Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1870s, 1839,
"It was part of the former La Ballona Rancho, a land grant deeded to the Machado and Talamantes families by the Mexican government in 1839. Some of it had been used for cattle grazing but the land was too often flooded to provide good forage.
"Colonel R.S. Baker had moored his houseboat Pollywog on the lagoon in the center of the marsh. He entertained visiting dignitaries such as "Bull Run" Russell, the Duke of Sutherland, Charles A. Dans and Governor Dorsheimer of New York aboard his well-provisioned boat.
"Will Tell, a Santa Monica house-painter, had tried to start a hunting resort amond the reeds and swamp grass but . . . was destroyed by high waves. The hunting was excellent and those hardy enough to brave the ooze and mosquitos could expect full game bags at the completion of a day's shooting."
" . . .
Abbot Kinney
"Abbot Kinney was the founder of Venice . . .
"He was born in 1850 to an influential New Jersey family that claimed kinship with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes and William Henry Harrison. The young Kinney worked for an uncle, Senator James Dixon of Connecticut, and then traveled abroad to complete his education in France, Switzerland, and at Heidelberg University in Germany.
"President Ulysses S. Grant employed the youth on his personal staff. Kinney left that post to speculate in the stock market. Poor investments in a rigged market left him penniless and he had to take a clerking job at a Baltimore dry goods store.
"Kinney's brothers formed a tobacco manufacturing company and Abbot joined the family firm. He traveled throughout the Middle East as a buyer of tobacco in quantity. The cigarette was a relatively new product for smokers but it was cutting into the traditional cigar-dominated smoking market. The Kinney firm blended Virginia "bright" tobacco with imported Turkish varieties. The products they marketed, Egyptian, Cleopatra, Flowers and Sweet Caporal cigarettes were commercially successful and the Kinneys became wealthy men.
[p. 8 photo of Kinneloa, courtesy Helen Kinney Boyle]
"Abbot Kinney suffered ill health and an almost constant state of insomnia. . . .
" . . . He arrived by steamer in San Francisco's harbor in 1880 . . .