Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp., 1935, 1876, 1860s, 1850s
Chapter XI Trails of Destiny
"p. 118 . . .
"We have an accurate picture written by a woman of [p. 119] gentle birth who tells what the pueblo was like in these formative days. Mrs. Benjamin Hayes was the wife of a young lawyer, son of a Missouri slave-holder who came in 1852 . . . [p. 120] Mrs. Hayes did not live to see the pueblo grow up; she died of consumption. Judge Hayes . . . his diary is one of the standard books of California history.
" . . .
"1853: Comes Abel Stearns, the Yankee, to marry the beautiful Arcadia Bandini and put new impulse into the old Spanish life, yet accepting its customs and proud to become "Don Abel." Dr. W. B. Osborne build a post office by making pigeonholes in a cracker box. Before, the letters had been thrown into a tub. Catholic Sisters started the first hospital in the adobe house of Don Cristobal Aguilar on upper Main Street. H.P. Dorsay installed the first Masonic master.
"1854: The Rev. James Woods started a Presbyterian church in a carpenter shop on Main Street. Rabbi A.W. Edelman started the first synagogue. Joseph Newmark brought the first Chinese servant in, to whom he paid one hundred dollars per month. Bill, the waterman, was peddling domestic water, a bucket a day, for fifty cents a week. Andrew Briswalter, an Alsatian, planted the first truck garden. O.W. Childs paid one hundred fifty dollars for the first hive of bees.
"1855: The first public school was started at Second and Spring, far out of town to keep the children away from the pueblo's distractions. St. Vincent's College was started in [p. 121] the old Lugo house on the Plaza. The first flour-mill ended the long anthem of the metate.
"1856: Boom year. Cattle sold for five hundred thousand dollars. William Wolfskill shipped the first oranges East-four hundred boxes, one hundred dollars a tree.
"1857: Lieutenant Ord made the first survey establishing the present streets. A public appeal was made to citizens to buy public lands at one dollar an acre, now the heart of the down-town district.
"1859: Mrs, Arcadia de Bandini de Stearns de Baker [sic] built the Baker Block, the first grand building. A gold rush in San Gabriel canyon thrilled the pueblo. On account of the pro-slavery attitude of Los Angeles, California voted by a two-thirds majority to divide the state. Congress refused to ratify.
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Chapter XVIII The East A-Calling
"[p. 223] Captain Phineas Banning from Wilmington, Delaware, was the father of the [San Pedro] harbor. He started the first stage-line to the pueblo; took a long chance and towed the first schooner into the inner harbor; promoted the first railroad between Los Angeles and the bay.
"In his day, it was the only connection between the pueblo and San Francisco . . . then the big city of the coast. Los Angeles was a contemptible, one-horse, sleepy adobe town so inconsequential that the first railroad had to be coaxed hard to build the rails into Los Angeles instead of driving straight down to San Bernardino.
"There was a weekly mail steamer which anchored off shore and took on passengers from the pueblo by lighter.