Chapter XVIII: First Experience with the Telegraph

1860

In 1860, Maurice Kremer was elected County Treasurer, succeeding H. N. Alexander who had entered the service of Wells Fargo & Company; and he attended to this new function at his store on Commercial Street, where he kept the County funds. I had my office in the same place; and the salary of the Treasurer at the time being but one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, with no allowance for an assistant, I agreed to act as Deputy Treasurer without pay. As a matter of fact, I was a sort of Emergency Deputy only, and accepted the responsibility as an accommodation to Kremer, in order that when he was out of town there might be someone to take charge of his affairs. It is very evident, however, that I did not appreciate the danger connected with this little courtesy, since it often happened that there were from forty to fifty thousand dollars in the money-chest. An expert burglar could have opened the safe without special effort, and might have gone scot-free, for the only protector at night was my nephew, Kaspare Cohn, a mere youth, who clerked for me and slept on the premises.

Inasmuch as no bank had as yet been established in Los Angeles, Kremer carried the money to Sacramento twice a year; nor was this transportation of the funds, first by steamer to San Francisco, thence by boat inland, without danger. The State was full of desperate characters who would cut a throat or scuttle a ship for a great deal less than the amount involved. At the end of five or six years, Kremer was succeeded as County Treasurer by J. Huber, Jr. I may add, incidentally, that the funds in question could have been transported north by Wells Fargo & Company, but their charges were exorbitant. At a later period, when they were better equipped and rates had been reduced, they carried the State money.

On January 2d, Joseph Paulding, a Marylander, died. Twenty-seven years before, he came by way of the Gila, and boasted having made the first two mahogany billiard tables constructed in California.

The same month, attention was directed to a new industry, the polishing and mounting of _abalone_ shells, then as now found on the coast of Southern California. A year or so later, G. Fischer was displaying a shell brooch, colored much like an opal and mounted in gold. By 1866, the demand for _abalone_ shells had so increased that over fourteen thousand dollars' worth was exported from San Francisco, while a year later consignments valued at not less than thirty-six thousand dollars were sent out through the Golden Gate. Even though the taste of to-day considers this shell as hardly deserving of such a costly setting, it is nevertheless true that these early ornaments, much handsomer than many specimens of quartz jewelry, soon became quite a fad in Los Angeles. Natives and Indians, especially, took a fancy to the _abalone_ shell, and even much later earrings of that material were worn by the Crow scout Curley, a survivor of the Custer Massacre. In 1874, R. W. Jackson, a shell-jeweler on Montgomery Street, San Francisco, was advertising here for the rarities, offering as much as forty and fifty dollars for a single sound red, black or silver shell, and from fifty to one hundred dollars for a good green or blue one. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that the Chinese consumed the _abalone_ meat in large quantities.

Broom-making was a promising industry in the early sixties, the Carpenters of Los Nietos and F. W. Gibson of El Monte being among the pioneers in this handiwork. Several thousand brooms were made in that year; and since they brought three dollars a dozen, and cost but eleven cents each for the handles and labor, exclusive of the corn, a good profit was realized.

Major Edward Harold Fitzgerald, well known for campaigns against both Indians and bandits, died on January 9th and was buried with military honors.

On January 10th, Bartholomew's Rocky Mountain Circus held forth on the Plaza, people coming in from miles around to see the show. It was then that the circus proprietor sought to quiet the nerves of the anxious by the large-lettered announcement, "A strict Police is engaged for the occasion!"

The printing of news, editorials and advertisements in both English and Spanish recalls again not only some amusing incidents in court activities resulting from the inability of jurists and others to understand the two languages, but also the fact that in the early sixties sermons were preached in the Catholic Church at Los Angeles in English and Spanish, the former being spoken at one mass, the latter at another. English proper names such as John and Benjamin were Spanished into Juan and Benito, and common Spanish terms persisted in English advertisements, as when Don Juan Ávila and Fernando Sepúlveda, in January, announced that they would run the horse _Coyote_ one thousand _varas_, for three thousand dollars. In 1862, also, when Syriaco Arza was executed for the murder of Frank Riley, the peddler, and the prisoner had made a speech to the crowd, the Sheriff read the warrant for the execution in both English and Spanish. Still another illustration of the use of Spanish here, side by side with English, is found in the fact that in 1858 the Los Angeles assessment rolls were written in Spanish, although by 1860 the entries were made in English only.

A letter to the editor of the _Star_, published on January 28th, 1860, will confirm my comments on the primitive school conditions in Los Angeles in the first decade or two after I came. The writer complained of the filthy condition of the Boys' Department, School No. 1, in which, to judge by the mud, "the floor did not seem to have been swept for months!" The editor then took up the cudgel, saying that the Board formerly paid a man for keeping the schoolroom clean, but that the Common Council had refused any longer to pass the janitor's bills; adding that, in his opinion, the Council had acted wisely! If the teacher had really wished the schoolroom floor to be clean, contended the economical editor, he should have appointed a pupil to swing a broom each day or, at least, _each week_, and otherwise perform the necessary duties on behalf of the health of the school.

The year 1860 witnessed the death of Don António María Lugo--brother of Don José Ygnácio Lugo, grandfather of the Wolfskills--uncle of General Vallejo and the father-in-law of Colonel Isaac Williams, who preceded Lugo to the grave by four years. For a long time, Lugo lived in a spacious adobe built in 1819 near the present corner of East Second and San Pedro streets, and there the sons, for whom he obtained the San Bernardino _rancho_, were born. In earlier days, or from 1813, Don António lived on the San António Ranch near what is now Compton; and so well did he prosper there that eleven leagues were not enough for the support of his cattle and flocks. It was a daughter of Lugo who, having married a Perez and being made a widow, became the wife of Stephen C. Foster, her daughter in turn marrying Wallace Woodworth and becoming María Antónia Perez de Woodworth; and Lugo, who used to visit them and the business establishments of the town, was a familiar figure as a sturdy _caballero_ in the streets of Los Angeles, his ornamental sword strapped in Spanish-soldier fashion to his equally-ornamental saddle. Don António died about the first of February, aged eighty-seven years.

About the middle of February, John Temple fitted up the large hall over the City Market as a theater, providing for it a stage some forty-five by twenty feet in size--in those days considered an abundance of platform space--and a "private box" on each side, whose possession became at once the ambition of every Los Angeles gallant. Temple brought an artist from San Francisco to paint the scenery, Los Angeles then boasting of no one clever enough for the work; and the same genius supervised the general decoration of the house. What was considered a record-breaking effort at making the public comfortable was undertaken in furnishing the parquet with armchairs and in filling the gallery with two tiers of raised benches, guaranteeing some chance of looking over any broad _sombreros_ in front; and to cap the enterprise, Temple brought down a company of players especially to dedicate his new house. About February 20th, the actors arrived on the old _Senator_; and while I do not recall who they were or what they produced, I believe that they first held forth on Washington's Birthday when it was said: "The scenery is magnificent, surpassing anything before exhibited in this city."

The spring of 1860 was notable for the introduction of the Pony Express as a potent factor in the despatch of transcontinental mail; and although this new service never included Los Angeles as one of its terminals, it greatly shortened the time required and, naturally if indirectly, benefited the Southland. Speed was, indeed, an ambition of the new management, and some rather extraordinary results were attained. About April 20th, soon after the Pony Express was started, messages were rushed through from St. Louis to San Francisco in eight and a half days; and it was noised about that the Butterfields planned a rival pony express, over a route three hundred miles shorter, that would reach the Coast in seven days. About the end of April, mail from London and Liverpool reached Los Angeles in twenty or twenty-one days; and I believe that the fastest time that the Pony Express ever made was in March, 1861, when President Lincoln's message was brought here in seven days and seventeen hours. This was somewhat quicker than the passage of the report about Fort Sumter, a month afterward, which required twelve days, and considerably faster than the transmission, by the earlier methods of 1850, of the intelligence that California had been admitted to the Union--a bit of news of the greatest possible importance yet not at all known here, I have been told, until six weeks after Congress enacted the law! Which reminds me that the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the poet, although occurring in Italy on June 29th, 1861, was first announced in Los Angeles on the seventeenth of the following August!

In February or March, the sewer crossing Los Angeles Street and connecting the Bella Union with the _zanja_ (which passed through the premises of Francis Mellus) burst, probably as the result of the recent rains, discharging its contents into the common yard; and in short order Mellus found himself minus two very desirable tenants. For a while, he thought of suing the City; and then he decided to stop the sewer effectually. As soon as it was plugged up, however, the Bella Union found itself cut off from its accustomed outlet, and there was soon a great uproar in that busy hostelry. The upshot of the matter was that the Bella Union proprietors commenced suit against Mellus. This was the first sewer--really a small, square wooden pipe--whose construction inaugurated an early chapter in the annals of sewer-building and control in Los Angeles.

Competition for Government trade was keen in the sixties, and energetic efforts were made by merchants to secure their share of the crumbs, as well as the loaves, that might fall from Uncle Sam's table. For that reason, Captain Winfield Scott Hancock easily added to his popularity as Quartermaster, early in 1860, by preparing a map in order to show the War Department the relative positions of the various military posts in this district, and to emphasize the proximity of Los Angeles.

One day in the Spring a stranger called upon me with the interesting information that he was an inventor, which led me to observe that someone ought to devise a contrivance with which to pluck oranges--an operation then performed by climbing into the trees and pulling the fruit from the branches. Shortly after the interview, many of us went to the grove of Jean Louis Sainsevain to see a simple, but ingenious appliance for picking the golden fruit. A pair of pincers on a light pole were operated from below by a wire; and when the wire was pulled, the fruit, quite unharmed by scratch or pressure, fell safely into a little basket fastened close to the pincers. In the same year, Pierre Sainsevain established the first California wine house in New York and bought the Cucamonga vineyard, where he introduced new and better varieties of grapes. But bad luck overtook him. In 1870, grasshoppers ate the leaves and destroyed the crop.

Small as was the population of Los Angeles County at about this time, there was nevertheless for a while an exodus to Texas, due chiefly to the difficulty experienced by white immigrants in competing with Indian ranch and vineyard laborers.

Toward the middle of March, much interest was manifested in the welfare of a native Californian named Serbo--sometimes erroneously given as Serbulo and even Cervelo--Varela who, under the influence of bad whiskey, had assaulted and nearly killed a companion, and who seemed certain of a long term in the State prison. It was recalled, however, that when in the fall of 1846, the fiendish Flores, resisting the invasion of the United States forces, had captured a number of Americans and condemned them to be dragged out and shot, Varela, then a soldier under Flores, and a very brave fellow, broke from the ranks, denounced the act as murder, declared that the order should never be carried out except over his dead body, and said and did such a number of things more or less melodramatic that he finally saved the lives of the American prisoners. Great sympathy was expressed, therefore, when it was discovered that this half-forgotten hero was in the toils; and few persons, if any, were sorry when Varela was induced to plead guilty to assault and battery, enabling the court to deal leniently with him. Varela became more and more addicted to strong drink; and some years later he was the victim of foul play, his body being found in an unfrequented part of the town.

A scrap-book souvenir of the sixties gives us an idyllic view of contemporaneous pueblo life, furnishing, at the same time, an idea of the newspaper English of that day. It reads as follows:

With the exception of a little legitimate shooting affair
last Saturday night, by which some fellow had well-nigh the
top of his head knocked off, and one or two knock-downs and
drag-outs, we have had a very peaceful week indeed. Nothing
has occurred to disturb the even tenor of our way, and our
good people seem to be given up to the quiet enjoyment of
delicious fruits and our unequalled climate,--each one
literally under his own vine and fig tree, revelling in
fancy's flights, or luxuriating among the good things which
he finds temptingly at hand.

The demand for better lighting facilities led the Common Council to make a contract, toward the end of March, with Tiffany & Wethered, who were given a franchise to lay pipes through the streets and to establish gas-works here; but the attempt proved abortive.

In this same year, the trip east by the Overland Stage Route, which had formerly required nearly a month, was accomplished in eighteen or nineteen days; and toward the end of March, the Overland Company replaced the "mud-wagons" they had been using between Los Angeles and San Francisco with brightly-painted and better-upholstered Concord coaches. Then the Los Angeles office was on Spring Street, between First and Second--on the lot later bought by Louis Roeder for a wagon-shop, and now the site of the Roeder Block; and there, for the price of two hundred dollars, tickets could be obtained for the entire journey to St. Louis.

Foreign coin circulated in Los Angeles, as I have said, for many years, and even up to the early sixties Mexican money was accepted at par with our own. Improved facilities for intercourse with the outside world, however, affected the markets here, and in the spring of that year several merchants refused to receive the specie of our southern neighbor at more than its actual value as silver. As a result, these dealers, though perhaps but following the trend elsewhere, were charged openly with a combination to obtain an illegitimate profit.

In 1860, while Dr. T. J. White was Postmaster, a regulation was made ordering all mail not called for to be sent to the Dead Letter Office in Washington, within a week after such mail had been advertised; but it was not until the fall of 1871 that this order was really put into operation in our neighborhood. For some time this worked great hardship on many people living in the suburbs who found it impossible to call promptly for their mail, and who learned too late that letters intended for them had been returned to the sender or destroyed.

Political enthusiasm was keen in early days, as is usual in small towns, and victorious candidates, at least, knew how to celebrate. On Monday, May 7th, 1860, Henry Mellus was elected Mayor; and next day, he and the other City officers paraded our streets in a four-horse stagecoach with a brass band. The Mayor-elect and his _confrères_ were stuffed inside the hot, decorated vehicle, while the puffing musicians bounced up and down on the swaying top outside, like pop-corn in a frying-pan.

More than a ripple of excitement was produced in Los Angeles about the middle of May, when Jack Martin, Billy Holcomb and Jim Ware, in from Bear Valley, ordered provisions and paid for the same in shining gold dust. It was previously known that they had gone out to hunt for bear, and their sudden return with this precious metal, together with their desire to pick up a few appliances such as are not ordinarily used in trapping, made some of the hangers-on about the store suspicious. The hunters were secretly followed, and were found to return to what is now Holcomb Valley; and then it was learned that gold had been discovered there about the first of the month. For a year or two, many mining camps were formed in Holcomb and Upper Holcomb valleys, and in that district the town of Belleville was founded; but the gold, at first apparently so plentiful, soon gave out, and the excitement incidental to the discovery subsided.

While some men were thus digging for treasure, others sought fortune in the deep. Spearing sharks, as well as whales, was an exciting industry at this period; sharks running in large numbers along the coast, and in the waters of San Pedro Bay. In May, Orin Smith of Los Angeles, with the aid of his son, in one day caught one hundred and three sharks, from which he took only the livers; these, when boiled, yielding oil which, burned fairly well, even in its crude state. During the next year, shark-hunting near Rattlesnake Island continued moderately remunerative.

Sometime in the spring, another effort was made to establish a tannery here and hopes were entertained that an important trade might thus be founded. But the experiment came to naught, and even to-day Los Angeles can boast of no tannery such as exists in several other California cities.

With the approach of summer, Elijah and William H. Workman built a brick dwelling on Main Street, next to Tom Rowan's bakery, and set around it trees of several varieties. The residence, then one of the prettiest in town, was built for the boys' mother; and there, with her, they dwelt.

That sectarian activity regarding public schools is nothing new in Los Angeles may be shown from an incident, not without its humorous side, of the year 1860. T. J. Harvey appeared with a broadside in the press, protesting against the reading of the Bible in schoolrooms, and saying that he, for one, would "never stand it, come what may." Some may still remember his invective and his pyrotechnical conclusion: "_Revolution! War!! Blood!!!_"

During Downey's incumbency as Governor, the Legislature passed a law, popularly known as the Bulkhead Bill, authorizing the San Francisco Dock and Wharf Company to build a stone bulkhead around the water-front of the Northern city, in return for which the company was to have the exclusive privilege of collecting tolls and wharfage for the long period of fifty years, a franchise the stupendous value of which even the projectors of that date could scarcely have anticipated. Downey, when the measure came before him for final action, vetoed the bill and thus performed a judicious act--perhaps the most meritorious of his administration.

Whether Downey, who on January 9th had become Governor, was really popular for any length of time, even in the vicinity of his home, may be a question; but his high office and the fact that he was the first Governor from the Southland assured him a hearty welcome whenever he came down here from the capital. In June Downey returned to Los Angeles, accompanied by his wife, and took rooms at the Bella Union hotel, and besides the usual committee visits, receptions and speeches from the balcony, arranged in honor of the distinguished guests, there was a salute of thirteen guns, fired with all ceremony, which echoed and re-echoed from the hillsides.

In 1860, a number of delegates, including Casper Behrendt and myself, were sent to San Francisco to attend the laying of the corner-stone, on the twenty-fifth of June, of the Masonic Temple at the corner of Post and Montgomery streets. We made the trip when the weather was not only excessively hot, but the sand was a foot deep and headway very slow; so that, although we were young men and enjoyed the excursion, we could not laugh down all of the disagreeable features of the journey. It was no wonder, therefore, that when we arrived at Visalia, where we were to change horses, Behrendt wanted a shave. While he was in the midst of this tonsorial refreshment, the stage started on its way to San Francisco; and as Behrendt heard it passing the shop, he ran out--with one side of his face smooth and clean, while the other side was whiskered and grimy--and tried to stop the disappearing vehicle. Despite all of his yelling and running, however, the stage did not stop; and finally, Behrendt fired his pistol several times into the air. This attracted the attention of the sleepy driver, who took the puffing passenger on board; whereupon the rest of us chaffed him about his singular appearance. Behrendt[19] did not have much peace of mind until we reached the Plaza Hotel at San Juan Bautista ("a relic," as someone has said, "of the distant past, where men and women played billiards on horseback, and trees bore human fruit"), situated in a sweet little valley, mountain-girdled and well watered; where he was able to complete his shave and thus restore his countenance to its normal condition.

In connection with this anecdote of the trip to San Francisco, I may add another story. On board the stage was Frederick J. McCrellish, editor of the _Alta California_--the principal Coast paper, bought by McCrellish & Company in 1858--and also Secretary of the telegraph company at that time building its line between San Francisco and Los Angeles. When we reached a point between Gilroy and Visalia, which was the temporary terminus of the telegraph from San Francisco, McCrellish spoke with some enthusiasm of the Morse invention and invited everybody on the stage to send telegrams, at his expense, to his friends. I wrote out a message to my brother in San Francisco, telling him about the trip as far as I had completed it, and passed the copy to the operator at the clicking instrument. It may be hard for the reader to conceive that this would be an exciting episode in a man's life; but since my first arrival in the Southland there had been no telegraphic communication between Los Angeles and the outside world, and the remembrance of this experience at the little wayside station was never to be blotted from my mind. I may also add that of that committee sent to the Masonic festivities in San Francisco, Behrendt and I are now the only surviving members.

It has been stated that the population of Los Angeles in 1850 was but sixteen hundred and ten. How true that is I cannot tell. When I came to the city in 1853, there were some twenty-six hundred people. In the summer of 1860 a fairly accurate census was made, and it was found that our little town had four thousand three hundred and ninety-nine inhabitants.

Two distinguished military men visited Los Angeles in the midsummer of 1860. The first was General James Shields who, in search of health, arrived by the Overland Route on the twenty-fourth of July, having just finished his term in the Senate. The effect of wounds received at the battle of Cerro Gordo, years before, and reports as to the climate of California started the General westward; and quietly he alighted from the stage at the door of the Bella Union. After a while, General Shields undertook the superintending of a Mexican mine; but at the outbreak of the Civil War, although not entirely recovered, he hastened back to Washington and was at once appointed a Brigadier-General of volunteers. The rest of his career is known.

A week later, General, or as he was then entitled, Colonel John C. Frémont drew up at the Plaza. His coming to this locality in connection with the Temescal tin mine and Mariposa forestry interests had been heralded from Godey's ranch some days before; and when he arrived on Tuesday, July 31st, in company with Leonidas Haskell and Joseph C. Palmer, the Republicans were out in full force and fired a salute of twenty-five guns. In the evening, Colonel Frémont was waited upon in the parlors of the Bella Union by a goodly company, under the leadership of the Republican Committee, although all classes, irrespective of politics, united to pay the celebrated California pioneer the honors due him.

Alexander Godey, to whose _rancho_ I have just referred, was a man of importance, with a very extensive cattle-range in Kern County not far from Bakersfield, where he later lived. He occasionally came to town, and was an invariable visitor at my store, purchasing many supplies from me. These and other provisions, which Godey and his neighbors sent for, were transported by burro- or mule-train to the ranches in care of Miguel Ortiz, who had his headquarters in Los Angeles. Loading these so-called pack-trains was an art: by means of ropes and slats of wood, merchandise was strapped to the animal's sides and back in such a fashion that it could not slip, and thus a heavy, well-balanced load was conveyed over the plain and the mountain trails.

By 1860, the Germans were well-organized and active here in many ways, a German Benevolent Society, called the Eintracht, which met Tuesday and Friday evenings in the Arcadia Block for music drill under Director Heinsch, affording stimulating entertainment and accomplishing much good. The Turnverein, on the other hand, took an interest in the success of the Round House, and on March 12th put up a liberty pole on top of the oddly-shaped building. Lager beer and other things deemed by the Teutonic brethren essential to a Garden of Paradise and to such an occasion were freely dispensed; and on that day Lehman was in all his glory.

A particular feature of this Garden of Paradise was a cabbage, about which have grown up some traditions of the Brobdingnagian sort that the reader may accept _in toto_ or with a grain of salt. It was planted when the place was opened, and is said to have attained, by December, 1859, a height of twelve feet, "with a circumference" (so averred an ambiguous chronicler of the period, referring doubtless to crinolines) "equal to that of any fashionably-attired city belle measuring eight or ten feet." By July, 1860, the cabbage attained a growth, so the story goes, of fourteen feet four inches although, George always claimed, it had been cropped twenty or more times and its leaves used for _Kohlslau_, _Sauerkraut_ and goodness knows what. I can afford the modern reader no better idea of Lehman's personality and resort than by quoting the following contemporaneous, if not very scholarly, account:

THE GARDEN OF PARADISE. Our friend George of the Round
House, who there keeps a garden with the above captivating
name, was one of the few who done honor to the Fourth. He
kept the National Ensign at the fore, showed his
fifteen-foot cabbage, and dealt _Lager_ to admiring crowds
all day.

Among the popular pleasure-resorts of 1860 was the Tivoli Garden on the Wolfskill Road, conducted by Charles Kaiser, who called his friends together by placarding the legend, "Hurrah for the Tivoli!" Music and other amusements were provided every Sunday, from two o'clock, and dancing could be enjoyed until late in the night; and as there was no charge for admission, the place was well patronized.

When the Fourth of July, 1859, approached and no preparation had been made to observe the holiday, some children who were being instructed in calisthenics by A. F. Tilden began to solicit money, their childish enthusiasm resulting in the appointing of a committee, the collecting of four hundred dollars, and a picnic in Don Luis Sainsevain's enclosed garden. A year later, Tilden announced that he would open a place for gymnastic exercises in "Temple's New Block;" charging men three dollars for the use of the apparatus and the privilege of a shower-bath, and training boys at half rates. This was the origin of systematic physical culture in Los Angeles.

FOOTNOTE:

[19] Died November 19th, 1913.