Chapter XXI: Hancock--Lady Franklin--The Deluge

1861

When the Civil War began, California and the neighboring territory showed such pronounced Southern sympathies that the National Government kept both under close surveillance, for a time stationing Major, afterward General James Henry Carleton--in 1862 sent across the Colorado River when the Government drove out the Texans--with a force at Camp Latham, near Ballona, and dispatching another force to Drum Barracks, near Wilmington. The Government also established a thorough system of espionage over the entire Southwest. In Los Angeles and vicinity, many people, some of whom I mention elsewhere, were arrested; among them being Henry Schaeffer who was taken to Wilmington Barracks but through influential friends was released after a few days. On account of the known political views of their proprietors, some of the hotels also were placed under watch for a while; but beyond the wrath of the innkeepers at the sentinels pacing up and down their verandas, nothing more serious transpired. Men on both sides grew hot-headed and abused one another roundly, but few bones were broken and little blood was shed. A policy of leniency was adopted by the authorities, and sooner or later persons arrested for political offenses were discharged.

The ominous tidings from beyond the Colorado, and their effect, presaging somewhat the great internecine conflict, recalls an unpublished anecdote of Winfield Scott Hancock, who was a graduate of West Point, an intense patriot and a "natural born" fighter. One day in 1861, coincident with the Texan invasion, and while I was visiting him in his office on Main Street near Third (after he had removed from the upstairs rooms adjoining the Odd Fellows' Hall in the Temple Building), John Goller dropped in with the rumor that conspirators, in what was soon to become Arizona, were about to seize the Government stores. Hancock was much wrought up when he heard the report, and declared, with angry vehemence, that he would "treat the whole damned lot of them as common thieves!" In the light of this demonstration and his subsequent part as a national character of great renown, Hancock's speech at the Fourth of July celebration, in 1861, when the patriotic Angeleños assembled at the Plaza and marched to the shady grove of Don Luis Sainsevain, is worthy of special note. Hancock made a sound argument for the preservation of the Union, and was heartily applauded; and a few days afterward one of the local newspapers, in paying him a deserved tribute, almost breathed an augury in saying:

Captain Hancock's loyalty to the Stars and Stripes has
never for a moment been doubted, and we hope he may be
advanced in rank and honors, and live to a green old age,
to see the glorious banner of our country yet waving in
peaceful glory over a united, prosperous, and happy people.

Few of us, however, who heard Hancock speak on that occasion, dreamed to what high position he would eventually attain.

Soon after this episode, that is, in the early part of August, 1861, Hancock left for the front, in company with his wife; and taking with him his military band, he departed from San Pedro on the steamer _Senator_. Some of my readers may know that Mrs. Hancock--after whom the ill-fated _Ada Hancock_ was named--was a Southern woman, and though very devoted to her husband, had certain natural sympathies for the South; but none, I dare say, will have heard how she perpetrated an amusing joke upon him on their way north. When once out upon the briny deep, she induced the musicians to play _Dixie_, to the great amusement of the passengers. Like many Southerners, Mrs. Hancock was an Episcopalian and frequently contributed her unusual musical talent to the service of the choir of St. Athanasius Church, the little edifice for a while at the foot of Pound Cake Hill--first the location of the Los Angeles High School and now of the County Courthouse--and the forerunner of the Episcopal Pro-Cathedral, on Olive Street opposite Central Park.

Having in mind the sojourn in Los Angeles for years of these representative Americans, the following editorial from the Los Angeles _Star_ on the departure of the future General and Presidential nominee, seems to me now of more than passing significance:

While resident here, Captain Hancock took great interest in
our citizens, the development of our resources, and the
welfare of this section of the country; and as a
public-spirited, enterprising gentleman, he will be missed
from among us, and his most estimable lady will long live
in the hearts of her many friends. We desire their
prosperity, happiness, and long life, wherever their lot
may be cast.

The establishing of Drum Barracks and Camp Drum at Wilmington was a great contribution to the making of that town, for the Government not only spent over a million dollars in buildings and works there, and constantly drew on the town for at least part of its supplies, but provisions of all kinds were sent through Wilmington to troops in Southern California, Utah, Yuma, Tucson and vicinity, and New Mexico.

P. H., popularly known as Major Downing, was employed by Banning for some time during the War to take charge of the great wagon-trains of Government supplies sent inland; and later he opened a general merchandise store in Wilmington, after which he transacted a large volume of business with H. Newmark & Company.

At the breaking out of the War, the Southern Overland Mail Route was discontinued and a contract was made with Butterfield for service along a more central course, by way of Great Salt Lake. There was then a stage six times a week; and a branch line ran to Denver, the terminus having been changed from St. Joseph to Omaha. Twenty days was the time allowed the company to get its stages through during eight months of the year, and twenty-three days for the more uncertain winter months. This contract was made for three years, and one million dollars a year was the compensation allowed the Butterfields. After the War, the old route was resumed.

J. De Barth Shorb came to Los Angeles at the commencement of the War, as Assistant Superintendent of the Philadelphia & California Oil Company; and in 1867 he bought the Temescal grant and began to mine upon the property. The same year he married a daughter of B. D. Wilson, establishing a relationship which brought him a partnership in the San Gabriel Wine Company, of which he eventually became manager. His position in this community, until he died in 1895, was important, the little town of Shorb testifying to one of his activities.

Not only were the followers of the indefatigable _padres_ rather tardy in taking up the cultivation of olives, but the olive-oil industry hereabouts was a still later venture. As an illustration, even in 1861 somewhat less than five hundred gallons of olive oil was made in all Los Angeles County, and most of that was produced at the San Fernando Mission.

How important was the office of the _Zanjero_, may be gathered from the fact that in 1861 he was paid twelve hundred dollars a year, while the Mayor received only eight hundred dollars and the Treasurer two hundred dollars less than the Mayor. At the same time, the Marshal, owing to the hazardous duties of his office, received as much as the Mayor; the City Attorney one hundred dollars less than the Treasurer; and the Clerk but three hundred and fifty.

By 1861, there were serious doubts as to the future of cattle-raising in Southern California, but Banning & Company came forward proposing to slaughter at New San Pedro and contracted with John Temple, John Rains and others, to do their killing. For a while, the enterprise was encouraged; Temple alone having six hundred head so disposed of and sold.

In September, Columbus Sims, the popular attorney of unique personality who from 1856 to 1860 had been Clerk of the United States District Court, was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel in the United States Army and placed in charge of Camp Alert, at the Pioneer Race Course, San Francisco, where twelve companies were soon assembled; and a month or two later he was made Colonel in the Second Cavalry. Late in December of that year, however, he had an altercation with D. D. Colton, in San Francisco, when blows were exchanged and Sims drew "a deadly weapon." For this, the doughty Colonel was arrested and held to await the action of the Grand Jury; but I am under the impression that nothing very serious befell the belligerent Sims as a result.

On September 11th, H. Stassforth, after having bought out A. W. Schulze, announced a change in the control of the United States Hotel, inviting the public, at the same time, to a "free lunch," at half-past four o'clock the following Sunday. Stassforth was an odd, but interesting character, and stated in his advertisement that guests were at liberty, when they had partaken of the collation, to judge if he could "keep a hotel." Whether successful or otherwise, Stassforth did not long continue in control, for in November, 1862, he disposed of the business to Webber & Haas, who in turn sold it to Louis Mesmer.

In the fall, an atrocious murder took place here, proving but the first in a series of vile deeds for which, eventually, the culprit paid with his own life at the hands of an infuriated populace. On Sunday evening, September 30th, some Frenchmen were assembled to sit up with the body of one of their recently-deceased countrymen; and at about eleven o'clock a quarrel arose between two of the watchers, A. M. G., or Michel Lachenais--a man once of good repute, who had cast some slurs at the French Benevolent Society--and Henry Delaval, a respected employee of the Aliso Mills who spiritedly defended the organization. Lachenais drew a weapon, approached Delaval and tried to shoot him; but the pistol missed fire. Thereupon Lachenais, enraged, walked toward a lamp, adjusted two other caps, and deliberately shot Delaval through the body. The next day his victim died. Lachenais made his escape and so eluded the authorities that it was not until the middle of February, 1866, that he surrendered himself to Deputy Sheriff Henderson. Then he was tried, but was acquitted.

About October, Remi Nadeau, a Canadian, after whom Nadeau Street is named and father of George A. Nadeau, came across the Plains to Los Angeles, having spent the previous winter, _en route_, in Salt Lake City; and for a while he teamed between here and Montana. Within the year, believing that San Francisco offered a larger field, he moved to that city and continued his operations there.

In the front part of a little building on Main Street, between Second and Third, Lorenzo Leck, whom I have already mentioned, conducted a grocery, living with his family in the rear. He was a plain, unassuming, honest Dane of the old school, who attended scrupulously to his business and devoted his Sundays and holidays to modest amusements. On such days, he would put his wife, Caroline, and their children on a little wagon that he owned and take them to his vineyard on the outskirts of the town; and there he would enjoy with them those rural pastimes to which he had been accustomed in the Fatherland, and which to many early-comers here were a source of rest and delight.

On the afternoon of Saturday, October 17th, Francisco Cota, a Mexican boy fifteen years of age, entered Leck's store while he was out, and, taking advantage of the fact that Frau Leck was alone, whipped out a knife, stabbed her to death, stole what cash was in sight and then escaped to a vineyard, where he hid himself. John W. Henderson, the son of A. J. Henderson, a Deputy Sheriff here still living in Los Angeles, came in soon after and finding Mrs. Leck horribly disfigured, he gave the alarm. Neighbors and friends at once started in pursuit and caught Cota; and having tied a rope around the murderer's neck during the excitement they dragged him down to Alameda Street, where I witnessed the uproar. As they proceeded by way of Aliso Street, the mob became more and more infuriated, so that before it reached the spot which had been selected for his execution, the boy had been repeatedly stabbed and was nearly dead. At length, he was strung up as a warning to other malefactors.

A short time after this melancholy event, I was driving with my wife to the Cerritos _rancho_ and, missing our road, we stopped at a Mexican home to inquire the way. The woman who answered our summons proved to be one who knew, and was known by all Los Angeles merchants on account of her frequent excursions to town; she was, in fact, the mother of the Mexican boy who had been mobbed and hung for the murder of poor Leck's wife! The sight of _Gringos_ kindled anew her maternal wrath; and she set up such a hue and cry as to preclude any further intelligible conversation.

California being so far removed from the seat of war did not awake to its full significance until the credit of the Government began to decline. Four weeks were required, it is well to remember, to complete the trip from New York to San Francisco _via_ Panamá, and our knowledge of events in the East was far from perfect. Until the completion of the continental telegraph in October, 1861, the only immediate news that reached the Coast came privately and we were, therefore, pretty much in the dark until the arrival of Eastern papers, and even after that telegraphing was so expensive that our poorly-patronized little news-sheets could not afford the outlay. A few of us therefore made up a purse of one hundred dollars a month, which small sum enabled us to allay our anxiety at least in the case of very important happenings.

It must not be forgotten, though, that we then had a little relief from San Francisco, whose newspapers, containing some telegraphic despatches, arrived in town perhaps three to four days after their publication. I may add, in fact, that it was not until about the beginning of the eighties that Los Angeles dailies could afford the luxury of regular direct telegrams.

In other respects as well, editing a local newspaper during the War was apt to entail financial loss. The Los Angeles _News_, for instance, was outspoken for the Union and so escaped the temporary eclipse suffered by the _Star_ through Government censorship; but the Unionists being in a decided minority in the community, pickings for the _News_ were mighty poor. Perhaps this want of patronage suggested the advisability, in 1863 (when that paper was published by C. R. Conway and Alonzo Waite, on Main Street, opposite the express office), of reducing the subscription rate to five dollars a year.

Probably one of the most interesting visits to Los Angeles ever made by a well-known personage was the sudden call with which Lady Franklin, the wife of the eminent, lost Arctic explorer, honored our little town far back in 1861. The distinguished lady, accompanied by Mrs. Cracroft, her niece, Commodore and Madame Watkins and Collector and Mrs. Rankin, arrived at San Pedro on the _Golden State_ during the first week in November and was driven, with her companions, to the Bella Union hotel, from which she made such short excursions about the city as were then possible; and as sympathy for her in her sorrow, and admiration for her long years of plucky though vain search for her husband were still general, every courtesy possible was afforded her. During Lady Franklin's stay Benjamin D. Wilson arranged a delightful garden party at his hospitable mansion at Lake Vineyard in her ladyship's honor, and Phineas Banning also entertained her with a reception and collation at his San Pedro home; and these receptions and collations were as enjoyable as they were notable. After a day or two, Lady Franklin and her party left on the _Senator_ for San Francisco, being accorded, as the vessel weighed anchor, a marked ovation.

For many years funerals were attended by men on horseback and by women on foot, as hacks were unknown in early days; and while the good citizens were doubtless then conducted to their last resting-place in a manner just as satisfactory to themselves as are their descendants who are buried according to present-day customs, those who followed in the train were very seriously inconvenienced by the melancholy, dusty processions to the old and now-forgotten burial-grounds; for in those days the trip, in summer exceedingly hot and in winter through rain and mud, was a long, fatiguing one.

Speaking of funerals, a strange sight was witnessed in our streets about the end of November, 1861, attending the burial of a child. The father and mother, both native Californians, were seated in a wagon, in which was also placed the strikingly plain little coffin or box containing the dead. Beside the wagon walked an old man, playing a fiddle. Two or three persons followed in the deep mud; the whole forming a weird picture, said to be the relic of an almost obsolete back-woods custom.

Banning & Hinchman's _Comet_ proving insufficient, the _Gondolier_ was put on in the fall of 1861 and became a familiar craft in the conveying of passengers and freight between New San Pedro and the ships lying off the harbor.

Two years previous to the completion of the telegraph from San Francisco to Los Angeles--that is, in 1858--the first continental telegraph was undertaken; and by October, 1861, Governor Downey of California sent a congratulatory message to President Lincoln. On November 7th, the line was open to the public. Several months before, all the companies in the State had consolidated into the California State Telegraph Company. Banning & Hinchman having succeeded, for a short season, Phineas Banning, the sub-contractor for the building of the first telegraph, they made an effort, following the establishment of communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific, to secure a line to New San Pedro; and at the end of October, 1861, the first telegraph pole in the long row from Los Angeles to the harbor was formally set. About the middle of November, this line was completed; and though it was widely proclaimed as "working like a charm," the apparatus soon got out of order and by the following January there were many complaints that both poles and wire had fallen to the ground, blocking the thoroughfares and entangling animals in such a way as to become a nuisance. Indeed, there was soon a public demand either to repair the telegraph or to remove it altogether and throw the equipment away. Soon after the first of February, 1862, the line was working again; but by that time the telegraph to San Francisco had gotten out of order! And so great were the difficulties in repairing that line, that Los Angeles was not again talking uninterruptedly over the wire with its neighbor until July.

On November 15th, the first number of _El Amigo del Pueblo_, printed in Spanish, appeared from the shop of José E. Gonzales & Company; but native support being withheld, "The Friend of the People" starved to death in the following May.

Whaling, like shark-hunting, continued brisk in 1861 and 1862, and many vessels were fitted out at San Pedro; Los Angeles merchants selling them most of their supplies. The sea-monsters usually moved up the coast about the first of the year, the males keeping in toward the shore going up, and the females hugging the coast, coming down; and small boats such as Captain W. Clark's _Ocean_, used to take from four hundred and fifty to five hundred barrels of oil in five or six weeks. For six days, in March, 1862, San Pedro whalers harpooned a whale a day, bringing to the landing over two hundred barrels of oil as a result of the week's labor.

The bitter fight between Abolitionists and Southern sympathizers was immediately reflected in the public schools. Defenders of the Union worked for a formal oath of allegiance to the National Government, as a preliminary to granting teachers' certificates; while the Confederates, incensed at what they deemed a violation of personal rights, assailed the institutions. The result was that attendance at the public schools gradually fell off until, in the winter of 1865-66, only about three hundred and fifty children of school age were being instructed by public teachers; another third of a thousand was in private schools, while some three hundred and sixty-nine were not on any roster.

The gloom naturally caused by the outbreak of war was sometimes penetrated by the brightness of social life, and among the happier occasions of the winter of 1861 was the marriage, on December 23d, in the presence of a large circle of friends, of Tom D. Mott to Ascención, daughter of Don José Andrés and Doña Francisca Ábila Sepúlveda.

The winter of 1861-62 recorded the greatest of all floods, especially in the North where, in December and January, something like thirty-five inches of rain was precipitated. In Los Angeles County the rivers soon rose and overflowed the lowlands; but the rise was gradual, causing the loss of but few or no lives and permitting the stock to reach the neighboring hills in safety. In Anaheim the water was four feet deep in the streets and people had to seek flight to the uplands or retreat to the roofs of their little houses. Vineyards were sometimes half-ruined with the layers of deep sand; banks of streams were lined for miles with driftwood; and ranchers saw many a clod of their farms carried off and deposited to enrich their neighbors, miles away. For a month it rained so steadily that the sun peeped out for scarcely an hour.

I witnessed this inundation in Los Angeles, where much damage was done to business buildings, especially to Mellus's Row, and saw merchants in water up to their waists, trying to save their goods. The wall of the room occupied by Sam Meyer fell first, whereupon Hellman & Brother became intensely interested in the removal of their stock, while poor Sam, knee-deep in water, sadly contemplated his losses. Before the Hellmans had made much headway, they observed a tendency on the part of their walls to crumble, and their exit was neither graceful nor delayed. After that the store occupied by Meyer & Breslauer caved in, smashing show cases and shelves, and ruining a large amount of merchandise. The ludicrous picture of this rush for "safety first" is not a fit reflection of the feelings of those pioneers who saw the results of years of labor obliterated in a moment. Friends and neighbors lent assistance to the unfortunate, and helped to save what they could. After this flood, Hellman & Brother and Sam Meyer removed to the Arcadia Block, while Meyer & Breslauer secured accommodations north of the Plaza Church.