stage was tied up, and once at least Andrew Boyle, before he had
become conversant with the vagaries of the Los Angeles River, found it
impossible for the better part of a fortnight to come to town for the
replenishment of a badly-depleted larder. Lovers' Lane, willowed and
deep with dust, was a narrow road now variously located in the minds
of pioneers; my impression being that it followed the line of the
present Date Street, although some insist that it was Macy.
Pierre Sainsevain, a nephew of Vignes, came in 1839 and for a while
worked for his uncle. Jean Louis Sainsevain, another nephew, arrived
in Los Angeles in 1849 or soon after, and on April 14th, 1855,
purchased for forty-two thousand dollars the vineyard, cellars and
other property of his uncle. This was the same year in which he
returned to France for his son Michel and remarried, leaving another
son, Paul, in school there. Pierre joined his brother; and in 1857
Sainsevain Brothers made the first California champagne, first
shipping their wine to San Francisco. Paul, now a resident of San
Diego, came to Los Angeles in 1861. The name endures in Sainsevain
Street.
The activity of these Frenchmen reminds me that much usually
characteristic of country life was present in what was called the city
of Los Angeles, when I first saw it, as may be gathered from the fact
that, in 1853, there were a hundred or more vineyards hereabouts,
seventy-five or eighty of which were within the city precincts. These
did not include the once famous "mother vineyard" of San Gabriel
Mission, which the _padres_ used to claim had about fifty thousand
vines, but which had fallen into somewhat picturesque decay. Near San
Gabriel, however, in 1855, William M. Stockton had a large vineyard
nursery. William Wolfskill was one of the leading vineyardists, having
set out his first vine, so it was said, in 1838, when he affirmed his
belief that the plant, if well cared for, would flourish a hundred
years! Don José Serrano, from whom Dr. Leonce Hoover bought many of
the grapes he needed, did have vines, it was declared, that were
nearly a century old. When I first passed through San Francisco, _en
route_ to Los Angeles, I saw grapes from this section in the markets
of that city bringing twenty cents a pound; and to such an extent for
a while did San Francisco continue to draw on Los Angeles for grapes,
that Banning shipped thither from San Pedro, in 1857, no less than
twenty-one thousand crates, averaging forty-five pounds each. It was
not long, however, before ranches nearer San Francisco began to
interfere with this monopoly of the South, and, as, a consequence, the
shipment of grapes from Los Angeles fell off. This reminds me that
William Wolfskill sent to San Francisco some of the first Northern
grapes sold there; they were grown in a Napa Valley vineyard that he
owned in the middle of the fifties, and when unloaded on the Long
Wharf, three or four weeks in advance of Los Angeles grapes, brought
at wholesale twenty-five dollars per hundred weight!
With the decline in the fresh fruit trade, however, the making and
exportation of wine increased, and several who had not ventured into
vineyarding before, now did so, acquiring their own land or an
interest in the establishments of others. By 1857, Jean Louis Vignes
boasted of possessing some white wine twenty years old--possibly of
the same vintage about which Dr. Griffin often talked, in his
reminiscences of the days when he had been an army surgeon; and Louis
Wilhart occasionally sold wine which was little inferior to that of
Jean Louis. Dr. Hoover was one of the first to make wine for the
general market, having, for a while, a pretty and well-situated place
called the Clayton Vineyard; and old Joseph Huber, who had come to
California from Kentucky for his health, began in 1855 to make wine
with considerable success. He owned the Foster Vineyard, where he died
in July, 1866. B. D. Wilson was also soon shipping wine to San
Francisco. L. J. Rose, who first entered the field in January, 1861,
at Sunny Slope, not far from San Gabriel Mission, was another
producer, and had a vineyard famous for brandy and wine. He made a
departure in going to the foothills, and introduced many varieties of
foreign grapes. By the same year, or somewhat previously, Matthew
Keller, Stearns & Bell, Dr. Thomas J. White, Dr. Parrott, Kiln Messer,
Henry Dalton, H. D. Barrows, Juan Bernard and Ricardo Vejar had
wineries, and John Schumacher had a vineyard opposite the site of the
City Gardens in the late seventies. L. H. Titus, in time, had a
vineyard, known as the Dewdrop, near that of Rose. Still another wine
producer was António María Lugo, who set out his vines on San Pedro
Street, near the present Second, and often dwelt in the long adobe
house where both Steve Foster, Lugo's son-in-law, and Mrs. Wallace
Woodworth lived, and where I have been many times pleasantly
entertained.
Dr. Leonce Hoover, who died on October 8th, 1862, was a native of
Switzerland and formerly a surgeon in the army of Napoleon, when his
name--later changed at the time of naturalization--had been Huber. Dr.
Hoover in 1849 came to Los Angeles with his wife, his son, Vincent A.
Hoover, then a young man, and two daughters, the whole family
traveling by ox-team and prairie schooner. They soon discovered rich
_placer_ gold-beds, but were driven away by hostile Indians. A
daughter, Mary A., became the wife of Samuel Briggs, a New Hampshire
Yankee, who was for years Wells Fargo's agent here. For a while the
Hoovers lived on the Wolfskill Ranch, after which they had a vineyard
in the neighborhood of what is now the property of the Cudahy Packing
Company. Vincent Hoover was a man of prominence in his time; he died
in 1883. Mrs. Briggs, whose daughter married the well-known physician,
Dr. Granville MacGowan, sold her home, on Broadway between Third and
Fourth streets, to Homer Laughlin when he erected the Laughlin
Building. Hoover Street is named for this family.
Accompanied by his son William, Joseph Huber, Sr., in 1855 came to Los
Angeles from Kentucky, hoping to improve his health; and when the
other members of his family, consisting of his wife and children,
Caroline, Emeline, Edward and Joseph, followed him here, in 1859, by
way of New York and the Isthmus, they found him settled as a
vineyardist, occupying the Foster property running from Alameda Street
to the river, in a section between Second and Sixth streets. The
advent of a group of young people, so well qualified to add to what
has truthfully been described by old-time Angeleños as our family
circle, was hailed with a great deal of interest and satisfaction. In
time, Miss Emeline Huber was married to O. W. Childs, and Miss
Caroline was wedded to Dr. Frederick Preston Howard, a druggist who,
more than forty years ago, bought out Theodore Wollweber, selling the
business back to the latter a few years later. The prominence of this
family made it comparatively easy for Joseph Huber, Jr., in 1865, to
secure the nomination and be elected County Treasurer, succeeding M.
Kremer, who had served six years. Huber, Sr., died about the middle
sixties. Mrs. Huber lived to be eighty-three years old.
José de Rúbio had at least two vineyards when I came--one on Alameda
Street, south of Wolfskill's and not far from Coronel's, and one on
the east side of the river. Rúbio came here very early in the
century, after having married Juana, a daughter of Juan María Miron, a
well-known sea captain, and built three adobe houses. The first of
these was on the site of the present home of William H. Workman, on
Boyle Heights; the second was near what was later the corner of
Alameda and Eighth streets, and the third was on Alameda Street near
the present Vernon Avenue. One of his ranches was known as "Rúbio's,"
and there many a barbecue was celebrated. In 1859, Rúbio leased the
Sepúlveda Landing, at San Pedro, and commenced to haul freight, to and
fro. Señor and Señora Rúbio[16] had twenty-five children, of whom five
are now living. Another Los Angeles vineyardist who lived near the
river when I came was a Frenchman named Clemente.
Julius Weyse also had a vineyard, living on what is now Eighth Street
near San Pedro. A son, H. G. Weyse, has distinguished himself as an
attorney and has served in the Legislature; another, Otto G., married
the widow of Edward Naud, while a third son, Rudolf G., married a
daughter of H. D. Barrows.
The Reyes family was prominent here; a daughter married William
Nordholt. Ysidro had a vineyard on Washington Street; and during one
of the epidemics, he died of smallpox. His brother, Pablo, was a
rancher.
While on the subject of vineyards, I may describe the method by which
wine was made here in the early days and the part taken in the
industry by the Indians, who always interested and astounded me.
Stripped to the skin, and wearing only loin-cloths, they tramped with
ceaseless tread from morn till night, pressing from the luscious fruit
of the vineyard the juice so soon to ferment into wine. The grapes
were placed in elevated vats from which the liquid ran into other
connecting vessels; and the process exhaled a stale acidity, scenting
the surrounding air. These Indians were employed in the early fall,
the season of the year when wine is made and when the thermometer as a
rule, in Southern California, reaches its highest point; and this
temperature coupled with incessant toil caused the perspiration to
drip from their swarthy bodies into the wine product, the sight of
which in no wise increased my appetite for California wine.
A staple article of food for the Indians in 1856, by the way, was the
acorn. The crop that year, however, was very short; and streams having
also failed, in many instances, to yield the food usually taken from
them, the tribes were in a distressed condition. Such were the
aborigines' straits, in fact, that _rancheros_ were warned of the
danger, then greater than ever, from Indian depredations on stock.
In telling of the Sisters of Charity, I have forgotten to add that,
after settling here, they sent to New York for a portable house, which
they shipped to Los Angeles by way of Cape Horn. In due time, the
house arrived; but imagine their vexation on discovering that,
although the parts were supposed to have been marked so that they
might easily be joined together, no one here could do the work. In the
end, the Sisters were compelled to send East for a carpenter who,
after a long interval, arrived and finished the house.
Soon after the organization of a Masonic lodge here, in 1854, many of
my friends joined, and among them my brother, J. P. Newmark, who was
admitted on February 26th, 1855, on which occasion J. H. Stuart was
the Secretary; and through their participation in the celebration of
St. John's Day (the twenty-fourth of June,) I was seized with a desire
to join the order. This I did at the end of 1856, becoming a member of
Los Angeles Lodge No. 42, whose meetings were held over Potter's store
on Main Street. Worshipful Master Thomas Foster initiated me, and on
January 22d, 1857, Worshipful Master Jacob Elias officiating, I took
the third degree. I am, therefore, in all probability, the oldest
living member of this now venerable Masonic organization.
FOOTNOTE:
[16] Señora de Rúbio survived her husband many years, dying on October
27th, 1914, at the age of one hundred and seven, after residing in Los
Angeles ninety-four years.