Chapter XX: The Rumblings of War

1861

The year 1861 dawned dark and foreboding. On the twentieth of the preceding December, South Carolina had seceded, and along the Pacific, as elsewhere, men were anxiously wondering what would happen next. Threats and counter-threats clearly indicated the disturbed state of the public mind; and when, near Charleston Harbor, a hostile shot was fired at the _Star of the West_, the certainty of further trouble, particularly with the coming inauguration of Lincoln, was everywhere felt.

Aside, however, from these disturbing events so much affecting commercial life, the year, sandwiched between two wet seasons, was in general a prosperous one. There were evil effects of the heavy rains, and business in the spring was rather dull; but cattlemen, upon whose success so many other people depended, took advantage of the favoring conditions and profited accordingly.

During the period of the flood in 1859-60, the river, as we have seen, was impassable, and for months there was so much water in the bed, ordinarily dry, that foot-passage was interrupted. In January, 1861, therefore, the Common Council, under the influence of one of its members, E. Moulton, whose dairy was in East Los Angeles, provided a flimsy foot-bridge in his neighborhood. If my memory serves me, construction was delayed, and so the bridge escaped the next winter's flood, though it went down years later.

On January 9th, the schooner _Lewis Perry_ arrived at anchorage, to be towed across the bar and to the wharf by the little steamer[22] _Comet_. This was the first sea-going vessel that had ever visited New San Pedro with a full cargo, and demonstrated, it was thought by many, that the port was easily navigable by vessels drawing eleven feet of water or less! Comments of all kinds were made upon this event, one scribe writing:

We expect to see coasting steamers make their regular trips
to New Town, discharging freight and loading passengers on
the wharf, safe from the dangers of rough weather, instead
of lying off at sea, subjecting life and property to the
perils of southeast gales and the breakers. The _Senator_
even, in the opinion of experienced persons, might easily
enter the channel on the easterly side of Dead Man's
Island, and thence find a safe passage in the Creek. _It
will yet happen!_

John M. Griffith came to Los Angeles in 1861, having four years previously married a sister of John J. Tomlinson. With the latter he formed a partnership in the passenger and freight-carrying business, their firm competing with Banning & Company until 1868, when Tomlinson died.

This same year, at the age of about eighteen, Eugene Meyer arrived. He first clerked for Solomon Lazard, in the retail dry-goods business; and in 1867 he was admitted into partnership. On November 20th of that year Meyer married Miss Harriet, the youngest daughter of Joseph Newmark--who officiated.

Felix Bachman, who came in 1853, was at various times in partnership with Philip Sichel (after whom Sichel Street is named, and Councilman in 1862), Samuel Laubheim and Ben Schloss, the firm being known as Bachman & Company; and on Los Angeles Street near Commercial they carried on the largest business in town. Bachman secured much Salt Lake trade and in 1861 opposed high freight rates; but although well off when he left here, he died a poor man in San Francisco, at the age of nearly one hundred years.

In 1861, Adolph Junge arrived and established a drug-store in the Temple Block, his only competitor being Theodore Wollweber; and there he continued for nearly twenty years, one of his prescription books, now in the County Museum, evidencing his activity. For a while, F. J. Gieze, the well-known druggist for so many years on North Main Street, and an arrival of '74, clerked for Junge. At the beginning of the sixties, Dr. A. B. Hayward practiced medicine here, his office being next to Workman Brothers' saddlery, on Main Street. Wollweber's name recalls a practical joke of the late sixties, when some waggish friend raised the cry that there was a bear across the river, and induced my Teutonic neighbor to go in hot pursuit. After bracing himself for the supreme effort, Wollweber shot the beast dead; only to learn that the bear, a blind and feeble animal, was a favorite pet, and that it would take just twenty-five dollars to placate the irate owner!

The absence in general of shade trees was so noticeable that when John Temple, on January 31st, planted a row facing Temple Building there was the usual town gossip. Charley Ducommon followed Temple's example. Previously, there had been several wide-spreading trees in front of the Bella Union hotel, and it came to pass within the next five years that many pepper-trees adorned the streets.

In 1861, the Post Office was removed from North Spring Street to a frame building on Main Street, opposite Commercial. About the same time when, owing to floods, no mail arrived for three or four weeks and someone facetiously hung out a sign announcing the office "To Let!" the Washington postal authorities began issuing stamped envelopes, of the values of twelve and twenty-four cents, for those business men of Los Angeles and the Pacific Coast who were likely to use the recently-developed Pony Express.

Matthew Keller, or Don Mateo, as he was called, who died in 1881, was a quaint personality of real ability, who had a shop on the northwest corner of Los Angeles and Commercial streets, and owned the adjoining store in which P. Beaudry had been in business. His operations were original and his advertising unique, as will be seen from his announcement in the _Star_ in February:

M. KELLER, TO HIS CUSTOMERS

You are hereby notified that the time has at last arrived
when you must pay up, without further delay, or I shall be
obliged to invoke the aid of the law and the lawyers.

Your most ob't servant,
M. KELLER.

Which warning was followed, in the next issue, by this:

M. KELLER, TO HIS CUSTOMERS

The Right of Secession Admitted!

You are hereby notified that the time has arrived when you
must pay up, without further delay, or I shall be obliged
to invoke the aid of the law and the lawyers.

After such settlement, slow-payers are requested to secede.

M. KELLER.

(to be augmented next week)

This later advertisement, with the line in parenthesis, continued to be printed, week after week, without change, _for at least twelve months_.

The following year, Keller, in flaring headlines, offered for sale the front of his Los Angeles vineyard, facing on Aliso Street, in building lots of twenty by one hundred feet, saying, in his prospectus:

Great improvements are on the _tapis_ in this quarter.
Governor Downey and the intrepid Beaudry propose to open a
street to let the light of day shine in upon their dark
domains. On the Equerry side of Aliso Street, "what fine
legs your master has," must run to give way for more
permanent fixtures. Further on, the Prior estates are about
to be improved by the astute and far-seeing Templito; and
Keller sells lots on the sunny side of Aliso Street. The
map is on view at my office; come in and make your
selections,--first come, first served! Terms will be made
handy!

M. KELLER.

Nathaniel Pryor--sometimes known as Don Miguel N. Pryor or Prior--is the pioneer referred to by Keller. At the age of thirty, it is said, in 1828, he came here, and fifteen or twenty years later, about the time that he was a _Regidor_ or Councilman, was one of eight or ten Easterners who had farms within the pueblo district. His property, in part a vineyard, included what is now Commercial to First streets and possibly from Los Angeles Street to the river; on it was an adobe which is still standing on Jackson Street, and is the only mud-brick structure in that section. For a while, and probably because he had loaned Pryor some money, F. P. F. Temple had an interest in the estate. Pryor was twice married, having a son, Charles, by his first wife, and a son, Nathaniel, Jr., by his second. Pablo Pryor of San Juan was another son. The first Mrs. Pryor died about 1840, and is one of the few--with the mother of Pio Pico--buried inside of the old church at the Plaza. The second Mrs. Pryor, who inherited the property, died about 1857. A granddaughter, Mrs. Lottie Pryor, is a surviving member of this family.

During the administration of Padre Blas Raho, a genial, broad-minded Italian, several attempts were made, beginning with 1857 or 1858, to improve the old church at the Plaza; and in 1861, the historic edifice, so long unchanged, was practically rebuilt. The front adobe wall, which had become damaged by rains, was taken down and reconstructed of brick; some alterations were made in the tower; and the interesting old tiled roof was replaced--to the intense regret of later and more appreciative generations--with modern, less durable shingles. A fence was provided, and trees, bushes and plants were set out. The church was also frescoed, inside and out, by Henri Penelon, the French pioneer artist and photographer, who painted upon the wall the following inscription:

_Los Fieles de Esta Parroquia á la Reina de los Angeles, 1861._[23]

Early in March, Sanchez Street was opened by the Common Council. It was opposite the northern section of Arcadia Block, passed through the properties of Sanchez, Pico, Coronel and others, and terminated at the Plaza.

The Los Angeles Mounted Rifles, part of the five thousand militia wanted by California, was organized on March 6th at a meeting in the Court House presided over by George W. Gift, with M. J. Newmark, who became an officer in the company, as Secretary.

Late in March, John Fröhling rented from the City Fathers a space under the Temple Market building for a wine cellar; and in December, 1860, at the close of his vintage, when he had conducted a hearty harvest-home celebration, he filled the vault with pipes and other casks containing twenty thousand or more gallons of native wines. In a corner, a bar was speedily built; and by many Angeleños that day not associated with at least one pilgrimage to Fröhling's cool and rather obscure recesses was considered incomplete.

Few who witnessed the momentous events of 1861 will forget the fever-heat of the nation. The startling news of the attack on Fort Sumter took twelve days by Pony Express to reach the Coast, the overland telegraph not being completed until six months later; but when, on the twenty-fourth of April, the last messenger in the relay of riders dashed into San Francisco with the story, an excited population was soon seething about the streets. San Francisco instantly flashed the details south, awakening here much the same mingled feelings of elation and sorrow.

When the war thus broke out, Albert Sidney Johnston, a fellow-townsman who had married a sister of Dr. J. S. Griffin, and who, in 1857, had successfully placed Utah under Federal control, resigned from his command as head of the Department of the Pacific--General Edwin V. Sumner succeeding him--and, being a Southerner, left for the South, by way of Warner's Ranch and the Overland Route, with about a hundred companions, most of whom were intercepted at Fort Yuma through the orders of Captain W. S. Hancock. According to Senator Cornelius Cole, Sumner arrived at Johnston's headquarters in San Francisco after dark; and in spite of Johnston's protest, insisted on assuming command at once. Johnston took up arms for the Confederacy, and was made a Brigadier-General; but at Shiloh he was killed, the news of his death causing here the sincerest regret. I shall speak of the loss of one of General Johnston's sons in the disaster to the _Ada Hancock_; another son, William Preston, became President of Tulane University.

Others of our more enthusiastic Southerners, such as Cameron E. Thom and J. Lancaster Brent, also joined the Rebellion and proceeded to the seat of war. Thom, who has since attained much distinction, returned to Los Angeles, where he is still living[24]. Brent never came back here, having settled near New Orleans; and there I again met him, while I was attending the Exposition. He had fought through the War, becoming a General before its close; and he told me that he had been arrested by Federal officers while on his way to the South from Los Angeles, but had made his escape.

Among the very few who went to the front on the Union side and returned here was Charles Meyrs Jenkins, already referred to as a city _Zanjero_. Owing to the possible need of troops here, as well as to the cost of transportation, volunteers from the Pacific slope were not called for and Jenkins joined an Eastern cavalry battalion organized in October, 1862. Even then, he and his comrades were compelled to pay their own way to the Atlantic seaboard, where they were incorporated into the Second Massachusetts Cavalry. Jenkins engaged in twenty battles, and for fifteen months was a prisoner of war confined at both Andersonville and Libby; suffering such terrible hardships that he was but one of three, out of a hundred and fifty of his battalion, who came out alive.

Not everyone possibly even among those familiar with the building of the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad, knows that an effort was made, as far back as 1861, to finance a railroad here. About the middle of February in that year, Murray Morrison and Abel Stearns, Assemblymen, learned of the willingness of Eastern capitalists to build such a road within eighteen months, providing the County would subscribe one hundred thousand dollars toward the undertaking, and the City fifty thousand. The Legislature therefore on May 17th, 1861, granted the franchise; but important as was the matter to our entire district, nothing further was done until 1863 to give life to the movement.

For almost a decade after I came here, St. Valentine's Day was seldom observed in Los Angeles; but about 1861 or 1862, the annual exchange of decorated cards, with their sentimental verses, came to be somewhat general.

Phineas Banning was a staunch Republican and an ardent Abolitionist; and it was not extraordinary that on May 25th, at a grand Union demonstration in Los Angeles, he should have been selected to present to the Union Club, in his characteristically vigorous manner, an American flag made for the occasion. Columbus Sims, as President, accepted the emblem, after which there was a procession, led by the First Dragoons' band, many participants being on horseback. In those days such a procession had done its duty when it tramped along Main Street and around the Plaza and back, by way of Spring Street, as far as First; and everyone was in the right frame of mind to hear and enjoy the patriotic speeches made by Captain Winfield Scott Hancock, General Ezra Drown and Major James Henry Carleton, while in the distance was fired a salute of thirty-four guns--one for each State in the Union.

Senator William McKendree Gwin was another man of prominence. Following his search for gold with the Forty-niners--due, he used to say, to advice from John C. Calhoun, who, probably taking his cue from Dana's prophecy in _Two Years Before the Mast_, one day put his finger on the map and predicted that, should the bay now called San Francisco ever be possessed by Americans, a city rivaling New York would spring up on its shores--Gwin came to Los Angeles occasionally, and never forgot to visit me at my home. In 1861, he was arrested by the Federal Government for his known sympathy with the South, and was kept a prisoner for a couple of years; after which he went to France and there planned to carry through, under force of arms, the colonization of Sonora, Mexico, depending in vain on Napoleon III. and Maximilian for support. Notwithstanding this futile effort, Gwin became a leader in national Democratic councils, and was an intimate adviser of Samuel J. Tilden in his historic campaign.

Oscar Macy, son of Dr. Obed Macy, having as a newspaper man enthusiastically advocated the election of Frémont in 1856, was appointed, on Lincoln's inauguration, to the Collectorship of Customs at San Pedro; a post which he continued to fill even after the office had been reduced to an inspectorship, later resigning in favor of George C. Alexander. This recalls another appointment by Lincoln--that of Major António María Pico, a nephew of Pio Pico, to the Receivership of Public Moneys at Los Angeles. Pico lived at San José; and finding that his new duties exiled him from his family, he soon resigned the office.

Old-time barbers, as the reader may be aware, were often surgeons, and the arrival in Commercial Street, in the early sixties, of J. A. Meyer, "late of San Francisco," was announced in part as follows:

Gentlemen will be waited on and have Shaving,
Hair-Dressing, and Shampooing prepared in the most
luxurious manner, and in the finest style of the art; while
Cupping, Bleeding, and Teeth-Extracting will also be
attended to!

Fort Tejón had been pretty well broken up by June, when a good deal of the army property was moved to Los Angeles. Along with Uncle Sam's bag and baggage, came thirty or more of the camels previously mentioned, including half a dozen "young uns." For some months they were corralled uncomfortably near the genial Quartermaster's Main Street office; but in October they were removed to a yard fixed up for them on D. Anderson's premises, opposite the Second Street schoolhouse.

Starting with the cook brought to Los Angeles by Joseph Newmark, the Chinese population in 1861 had increased to twenty-one men and eight women--a few of them cooks and servants, but most of them working in five or six laundries. About the middle of June of that year, Chun Chick arrived from San Francisco and created a flurry, not merely in Chinatown, but throughout our little city, by his announcement that he would start a store here; and by the thirteenth of July, this pioneer Chinese shop, a veritable curiosity shop, was opened. The establishment was on Spring Street, opposite the Court House; and besides a general assortment of Chinese goods, there was a fine display of preserves and other articles hitherto not obtainable in town. Chun Chick was clever in his appeals of "A Chinese Merchant to the Public;" but he nevertheless joined the celebrities advertised for delinquent taxes. Chun Chick--or, as he appeared on the tax collector's list, Chick Chun--was down for five hundred dollars in merchandise, with one dollar and twenty-five cents for City, and the same amount for school taxes. Sing Hop, Ching Hop and Ah Hong were other Chinamen whose memory failed at the critical tax time of that year.

For years, until wharves made possible for thousands the pleasures of rod and reel, clams, since used for bait, were almost a drug on the market, being hawked about the streets in 1861 at a dollar a bucket--a price not very remunerative considering that they came from as far north as San Buenaventura.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] A term locally applied to tugs.

[23] "The Faithful of this Parish, to the Queen of the Angels."

[24] Captain Thom died on February 2d, 1915.