The hard times strikingly conduced to criminality and, since there were then probably not more than three or four policemen in Los Angeles, some of the desperadoes, here in large numbers and not confined to any particular nationality or color, took advantage of the conditions, even making several peculiar nocturnal assaults upon the guardians of the peace. The methods occasionally adopted satisfied the community that Mexican bandidos were at work. Two of these worthies on horseback, while approaching a policeman, would suddenly dash in opposite directions, bringing a reata (in the use of which they were always most proficient) taut to the level of their saddles; and striking the policeman with the hide or hair rope, they would throw him to the ground with such force as to disable him. Then the ingenious robbers would carry out their well-planned depredations in the neighborhood and disappear with their booty.

J. Ross Browne, one of the active Forty-niners in San Francisco and author of Crusoe's Island and various other volumes dealing with early life in California and along the Coast, was on and off a visitor to Los Angeles, first passing through here in 1859, en route to the Washoe Gold fields, and stopping again in 1864.

Politics enlivened the situation somewhat in the fall of this year of depression. In September, the troops were withdrawn from Catalina Island, and the following month most of the guard was brought in from Fort Tejón; and this, creating possibly a feeling of security, paved the way for still larger Union meetings in October and November. Toward the end of October, Francisco P. Ramirez, formerly editor of El Clamor Público, was made Postmaster, succeeding William G. Still, upon whose life an attempt had been made while he was in office.

As an illustration of how a fortunate plunger acquired property now worth millions, through the disinclination on the part of most people here to add to their taxes in this time of drought, I may mention two pieces of land included in the early Ord survey, one hundred and twenty by one hundred and sixty-five feet in size—one at the southwest corner of Spring and Fourth streets, the other at the southeast corner of Fort and Fourth—which were sold on December 12th, 1864, for two dollars and fifty-two cents, delinquent taxes. The tax on each lot was but one dollar and twenty-six cents, yet only one purchaser appeared!

About that very time, there was another and noteworthy movement in favor of the establishment of a railroad between Los Angeles and San Pedro. In December, committees from outside towns met here with our citizens to debate the subject; but by the end of the several days' conference, no real progress had been made.

The year 1865 gave scant promise, at least in its opening, of better times to come. To be sure, Northern arms were more and more victorious, and with the approach of Lincoln's second inauguration the conviction grew that under the leadership of such a man national prosperity might return. Little did we dream that the most dramatic of all tragedies in our history was soon to be enacted. In Southern California the effects of the long drought continued, and the certainty that the cattle-industry, once so vast and flourishing, was now but a memory, discouraged a people to whom the vision of a far more profitable use of the land had not yet been revealed.

For several years my family, including three children, had been shifting from pillar to post owing to the lack of residences such as are now built to sell or lease, and I could not postpone any longer the necessity of obtaining larger quarters. We had occupied, at various times, a little shanty on Franklin Street, owned by a carpenter named Wilson; a small, one-story brick on Main Street near First, owned by Henne, the brewer; and once we lived with the Kremers in a one-story house, none too large, on Fort Street. Again we dwelt on Fort Street in a little brick house that stood on the site of the present Chamber of Commerce building, next door to Governor Downey's, before he moved to Main Street. The nearest approach to convenience was afforded by our occupancy of Henry Dalton's two-story brick on Main Street near Second. One day a friend told me that Jim Easton had an adobe on Main Street near Third, which he wished to sell; and on inquiry, I bought the place, paying him a thousand dollars for fifty-four feet, the entire frontage being occupied by the house. Main Street, beyond First, was practically in the same condition as at the time of my arrival, no streets running east having been opened south of First.

After moving in, we were inconvenienced because there was no driveway, and everything needed for housekeeping had to be carried, in consequence, through the front door of the dwelling. I therefore interviewed my friend and neighbor, Ygnácio Garcia, who owned a hundred feet adjoining me, and asked him if he would sell or rent me twenty feet of his property; whereupon he permitted me the free use of twenty feet, thus supplying me with access to the rear of my house. A few months later, Alfred B. Chapman, Garcia's legal adviser (who, by the way, is still alive)[25] brought me a deed to the twenty feet of land, the only expense being a fee of twenty-five dollars to Chapman for making out the document; and later Garcia sold his remaining eighty feet to Tom Mott for five dollars a foot. This lot is still in my possession. In due time, I put up a large, old-fashioned wooden barn with a roomy hay-loft, stalls for a couple of horses or mules, and space for a large flat-truck, the first of the kind for years in Los Angeles. John Simmons had his room in the barn and was one of my first porters. I had no regular driver for the truck, but John usually served in that capacity.

Incidentally to this story of my selecting a street on which to live, I may say that during the sixties Main and San Pedro streets were among the chief residential sections, and Spring Street was only beginning to be popular for homes. The fact that some people living on the west side of Main Street built their stables in back-yards connecting with Spring Street, retarded the latter's growth.

Here I may well repeat the story of the naming of Spring Street, particularly as it exemplifies the influence that romance sometimes has upon affairs usually prosaic. Ord, the surveyor, was then more than prepossessed in favor of the delightful Señorita Trinidad de la Guerra, for whose hand he was, in fact, a suitor and to whom he always referred as Mi Primavera—"My Springtime;" and when asked to name the new thoroughfare, he gallantly replied, "Primavera, of course! Primavera!"

On February 3d, a wind-storm, the like of which the proverbial "oldest inhabitant" could scarcely recall, struck Los Angeles amidships, unroofing many houses and blowing down orchards. Wolfskill lost heavily, and Banning & Company's large barn at the northeast corner of Fort and Second streets, near the old schoolhouse, was demolished, scarcely a post remaining upright. A curious sight, soon after the storm began to blow, was that of many citizens weighing down and lashing fast their roofs, just as they do in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, to keep them from being carried to unexpected, not to say inconvenient, locations.

In early days, steamers plying up and down the Pacific Coast, as I have pointed out, were so poor in every respect that it was necessary to make frequent changes in their names, to induce passengers to travel on them at all. As far back as 1860, one frequently heard the expression, "the old tubs;" and in 1865, even the best-known boat on the Southern run was publicly discussed as "the rotten old Senator," "the old hulk" and "the floating coffin." At this time, there was a strong feeling against the Steam Navigation Company for its arbitrary treatment of the public, its steamers sometimes leaving a whole day before the date on which they were advertised to depart; and this criticism and dissatisfaction finally resulted in the putting on of the opposition steamer Pacific which for the time became popular.

In 1865, Judge Benjamin S. Eaton tried another agricultural experiment which many persons of more experience at first predicted would be a failure. He had moved into the cottage at Fair Oaks, built by the estimable lady of General Albert Sidney Johnston, and had planted five thousand or more grapevines in the good though dry soil; but the lack of surface water caused vineyardists to shake their heads incredulously. The vines prospered so well that, in the following year, Eaton planted five or six times as many more. He came to the conclusion, however, that he must have water; and so arranged to bring some from what is now known as Eaton's Cañon. I remember that, after his vines began to bear, the greatest worry of the Judge was not the matter of irrigation, but the wild beasts that preyed upon the clustering fruit. The visitor to Pasadena and Altadena to-day can hardly realize that in those very localities both coyotes and bears were rampant, and that many a night the irate Judge was roused by the barking dogs as they drove the intruders out of the vineyard.

Tomlinson & Company, always energetic competitors in the business of transportation in Southern California, began running, about the first of April, a new stage line between Los Angeles and San Bernardino, making three trips a week.

On the fifteenth of April, my family physician, Dr. John S. Griffin, paid a professional visit to my house on Main Street, which might have ended disastrously for him. While we were seated together by an open window in the dining-room, a man named Kane ran by on the street, shouting out the momentous news that Abraham Lincoln had been shot! Griffin, who was a staunch Southerner, was on his feet instantly, cheering for Jeff Davis. He gave evidence, indeed, of great mental excitement, and soon seized his hat and rushed for the door, hurrahing for the Confederacy. In a flash, I realized that Griffin would be in awful jeopardy if he reached the street in that unbalanced condition, and by main force I held him back, convincing him at last of his folly. In later years the genial Doctor frankly admitted that I had undoubtedly saved him from certain death.

This incident brings to mind another, associated with Henry Baer, whose father, Abraham, a native of Bavaria and one of the earliest tailors here, had arrived from New Orleans in 1854. When Lincoln's assassination was first known, Henry ran out of the house, singing Dixie and shouting for the South; but his father, overtaking him, brought him back and gave him a sound whipping—an act nearly breaking up the Baer family, inasmuch as Mrs. Baer was a pronounced Secessionist.

The news of Lincoln's assassination made a profound impression in Los Angeles, though it cannot be denied that some Southern sympathizers, on first impulse, thought that it would be advantageous to the Confederate cause. There was, therefore, for the moment, some ill-advised exultation; but this was promptly suppressed, either by the military or by the firm stand of the more level-headed members of the community. Soon even radically-inclined citizens, in an effort to uphold the fair name of the town, fell into line, and steps were taken fittingly to mourn the nation's loss. On the seventeenth of April, the Common Council passed appropriate resolutions; and Governor Low having telegraphed that Lincoln's funeral would be held in Washington on the nineteenth, at twelve o'clock noon, the Union League of Los Angeles took the initiative and invited the various societies of the city to join in a funeral procession.

On April 19th all the stores were closed, business was suspended and soldiers as well as civilians assembled in front of Arcadia Block. There were present United States officers, mounted cavalry under command of Captain Ledyard; the Mayor and Common Council; various lodges; the Hebrew Congregation B'nai-B'rith; the Teutonia, the French Benevolent and the Junta Patriotica societies, and numerous citizens. Under the marshalship of S. F. Lamson the procession moved slowly over what to-day would be regarded as an insignificantly short route: west on Arcadia Street to Main; down Main Street to Spring as far as First; east on First Street to Main and up Main Street, proceeding back to the City Hall by way of Spring, at which point the parade disbanded.

Later, on the same day, there were memorial services in the upper story of the old Temple Court House, where Rev. Elias Birdsall, the Episcopal clergyman, delivered a splendid oration and panegyric; and at the same time, the members of the Hebrew Congregation met at the house of Rabbi A. W. Edelman. Prayers for the martyred President were uttered, and supplication was made for the recovery of Secretary of State Seward. The resolutions presented on this occasion concluded as follows:

I may add that, soon after the assassination of the President, the Federal authorities sent an order to Los Angeles to arrest anyone found rejoicing in the foul deed; and that several persons, soon in the toils, were severely dealt with. In San Francisco, too, when the startling news was flashed over the wires, Unionist mobs demolished the plants of the Democratic Press, the News Letter and a couple of other journals very abusive toward the martyred Emancipator; the editors and publishers themselves escaping with their lives only by flight and concealment.

Notwithstanding the strong Secessionist sentiment in Los Angeles during much of the Civil War period, the City election resulted in a Unionist victory. José Mascarel was elected Mayor; William C. Warren, Marshal; J. F. Burns, Treasurer; J. H. Lander, Attorney; and J. W. Beebe, Assessor. The triumph of the Federal Government doubtless at once began to steady and improve affairs throughout the country; but it was some time before any noticeable progress was felt here. Particularly unfortunate were those who had gone east or south for actual service, and who were obliged to make their way, finally, back to the Coast. Among such volunteers was Captain Cameron E. Thom who, on landing at San Pedro, was glad to have J. M. Griffith advance him money enough to reach Los Angeles and begin life again.

Outdoor restaurant gardens were popular in the sixties. On April 23d, the Tivoli Garden was reopened by Henry Sohms, and thither, on holidays and Sundays, many pleasure-lovers gravitated.

Sometime in the spring and during the incumbency of Rev. Elias Birdsall as rector, the Right Reverend William Ingraham Kip, who had come to the Pacific Coast in 1853, made his first visit to the Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, as Bishop of California, although really elevated to that high office seven years before. Bishop Kip was one of the young clergy who pleaded with the unresponsive culprits strung up by the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856; and later he was known as an author. The Reverend Birdsall, by the way, was Rector of St. Paul's School on Olive Street, between Fifth and Sixth, as late as 1887.

John G. Downey subdivided the extensive Santa Gertrudis rancho on the San Gabriel River in the spring, and the first deed was made out to J. H. Burke, a son-in-law of Captain Jesse Hunter. Burke, a man of splendid physique, was a blacksmith whose Main Street shop was next to the site of the present Van Nuys Hotel. Downey and he exchanged properties, the ex-Governor building a handsome brick residence on Burke's lot, and Burke removing his blacksmith business to Downey's new town where, by remaining until the property had appreciated, he became well-to-do.

I have alluded to the Dominguez rancho, known as the San Pedro, but I have not said that, in 1865, some four thousand acres of this property were sold to Temple & Gibson at thirty-five cents an acre, and that on a portion of this land G. D. Compton founded the town named after him and first called Comptonville. It was really a Methodist Church enterprise, planned from the beginning as a pledge to teetotalism, and is of particular interest because it is one of the oldest towns in Los Angeles County, and certainly the first "dry" community. Compton paid Temple & Gibson five dollars an acre.

Toward the end of the War, that is, in May, Major-General Irwin McDowell, the unfortunate commander of the Army of the Potomac who had been nearly a year in charge of the Department of the Pacific, made Los Angeles a long-announced visit, coming on the Government steamer Saginaw. The distinguished officer, his family and suite were speedily whirled to the Bella Union, the competing drivers shouting and cursing themselves hoarse in their efforts to get the General or the General's wife, in different stages, there first. As was customary in those simpler days, most of the townsfolk whose politics would permit called upon the guest; and Editor Conway and other Unionists were long closeted with him. After thirty-six hours or more, during which the General inspected the local Government headquarters and the ladies were driven to, and entertained at, various homes, the party, accompanied by Collector James and Attorney-General McCullough, boarded the cutter and made off for the North.

Anticipating this visit of General McDowell, due preparations were made to receive him. It happened, however, as I have indicated, that José Mascarel was then Mayor; and since he had never been able to express himself freely in English, though speaking Spanish as well as French, it was feared that embarrassment must follow the meeting of the civil and military personages. Luckily, however, like many scions of early well-to-do American families, McDowell had been educated in France, and the two chiefs were soon having a free and easy talk in Mascarel's native tongue.

An effort, on May 2d, better to establish St. Vincent's College as the one institution of higher learning here was but natural at that time. In the middle of the sixties, quite as many children attended private academies in Los Angeles County as were in the public schools, while three-fifths of all children attended no school at all. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, two-thirds of all the children in the county attended public schools.

CHAPTER XXIV
H. NEWMARK & CO.—CARLISLE-KING DUEL
1865-1866

From 1862 I continued for three years, as I have told, in the commission business; and notwithstanding the bad seasons, I was thus pursuing a sufficiently easy and pleasant existence when a remark which, after the lapse of time, I see may have been carelessly dropped, inspired me with the determination to enter again upon a more strenuous and confining life.

On Friday, June 18th, 1865, I was seated in my little office, when a Los Angeles merchant named David Solomon, whose store was in the Arcadia Block, called upon me and, with much feeling, related that while returning by steamer from the North, Prudent Beaudry had made the senseless boast that he would drive every Jew in Los Angeles out of business. Beaudry, then a man of large means, conducted in his one-story adobe building on the northeast corner of Aliso and Los Angeles streets the largest general merchandise establishment this side of San Francisco. I listened to Solomon's recital without giving expression to my immediately-formed resolve; but no sooner had he left than I closed my office and started for Wilmington.

During the twelve years that I had been in California the forwarding business between Los Angeles and the Coast had seen many changes. Tomlinson & Company, who had bought out A. W. Timms, controlled the largest tonnage in town, including that of Beaudry, Jones, Childs and others; while Banning & Company, although actively engaged in the transportation to Yuma of freight and supplies for the United States Government, were handicapped for lack of business into Los Angeles. I thought, therefore, that Phineas Banning would eagerly seize an opportunity to pay his score to the numerous local merchants who had treated him with so little consideration. Besides, a very close intimacy existed between him and myself, which may best be illustrated by the fact that, for years past when short of cash, Banning used to come to my old sheet-iron safe and help himself according to his requirements.

Arriving in Wilmington, I found Banning loading a lot of teams with lumber. I related the substance of Solomon's remarks and proposed a secret partnership, with the understanding that, providing he would release me from the then existing charge of seven dollars and a half per ton for hauling freight from Wilmington to Los Angeles, I should supply the necessary capital, purchase a stock of goods, conduct the business without cost to him and then divide the profits if any should accrue. Banning said, "I must first consult Don David," meaning Alexander, his partner, promising at the same time to report the result within a few days. While I was at dinner, therefore, on the following Sunday, Patrick Downey, Banning's Los Angeles agent, called on me and stated that "the Chief" was in his office in the Downey Block, on the site of Temple's old adobe, and would be glad to see me.

Without further parleying, Banning accepted my proposition; and on the following morning, or June 21st, I rented the last vacant store in Stearns's Arcadia Block on Los Angeles Street, which stands to-day, by the way, much as it was erected in 1858. It adjoined John Jones's, and was nearly opposite the establishment of P. Beaudry. There I put up the sign of H. Newmark, soon to be changed to H. Newmark & Company; and it is a source of no little gratification to me that from this small beginning has developed the wholesale grocery firm of M. A. Newmark & Company.[26]

At that time, Stearns's property was all in the hands of the Sheriff, Tomás Sanchez, who had also been appointed Receiver; and like all the other tenants, I rented my storeroom from Deputy A. J. King. Rents and other incomes were paid to the Receiver, and out of them a regular monthly allowance of fifty dollars was made to Stearns for his private expenses. The stock on Stearns's ranches, by the way, was then in charge of Pierre Domec, a well-known and prosperous man, who was here perhaps a decade before I came.

My only assistant was my wide-awake nephew, M. A. Newmark, then fifteen years of age, who had arrived in Los Angeles early in 1865. At my request Banning & Company released their bookkeeper, Frank Lecouvreur, and I engaged him. He was a thoroughly reliable man and had, besides, a technical knowledge of wagon materials, in which, as a sideline, I expected to specialize. While all of these arrangements were being completed, the local business world queried and buzzed as to my intentions.

Having rented quarters, I immediately telegraphed my brother, J. P. Newmark, to buy and ship a quantity of flour, sugar, potatoes, salt and other heavy staples; and these I sold, upon arrival, at cost and steamer freight plus seven dollars and a half per ton. Since the departure of my brother from Los Angeles for permanent residence in San Francisco (where he entered into partnership with Isaac Lightner, forming J. P. Newmark & Company), he had been engaged in the commission business; and this afforded me facilities I might otherwise not have had. Inasmuch also, as all of my neighbors were obliged to pay this toll for hauling, while I was not, they were forced to do business at cost. About the first of July, I went to San Francisco and laid in a complete stock paralleling, with the exception of clothing and dry goods, the lines handled by Beaudry. Banning, who was then building prairie schooners for which he had ordered some three hundred and fifty tons of iron and other wagon materials, joined me in chartering the brig Tanner on which I loaded an equal tonnage of general merchandise, wagon parts and blacksmith coal. The very important trade with Salt Lake City, elsewhere described, helped us greatly, for we at once negotiated with the Mormon leaders; and giving them credit when they were short of funds, it was not long before we were brought into constant communication with Brigham Young and through his influence monopolized the Salt Lake business.

Thinking over these days of our dealings with the Latterday Saints, I recall a very amusing experience with an apostle named Crosby, who once brought down a number of teams and wagons to load with supplies. During his visit to town, I invited him and several of his friends to dinner; and in answer to the commonplace inquiry as to his preference for some particular part of a dish, Crosby made the logical Mormonite reply that quantity was what appealed to him most—a flash of wit much appreciated by all of the guests. During this same visit, Crosby tried hard to convert me to Mormonism; but, after several ineffectual interviews, he abandoned me as a hopeless case.

At another time, while reflecting on my first years as a wholesale grocer, I was led to examine a day-book of 1867 and to draw a comparison between the prices then current and now, when the high cost of living is so much discussed. Raw sugar sold at fourteen cents; starch at sixteen; crushed sugar at seventeen; ordinary tea at sixty; coal oil at sixty-five cents a gallon; axle-grease at seventy-five cents per tin; bluing at one dollar a pound; and wrapping paper at one dollar and a half per ream. Spices, not yet sold in cans, cost three dollars for a dozen bottles; yeast powders, now superseded by baking powder, commanded the same price per dozen; twenty-five pounds of shot in a bag cost three dollars and a half; while in October of that year, blacksmith coal, shipped in casks holding fifteen hundred and ninety-two pounds each, sold at the rate of fifty dollars a ton.

The steamers Oriflamme, California, Pacific and Sierra Nevada commenced to run in 1866 and continued until about the middle of the seventies. The Pacific was later sunk in the Straits of San Juan de Fuca; and the Sierra Nevada was lost on the rocks off Port Harford. The Los Angeles, the Ventura and the Constantine were steamers of a somewhat later date, seldom going farther south than San Pedro and continuing to run until they were lost.

To resume the suggestive story of I. W. Hellman, who remained in business with his cousin until he was able in 1865 to buy out Adolph Portugal and embark for himself, at the corner of Main and Commercial streets: during his association with large landowners and men of affairs, who esteemed him for his practicality, he was fortunate in securing their confidence and patronage; and being asked so often to operate for them in financial matters, he laid the foundation for his subsequent career as a banker, in which he has attained such success.

The Pioneer Oil Company had been organized about the first of February, with Phineas Banning, President; P. Downey, Secretary; Charles Ducommon, Treasurer; and Winfield S. Hancock, Dr. John S. Griffin, Dr. J. B. Winston, M. Keller, B. D. Wilson, J. G. Downey and Volney E. Howard among the trustees; and the company soon acquired title to all brea, petroleum or rock oil in San Pasqual rancho. In the early summer, Sackett & Morgan, on Main Street near the Post Office, exhibited some local kerosene or "coal-oil;" and experimenters were gathering the oil that floated on Pico Spring and refining it, without distillation, at a cost of ten cents a gallon. Coming just when Major Stroble announced progress in boring at la Cañada de Brea, these ventures increased here the excitement about oil and soon after wells were sunk in the Camulos rancho.

On Wednesday afternoon, July 5th, at four o'clock, occurred one of the pleasant social occasions of the mid-sixties—the wedding of Solomon Lazard and Miss Caroline, third daughter of Joseph Newmark. The bride's father performed the ceremony at M. Kremer's residence on Main Street, near my own adobe and the site on which, later, C. E. Thom built his charming residence, with its rural attractions, diagonally across from the pleasant grounds of Colonel J. G. Howard. The same evening at half-past eight a ball and dinner at the Bella Union celebrated the event.

While these festivities were taking place, a quarrel, ending in a tragedy, began in the hotel office below. Robert Carlisle, who had married Francisca, daughter of Colonel Isaac Williams, and was the owner of some forty-six thousand acres comprising the Chino Ranch, fell into an altercation with A. J. King, then Under Sheriff, over the outcome of a murder trial; but before any further damage was done, friends separated them.

About noon on the following day, however, when people were getting ready to leave for the steamer and everything was life and bustle about the hotel, Frank and Houston King, the Under Sheriff's brothers, passing by the bar-room of the Bella Union and seeing Carlisle inside, entered, drew their six-shooters and began firing at him. Carlisle also drew a revolver and shot Frank King, who died almost instantly. Houston King kept up the fight, and Carlisle, riddled with bullets, dropped to the sidewalk. There King, not yet seriously injured, struck his opponent on the head, the force of the blow breaking his weapon; but Carlisle, a man of iron, put forth his little remaining strength, staggered to the wall, raised his pistol with both hands, took deliberate aim and fired. It was his last, but effective shot, for it penetrated King's body.

Carlisle was carried into the hotel and placed on a billiard-table; and there, about three o'clock, he expired. At the first exchange of shots, the people nearby, panic-stricken, fled, and only a merciful Providence prevented the sacrifice of other lives. J. H. Lander was accidentally wounded in the thigh; some eight or ten bystanders had their clothes pierced by stray bullets; and one of the stage-horses dropped where he stood before the hotel door. When the first shot was fired, I was on the corner of Commercial Street, only a short distance away, and reached the scene in time to see Frank King expire and witness Carlisle writhing in agony—a death more striking, considering the murder of Carlisle's brother-in-law, John Rains. Carlisle was buried from the Bella Union at four o'clock the next day. King's funeral took place from A. J. King's residence, two days later, at eight o'clock in the morning.

Houston King having recovered, he was tried for Carlisle's murder, but was acquitted; the trial contributing to make the affair one of the most mournful of all tragic events in the early history of Los Angeles, and rendering it impossible to express the horror of the public. One feature only of the terrible contest afforded a certain satisfaction, and that was the splendid exhibition of those qualities, in some respects heroic, so common among the old Californians of that time.

July was clouded with a particularly gruesome murder. George Williams and Cyrus Kimball of San Diego, while removing with their families to Los Angeles, had spent the night near the Santa Ana River, and while some distance from camp, at sunrise next morning, were overtaken by seven armed desperadoes, under the leadership of one Jack O'Brien, and without a word of explanation, were shot dead. The women, hearing the commotion, ran toward the spot, only to be commanded by the robbers to deliver all money and valuables in their possession. Over three thousand dollars—the entire savings of their husbands—was secured, after which the murderers made their escape. Posses scoured the surrounding country, but the cutthroats were never apprehended.

Stimulated, perhaps, by the King-Carlisle tragedy, the Common Council in July prohibited everybody except officers and travelers from carrying a pistol, dirk, sling-shot or sword; but the measure lacked public support, and little or no attention was paid to the law.

Some idea of the modest proportion of business affairs in the early sixties may be gathered from the fact that, when the Los Angeles Post Office, on August 10th, was made a money-deposit office, it was obligatory that all cash in excess of five hundred dollars should be despatched by steamer to San Francisco.

In 1865, W. H. Perry, having been given a franchise to light the city with gas, organized the Los Angeles City Gas Company, five years later selling out his holdings at a large profit. A promise was made to furnish free gas for lamps at the principal crossings on Main Street and for lights in the Mayor's office, and the consumers' price at first agreed upon was ten dollars a thousand cubic feet.

The history of Westlake Park is full of interest. About 1865, the City began to sell part of its public land, in lots of thirty-five acres, employing E. W. Noyes as auctioneer. Much of it went at five and ten dollars an acre; but when the district now occupied by the park and lake was reached, the auctioneer called in vain for bids at even a dollar an acre; nobody wanted the alkali hillocks. Then the auctioneer offered the area at twenty-five cents an acre, but still received no bids, and the sale was discontinued. In the late eighties, a number of citizens who had bought land in the vicinity came to Mayor Workman and promised to pay one-half of the cost of making a lake and laying out pleasure grounds on the unsightly place; and as the Mayor favored the plan, it was executed, and this was the first step in the formation of Westlake Park.

On September 2d, Dr. J. J. Dyer, a dentist from San Francisco, having opened an office in the Bella Union hotel, announced that he would visit the homes of patrons and there extract or repair the sufferers' teeth. The complicated equipment of a modern dentist would hardly permit of such peripatetic service to-day, although representatives of this profession and also certain opticians still travel to many of the small inland towns in California, once or twice a year, stopping in each for a week or two at a time.

I have spoken of the use, in 1853, of river water for drinking, and the part played by the private water-carrier. This system was still largely used until the fall when David W. Alexander leased all the public water-works for four years, together with the privilege of renewing the lease another four or six years. Alexander was to pay one thousand dollars rental a year, agreeing also to surrender the plant to the City at the termination of his contract. On August 7th, Alexander assigned his lease to Don Louis Sainsevain, and about the middle of October Sainsevain made a new contract. Damien Marchessault associated himself with Don Louis and together they laid pipes from the street now known as Macy throughout the business part of the city, and as far (!) south as First Street. These water pipes were constructed of pine logs from the mountains of San Bernardino, bored and made to join closely at the ends; but they were continually bursting, causing springs of water that made their way to the surface of the streets.

Conway & Waite sold the News, then a "tri-weekly" supposed to appear three times a week, yet frequently issued but twice, to A. J. King & Company, on November 11th; and King, becoming the editor, made of the newspaper a semi-weekly.

To complete what I was saying about the Schlesingers: In 1865, Moritz returned to Germany. Jacob had arrived in Los Angeles in 1860, but disappearing four years later, his whereabouts was a mystery until, one fine day, his brother received a letter from him dated, "Gun Boat Pocahontas." Jake had entered the service of Uncle Sam! The Pocahontas was engaged in blockade work under command of Admiral Farragut; and Jake and the Admiral were paying special attention to Sabine Pass, then fortified by the Confederacy.

On November 27th, Andrew J. Glassell and Colonel James G. Howard arrived together in Los Angeles. The former had been admitted to the California Bar some ten or twelve years before; but in the early sixties he temporarily abandoned his profession and engaged in ranching near Santa Cruz. After the War, Glassell drifted back to the practice of law; and having soon cast his lot with Los Angeles, formed a partnership with Alfred B. Chapman. Two or three years later, Colonel George H. Smith, a Confederate Army officer who in the early seventies lived on Fort Street, was taken into the firm; and for years Glassell, Chapman and Smith were among the leading attorneys at the Los Angeles Bar. Glassell died on January 28th, 1901.

To add to the excitement of the middle sixties, a picturesque street encounter took place, terminating almost fatally. Colonel, the redoubtable E. J. C. Kewen, and a good-natured German named Fred Lemberg, son-in-law to the old miller Bors, having come to blows on Los Angeles Street near Mellus's Row, Lemberg knocked Kewen down; whereupon friends interfered and peace was apparently restored. Kewen, a Southerner, dwelt upon the fancied indignity to which he had been subjected and went from store to store until he finally borrowed a pistol; after which, in front of John Jones's, he lay in wait. When Lemberg, who, because of his nervous energy, was known as the Flying Dutchman, again appeared, rushing across the street in the direction of Mellus's Row, the equally excited Colonel opened fire, drawing from his adversary a retaliatory round of shots. I was standing nearly opposite the scene and saw the Flying Dutchman and Kewen, each dodging around a pillar in front of The Row, until finally Lemberg, with a bullet in his abdomen, ran out into Los Angeles Street and fell to the ground, his legs convulsively assuming a perpendicular position and then dropping back. After recovering from what was thought to be a fatal wound, Lemberg left Los Angeles for Arizona or Mexico; but before he reached his destination, he was murdered by Indians.

I have told of the trade between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, which started up briskly in 1855, and grew in importance until the completion of the transcontinental railroad put an end to it. Indeed, in 1865 and 1866 Los Angeles enterprise pushed forward until merchandise was teamed as far as Bannock, Idaho, four hundred and fifty miles beyond Salt Lake, and Helena, Montana, fourteen hundred miles away. This indicates to what an extent the building of railroads ultimately affected the early Los Angeles merchants.

The Spanish drama was the event of December 17th, when Señor Don Guirado L. del Castillo and Señora Amelia Estrella del Castillo played La Trenza de sus Cabellos to an enthusiastic audience.

In 1865 or 1866, William T. Glassell, a younger brother of Andrew Glassell, came to Los Angeles on a visit; and being attracted by the Southwest country, he remained to assist Glassell & Chapman in founding Orange, formerly known as Richland. No doubt pastoral California looked good to young Glassell, for he had but just passed eighteen weary months in a Northern military prison. Having thought out a plan for blowing up the United States ironclads off Charleston Harbor, Lieutenant Glassell supervised the construction of a cigar-shaped craft, known as a David, which carried a torpedo attached to the end of a fifteen-foot pole; and on October 5th, 1863, young Glassell and three other volunteers steamed out in the darkness against the formidable new Ironsides. The torpedo was exploded, doing no greater damage than to send up a column of water, which fell onto the ship, and also to hurl the young officers into the bay. Glassell died here at an early age.

John T. Best, the Assessor, was another pioneer who had an adventurous life prior to, and for a long time after, coming to California. Having run away to sea from his Maine home about the middle fifties, Best soon found himself among pirates; but escaping their clutches, he came under the domination of a captain whose cruelty, off desolate Cape Horn, was hardly preferable to death. Reaching California about 1858, Best fled from another captain's brutality and, making his way into the Northern forests, was taken in and protected by kind-hearted woodmen secluded within palisades. Successive Indian outbreaks constantly threatened him and his comrades, and for years he was compelled to defend himself against the savages. At last, safe and sound, he settled within the pale of civilization, at the outbreak of the Civil War enlisting as a Union officer in the first battalion of California soldiers. Since then Best has resided mostly in Los Angeles.

The year 1866 is memorable as the concluding period of the great War. Although Lee had surrendered in the preceding April, more than fifteen months elapsed before the Washington authorities officially proclaimed the end of the Titanic struggle which left one-half of the nation prostrate and the other half burdened with new and untold responsibilities. By the opening of the year, however, one of the miracles of modern history—the quiet and speedy return of the soldier to the vocations of peace—began, and soon some of those who had left for the front when the War broke out were to be seen again in our Southland, starting life anew. With them, too, came a few pioneers from the East, harbingers of an army soon to settle our valleys and seasides. All in all, the year was the beginning of a brighter era.

Here it may not be amiss to take up the tale of the mimic war in which Phineas Banning and I engaged, in the little commercial world of Los Angeles, and to tell to what an extent the fortunes of my competitors were influenced, and how the absorption of the transportation charge from the seaboard caused their downfall. O. W. Childs, in less than three months, found the competition too severe and surrendered "lock, stock and barrel;" P. Beaudry, whose vain-glorious boast had stirred up this rumpus, sold out to me on January 1st, 1866, just a few months after his big talk. John Jones was the last to yield.

In January, 1866, I bought out Banning, who was soon to take his seat in the Legislature for the advancing of his San Pedro Railroad project, and agreed to pay him, in the future, seven dollars and a half per ton for hauling my goods from Wilmington to Los Angeles, which was mutually satisfactory; and when we came to balance up, it was found that Banning had received, for his part in the enterprise, an amount equal to all that would otherwise have been charged for transportation and a tidy sum besides.

Sam, brother of Kaspare Cohn, who had been in Carson City, Nevada, came to Los Angeles and joined me. We grew rapidly, and in a short time became of some local importance. When Kaspare sold out at Red Bluff, in January, 1866, we tendered him a partnership. We were now three very busy associates, besides M. A. Newmark, who clerked for us.

Several references have been made to the trade between Los Angeles and Arizona, due in part to the needs of the Army there. I remember that early in February not less than twenty-seven Government wagons were drawn up in front of H. Newmark & Company's store, to be loaded with seventy to seventy-five tons of groceries and provisions for troops in the Territory.

Notwithstanding the handicaps in this wagon-train traffic, there was still much objection to railroads, especially to the plan for a line between Los Angeles and San Pedro, some of the strongest opposition coming from El Monte where, in February, ranchers circulated a petition, disapproving railroad bills introduced by Banning into the Legislature. A common argument was that the railroad would do away with horses and the demand for barley; and one wealthy citizen who succeeded in inducing many to follow his lead, vehemently insisted that two trains a month, for many years, would be all that could be expected! By 1874, however, not less than fifty to sixty freight cars were arriving daily in Los Angeles from Wilmington.

Once more, in 1866, the Post Office was moved, this time to a building opposite the Bella Union hotel. There it remained until perhaps 1868, when it was transferred to the northwest corner of Main and Market streets.

In the spring of 1866, the Los Angeles Board of Education was petitioned to establish a school where Spanish as well as English should be taught—probably the first step toward the introduction into public courses here of the now much-studied castellano.

In noting the third schoolhouse, at the corner of San Pedro and Washington streets, I should not forget to say that Judge Dryden bought the lot for the City, at a cost of one hundred dollars. When the fourth school was erected, at the corner of Charity and Eighth streets, it was built on property secured for three hundred and fifty dollars by M. Kremer, who served on the School Board for nine years, from 1866, with Henry D. Barrows and William Workman. There, a few years ago, a brick building replaced the original wooden structure. Besides Miss Eliza Madigan, teachers of this period or later were the Misses Hattie and Frankie Scott, daughters of Judge Scott, the Misses Maggie Hamilton, Eula P. Bixby, Emma L. Hawkes, Clara M. Jones, H. K. Saxe and C. H. Kimball; a sister of Governor Downey, soon to become Mrs. Peter Martin, was also a public school teacher.

Piped gas as well as water had been quite generally brought into private use shortly after their introduction, all pipes running along the surface of walls and ceilings, in neither a very judicious nor ornamental arrangement. The first gas-fixtures consisted of the old-fashioned, unornamented drops from the ceiling, connected at right angles to the cross-pipe, with its two plain burners, one at either end, forming an inverted T (); and years passed before artistic bronzes and globes, such as were displayed in profusion at the Centennial Exposition, were seen to any extent here.

In September, Leon Loeb arrived in Los Angeles and entered the employ of S. Lazard & Company, later becoming a partner. When Eugene Meyer left for San Francisco on the first of January, 1884, resigning his position as French Consular Agent, Loeb succeeded him, both in that capacity and as head of the firm. After fifteen years' service, the French Government conferred upon Mr. Loeb the decoration of an Officer of the Academy. As Past Master of the Odd Fellows, he became in time one of the oldest members of Lodge No. 35. On March 23d, 1879, Loeb married my eldest daughter, Estelle; and on July 22d, 1911, he died. Joseph P. and Edwin J. Loeb, the attorneys and partners of Irving M. Walker, (son-in-law of Tomás Lorenzo Duque),[27] are sons of Leon Loeb.

In the summer there came to Los Angeles from the Northern part of California an educator who had already established there and in Wisconsin an excellent reputation as a teacher. This was George W. Burton, who was accompanied by his wife, a lady educated in France and Italy. With them they brought two assistants, a young man and a young woman, adding another young woman teacher after they arrived. The company of pedagogues made quite a formidable array; and their number permitted the division of the school—then on Main near what is now Second Street—into three departments: one a kind of kindergarten, another for young girls and a third for boys. The school grew and it soon became necessary to move the boys' department to the vestry-room of the little Episcopal Church on the corner of Temple and New High streets.

Not only was Burton an accomplished scholar and experienced teacher, but Mrs. Burton was a linguist of talent and also proficient in both instrumental and vocal music. Our eldest children attended the Burton School, as did also those of many friends such as the Kremers, Whites, Morrises, Griffiths, the Volney Howards, Kewens, Scotts, Nichols, the Schumachers, Joneses and the Bannings.

Daniel Bohen, another watchmaker and jeweler, came after Pyle, establishing himself, on September 11th, on the south side of Commercial Street. He sold watches, clocks, jewelry and spectacles; and he used to advertise with the figure of a huge watch. S. Nordlinger, who arrived here in 1868, bought Bohen out and continued the jewelry business during forty-two years, until his death in 1911, when, as a pioneer jeweler, he was succeeded by Louis S. and Melville Nordlinger, who still use the title of S. Nordlinger & Sons.

Charles C. Lips, a German, came to Los Angeles from Philadelphia in 1866 and joined the wholesale liquor firm of E. Martin & Company, later Lips, Craigue & Company, in the Baker Block. As a volunteer fireman, he was a member of the old Thirty-Eights; a fact adding interest to the appointment, on February 28th, 1905, of his son, Walter Lips, as Chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

On October 3d, William Wolfskill died, mourned by many. Though but sixty-eight years of age, he had witnessed much in the founding of our great Southwestern commonwealth; and notwithstanding the handicaps to his early education, and the disappointments of his more eventful years, he was a man of marked intelligence and remained unembittered and kindly disposed toward his fellow-men.

A good example of what an industrious man, following an ordinary trade, could accomplish in early days was afforded by Andrew Joughin, a blacksmith, who came here in 1866, a powerful son of the Isle of Man, measuring over six feet and tipping the beam at more than two hundred pounds. He had soon saved enough money to buy for five hundred dollars a large frontage at Second and Hill streets, selling it shortly after for fifteen hundred. From Los Angeles, Joughin went to Arizona and then to San Juan Capistrano, but was back here again in 1870, opening another shop. Toward the middle seventies, Joughin was making rather ingenious plows of iron and steel which attracted considerable attention. As fast as he accumulated a little money, he invested it in land, buying in 1874, for six thousand dollars, some three hundred and sixty acres comprising a part of one of the Ciénega ranchos, to which he moved in 1876. Seven years later, he purchased three hundred and five acres once called the Tom Gray Ranch, now known by the more pretentious name of Arlington Heights. In 1888, three years after he had secured six hundred acres of the Palos Verdes rancho near Wilmington, the blacksmith retired and made a grand tour of Europe, revisiting his beloved Isle of Man.

Pat Goodwin was another blacksmith, who reached Los Angeles in 1866 or 1867, shoeing his way, as it were, south from San Francisco, through San José, Whisky Flat and other picturesque places, in the service of A. O. Thorn, one of the stage-line proprietors. He had a shop first on Spring Street, where later the Empire Stables were opened, and afterward at the corner of Second and Spring streets, on the site in time bought by J. E. Hollenbeck.

Still another smith of this period was Henry King (brother of John King, formerly of the Bella Union), who in 1879-80 served two terms as Chief of Police. Later, A. L. Bath was a well-known wheelwright who located his shop on Spring Street near Third.

In 1866, quite a calamity befell this pueblo: the abandonment by the Government of Drum Barracks. As this had been one of the chief sources of revenue for our small community, the loss was severely felt, and the immediate effect disastrous. About the same time, too, Samuel B. Caswell (father of W. M. Caswell, first of the Los Angeles Savings Bank and now of the Security), who had come to Los Angeles the year before, took into partnership John F. Ellis, and under the title of Caswell & Ellis, they started a good-sized grocery and merchandise business; and between the competition that they brought and the reduction of the circulating medium, times with H. Newmark & Company became somewhat less prosperous. Later, John H. Wright was added to the firm, and it became Caswell, Ellis & Wright. On September 1st, 1871, the firm dissolved.

CHAPTER XXV
REMOVAL TO NEW YORK, AND RETURN
1867-1868

The reader may already have noted that more than one important move in my life has been decided upon with but little previous deliberation. During August, 1866, while on the way to a family picnic at La Ballona, my brother suggested the advisability of opening an office for H. Newmark & Company in New York; and so quickly had I expressed my willingness to remove there that, when we reached the rancho, I announced to my wife that we would leave for the East as soon as we could get ready. Circumstances, however, delayed our going a few months.

My family at this time consisted of my wife and four children; and together on January 29th, 1867, we left San Pedro for New York, by way of San Francisco and Panamá, experiencing frightfully hot weather. Stopping at Acapulco, during Maximilian's revolution, we were summarily warned to keep away from the fort on the hill; while at Panamá yellow fever, spread by travelers recently arrived from South America, caused the Captain to beat a hasty retreat. Sailing on the steamer Henry Chancey from Aspinwall, we arrived at New York on the sixth of March; and having domiciled my family comfortably, my next care was to establish an office on the third floor at 31 and 33 Broadway, placing it in charge of M. J. Newmark, who had preceded me to the metropolis a year before. In a short time, I bought a home on Forty-ninth Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, then an agreeable residence district. An intense longing to see my old home next induced me to return to Europe, and I sailed on May 16th for Havre on the steam-propeller Union; the band playing The Highland Fling as the vessel left the pier. In mid-ocean, the ship's propeller broke, and she completed the voyage under sail. Three months later, I returned on the Russia. The recollection of this journey gives me real satisfaction; for had I not taken it then, I should never again have seen my father. On the twenty-first of the following November, or a few months after I last bade him good-bye, he died at Loebau, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. My mother had died in the summer of 1859.

It was during this visit that, tarrying for a week in the brilliant French capital, I saw the Paris Exposition, housed to a large extent in one immense building in the Champ de Mars. I was wonderfully impressed with both the city and the fair, as well as with the enterprising and artistic French people who had created it, although I was somewhat disappointed that, of the fifty thousand or more exhibitors represented, but seven hundred were Americans.

One little incident may be worth relating. While I was standing in the midst of the machinery one day, the gendarmes suddenly began to force the crowd back, and on retreating with the rest, I saw a group of ladies and gentlemen approaching. It was soon whispered that they were the Empress Eugénie and her suite, and that we had been commanded to retire in order to permit her Majesty to get a better view of a new railroad coach that she desired to inspect.

Not long ago I was reading of a trying ordeal in the life of Elihu B. Washburne, American Minister to France, who, having unluckily removed his shoe at a Court dinner, was compelled to rise with the company on the sudden appearance of royalty, and to step back with a stockinged foot! The incident recalled an experience of my own in London. I had ordered from a certain shoemaker in Berlin a pair of patent-leather gaiters which I wore for the first time when I went to Covent Garden with an old friend and his wife. It was a very warm evening and the performance had not progressed far before it became evident that the shoes were too small. I was, in fact, nearly overcome with pain, and in my desperation removed the gaiters (when the lights were low), quietly shoved them under the seat and sat out the rest of the performance with a fair degree of comfort and composure. Imagine my consternation, however, when I sought to put the shoes on again and found the operation almost impossible! The curtain fell while I was explaining and apologizing to my friends; and nearly every light was extinguished before I was ready to emerge from the famous opera house and limp to a waiting carriage.

A trifling event also lingers among the memories of this revisit to my native place. While journeying towards Loebau in a stage, I happened to mention that I had married since settling in America; whereupon one of my fellow-passengers inquired whether my wife was white, brown or black?

Major Ben C. Truman was President Johnson's private secretary until he was appointed, in 1866, special agent for the Post Office department on the Pacific Coast. He came to Los Angeles in February, 1867, to look after postal matters in Southern California and Arizona, but more particularly to reëstablish, between Los Angeles and points in New Mexico, the old Butterfield Route which had been discontinued on account of the War. Truman opened post offices at a number of places in Los Angeles County. On December 8th, 1869, the Major married Miss Augusta Mallard, daughter of Judge J. S. Mallard. From July, 1873, until the late summer of 1877, he controlled the Los Angeles Star, contributing to its columns many excellent sketches of early life in Southern California, some of which were incorporated in one or more substantial volumes; and of all the pioneer journalists here, it is probable that none have surpassed this affable gentleman in brilliancy and genial, kindly touch. Among Truman's books is an illustrated work entitled Semi-Tropical California, dedicated, with a Dominus vobiscum, to Phineas Banning and published in San Francisco, 1874; while another volume, issued seven years later, is devoted to Occidental Sketches.

A fire, starting in Bell's Block on Los Angeles Street, on July 13th, during my absence from the city, destroyed property to the value of sixty-four thousand dollars; and the same season, S. Lazard & Company moved their dry goods store from Bell's Row to Wolfskill's building on Main Street, opposite the Bella Union hotel.

Germain Pellissier, a Frenchman from the Hautes-Alpes, came to Los Angeles in August, and for twenty-eight years lived at what is now the corner of Seventh and Olive streets. Then the land was in the country; but by 1888, Pellissier had built the block that bears his name. On settling here, Pellissier went into sheep-raising, scattering stock in Kern and Ventura counties, and importing sheep from France and Australia in order to improve his breed; and from one ram alone in a year, as he demonstrated to some doubting challengers, he clipped sixty-two and a half pounds of wool.

P. Beaudry began to invest in hill property in 1867, at once improving the steep hillside of New High Street, near Sonora Town, which he bought in, at sheriff's sale, for fifty-five dollars. Afterward, Beaudry purchased some twenty acres between Second, Fourth, Charity and Hill streets, for which he paid five hundred and seventeen dollars; and when he had subdivided this into eighty lots, he cleared about thirty thousand dollars. Thirty-nine acres, between Fourth and Sixth, and Pearl and Charity streets, he finally disposed of at a profit, it is said, of over fifty thousand dollars.

John G. Downey having subdivided Nieto's rancho, Santa Gertrudis, the little town of Downey, which he named, soon enjoyed such a boom that sleepy Los Angeles began to sit up and take notice. Among the early residents was E. M. Sanford, a son-in-law of General John W. Gordon, of Georgia. A short time before the founding of Downey, a small place named Galatin had been started near by, but the flood of 1868 caused our otherwise dry rivers to change their courses, and Galatin was washed away. This subdividing at once stimulated the coming of land and home-seekers, increased the spirit of enterprise and brought money into circulation.

Soon afterward, Phineas Banning renewed the agitation to connect Los Angeles with Wilmington by rail. He petitioned the County to assist the enterprise, but the larger taxpayers, backed by the over-conservative farmers, still opposed the scheme, tooth and nail, until it finally took all of Banning's influence to carry the project through to a successful termination.

George S. Patton, whose father, Colonel Patton of the Confederate Army, was killed at Winchester, September 19th, 1864, is a nephew of Andrew Glassell and the oldest of four children who came to Los Angeles with their mother and her father, Andrew Glassell, Sr., in 1867. Educated in the public schools of Los Angeles, Patton afterward attended the Virginia Military Institute, where Stonewall Jackson had been a professor, returning to Los Angeles in September, 1877, when he entered the law firm of Glassell, Smith & Patton. In 1884, he married Miss Ruth, youngest daughter of B. D. Wilson, after which he retired to private life. One of Patton's sisters married Tom Brown; another sister became the wife of the popular physician, Dr. W. Le Moyne Wills. In 1871, his mother, relict of Colonel George S. Patton, married her kinsman, Colonel George H. Smith.

John Moran, Sr., conducted a vineyard on San Pedro Street near the present Ninth, in addition to which he initiated the soda-water business here, selling his product at twenty-five cents a bottle. Soda water, however, was too "soft" a drink to find much favor and little was done to establish the trade on a firm basis until 1867, when H. W. Stoll, a German, drove from Colorado to California and organized the Los Angeles Soda Water Works. As soon as he began to manufacture the aerated beverages, Stevens & Wood set up the first soda-water fountain in Los Angeles, on North Spring Street near the Post Office. After that, bubbling water and strangely-colored syrups gained in popularity until, in 1876, quite an expensive fountain was purchased by Preuss & Pironi's drug store, on Spring Street opposite Court. And what is more, they brought in hogsheads from Saratoga what would be difficult to find in all Los Angeles to-day: Congress, Vichy and Kissingen waters. Stoll, by the way, in 1873, married Fräulein Louisa Behn, daughter of John Behn.

An important industry of the late sixties and early seventies was the harvesting of castor beans, then growing wild along the zanjas. They were shipped to San Francisco for manufacturing purposes, the oil factories there both supplying the ranchmen with seed and pledging themselves to take the harvest when gathered. In 1867, a small castor-oil mill was set up here.

The chilicothe—derived, according to Charles F. Lummis, from the Aztec, chilacayote, the wild cucumber, or echinocystes fabacea—is the name of a plaything supplied by diversified nature, which grew on large vines, especially along the slope leading down to the river on what is now Elysian Park, and in the neighborhood of the hills adjacent to the Mallard and Nichols places. Four or five of these chilicothes, each shaped much like an irregular marble, came in a small burr or gourd; and to secure them for games, the youngsters risked limb, if not life, among the trees and rocks. Small circular holes were sometimes cut into the nuts; and after the meat, which was not edible, had been extracted, the empty shells were strung together like beads and presented, as necklaces and bracelets, to sisters and sweethearts.

Just about the time when I first gazed upon the scattered houses of our little pueblo, the Pacific Railway Expedition, sent out from Washington, prepared and published a tinted lithograph sketch of Los Angeles, now rather rare. In 1867, Stephen A. Rendall, an Englishman of Angora goat fame, who had been here, off and on, as a photographer, devised one of the first large panoramas of Los Angeles, which he sold by advance subscription. It was made in sections; and as the only view of that year extant, it also has become notable as an historical souvenir.

Surrounded by his somewhat pretentious gallery and his mysterious darkroom on the top floor of Temple's new block, V. Wolfenstein also took good, bad and indifferent photographs, having arrived here, perhaps, in the late sixties, and remaining a decade or more, until his return to his native Stockholm where I again met him. He operated with slow wet-plates, and pioneers will remember the inconvenience, almost tantamount to torture, to which the patron was subjected in sitting out an exposure. The children of pioneers, too, will recall his magic, revolving stereoscope, filled with fascinating views at which one peeped through magnifying glasses.

Louis Lewin must have arrived here in the late sixties. Subsequently, he bought out the stationery business of W. J. Brodrick, and P. Lazarus, upon his arrival from Tucson in 1874, entered into partnership with him; Samuel Hellman, as was not generally known at the time, also having an interest in the firm which was styled Louis Lewin & Company. When the Centennial of the United States was celebrated here in 1876, a committee wrote a short historical sketch of Los Angeles; and this was published by Lewin & Company. Now the firm is known as the Lazarus Stationery Company, P. Lazarus[28] being President. Lewin and Lazarus married into families of pioneers: Mrs. Lewin is a daughter of S. Lazard, while Mrs. Lazarus is a daughter of M. Kremer. Lewin died at Manilla on April 5th, 1905.

On November 18th, the Common Council contracted with Jean Louis Sainsevain to lay some five thousand feet of two- and three-inch iron pipe at a cost of about six thousand dollars in scrip; but the great flood of that winter caused Sainsevain so many failures and losses that he transferred his lease, in the spring or summer of 1868, to Dr. J. S. Griffin, Prudent Beaudry, and Solomon Lazard, who completed Sainsevain's contract with the City.

Dr. Griffin and his associates then proposed to lease the water-works from the City for a term of fifty years, but soon changed this to an offer to buy. When the matter came up before the Council for adoption, there was a tie vote, whereupon Murray Morrison, just before resigning as President of the Council, voted in the affirmative, his last official act being to sign the franchise. Mayor Aguilar, however, vetoed the ordinance, and then Dr. Griffin and his colleagues came forward with a new proposition. This was to lease the works for a period of thirty years, and to pay fifteen hundred dollars a year in addition to performing certain things promised in the preceding proposition.

At this stage of the negotiations, John Jones made a rival offer, and P. McFadden, who had been an unsuccessful bidder for the Sainsevain lease, tried with Juan Bernard to enter into a twenty-year contract. Notwithstanding these other offers, however, the City authorities thought it best, on July 22d, 1868, to vote the franchise to Dr. Griffin, S. Lazard and P. Beaudry, who soon transferred their thirty-year privileges to a corporation known as the Los Angeles City Water Company, in which they became trustees. Others associated in this enterprise were Eugene Meyer, I. W. Hellman, J. G. Downey, A. J. King, Stephen Hathaway Mott—Tom's brother—W. H. Perry and Charles Lafoon. A spirited fight followed the granting of the thirty-year lease, but the water company came out victorious.

In the late sixties, when the only communities of much consequence in Los Angeles County were Los Angeles, Anaheim and Wilmington, the latter place and Anaheim Landing were the shipping ports of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Arizona. At that time, or during some of the especially prosperous days of Anaheim, the slough at Anaheim Landing (since filled up by flood) was so formed, and of such depth, that heavily-loaded vessels ran past the warehouse to a considerable distance inland, and there unloaded their cargoes. At the same time the leading Coast steamers began to stop there. Not many miles away was the corn-producing settlement, Gospel Swamp.

I have pointed out the recurring weakness in the wooden pipes laid by Sainsevain and Marchessault. This distressing difficulty, causing, as it did, repeated losses and sharp criticism by the public, has always been regarded as the motive for ex-Mayor Marchessault's death on January 20th, when he committed suicide in the old City Council room.

Jacob Loew arrived in America in 1865 and spent three years in New York before he came to California in 1868. Clerking for a while in San Francisco, he went to the Old Town of San Diego, then to Galatin, and in 1872 settled in Downey; and there, in conjunction with Jacob Baruch, afterward of Haas, Baruch & Company, he conducted for years the principal general merchandise business of that section. On coming to Los Angeles in 1883, he bought, as I have said, the Deming Mill now known as the Capitol Mills. Two years later, on the second of August, he was married to my daughter Emily.

Dr. Joseph Kurtz, once a student at Giessen, arrived in Los Angeles on February 3d, with a record for hospital service at Baltimore during the Civil War, having been induced to come here by the druggist, Adolf Junge, with whom for a while he had some association. Still later he joined Dr. Rudolph Eichler in conducting a pharmacy. For some time prior to his graduation in medicine, in 1872, Dr. Kurtz had an office in the Lanfranco Building. For many years, he was surgeon to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and consulting physician to the Santa Fé Railroad Company, and he also served as President of the Los Angeles College Clinical Association. I shall have further occasion to refer to this good friend. Dr. Carl Kurtz is distinguishing himself in the profession of his father.

Hale fellow well met and always in favor with a large circle, was my Teutonic friend, Lewis Ebinger, who, after coming to Los Angeles in 1868, turned clay into bricks. Perhaps this also recalled the days of his childhood when he made pies of the same material; but be that as it may, Lewis in the early seventies made his first venture in the bakery business, opening shop on North Spring Street. In the bustling Boom days when real estate men saw naught but the sugar-coating, Ebinger, who had moved to elaborate quarters in a building at the southwest corner of Spring and Third streets, was dispensing cream puffs and other baked delicacies to an enthusiastic and unusually large clientele. But since everybody then had money, or thought that he had, one such place was not enough to satisfy the ravenous speculators; with the result that John Koster was soon conducting a similar establishment on Spring Street near Second, while farther north, on Spring Street near First, the Vienna Bakery ran both Lewis and John a merry race.

Dr. L. W. French, one of the organizers of the Odontological Society of Southern California, also came to Los Angeles in 1868—so early that he found but a couple of itinerant dentists, who made their headquarters here for a part of the year and then hung out their shingles in other towns or at remote ranches.