1860-1870 Carr 1935

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.

     " . . .

     "1861: Year of the Civil War. Southern feeling ran so high that Charles Jenkins who wanted to enlist in the Union Army had to sneak out of town and ride to San Francisco to enlist. General Albert Sidney Johnston, with a hundred followers, rode East on horseback to join the Confederacy. He was killed at Shiloh. Captain Hancock, afterwards a famous Union general, put the town under martial law, closing the United States Hotel, notorious for sedition. The dragoons marched from Tejon to the war. A military post was built at Santa Catalina Island-another in the Arroyo near Pasadena. The foreigners-French, German and Mexican were loyal. A union regiment of native California cavalry was raised.

     "1861: First Baptist church started. Chung Chick opened the first Chinese store. Telegraph line opened to San Pedro. Pobladores began shingling roofs. Heavy floods. Smallpox and measles raged. Times were so hard that two lots 120 x 165 on Spring and Fourth Street and Broadway and Fourth were offererd for $1.26 taxes. No takers.

     "[p. 122] 1864: The great drought. Cattle died by thousands. Rancheros ruined.

     "1865: Dragoons arrived from Fort Tejon to squelch a demonstration of joy on the part of Southerners when Lincoln was assassinated. Joseph Mesmer took over the disloyal United States Hotel, His heirs still own the old hotel which stands across the street from the present City Hall on Main Street. Gringos began buying and cutting up the ruined ranchos. One of the first was Santa Gertrudis subdivided by John G. Downey, afterward governor. Downey Avenue is named for him.

     "1865: Oil discovered. St. Vincent's College moved to a new building on the present site of Bullock's Deparment Store. Two banks started, one by John G. Downey and J.A. Howard with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars, the other by I.W. Hellman and William Workman. F.P.F. Temple and Joseph Toberman also started one which was ruined by their soft-hearted policy. Temple killed himself. J.J. Reynolds, a stage-driver, imported the first hack. Pico House was opened, the famous hostelry of the South. The first steam fire engine came in. Pasadena started as "The Indiana Colony." R.M. Widney built the first street-car line, running from Temple Block to First, down Fort (Broadway) to Fifth, to Olive to Sixth to Figueroa.

Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp., 1860s

Chapter XXVI Our Literati

     "Major [Horace] Bell had served in the Civil War and came to California in the sixties. His uncle was Alexander Bell, a respected pioneer of parts and influence. The major came to San Pedro by boat and tells of his first mad ride to the pueblo in one of Phineas Banning's stages.

     "The pueblo then had about five thousand people-with mud holes in the street, adobes and saloons enough to liquidate a center of population. The major seems to have made [p. 341]a bee-line for the Bella Union bar with the unerring instinct of a carrier-pigeon. Thereafter he attended all the fandangos; saw most of the gun-fights and knew all the scandals; joined an illegal filibustering expedition to Nicaragua; but helped organize the volunteers-the Rangers-who ran down the last of the great Calfornia bandits-Joaquín Murietta. I never saw Major Bell on horseback but I am willing to wager that his tapaderos were so long that they swept the ground; that his saddle had more silver geegaws and that the wheel in his horse's bit more noise than any of the other silver bits.

     "[p. 341] The major kicked out the box from under one of the last murderers lynched in the pueblo, and carried on several feuds with gusto and high drama . . . "

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 Kelyn Roberts 2017