tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88812580983072983062024-03-21T22:19:05.616-07:00La Misión Vieja: The Center of Greater Los AngelesThis blog covers the history of La Misión Vieja (Old Mission) in Whittier Narrows where the San Gabriel River has provided the basis for human settlement from the native Indians to modern Angelenos. Please enjoy, leave comments or questions, and let others know about this amazing place at the center of greater Los Angeles.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-13189370457124052322016-02-04T19:38:00.000-08:002018-06-01T23:00:07.968-07:00Misión Vieja: The Ancestral Center of the Los Angeles RegionBefore there was a Los Angeles and the vast metropolitan area that surrounds it, the Kizh-Gabrieleño Indians occupied a region that stretched west to east from the Simi Pass down to Las Flores Canyon along the coast to the San Bernardino Valley and from the Pacific Ocean to the Inland Empire and much of today's Corona area. <br />
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From north to south, the domain ranged from the San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Mountains and part of the San Bernardino Mountains down to the ocean and through most of Orange County, terminating near Aliso Creek, Irvine and the Santa Ana Mountains. Four of the Channel Islands off the coast are also part of the region, including Santa Catalina, San Clemente, San Nicolás and Santa Barbara. Three large valleys (San Fernando, San Gabriel, San Bernardino) and two spacious plains (Los Angeles and Santa Ana) are also within the tribal lands.<br />
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For thousands of years, these native peoples built a society that was adapted to their environment, of which the most precious resource, as is the case anywhere, was, of course, water. While there were at least two other major watercourses that drained into the areas occupied by the Kizh-Gabrieleño, these being the Los Angeles and Santa Ana rivers, it is notable that the greatest concentration of village sites and, obviously, of numbers of people was tied directly to the San Gabriel River watershed, including the many creeks and streams that fed into it.<br />
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The central point of that system was what we now refer to as the Whittier Narrows, where the San Gabriel River over many, many generations scoured away a narrow space between the Puente and Montebello hills. This pass was also memorialized in the name of a ranch within the Narrows area, <i>Rancho Paso de Bartolo</i>, which includes much of today's Whittier, the unincorporated area historically called Los Nietos and other adjacent locations.<br />
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The San Gabriel gathers its waterflow from three main branches in the San Gabriel (formerly known as the Sierra Madre) Mountains in Azusa Canyon, the north, west and east forks and empties down into its namesake valley. Historically, the water actually was directed underground through sand, gravel and boulders for several miles and then emerged above ground in the vicinity of El Monte. <br />
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One of its main channels for a long period of time after the written record came into being after 1769 is what is now known as the Rio Hondo and that "Old San Gabriel River" actually veered west around the Montebello Hills and headed off towards the Pacific.<br />
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In 1867-68, during a particularly strong rainy season (something like the one we are now anticipating), the river shifted eastward, with an unintended assist from ex-Governor Pío Pico, owner of the Paso de Bartolo rancho, whose irrigation ditch became the start of a new channel when heavy water flow poured into the Narrows. The river's route then took over the Los Coyotes Creek waterway moving southwest into the Pacific where the modern San Gabriel empties into the ocean where Seal Beach and Long Beach meet. Our "engineered" San Gabriel seems to ensure that the current channel will remain that way for the foreseeable future.<br />
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The "Old San Gabriel River" became the Rio Hondo and because it channel still continued to flow southwest and then into a frequently rerouted Los Angeles River, any tributaries in the western San Gabriel Valley that flow into the Rio Hondo, such as Alhambra Wash, Rubio Wash, Eaton Creek/Wash and Santa Anita Creek/Wash.<br />
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While these westward tributaries were part of the old San Gabriel system, the modern version has a significant number of tributary streams (creeks and washes) that have deposited water into its channel coming from the east and northeast. These include Big Dalton Wash, Walnut Creek and San José Creek.<br />
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Naturally, where there's water, there is abundant plant and animal life. When the first Spanish expedition came through this region in summer 1769, diary entries noted the profusion of wild grapevines, Rose of Castile bushes, oaks, sycamores, willows and many other plant materials. Bear, antelopes, deer, and many other animals were noted. Obviously, with this extraordinary supply of water, food and other resources, the native peoples congregated where they could take greatest advantage of what was available to them.<br />
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Several large villages dotted the landscape of the Narrows, including Shevaanga, which appears to have been located along the west side of the Rio Hondo in an area now north of the 60 Freeway in a corner of Rosemead near Whittier Narrows Golf Course. Others identified in sources are Houtgna, Isantcagna, and Wiichinga. To the east at La Puente was 'Awiinga, and it was said that an Indian baptized as Mateo in 1774 was acknowledged as the chief of that village, but also of a wide ranging area embracing several villages, presumably within the Whittier Narrows region.<br />
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When the Spanish decided to establish a mission in the area, there were several possible sites identified in the diaries of the first exploration of 1769-1770, but the chosen location was in the Whittier Narrows, precisely because of the availability of water, plant materials and animal life, as well as the larger concentrations of native peoples the Spanish wanted to convert to Christianity and European ways of life, including as forced labor for the mission.<br />
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Although the first Mission San Gabriel site was established along the west bank of the old river just north of the pass, flooding forced its removal to a higher, drier location by 1775 at the current location. The former site became known as "La Misión Vieja" or Old Mission, a name that remained until well into the 20th century.<br />
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About ten archaeological sites have been studied over the decades in the Whittier Narrows area and the work there, as well as what has been in the historical (ethnographic) record gives powerful testimony to the central importance of this region to the Kizh-Gabrieleño people of centuries and millenia past and to their descendants now.<br />
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It should be noted that the Spanish referred to the native peoples under their regime as <i>Kichireños </i>when the original mission site at the Narrows was in operation. Later, at the current site, the term <i>Gabrieleños</i> was employed. Accounts published in 1846 and 1856, however, make use of the term <i>Kizh</i> in reference to the natives, the descendants of which hold that the Whittier Narrows/<i>Misión Vieja</i>/Old Mission area is a central, sacred place of immense cultural and religious significance to the tribe.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-20205426624193126512014-10-17T10:55:00.001-07:002014-10-17T10:55:53.697-07:00The Basye Family of Misión ViejaThe last post concerned the family of Juan Matias Sánchez, co-owner of Rancho La Merced from 1851 onward. Sánchez occupied and then expanded the adobe built by the rancho's original owner, Casilda Soto de Lobo, and ran his nearly 1,200-acre half of La Merced from there.<br />
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In 1856, Sánchez was joined by a nephew, Rafael Basye, who migrated from New Mexico. Rafael was a son of Sánchez's sister Geronima and James Basye. James was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky about 1802 and, as a young man, lived in Shelbyville, Illinois and then moved to Cass County, Missouri, southeast of today's Kansas City.<br />
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Apparently, though, James traveled on the Santa Fe Trail to New Mexico, where he married Geronima Sánchez about 1830 or so. Rafael was born in 1832 and there were at least two other sons, Joseph (born in 1837) and Peter (1839), all of whom were born in New Mexico. By about 1842, however, Geronima died and James took his three sons back to Missouri. When the 1850 census was conducted, James, his three sons from Geronima, his second wife Elizabeth and their daughter and son together were residing on a farm in the Sixteenth District of Cass County.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNlQw-umFlgsEis9jKPQYQytUEj5u-d50reLRsvVTDfQJWd8G_g_QyCcY6BloC4kgrHgfhIwUkuY4FkY-ATizqUOu4IGTXpJiKybTkElZgtpnYtjpgOK9PbMQaAr1AGgLQpZqbgQ3D8_1k/s1600/Old+Mission+detail+around+Rio+Hondo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNlQw-umFlgsEis9jKPQYQytUEj5u-d50reLRsvVTDfQJWd8G_g_QyCcY6BloC4kgrHgfhIwUkuY4FkY-ATizqUOu4IGTXpJiKybTkElZgtpnYtjpgOK9PbMQaAr1AGgLQpZqbgQ3D8_1k/s1600/Old+Mission+detail+around+Rio+Hondo.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This early 1900s map shows the <i>Misión Vieja</i> area, with the Montebello Hills at the left, the Rio Hondo [Old San Gabriel River] going vertically at the center, and the bridge along San Gabriel Boulevard crossing the Rio Hondo at the center. Just below that, on the left of the river, is the Basye Adobe. Click on any image to see the set in a separate window and in enlarged views. All photos courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.</td></tr>
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An 1889 biography of Rafael stated "he was born in New Mexico, 1 May 1832; but while a youth his parents located in Missouri, where Mr. Basye was reared as a farmer and stock-raiser." The account continued, "In 1856 he crossed the plains to California, and located in Los Angeles County, where, in connection with his uncle, John Sanches [sic], he was engaged in sheep-ranching and wool-growing in the San Gabriel Valley."<br />
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A Basye family history published in 1950 stated that James Basye "went to California in about 1850 [and] from there in 1851 he took a steamer for home, carrying a large sum of money, said to be $65,000, but he was never heard from." If true, this statement indicates pretty clearly that James was wildly successful digging for gold during the famed Gold Rush and was heading back to Missouri with his riches when he vanished. The account continued that, "it is supposed he was drowned, murdered, or lost on the Isthmus."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1VpuxiTUlCnD6d_1MKtZ_qlHmWSDhMufHlOZZ-ZNYH108YMde-JADx857ySlaClXV4BRuko-2S0bQK66iFfnaAFbwhg0hC5o9WK2I0HnGPdD6QUYVwIb8pFw7TNcLXAymvO25Oja1rNT_/s1600/Potrero+Chico+SW+part.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1VpuxiTUlCnD6d_1MKtZ_qlHmWSDhMufHlOZZ-ZNYH108YMde-JADx857ySlaClXV4BRuko-2S0bQK66iFfnaAFbwhg0hC5o9WK2I0HnGPdD6QUYVwIb8pFw7TNcLXAymvO25Oja1rNT_/s1600/Potrero+Chico+SW+part.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another early 20th=-century map with detail of the southwest corner of Rancho Potrero Chico. Coming from the upper left to the lower right is San Gabriel Boulevard and, towards the lower left, is a small indication for Lincoln Avenue. Just below San Gabriel and right of Lincoln is the location of the Basye Adobe.</td></tr>
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As for Rafael's two full brothers, Joseph, at around 13 years old, went to California with his father in 1850, and then was left there at Vacaville with relatives. When James failed to make it back home to Missouri, Joseph was left in California and, "lost track of his people," according to the 1950 Basye history. He married and had a large family and spent his last years in Bakersfield, where he died at the end of 1919.<br />
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Peter, the younger of the trio, left Missouri and went a short distance west over the border to Kansas, where, at age 23, he enlisted in the Second Kansas Cavalry for the Union Army during the Civil War. He served as a private from April 1862 until his discharge from Little Rock, Arkansas, just a few days after the assassination of President Lincoln three years later. Peter, who never married, worked as a farmer near present Kansas City and at Richland, near Topeka and Lawrence, before rheumatism led him to be admitted to the National Soldiers' Home at Leavenworth in 1887. He was in and out of the home five separate times for stints as long as six years at a time. During his last stay there, on 16 January 1904, he was walking along a Burlington Northern railroad track at night and was struck and killed by a train.<br />
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Whether Rafael had any contact with his brothers is not known, but, in the 1860 census he shows up as "Rafael Vasa" in the household of his uncle Juan Matias Sánchez. He must have remained there for almost another decade, as he married Maria Antonia Alvitre, of a long-standing <em>Misión Vieja</em> family profiled in this blog previously, in 1869.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNoPriLYkFWUJYYAn5KSNYU7lfNr4Hkm9TMaXinM1xW-CSW0Kwm4xQkkp-qHP_jraAq2ITMh5BlqlZA3c6PxTejG2KmFlbXl1YF-Dr9VYlBf_kirEbUma9fa44pnI3aFP3H4MPr-v_7V7G/s1600/Basye+Adobe+Zuniga+Store.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNoPriLYkFWUJYYAn5KSNYU7lfNr4Hkm9TMaXinM1xW-CSW0Kwm4xQkkp-qHP_jraAq2ITMh5BlqlZA3c6PxTejG2KmFlbXl1YF-Dr9VYlBf_kirEbUma9fa44pnI3aFP3H4MPr-v_7V7G/s1600/Basye+Adobe+Zuniga+Store.jpg" height="270" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A circa 1890s photo of the Basye Adobe with false wood fronts, including the former Basye Store at the right, then called the "Pioneer Store" and "Old Mission Saloon" and run by Manuel Zuñiga, who was from a long-time early <i>Misión Vieja</i> family. Standing at the center is Zuñiga's second wife, Lucinda Temple, from another Old Mission family.</td></tr>
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Settling into an adobe house built by him and Jesús Andrade situated just off the west bank of the Rio Hondo, which until a massive flood in 1867 was the old course of the San Gabriel River, Bayse opened a general store, which catered to the Old Mission community. He remained a merchant for the rest of his life until he died on 27 February 1887.<br />
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After Rafael's death, his widow and children remained at the adobe and continued to operate the store, which soon became managed by the eldest child, James. By 1900, however, the Basyes left the adobe, which continued to house the "Pioneer Store" and "Old Mission Saloon", owned by Manuel Zuñiga, whose family resided in the Old Mission area from well before 1850 and who was married to another <i>Misión Vieja</i> native, Lucinda Temple when he ran the store and saloon.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjILUGpQdZo6hp3gBvTCiTi56Ki8l48vRem4ZXxgEenEj9at1QAL8QdJspNbZymJlwyb8mfR_kPRV8FHpupCfJOJ6GwpRDtVTsTiiRsiYT3hDrA6xXYKrHDzzJl2Mh4Inuf7bNAMhh6IRb3/s1600/Temples+at+Basye+Adobe+ca+1914.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjILUGpQdZo6hp3gBvTCiTi56Ki8l48vRem4ZXxgEenEj9at1QAL8QdJspNbZymJlwyb8mfR_kPRV8FHpupCfJOJ6GwpRDtVTsTiiRsiYT3hDrA6xXYKrHDzzJl2Mh4Inuf7bNAMhh6IRb3/s1600/Temples+at+Basye+Adobe+ca+1914.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walter Temple, upper right, Laura Gonzalez Temple, upper left, and their four children, from left to right, Agnes, Walter, Jr., Edgar, and Thomas, next to the Basye Adobe about 1914. In April 1914, Thomas accidentally discovered oil on the hills to the west of the house, which led to a lease with Standard Oil Company of California. Two dozen oil wells were drilled, several proving to be gushers, and, after the Temples moved, the adobe became the lease headquarters for Standard. Once the company vacated the building, sometime in the 1930s, it was razed.</td></tr>
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In 1912, the adobe was purchased by Walter P. Temple, Lucinda's younger brother, after he decided to sell the 50-acre Temple homestead on the east side of the Rio Hondo. Temple and his family resided in the Basye Adobe for five years and, when oil was found on land the Temples owned in the Montebello Hills just west of the house, the structure became the headquarters for Standard Oil Company of California for the Temple Lease. It remained in use by the company until sometime in the 1930s, when it was torn down.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqXS7OMLewCmwB8vHrpkuGqOjx-iP4j3S2KdgQfNJ26019XR8o_wnzYdm3COGB9V-uR8TF39EmfDZ_pTuUZiBpv6Uw1USsaZr2gWr9QtSBe6ur_Sh2USvE7lJPEJNoaYWGcODYWSlGep2A/s1600/Temple+barbeque+1917+house+behind+trees.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqXS7OMLewCmwB8vHrpkuGqOjx-iP4j3S2KdgQfNJ26019XR8o_wnzYdm3COGB9V-uR8TF39EmfDZ_pTuUZiBpv6Uw1USsaZr2gWr9QtSBe6ur_Sh2USvE7lJPEJNoaYWGcODYWSlGep2A/s1600/Temple+barbeque+1917+house+behind+trees.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is a detail of a Summer 1917 panoramic photo that showed hundreds of persons gathered near the Basye Adobe, which is barely visible behind the trees, for a celebration commemorating the first Temple oil well at the Montebello Hills. John H. Temple, brother of Walter, who owned the wells, sports a large white mustache and wears in a suit and bow tie at the lower center. For a brief time, he lived in the adobe while he managed a gas station owned by his brother at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and San Gabriel Boulevard, just a stone's throw west of the adobe.</td></tr>
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Meantime, the Basye family had a forty-acre farm about a mile or so northeast of their adobe and within the town of El Monte. This property was owned by Maria Antonia Alvtire de Basye and, by the late 1880s, there were seventeen acres planted to wine grapes, an orchard and other crops. Today, Basye Street in the area is a visible reminder of the family's quarter-section farm.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLVIMChJUioznPqhbl64I1ETnyUwZT-l6WzoQ0OtzEwzLpU0taGIVJVhmBw9U-Pk1QLYPgG12goxyeUTEgQpc6OkJaJv9pB837N9t-5mgPYHgeAQZrFFJwQtocuJT_AG4xq9wxNnE3LlSj/s1600/Basye+Adobe+Temple+Oil+Field+1920s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLVIMChJUioznPqhbl64I1ETnyUwZT-l6WzoQ0OtzEwzLpU0taGIVJVhmBw9U-Pk1QLYPgG12goxyeUTEgQpc6OkJaJv9pB837N9t-5mgPYHgeAQZrFFJwQtocuJT_AG4xq9wxNnE3LlSj/s1600/Basye+Adobe+Temple+Oil+Field+1920s.jpg" height="267" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This fantastic image, probably taken in the 1920s from an oil derrick like those seen in the background, shows the Basye Adobe at the left while it was used as headquarters for Standard Oil Company of California and its Temple lease. At the right is San Gabriel Boulevard heading to the northwest. In the distance is a portion of the Montebello Hills. Those with sharp eyes can make out, at the top right, the intersection with Lincoln Avenue.</td></tr>
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In all, there were six surviving children of Rafael and Maria Antonia, including James, Rafaela, Thomas, Miguel, Edward and Isabelle. The family remained in the Old Mission/El Monte area for many years and descendants continue to reside in the Los Angeles region.<br />
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As is often the case, there were some difficult times, much of it centered on the 1898 marriage of Rafaela Basye to Charles P. Temple, of the prominent <i>Misión Vieja</i> family, and her death very shortly afterward. Her family blamed Temple for Rafaela's premature passing and, not long afterward, James confronted Temple after both had been drinking and the two men pulled out pistols and shot at each other. Temple was wounded and James went on trial, but the case ended without a conviction and, it is said, the two men amicably parted from the courthouse.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjor8a9X2vaT5p2vMUhCSsGDeaUBwiLPET2wQEcePTX0aAsamgFoBHQDD9AhY9TjF3W5Z3lTyHxmNk-GrJfq7mJdWPEhts661OnZmvJVnJI3Ft7WpvpriXQ4_1BIsgoTWfoYFsMYRrtCFbW/s1600/Basye+Adobe+1930.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjor8a9X2vaT5p2vMUhCSsGDeaUBwiLPET2wQEcePTX0aAsamgFoBHQDD9AhY9TjF3W5Z3lTyHxmNk-GrJfq7mJdWPEhts661OnZmvJVnJI3Ft7WpvpriXQ4_1BIsgoTWfoYFsMYRrtCFbW/s1600/Basye+Adobe+1930.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photographed in 1930 for a college term paper on the La Puente School District, which included the Old Mission area, the Basye Adobe appears to have been abandoned and was missing windows and other details. It had served as headquarters for Standard Oil Company of California for the company's Temple Lease, but was torn down within several years of this photo being taken.</td></tr>
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This wasn't the case three years later, in 1902, when Thomas Basye was in Temple's "La Paloma" saloon, run out of the old Temple family adobe in Old Mission. Naturally, there was drinking and an argument and Temple shot and killed Thomas. A dramatic and avidly-covered trial took place, leading to Temple's acquittal.<br />
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These incidents will be covered in this blog in more detail at a later date. Another Basye-related post for the future will be about the original ledger from the family store, which has remarkably survived the decades, though the book is badly worn and damaged. Its pages contain transactions with the early families of <i>La Misión Vieja</i> and will make for an interesting addition to this blog.<br />
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Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-65475763299958516732014-08-11T12:14:00.001-07:002018-06-01T23:10:17.320-07:00The Sánchez Family of Misión ViejaJuan Matias Sánchez was born in New Mexico in 1808 to Juan Cristobal Sanchez and Maria Margarita Silva. Little is known of his life there, but, in his late thirties, he migrated via the Old Spanish Trail to the Los Angeles area, perhaps in a caravan in 1846 or 1847. The earliest documentation of him in this region was his registration for a cattle brand, dated 20 September 1847.<br />
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Where he was keeping his cattle is not known, but it is likely it was on the Rancho La Puente, co-owned by John Rowland and William Workman, who had come from Taos, New Mexico in late 1841 and undoubtedly knew Sánchez well there. <br />
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It may be that Sánchez moved to this area to take up work with Workman, because, in the 1850 federal census, which was actually taken early in 1851 because California statehood was not decided until September 1850, Sánchez was counted in Workman's household and his occupation given as "overseer." <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuaFdyByFtZFNPYfNAOpluedTi4OlQ5DIs5YGipI7Fgfn16o0pogmFZ7-Ox0dcFGTM4yOf4KnyKQyYUmVLhSsWQLVNk4qJFfMnbeXL1bUYgQu54naRwe8CfSV-5dkocUoGv5uMt_kuwc0N/s1600/Juan++Matias+Sanchez.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuaFdyByFtZFNPYfNAOpluedTi4OlQ5DIs5YGipI7Fgfn16o0pogmFZ7-Ox0dcFGTM4yOf4KnyKQyYUmVLhSsWQLVNk4qJFfMnbeXL1bUYgQu54naRwe8CfSV-5dkocUoGv5uMt_kuwc0N/s1600/Juan++Matias+Sanchez.jpg" width="307" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Juan Matias Sánchez (1808-1885), co-owner of the ranchos La Merced and Potrero Grande in the <i>Misión Vieja</i> area. Photo supplied by Tim Miguel.</td></tr>
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In other words, Sánchez was the <i>majordomo</i>, or foreman, for Workman's cattle, horses and other animals on the latter's enormous 24,000-plus half of La Puente. This was a job requiring considerable skill in managing the <i>vaqueros</i> tending the animals and arranging for the shipment of stock to the newly-discovered gold fields in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, some 250 miles to the north.<br />
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In fact, Sánchez departed for the gold fields in 1849 to seek his fortune there, but apparently returned quickly realizing that the effort was not as productive as taking cattle there to supply the growing masses of miners and others who were flocking to California during the rush.<br />
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However, it is possible Sánchez did well in the fields, because in September 1850 he loaned his employer, Workman, 211 1/2 ounces of gold, which would have been worth several thousand dollars, a fortune for the time. <br />
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The surviving receipt, dated 26 September, simply states that Workman declared himself "to be in debt to Don Juan Matias Sanchez the amount of 211 1/2 ounces in gold -- in troy weight, which amount I promise and oblige to give to the aforementioned Sanchez to his order the day he asks for it. In February 1852, Sánchez acknowledged the receipt of 1500 <i>pesos</i> in silver, with another 500 paid up a little over a year later. <br />
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When Casilda Soto de Lobo, grantee in October 1844 of Rancho La Merced in the Old Mission area, gave Workman 825 pesos as payment for a debt, Workman forwarded that amount to Sánchez--this also being in March 1853.<br />
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The reason this latter transaction is significant is because Señora Soto de Lobo borrowed $1225 from Workman in December 1850 and was obligated to return the money by early April 1851. In lieu of this, Workman was given the option of buying the 2,363-acre rancho outright for $2,500. On 30 April 1851, he exercised that option. Shortly afterward, Workman's daughter Margarita and her husband, F.P.F. Temple, moved onto the ranch and built an adobe.<br />
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On 15 September 1852, Workman executed a deed transferring the La Merced ranch to F.P.F. Temple and Sánchez, so the transfer six months later to Sánchez of the 825 pesos paid over by Señora Soto de Lobo to Workman follows the trail, it appears, of that original loan by Sánchez to Workman.<br />
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Casilda Soto de Lobo built, probably in the summer of 1845, for herself and her children an adobe on a bluff at the base of the Montebello Hills facing east towards the Rio Hondo, the original channel of the San Gabriel River. Shortly after she lost the ranch and Sánchez was given a half-interest in it, he moved into the adobe. <br />
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Oddly, one of the Lobo sons, Juan, who had received his own cattle brand in 1846 for use at La Merced, went to the gold fields in 1849 and got himself into some trouble. At Sonora, in what became Tuolumne County in the "southern mines," Juan Lobo executed a contract with a Charles Van Winel in which he borrowed $1,000 on promise of repayment and, in lieu of the latter, he promised the La Merced ranch. In April 1851, Van Winel executed a foreclosure action in Los Angeles and, when it was revealed that Juan Lobo had no legal right to mortgage any property, he was thrown in jail and Van Winel had no legal recourse to recover his money.<br />
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Meantime, Sánchez began a common-law marriage with Maria Luisa Archuleta, a native of New Mexico, whose first husband Rafael Martinez, a brother of John Rowland's wife Encarnación, had disappeared during the Gold Rush when he'd left the area to search for gold and was never heard from again. Luisa had three children with Martinez: Albino David, María del Refugio, and José. The common-law relationship may have been because of the uncertainty of what had happened to Rafael Martinez.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo0QqPX-A4D-0ptEjmgsPHcv8DMKn-18pOULbNSe3v0xzf61xYM_hO0h17HUTA96aOAfZE-Pb_9pDCgVeT5m0cy9uPXCxpvggY7zMiQ3dyzgzbc5_HO87kBEOkls-xYMqRLSpDPsCjDQD4/s1600/Luisa+Archuleta+Sanchez.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo0QqPX-A4D-0ptEjmgsPHcv8DMKn-18pOULbNSe3v0xzf61xYM_hO0h17HUTA96aOAfZE-Pb_9pDCgVeT5m0cy9uPXCxpvggY7zMiQ3dyzgzbc5_HO87kBEOkls-xYMqRLSpDPsCjDQD4/s1600/Luisa+Archuleta+Sanchez.jpg" width="247" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo supplied by Tim Poyorena-Miguel.</td></tr>
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In any case, Sánchez and Luisa Archuleta settled in the Soto adobe at La Merced and expanded it with a perpendicular wing--necessary because of the growing family that included her Martinez children and the five who were born to them between 1856 and 1867. These included Tomás, Francisco, Luz, Juan Cristobal, and Julián. Luisa died in 1873, not long after she and Sanchez had an official church marriage, which took place on 10 February 1872.<br />
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Notably, the four sons shared the same names as the first four sons of F.P.F. and Margarita Temple and the five Sánchez children were sponsored at baptism by William Workman, his wife Nicolasa, the Temples, and their two oldest sons, Thomas and Francis (that is, Tomás and Francisco.) This represents the closeness the Sánchez, Temple and Workman families had as <i>compadres</i> and neighbors.<br />
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Sánchez added to his landholdings in October 1852 when he was granted all of Rancho Potrero Grande, excepting 172 acres previously sold, by its original grantee Manuel Antonio Pérez. This property, which was north of La Merced, amounted to over 4,000 acres, though the deed was, for an unknown reason, not executed with the county until March 1878.<br />
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Sánchez quickly mortgaged his section of the Potrero Grande to Andrés Pico, brother of ex-governor Pío Pico and a hero of the Californio resistance to the American invasion of 1846-47, for $6,300 in October 1853. The loan was due in May 1854 and repaid in full, perhaps with proceeds from the annual sale of cattle in the gold fields. In March 1857, Sánchez sold 1/4 interests to his <i>compadres</i> Workman and Temple for $1,500 each, so that he retained a 1/2 stake in the ranch.<br />
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In 1863, Sánchez, Temple and Workman acquired a majority of the small Rancho Potrero Chico, which only totaled about 80 acres near the original site of Mission San Gabriel and adjacent to La Merced and Potrero Grande. With these dealings, Sánchez eventually had a portfolio of well over 3,000 acres, a substantial estate for the period.<br />
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In the 1860 census, the first of two that recorded self-reported values for real estate and personal property, Sánchez claimed that he had $8,000 of each—this during an economic downturn brought about by the end of the Gold Rush and a national depression and then followed by flooding and drought that decimated the cattle industry. A decade later, as matters improved significantly in the economic arena, Sánchez reported $30,000 in real estate and $15,000 in personal property. It can be added that Sánchez was one of the largest wool producers in Los Angeles County—in 1862, he was twelfth on a list with nearly 5,000 pounds produced the previous year, but this was before the drought took full effect.<br />
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During the ups-and-downs of the Gold Rush, floods and droughts, the Civil War and other conditions of the 1850s and 1860s was the long quagmire involved in the land claims for California ranches secured under Spanish and Mexican rule.<br />
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Although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was drafted in early 1848 to include an article preserving Spanish and Mexican era land grants, the U.S. Congress voted to remove that provision in approving the treaty. Then, with the onset of the Gold Rush and a mass of migrants seeking gold and then land, disputes arose over those grants.<br />
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Consequently, Congress passed an act in March 1851, appointing a commission to hold hearings at which land grant holders were to present their grants, maps and witness testimony after which the commission would make a ruling. Of the over 800 grants presented to the commission, over two-thirds were approved. <br />
The legislation, however, included a provision for either side (the government or the grantee) to appeal the commission ruling to a federal district court, with further appeals available to the United States Supreme Court. Although the commission did its work quickly, claims in the courts dragged on so that the average claim took seventeen years to complete.<br />
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For Sánchez, there were two claims to make: for Rancho Potrero Grande and for Rancho La Merced. The first was a breeze, as the commission quickly rendered its decision in his favor and the district court followed suit. In 1859, seven years after filing his claim, the patent arrived from Washington, making Sánchez (and Temple and Workman, who owned half of the ranch after 1857) one of the earliest of the patent holders in the region. La Merced was a different story, however. The claim took over twenty years to be reconciled, with the patent not being issued until 1872.<br />
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Having a patent, however, was hardly a guarantee that ownership of a large ranch would be trouble-free. In the early 1850s, several groups of settlers from the southern states migrated to the area and established communities like Savannah (a corruption of the native Gabrieleño name of Sivag-na), Lexington and El Monte. In some cases, these new arrivals established farms on ranchos from the Mexican era and were labeled squatters by the owners of these ranches.<br />
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Potrero Grande turned out to be a flashpoint for the squatting problem. Sánchez, Temple and Workman filed suit in the local district court to evict several dozen people who had taken up residence on the ranch. In 1859, the year the land patent was received, the court ruled for the three men and against the squatters. It was one thing, however, to get a judgment from the court and quite another to execute it and it is not yet known what happened in the aftermath of the case.<br />
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In 1874, however, another ejectment suit by Sánchez and F. P. F. Temple (William Workman deeded over his quarter interest to his daughter, Temple's wife, in 1862) was filed against several families who had also squatted on Potrero Grande. It quickly became known that at least a few of them, including the Penfolds and the Newmans, were not going to yield their land without a fight. In mid-January, Sheriff William R. Rowland and his deputies rode out from Los Angeles to serve a writ upon Bernard Newman, but were fired upon with one deputy, Pete Gabriel, being severely wounded. Newman was arrested and tried in court and that event will be covered here in a later post.<br />
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Whether or not the land dispute of 1874 was fully resolved in the favor of Sánchez and Temple, another much greater challenge was just around the corner.<br />
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The late 1860s and early 1870s was a period of unprecedented growth and development in the Los Angeles area, as the population grew and the economy improved. Sánchez's <i>compadres</i>, F.P.F. Temple and William Workman, launched headlong into business ventures during this boom period, including banking. After 1871, their private bank, simply called Temple and Workman, was an active participant in development projects throughout the region, including oil, real estate and railroads, but it was also poorly managed.<br />
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In late August 1875, the economy collapsed due to stock speculation in Virginia City, Nevada silver mines, toppling the Bank of California, the state's largest. The panic reached Los Angeles and fearful depositors flocked to the two commercial banks in town, Temple and Workman and Farmers and Merchants, to withdraw their money. While the latter had enough cash in reserve to meet the need, Temple and Workman did not, closed for several months, and sought a loan to continue operation. In early December, Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin offered to loan the bank $210,000, but insisted that not only Temple and Workman use their massive landholdings as collateral for the loan, but that Sánchez do the same, even though he had no involvement in the bank.<br />
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Los Angeles merchant, Harris Newmark, recalled in his memoir that "Sánchez, who transacted a good deal of business with H. Newmark & Company, came to me for advice." Newmark told the ranchero that "Temple & Workman's relief could be at best but temporary . . . and so I strenuously urged Sánchez to refuse [to include his land in the Baldwin mortgage]; which he finally promised me to do." Notably, Newmark observed that "so impressive was out interview that I still vividly recall the scene when he dramatically said: '<i>No quiero morir de hambre!</i>' — 'I do not wish to die of hunger!'" Finally, the merchant mournfully noted that, "a few days later I learned, to my deep disappointment, that Sánchez had agreed, after all, to include his lands."<br />
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As Newmark, and surely many others, predicted, the Temple and Workman bank loan did not prevent disaster and the institution closed its doors permanently in early January 1876. The merchant stated that "thus ended in sorrow and despair the lives of three men, who, in their day, had prospered to a degree not given to every man."<br />
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It took several years for the bank affair to be wrapped up in the courts and Baldwin received his foreclosure judgment by 1880. Sánchez was then in his early seventies and, although Baldwin was known for his ruthlessness in business, he did show some compassion.<br />
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In 1880, Baldwin executed a deed to Sánchez for 200 acres of La Merced known "as the Juan Matias Sánchez House and Vineyard" as well as "lands under cultivation and improvements thereon," which was to remain the property of Sánchez.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPw1gpuSiLApaULgfgmzqTCa5ApmXcMEq3aM8yfX0gOedC_1AZHj2mylt5g_cptw2Q0CjfKCjhd7QTrXZHXUk_cZvcZxrDcNF6g1daGBAHz5xX9Cd-cg1XR5ozV8EaEy5cB8e8AfwwtrHB/s1600/Matilda+Bojorquez+Sanchez.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPw1gpuSiLApaULgfgmzqTCa5ApmXcMEq3aM8yfX0gOedC_1AZHj2mylt5g_cptw2Q0CjfKCjhd7QTrXZHXUk_cZvcZxrDcNF6g1daGBAHz5xX9Cd-cg1XR5ozV8EaEy5cB8e8AfwwtrHB/s1600/Matilda+Bojorquez+Sanchez.jpg" width="281" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Matilda Bojorquez de Sanchez (ca. 1860-1891), the second wife of Juan Matias Sánchez.. The original photograph was taken in the late 1880s by A.C. Golsh. Courtesy of Dara Jones.</td></tr>
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Shortly afterwards, Sánchez married again, to Matilda Bojorquez, who was still in her teens when she wed the 70-something ranchero. The couple had three children, daughters Dolores and Rosa and son José Juan between 1879 and 1883.<br />
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Mindful of the future of the ranch and his second family, Sánchez issued a deed in June 1882, giving his young wife, Matilda, the 200 acres as well as to "her heirs and assignees forever."<br />
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A little over three years later, in November 1885, Sánchez, aged 78, died at his home, having lived a long and eventful life, though Newmark wrote that he "died very poor." Whether this last statement was true or not, Sánchez did live much of his life in California as a wealthy and well-regarded ranchero.<br />
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In 1887, his widow Matilda sold a 1/2 interest in the 200 acres to Frederick Hall and Charles H. Forbes and then she married the latter's son, Agustin two years later. The marriage lasted less than two years, as Matilda died in April 1891 in her early thirties as she was giving birth to twins, who also died.<br />
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In November 1892, Lucky Baldwin filed an action claiming the 200 acre property and won a judgment on Christmas Eve 1896.<br />
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The Soto-Sanchez Adobe, however, remained in the hands of the Bojorquez family until it was sold to the Lucky Baldwin estate in 1911. Three years later, the Baldwin estate sold the house and the 200 acre property to Edwin G. Hart, a noted developer who founded the communities of North Whittier Heights (Hacienda Heights) and La Habra Heights, among others. Hart subdivided the parcel through the La Merced Heights Land and Water Company. <br />
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Also in 1914, oilman William B. Scott purchased the Soto-Sanchez Adobe, which, after his death in the early 1920s, was held by his family and, for years, his two children, Josephine Scott Crocker and Keith Scott, until the family donated the adobe to the City of Montebello in 1972 and the house became a historic site museum, managed by the Montebello Historical Society.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwnNhCAeqrTGOBNsQO5O3F5bu66ocqIpchcWh0V_nEDMXeYXZPeNABrsUsQOTWupYyEF27xxBpq5JTo2ozQYxb3y8F0LKB8pLCvmblLrg3pwSalMXY67XGGANfYTaT2ZKaOhpdaxuaCLPc/s1600/Sanchez+family.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwnNhCAeqrTGOBNsQO5O3F5bu66ocqIpchcWh0V_nEDMXeYXZPeNABrsUsQOTWupYyEF27xxBpq5JTo2ozQYxb3y8F0LKB8pLCvmblLrg3pwSalMXY67XGGANfYTaT2ZKaOhpdaxuaCLPc/s1600/Sanchez+family.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two of the sons of Juan Matias Sánchez and Luisa Archuleta, Tomás (sitting on the stair rail at the right) and Francisco (standing just to the left of Tomás) with their wives, Masrgarita Rowland Sanchez (top left with the striped blouse) and Felipa Gonzalez (just over the left shoulder of Francisco) and other family and friends, including Juan Matias's nephew's son, James Basye (standing lower left,) ca. 1900s. Courtesy of Dara Jones.</td></tr>
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The Soto-Sanchez Adobe is one of the few remaining buildings that touches upon the story of the <i>Misión Vieja</i> community. While Juan Matias may not be a familiar name to most people, his life serves as an interesting and notable element of the history of Old Mission and the Los Angeles region.<br />
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Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-50583195913978997352014-05-22T12:54:00.000-07:002014-05-22T12:54:54.915-07:00The Temple Family of Misión ViejaIn 1851, shortly after foreclosing on Casilda Soto de Lobo on a loan that used the Rancho La Merced as collateral, William Workman, owner of half of the massive Rancho La Puente east of Old Mission, executed a deed that transferred the ranch to his son-in-law, F. P. F. Temple and to Juan Matias Sánchez, who had been Workman's foreman at La Puente.<br />
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While Sánchez moved to the Soto adobe on a bluff overlooking the Rio Hondo (then the San Gabriel River) and built a wing to the structure soon afterward, Temple and his wife, Workman's daughter, Margarita, began construction on an adobe home to the east of the river. The Temples completed their L-shaped adobe the same year and it became the centerpiece of one of the more notable residences in the Los Angeles region and the headquarters of their half-share of the 2,363-acre La Merced ranch.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMx058ABtwqJoU5FEmvvNBkq1ts2UTcQ0eu52ul5QeQjl5Pv3lQX7FrnsAt7gZYbJ5bhbn34NXKzsBOrUltygETrmO9CP-AKIUR4ognJSR67W-xKCABChsTM4PxbJlTGcQJIg6RbIFdcbc/s1600/AMW+FPF+1852.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMx058ABtwqJoU5FEmvvNBkq1ts2UTcQ0eu52ul5QeQjl5Pv3lQX7FrnsAt7gZYbJ5bhbn34NXKzsBOrUltygETrmO9CP-AKIUR4ognJSR67W-xKCABChsTM4PxbJlTGcQJIg6RbIFdcbc/s1600/AMW+FPF+1852.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">F.P.F. Temple and Antonia Margarita Workman, co-owners of Rancho La Merced. From the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.</td></tr>
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Pliny Fisk Temple was born in Reading, Massachusetts, northwest of Boston, in 1822. Named for a famed Congregationalist missionary who had done his work in Egypt and Palestine, Pliny was the youngest of his family of eleven children and was the son of Lucinda Parker and Captain Jonathan Temple. After spending most of his youth in his hometown, Pliny decided at the age of eighteen to make the long journey to Mexican California to meet his oldest sibling, a half-brother, also named Jonathan.<br />
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The Temple brothers were twenty-six years apart in age, enough for Jonathan to be old enough to be Pliny's father, and the elder Temple left Massachusetts before the younger was born. Jonathan sailed for what was then known as the Sandwich Islands (more commonly Hawai'i) within a couple of years of the arrival of Congregationalist missionaries from Massachusetts, who soon became dominant figures in the island kingdom. As was often the case, missionaries were soon followed by merchants, who established their own power base in Hawai'i. <br />
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While little is known about Jonathan Temple's years in the islands, it was recorded that he was imprisoned briefly for political reasons unstated and his stay was relatively brief. In 1827, Jonathan left Hawai'i for San Diego, where he was baptized a Roman Catholic. The following year, he migrated to Los Angeles, becoming the second American or European to live in the town (the first was an American, Joseph Chapman, who was a shipwreck from an Argentinian vessel captained by a French pirate named Bouchard--but that's another story!)<br />
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Shortly after settling in Los Angeles, Jonathan opened the pueblo's first store and over the years a small number of Americans and Europeans joined him in a small, but well-connected, community of merchants and traders. When Pliny made his voyage from Boston, leaving in mid-January 1841, to Los Angeles, arriving about the first of July, his brother was owner of some prime property in the town, as well as the Rancho Los Cerritos, comprising much of today's Long Beach and nearby areas.<br />
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Pliny, it appears, intended only to visit for about a year before returning home, but found Los Angeles to be to his liking, so he remained. Surviving letters from his family in Massachusetts indicate their concern for his well-being, but he adapted to life in Mexican California quickly. Working as a clerk in his brother's store, Pliny was here less than a year when he began selling gold dust, through a brother back east, in Philadelphia from a March 1842 discovery at Placerita Canyon near today's Santa Clarita.<br />
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In 1845, Pliny was baptized (as Francisco, hence his new moniker of F.P.F.) and married at the same ceremony. His wife was Antonia Margarita Workman, daughter of William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, the latter a native of Taos, New Mexico, where the Workmans lived prior to migrating to California in late 1841 as part of a group commonly known as the Rowland-Workman Expedition. The couple lived in Los Angeles and their first two children, sons Thomas and Francis, were born during the late 1840s. Pliny had no involvement in the invasion of California by American forces in 1846-47, though he did write home about it.<br />
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With the outbreak of the Gold Rush in the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1848, Pliny left his brother's employment and ventured to the gold fields. Eventually, though, he found another way to take advantage of what the Gold Rush had to offer, in terms of supplying fresh beef from Los Angeles-area cattle. Namely, he developed a series of enterprises involving grazing lands, slaughterhouses and butcher shops in the Tuolumne County area near the towns of Springfield, Sonora and Columbia. At the latter, now a state historic park, two surviving structures were owned by Temple, though his area residence was near Springfield. For over a quarter century he maintained an active presence in the region.<br />
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The gift of half of La Merced from Workman in 1851, then, made sense in terms of Temple's growing involvement in the cattle industry. Along with Workman and Sánchez, Temple made many thousands of dollars in annual cattle and sheep runs from the San Gabriel Valley to the gold country, and he even had an interest in ranch lands along the Grapevine north of Los Angeles to rest his herds on the long journey north. While the Gold Rush peaked before 1855 and declined steadily afterwards, the Temples still had about 1,200 head of cattle on the ranch.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWqILXVflxF_4rQ6U7OpX4tJ3jTM8hbkbwNPxpdtkyYyy3nEv068D0pNHYlm2ghm0-1EfXXq8b37KR_Qkbcldy-x61S3JbUhSUmkfCajQ0SGuqzrW7cdZUWX5efSuYIFiN9ShwWR24AbM1/s1600/Temple+Ranch+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWqILXVflxF_4rQ6U7OpX4tJ3jTM8hbkbwNPxpdtkyYyy3nEv068D0pNHYlm2ghm0-1EfXXq8b37KR_Qkbcldy-x61S3JbUhSUmkfCajQ0SGuqzrW7cdZUWX5efSuYIFiN9ShwWR24AbM1/s1600/Temple+Ranch+1.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Temple Ranch from a stereoscopic photograph by William M. Godfrey, ca. 1870. One end of the adobe house is at the left center, a water tower is in the center and some of the fencing that bounded the Temple portion of La Merced is in view. The road in the foreground might be San Gabriel Boulevard. Courtesy of Philip Nathanson, owner of the original photo.</td></tr>
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Meanwhile, as his wealth grew, so did his residence and headquarters at La Merced. Visitors in the late 1850s through 1860s described some of the Temple family's domain there. For example, John Q.A. Warren, who published a livestock and farming magazine in San Francisco during the first part of the 1860s, spent some time at the Temple's home in 1860 and commented that "the mansion is adobe, built in substantial and comfortable style, and like the usual Spanish [?] houses forms a half-square 110 feet by 70 feet." This reference to a "half-square" indicated that the adobe was L-shaped and, if a standard of about 20 feet wide is accepted, the house probably measured about 3,600 square feet, which was quite large for "usual Spanish houses," whatever that might mean!<br />
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As to the Temples' roughly 1,200 acre share of La Merced, Warren observed that there was "a large variety of fruit trees, pear, peach, plum, apricot, olive, figs, and English walnuts," with some 200 of the walnuts in the orchard. As to field crops, there was corn, wheat, barley and rye. Some of this was ground at a mill that was built by another man, but purchased by F. P. F. Temple in the 1850s and which, by 1860, had an inventory of corn meal and flour valued at $21,000, a small fortune for the time. To irrigate the field crops, Temple constructed, in 1854, an irrigation ditch to run water from the San Gabriel River, a total of four miles through his property, both at La Merced and at the Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo, which was adjacent to the northeast.<br />
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Typically, ranchos were so large that fencing them was cost-prohibitive and too labor intensive, at least until "fence laws" forced ranchers to put up barbed-wire fencing later on. But, F. P. F. Temple had developed enough wealth to spend, according to one source, $40,000 in lumber from Phineas Banning of Wilmington so that he could fence in his part of La Merced.<br />
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As prosperous as the 1850s were, the following decade largely proved the opposite. The decline of the Gold Rush and lowered demand for local beef (affected, as well, by imported longhorn cattle from Texas and other locales), a national economic depression in 1857 and the vagaries of the weather caused major disruptions in the Los Angeles-area economy.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxtq82RMX8vQLJzQhr_ytLggdII4ivNR7pPXSYkqPWOjWnYYIb5Hfx_CkPg33YbkjcL26SdflD9dyd8oattBvNYdOXb7byHiCz_W9wKPiK5MPg1q5hyphenhyphen99g-9afYoByXOKbeYr5oZd0Vw5E/s1600/Beef+slaughter+Temple+adobe+1870.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxtq82RMX8vQLJzQhr_ytLggdII4ivNR7pPXSYkqPWOjWnYYIb5Hfx_CkPg33YbkjcL26SdflD9dyd8oattBvNYdOXb7byHiCz_W9wKPiK5MPg1q5hyphenhyphen99g-9afYoByXOKbeYr5oZd0Vw5E/s1600/Beef+slaughter+Temple+adobe+1870.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A view of workers cutting beef near a <em>zanja</em> (water ditch) in front of the Temple adobe at Rancho La Merced, ca. 1870. Copy provided by Philip Nathanson.</td></tr>
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On Christmas Eve 1861, rainfall started that hardly let up for several weeks up through most of January 1862. As this was roughly a 40-day period, the resulting inundation was called "Noah's Flood," and many cattle, crops, and some structures were washed away. Much of southern Los Angeles County became an inland sea, as was a significant part of the San Joaquin Valley. A short notice in the <em>Los Angeles Star</em> newspaper in January observed that, with their adobe home flooded, the Temples "effected their escape from the house on a raft." In hindsight, it's amazing the building survived for as long as it did, because the area is now a restricted floodplain controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which built the Whittier Narrows Dam, just a short distance south of the adobe.<br />
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The El Niño effect (not known to locals, obviously) was then followed by La Niña and two years of devastating drought ensued in 1863 and 1864. What cattle and crops were still left were ruined by the calamity, further driving the economy downward. Eventually, though, as the drought ended and the Civil War concluded, Los Angeles experienced, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, its first significant period of population and economic growth. While F.P.F. Temple continued to maintain his ranching and farming interests, especially increasing his investment in sheep-raising, he turned more towards business interests in Los Angeles and nearby areas.<br />
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With real estate, for example, Temple and El Monte resident Fielding Gibson purchased and subdivided, by 1867, a tract of land between Los Angeles and San Pedro that was initially known as Centerville and Gibsonville. When a major part of the tract was purchased by George Compton in 1870, however, the developing community took his name. Later, Temple became a major investor in projects with the Rancho Centinela, in what is now the Inglewood area, and the Lake Vineyard tract of today's Alhambra and San Marino, among others.<br />
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Temple was also heavily involved in local mining, in such places as Santa Catalina Island, the White Mountains of Inyo County and the mountains of southwest Kern County, while keeping some of his Tuolumne County properties until the 1870s. He also was an early entrepreneur in oil drilling, concentrating his work in what was called the San Fernando field in the mountains in present-day Santa Clarita. He built the first steam-powered refinery in California, part of which survives as a state historical landmark in Newhall, and did produce a small amount of oil through his Los Angeles Petroleum Refining Company, the product being used for gas lighting.<br />
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With lumber interests in the San Gabriel Mountains above modern Claremont and in the San Jacinto Mountains near today's Idyllwild, as well as a stake in the import and raising of eucalyptus trees (intended for lumber, the wrong "gum" was imported and the trees wound up being used as wind breaks for farmers) through the Forest Grove Company, Temple sought a place in the lumber industry as the area grew.<br />
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He also was invested in railroads, becoming a major negotiator to bring the Southern Pacific Railroad's line from the north through Los Angeles and then forming his own railroad, the Los Angeles and Independence, which was aiming to tap silver mines in Inyo County where he had a water and mining company actively working. He was the first president of the line, but needing outside funding, Temple and his partners convinced Nevada senator John P. Jones to take a majority stock ownership. Jones was building a seaside resort called Santa Monica, so the railroad constructed a line from Los Angeles to the new town before starting work east towards Inyo County that was only partially completed.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-KsNUy7jGE6YkUAqVVxpMakXjFgbOWWgh1xxVNf1zIls4rA7EnZms-N89RGGZerNWLd12FdEGYocdzKumZ6FsLFjo5Sz6bPzHKHP388NfSMrdQa0UmqkxYZxyJP1pgsSzlOznOulRoFVF/s1600/Temples+gazebo+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-KsNUy7jGE6YkUAqVVxpMakXjFgbOWWgh1xxVNf1zIls4rA7EnZms-N89RGGZerNWLd12FdEGYocdzKumZ6FsLFjo5Sz6bPzHKHP388NfSMrdQa0UmqkxYZxyJP1pgsSzlOznOulRoFVF/s1600/Temples+gazebo+2.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Members of the Temple family and household workers in the garden next to the Temple family residence at La Merced. From an original stereoscopic photograph at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.</td></tr>
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To fund much of his projects, Temple and his father-in-law Workman got involved in banking. They had a partner, the brilliant Los Angeles merchant, Isaias W. Hellman, and the firm of Hellman, Temple and Company opened, in 1868, the second bank in Los Angeles. The enterprise was short-lived, though, because Temple and Hellman differed on loaning policy and other management questions. While Hellman went on to found Farmers and Merchants Bank, run Wells Fargo and other San Francisco banks, and became the wealthiest man on the west coast, Temple and Workman opened their own bank in 1871, known simply as Temple and Workman.<br />
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The bank was popular, but often for the wrong reasons. A genial and highly-popular man, Temple too easily loaned money to people who lacked the ability to repay and did not have proper collateral to collect on loans that were delinquent. In addition, Temple was so busy with his many business projects and political ambitions (he ran for county supervisor in 1871 and county treasurer in 1873 and 1875, winning the last one), that he left day-to-day management of the bank to a cashier who did not properly administer its affairs.<br />
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When the overheated California economy, heavily dependent on silver mine stocks in Nevada, collapsed in late August 1875, the Temple and Workman bank faced a run by depositors and could not pay out due to low cash reserves. It suspended business on the day of the county elections (at which Temple, ironically, was elected county treasurer) and remained closed for over three months.<br />
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Desperate for funds to reopen and save the bank, Temple finally secured a loan from Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, a San Francisco capitalist, who was acquiring Los Angeles-area real estate and saw that Temple and Workman, the two biggest local landowners, were in dire straits. The loan was set up to be impossible to repay, but determined to avoid bankruptcy and shame, Temple signed on anyway, telling his father-in-law in a surviving letter that the loan was "on hard terms" but that everything would work out.<br />
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The opposite proved true. After a grand reopening celebration in early December, depositors quietly closed their accounts and withdrew the borrowed funds. Baldwin added $130,000 more dollars and then turned off the spigot. In mid-January 1876, the doors of Temple and Workman closed for good and assignment proceedings began to sort our assets and liabilities.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkgsZKpbakl1cBbeoCpA_FT8Ge70egdgZXKzIwFKoaSAdzphVo7NGzWzuOnS_xUF3m6U6woJVYti2JWFuQRWH6lnwWedO8BOgB9LWCUF7izKXv7RWtBkuHKXxCIPpD3A3knXpTjVjt7K7I/s1600/Temple+garden+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkgsZKpbakl1cBbeoCpA_FT8Ge70egdgZXKzIwFKoaSAdzphVo7NGzWzuOnS_xUF3m6U6woJVYti2JWFuQRWH6lnwWedO8BOgB9LWCUF7izKXv7RWtBkuHKXxCIPpD3A3knXpTjVjt7K7I/s1600/Temple+garden+3.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A portion of the gardens at the Temple residence at Rancho La Merced, ca. 1870. Copy provided by Philip Nathanson.</td></tr>
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If the partners had declared bankruptcy when the bank first closed, they could have sold much of their assets to pay creditors and still been left with enough to live comfortably. Their gamble with Baldwin's loan, however, proved to be a disaster. Mismanagement was starkly revealed in the inventory of the books and it was quickly realized that with Baldwin holding a mortgage on most of the assets held by Temple and Workman, depositors would get almost nothing.<br />
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Remarkably, Temple was not asked to resign his office as county treasurer and served his two-year term without incident, although a deputy was assigned to conduct day-to-day work. Having declared bankruptcy, six months after the bank's failure, Temple had the dubious distinction of being the county's only bankrupt financial manager while in office.<br />
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He was also beset by tremendous stress, suffering a series of strokes from within months after the bank's failure and continuing until his death in April 1880 at age 58. Though some sources claimed he died in a sheepherder's hut on a corner of the ranch, this was not the case. He still retained possession of his 1851 adobe house and a substantial brick French Second Empire home built around 1870.<br />
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Just before Temple's death, Baldwin, having waited over three years to allow interest to accumulate, foreclosed on his mortgage in 1879, with the required sheriff's sale held early the next year. Baldwin did allow Temple's widow to purchase the family's houses and 50 acres surrounding them and Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple remained the owner of what was called the "Temple Homestead" for over a decade afterward.<br />
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The family held on to the land, growing crops and raising animals and selling off other lands that were in her name and not subject to Baldwin's mortgage. In early 1892, the flu carried off Mrs. Temple, her mother and her oldest child within two weeks. Ownership of the Temple Homestead passed to her two youngest sons, Walter and Charles, both in their early twenties.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsVXsWq5RYvvofr2cvE6kT_hKBPWYfciU5BhhGAk3DgH-1AjIURG7ZQve7hWfR3Fl2_wmMxxD1F5-4js9Eta2Bnqxkq-HCFxA3ILS2Sfx06qAdJsjAoKKMBOtthDR3ICkokotkMNEV0rNg/s1600/Temple+homes+La+Merced.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsVXsWq5RYvvofr2cvE6kT_hKBPWYfciU5BhhGAk3DgH-1AjIURG7ZQve7hWfR3Fl2_wmMxxD1F5-4js9Eta2Bnqxkq-HCFxA3ILS2Sfx06qAdJsjAoKKMBOtthDR3ICkokotkMNEV0rNg/s1600/Temple+homes+La+Merced.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A circa 1900 view of the houses at the Temple Homestead at <em>Misión Vieja</em>. The building at the left is the same adobe house shown in earlier photos with the addition of a wood second-story and other additions. To the right is a ca. 1870 brick French Second Empire residence. This photo was taken when the adobe was leased to winemaker Giovanni Piuma, whose sign is atop the roof at the left. From the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.</td></tr>
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The two leased out the old Temple adobe to Italian winemarkers, Piuma and Briano, and continued to farm--Charles owned the northern half of the spread and opened a club called "La Paloma." Wild and prone to drinking, Charles was involved in several notable incidents, including a duel with his brother-in-law after Charles' young wife died suddenly not long after the marriage. A few years later, and newly remarried, Charles got into a dispute with another brother of his first wife and shot him to death. While he was acquitted of murder charges and freed, Charles soon sold his interest in the Homestead to Walter and left the area.<br />
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Walter, now full owner of the property, continued to farm and worked at other jobs, including as a teamster and insurance agent, among others. Struggling often financially, he frequently borrowed money, using the Homestead as collateral, though he didn't lose the property. In 1903 he married Laura Gonzalez, who grew up in the <em>Misión Vieja</em> community and was a household worker for Walter's brother, Francis, at the Workman Homestead. Walter and Laura even had a secret romance as teenagers and did not marry for over 15 years. Between 1905 and 1910, they had five children, four living into adulthood.<br />
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Then came a staggering stroke of good fortune. Walter Temple sold the Homestead in Fall 1912 and bought a similar sized property just to the west at the northeast corner of the Montebello Hills and some land next to it that was also adjacent to the Rio Hondo, An adobe house, built in 1869 and lived in by the Basye family (later to be profiled here), was occupied by the Temples.<br />
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It has been speculated that Temple acquired his new spread because a friend, Milton Kauffman of El Monte, worked for oil companies and knew that attention was being given to places near the newly-developed fields of Fullerton and Whittier, such as Montebello. Remarkably, Temple lacked the funds to buy the 60-acre property outright, so borrowed from its owners. These happened to be the daughters of Lucky Baldwin, who foreclosed on the same property over thirty years before from Temple's father. Maybe the barren Montebello Hills didn't seem a likely place for a fortune, so loaning Temple the money seemed as much an act of charity as anything else?<br />
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In any case, in Spring 1914, Temple's oldest child, nine-year-old Thomas, was playing on the hillside above the family's house when he breathlessly ran down to tell his father he'd found oil. Sprinting back up the hill, Walter verified that a pool of water that was bubbling, smelling like rotten eggs and turning black, was, indeed, crude oil. For those that remember the old television show, "The Beverly Hillbillies," here was "The Montebello Hillbillies"!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF_D4G7FLofokNYlko2vPbWQJlGM8uKdXlHNoUTkZ5NlnhWGpV0pNa_qXK_VqpzZkUV7V5wQyh3UYF6Aam2tWs3ErzM36de58unNWulTrefUHBwNi7UcRHX4HNTLBSQnYyCjnYBRoqlk0n/s1600/Temples+at+1917+oil+barbeque.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF_D4G7FLofokNYlko2vPbWQJlGM8uKdXlHNoUTkZ5NlnhWGpV0pNa_qXK_VqpzZkUV7V5wQyh3UYF6Aam2tWs3ErzM36de58unNWulTrefUHBwNi7UcRHX4HNTLBSQnYyCjnYBRoqlk0n/s1600/Temples+at+1917+oil+barbeque.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Walter and Laura Temple family at the middle of the first row at a barbeque celebrating their first oil well at Montebello, July 1917. Behind the dense thicket of trees is the Basye adobe, built in 1869, which was the Temple family home. From an original photo at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.</td></tr>
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There is another story, reported in a local newspaper, that oil was also found by crews driving piles for a new bridge along San Gabriel Boulevard as it crossed the Rio Hondo within yards of the Temple's home, but the one involving a kid's stumbling on a pool of "a-bubblin' crude" sounds more interesting.<br />
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Whatever happened, the Temples executed a lease with Standard Oil Company of California (now Chevron) in 1915. The already-rich Baldwin daughters, Anita Baldwin Stocker and Clara Baldwin, did the same and a test well on their land in the Montebello Hills in 1916 proved to be a producer. The following year, Temple well #1 was drilled and, in late June, a gusher was located, just yards from the Baldwin test well. At age 48 and after a quarter-century of owning parts of Rancho La Merced within the Old Mission community, Walter Temple and his family were on their way to wealth.<br />
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As Standard Oil moved aggressively to drill more wells and extract crude from the small, but significant Temple lease on the Montebello Oil Field, the Temples decided to move. They lived for a time in Monterey Park (known then as Ramona Acres) before buying a substantial home in Alhambra.<br />
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The Basye Adobe became the headquarters for Standard Oil at the Montebello field and Temple built a gas station at the southeast corner of San Gabriel Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue. He also erected two historic monuments at the southwest corner of the same intersection.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTLy6AMmdS-l2BdXQwvTrKOgKIiEI1cN-6fooJcm99lFQMUvbtEm63RFmA_eE-ojuF6AuQN_uY48MWWFXkfISms7-LxXy5ARvnPIvsPv-nsxZmzs99zPzwjbZUuAH9DWqQzJUCqCnj4n_o/s1600/Temples+1919.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTLy6AMmdS-l2BdXQwvTrKOgKIiEI1cN-6fooJcm99lFQMUvbtEm63RFmA_eE-ojuF6AuQN_uY48MWWFXkfISms7-LxXy5ARvnPIvsPv-nsxZmzs99zPzwjbZUuAH9DWqQzJUCqCnj4n_o/s1600/Temples+1919.jpg" height="320" width="246" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walter and Laura Temple with their children (left to right) Walter, Junior; Agnes; Edgar and Thomas, October 1919. From the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.</td></tr>
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The first, put up in 1919, was in honor of Joseph Kauffman, his business partner's brother, who died in the Argonne Forest in France at the end of the recently-concluded First World War. This cenotaph, said to be the first private memorial to a World War I soldier in the state, was moved to Temple City in 1930 and remains there today, along with one of two cannons that were said to have been unearthed by Temple from the Rio Hondo and to have been used during the American invasion of California in 1846-47.<br />
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The second marker was placed in 1921 to commemorate the founding of the Mission San Gabriel. As mentioned here before, the marker misleadingly states the mission was founded on that spot, which is a small flat piece of ground beneath a steep hillside, not exactly a location for a mission complex, which was almost certainly across San Gabriel Boulevard a short distance to the northwest. This monument, a protected state historic landmark, is still in its odd location next to the hills, where an occasional oil well is still in operation, though there have been plans, so far not much beyond the discussion stage, of developing the Montebello Hills into housing tracts, shopping, schools, parks and so on.<br />
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Walter Temple kept ownership of his sixty-acre oil lease property throughout the 1920s. About two dozen wells were drilled, some of them producing and a few becoming gushers. Well number 9, completed in Spring 1919 was, for a time, the most active well in the United States, according to newspaper references, churning out some 30,000 barrels a day for a spell. The Montebello field, however, proved to be a short-lived major producer and the Temple wells slowed down considerably by the mid-1920s.<br />
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Temple went on to build office buildings, post offices, movie theaters and other structures in Los Angeles, Alhambra, San Gabriel and El Monte and developed the Town of Temple, changed to Temple City in 1928. He was an investor or owner of oil projects in Mexico, Texas, Alaska and many places in California, including Ventura, Huntington Beach, Signal Hill, and Whittier, but did not realize anywhere near the results he had at Montebello.<br />
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Finally, he bought the Workman Homestead near La Puente, which had been whittled down to 75 acres, the family home and cemetery and some outbuildings and owned by two of Walter's brothers in the late 1800s before passing to other ownership. In 1917, the week he bought his Alhambra residence, Walter and his wife purchased the Workman place. Over the following decade, the ranch was extensively renovated and a large Spanish Colonial Revival mansion, a showplace of adobe construction and all manner of decorative tile, woodwork, stained and painted glass, and wrought iron was constructed.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhW7lIj2ELTGbtXrr5seTdsRzjR9OPb5rC0bxjhQI5wPlaJzFD7I8lAP2pGe_nn9yOqmyBtQUPUcoMX4OzraR2KvgQvgSYnvZfK0wSciWb1GiwEo2n1_8T443S4X0jurP2E4c27-CX9hm_/s1600/Charles+Walter+Temple+families+1907.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhW7lIj2ELTGbtXrr5seTdsRzjR9OPb5rC0bxjhQI5wPlaJzFD7I8lAP2pGe_nn9yOqmyBtQUPUcoMX4OzraR2KvgQvgSYnvZfK0wSciWb1GiwEo2n1_8T443S4X0jurP2E4c27-CX9hm_/s1600/Charles+Walter+Temple+families+1907.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charles and Walter Temple, their wives Susie Castino (front center) and Laura Gonzalez (front right) and their two sons, Charles, Junior and Thomas (in their father's arms), with an unknown woman, probably at Santa Monica, ca. 1906. The Temple brothers jointly owned the family homestead at Old Mission from 1892 to about 1903. From the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.</td></tr>
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All of this activity quickly drained the family's finances, however, and, by 1926, money was borrowed from a bank. If this sounds familiar, so will the outcome. As the economy worsened with the onset of the Great Depression, Temple was unable to salvage any of this holdings. He lost the oil lease property and the Workman Homestead by the early 1930s. Pioneering, probably, the concept of Americans living "on the cheap" in Baja California, at both Ensenada and Tijuana, Temple developed cancer and returned to Los Angeles, where he died in 1938.<br />
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Physically, there is little left of what the Temples had at <em>Misión Vieja</em>. The Mission San Gabriel marker still stands in its lonely little corner. Yellow metal markers dot the oil fields indicating where the Temple wells once stood. A palm tree east of Rosemead Boulevard and south of where San Gabriel Boulevard meets Durfee Avenue indicates where Walter and Laura built a simple wood-frame home in the early 1900s. <br />
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And, on Durfee, outside Rancho La Merced and just inside Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo, stands the local headquarters of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the floodplain on which the Temple Homestead once stood. A few of the buildings date back to the 1930s, when the site was the Temple School, originally La Puente School, opened in 1868 on an acre donated by F.P.F. Temple.<br />
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The Temple family history at Old Mission was lengthy and significant, as was the case with many other families, more of whom will be discussed here in the future.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-85403177665581804782013-08-30T18:39:00.003-07:002018-06-01T23:13:03.638-07:00The Lobo Family of Misión ViejaIt was uncommon for Spanish and Mexican-era land grants in California to be made to women, but it did happen in the case of Rancho La Merced, granted by Governor Manuel Michetorena to María Casilda Soto de Lobo in 1844. Señora Lobo was born in Los Angeles in 1799 to Guillermo Soto (1751-1819), a solider with the Spanish army who had just arrived in the pueblo the previous year with his wife, Juana María Pérez (1772-1832). A major arterial roadway, Soto Street, in Boyle Heights and surrounding areas is named for this family.<br />
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By 1820, Casilda married José Cecilio Villalobo (a.k.a. Lobo), who was born in 1785 in Los Angeles to Maria Beltran (1756-1792) and Juan José Villalobo (1741-1792), with Juan José being among the soldiers recruited to accompany the original 44 <i>pobladores</i> from Mexico to the newly-created village of Los Angeles in 1781. The family, including seven children, appeared in the first census taken of the community in 1790 (there were only 31 families in Los Angeles then,) at which time Juan José had retired from the military and was working as a muleteer, but both of Cecilio's parents died soon after.<br />
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Cecilio and Casilda had at least eight children, of whom only a few survived childhood and had their own families. Among them were Juan José, Jr. (1816-1854), who married Saturnina Féliz in 1836. Saturnina came from another early Los Angeles family, whose patriarch was her grandfather José Vicente (1740-1809). He came to Spanish Alta California with the famous Anza Expedition of 1775 and then was, like Juan José Villalobo, an escort for the founders of Los Angeles. Their shared connection might explain why their children married. Vicente Féliz was a chief administrator in Los Angeles during the 1780s and 1790s before he retired from military service and received a land grant called Rancho Los Féliz, now largely comprised of the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles and Griffith Park.<br />
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Another son, José (born in 1820) married María Dolores Verdugo, whose family owned the Rancho Verdugo in the present-day Glendale area. Finally, there was Felipe Santiago (1821-1850), whose wife was María Presentación Alvitre, of the family profiled on this blog's most recent post. Her parents were José Claudio Alvitre (1811-1861) and Maria de la Asunción Valenzuela (1808-1861) and her grandparents were Sebastian Alvitre and María Rufina Hernández. Because Sebastian Alvitre and Juan José Villalobos, grandathers of Felipe and Presentación, were from the same hometown, Villa de Sinaloa in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, this might explain how they became married.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMbSQSdCRJRmK7Dx31FTLOMmduy4KXWWvYLqYM3KdmX71dpoHPDU4WXGsf8SNc4k57Yr617ZyyQa_9EkwSURTsHSN7NmmVlL6a4NYVL7I0AoDwRBW5Pu0qr1fhzziRnopql-zflehfP6Nq/s1600/Old+Mission+aerial+1920s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMbSQSdCRJRmK7Dx31FTLOMmduy4KXWWvYLqYM3KdmX71dpoHPDU4WXGsf8SNc4k57Yr617ZyyQa_9EkwSURTsHSN7NmmVlL6a4NYVL7I0AoDwRBW5Pu0qr1fhzziRnopql-zflehfP6Nq/s640/Old+Mission+aerial+1920s.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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This ca. 1920s aerial photograph looks down on the Old Mission community. The Rio Hondo flows from the top center to the lower left. At an angle at the center and going to the lower right is "Temple Road," now San Gabriel Boulevard, leading to Siphon Road with Durfee extending north and east. San Gabriel Boulevard leaves the Rio Hondo at the center and curved upward towards the top. What was called "Valley Road" and is now Rosemead Boulevard comes up from the bottom center and ends at San Gabriel Boulevard. Lincoln Boulevard heads south from San Gabriel Boulevard along the base of the Montebello Hills and the Soto-Sanchez Adobe, then owned by oil magnate W. B. Scott, is towards the lower left corner, just to the right of a dark spot. Most of the left half of the photo consists of the Montebello oil field and is largely within Rancho La Merced. To the upper right across the Rio Hondo is the roughly 90-acre Rancho Potrero Chico and then east of that much of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo. At the extreme lower right is a section of Rancho Paso de Bartolo. Click the map to see it in a different window and in a larger view.</div>
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The connection to Rancho La Merced also could be tied to the Alvitres, because Sebastian moved out to what was then called the Rancho Nieto, a vast land grant given to the family of that name in the 1780s (in fact, the Nieto and Verdugo rancho were among the first three land grants when they were issued in 1784) after some troublesome stays at the pueblos of San Jose and Los Angeles.<br />
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After Cecilio Villalobo died around 1836, perhaps not long after he and his family were counted the first Los Angeles district census, it might be that his widow and children moved out to <i>Misión Vieja</i>. Notably, although one of the sons, Juan José was enumerated in the 1844 census as living in "Angeles" with wife Saturnina and their children, none of the other family was to be found.<br />
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This was striking because it was that same year that the grant of La Merced to Casilda Soto de Lobo was made. As noted in the post on that rancho, Casilda and her family built an adobe house that forms one part of today's Sanchez Adobe historic site in Montebello and occupied it and the ranch for about five years.<br />
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Things changed rapidly, however, when Casilda borrowed a little over $2,000 from one of her neighbors, William Workman, co-owner of the Rancho La Puente east of La Merced. The loan entailed interest, which was common enough in Workman's experience, but not likely in that of Señora Soto's. At any rate, she was unable to repay the loan and, at the end of 1850, Workman took possession of the ranch, which had been used as collateral.<br />
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Interestingly, California, seized by force from Mexico by the United States in 1847, had just been admitted as the 31st state in September and a census was quickly organized and conducted early in 1851. When the census taker came through Old Mission he found Casilda living with her son Juan and daughter-in-law Dolores Verdugo and their two children, as well as with son Felipe Santiago and his wife Presentación Alvitre. The adjacent household consisted of her son Juan José, who notably was listed as Villalobo, his wife Saturnina Feliz and their four children.<br />
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Tragedy struck within a few years as Doña Casilda and two of her sons, Juan José and Felipe Santiago died in the early 1850s. When the 1860 federal census was conducted, the latter's widow Saturnina was still at Misión Vieja with four children, ranging from three to ten years old. Moreover, nearby was Dolores Verdugo with her five children, who were three months to twelve years old, though for an unknown reason, her husband Juan Lobo was not counted.<br />
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At some point afterward, the Lobo family left <i>Misión Vieja</i>. Juan José and Saturnina's son, Felipe, left for San Juan Capistrano where he lived for several decades, married Marcelina Gutierrez and had a family. Presentación Alvitre de Lobo headed east and settled in what later became the Walnut/Pomona area, close to what was the settlement of Spadra, about where the 57 Freeway and Valley Boulevard come together at Cal Poly Pomona.<br />
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Eventually, other members of the family made the Pomona area their home, as well, including her daughters Inocencia and Magdalena and sons Felipe, Jesús, Porfirio and Pablo, some of whom lived for a time at the city and county limits near Reservoir Street close to Chino. Jesús, whose wife María Francisca Fraijo came from a family that owned where Irwindale later developed, lived for a time in downtown Chino, his mother Presentación also being in their household in 1900, before relocating to south Pomona. Pablo was, for a while, an employee on the Diamond Bar Ranch, which was created in 1918, and he was one of a about a dozen workers there when the census was taken two years later. By 1930, he was living with his mother on Hamilton near White in south Pomona and close to Jesús.<br />
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Unlike the Alvitres and other families, as will be discussed in subsequent posts, the Lobos did not live particularly long at <i>Misión Vieja</i>, living there for perhaps a couple of decades or somewhat more. But, because of the fact that Rancho La Merced was granted to Doña Casilda, they should be remembered as among the community's earliest and nost notable residents.<br />
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UPDATE, 11 December 2014. Thanks to a question on another post from this blog, it has been learned that Juan (or perhaps his brother Santiago) Lobo may be one of the <i>Californio</i> heroes in the Battle of San Pascual, which took place near San Diego at the end of 1846 during the American invasion of California in the Mexican-American War.<br />
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According to Richard Griswold del Castillo's 2003 article in <i>The Journal of San Diego History</i>, "one Californio solider recalled that Juan Lobo, a twenty-three year old vaquero from Mission Vieja, led the main Californio assault on Kearny's forces." The footnote for part of the article cites a 1973 University of San Diego master's thesis and a manuscript in the papers of Benjamin Hayes, a longtime Los Angeles County District Court judge and later a San Diego resident.<br />
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Yet, the thesis, written by Sally Cavell Jones, lists the soldiers who fought under General Andrés Pico at San Pascual and the name on the list is "Santiago Lobo," not Juan. Juan did have a younger brother, Santiago, whose age in the 1850 federal census (actually, taken in early 1851), was given as 21. If this is true, Santiago would only have been 16 or 17 years old at the time of the battle.<br />
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In any case, there may not be any further available information, but this does raise intriguing questions about whether members of the Lobo family of <i>Misión Vieja</i> were heroes of the <i>Californio </i> resistance against the American invaders during this highly-controversial war, the first of American imperialism.<br />
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Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-69640152975713682632013-05-16T12:00:00.002-07:002013-05-16T12:00:16.688-07:00The Alvitre Family of Misión ViejaAmong the earliest European-derived families to settle in the <em>Misión Vieja </em>community were the Alvitres. Moreover, members of the family continued to live at Old Mission until about the time that the area was declared a federal flood zone and residential uses of the neighborhood were ended in the mid-1900s.<br />
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The origins of the family in Spanish Alta California date to Sebastian Alvitre, a soldier and native of Villa de Sinaloa, Sinaloa, México, who was among the original nine landholders in the pueblo of San José in 1783 (the town was formally organized in 1777, but it does not appear that land was issued until the later date) and who received, as did the others, two lots in the town. <br />
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It is evident, though, that Alvitre had been in the department for some years before as Hubert Howe Bancroft, who compiled a massive history of California in the 1880s, noted that "Alvitre was a pioneer soldier of the earlier years." In the first volume of <em>Spanish-Mexican Families of Early California: 1769-1850</em> it was stated that Sebastian was a "<em>Soldado de Cuero </em>[leather-jacket soldier] of 1769 Portolá Expedition." If this is true, then he was part of the first land-based expedition by Europeans in Alta California, and Alvitre would have camped with the party in what became <em>Misión Vieja</em> at the beginning of August 1769. <br />
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It turns out, though, that Sebastian's years in San José were turbulent. According to Bancroft, "Sebastian Alvitre had proved unmanageable at San José and after four or five years of convict life at the presidio had been sent to [Los] Angeles for reform." It was not stated what he had actually done to warrant being thrown into the <em>abogado</em> (jail) at the pueblo, though undocumented sources offer that Alvitre had relations with an Indian woman that put him in the crosshairs of authorities.<br />
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Bancroft followed this with a statement often made about early California, namely that "the settlers were not a very orderly community," and this seemed especially to apply to soldiers, who were widely known for their mistreatment of Indians at the missions and elsewhere in the department.<br />
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As noted by Bancroft, Alvitre came south and arrived in Los Angeles about 1786, when the lands of the pueblo, founded five years earlier, were redistributed among the original settlers (there had been 44 in 1781), save one who had left, and twenty new residents, among these being Alvitre.<br />
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Apparently, matters still continued to be problematic for Alvitre in his new home, as Bancroft cited a 1791 report of Governor Pedro Fages, in which that official "tells the tale of three or four incorrigible rogues, Alvitre and Navarro of Angeles, and Pedraza, a deserter from the galleon, whose scandalous conduct no executive measure has been able to reform." <br />
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Again, no specifics were provided as to what Alvitre might have done to anger the governor, but Bancroft did write, citing official reports of the era, that "Sebastian Alvtire of Los Angeles and Francisco Avila of San José were usually in prison, in exile, or at forced work for their excesses with Indian women and with the wives of their neighbors."<br />
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The historian went on to note that "Concubinage and all irregular sexual relations were strictly prohibited and the authorities seem to have worked earnestly in aid of the friars to enforce the laws." These included "warnings, threats, exposure to husbands, and finally seclusion in respectable houses with hard work," though, as seen above, exile to another part of the department took place and there were others put in irons, in the stocks, or whipped.<br />
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In any case, it does appear that Alvitre finally settled down, as about 1795 he was married in Loreto, Baja California, to María Rufina Hernández, and the couple bore their first child, Jacinto, in that mission community. By 1798, the family had moved back to Alta California and it appears that Sebastian was stationed at Mission San Gabriel, where the remaining eight children were born. These were Juan José (1798), José Gabriel (1801), José Antonio (1803), María Dominga (1805), José Vicente (1807), María Florentina (1808), José Claudio (1811) and María Dolores (1814).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWkULUSB3UXF7RmkwiUWawveHehKdQFmAZGa1vjkgxNcg1xnJYCzweAFX13NJczv3FaaqB50H6hQpbPWHJf3pjh4f06BYeWCk2jeAd-CT1RFRLpQqJADyq5-6f8bg1zVb2tETjR3kebTnf/s1600/Potrero+Chico+Repetto+Alvitre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWkULUSB3UXF7RmkwiUWawveHehKdQFmAZGa1vjkgxNcg1xnJYCzweAFX13NJczv3FaaqB50H6hQpbPWHJf3pjh4f06BYeWCk2jeAd-CT1RFRLpQqJADyq5-6f8bg1zVb2tETjR3kebTnf/s320/Potrero+Chico+Repetto+Alvitre.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This detail of a ca. 1920s map of Rancho Potrero Chico (or Potrero de la Misión Vija) shows the portions owned by Pedro Alvitre and Timoteo Repetto, both of whom descended from Juan José Alvitre, an original grantee with his brother-in-law Antonio Valenzuela (whose wife was Dominga Alvitre) of the rancho in 1844. Courtesy of Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.</td></tr>
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Having been dismissed as an "incorrigible scamp" by Bancroft for his wayward years at San José and Los Angeles in the 1780s, it might well be that Alvitre's later years were more on the "straight and narrow" and he remained at Mission San Gabriel until his death in February 1817. As those who died there were buried under the old stone church until about 1850, it is assumed that his last resting place is there.</div>
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As to the nine children of Sebastian and Rufina, a few died as young adults, including José Gabriel, who passed away in late 1830; José Vicente, who died in September 1828; and María Dolores, whose death occurred in November 1832. Of the six others, José Antonio, appears to have joined the military and moved north. He was married at Mission San Juan Bautista in central California and, though he did live in Los Angeles in the 1830s, he spent most of his later life at Monterey where he died in early 1862.<br />
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The remaining Alvitre children settled in the general Old Mission area in subsequent years. For example, in the 1836 Los Angeles district census most of them were counted in the Rancho Santa Gertrudes place name listed in that enumeration. Juan Crispín Pérez, whose father was about the same age as Sebastian Alvitre and from the same hometown of Villa de Sinaloa, México, had been, according to Bancroft, a part-owner of that rancho, part of the enormous Nieto grant of 1784 that was late subdivided, since 1821. In 1835, Pérez was grantee of the Rancho Paso de Bartolo (which, after 1851, was the property of Pío Pico). More importantly, he was the <em>majordomo</em> (foreman) for the remaining Mission San Gabriel lands not taken by secularization of the California missions in the 1830s, and served in that position from 1841 to 1845.<br />
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In that 1836 census, Jacinto with his wife Lugarda Moreno, Juan José with his spouse Tomasa Alvarado, Dominga, who was the wife of José Antonio Valenzuela, Florentina, the spouse of Manuel Antonio Pérez, and José Claudio and his wife María Asención Valenzuela, were all at Santa Gertrudes, although where exactly has not been (and may not be) determined.<br />
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Eight years later, though, the 1844 district census, showed a definite change. The place name <em>Misión Vieja</em> was delineated and its residents consisted solely of the Alvitre family. These included Jacinto and Lugarda; Juan José and Tomasa; José Claudio and Asención; and Dominga and Antonio Valenzuela. <br />
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Notably, at the end of that year, on 9 December, Governor Manuel Micheltorena granted to brothers-in-law Antonio Valenzuela and Juan José Alvitre the Rancho Potrero de la Misión Vieja de San Gabriel also known as Rancho Potrero Chico, a very small grant of under 100 acres. <br />
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This was after the district census, so it seems obvious that, perhaps with Juan Crispín Pérez as <em>majordomo </em>at San Gabriel, his influence might have brought the Alvitres to the Old Mission area and then helped secure the land grant. <br />
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A few months later on 8 April 1845, under new governor Pío Pico, Manuel Antonio Pérez (known on the document as "Manuel Antonio, an Indian," perhaps associated with Mission San Gabriel) received a grant to the Rancho Potrero Grande, just north and west of Potrero Chico, which was over 4,400 acres. Manuel Antonio was married to Florentina Alvitre, the remaining sibling, and they may have been living on that property before the grant, which might explain why they weren't in the Misión Vieja place name in the 1844 census.<br />
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So, from at least 1844 (and perhaps earlier), the Alvitre family were directly associated with the place name of Misión Vieja. For a century, they remained in the area, where they farmed and ranched, raised families, and experienced the ups and downs of life that most families do. There were some dramatic incidents involving some members that will be touched upon here subsequently, but it bears remembering that it was a large family and everyday events do not get recorded the way dramatic ones do. <br />
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In any case, the Alvitres deserves remembrance as an early family of the Old Mission community.<br />
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Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-20793806831548435772012-12-21T13:36:00.000-08:002018-06-01T23:16:58.656-07:00The Kizh/Gabrieleño People and Misión ViejaWhile this blog refers to the specific place name of <i>Misión Vieja</i> or Old Mission as the first European site established in Los Angeles County, there was thousands of years of habitation in the area by the native indigenous peoples. While these first settlers are often called <i>Gabrieleño </i>(or <i>Gabrieliño</i>), because of their "association" with the Mission San Gabriel, which started at <i>Misión Vieja</i> in 1771 but relocated to the current site within a few years because of flooding from the San Gabriel River, a more recent appellation has been <i>Tongva</i>. This latter term, however, has no real historical basis, whereas the name <i>Kizh</i> does have a legitimacy in the record and will be used here.<br />
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For example, in William McCawley's 1996 book, <i>The First Angelinos</i>, he cites the statement of Raimundo Yorba, who was a consultant to the archaeologist John P. Harrington stated to him that the natives living in the Old Mission area were "what they called a <i>Kichireño</i>, one of a bunch of people that lived at that place just this side of San Gabriel which is known as the <i>Misión Vieja</i>. <i>Kichireño</i> is not a placename, but a tribename, the name of a kind of people."<br />
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While the <i>Kizh/Gabrieleño</i>, like most so-called pre-literate peoples throughout the world, did not have a written language, they, naturally, had an oral one. This, in turn, meant that there was a vast oral record passed down through the generations among the <i>Kizh/Gabrieleño</i>, having to do with their religious beliefs, history, cultural and social practices, and much else. The fact that these attributes were not written down do not, in any way, make them subordinate to the written word—it is simply a different way of recording.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This 1925 United States Bureau of Ethnology map (click on it for a larger view in a separate window,) made by the United States Geological Survey, shows "Gabrielino" tribal villages in the broader Los Angeles region. Note "Hout" in the upper center, corresponding with the term <i>Houtg-na</i> identified by Hugo Reid in 1852 as on "Ranchito de Lugo," probably Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo within the general <i>Misión Vieja</i> area. While Reid also identified <i>Isanthcag-na</i> as specifically in <i>Misión Vieja</i>, it does not appear on this map, which was provided courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.</td></tr>
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This makes documenting the history of native peoples anywhere on the planet troublesome for those who need written sources to determine what is valid. When it comes to the <i>Kizh/Gabrieleño</i> and their thousands of years of residence in the Old Mission area, it has been reported that there were at least two or three villages. One was noted as <i>Isanthcag-na</i> at "Misión Vieja" by Hugo Reid, a Scotchman who was married to Victoria Comacrabit, a native from the Mission San Gabriel and published 21 letters, the first written analysis, about the "Los Angeles County Indians" in the <i>Los Angeles Star</i> newspaper in 1852. Notably, while Reid provided names for 28 villages and their 1852 locations, he also observed that "there were a great many more villages . . . probably some forty."<br />
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McCawley cited another source who claimed that the name, rendered as <i>'Iisanchanga</i>, derived from a name for wolf, this being <i>'isawt</i>, though Harrington considered this linkage "not clear." McCawley, however, stated that "it is curious that <i>'Iisanchanga</i> does not appear as a recognizable name in the mission registers" and, therefore, wondered if it "was a small settlement consisting of a few families, or simply a geographical placename."<br />
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Bernice Eastman Johnson's 1962 publication for the Southwest Museum, <i>California's Gabrieliño Indians</i>, states, however, that near the first mission site, "perhaps on the rounded hills where oil wells now pump day and night, lay the Gabrielino village of <i>Isantcangna</i>. Men from this settlement helped the soldiers and the muleteers to raise the first rude structures of poles and 'tules' and gave their attention to the religious observance." <br />
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There are several questionable aspects to this statement, one being that the natives would settle on bare hills rather than in the fertile lowlands closer to water, game and usable plant material. Another is the inference that the <i>Kizh/Gabrieleño</i> were as helpful in work and dutiful in the Spaniards' religious ceremonies as Eastman described. Her statement, however, that the original 1771 mission structures "were built of materials as flimsy as those from which were formed the huts of neighboring <i>Isantcangna</i>," is notable for two reasons. First, the demeaning use of "flimsy" (as opposed to, say, "flexible"?) and the suggestion that the Spanish were willing to copy native building materials for their new facility.<br />
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Johnson also mischaracterized the later settlement of Old Mission, writing that "years later a little Mexican village of adobe buildings grew up nearby and took the name 'Old Mission,' but this was destroyed in the floods of 1867 and now lies in the rubble behind the new flood-control dam." This last statement about the 1867 floods is simply untrue: the Temple adobe of 1851, built just a few hundred yards from the river and which was flooded in 1862, survived into the 20th-century and two years after the 1867 deluge, Rafael Basye built an adobe house adjacent to the Rio Hondo. Moreover, the Old Mission community existed for decades beyond that flood.<br />
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Archaeological investigation, however, as pointed out in early posts on this blog, have not been able, with certainty, to establish this site, primarily because of the total disturbance of the area from flooding, ranching and farming, oil and gas development and the like. It is thought, though, that a site just to the west of the Rio Hondo, the old course of the San Gabriel River prior to 1867, and north of San Gabriel Boulevard, which is roughly along the old road between the old and new mission sites, is the likeliest spot.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This map from William McCawley's <i>The First Angelinos</i> purports to show Gabrielino villages in the San Gabriel Valley, but does not show any in the vicinity of Old Mission, at the lower center, despite Reid's identification of two, one of which, <i>Houtg-na </i>(or <i>Huunang-na/Hout</i>) appears on the 1925 U.S. Bureau of Ethnology map above. </td></tr>
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McCawley also discussed "the community of <i>Wiichinga</i> [which] was also located in the Whittier Narrows area" and which was said to have been a "ranchería, that is to the east of this Mission on a plain closed by water on all sides." According to McCawley, "this may have been a small settlement rather than a large community" and reported that there was only one entry in the mission records, from the earliest baptism recorded from Mission San Gabriel in 1771.<br />
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The other mentioned village was <i>Huunang-na</i>, although McCawley makes no mention of this site. Johnson, however, cited Hugo Reid in noting "Houtg-na" as being on the "Ranchito de Lugo," which, stated Johnson, "lay in the vicinity of El Monte." She linked that name with the term "hukngna" offered by Harrington as meaning willow trees, but then stated that "the Gabrielino word for willow is <i>saxat</i> and a village in the San Bernardino area, <i>Saxangna</i>, was based on that root." <br />
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Confusingly, Johnson went on to say that, "here only the Spanish name El Monte refers to the thickets that bordered the swamps and streams." She continued with a reference to an "old man who recalled this place [and] seemed to be referring to an incident which had occurred in his father's time," this being a lashing of Indians with willow switches. On the 1925 map included in this post, there is a placename of "Hout" that appears to conform with the location of the Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo and it has been said that the village was located just north of today's Whittier Narrows Nature Center, south of the 60 Freeway and west of today's San Gabriel River.<br />
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There is another notable place associated in the general area surrounding <i>Misión Vieja</i> worth noting. According to an account compiled by Harrington, the oral tradition of the natives cited a place called <i>Xarvo</i>, <i>Xarvat</i>, or <i>Qarvat</i>, where sorcerers were said to engage in witchcraft and the locale is also said to be connected to the oft-cited tale of <i>Chengiichngech</i>, in that this supernatural figure sent avenging creatures, such as bears, vipers and dog-like animals, to punish those people who did not obey his commands. Another tradition related that shamans in this area called up windstorms to fight their enemies from the coastal areas and that this occurred "near <i>Punta de la Loma</i> [a hilltop] by old S. G. Mission and <i>Xarvut</i>."<br />
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In any case, this site was said to be in "a deep gulch back of Petissier's [Pellissier's] place, opening to the west (near Bartolo Station)" and that "there is a big <i>canyada</i> opening through the hills. Indians used to live there." To McCawley, the likely location is Sycamore Canyon at the west end of the Puente Hills in Whittier, now a natural preserve managed by the Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Preservation Authority.<br />
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Despite what is probably inevitable differences and contradictions in available written sources, some of what appears in print clearly showed that native peoples lived in the Whittier Narrows area when the Spaniards arrived to establish the first Mission San Gabriel there in 1771. Why Reid would acknowledge two villages in his 1852 work, being much closer to the period of their existence, and McCawley choose not consider them as true villages is curious. <br />
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There are, however, many descendants of the <i>Kizh/Gabrieleño </i>in the area and their oral traditions are there, as well. This confirms their sense of place in <i>Misión Vieja</i> relating to their presence there for thousands of years regardless of inconsistencies in the written historical record.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-71391052489056782652012-10-15T11:59:00.001-07:002012-10-15T11:59:13.397-07:00Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo and Misión ViejaThe fourth and last of the ranchos that was associated with the Old Mission/Misión Vieja community was Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo. This approximately one-half league, or 2,042-acre, ranch was granted by Governor Pío Pico to George (Jorge) Morillo and Teodoro Romero in April 1845. Potrero de Felipe Lugo was also known as Rancho Dolores, though the origins of that name are not yet known.<br />
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The rancho's common name, however, relates to Felipe Lugo, whose father, Antonio María, was grantee of the Rancho San Antonio, a large land grant south and east of the pueblo of Los Angeles. Felipe was likely allowed to graze some of his cattle from San Antonio in the meadows (which is what <em>potrero</em> means) owned by the Mission San Gabriel and west of the San Gabriel River. <br />
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Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo's boundaries run roughly in the following way: the western boundary of the ranch follows a straight line from south of Santa Anita Avenue as it heads north from Durfee Avenue and then turns northeast very close to the old Lexington-Gallatin Road (an old thoroughfare that ran from today's Pico Rivera, where the townsite of Gallatin was once located, to El Monte, with Lexington being a name for a village in that area) and then just east of Mountain View Road through El Monte until that line hits Valley Boulevard. <br />
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The northern line goes along Valley Boulevard very close to its intersection with Garvey Avenue at the Five Points area of El Monte until just about where Valley meets the 605 Freeway close to Mountain View High School. <br />
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The east line then zigs and zags along the San Gabriel River and cuts within portions of the California Country Club in the City of Industry east of the river and the 605 Freeway. The boundary then crosses the 605 and river just north of the 60 Freeway, moves over to Durfee Avenue and then moves south across the 60, crosses the San Gabriel River again and turns a corner within the Pico Rivera Bicentennial Park. <br />
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The short southern line of the rancho then turns westward across the river for the last time, moves within the lower or southern section of the Whittier Narrows Nature Center and meets up with the western boundary at Durfee Avenue and Santa Anita Avenue.<br />
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As to the grantees, George Morrillo was married to Magdalena Vejar, whose brother Ricardo was, for many years, the owner of the southern or lower portion of Rancho San José, covering modern day Pomona and parts of neighboring areas. Prior to marring Morrillo, Magdalena was the wife of José Joaquin Verdugo, of the family who received one of the first California land grants back in 1784, including the Glendale and surrounding areas.<br />
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A daughter of Magdalena Vejar and José Joaquin Verdugo was Juana María Verdugo and she was first married to Teodoro Romero. So, when the 1845 grant was made by Governor Pico it was to father-in-law (Morrillo) and son-in-law (Romero.) By 1850, however, Romero died, so Juana María married Refugio Zuñiga, who came to the marriage with one son and then the couple had several more children. One of these, Manuel, who was born in 1854, was a long-time fixture in the Old Mission community.<br />
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With the conquest of Mexican California by the United States, the striking of a provision protecting Spanish and Mexican land grants from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the ensuing Gold Rush and struggles over land ownership, Congress enacted the land claims process with a March 1851 law that set up a commission and created a court structure to hear and decide land grant claims. <br />
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On 1 November 1852, a claim was put forward to the land commission in the name of George Morrillo and Juana María Verdugo de Romero. The commission heard the case within a year and, on 18 October 1853, ruled in favor of the claimants. <br />
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Because the federal government automatically appealed all successful commission decisions, the matter went to the local federal district court in Los Angeles and the case heard on 19 September 1855, where, once again, Morrillo and his step-daughter were successful.<br />
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Once again, though, the U. S. government appealed the court case, as was the strategy in all such matters, and the local federal district court heard the matter on 23 February 1857 and dismissed the government's appeal.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is the first page of the December 1858 map of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo by Los Angeles County Surveyor Henry Hancock, made for the land claim initiated by original grantee George Morrillo and his partner's widow, Maria Verdugo Romero, in 1852 and finally patented in 1871. It shows the southwestern portion of the ranch and its borders with neighboring ranches La Merced, Potrero Grande, and San Bartolo. Winding along as the eastern boundary at the right is the San Gabriel River. The signature at the bottom from 15 June 1871 is by the federal General Land Office commissioner for the issuance of the patent that day. Click on the image to open a larger version in a separate window. This copy was provided by the El Monte Historical Society.</td></tr>
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While this all seemed well for the Morrillo/Romero family and their ranch, there were enormous financial and personal costs in pursuing these claims. Lawyer's fees, charges for having required official survey maps drawn, and other expenses could be onerous, especially as the local economy, which boomed in the beef cattle trade with northern mining areas during the Gold Rush earlier in the 1850s, was starting to experience a tightening as the Gold Rush waned. In addition, there was a major national economic depression that broke out in 1857.<br />
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Given all of this, it is not surprising that Juana María Verdugo and her second husband, Refugio Zuñiga, sold their half-interest, or just over 1,000 acres to F. P. F. Temple on 7 January 1857 for $3,000, which was a substantial sum at the time. <br />
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Temple, who came to the Old Mission community in 1851 after receiving half of the neighboring Rancho La Merced from his father-in-law, William Workman, owner of the Rancho La Puente (which bordered Potrero de Felipe Lugo on the east) was busy with Workman and the other owner of La Merced, Workman's former La Puente <em>mayordomo</em> (foreman), Juan Matias Sanchez, in acquiring as much land in the Old Mission ranchos, including Potrero Chico and Potrero Grande, as they could. <br />
For example, also in 1857, Sanchez took possession of Potrero Grande and gave half of it to Workman and Temple. Six years later, in 1863, Workman and Temple acquired ownership of much of the tiny Potrero Chico grant.<br />
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Notably, though, the Verdugo/Zuñiga deed to Temple included all but one of the 20 lots comprising the ranch, which seems to indicate that the couple reserved lot 8 for themselves as part of the deed. <br />
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Beyond this, Temple moved quickly over the next year to secure quit claims, which would avoid any later attempts to claim portions of the ranch. For example, on 25 April 1857, a quit claim was filed in Temple's favor by Maria Tifania Romero, a daughter of Juana Maria Verdugo and Teodoro Romero, and her husband Jose Espinosa, as potential heirs of Tifania's mother's half of the rancho. A couple of weeks later, Walter Shay, who had acquired a 160-acre section from the Verdugo/Zuñiga half of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, filed a quit claim to Temple. In early 1858, Temple secured another quit claim from Juana Maria Verdugo through her children José and María's potential interest as heirs.<br />
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In May 1858, Temple made another purchase, acquiring the interest of Elmore and Louisa Squires in parts of 9 lots that included what was referred to as the "Old Mill." This was followed up two years later, in April 1860, with the acquisition from Richard and Margaret Chapman of their interest in what was called the "Old Squires/Davis Mill."<br />
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What this referred to was a grist mill for grinding wheat, corn and other field crops and which was built by Elmore W. Squires and Edward Davis (or Davies.) Squires (1826-1906) was a native of Kentucky who lived in Missouri, where he married his wife in 1848. The couple then migrated on the famed wagon trail to Oregon, where their first child was born, but traveled south to Santa Clara, near San Jose, by 1852. Then, the family came down to Los Angeles County and settled on Potrero de Felipe Lugo. After selling out to Temple, Squires moved to the Rancho Sausal Redondo at what was commonly called "Halfway House," a stop on the main road from Los Angeles to the harbor at San Pedro. Squires remained there for nearly twenty years, lost land in a foreclosure, and then moved to Orange, where he remained the rest of his life.<br />
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Edward Davis/Davies (1807-1859) was from Wales, as was his wife Margaret and apparently the two were Mormon converts (there was a significant conversion and migration of British subjects to the Mormon Church in the 1840s) because the two were married in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1850 and their first two children were married there. A third child, Caleb, was born in San Bernardino in 1856 and that town had been established by Mormons sent to California by the church to establish a colony. Somehow, Davis/Davies wound up at Potrero de Felipe Lugo and made the acquaintance of Squires and they established their mill, about 1856 or 1857, though why it was referred to as "old" is puzzling, unless it was built earlier by Morrillo and Romero. In any case, Davis passed away in November 1859 at La Puente, just east of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, and his widow Margaret married Richard Chapman, an Englishman, but the couple then disposed of their property to Temple.<br />
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Temple continued to operate this grist mill for grinding wheat, corn and other field crops for some years and expanded his holdings on Potrero Lugo. First, with his father-in-law Workman, the two obtained the remaining 1/2 interest in the ranch, or the other 1,000 acres, from Morrillo and Magdalena Vejar. Then, Temple acquired another 160-acre section that had been owned by Cyrus Lyon, who later went on to operate a well-known stage stop at Lyon's Station near Newhall in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles.<br />
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Then, in conjunction with his father-in-law Workman, Temple obtained a quit claim in February 1859 from Morrillo and Magdalena Vejar for their half of the ranch; that is, the remaining 1,000 acres. Three years later, in October 1862, Workman quit claimed his interest in Potrero de Felipe Lugo to his daughter, Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple. It was a common matter to place property in the hands of wives and daughters as a way to protect assets in case of financial issues or to merely provide something for grandchildren in the event of the untimely death of a husband or father. In any case, for about thirteen years, the ownership of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, except for lot 8, was held by the Workman and Temple families.<br />
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The next major change came in the early 1870s, when the brothers George (1823-1896) and James Durfee (1840-1920) formally acquired just under 70 acres of the ranch from F. P. F. Temple. The Durfees became prominent farmers and ranchers in the area and rented land from Temple before acquiring the property from him. There will be a separate entry on this blog about the interesting background of the Durfees, but they were early walnut farmers on their ranch, of which 60 acres was west of Durfee Avenue near South El Monte High School and 9 acres on the east side of the road within the Whittier Narrows Nature Center. While George later moved to Los Angeles, where he died, James remained at the ranch until his passing. James was also a founder, with Temple, of the La Puente School District, which organized in 1863 and of which there will be a separate post.<br />
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Meantime, the land claim filed for Potrero de Felipe Lugo, as noted above, in 1852 and approved by both the land claims commission and federal district court, finally ended with the issuance of a patent by the federal government on 15 June 1871. This long delay was common, as most claims were approved by 1860, but then the Civil War and its aftermath meant that most patents were unissued until much later.<br />
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In late 1875, the ownership of Potrero de Felipe Lugo changed dramatically when the Workman and Temple families were beset by financial problems through their Los Angeles bank of Temple and Workman, which had opened in late 1871, but had also been heavily invested in oil, railroad, real estate and other projects, as well as poorly managed. When the state economy went into a tailspin in late Summer 1875, the bank suspended operations for a few months while seeking loans. <br />
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Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, a San Francisco mining magnate, who had purchased Rancho Santa Anita to the north, was looking for more property acquire and saw that Temple and Workman, the largest landowners in Los Angeles County, were in deep trouble. He arranged a loan to float the bank and also made a separate acqusition at the same time, in December 1875, for 297 acres of Potrero de Felipe Lugo along its northern edge for $10,000. The same day Baldwin had arranged to acquire from Workman, F. P. F. Temple and Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple another 203 acres from either Potrero de Felipe Lugo or Potrero Grande, its western neighbor, for $30 an acre, or just over $6,000, though it appears he selected that parcel from the latter rancho.<br />
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The remainder of the rancho, excepting the land held by the Durfees and the separate property of Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple that was not included in the 297-acre sale, was put down as collateral for the bank loan, which was also made in early December 1875. Within six weeks, however, the bank failed, as depositors rushed in to close their accounts and left with Baldwin's borrowed money, and the loan was defaulted. After three years, to allow the interest to accumulate far beyond repayment, Baldwin foreclosed and, in 1879, took possession of the lion's share of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo.<br />
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Mrs. Temple, having retained her property, distributed her Potrero de Felipe Lugo holdings to some of her children, obviously in the hopes that they could do something to make a living in the aftermath of the devastating bank failure, which brought bankruptcy to the Temple family. In November 1876, she deeded 100 acres to her son Thomas, who had been a cashier in the bank, and who had just married. Thomas evidently tried farming for a period, but with a bad economy and a punishing drought that occurred in 1876-77, he could not pay his taxes and portions of the property was sold at a tax auction in March 1879. Thomas eventually disposed of the remainder of his land and then moved to Mexico before returning in later years to Los Angeles.<br />
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An additional 400 acres of Mrs. Temple's was given to other children of hers, most notably John Harrison Temple, who had just returned from schooling in Massachusetts after the bank failure. Only 21 years old, John took possession of land east of Durfee Avenue, comprising most of what is now the Whittier Narrows Nature Center, built himself a residence and planted over 130 acres to walnut trees. Unlike his older brother Thomas, though, John was able to make his ranch profitable and remained on it for over a decade. There was, though, a lawsuit against John filed in February 1887 by Lucky Baldwin, who claimed that Temple illegally occupied some of his land. The case dragged on until March 1889, when the court ruled that Temple had a good, valid title and there was no infringement. By then, however, Temple's second oldest brother, Francis, had died in 1888 at the Workman Homestead in La Puente, and John became its new owner. He moved from the Potrero de Felipe Lugo ranch, but appears to have rented it until it was sold in 1892 to A. N. Davidson.<br />
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Mrs. Temple also placed 100 acres of land in the hands of her mother, Nicolasa Workman, and this property was rented out by tenant farmers, though there was also a tax payment lapse in 1882 for the parcel. As is often the case, the term "land rich, cash poor" applies, because if a property could not be made profitable to cover expenses and taxes, it would often wind up sold at a tax sale, auction or private sale and the Temple and Workman holdings at Potrero de Felipe Lugo definitely apply, as they lost everything on the ranch by 1892.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is page 2 of the 1858 Hancock survey for Potrero de Felipe Lugo, showing the northeastern section, including the northern boundary being the "Road from Los Angeles to San Bernardino" or today's Valley Boulevard, as well as neighboring lands of the ranchos La Puente and San Francisquito and the "Lands of the Mission San Gabriel." Snaking along the right side of the ranch is the "San Gabriel or Azusa River."</td></tr>
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Meantime, Lucky Baldwin, along with partner Richard Garvey, subdivided their 1,500 acres of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, for sale during the great land boom of the 1880s. In a publication called the <em>Illustrated Herald</em> in August 1888, Baldwin's nephew and estate manager, Henry Unruh, published their offering of the land in ten-acre parcels. The price was $175 to $250 an acre and the claim was that "this tract will produce anything which grows in Los Angeles county, with perhaps the exception of citrus fruit," although it was then stated that "oranges, indeed, will grow here . . . but these trees do their best on the mesa land." <br />
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Still, it was observed that "The Felipe Lugo is what is known as moist land. On this are grown to greatest perfection all leguminous crops, potatoes, corn, tomatoes, and wheat and barley, as well as alfalfa. They will produce a ctop of any of these without any artificial irrigation in our years of least rainfall. In the more favorable years two crops can be raised on such lands in the twelve months. The soil is free of stiff clay, and is most easily worked at all seasons."<br />
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The piece went on to note that "cereals and vegetables are not all that grow on such rich bottom lands as the Felipe Lugo. Many of the finest vineyards in the county are found in just such localities. These, at their best, could not be bought for $500 an acre, when in bearing. These damp lands, too, are admirably adapted to the growth of the English walnut—one fo the most profitable crops of this section. The orchards require the very minimum of care, and pay not less than $100 an acre, when at their best. Then, here, is the choicest home of the apple, the pear, and many similar varieties of deciduous fruit."<br />
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And, there was more! The Felipe Lugo was deemed perfect for dairies and alfalfa, the latter being the common feed for cattle, who could graze year-round in the mild climate of the area. The bottom line, the sales pitch went, was "the thirfty and industrious farmer who enters on these pursuits, with intelligence, will be able to make for himself a very pleasant home in a lovely climate, and in time he will grow into affluent circumstances on such farms as are now offered so cheap as the Felipe Lugo."<br />
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Well, it was a boom time that was just about to go bust in 1888. Four years later, in the same periodical, Unruh made another pitch, this time combining Potrero de Felipe Lugo with the La Merced and San Franciscquito ranches, also acquired by Baldwin by foreclosure from Temple, Workman and, the case of La Merced, Juan Matias Sanchez.<br />
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A total of 3,000 acres was subdivided and 800 had been sold by March 1892. Terms were $150 to $200 an acre with a third down in cash, and the rest due in five years and 8% interest. The lands were described as "soil is exceedingly rich black loam of great depth; always moist and producing enormous crops of corn, alfalfa, potatoes, etc., without irrigation; admirable for walnuts and deciduous fruits."<br />
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In 1893, however, came another national economic depression and there were six years of drought in the Los Angeles region, so it is likely that sales were lacking at Potrero de Felipe Lugo until after 1900. In fact, after Baldwin's death in 1909 and with the disposition of his estate, much of his San Gabriel Valley land, including, presumably, Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo, was sold off to farmers. <br />
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After a series of floods, especially in 1914 and 1938, some of the southern part of the rancho was earmarked for flood control purposes held by the federal government and managed by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Some of that land is leased to the county for the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area and Whittier Narrows Nature Center. The northern part, over time, became developed for housing and commercial uses in the cities of South El Monte and El Monte.<br />
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Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-22116920080611254412012-08-08T16:21:00.000-07:002012-08-08T16:32:22.110-07:00Rancho Potrero Grande and Misión ViejaThe final of the four ranchos in and surrounding the community of <em>Misión Vieja</em>, or Old Mission, was Potrero Grande. This former ranch of the Mission San Gabriel was granted to, as records show, "Manuel Antonio, an Indian," meaning a neophyte of the mission, and who was otherwise known as Manuel Antonio Pérez. <br />
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Born about 1798, Pérez may have received his surname (the native peoples, of course, not having there prior to the Spanish occupation) from Eulalia Pérez, the famed <em>llavalera</em> (or keeper of the keys) at Mission San Gabriel. One of the few documents mentioning him noted that he was an "<em>Indio viudo de Margarita,</em>" or "Indian widow of Margarita," this wife obviously being another native person. <br />
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The document, in fact, was a reference to Manuel Antonio's marriage in 1824 to María Florentina Alvitre. Florentina was a daughter of Sebastian Alvitre and María Rufina Hernandez, early settlers of Alta California in the Spanish era, and many of whose children were among the earliest, if not the first, settlers of the <em>Misión Vieja</em> community. The couple had at least six children, though some sources indicate that only two daughters lived.<br />
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It has also been stated that Manuel Antonio was a Mission San Gabriel <em>mayordomo</em>, or ranch foreman, and that this was the primary factor in his receiving the grant to Potrero Grande. This was done on 8 April 1845 by Governor Pío Pico, and the amount of land specified was one square league, or 4,432 acres.<br />
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The shape of the rancho is a slanted parallellogram with the southern line running fairly straight to the west diving the rancho from its neighbor, Rancho La Merced, from Rosemead Boulevard a short distance above the intersection of San Gabriel Boulevard/Durfee Avenue, crossing the Río Hondo and then San Gabriel Boulevard a short distance west of Lincoln Avenue, skirting the southern edge of the Montebello Town Center, crossing the 60 Freeway at the Paramount Boulevard exit and running along the south edge of Resurrection Cemetery and crossing Potrero Grande Drive before turning northeast.<br />
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The western boundary, then runs west of Potrero Grande Drive and crossed Del Mar Street, Graves Avenue, San Gabriel Boulevard and Walnut Grove Avenue before coming to a point just below Interstate 10 along Burton Avenue in Rosemead.<br />
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The northern boundary moves on a slight southeasterly angle crossing Rosemead Boulevard, the Río Hondo, Merced Avenue and the intersection of Garvey Avenue at Santa Anita Avenue before moving past Tyler Avenue and Peck Road before coming to a point at Mountain View Road just north of Elliott Avenue in El Monte.<br />
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The eastern line travels in a southwest direction along Mountain View and then east of Tyler and Santa Anita through South El Monte neighborhoods, crossing the 60 Freeway and then into the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area. Once the line crossed Santa Anita Avenue after it turns in towards Durfee Avenue, it follows the northern edge of Rancho Potrero Chico and through Legg Lake. Crossing Rosemead Boulevard the line heads toward the Río Hondo and then turns sharply to the southeast and back to the beginning at Rosemead.<br />
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In all, large sections of the cities of South San Gabriel, Rosemead, South El Monte and El Monte are within the rancho, along with unincorporated Los Angeles County lands falling within the flood plain of the San Gabriel River system and managed by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.<br />
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As to Pérez, his ownership of the rancho appears to have lasted only about seven years. He does appear in the 1850 federal census, which was taken in early 1851 (Pérez and family were enumerated on 11 February) because California was not admitted as a state until September 1850. There, he is listed as 52 years old, and is shown as a farmer with a self-declared value of real estate as $2,000. Listed with him is "María," meaning María Florentina, age 40, and three children: María Bárbara, 21, María Antonia, 16, and Juan, 7.<br />
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In addition, the agricultural schedule of that census shows that Manuel Antonio had 20 unimproved acres of land valued at $200. This is a curious item, because there was a column next to that for improved land and there is a blank there. How his self-declared value of $2,000 is to be squared with the agricultural census valuation of one-tenth of that and only twenty listed acres is not clear. In any case, he was shown as having $20 worth of farm implements, eleven horses, two oxen, 100 cattle, and sixty sheep and the the value of his animals was given as $1,440.<br />
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Within a little more than a year, however, much had changed. On 9 June 1852, Manuel Antonio sold 172 acres of Potrero Grande to Inocencia Reyes, who happened to be his neighbor in the aforementioned census. Inocencia, as noted elsewhere in this blog, was the common-law wife of Teodocio Yorba, of the prominent family of what is now northeast Orange County, and bore him a large family until they were married in 1860, three years before Yorba's death. In the 1850 (1851) census, Inocencia had five children, ranging from a few months to sixteen years. Perhaps she raised her family on this property she acquired from Pérez.<br />
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Four months later, on 13 October 1852, a land claim to Potrero Grande, under the terms of the California land claims act of 1851 concerning Spanish and Mexican grants, was not made by Manuel Antonio, but by Juan Matias Sánchez, half-owner of the neighboring Rancho La Merced. There doesn't appear to be a located deed for the sale of everything but Inocencia's property to Sánchez and a reason is certainly not known. Did Pérez sell because of financial problems, even though the Gold Rush was in full flower and money was made in copious amounts by southern California rancheros supplying fresh beef to mining region residents? Perhaps he passed away in 1851 or 1852 and his widow decided to sell the property. At this point, there is no way to tell.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOTRAAMZdXuBzn-k5Y8QDr6rZtZzYgn4S8Mi90tlgyHU51f5JueYzVo-yV4Ly7fCZ_qPNy9X-eN6mmxw1CJysRw7YSaHLNLHUKwHvrLQAfh5Xe7-vFSI3VAmAMMd7WD2K9PJ-dcc-_L-Q0/s1600/1877+Potrero+Grande.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOTRAAMZdXuBzn-k5Y8QDr6rZtZzYgn4S8Mi90tlgyHU51f5JueYzVo-yV4Ly7fCZ_qPNy9X-eN6mmxw1CJysRw7YSaHLNLHUKwHvrLQAfh5Xe7-vFSI3VAmAMMd7WD2K9PJ-dcc-_L-Q0/s320/1877+Potrero+Grande.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This detail from a copy of an 1877 map of southern California shows the Rancho Potrero Grande, which is noted as having 4,431 acres. There are some subdivided areas, including at the northeast portion by Lucky Baldwin, who bought 203 acres of the ranch in December 1875, prior to foreclosing on most of the rest of the property a few years later.</td></tr>
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As to the descendants of Manuel Antonio and Florentina Pérez, it appears that two daughters survived of their several children. In the 1860 census, no one by that name appears in the El Monte township count. But, a decade later, there was María Pérez, 31, and daughter Josefa, 7, living next to Pedro Archuleta and his wife Bárbara. It would seem that these would be the two oldest daughters and the 1880 census showed them living in the same houseshold. Juan Matias Sánchez, the new owner of Potrero Grande, married Luisa Archuleta, the recent widow of Rafael Martinez, and Luisa's brother, Pedro, married Barbara Pérez. The Archuletas like Sánchez were from New Mexico. Aside from these census listings, little information is known about the Pérez descendants (though someone might see this and help fill in the gap?)<br />
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What is known is that Sánchez owned the vast majority of the rancho and, interestingly, there is a record of a mortgage that Sánchez executed with Andrés Pico, a well-known <em>Californio</em> hero of the resistance against the Americans during the Mexican-American War and younger brother of the governor who granted the rancho to Manuel Antonio. By October 1853, however, the mortgage was released, as Sánchez obviously repaid a loan for which the rancho was used as collateral.<br />
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In March 1857, Sánchez sold half of his stake in Potrero Grande to his <em>compadres</em> F. P. F. Temple and William Workman. As stated elsewhere in this blog, Sánchez had been mayordomo for Workman at the latter's portion of Rancho La Puente, east of Old Mission. Workman obtained Rancho La Merced, below Potrero Grande, by foreclosure from Casilda Soto de Lobo in the early 1850s and then granted it to his son-in-law Temple and to Sánchez. This friendship between the three men was further manifested in Sánchez' sale of the half of Potrero Grande to Workman and Temple, but there may have been a more practical reason.<br />
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The land claim initiated by Sánchez in 1852 came, as they all did, with great cost. Lawyers to represent the claimant and surveys to submit to authorities required ample funds. Sánchez did have his claim confirmed in October 1854 by the commission that heard the initial cases. As with all land claims cases, the federal government automatically appealed, regardless of who the claimant was, so that they could try to free up as much land as possible in a California that was the site of huge numbers of migrants who wanted land when their golden dreams in the mines failed, as they usually did.<br />
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Still, Sánchez prevailed at the local federal district court at the end of 1856, to which the feds appealed the claim to the same court. This was rejected in March 1858 and there was an option for the government to pursue the appeal to the Supreme Court in Washington. Not only was this not exercised, but Sánchez had the distinction of being the first claimaint in the Los Angeles region to receive his patent, which was issued in July 1859. Whereas the average time to get to that level was seventeen agonizing, expensive years, Sánchez was able to get through the process in just under seven.<br />
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However, the land claims papers reveal that there were problems. First, Gold Rush-era migrations brought large numbers of people from the American South to the area in the early 1850s, leading to the settlement of the "New American Town", otherwise known as Lexington and then El Monte. Some of these new arrivals occupied lands that were within the Potrero Grande boundaries. Richard Fryer, one of these migrants who later moved to Spadra in today's Pomona, filed an affidavit that, when he arrived, Manuel Antonio had placed "flag polls" with white rags atop them to mark his boundary along those areas, mainly to the north and east, where the settlers were locating their new homes. According to Fryer, he decided to move two miles north to avoid any conflict. There were others, however, who did not.<br />
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Meantime, the sale of half of the Potrero Grande property to Temple and Workman came along three months after Sánchez had his claim heard successfully in federal court in Los Angeles. It may be that Temple and Workman agreed to help with the thorny problem of squatters if Sánchez sold them half the ranch, and that half probably included the disputed area. It also turned out that the official ranch survey for the land claim, drawn up in 1857 by county surveyor Henry Hancock (whose Rancho La Brea was later part-owned by his son and is the location of the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles), was paid for by Workman.<br />
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Indeed, more affidavits were filed, by William W. Rubottom (another Southerner who came to El Monte, later ran a tavern and hotel at Rancho Cucamonga, built a cut-off road with Temple from Los Angeles to Cucamonga, and then settled and named Spadra for his home area in Arkansas) and Doctor Nehemiah Beardslee, who lived in the Azusa/Duarte area. Beardslee stated that, in 1854, Sánchez walked him along the rancho boundaries, perhaps to show the doctor that he had a legitimate border over which squatters had breached. <br />
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Rubottom, meantime, stated that Workman offered to sell him, in 1857 shortly after acquiring his part of Potrero Grande, his new lands at $6 an acre, but that Rubottom was concerned that "as this affiant and many others had settled upon what they supposed to be public land, but by the owners of said grant was claimed to be upon said grant," he turned down the offer. Workman asked Rubottom to have Sánchez walk the boundaries with him. <br />
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Further, Rubottom noted that, "he had a conversation with the said William Workman after Hancock had made the survey of said Rancho or grant, and that said Workman stated to him that he had paid to said Henry Hancock, the sum of <u>Seven thousand dollars</u> [underlining originally in the affidavit here and below] . . . and that he had loaned him <u>Seven thousand dollars more</u>." It might be noted that Hancock was also part-owner of Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas and lost it to Workman in foreclosure in 1862, perhaps because of his loan. Workman retained ownership of that section of Rodeo de las Aguas for seven years before selling it, not knowing this would later by Beverly Hills (and its famed Rodeo Drive!)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZW8AOMQS1cmsjrBJoL3SqvatKm7aT-HX4RElAxlY-DBrxJm3dFoJarDc3PNXlDjyyFhTVM3CtBT8gUpU7IeuQ7vYFuM2gzsDfkpUyPX9FT5uUkAAUtH_eQdX17RGqpj8tGkgjSzBI0wJu/s1600/Public+surveys+5+1861.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZW8AOMQS1cmsjrBJoL3SqvatKm7aT-HX4RElAxlY-DBrxJm3dFoJarDc3PNXlDjyyFhTVM3CtBT8gUpU7IeuQ7vYFuM2gzsDfkpUyPX9FT5uUkAAUtH_eQdX17RGqpj8tGkgjSzBI0wJu/s320/Public+surveys+5+1861.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This detail from an 1861 map showing land claims in California includes #371 at the left side, which refers to the Rancho Potrero Grande, the first patented claim in the Los Angeles region. From an original at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.</td></tr>
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With the issuance of the patent in 1859, Sánchez, Temple and Workman were able to pursue legal action against twenty-seven settlers/squatters and filed an ejectment suit in local district court. The settlers tried first to have the patent rescinded and then claimed that there was an expired two-year statute of limitations that prevented the owners from pursuing eviction against their clients. They also stated that the lands were swampy from overflow from the Río Hondo and San Gabriel River and were perhaps not accurately surveyed and that any surveys had fraudulently located their property in the rancho rather than on public land.<br />
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District Court Judge Benjamin Hayes, however, issued a ruling in early 1862 that favored the owners (at the same term of that court, Workman filed for a foreclosure on Hancock and others and got his "Beverly Hills" property that Fall.) Yet, it appears that at least some of the squatters remained on disputed property for years afterward.<br />
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In early 1874, F. P. F. Temple requested the county sheriff, William R. Rowland, to eject Bernard Newman from land on Potrero Grande. When a deputy was dispatched to serve papers, Newman shot and badly wounded the peace officer, who did survive. Newman, meantime, was convicted for the crime and went to prison. Stories of "land grabbing" by Temple, Workman and Sánchez appeared in Los Angeles newspapers even after this, but those stories were to be halted by a sudden turn of events.<br />
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As Temple and Workman moved further into business and development in Los Angeles' first growth boom, from the late 1860s into the middle 1870s, they got into banking, first with a partner, Isaias W. Hellman (who later ran Wells Fargo among other successful endeavors) and then on their own. When the economy in California crashed in late August 1875 due to a silver mining stock bubble bursting in Virginia City, Nevada, a panic erupted. The bank of Temple and Workman lacked cash reserves but faced hordes of depositors and were unable to satisfy their demands. Consequently, the bank closed until a loan could be arranged with Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin of San Francisco, who had pocketed millions of dollars in profit in Virginia City stock sales that helped bring the crash and then began investing in San Gabriel Valley real estate, notably Rancho Santa Anita earlier in 1875. In December 1875, just before the loan was executed, Baldwin purchased 203 acres for just over $6,000 of either the Potrero Grande, the Potrero de Felipe Lugo to the east, or both, from Sánchez, Temple and Workman. The 1877 map shown above seems to indicate that he chose property on Potrero Grande.<br />
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The loan, however, required the participation of Sanchez and his shares of the La Merced and Potrero Grande ranchos, a tale that will be told later in this blog. Regardless, the loan was provided but was futile, as depositors closed their accounts. The bank failed in early 1876 and Temple, Workman and Sánchez were ruined.<br />
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Baldwin waited three years to foreclose, allowing the interest to accumulate so that it would be impossible, as if it weren't already, to redeem the mortgage and its rising principal. After assuming ownership of Potrero Grande, he sold 566 acres of the ranch in the northwest corner to Richard Garvey. Garvey, an Irishman who came to Los Angeles in the late 1850s, was involved in mining and became associated with Baldwin at a gold mine near today's Big Bear Lake. He was an agent of Baldwins for many years and was also the court receiver sent to William Workman's residence on 17 May 1876 to serve him notice about pending court proceedings for Workman's estate in the aftermath of the bank failure. Distraught at the prospect of losing a real estate empire carefully constructed over thirty years, Workman took his own life that evening. Later, Baldwin and Garvey had a falling-out over how rents were collected on the ranchos near Old Mission that the former had acquired and the latter was helping to manage. Garvey was a shrewd businessman and amassed a substantial estate that made him a founder of Monterey Park and lived well into the 20th century.<br />
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Meanwhile, William Workman, in October 1862, decided to transfer his 1/4 share in the Potrero Grande to his daughter, Margarita Temple and her children, probably as a safeguard to keep land in the family's hands in case of any unforeseen problems. This 1100 or so acres remained in Workman's control until his death. Not long after Mrs. Temple took possession, she deeded the parcel to two of her sons, Francis and William, who then filed for a legal partition to distinguish their land from that of Baldwin. William, however, borrowed money from the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Los Angeles, using his 550 acres as collateral, and, after not repaying the loan, faced foreclosure and lost his land in June 1880. A few months later, Francis Temple deeded his 550 acres over to Baldwin and Garvey, he having taken possession of the home and 75 acres of his grandfather William Workman, which Francis had managed and occupied since Workman's death. Perhaps the sale of his Potrero Grande land was his way of acquiring the Workman Homestead, which took place at about the sae time in 1880.<br />
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From 1880, then, Baldwin and Garvey assumed ownership of all of Potrero Grande and subdivision gradually ensued, accelerating after Baldwin's death in 1909.<br />
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Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Collections Manager, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-73412737064131765682012-06-07T16:33:00.000-07:002012-08-31T15:47:09.597-07:00Rancho La Merced and Misión ViejaThe Rancho La Merced, comprising 2,363 acres or a half-league in the old Spanish/Mexican system of measurement, lay south and west of Rancho Potrero Chico with San Gabriel Boulevard being a general (though not precise) boundary between the two ranches in the area in and around that thoroughfare's intersection with Rosemead Boulevard.<br />
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La Merced actually stretched east to west from the San Gabriel River and then in a vaiation of a pie-shape to the northwest, with one boundary running through the Montebello Town Center and across the 60 Freeway at Paramount Boulevard, then forming the southern boundary of Resurrection Cemetery and the northern boundary of La Loma Park in Monterey Park before coming to a point at Edison Trails Park at Garfield Avenue. <br />
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It meets a line that moves southeast from that point through residential neighborhoods in Monterey Park and takes in part of the border of the landfill that is on the south side of the 60 Freeway and entering Montebello. After crossing Montebello Boulevard near Avenida La Merced and then across Lincoln Avenue and Poplar Avenue, it reaches its southeast terminus at Beverly Boulevard and the Rio Hondo (the Old San Gabriel River.) <br />
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The boundary then moves northward to the Whittier Narrows Dam and goes along its southern flank and eastward through Streamland Park and along the north side of Kruse Road and the Pico Rivera Municipal Golf Course. After crossing Siphon Road (the old San Gabriel Boulevard route to the current San Gabriel River), the line enters the Whittier Narrows Nature Center briefly before turning back northwest to pass Durfee Avenue and then turn west to Rosemead and the line that this description started with.<br />
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The rancho, long a part of the Mission San Gabriel system, became subject to private ownership by a land grant from Mexican California authorities after the secularization of the missions in the mid-1830s. On 8 October 1844, Governor Manuel Micheltorena issued title to Casilda Soto, in a very rare instance of a California land grant being given to a woman. Casilda Soto was the widow of José Cecilio Villalobo, who also went by the surname of Lobo. <br />
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Cecilio Villalobo's mother was Maria Beltran, a native of Horcasitas, Sonora and born about 1756, and his father Juan José, born in Villa de Sinaloa, ca. 1742, was a soldier with the Rivera-Moncada expedition of 1781 that accompanied the 44 <em>pobladores</em> that settled the newly-founded <em>pueblo</em> of Los Angeles. Shortly afterward, in 1782, Juan José was sent with a detachment that founded the Santa Barbara Presidio. The family was in Santa Barbara when Cecilio was born there on 22 November 1786, but, by the time of the 1790 census of Los Angeles, the family was in the pueblo, listed under the name of Lobo, with Juan José shown as a muleteer. About two years later, in early June 1792, Juan José died.<br />
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Cecilio, meanwhile, married Casilda Soto at Mission San Gabriel in early November 1812 and a few years later, about 1816, the couple were living in San Diego. When the 1836 census of the Los Angeles district was conducted, the couple and five children were residing on what was termed the Rancho Santa Gertrudes, a spin-off in 1834 of the vast Rancho Nieto grant of 1784, and generally considered to be in the vicinity of modern La Mirada, Whittier, Santa Fe Springs and nearby areas. It seems like, though, that the Lobos were residing in what became <em>Misión Vieja</em>, or Old Mission. Although an online source lists Cecilio's death as taking place in 1847, the grant documents to his wife for La Merced in October 1844 refer to her as a widow, so he therefore died sometime between 1836 and then. <br />
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As to why Casilda Soto de Lobo received the La Merced grant, this appears to have to do with the fact that her mother was a Nieto, the family that owned Rancho Santa Gertrudes, where the Lobos were counted in the 1836 census, and that connection might have facilitated the grant to La Merced, though this will probably never be documentable. Casilda's mother, Juana María Nieto, born about 1771 at Buenavista, Sonora, was the daughter of María de los Reyes Armenta and Juan Crispin Pérez Nieto (commonly known by the Pérez surname), both, incidentally, born in Villa de Sinaloa, the hometown of Juan José Villalobo/Lobo, the father of Casilda's husband. Crispin Pérez was the younger brother of Manuel Pérez Nieto, who had received the massive grant referred to above, and resided on what became the Rancho Santa Gertrudes after the Nieto grant division.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmEaiZed_boV1ihauOGpVLnlR2RxgTPdGzzymoTnvcFTcgtmiJSEJhf9H7YZSekrCGkU6lA_jIZNoITbvdSf-48ej7Ok3I8iy3f7kGOkeJSsMfMniuzDH_dHEPA-5gM3qvHljaTT4DHglf/s1600/1877+map+La+Merced.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmEaiZed_boV1ihauOGpVLnlR2RxgTPdGzzymoTnvcFTcgtmiJSEJhf9H7YZSekrCGkU6lA_jIZNoITbvdSf-48ej7Ok3I8iy3f7kGOkeJSsMfMniuzDH_dHEPA-5gM3qvHljaTT4DHglf/s320/1877+map+La+Merced.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This detail from a reproduced 1877 map of southern California shows the Rancho La Merced with its distinctive pointed west end located within the community designation of Old Mission. Just above La Merced is the tiny Rancho Potrero Chico and the Rancho Potrero Grande. At left is the name "A. Repetto," for Alessandro Repetto, an Italian-born sheep rancher who ran his cattle in the hills of what is now Monterey Park and whose son, Timoteo, owned Potrero Chico land for decades. Click on the map to see an enlarged view in a separate window. Courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.</td></tr>
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In any case, it was under Casilda Soto de Lobo's ownership of Rancho La Merced that a small adobe house was built on a bluff overlooking the Rio Hondo, the original channel of the San Gabriel River. Señora Lobo resided in the house and superintended the ranch with her children when the American conquest occurred during the Mexican-American War in 1846-47; in fact, a skirmish between American and <em>Californio</em> forces occurred just downstream on the Rio Hondo not far from the newly-built Soto adobe house (a monument commemorating the "Battle of Rio San Gabriel," which took place on 8-9 January 1847, stands at this general location where Washington Boulevard crosses today's Rio Hondo at Bluff Road in Montebello.<br />
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Shortly after the controversial war's conclusion, the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill changed the landscape of California in so many ways. While some cattle ranchers immediately benefitted financially from the growing demand for local beef in the gold fields, Casilda Soto de Lobo borrowed $2000 from William Workman, co-owner of the Rancho La Puente just east of her La Merced property. In return for the loan, she used her ranch as collateral and a mortgage document was drawn up on 18 December 1850. <br />
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Within a few months, it seems as if Señora Lobo was unable to repay the loan, but rather than file a foreclosure suit in the local district court, Workman executed a deed with Lobo on 30 April 1851, in which he purchased the La Merced for $2500, which might be interpreted as an actual $4500 purchase for the land. Did Workman take this route in some form of sympathy towards a widower with children? The answer will likely never be known.<br />
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What is known is that, within a short period time, Workman and his wife, Nicolasa Urioste, executed a deed with their son-in-law, F. P. F. Temple (husband of their daughter, Margarita) and Juan Matias Sanchez, formerly the <em>majordomo</em> or ranch foreman for Workman at La Puente, giving the two equal ownership of La Merced. Though this deed was dated 15 September 1852, it was already known that the Temples were living on the ranch; in fact, within a month of the deed from Casilda Soto de Lobo, on 25 May 1851, their third son, William, was born at La Merced.<br />
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Prior to the 1852 deed, the Temples, who had lived mainly in Los Angeles from the time of their 1845 marriage because F. P. F. Temple was clerk in the store (the first in the town) owned by his brother, Jonathan until 1849, when he went to the gold fields. Evidently finding, as many did, that digging for gold was not a profitable enterprise for the labor required, Temple may have been given La Merced so that he could have his own cattle ranch, so he could take advantage of the opportunities found in supplying beef to the gold mining communities. Indeed, F. P. F. Temple became a major landowner and businessman in the Tuolumne County boom towns of Sonora and Columbia. <br />
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Upon receiving the deed, the Temples built an L-shaped adobe house that has been said to have been 110 x 70 feet in dimensions--this would be almost 8,000 square feet, which seems hard to believe, unless those dimensions applied to the grounds immediately surrounding the residence. This home stood at what is now the southeast corner of Rosemead Boulevard and San Gabriel Boulevard/Durfee Avenue and was the center of a cattle ranch and farm that was highly successful for about a quarter century.<br />
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The same could be said, as well, for the Soto Adobe, which was occupied by Juan Matias Sanchez. He added a wing to the building, stocked his portion of the ranch with cattle and also raised crops on small sections of the land. While not as well known at the time or subsequently as Workman and Temple, Sanchez was a successful rancher and farmer, to the extent that, within a few years of his moving onto La Merced, he was able to acquire another ranch, which will be the subject of the next post, the Potrero Grande.<br />
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Meantime, there was a notable twist to the story of Rancho La Merced that took place in 1875. William Workman and F. P. F. Temple were the proprietors of one of the two commercial banks in Los Angeles, but, when the state's economy fell into a tailspin that summer because of overspeculation in silver mine stocks in Virginia City, Nevada and then the California Bank in San Francisco collapsed, the Temple and Workman bank found itself besieged by depositors looking to withdrawn their money--money that was not in the vault because the bank was funding many investment projects, such as land subdivisions, railroads and others, in the Los Angeles region.<br />
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When the two men realized that they needed a loan to try and save their bank, they also had to determine which of their massive landholdings, amounting to tens of thousands of acres of land, they would use as collateral for a loan. In the case of La Merced, the September 1852 deed from Workman to Temple and Sanchez, it turned out, had <em>never been recorded</em>. So, on 20 November 1875, almost exactly twenty-three years later, it finally was.<br />
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More on this and other stories connected to the Panic of 1875 in a future post!<br />
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Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-62339525067201807132012-04-26T14:35:00.001-07:002014-09-15T09:44:55.800-07:00Rancho Potrero Chico and Misión ViejaIn the general community of Old Mission or <em>Misión Vieja</em>, there were several ranchos created out of the former lands of the Mission San Gabriel, which was originally established along the Rio Hondo just north and east of San Gabriel Boulevard and west of Rosemead Boulevard in 1771 and then moved to its current location within about three years. Before that, the Gabrieleño Indian villages commonly known as Shevaanga or Siba and Isanthcag-na was likely on or near the same spot.<br />
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Although the secularization of the missions took place in the mid-1830s, it was about a decade before the ranchos at Old Mission were granted. The smallest, but the most historically significant, was Rancho Potrero Chico known also as Potrero de la Misión Vieja de San Gabriel.<br />
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A<em> potrero</em> is pasture land, so with the well-watered lowlands around the Rio Hondo (the old channel of the San Gabriel River) being so desirable for the maintaining of cattle, it is easy to see why the three ranchos named as potreros were of interest to potential grantees.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This detail from a very large 1877 map of southern California shows Rancho Potrero Chico in the "Old Mission" district with Rancho La Merced to the south, Rancho Potrero Grande (identified by the 4431 acres mark) to the north, west and east, and the 45 degree angle line marking the boundary between Potrero Grande and Potrero de Felipe Lugo to the east.</td></tr>
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Rancho Potrero Chico was granted on 9 December 1844 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Juan Alvtire and Antonio Valenzuela and the size of the land in the grant was said to have been 1,200 by 450 varas. A <em>vara</em> is a unit of length that varied throughout Spanish-controlled areas, but in California was generally acknowledged to be 33 inches. Using this, the size of this rancho would have been in the neighborhood of about 96 acres. By any standard, this is an extraordinarily small rancho and it is not known why the grant was so small, unless it was understood to be specific pasture land held over from the original Mission San Gabriel's 1771-1774 occupation of the area. Although Manuel Requena, alcalde (mayor) of Los Angeles, conducted a survey or <em>diseño</em>, this map does not appear to have survived. <br />
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Basically, the Potrero Chico lies north of San Gabriel Boulevard and Durfee Avenue and is bisected by Rosemead Boulevard, with more of the ranch to the east of the latter road than to the west. To the north is Legg Lake and the Whittier Narrows Regional Park. While this is not entirely clear, it does appear as if the Alvitres took the western portion of the small ranch, while the Valenzuelas occupied the eastern section. The reasons for this assumption are below.<br />
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As to the original grantees, Juan José Alvitre was born on 30 August 1798 in Los Angeles. His mother, María Rufina Hernandez was a native of the presidio of Loreto in Baja California. His father, Sebastian Alvtire, was born in Villa de Sinaloa in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico. A soldier in the Spanish army of New Spain (Mexico), Alvtire married Rufina at Loreto. He was one of the <em>soldados del cuero</em> (leather jackets) who were the military guard for the first European land exploration of California, the Portolá Expedition of 1769-1770. He was, then, present when the expedition stopped at the San Gabriel River (which Portolá called San Miguel) and camped. Father Juan Crespí, another member of the expedition who was scouting potential mission sites, found this area to be excellent for a mission, though considered the area now known as La Puente to be superior. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This 1924 map of oil fields in the Montebello/Whittier districts shows the Rancho Potrero Chico as being separate from much of the land denoted as the Barry, Repetto and Alvitre holdings, which was clearly not the case from other maps, as seen below. Clicking on any map in this post will show them in separate windows and in a larger size.</td></tr>
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In any case, Sebastian Alvitre remained in the military for some years and was then a settler of San José in 1783 before migrating to Los Angeles seven years later. Still later, Sebastian settled on the enormous Rancho Nieto and died in 1817 on what became the subdivided Santa Gertrudes rancho within the larger Nieto grant of 1784. There'll be more about him and others in his family in subsequent posts on this blog, but at the Mission San Gabriel in October 1817 Juan José married María Tomasa Alvarado, who was born in 1799, at the Mission San Miguel in Baja California. The couple settled on the Nieto rancho with Juan José's parents and had 14 children, of whom five died in infancy or childhood, and by the time their last child was born in 1839 the area they lived on had been subdivided into Santa Gertrudes. <br />
Five years after that, the grant to Potrero Chico was made and the Alvitres resettled. The couple appeared in the 1850 federal census, actually taken in early 1851 because California's statehood did not become official until September 1850, but they do not appear in the 1860 enumeration, so they evidently died in the interim. <br />
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The other grantee, José Antonio Valenzuela, was the brother-in-law of Juan José Alvitre, being married to Juan's younger sister, Maria Dominga Alvitre, who was born in Los Angeles in 1805. Valenzuela was almost a decade older than his wife, being born in 1796. His father, Jose Manuel, was, like Sebastian Alvitre from Villa de Sinaloa, Sinaloa, Mexico and came to California for the 1781 expedition to Mission San Gabriel, which would evidently been the same that brought the original 44 <em>pobladores </em>to found the new pueblo of Los Angeles. José Antonio and María Dominga had five children, including three sons and two daughters. She passed away in 1853 and he followed a decade later.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another 1920s era map that seems to show the Cruz, Barry, Repetto and Alvitre sections as clearly within the boundaries of Rancho Potrero Chico. This is getting confusing!</td></tr>
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Within a few years of the Alvitres and Valenzuelas receiving the Potrero Chico grant, the American invasion of Mexico, including its department of Alta California, took place. While the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which followed the conclusion of fighting in 1848, was drafted to protect land grants made under Mexican or Spanish rule, the article covering this was removed by the United States Senate before ratification. Consequently, Congress passed a land claims act pertaining to California grants in March 1851, establishing a commission to hear testimony and receive evidence of legitimate claims to grants by their owners. Although the commission approved 85% of the 800 or so claims put before them, the federal government pursued an automatic appeal of successful claims to the federal courts, going as far as the United States Supreme Court, if needed.<br />
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Alvitre and Valenzuela filed their land claim on 23 October 1852 when the commission held sessions in Los Angeles. A little more than a year later, on 13 December 1853, the commission ruled in favor of the claimants, but, as noted above, the inevitable appeal by the feds was filed. Two hearings before the Los Angeles federal district court were held in late January and early March 1856 and, again, Alvitre and Valenzuela, were successful. Another year passed by and, in late February 1857, the district court officially dismissed a federal appeal. Believing, evidently, that their grant was fully confirmed, the owners had a survey drawn up by county surveyor Henry Hancock in 1858, which gave the acreage as 100.07, although a 1956 engineering report submitted by Valenzuela heirs stated that Hancock recorded 96 acres, divided into two even sections of 48--presumably one for each family, with Alvitre to the west and Valenzuela to the east (as noted above.) This report also gives 1850s tax figures showing that the two men were assessed for 48 acres each.<br />
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Within a few years, however, both Alvitre and Valenzuela were dead and a number of issues developed that greatly changed the situation at Potrero Chico. First, although the 1858 survey was filed, there was no delivery of the patent by the federal government nor was any effort by heirs to seek one made. In addition, whatever income might have been made from the ranch, whether by farming and cattle grazing, the economy in the United States generally and in California and the Los Angeles area specifically soured in the late 1850s as a national depression erupted in 1857 and the end of the Gold Rush took place in the state. Then, in the winter of 1861-62, enormous flooding took place that ravaged the area, especially the Potrero Chico situated within the Whittier Narrows, where torrents of water from the San Gabriel (then called the Sierra Madre) Mountains rushed south toward the ocean. Once the area dried out, a two-year drought ensued that brought further devastation to farmers and ranchers.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Continuing the confusion: this map, also from about the 1920s or so, shows considerable sections of the Alvitre, Repetto, Barry and Davis properties outside, but some are inside, of the rancho boundaries.</td></tr>
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It is not surprising then to find that two of Valenzuela's daughters decided to sell their inherited lands, probably because of the severe economic depression that existed in the early to mid 1860s. In early March 1863, just after their father José Antonio Valenzuela's death, Salome and her husband Lauriano García and Siriaca and her husband Francisco Duarte deeded their inheritance, which was not specified in acres, to William Workman, F. P. F. Temple and Juan Matias Sánchez. These three men were the wealthiest land owners in the general area. Workman, who owned half of the enormous Rancho La Puente to the east had obtained the Rancho La Merced, immediately south of Potrero Chico in 1850 by foreclosure against its grantee, Casilda Soto de [Villa]Lobo and gave that ranch to his son-in-law, Temple and his La Puente <em>mayordomo</em> (foreman), Sanchez. Over several years, during the depressed economic period of 1857 to 1863, the three began acquiring ranch lands in the <em>Misión Vieja</em> area, including portions of Potrero Chico.<br />
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Notably, the sale price was only $1, which suggests that Workman, Temple and Sanchez had perhaps loaned money to the sisters or, more likely, to their father or that there was some other consideration that would lead the Valenzuela women and their husbands to transfer the property for literally nothing. Also of interest is that the land described was "known by the name of <em>Potrero</em> <em>en media de Potrero Chico</em> originally granted to Antonio Valenzuela and Juan Alvitre." The italicized name indicates that this was half of the overall Potrero Chico consisting of separate pasture lands--in other words, this would be what Valenzuela had separate from Alvitre.<br />
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Meantime, another portion of Potrero Chico was sold a few weeks later, in early May 1863. This was a tract, described as in the northeast portion of the ranch and measuring 350x250 varas in extent. This is about 15 acres or so. This tract had been sold in March 1853 by Antonio Valenzuela to Francisco Vejar, of the well-known family that owned much of present today Pomona, and Vejar was assessed for 1850s taxes on 13 acres. Vejar, in turn, appointed his son Juan to be his "attorney in fact," handling the sale of this parcel to Workman, Temple and Sanchez. This was another $1 deed, but the reason for it is also not known.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And, yet . . . this map, another early 20th century example, shows the Cruz, Barry, Repetto and Alvitre parcels as being <em>mostly</em> within the rancho and only <em>partially</em> without! Again, click on any map here to see them in a different window.</td></tr>
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This left approximately 40 acres or so that was retained by the Alvitre family on the western side of the ranch. After the deaths of Juan José Alvitre and his wife Tomasa Alvarado, their estate administrator was their son José Anastacio, who was born in 1822 and lived into the 1910s and who took possession of the northwestern portion of the ranch.<br />
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Just below this was a section that was inherited by Anastacio's sister, Maria de la Cruz. Although she was married in 1843 to José Ygnacio Cerradel, she had a later common-law relationship with Alessandro Repetto, a native of Genoa, Italy, who raised sheep on a ranch he owned in the hills of today's Monterey Park. In 1866, Maria de la Cruz gave birth to a son named Timoteo, who claimed his birthplace as the Rancho Potrero Chico, presumably on his mother's land. <br />
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In a parcel below Maria de la Cruz was one inherited by her sister, María Ventura, who was married to José Antonio Bermudez. Finally, there was about 6 acres held by another sibling, Micaela Alvitre. All four of these Alvitre tracts, owned by Anastacio, Cruz, Ventura, and Micaela, survived the the difficult years of the late 1850s and early 1860s, although Micaela did sell her tract to F. P. F. Temple in the early 1875.<br />
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Temple, Workman and Sanchez, however, experienced their own financial disaster, when the bank owned by the former two collapsed in 1876 due to poor management, bad investments, and a souring national and state economy. Desperate to save their institution, Temple and Workman took out a loan from San Francisco capitalist Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, putting down their many landholdings as collateral. Baldwin would not execute the loan without getting Sanchez to include his land in the deal. The loan failed to prevent the failure of the Temple and Workman bank and the three men were ruined. Subsequently, Baldwin foreclosed and took over the eastern portions of Potrero Chico deeded by the Valenzuela daughters and Vejar to Temple, Workman and Sanchez. After Baldwin's 1909 death, his daughters Anita Baldwin Stocker and Clara Baldwin became owners of these areas of the ranch.<br />
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Meantime, Temple had deeded the Micaela Alvitre tract shortly after he acquired it to Venancia Peña de Davis, who had been associated for years with Sanchez, and Mrs. Davis occupied it with her children. After Venancia died, her daughter Julia Davis de Cruz assumed ownership and resided on the property until her death in 1918. By 1930, a man named Stearns was said to have bought her land, shown as a little over 8 acres. As to the Ventura Alvitre de Bermudez tract, this soon passed to her daughter Adelaida (Elizabeth) Bermudez de Barry, who was married Irish-born George Barry. After the death of Cruz Alvitre in 1907, her tract went to her son, Timoteo Repetto, who had lived for years in Mexico and worked as a professional acrobat with his Mexican-born wife, Maria before moving in with his mother on her 16-acre spread in 1902. Finally, after Anastacio Alvitre died in the 1910s, his land went to son Pedro. Timoteo Repetto and Pedro Alvitre proved to be the last of the original ranch descendants to live on Potrero Chico, remaining there well after the 1940 census (as shown in the last post on this blog.)<br />
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Still, there was an essential problem. Despite the 1856-57 court judgments in favor of the Alvitre-Valenzuela land claim, no patent had been issued by the United States for Potrero Chico. There were also serious questions about the actual boundaries and acreage of the ranch and, as was often the case with Henry Hancock's work, the survey he did in 1858 was seriously questioned. Consequently, in 1920, the Joy Survey was conducted and came up with about 95 acres in total. This map was accepted by the California Surveyor General and the commissioner of the federal General Land Office. With a new survey on file, the heirs, presumably that of the Alvitre family, were able to request, finally, their government patent, which was dated 4 April 1923.<br />
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By 1923, some of their residents and heirs on Potrero Chico were leasing their properties for oil development, which had swept the area since the discovery of oil in the Montebello Hills several years prior. In many cases, prospecting was unsuccessful, in others there was moderate production, with the best wells generally being the hills or very close to them. In at least, possibly more, cases at Potrero Chico, there was at least some production, as Adelaida Bermudez de Barry and the estate of Julia Davis de Cruz (who died just weeks before oil drilling started on her land), in the southwestern sections closest to the hills, did receive at least some royalties.<br />
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In later years, though, oil or at least the potential of it seems to have driven the effort of the Valenzuela heirs to look into possible claims for the Potrero Chico lands they had once owned. The 1956 engineering report mentioned above was created to advance the Valenzuela family's assertion that they had been deprived, by bad surveying, other legal actions, and even an unsourced report of violence, of oil-bearing (or potentially so) lands that they were entitled to as descendants of one of the original ranch grantees. <br />
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A reading of the document, however, seems to show that the engineer was seeking to identify the location of the Potrero Chico ranch as being further west and south than the official maps show (basically over a reading of the original grant--the map of which is long gone--that indicates a reference to crests of hills that could have been the Montebello Hills to the southwest), including "covering" land owned by such successful oil leasors as Walter P. Temple (who was actually south of San Gabriel Boulevard) and William Prugh (whose land was on San Gabriel Boulevard, but near Darlington Avenue quite a distance north and west of Potrero Chico.) Moreover, the engineer, who did a great deal of research which is useful, also made some erroneous statements about deeds and grants. <br />
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One example is the claim that the 1853 deed from Valenzuela to Vejar was invalid because "having been made in 1853 over a year during which period the Mexicans could retain their old citizenship after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified, the transfer would clearly come under American Law . . . which would bar further action." The problem with this interpretation is simply that the treaty guaranteed that citizens of Mexican California would automatically receive American citizenship with the transfer of California to the U. S. <em>unless they elected otherwise within five years</em>. There is no evidence that Valenzuela elected to forego American citizenship and remain only a Mexican citizen and if he did nothing, he was automatically an American citizen and, therefore, entirely capable of issuing deeds.<br />
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In any case, it is hard to get around the fact that, in 1863, Salome and Siriaca Valenzuela, with their husbands, sold their interest in Potrero Chico to Workman, Temple and Sanchez and that there were many owners, residents and users of the land over the following 90 years. In addition, the surveying clearly was a mess (as the examples of maps shows above does demonstrate), but the assertion that the ranch boundaries would be so much further west and south is based on reading very vague statements made in the 1840s and then from witness statements from Valenzuela descendants who were not alive when the original grant was made. <br />
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Notably, one of them said that Valenzuela asked for land in the Montebello Hills (where valuable oil wells were located--some still operating today, though not for long) because he wanted to raise potatoes on them where it was drier than the land near the Rio Hondo. Yet, how would raising potatoes have been conducted on rocky hilly slopes with little soil in which to plant and no easily obtainable water supply for irrigating? If that were the case, than owners over the following decades, including Temple, Sanchez and Baldwin, would have been able to have farmed the hills before oil was found in 1917--but the hills apparently were only used for grazing animals.<br />
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Rancho Potrero Chico, though one of the smallest ranchos found in the Spanish and Mexican eras of California, is significant. Home for thousands of years to Gabrieleño Indians whose village of Isanthcag-na was located in the area, the rancho also has an important connection to the first European settlement in Los Angeles County, the Mission San Gabriel. Granted to descendants of early Spanish-era immigrants to California in the Alvitre and Valenzuela families, the rancho was occupied, ranched and farmed for a few generations with much of its parcels sold and deeded to others over the decades. The oil industry coming in after 1917 transformed the rancho and, after World War II, the creation of the Whittier Narrows flood control district also meant great changes as residential use was banned.<br />
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Finally, the Bosque de Rio Hondo park opened at the northwest corner of Rosemead and San Gabriel boulevards and part of it <em>may </em>(depending on whether surveys are believed!) be within the rancho, while other sections have commercial, government and recreational use in and around Whittier Narrows Regional Park.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-11131927435390443542012-04-17T18:36:00.000-07:002012-04-20T15:36:29.789-07:00Misión Vieja and the 1940 Federal CensusA couple of weeks ago, the 1940 Federal Census was made publicly available by the National Archives. Censuses are released for general use 72 years after they were taken, so this latest enumeration allows us to see what was happening in our country at the tail end of the Great Depression and just before the United States entered World War II.<br />
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There were some notable changes to this census compared to previous ones. For example, the educational levels of citizens were recorded. Another addition is that residents were asked if they were living in the same household or, if not, where they had lived five years prior, in 1935. The census also asked for more specifics about employment, including number of weeks worked and earned income for the year 1939. With both the living arrangements since 1935 and the employment questions, the Census Bureau clearly wanted to see the effects of the Depression on Americans.<br />
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At Old Mission, changes continued to occur as the use of land in the area changed. On 13 April, census taker Robert West traveled down Rosemead Boulevard from Loma Avenue in what is now South El Monte and began his count within the area that is generally <em>Misión Vieja</em>. Notably, most of those persons counted remained in the same household they had been in during 1935. Of the thirty households that he found, only five, however, owned their houses, the rest being renters. Some of this was attributable to employees of oil and gas companies that had leases or, perhaps, owned the land they were prospecting. In some cases, residents might have been tenants of absentee landlords.<br />
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The first family was a rare one of propertyowners, this being Lorenzo Garcia, a 40-year old widower from Mexico, who lived with his four daughters and one son, all born in California. The Garcias had been in the same house in 1935, but, while Lorenzo was out of work, he had two daughters, Conchita and Isabelle, who were working as private family servants. As to education, Lorenzo studied up to the fourth grade, while his wife and two oldest daughters had some high school education.<br />
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Next to the Garcias was Severo and Micaela Ramirez, both 40, and their three sons and one daughter. While the parents were born in Mexico, their children were natives of California. This family had also resided in the same house five years prior and Severo worked as a road construction laborer, while one of his daughters was a student employee. Severo had a fourth-grade education, but his wife never went to school. The two youngest children were still in school, but the oldest, 19 and 18, left after the eighth grade.<br />
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Following were 88-year old Filomeno Alvarez, who lived with his 75-year old wife Virginia. Both were Mexican natives, had lived in the same house in 1935 and neither had ever attended school. At their age, of course, it is not surprising the neither had a listed occupation.<br />
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Then, there were the remaining members of the Alvitre family still living at Old Mission, where members of the family had resided for over 100 years. The patriarch was Pedro Alvitre, 75, who owned a modest home self-valued at $300. Pedro was listed as a farmer and had never been to school. He lived his 31-year old son, Angelo, and the young man's wife, Anita, age 26. Both of them had been to school through the sixth grade and Angelo was employed as a nurseryman. Living in a separate dwelling was Albert Alvitre, Pedro's son, who was residing with his wife Stella, 23, and their four young children, ranging from 2 months to 5 years old. Albert, who had been through two years of high school, was listed as head of a farm, perhaps superintending his father's spread, passed down for nearly a century on the old Rancho Potrero Chico, close to the original location of Mission San Gabriel, from its 1771 founding to about three years later when it moved to its current site. Finally, there was another son, Richard Alvitre, aged 30, his 20-year old wife Rebecca and their year-old son Rudolph. Richard had also completed two years of high school and, like his brother Angelo, worked in a nursery.<br />
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After a farming family was counted, named Varza by the census taker, but possibly named Garza, and headed by a 47-year old native of Mexico named Daniel and his wife Mary, who had three girls from 7 to 13 years old, the enumeration movdd to the other remaining "old timer" left from the early days of the Old Mission community. This was Pedro Alvitre's cousin, Timoteo Repetto. Aged 75, Repetto lived alone on some acreage that had been left to him through his mother, who was an Alvitre. He had a much nicer home than his cousin, however, judging from the $3000 value assigned to it. Shown also as a farmer, Timoteo was unusual with respect to his education, since he was shown as having attended two years of college, a rarity in the neighborhood.<br />
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The next household was that of Marcino and Isabella Serrano, natives of Mexico, who had three sons, a daughter and Mrs. Serrano's father, with them. Marcino, who did not receive any schooling, was a building construction laborer. Adjacent to them was another highly educated person, Mexican-born Juan Robles, age 45, who was a college graduate or at least had attended four years of higher education. Also different was his occupation: Robles was listed as "proprietor, fish pond." Evidently, he operated either a fish farm or, more likely a place where people could do a little fishing. In this general area is Legg Lake and maybe this was a predecessor of sorts. After Robles was the household of Pablo and Julia Amaro and Pablo's father, Amado, who was listed as 95 years old and would have been the oldest Old Mission resident. Pablo worked as a farmer and he and his wife had completed the eighth grade while Amado went only as far as the second. All of the people mentioned above had been residents of their households in 1935, except for Robles who had been living then in Los Angeles.<br />
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The next stop was the residence of Alva Andrus, a resident of the community since 1926, and a 49-year old native of Nebraska with an eighth-grade education. Andrus, living with his Indiana-born wife, Gayle, who only went to school through the fourth-grade, and their 14-year old son who was in eighth grade, did not have a job, though he'd been a laborer ten years before.<br />
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Following were two families who were connected. Archie McCoy, a 47-year old from New York, who'd been the college for a a year, lived his wife, two sons, and her father and McCoy was a oil company pumper. One of his sons, both of whom had some college education, was a car loader for an automobile company. Next to them was Nellie McCoy, presumably a sister-in-law of Archie's, and her son, Leo. The two had been in Anaheim in 1935, while Archie and his family were in the Old Mission community then. Leo was a truck driver for the "CCC," which stands for the California Conservation Corps, a New Deal program that is still around and doing important public works today. Another oil worker lived nearby, toolman Luther Grisham, a 38-year old from Illinois and his wife, two daughters and son--the Grishams had also been in the same house five years earlier. <br />
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The last two families listed on Rosemead Boulevard were that of building construction laborer Andrew Nunez, a 29-year old native of Mexico, his wife Ignacia, their two girls and one boy, and Nunez' fater Esteban or Steven and Joseph Lara, a 21-year old farmer and California native, residing with his wife, Mary, and their ten-month old daughter. Both Nunez, whose family had been in Los Angeles in 1935, and Lara, who was in the same house as five years before, had finished the eighth grade.<br />
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From here, enmerator West turned east and went up Durfee Avenue. His first family encountered was farm hand Eusebio Pérez, a 44-year old California native, his 23-year old wife, and two sons and a daughter, ranging from ages 12 to 18. Clearly Pérez had been married before and the children came from that first marriage. He had a sixth-grade education and two of his three children were in school, though the oldest, son Manuel, was also a farm worker. The family had been in their residence in 1935.<br />
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Two more oil-industry families followed. Truman Goodenough (these names usually pronounced Good-now) was an oil pumper and still working in a dangerous profession at age 69. The Pennsylvania native (this is where the American oil industry began in the late 1850s), who finished eighth grade, lived with his 57-year old wife, Mary. Next to them was an oil field foreman at only age 22, Robert Cain, who was a high school graduate and also from Pennsylvania and living with his 21-year old wife, Ruth, who a rare female worker, she being a typist for an insurance company. Both families had been in their houses in 1935.<br />
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Then, there was 48-year old Michigan-born Don Renwick, who migrated from Los Angeles within the last five years. Renwick, who had an eighth-grade education, was a foreman for a road construction crew, and he lived with his wife and namesake son.<br />
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The only Japanese family in the community was that of farmer Tokusuki Asato, age 63, and a widower and his three sons and one daughter, all born in California, and two of the sons working for their father. Asato had no education, but his two oldest sons had finished high school and his younger two were still in high school. The family was in the same residence they occupied in 1935.<br />
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Next to the Asatos were two additional oil workers, both working as pumpers on wells. These were 52-year old Edward Rush, a Tennessee-native with an eighth grade education and William Bugbee, a Canadian (as was his wife) who was still working at age 72. These men had also lived in their homes five years before.<br />
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West then counted families on Siphon Road, which still exists as a non-public roadway and which was historically an extension of San Gabriel Boulevard, being called in earlier days, Temple Road, for the prominent ranching family that once lived in the neighborhood. Here, on Siphon, was another aged worker, 74-year old Jesús Estrada, a native of California, who only went to school through the second grade and who was employed as a farm caretaker. He'd been in the same house the preceding half-decade, as well. <br />
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Of the several Italian families who had been in the community for several decades, one was Baptista Ciocca, a 65-year old native of the old country, living with his wife, also from Italy, and their two sons and two daughters. The Ciocca's were among the few homeowners, living in a $7000 residence, and also were distinguished by having three children who had been to college, with the youngest still in high school. Ciocca, as in 1930, had no listed occupation, evidently having enough money to be retired and was in the same house as in 1935.<br />
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Bernard Normann, listed as a farmer, but as a walnut grower in 1930, was living in a modest $1000 home that he owned along with his two sons in their early 20s. Normann, born in Illinois and aged 50, had an eighth grade education, but while his older son, a pipe factory worker, finished high school, his youngest was a rare college graduate and was working as a commercial artist. The Normann's obviously had not gone anywhere in the preceding five years.<br />
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The remaining five households were all renters. 27-year old California native Donald Farmer was not that, but, instead was a gas company crewman, who went as far as eighth grade in school. His Texan-born 18 year old wife, Thelma, completed two years of high school. Wilber Nutt was a poultry farmer and was a 25-year old California native, living with his wife Sybil, who was from Illinois and was a rare woman with some college education, probably junior college. The couple had a three year old daughter and, as with the Farmers, were living in the same residence as in 1935.<br />
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Two others on Siphon Road were 35-year old Jack Fickert, a Modesto, California transplant, who had one year of high school education and was employed as an oil well pumper. Next to him, was a 49-year old Oklahoma-born widow, Lilly Capehart, who had moved from her home state within the last five years and was a restaurant manager, though probably not in the Old Mission neighborhood.<br />
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Finally, the last family counted in the census in <em>Misión Vieja</em> was that of John Briano, whose father settled as a winemaker in the community during the 1890s. John, age 41 and a high school graduate, was running a retail liquor store and lived with his wife Freda and their three teenage children, one of whom was in college.<br />
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What the 1940 census shows is that the population of Old Mission was continuing to decline with there being just over 100 persons in the community. Many were farmers there, others worked on the remaining oil wells which were part of the Montebello Oil Fields, and some had jobs that took them outside their community. Within the next couple of decades, most of the community would be declared a flood zone by the federal government and the affected residents were forced to leave as the Whittier Narrows Dam was built. The 1950 census won't be available until 2022, so it will be quite a while until the next examination of the community can be made.<br />
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Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-83116539648565339792012-03-09T19:06:00.001-08:002012-03-09T19:07:50.445-08:00Misión Vieja and the 1930 Federal Census<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtnuHJty5ZchIq7to-esVlwgeuIE-ZnwJptUp2mIJl3LoBbff2qgr87D_uqgpx90V_jo-hJzLEi5WWTsVtItYUXXZtu_XC6EvKp5H4k2zvCejOKNAH_0AGvKHuQqEF9LDvPv7dNZWR3A21/s1600/Old+Mission+area+dairy+1930.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtnuHJty5ZchIq7to-esVlwgeuIE-ZnwJptUp2mIJl3LoBbff2qgr87D_uqgpx90V_jo-hJzLEi5WWTsVtItYUXXZtu_XC6EvKp5H4k2zvCejOKNAH_0AGvKHuQqEF9LDvPv7dNZWR3A21/s320/Old+Mission+area+dairy+1930.jpg" width="320" yda="true" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This photograph shows one of the several dairies located at <em>Misión Vieja</em> in 1930 and is from a college report on the Old Mission Community called "A Rural Life Survey of the La Puente School District, 1930" by Trent H. Steele. Click on the image to get an enlarged view in a new window. <br />
Courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.</td></tr>
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With the 1930 federal census, changes that had been developing in the Old Mission area since the discovery of oil in the community continued to affect the demographics of the neighborhood. Over three days, from 24-26 April 1930, enumerator Efner Farrington made his way through Misión Vieja, having come in from communities to the north in present-day South El Monte.<br />
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One page was identified as "near Rosemead on Potrero Rancho," which appears to mean the area in and around Rancho Potrero Chico. In this part of the listings were the last two of the long-standing families from Old Mission still remaining in the area. 65 year-old Timoteo Repetto, whose mother was a member of the Alvitre family that received half of the approximately ninety-acre Potrero Chico land grant in 1845, resided with his Mexican-born wife Maria, age 60, in a home self-valued at $2,000 and was listed as a "fruit farmer." The next household was that of Repetto's cousin, Pedro Alvitre, age 64, who declared his home at $300, and lived with four sons and a daughter, ranging in age from 16 to 26.<br />
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Of the eight other households on the page, seven were headed by persons born in Mexico and who migrated to the United States between 1900 and 1920. The men in these household were mainly farm laborers, although there was one who worked in a nursery, another who toiled in a brick yard, and a third who was employed by a clay products company. Surnames included Enriquez, Gonzalez, Valdez, Lara and Rodriguez. The other household, that of the Abe family, was Japanese, with the husband, Tamakichi, coming to America in 1902 and his wife, Hana, arriving a decade later. Tamakichi Abe was a farm foreman.<br />
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The next page consisted of persons listed as residing on Lexington Road (now known as Lexington-Gallatin Road and which was an old route between the old community of Lexington, now in El Monte, and Gallatin, which was in today's Downey) and Durfee Avenue. Most families here were also Mexican and migrating to the U.S. between 1911 and 1924 and the men working in general farm labor. Family names included Reyes, Rodriguez, Garcia, Contreras, Campos and Martinez. <br />
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There was one Italian family, headed by dairy owner Bartolo Briano, who had worked in a local vineyard for his winemaking brother Paolo, partner of Giovanni Piuma in their business at the old Temple Homestead at the southeast corner of San Gabriel and Rosemead boulevards. Briano, a 1906 emigrant to America, employed two German-born brothers as milkers, Johannes and Arnold Peterson. Johannes was 24 and came to the U.S. eight years before and had just married an Oklahoma native in 1929, while his 20-year old sibling migrated in 1927.<br />
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Another dairyman was Andrew Irwin, a native of Northern Ireland, who came to America in 1892 at age 20. He was married to a woman from Kansas and had a daughter and son in his household. The next household was that of oil refinery shop foreman George Afheldt, a migrant from Germany in 1891, and his Kentucky-born wife and 9-year old daughter. There was one other family to mention, that of 62-year old Indiana-born orange grower Edwin Eby, his wife Emma, a 52-year old also from Indiana, and their California-born daughter. Emma Eby was the school teacher at Temple School, formerly called La Puente School, which had been founded in 1863 and was in its third building at the corner of Durfee Avenue and what is now Santa Anita Avenue (then Lexington-Gallatin Road.)<br />
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The next sheet was demarcated as "Siphon" and this refers to the old roadway that extended from San Gabriel Boulevard and then past its junction with Durfee eastward towards the San Gabriel River. The roadbed is still there, though not as a public street. In this area, households headed by native-born Mexicans predominated and these were farm laborers who rented their property. Surnames included Hernandez, Mirelles, Estrada, Garcia and Robledo and these families came to the U.S. from 1914 to 1928. Another laborer was an American, Alva Andrus, who came with his family to the area in 1926.<br />
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All of these laborers might have worked for the two dairy owners on this sheet: Urbano Estrada, a California native of Mexican parentage and Italian Baptista Ciocca. Estrada lived with his wife, Lucy, who had a Cuban father, and eight children, one of whom was a truck driver and another a seamstress. Ciocca, who came to America in 1902, lived with his wife, who came the following year, and their nine children, one who was private nurse, another did fertilizer work on the dairy, and a third was a grocery clerk. The last Siphon Road resident (the enumeration continuing on the following sheet) was walnut grower B. E. Nomann, who may have been cultivating an existing grove, because walnuts were raised in the Durfee/Siphon area at least as far back as the 1880s, when John H. Temple, member of the early Old Mission family, had a 132 acres of the crop on what is now the Whittier Narrows Nature Center.<br />
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The next sheet included households on San Gabriel Boulevard, Durfee Avenue, and Fleming Lane, which no longer survives. On San Gabriel Boulevard, perhaps at the northeast corner of Rosemead, was John Rodriguez, his two brothers Joaquin and Amado and his sister Agnes--all natives of California, as were their parents. John was listed as a vegetable farmer who owned a modest $100 house, and his brothers were shown as farm laborers, obviously working for John. <br />
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The next three households on Durfee Avenue were those of oil workers who rented their houses, though from which oil company is not specified. These were men aged 44 to 59, one from Pennsylvania, another from Ohio and the third from California. Another household was the single one of Ed Ciocca, a relative of the Baptista Ciocca noted above, and who was a 36-year old dairy farmer and emigrant of 1912. Ciocca had a Mexican-born employee named Reginaldo Gutierrez, who had come to the U.S. only two years before, in 1928.<br />
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On Fleming Lane was its namesake, truck garden farmer William Fleming and his family, dairy farmer Henry Kruse, a German-born emigrant of 1907, and two of Kruse's workers, one from Germany and the other from Kansas. As the next sheet continues with Fleming's son, there was one more occupant of Fleming Lane: Japanese vegetable garden laborer Sam Inouye, a 56-year old emigrant of 1892, his wife of thirteen years, a Latina named Eloise; her child from an earlier marriage and their son, Samuel, Junior. The family had been in Texas before coming to California and it is wondered how people in both states reacted to their mixed marriage and children.<br />
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Back on San Gabriel Boulevard was hog farmer Martin Litwin, a 40-year old who came from Poland in 1898, his wife Cassie, also from that country and an emigrant of 1913, and their two children, born in Michigan. The last two households in the Old Mission community were back on Siphon Road and consisted of John Briano, brother of the Bartolo and Paolo mentioned earlier, who was a 30-year old grocery store owner, living with his California-born wife of Swiss parents, Frieda, and their three young children, a daughter and two sons; and "S. Hanashiro", a 53-year old Japanese truck garden farmer and migrant of 1922. Hanashiro had two children from a previous marriage and a second wife, Kamado, who came with him to the United States and there were three sons and two daughters born in California.<br />
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From there, the census moved northwest up San Gabriel Boulevard towards Rosemead and it is interesting to note that the first household encountered before reaching Darlington Avenue and the small residential tract next to the 60 Freeway was that of William S. Prugh, a 70-year old rancher and mirror salesman from Ohio, whose house was declared as worth $50,000, a sum about ten times greater than anyone else in the area. Prugh, who resided with his two sisters and the husband and daughter of one of the sisters, had worked in a glass and mirror company in Pittsburgh part-owned by his brother, and moved to Los Angeles about 1914 to represent the company. He bought a small ranch off San Gabriel Boulevard, on which oil wells were successfully drilled, and he built his mansion, <em>El Aliso</em> (The Cottonwood), on it. Prugh enjoyed his wealth another few years and died in October 1933.<br />
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By 1930, the community of Misión Vieja had undergone major changes. Most of its longtime families were gone, including those from the Davis, Barry, Temple, Manzanares, Andrade families and the only who remained were cousins Timoteo Repetto and Pedro Alvitre, neighbors on the Rancho Potrero Chico granted to their grandfather 85 years before. There were, however, new residents, most coming from Mexico between 1900 and 1930, although there were also a few Japanese, Italians and others. Aside from the oil industry, the dairy business also became a fixture, with several of them in operation. Neighborhoods change, but Old Mission remained fairly static for decades. With the onset of the oil industry and widespread immigration from Mexico, mainly after the Revolution of 1910, and other factors, the community did transform.<br />
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In a few weeks, the 1940 census will be made available for the first time and it will be interesting to see what <em>Misión Vieja</em> was like a little over 70 years ago.<br />
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Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-33566450443167743852012-02-07T13:54:00.001-08:002012-02-23T12:59:02.486-08:00Misión Vieja and the 1920 Federal Census<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx-QM2Gh1STimCmZUQaM38oNqMkCYFYVm7V4qp97AGIUsaiXcfUExzuwYiaO-1xDLeqBu0NA46z7TRNk_l2OE9-T-TxrZi7dqp6bQMUdSrWXPYJjGEfRmXiodM3nUuSgFql_UtvCYMFfAE/s1600/Montebello+Oil+Field+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx-QM2Gh1STimCmZUQaM38oNqMkCYFYVm7V4qp97AGIUsaiXcfUExzuwYiaO-1xDLeqBu0NA46z7TRNk_l2OE9-T-TxrZi7dqp6bQMUdSrWXPYJjGEfRmXiodM3nUuSgFql_UtvCYMFfAE/s320/Montebello+Oil+Field+8.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This detail from a 1921 panoramic photograph published in a state report on the oil industry is taken from atop an oil derrick looking west. The road is Durfee Avenue as it merges into San Gabriel Boulevard. The newly-built bridge crossing the Rio Hondo (water is clearly seen in the river at the upper right) is near the Basye Adobe, headquarters at the time for Standard Oil Company's Montebello field operations. The Montebello Hills are in the distance. Click on the photo for a larger view in a new window.</td></tr>
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In terms of demographics and the use of the land by its residents, especially, the Old Mission community changed relatively little from its earliest settlement before 1836 until well into the 20th century. Matters accelerated, however, in the 1910s, specifically with the discovery of oil in the Montebello Hills. A Whittier newspaper from 1915 attributed the local find to road crews driving bridge piles, presumably for San Gabriel Boulevard's new span across the Rio Hondo, and forcing a seepage of crude to the surface. <br />
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Another version is that 9-year old Thomas W. Temple II, whose grandfather, F. P. F. Temple owned much of the land in and around <em>Misión Vieja</em> from the early 1850s, and whose father, Walter Temple, purchased in 1912 about 60 acres on and just below the very northeastern corner of the Montebello Hills, made a discovery in April 1914. According to this account, young Thomas was playing in the hills after a rain and saw a pool of water bubbling and turning black, while a strong rotten egg-like smell emanated from the pool. Knowing that there was oil there, the boy ran down the hill and crossed Lincoln Boulevard to the Temple family home, formerly the adobe store and saloon built by Rafael Basye and Jesús Andrade in 1869, to tell his father. Walter Temple returned with a match and, riskily, struck it over the pool and flame shot out. For those who remember the old television sitcom, <em>The Beverly Hillbillies</em>, this incredible tale might sound a little familiar! <br />
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In 1915, the Temples arranged a lease with Standard Oil Company of California (now Chevron), while the daughters of Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, who took most of the area land about 1880 from F. P. F. Temple and Juan Matías Sánchez when Temple failed to repay a loan that Sánchez used his land as security for, arranged their own lease with Standard on hundreds of acres of the hills.<br />
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By 1916, a test well was drilled on the Baldwin portion and came in successfully. The Temple lease was then drilled on and the first well came in there in late June 1917 with a gusher. The bonanza was on! Within a few years, leases were signed with area farmers and landowners by several companies and the Montebello oil field, centered on the hills and in the vicinity of Old Mission, was born.<br />
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Consequently, the 1920 federal censuses reflected an already-transformed community. When enumerator Isaac F. Baker came through in late January and early February, many of the longtime families or older members of them were deceased or had moved away. For example, Walter Temple, born in the neighborhood in 1869, used the proceeds from his immense stroke of luck and moved in 1917 to Monterey Park and then, later that year, to Alhambra.<br />
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One "old timer" who remained in Old Mission was Pedro Alvitre, son of Anastacio Alvitre and Eleuteria Verdugo, who lived long lives in the community and died during the 1910s. Pedro assumed ownership of his father's share in the Rancho Potrero Chico, living in a section at the northwestern portion of the rancho, west of today's Rosemead Boulevard and east of the Rio Hondo. His four sons, a daughter, and a nephew, Tony Bermudez, also resided with him on the farm, though there were attempts at finding oil on their land, as was the case with any property in the area.<br />
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The next family was that of the Salgados, whose head, Victoriano, a 50-year old native of Mexico, was listed as a farm laborer, perhaps assisting on the Alvitre farm. Victoriano lived with his California born wife, Nasario and their four sons and two daughters.<br />
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Interestingly, the next household was that of Elizabeth Barry, who owned the middle of three sections of the western portion of the Potrero Chico ranch, and she listed her occupatiuon as "farm, oil wells." Indeed, there were successful wells drilled on the Barry lease in the late 1910s. Elizabeth, who was a Bermudez, before her marriage to Irish native George Barry (who died in the 1890s), was 70 years old in 1920 and lived with two unmarried daughters. The adjacent household was that of her son, James, a 50-year old widower, who was shown as an "oil field laborer" and was living with three sons and a daughter, with the eldest son, age 15, working as a farm laborer.<br />
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Notably, the third landowner of the sections between the Barrys and Alvitres was Timoteo Repetto. He and his wife Maria were counted, but on two sheets earlier than that of his neighbors. Perhaps Baker visited the home out of order for some reason. He also indicated that the Repettos were renters, which was clearly not the case. Previous censuses and the 1930 count showed Timoteo as an owner of his own farm.<br />
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Another early family that still had some members residing at <em>Misión Vieja</em> in 1920 was the Manzanares clan. Specifically, there were the brothers Pedro and Inocente, whose brother Victor had been in the area in 1910, but moved to Monterey Park by the end of the decade. The two remaining in Old Mission were 51 and 48, respectively, and both single, working as farm laborers.<br />
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Next to them were step-siblings and the last of the long-standing families to still be in the neighborhood in 1920. These were brother and sister, Antonio and Dominga Duarte. They were the children of Maria Siriaca Valenzuela, whose father was one of the original grantees of Rancho Potrero Chico, and Francisco Duarte. After their father died, Siriaca married Cristobal Manzanares, the father of the Pedro and Inocente noted above. Antonio, like his step brothers, was also a farm laborer.<br />
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There were, however, many new residents of the general Old Mission community, most of whom were associated with the new and burgeoning oil industry. For example, after Walter Temple left the neighborhood in 1917, the old Basye Adobe became the headquarters of the Standard Oil Company for the Montebello oil field. Several dozen single men were listed on two sheets of the census as residents of "Boarding House Standard Oil Co." The great majority of the workers were in their 20s, which was natural given the rigorous physical (and dangerous) work involved in much of the oil industry. While a number of the employees housed at the boarding house were native Californians, most were from the Midwest, with a few from eastern or southern states. Five were from other countries, including England, Austria Denmark, Norway and Russia. Occupations included rotary drillers, tool dressers, derrick men, pumpers, gaugers, rig builders and roustabouts. These latter were general laborers, doing whatever work they were ordered to by the foreman, while tool dressers prepared the tools to be used in the drilling and operation of the well. Gaugers typically oversee the flow of crude in pipelines and into tanks. There were two other employees to point out from the Standard boarding house: cook Katherine DeMaine, who was listed as born "on sea American vessel", and baker Rose Kalics, an ethnic Bohemian from Vienna, Austria. These two were clearly essential to the maintenance of the workers trudging to and from the field every day!<br />
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Other oil workers in the general <em>Misión Vieja</em> community lived with families in separate housing often rented from the company or the lease owner. While some of these men could be workers like those listed above, they also included the supervisors or foremen, such as Standard's drill foreman Romane Richardson, a native of Pennsylvania (the birthplace of the American oil industry) and machinist foreman August Segelhorst, both of whom had families with children, or Columbia Oil company's lease foreman William M. Talbot, a New York native of Scottish parents, who lived with his wife, two daughters and two "wards," these latter being two sisters who might have been orphans taken in by Talbot and his wife.<br />
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In any case, the onset of the oil industry at Old Mission from about 1917 dramatically changed the community, a process that would continue through the next decade and beyond, though later developments were more about another use of the land, as will be seen in later posts.<br />
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Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-37211422419601480142012-01-18T16:32:00.002-08:002012-03-02T13:55:23.940-08:00Misión Vieja and the 1910 Federal Census<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht9ScHEiIrWHbmkGJl0DF6Zn7zBzEvNmdbqDl2l82tE-qX42kAdMcOboCgzGuDxHfeakqqrG09VESPqnZseY4xV91Db0rHQ7UAEgXo3rNSXeBYqlOQSjYJt1PxrmkUboA724qiiI_Rah25/s1600/Potrero+Chico+Cruz+Barry+Repetto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" nfa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht9ScHEiIrWHbmkGJl0DF6Zn7zBzEvNmdbqDl2l82tE-qX42kAdMcOboCgzGuDxHfeakqqrG09VESPqnZseY4xV91Db0rHQ7UAEgXo3rNSXeBYqlOQSjYJt1PxrmkUboA724qiiI_Rah25/s320/Potrero+Chico+Cruz+Barry+Repetto.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A detail of a map of Rancho Potrero Chico showing plots owned by Julia Davis Cruz, Elizabeth Bermudez Barry, Timoteo Repetto, and Pedro Alvitre. Notice at the bottom that there is "Temple Road," named for the Temple family, whose ranch was at the very bottom right corner below Durfee Avenue. The small comment at the bottom left, however, indicated that Temple Road had just been changed to San Gabriel Boulevard. Its path also was moved to just above the roadbed shown here and the fork where it meets Durfee is where what is now Rosemead Boulevard ended, though it was much later extended north into the Potrero Chico ranch. Rancho La Merced (over 2,300 acres) is also partially indicated on the southern edge of the much smaller Potrero Chico (about 80-90 acres, depending on the survey.) Clicking on the map gives a slightly larger view in a separate window. Courtesy: Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.</td></tr>
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With the 1910 federal census, the Old Mission community probably had relatively little change from the previous count a decade earlier. Many of the families who had resided in the community for decades were still there and engaged in various types of farming, including growing walnuts, fruits and vegetables or, in a few cases, grapes for winemaking. They were enumerated in the census by Charles Soward, who had some of the problems working with Spanish-language given and surnames that his predecessors had, although his writing also could be a little tough to decipher, thanks as well to light fading on the original sheets.<br />
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On the first page covering the community appears the family of Paolo Briano, recorded in the 1900 census along with Giovanni Piuma. Briano and Piuma, who were brothers-in-law (Briano married Piuma's sister) had been partners in a winemaking business and leased the old adobe and brick houses that comprised the Temple Homestead at the southeast corner of today's Rosemead Boulevard and San Gabriel Boulevard/Durfee Avenue intersection. By 1910, however, Piuma moved into Los Angeles and opened a large winery that was well known for many years. Briano, with his wife and four children, appears to have remained at the same property at Old Mission, but was listed as a store salesman in the census (a decade later, he ran a store in Monterey Park, and in both censuses his wife worked alongside her husband.) His brother, Bartolo, however, is shown as a "vineyard laborer" which suggests that the grape growing and winemaking conducted on the Temple ranch for decades and then leased to Piuma and Briano continued. The next household was of another Italian, Bartolomeo Pastorino and his wife Rosa, and Pastorino was also a "vineyard laborer."<br />
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The next household was that of Walter P. Temple, the last of his family to remain in Misión Vieja. Temple's brother, Charles, had been living with his brother in 1900 on the remains of the family homestead, but after legal troubles (to be detailed later) and a new marriage to Susie Castino (whose sister Lucy Pegorari is mentioned below) after the mysterious death of his first wife, Old Mission native Rafaela Basye, found him moving out to Santa Monica. In the meantime, Walter occupied a section of the homestead just south of Briano, having married Laura Gonzalez, a Misión Vieja native, in 1903 and started a family that included three children in the 1910 enumeration. Temple, listed as a farmer, raised walnuts and apples on his portion of the homestead. Included in the Temple household was Francisca Valenzuela, listed as Laura Temple's aunt, and who had resided in Old Mission since her birth in the early 1850s and Antonio Ramirez, a nephew of Mrs. Temples.<br />
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Next to the Temples was the large family of Felipe Rodriguez, his sister, and his seven children, with Rodriguez listed as a farmer. Adjacent was a household of several persons headed by Indiana native Ira Corpe and his wife, also from Indiana, and three sons born in Washington and Oregon. They seem to have occupied an area just north of Durfee Avenue and east of Rosemead. <br />
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The next household was that of Julia Davis Cruz and her brother Thomas Davis. These were the remaining members of a longtime Old Mission family, whose residence in the community goes back to the 1850s and their connection to Juan Matias Sanchez, once the half-owner of the Rancho La Merced, which covered much of the Misión Vieja area. Notably, Julia Cruz is listed as living on her "own income," while her brother, Thomas, was denoted an "imbecile." By this was meant that he was mentally disabled and was, therefore, under the care of his older sister. Ironically, oil was later found on the just under 10-acre Davis/Cruz property (see the map above) on the north side of San Gabriel Boulevard/Durfee Avenue, before Rosemead Avenue pushed north from that point, and just weeks before drilling was to begin on the leased property in 1917, Julia Davis Cruz died at age 66. Walter P. Temple, whose family was closely associated with the Davises, assumed management of the Davis/Cruz oil revenues from General Petroleum Corporation, which held the lease. <br />
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Next was the family of Urbano and "Horavia" Estrada, who operated a dairy, an industry that was relatively new in the community, but which became prominent for years. The couple had four young children, two sons and two daughters, and a newly arrived Italian immigrant, "Sam Pocanano", worked as a laborer there.<br />
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Another new family in the area was that of Frank and Delores Jeffredo. Delores was the daughter of the abovementioned Juan Matias Sanchez and his wife Matilda Bojorquez and was born in the late 1870s. In 1897, she married Jeffredo, whose father was French. and who was a resident of San Gabriel, and the two began their family and resided at Old Mission, where Frank was a farmer.<br />
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The adjacent household was that of Micaela Alvitre, a 69-year old native of Misión Vieja and daughter of Juan Jose Alvitre and Tomasa Alvarado. Although the columns provided for listing number of total and living children each say one for her and her son, 48-year old Joe Malcolm was residing with her, there is a 20-year old man, Joseph "Leibas" or Leiva, living in the household and denoted as "son." It seems likely that this identification was a mistake. In any case, Malcom and Leiva are shown as "odd jobs laborer," rather than farmers, so it is not clear what land Micaela Alvitre and the others were residing on. Was it property passed down through Alvitre connections to the old Rancho Potrero Chico, half of which went to the Alvitres back in the 1840s, or something separate?<br />
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Other families follow with the surnames of Rosas, connected through marriage with the Alvitres, with Ramona Alvitre, daughter of Jacinto Alvitre and Lugarda Moreno, having married Ramon Rosas about 1850; "Anguro," or Angulo and "Mongia" or Munguia--all of which were native to California. These were followed by Mexican born heads of households in the Diaz, Romo and Reyes families, all of whom came to the U.S. between 1888 and 1907 and all working as "odd jobs laborer."<br />
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More recent Old Mission families followed including the Pegoraris, whose head, Peter, was from California, though his father was Italian. His wife, Lucy, was a Castino, an Italian family who had lived in nearly "Fruitland" in the general Montebello/Bell Gardens area, and their five children were in the household and Peter's occupation was "carrying for cattle." There was also Luis Lopez, a Montebello plumber, who lived with his wife, five children and mother. Following was Luis Ortega, a native of Mexico and immigrant of 1893, who lived with his wife and six children and was an "odd jobs laborer."<br />
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Then, there is another longtime Old Mission family, that of Victor Manzanares, whose father Cristobal married Inocencia Alvitre. Victor, who owned his own farm, lived with his wife, Librada, their seven children and a niece. Nearby were Victor's two brothers, Pedro and Inocente, and relatives in the Melendrez family.<br />
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Another old connection to Misión Vieja is through the household of Encarnación Andrade, who married Rita Marina Gonzalez, daughter of Ramona Alvitre. Andrade, born in Mexico about 1855, came to the United States in 1868 and married Marina, who went in this census by Mary, in 1887. Mary Gonzalez Andrade gave birth, according to his census, to 16 children, of whom 11 survived and 9 were present in the household. Later in the census was Encarnación's father, Secundino Andrade, his second wife and children from both marriages. <br />
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After the household of Eufemio Bojorquez, a native of Mexico, who was a farmer, but had been a blacksmith at Old Mission in 1900, is the residence of Pedro Alvitre, who would remain at Old Mission long after most residents. Alvitre, age 47, had his own farm and was married for seven years. He and his wife had already had five children, of which three were still living. Also in the household, however, was Pedro's parents, Anastacio Alvitre and "Elutria" or Eleuteria Verdugo. Anastacio was listed as 99 years old, although he was actually 88, while his wife was correctly listed as 84. The two had been married for 62 years and, remarkably, Eleuteria was listed as having had 20 children, of whom only three were still living in 1910. The Alvitre property referred to here was 26 acres of the Rancho Potrero Chico, a portion of which is at the very top of the map shown above.<br />
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There was another unusual Anglo household that followed, that of John J. Fay, a farmer, with his wife Elaine and daughter Alice May.<br />
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Nearby was another old Misión Vieja clan, the Barrys. Elizabeth Bermudez Barry, widow of George Barry, lived with six of her children (overall 10 of her 13 children were living in 1910), while a seventh, James, resided close by with his wife, Isidora, and their four children. The Barrys occupied about 36 acres of Rancho Potrero Chico on either side of today's Rosemead Boulevard north of San Gabriel Boulevard/Durfee Avenue (see the above map.)<br />
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Close to the Barrys was another longtime family in the community. This consisted of Maria Antonia Alvitre Basye, her son James and daughter Isabel. Mentioned above was a deceased daughter, Rafaela, who was married to Charles P. Temple and whose mysterious death in 1899 caused a sensation in the community. This was further inflamed when another Basye child, Thomas, was killed by Temple three years later--allegedly over Rafaela's death (again, this will be covered subsequently.)<br />
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Not far from the Basyes and Barrys is "Timotaio" or Timoteo Repetto, who had a fascinating history. His mother was Maria de la Cruz Alvitre, daughter of the Juan Jose Alvitre and Tomasa Alvarado noted above with Michaela and Anastacio Alvitre, who were her sister and brother. Cruz Alvitre married, in 1843, Jose Ygnacio Serradel (also Cerradel), but had Timoteo in 1866 through a common-law relationship with Alejandro Repetto, a colorful natve of Genoa, Italy with a medical background, who owned a large ranch in what is now Monterey Park on the hills just north of the 60 Freeway. Alejandro Repetto raised sheep and was, evidently, well off when he became the final victim of famed <em>bandido</em> Tiburcio Vásquez in Spring 1874. Although Vásquez was foiled in his attempt to steal from Repetto, fled and was soon captured in modern-day Hollywood (and then executed in San Jose in 1875), rumors persisted for generations about hidden loot stolen from Repetto and buried either in the hills near the Repetto adobe or in the Montebello Hills closer to Old Mission. In any case, Alejandro died in 1881 and Cruz Alvitre about a quarter century later.<br />
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As for Timoteo, he was educated at the La Puente (later Temple) School on Durfee Avenue at Misión Vieja and assisted his father until Alejandro's death before engaging as a professional acrobat for twenty years. Meantime, he married in 1887 Maria Hernandez, born in Jalisco, Mexico, and, although a biography of Timoteo says there were no children, the 1910 census shows an 11-year old son, whose name appears to say "Wangisus" or Juan Jesús, though the young man may have died before reaching adulthood. After retiring as an acrobat, Timoteo and family returned to California from Mexico in 1902 and settled with his mother on the house and ranch where he was born, though this was not the Repetto ranch in Monterey Park, which had been sold years before. Instead, Timoteo moved to Old Mission, on Alvitre land from Rancho Potrero Chico passed down to his mother (see the map above.) Eventually, on the 16 acres, Timoteo farmed and had at least one oil well lease from which he derived revenue. His wife died in 1930, but Timoteo lived until at least the mid-1930s.<br />
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Near Repetto and after Secundino Andrade was another relatively new arrival in the community, farmer Victoriano Salgado, an 1888 immigrant from Mexico, his wife and five children, and it appears that the enumeration of Misión Vieja ends about with the Salgado family.<br />
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As with previous censuses, Old Mission remained overwhelmingly Latino, although with a greater mix of fairly newly arrived Mexicans among the long-established families in the area and in California, generally. There were only a few Americans and Italians and, just outside the community, was a household of five Chinese "truck farmers," meaning vegetable or fruit growers and, at another residence, one Japanese laborer. <br />
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In 1910, the community was also still wedded mainly to agriculture, but within several years that was to change dramatically with something different emerging from the ground than walnuts, apples, strawberries, grapes, lettuce and whatever else was raised on farms and ranches. Old Mission would not be the same fairly static place it had been for decades before.<br />
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Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-85120981612764843052011-11-10T16:28:00.000-08:002011-11-21T09:52:10.577-08:00Misión Vieja and the 1900 Federal Census<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjNASCVZNWIn6yMIaKfjvw-hzcIv1IKvpAH6QU_oRv1cKkZCtReDVWfrx7D1knNCgf4bcJgnxxlgtFl85CwFgv8TBU8cHD5gPftfOqdjBPTQj8YFJkPAuub4yrJUwPSHc5IfjJjnjbl3zN/s1600/1102-86+Lucinda+Temple+de+Zuniga+at+Basye+Adobe+c.1890s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="215" nda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjNASCVZNWIn6yMIaKfjvw-hzcIv1IKvpAH6QU_oRv1cKkZCtReDVWfrx7D1knNCgf4bcJgnxxlgtFl85CwFgv8TBU8cHD5gPftfOqdjBPTQj8YFJkPAuub4yrJUwPSHc5IfjJjnjbl3zN/s320/1102-86+Lucinda+Temple+de+Zuniga+at+Basye+Adobe+c.1890s.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lucinda Temple Zuñiga (1860-1928) standing in front of the store and saloon owned by her husband Manuel M. Zuñiga (1854-1928) at the Basye Adobe. Rafael Basye and Jesús Andrade built the adobe and started the business and then Zuñiga assumed ownership after Basye's death. Lucinda's brother, Walter P. Temple (1869-1938) bought the adobe in 1912 and moved his family into it. Copy provided by Carlos Hartnell, a Zuñiga descendant, to the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.</td></tr>
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With the 1890 federal census largely destroyed by fire, there is a major twenty-year gap between censuses, spanning from 1880 to 1900. For example, in the Los Angeles region, the economic slump that began in 1875 continued for about a decade. But, in 1885, a direct transcontinental railroad link reached the Los Angeles area from the east via the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad line. Soon after, a massive real estate boom, called the "Boom of the Eighties," ensued, bringing many new residents to the region. The boom went bust by the end of the decade and the 1890s was largely marked by a national depression, beginning in 1893 and compounding the local downturn, and several years of drought.<br />
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As to Old Mission, many of the old families remained, while there were a few new additions. Though not technically within the neighborhood, there were several groups of Chinese settlers close by, including a group of four men who worked a farm and had four Chinese laborers with them. It is noteworthy that all eight men had been in the United States for at least twenty years, the earliest of them migrating in 1862. This is significant because, in 1882, an exclusion act was passed by Congress forbidding any Chinese to settle in the country. Also just outside <em>Misión Vieja</em>, there was the unusual circumstance of Sing Hom, a farmer who came to California at age 10 in 1877, being married to Claire, a white woman from Pennsylvania and of English and French parentage. Intermarriage was not only exceedingly rare, but in the El Monte area, known as a hotbed of racism during the 19th-century, it must have attracted some attention, given that the Homs had quite a few neighbors from Texas, Alabama and Missouri around them.<br />
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One of the first Old Mission families counted in the census by enumerator William P. Spence was that of Tomás Alvitre, then 65 years old, and married for 45 years to his wife Francisca Verdugo. The two had three adult children, two sons and a daughter, residing with them, as well. <br />
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Two households away were the brothers Charles and Walter Temple, the sole remaining members of the once-prominent family that owned a great deal of land in and around Old Mission prior to the failure of the family's bank in 1876. The two, youngest of eleven children, inherited the fifty-acre Temple Homestead salvaged by their mother, Antonia Margarita Workman, after the bank's collapse. She died in 1892, however, during a two-week period when the flu took the lives of her mother and son, also. Walter, aged 30, and Charles, 28, still owned the early 1850s adobe and circa 1870 French Second Empire brick residence on the property. They, however, were leasing the former, as will be seen below. Meantime, the two had a boarder, a man only identified as "Camp," a 28-year old who was listed as married for five years, though his wife was not with him. Moreover, no information was given as to his birthplace or that of his parents. "Camp," however, was listed as the teacher at the La Puente School, which the Temple brothers were both involved in as trustees around this period. Also of note is that Charles Temple was a widow--his first wife was Rafaela Basye of a well-known Old Mission family. Therein lies a tale to be told at a later date (but, hopefully, not too much later)!<br />
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The next two households consisted of two men who leased the old Temple adobe from the Temple brothers. These were Italians Giovanni Piuma and Paolo Briano. Piuma was born in 1864 and migrated to the United States at age 21 in 1885. His wife, Mary, came to this country a few years after he did, presumably to marry him, because their first child was born that same year, 1888. Every two years another child followed, so that the brood was six by the time of the census. Also in the household were Piuma's parents, Rosa and Frank and a sister-in-law, all of whom migrated from the old country a few years prior. Briano, aged 28, and his wife Mary were migrants of 1896, having just married, and had a daughter and son after their settling in California. Notably, while Piuma's occupation was "wine maker," that of Briano was "farm laborer," so it appears that the latter worked for the former, though later they were partners.<br />
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The next residence was occupied by Manuel Zuñiga (listed as "Sunaga"), his second wife, Lucinda Temple, sister of the Walter and Charles noted above, and his son, David, by his late first wife, Carmel Davis. Zuñiga was proprietor of the store and saloon opened in 1869 by Rafael Basye in an adobe building he had constructed. After Basye's death in the late 1880s, Zuñiga took over the business and ran it from an undetermined period of time.<br />
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A seemingly-new family to the neighborhood was adjacent to the Zuñigas, this being the household of "Alves" [Elva?] Maria Flores and her four children. Next to the Flores family was that of Ramona Alvitre de Gonzalez, a member of the long-standing Alvitre family in the community, and long the widow of Feliz Gonzalez. She resided with three sons, a daughter and two granddaughters.<br />
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Then there is Julia Davis Cruz, her brothers Peter and Thomas, and two nieces, Lenora and Lucinda. There are direct connections here to Manuel Zuñiga from above. Namely, Julia, Peter and Thomas were the siblings of Zuñiga's first wife, Carmel, and Lenora and Lucinda were his daughters. Yet, though their brother David resided with his father and step-mother, the Zuñiga daughters were living with their aunt and uncles. Also puzzling is that Julia's marital status box was left blank, though she had been twice married (in the 1880 census her last name was given as "Montigue") and it is not known if her second husband, Carlos Cruz, was dead or living in 1900.<br />
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A few households follow of relatively new families to the area, including one shown as "Emetino" and other of a woman, Gertrude Cordova and her two children. These are followed by blacksmith "Eufemio" Bojorquez and his wife and three children. Afterward is Martín Flores and his wife and three children.<br />
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Next come more members of the Alvitre (shown as "Alvetra") family, including siblings Michaela and Ramon Alvitre, children of Juan Jose and Tomasa Alvarado. Michaela, listed as 60 years old, but five years older than that, had a boarder, while her brother, shown as 57 and widowed from Francisca Rayales, but also older (by about four years) had two sons, John and Ramon, with him as well as a boarder.<br />
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Another relatively new family to the neighborhood, shown as "Antoya," but most likely "Montoya" followed. Household head, Alejandro, was Mexican-born and an immigrant of 1883 and he lived with his wife and two young sons.<br />
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Then is the household of Victor Manzanares, whose father Cristobal, was an 1850s arrival in Old Mission, and whose mother was Inocencia Alvitre. Victor and his several siblings were listed in the 1880 census as orphans, but he was, by 1900, married and had give children. Following was the family of Jessie Manriquez and her son and three daughters.<br />
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A few households away was Elizabeth (Adelaida) Bermudez Barry, whose mother was Maria Ventura Alvitre, and her eight daughters and two sons. Elizabeth was recently widowed, her husband, Irish-born George Barry, having died in 1899. The Barrys were a long-time family in Old Mission and are the subject of a new book by descendant James Aguirre.<br />
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Further down the list were members of the Andrade family, including Encarnación, who married Rita Marina Gonzalez, daughter of Ramona Alvitre. The couple resided with their six children, three sons and three daughters. Below was 75-year old Maria Siriaca Valenzuela, first married to Francisco Duarte and then to Cristobal Manzanares, and who was living with her Duarte children: Antonio, Francisca and Dominga, as well two grandsons.<br />
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Adjacent was Anastacio Alvitre, 75, and the son of Juan Jose Alvitre and Tomasa Alvarado and older brother of the Michaela and Ramon Alvitre noted above. He was residing with his wife Eleuteria Verdugo, their son Pedro, and Eleuteria's sister, Salvadora Verdugo. Interestingly, there were also two Chinese brothers in the house, whose names appear to read "Pun Luie" and "Ken Luie" and who were 38 and 40. "Ken" was a migrant of 1875 and his brother three years later and the younger was listed as married for two years though there was no spouse present.<br />
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The next family, possibly the last in the <em>Misión Vieja</em> community for this census, was that of Felipe and Francisca Rodriguez, living with nine children. Remarkably, Mrs. Rodriguez had given birth to 17 children with just that little more than half surviving. Of course, larger families were more common then than now and the loss of children was frequent. In fact, one woman, Antonia Andrade, lost five of twelve children; Elizabeth Barry lost three of thirteen; and Raymunda "Emetino" lost an amazing ten of sixteen. Rare was the case where all of a large family survived, though this was the case with Francisca Alvitre, who bore eleven children.<br />
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The 1900 federal census revealed that some longtime families, such as the Alvitres, Zuñigas, Davises, Manzanareses, and Barrys still maintained a large presence in the community. Yet, there were new residents, including the Italian Piuma and Briano families, a few Chinese and a couple of Mexican families. Farming was the predominant occupation and would remain so for another fifteen or twenty years. Future censuses would start to show a declining population, particularly as the oil industry came to the area.<br />
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Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Collections Manager, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of IndustryUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-57768245346483073382011-09-29T14:38:00.000-07:002011-11-10T16:28:33.045-08:00Misión Vieja and the 1880 Federal Census<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq9zOxu9xpk3z4J2ljcT9wq5zQIPIX1sGIdqnKjfjR-ORwyDVgVPasm9IfiWsHdLb89sWHRtnoXXpQvC6J-BlXtqp0KdUa9_ujP8-AXGNIK89acRvuMt4Ri6O8UUtCNlIi1KGW3HC5IBss/s1600/Temple+Ranch+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" kca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq9zOxu9xpk3z4J2ljcT9wq5zQIPIX1sGIdqnKjfjR-ORwyDVgVPasm9IfiWsHdLb89sWHRtnoXXpQvC6J-BlXtqp0KdUa9_ujP8-AXGNIK89acRvuMt4Ri6O8UUtCNlIi1KGW3HC5IBss/s320/Temple+Ranch+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A circa 1870 view of a portion of the Temple Ranch at <em>Misión Vieja</em>, southwest of today's intersection of San Gabriel Blvd. and Durfee Avenue just east of Rosemead Boulevard. The 1850s adobe house is at the left of the water tower in the center. Later, a brick residence was added. By 1880, the Temple family's wealth had vanished in a disastrous bank failure and fifty acres including the area seen here were sold back to the family by Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin. Courtesy of Phillip Nathanson, from an original stereographic photograph in his collection.</td></tr>
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In the ten years since the 1870 federal census, significant changes occurred at <em>Misión Vieja</em> and the broader Los Angeles region. The first half of the decade had seen an economic boom accompanied by a significant population growth throughout the county. Mining activity in the deserts of Inyo and San Bernardino counties brought mineral ore through Los Angeles. Agriculture was growing rapidly, including viticulture and wine-making and the developing orange industry. Immigration, largely fueled by migrants from the eastern American states and Europe, swelled Los Angeles' population, but also that of established and newer towns in the county. During the early 1870s, new communities like San Fernando, Artesia, Downey, Pomona, and Orange, among others, arose. Transportation improvements were also notable, at the crude harbor at San Pedro, the new competing wharf at Anaheim Landing (Seal Beach), and new railroads, such as the Los Angeles and San Pedro line from the city to the port and the construction of local branch lines of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which finally made a direct connection to San Francisco in summer 1876. The boom, however, came to a spectacular crash in late 1875 and early 1876, as silver mine speculation at Virginia City, Nevada engulfed San Francisco banks and the panic rode the telegraph lines to Los Angeles. There, the bank co-owned and managed by Old Mission resident F. P. F. Temple, foundered. With a loan from San Francisco capitalist, Elias J. (Lucky) Baldwin, the bank reopened, but only long enough for depositors to close their accounts and withdraw the borrowed cash, forcing the bank to close for good. As collateral for the loan, Temple, his father-in-law William Workman of Rancho La Puente, and Juan Matias Sanchez, Temple's co-owner at Rancho La Merced, put up much of the land in and around <em>Misión Vieja</em> and then lost it to Baldwin after he foreclosed in 1879, just before the following year's federal census. <br />
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When A. J. Howard, the census enumerator, came through Old Mission in mid-June 1880, he found many of its long-time residents still there. As a small farming and ranching community, it did not likely change as much as Los Angeles or some of the bigger outlying settlements, like Los Nietos to the south or El Monte to the north.<br />
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The first recognizable name he came upon was Maria Duarte, this being Maria Inez Alvitre, daughter of Jose Claudio Alvitre and Asención Valenzuela. Maria (really, Inez) was only 40 years old, but was already widowed three times, as she was listed without a spouse and with one son, Antonio, and four daughters, three under 18 and one, Maria, who was in the household with her husband and son. Inez Duarte had outlived first husband Julio Duarte, who died in 1867. She then married Vicente Aragón, but he died shortly afterward. Finally, she wedded Luis Reyes in 1870, but he obviously passed away within the decade.<br />
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Next was the household of Mexico native Juan Mora, whose wife Petra had been previously married, given that the rest of the family consisted of Mora's step-children with the surname of Silvas. After this was a family of seven Manzanares brothers and sisters, orphaned, it seems, after their parents Cristobal Manzanares and Inocencia Alvitre, sister of the Inez mentioned above, seemingly passed away during the preceding decade. The children ranged from 23-year old Victor to six-year old Trinidad, so the earliest either parent could have died would have been about 1874.<br />
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Then comes José Yorba, son of Teodosio of the notable Orange County ranchero family and his mistress and then wife, Inocencia Reyes. José had been married to Eziquia Lopez in 1862 and she lived with him in 1870, but in 1880 he had a new wife, Francisca. Also in the household were five children from two to sixteen years, consisting of a son and four daughters. Unique among other men captured in the census from the neighborhood is José's occupation: gambler!<br />
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Afterwards is Ramon Rosas and his wife Ramona Alvitre, daughter of Jacinto Alvitre and Lugarda Moreno. While the couple had no children, there were several people in the household including Francisco Alvitre, probably a cousin of Ramona, and his wife, three sons and a daughter. Ventura Bermudez, cousin to Ramona (listed, however, as aunt) was also in the household. She had long been widowed, her husband having been José Antonio Bermudez, and her children were grown. José Antonio Bermudez's sister, meanwhile, Rita, lived next door to the Rosas clan and she resided with her daughter Ramona Gonzalez, whose father was Raymundo Alvitre. Gonzalez had six children from ages seven to seventeen living with her and was widowed\, as her husband, musician Feliz died in 1873.<br />
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Next to this was Juan Jesus (listed as John J.) Davis, saloon keeper at the general store owned by his neighbor and cousin, Rafael Basye. Juan Jesus and his brother, José, were the New Mexico-born sons of Martin Davis and Josefa Sanchez, a sister of Old Mission area rancher Juan Matías Sanchez. Another Sanchez sister married Rafael Basye's father in New Mexico, as well. Juan Jesus married Guadalupe Alvitre and the two lived with a young son, Antonio, and Guadalupe's mother, Celestina Alvitre. As for Basye, who also married an Alvitre, Maria Antonia, he was listed as a retail grocer and he and his wife had three sons and a daughter from a year to ten years old.<br />
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The next three households included Ramon Lopez and Juan Castillo, who were married to sisters. Then was the large household of Juan Manriquez and his wife, Maria, which included three sons, two of them with wives and six children, for a total of twelve in the residence. Following was Fecundo Reyes, long widowed from his wife Maria Dolores Verdugo, and his two teenaged children, as well as his 90-year old mother, the oldest resident in the community, Clara Cota. Clara's daughter and Fecundo's sister was Inocencia Reyes, mentioned earlier as the mistress, then wife of Teodosio Yorba. Another Manriquez son, José, resided nearby with his wife and five children from one to seventeen years of age.<br />
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Then came Tomás Alvitre, his wife Francisca Verdugo and their large clan of seven daughters and three sons, ranging from a year to twenty-six years, although the remarkable part of this is that Francisca was listed as age fifty and would have had a child at age 48 or 49! Next door was another unusual occurrence for the time period, a divorcee. This was Michaela Alvarado, age 42, living with her three year old daughter, Margarita and a 16-year old girl, listed as a cook, named Juana Temple. There was the prominent Temple family elsewhere in the census, but it may be that Juana was an adopted member of that family, since it is known that she was not a birth child of that clan.<br />
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A few households down is that of Juana Bermudez, age 79, and her son-in-law Ramon Alvitre, son (14th child, in fact!) of Juan José Alvitre and Tomasa Alvarado. His wife, Francisca, daughter of Juana, and their five children, from one to sixteen years old, were listed, as well.<br />
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Two residences down was Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple, whose husband, failed banker F. P. F. Temple (mentioned at the top), had died of a stroke less than two months prior. Though Lucky Baldwin had foreclosed on thousands of acres of Temple and Workman land, he did sell 50 acres of the Rancho La Merced surrounding the Temple homes (and 1851 adobe and a later brick house) to Mrs. Temple. In significantly reduced financial circumstances, she lived with a daughter and two sons, Margarita (14), Walter (12) and Charles (9), as well as an eight-year old girl, Andrea, listed as a daughter, but probably adopted (as was noted earlier with the Juana Temple who was a cook in the residence of Michaela Alvarado.) Also in the Temple household was Mrs. Temple's mother, Nicolasa Urioste de Workman, age 74, two female Indian servants listed as a cook and laundress and "boarder" Julia Montigue. This latter was Julia Davis, long attached to the Temple family and whose mother, Venancia Peña de Davis, resided next door with another daughter, Carmel, and three sons, Peter, Francis and Thomas. Venancia's husband, José Davis, mentioned above in connection his brother, Juan Jesus, and who was likely an employee of the Temple family, died in 1875 in an accidental fall.<br />
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After the listing of another family, the Rangels, the census moved on northward to El Monte. Our ability to track the future of the <em>Misión Vieja</em> community gets complicated by the fact that almost all of the 1890 federal census, including the California sheets, was destroyed by a fire decades ago. Moreover, the population of the neighborhood began to decline, as will be seen in future posts touching on later censuses.<br />
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Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Collections Manager, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of IndustryUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-54811767326802123492011-05-17T13:30:00.000-07:002011-11-10T16:28:51.379-08:00Misión Vieja and the 1870 Federal CensusIn the ten years between the 1860 and 1870 federal censuses, enormous changes took place in Old Mission and in the Los Angeles region broadly. First, the economic slump that arose in the latter part of the 1850s with the end of the Gold Rush and the resulting lessening of demand for the region's cattle met headon with the weather patterns with which we are familiar, but folks then were not: El Niño and its counterpart, La Niña. Christmas Eve 1861 it began to rain and, for most of the next month-and-a-half, it did not let up. In fact, some estimates are that up to 50 inches, a staggering sum by any standard, fell on the Los Angeles area. Without dams, channels and other means of flood control and with a largely undeveloped landscape, most of the area became a vast inland lake (mirrored by conditions in the San Joaquin Valley, most of which was underwater.) Those cattle that were not drowned in "Noah's Flood" were then subjected to the torments of a two-year drought in which four inches of rain were estimated for the years 1862 and 1863. Consequently, farming became the mainstay of the local economy as cattle ranching declined.<br />
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The flood and drought combination not only ravaged the region and the <em>Misión Vieja</em> community, but was even worsened by a smallpox epidemic that occurred in 1863. While specific information on deaths in Old Mission is lacking, local rancher F. P. F. Temple paid for coffins for those who succumbed to the highly-contagious disease.<br />
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Meanwhile, Temple, his father-in-law, William Workman and their <em>compadre</em> Juan Matias Sanchez were consolidating their ownership of most of the land in the Old Mission area as the economy led owners to sell their land to the trio. Between 1857 and 1863, the ranchos Potrero Grande, Potrero de Felipe Lugo and Potrero Chico were acquired by combinations of the three men. Later, however, they would be on the other end of a similar consolidation of land by San Francisco capitalist Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin.<br />
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Population changes are also important to note. <em>Misión Vieja</em> was part of the El Monte township and, in 1860, the Spanish-surnamed population of the larger El Monte area numbered near 500. But, a decade later, that total dropped to below 400, a 20% decline. At the same time, the proportion of American and European residents climed about 15%, from about 750 to over 850 persons. While this growth of "Anglos" was actually the smallest in the county (Los Nietos, which bordered Old Mission to the south, saw an astounding 4650% increase in Americans and Europeans, from only 24 to over 1,100), it still represented a change that would only accelerate in coming decades.<br />
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So, in late July 1870, when assistant census marshal Horace Allanson, a resident of San Gabriel, ventured into Old Mission, he encountered a transforming community, as he would have anywhere else in the county where he conducted his enumeration. As with 1860, the census included the listing of real estate and personal estate values, which were provided by the head of household and may have been under or overcounted according to what the person wished to be known. Unfortunately, while the 1860 enumerator, James MacManus had poor (or no) command of Spanish names, but clear writing, the case was largely the reverse with Allanson: he seems to have done better with the names, but his legibility is somewhat challenging for viewers of the original sheets.<br />
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One of the first families he found in the neighborhood was that of Francisco and Ramona Estrada, natives of Mexico, who resided with seven children, all born in California. Two households down was Cristobál Manzanares and his wife Inocencia (enumerated as Ygnacia) Alvitre, daughter of the José Claudio Alvitre and Asunción Valenzuela, whose deaths in 1861 were explained in the last post. The household included five children from one to fifteen years of age.<br />
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A few households below the Manzanares family was that of Diego Nieto. The son of Antonio Nieto (son of Jose Manuel Peréz Nieto, grantee of the massive Rancho Los Nietos, later divided into several smaller ranches like Los Alamitos, Los Cerritos, Las Bolsas, Los Coyotes and Santa Gertrudes, and Teresa Morrillo) and Josefa Cota, Diego was born at Las Bolsas, which has father had received when the Los Nietos division happened. In 1864, Diego, at 40 years old, married Isabel Yorba, the widow of Felipe Santiago Duarte, who had married Isabel in Summer 1860. A daughter, Josefa, age six, resided with the couple.<br />
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Adjacent to the Nietos was Isabel's brothers, Jose and Bautista Yorba. All three were the children of Teodosio Yorba of the famed Orange County-area clan, who died in 1863, and his long-time mistress and then his wife, Inocencia Reyes. Jose Asención married Esiquia Lopez in August 1862 and the couple had one son, Jose, aged one year. Bautista, then 23 years old, was single and living adjacent to his brother, but in April 1873 married Maria Antonia Rowland of the prominent family that owned much of Rancho La Puente to the east.<br />
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Next was Inocencia's brother, Fecundo (a.k.a. Secundino), who was widowed (his wife Maria Dolores Verdugo, having died sometime in the previous decade) and living with his two sons, a daughter, and Clara Cota, mother of Inocencia and Fecundo who was listed as 90 years old, but was actually a decade younger.<br />
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Nearby were members of the Pérez, Duarte and Archuleta families, the latter almost certainly connected to the household of Juan Matias Sanchez, a major figure in the area as noted above, given his half-ownership of Rancho La Merced and 1857 acquisition of Rancho Potrero Grande. Sanchez declared $30,000 as the value of his real estate and $15,000 for his personal property, making him far wealthier than anyone in <em>Misión Vieja</em> with one exception, noted below. Sanchez presided over a household including his wife María Luisa Archuleta and six children ranging from 3 to 18 years of age.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A photo from about 1870 of members of the Temple family, residents of the <em>Misión Vieja</em> area for sixty-five years. At center is Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple (1830-1892), wife of F. P. F. Temple, who is not in the photo. On her lap is daughter Margarita (1866-1953) and flanking her are, left, son Thomas (1846-1892) and, right, Francis (1848-1888.) Directly behind Mrs. Temple is her son John (1856-1926), while at the back row far left is daughter Lucinda (1860-1928.) Seated at far left is Julia Davis (1851-1917), an Old Mission resident and a goddaughter of the Temples. The young woman, standing second to the left, might be Margarita Burke, listed a few households away at Old Mission from the Temples in the 1870 census as a house servant, probably for the Temples. The identity of the man seated at the far right is not known and the man standing at far right might be Mrs. Temple's brother, José Manuel Workman (1833-1901). Photo courtesy of Bette Temple from the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.</td></tr>
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Two households down from Sanchez is that of Feliz Gonzalez, a native of Mexico and a 38-year old musician, who married Ramona Alvitre, daughter of Raimundo Alvitre (son of Juan Jose Alvitre and Maria Tomasa Alvarado and grandson of family patriarch Sebastian) and Rita Maria Bermudez, whose parenets were Juan Hilario Bermudez and Ana Maria Lugo. The Gonzalez family had nine children and there would be another daughter born in 1871 named Laura, who married Walter P. Temple of another Old Mission family.<br />
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Adjacent to the Gonzalez family was Rafael Basye, who was a nephew of Juan Matias Sanchez and had been in his uncle's household in 1860. Basye had, in February 1869, married Maria Antonia Alvitre, daughter of Anastacio Alvitre and Eleuteria Verdugo, and they had a three-month old son, James. Constructing an adobe house just west of the Rio Hondo, which had been the San Gabriel River until floods in the winter of 1867-68 changed the course to its current one, Rafael opened a store and there was also a saloon there. Perhaps this is why Feliz Gonzalez resided next door, to provide entertainment in the saloon?! Later, Basye's house, store and saloon passed to the ownership of Manuel Zuñiga who lived there with his second wife, Lucinda Temple. Then, in 1912, Lucinda's brother, Walter (mentioned above) purchased the adobe house and moved his family, including wife Laura Gonzalez and four children into it. While there, a couple of years later, oil was discovered and propelled the Temples into wealth (a future post will detail this remarkable history.)<br />
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Amidst these families and others, including the Figueroa and Manriquez clans, there was a rare American or European in the Old Mission community, James Ross, a 28-year old native of New York who was living alone and was listed as a farmer.<br />
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There was also a curious household in this grouping, number 231, which appears to have been headed by a "Maria Mesa," although Allanson's scrawl is difficult to decipher. She was shown as a 67-year old native of Mexico, but what was interesting was that there were seven children, all girls, in the household with five different surnames. These included Maria Renteria, age 11; Maria Castro, 7; Librada and Gertruds Quintana, ages 10 and 13; Maria Cerradel, 13; Ramona Alvitre, 7; and Zenobia Yorba, 7. Was this some kind of small girls' school? Could these children have been orphans? Unfortunately, the census does not give any indication. Also of note is that 10 year old Librada Quintana had $150 worth of personal property, a very unusual declaration for a child in a census.<br />
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Several households later is that of Tomás Alvitre, the 50-year old son of Jacinto Alvitre and Lugarda Moreno. Tomás was first married to Magdalena Linares in 1849, but she seemed to have died very shortly thereafter, probably in childbirth, because, in 1852, he married Maria Francisca Verdugo. In 1870, the couple resided with five childen, ages 2 to 16. Three households away was Tomás' sister, Ramona, and her husband Ramon Rosas. Notably, a brother of Tomas and Ramona, Felipe Alvitre, was notorious for the 1854 murders of El Monte resident James Ellington and a Peruvian and was executed by hanging at Los Angeles in early 1855. This will also be covered in a future post on this blog!<br />
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Next to Ramona Alvitre de Rosas was her cousin, Maria Buenaventura, or Ventura, Alvitre, daughter of Juan Jose Alvitre and Tomasa Alvarado. Ventura was a widow of José Antonio Bermudez, whom she had married in 1832 (Ventura's sister, Benita, had married José Antonio's brother, José Dolores) and was living with three sons and a daughter, aged 18 to 30. Ventura's sister-in-law, José Antonio's sister, María Rita Bermudez, age 42, lived nearby in her own household. Another Bermudez, 28-year old Petra, resided with four others in her household, including Felicita, age 29 (probably a sister) and two boys and a girl, aged 9, 10 and 12.<br />
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Another single household was that of 22-year old Francisca Valenzuela, member of the family that, with the Alvitres, were co-grantees of the Rancho Potrero Chico within the Old Mission community.<br />
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Adjacent to Francisca was George "Perry," actually Barry, a native of Ireland, who resided in El Monte in 1860 but then married Adelaida Bermudez, daughter of Jose Dolores Bermudez and Maria Benita Alvitre (Adelaida appears to be listed in the mangled 1860 census as "Avalangthum"!) A 16-year old male named Dolores Bermudez<em> </em>lived next door and undoubtedly is a brother or other relation of Adelaida. George and Adelaida then had two children, 2-year old Lucinda and four-month old Santiago or James. Only a few years prior, in 1866, George Barry had been involved in a fight with a man that led to Barry's shooting and killing of his adversary. Although convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to San Quentin, Barry was able to mount a successful appeal and was freed. More on this incident in a future blog post!<br />
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Next to the Barrys was the Cage family. Edward Cage, a native of Mississippi, was married to Macaria, from Guaymas, Mexico, had lived in Sebastopol in Napa County before moving to <em>Misión Vieja</em> and working as a farmer. Three years later, however, his son Robert got into a dispute with Tomás Mianez, who was a sheepherder for the Temple family, over animals entering the Cage property and Robert Cage shot and killed Mianez.<br />
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As hinted above, rancher F. P. F. Temple and his family resided next to the Cage clan. Owner of half the Rancho La Merced and portions of the neighboring three ranches: Potrero Chico, Potrero Grande, and Potrero de Felipe Lugo, Temple was also a partner in one of Los Angeles' first banks, Hellman, Temple and Company and was involved in real estate, oil, railroads, mining and other enterprises over the ensuing several years. Indeed, his reported wealth was staggering, especially for <em>Misión Vieja</em>, comprising $180,000 in real estate and over $100,000 in personal property. Temple and his wife Margarita Workman lived with six children ranging from a year to 21 years, including the youngest, Walter, mentioned above.<br />
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Over the next several households (and perhaps earlier ones) were employees of the Temple family, including Joseph Davis, a native of New Mexico, who had worked previously for Juan Matias Sanchez. In fact, Davis' wife, Venancia and two of their children had been reported in the Sanchez household in 1860, though Joseph was not there himself. In 1870, however, there were five children from two to 16 years. One of them, Julia, seems to have been a nurse or nanny for the Temples, since she appears in several Temple family photographs. Her sister, Carmel, went on to marry Manuel Zuñiga, who was mentioned above, before dying young. Peter, age 5, was later a carpenter for Walter Temple, when Temple built his <em>La Casa Nueva</em> mansion at what is now the Homestead Museum in City of Industry in the 1920s.<br />
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After Davis is Samuel A. Jackson, a native of Vermont, who is listed as "Horse Trainer," a job he held for Temple, who had begun breeding thoroughbred horses earlier in the 1860s. Jackson, his wife and two-year old son lived in their own household. Then came Charles W. Hamilton, a 55-year old Massachusetts native, who was the school teacher at the Old Mission or Temple School, created in the early 1860s on land donated by F. P. F. Temple. Following was Temple's nephew, Thornton Sanborn, son of F. P. F.'s sister, Lucinda. Sanborn, age 45, was born in Reading, Massachusetts, and had worked for about fifteen years for his uncle, both at Rancho La Merced at <em>Misión Vieja</em> and in Springfield in Tuolumne County's gold country, where Temple ran cattle. Another Temple employee was 63-year old Mathews Burke, who was from England, but had been married to a Latina, evidently deceased by 1870. There were three children in the Burke household, ages 14, 15 and 16, one listed as a house servant and who was undoubtedly a Temple employee. Burke is now buried at the <em>El Campo Santo</em>, the Workman and Temple family cemetery at the Homestead Museum.<br />
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There were some other families, including the Andrades and two single men, Lucas Rojas and Agustín Guerrero, who were laborers, probably for the Temples. Jesus Andrade has been identified as a partner of Rafael Basye in the construction of the 1869 adobe house and general store that became known as the Basye Adobe. Then, the Old Mission census ended with Henry Fogle, a 28-year old native of Illinois, who conducted dairy operations for F. P. F. Temple, but who also possessed a self-reported $6,000 value of personal property, a significant amount for the day. Fogle resided with his Missouri-born wife, Mary Ann, and their two sons and daughter, between 4 and 8 years old.<br />
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The early 1870s was a period of significant growth and great prosperity for the Los Angeles region, which was experiencing its first true land and population boom. While the 1870 census counted a little over 15,000 persons in the county, the next five years saw the population more than double. Like most booms, however, the speculation in land and certain industries became unmanageable and, when the state's largest bank collapsed in San Francisco in summer 1875, the local economy faltered and a bank owned by F. P. F. Temple and his father-in-law, William Workman, collapsed. More on this in a later post!<br />
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Meantime, next post will concern the 1880 census.<br />
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Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Collections Manager, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of IndustryUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-65630464542065901782011-03-16T18:41:00.000-07:002011-05-17T11:27:44.257-07:00Misión Vieja and the 1860 Federal CensusIn mid-July 1860, census marshal James McManus ventured south from El Monte and into the community of <em>Misión Vieja</em> or Old Mission. Whereas McManus had no problem whatever in enumerating the names of such American and European denizens of the former like Irish-born Barnabas Newman or Texan Samuel Bryant, the marshal had a distinct lack of ability in recording the names of the Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the latter. This, obviously, makes demographic and genealogical research that much more difficult.<br />
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For example, on the 18th, after leaving the home of farmer Ransom Moore, MacManus arrived at his next household and recorded the name of the head as Wauken Dwarty. Next door was broher Hulio Dwarty. Beyond that was Jose (at least that name came out all right!) Elvetre. Some other choice examples: Vicenta Malendas; Innosencia Rase; Catrudas Veha; Rafael Vasa; and Walupa Olivara. It takes some basic familiarity with Spanish names, an understanding of the local history and some investment of time, but most of these can be teased out with some effort. The first name, for instance, is <em>Joaquín Duarte</em>, followed by his brother <em>Julio</em>. Then there is <em>José Alvitre</em> and the surnames <em>Melendrez, Reyes, Vejar, Basye and Olivera</em>, as well as given names like <em>Inocencia, Gertrudes, </em>and <em>Guadalupe</em>. If only MacManus would have taken the time and a few dollars to hire a deputy marshal who knew Spanish, the results would have been much different (and clearer.)<br />
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The Duartes were an old <em>Misión Vieja</em> family and Joaquin was married to a woman from the earliest of the community's residents: Anastacia Alvitre, whose parents were Asención Valenzuela and José Claudio Alvitre. Joaquin and Anastacia were, in 1860, the parents of two daughters, Crispina and "Powler," which would be <em>Paula</em>. Next door, Julio Duarte, son of Manuel Duarte and Apolinaria Ontiveros (whose father built the Ontiveros Adobe, foundations of which are at Heritage Park in Santa Fe Springs), was living with his wife, Maria Ines Alvitre, Anastacia's younger sister. Then, the next household after was that of Claudio and Asención (noted as "Sensona") Alvitre and their seven younger children. As noted previously, Claudio was one of the youngest of the children of patriarch Sebastián Alvitre and his wife, Maria Rufina Hernandez. Finally, the family following Claudio and Asención was that of their daughter, Inocencia and her husband Cristobal Manzanares, along with their son and two daughters. Manzanares was from Abiquiu, New Mexico, from which many residents left for the Los Angeles area, especially in the early 1840s when the New Mexican communities of Agua Mansa, San Salvador and La Politana were established near today's Riverside. <br />
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Disaster would soon strike all four families: Less than a year after the census, Claudio, in a drunken rage, stabbed his wife to death and was hunted down and lynched by unidentified members of the neighborhood (more on this in a future post!) Then, prior to 1867, Julio Duarte passed away. Ines remarried, to Vicente Aragon, but he died within a couple of years and she entered into her third marriage in 1870, to Luis Reyes.<br />
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The next household from the Manzanares's was that of Vicente (shown as "Vicenta" although listed as a male!) Melendrez and his wife "Daruta" or <em>Dorotea</em> Valenzuela. She was from the very large family that had many branches in the San Gabriel Valley, her parents being José María Valenzuela and María de Jesus Rodriguez and her father's father being an early Spanish soldier in California named José Pedro Gabriel Valenzuela, a native of Alamos, Sonora, origin of many early Spanish Californians. Melendrez was a native of the Ensenada, Baja California area and he and Dorotea had eight children, seven of which were in the household for the census. Sadly, Dorotea died very shortly afterward and Melendrez remarried, with his second wife being María Antonia Rodriguez. The couple would have four children.<br />
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Mixed in with the Spanish-speaking denizens of Old Mission was Charles O. Cunningham, a Maine native who was a farmer on 160 acres (a section) of land in 1860. Among the farm laborers in this household was José Duarte, a relative of those mentioned above. Also present was Francis Baker, born in Massachusetts, who went on to be a Los Angeles policeman and police chief. As for Cunningham, who was married to Mary Thompson, daughter of early El Monte hotel owner Ira Thompson, he was an El Monte Township constable and justice of the peace and later went on to some renown in Arizona Territory (perhaps a story for another day!)<br />
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Two households down was "Setternena" or <em>Saturnina</em> Lobo, widow of Juan José Lobo, whose mother, Casilda Soto, was grantee of Rancho La Merced, encompassing much of <em>Misión Vieja</em>. A widow, Saturnina lived with her four children, including two sons and two daughters. Not far away was another Lobo widow, Dolores, whose husband had been Juan Lobo, and who, at age 30, was raising her five children alone.<br />
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Nearby was Inocencia Reyes, who was discussed in this blog's post on the 1850 census as being the common-law wife of prominent rancher Teodosio Yorba. What wasn't discussed last post was that she was the daughter of Maria Clara Cota, of the prominent Santa Barbara family, and who was married in 1816 at Mission San Gabriel to Antonio Faustino Reyes, whose mother was a Dominguez from that well-known South Bay clan. Inocencia's brother, José Facundo, was an Old Mission resident, as well, and was married to María Dolores Verdugo, daughter of Joaquín Verdugo and Magdalena Vejar (brother of Ricardo, owner of much of what is now Pomona and widow of Juan Villalobo). <br />
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Residing with her seven children, it is highly notable that the value of Inocencia's estate included $2000 in real estate and $4000 in personal property, putting her in financial circumstances far superior to anyone in Old Mission, excepting ranchers Juan Matias Sanchez and F. P. F. Temple, who, along with Temple's father-in-law William Workman (who had given Sanchez and Temple the Rancho La Merced after he foreclosed on the property that had been owned by Casilda Soto de Lobo) were the major landowners in the area. It seems likely that her estate came at the behest of Yorba, who finally married Inocencia later in 1860. Unfortunately, she did not live long, dying in 1863, perhaps during a smallpox epidemic that wreaked havoc in Los Angeles generally, but especially in <em>Misión Vieja</em>.<br />
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Another household in which the surname of the family was mangled by Marshal MacManus was that José "Clouthaalis," which might be <em>Gonzalez</em>, this group consisting of a husband, wife (Mary or Maria) and son (Francisco.)<br />
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José (shown as "Hosa") A. Bermudez was residing in Old Mission with his Estefana and daughter Maria and it is presumed that he was Jose Antonio Bermudez and married to Maria Presentación Alvitre, daughter of Juan José Alvitre--the brother of the Claudio noted above--and Tomasa Alvarado. This makes sense, even though the wife's name is different, because three households away was Tomasa Alvarado, who was widowed. She lived with her daughter Micaela and the latter's husband merchant John Morrow, a native of Tennessee and her seven-year old son, Brown, from a first marriage to Henry Malcomb. Micaela had married the latter in 1852, had her son that year or the next and then married Morrow in Spring 1858.<br />
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Next to Tomasa was her niece, "Johanna," actually <em>María Ines</em> Alvitre, her husband "Halina", that is, <em>Julio</em> Duarte (again shown as "Dwarty") and their two sons, "Hossuth" or <em>Jesús</em> and Jose. Strangely, a few more households away is a "Flora A. Alvetro," but who was a 47-year old <em>male</em>, along with three sons and a daughter, Juan, Pedro, Felipe and Maria "Alvetre," but these members of the Alvitre family are not obviously identifiable. The next household to these mysterious Alvitres was that of Sinforoso Rosas, widow of María del Refugio (Trinidad) Alvitre, and his youngest son Juan.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCxctNb0IOQySoW8z5JG0ql3Y2kpdMefxNrlOlZHEUZ6XZWp2Iwd1DG2Xv8EuvFYmA3PL8Ni_JCbrhTN-Ikx_BfZ7pVbQ8omoVEPAq8wuUH5qaYyldDInBxH5-Fwjx-oZi_KuTJJyV9mW5/s1600/Public+surveys+6+1861.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCxctNb0IOQySoW8z5JG0ql3Y2kpdMefxNrlOlZHEUZ6XZWp2Iwd1DG2Xv8EuvFYmA3PL8Ni_JCbrhTN-Ikx_BfZ7pVbQ8omoVEPAq8wuUH5qaYyldDInBxH5-Fwjx-oZi_KuTJJyV9mW5/s320/Public+surveys+6+1861.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This detail of an 1861 California Land Claims survey map shows #s370, 371 and 372 as the ranchos Potrero de Felipe Lugo, Portrero Grande, and La Merced, all within the area described as "Mis Vicia" or <em>Misión Vieja</em> (Old Mission). Click on the photo to get a zoomed-in look at it. Courtesy: Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.</td></tr>
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The largest single household in <em>Misión Vieja</em> in the 1860 census is that of Juan Matias Sánchez, a native of New Mexico who came to California in the 1840s over the Old Spanish Trail and went to work as <em>mayordomo </em>(ranch foreman) for William Workman at Rancho La Puente. As noted above, Sánchez was given half of the 2,363-acre Rancho La Merced from Workman after the latter foreclosed on the property on a defaulted loan to original owner, Casilda Soto de Lobo. By 1860, Sánchez was a prosperous rancher and he, Workman and F. P. F. Temple began consolidating landholdings in the area that continued through the next few years. Sanchez' household consisted of himself, wife Maria Archuleta and four children: Jose, Maria, Tomasa and Francisco. <br />
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There were also six Indian servants, including a mother, "Vanancio" and her four children "Hula Ann," "Massemon," Alvino and Victoria. This was the former <em>Venancia</em> Peña, a Luiseño Indian from Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside, San Diego County. The children were Julia, Máximo, Peter and Carmel, whose father was Joseph Davis, but who was not listed in the census in 1860. The Davises later became associated with the Temple family after leaving the employ of Sanchez. <br />
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Notably, the last column on the census sheet was for comments about "whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper or convict," as if these all had a common thread! The only time this column was utilized by Marshal MacManus was with Máximo Davis, who was only five years old. The notation reads: "Blind at 3 days old caused by applying a mud by an Indian woman." This is a fascinating and rare example of a record referring to Indian medicinal treatments, the "mud" evidently being a poultice applied to the face of the infant for some unspecified ailment, but the treatment of which seems to have caused the blindness. In later years, Máximo was raised by his older sister, Julia.<br />
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Another noteworthy person in the Sánchez household was Rafael "Vasa" or <em>Basye</em>. Basye was the son of Juan Matias Sanchez's sister and emigrated from New Mexico to California to live and work for his uncle. Eventually, Basye was given a piece of land on which he built an adobe house and store. More on him in our discussion of the 1870 census.<br />
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Not far from the Sanchez household was that of his La Merced co-owner, F. P. F. Temple. The Massachusetts-born rancher was married to Antonia Margarita (shown as "Margaretta") Workman and the couple had four children, Thomas, Francisco, William and John (the couple lost two sons during the 1850s) and two Indian children as servants, 12-year old Rosa and ten-year old Juan. The presence of several families of day laborers, farm laborers, and a washerwoman nearby might indicate employees of Temple, whose $18,000 estate was the highest in the area, a couple thousand more than that of Sánchez.<br />
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Close to the Temples was Francisco Vejar of the prominent family that owned half of Rancho San José in what is now Pomona. His sister, Magdalena, as was noted above was married to George Morrillo, co-grantee of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo with Teodoro Romero, husband of Magdelena's daughter by a first marriage, Juana María Verdugo.<br />
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Near Vejar was Dolores Bermudez (son of Juan Hilario and Ana María Lugo) and his wife Maria Ignacia Dominguez, of that well-known family in the San Pedro/Compton area. The couple had two children, as well as a daughter from Bermudez' first marriage to Maria Benita Alvitre, who seems to have died about 1853. Dolores's brother, José Antonio, had also been married to an Alvitre, María Ventura.<br />
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Next door to Bermudez was "Hosa Alvetre" or <em>José Alvitre</em>, who was probably José Apolinario, and his wife "Marea" who would then have been María Antonia Soto, along with five children.<br />
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Another badly misspelled listing was for "Lafusio Sonia" and family, this mangled moniker was for Refugio Zuñiga, a 45-year old farmer married to Juana Maria Verdugo (widow of Teodoro Romero, the co-grantee of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo at the northeast portion of the Old Mission community along the west bank of San Gabriel River). Also listed in the household were Domingo, 20, Juana Maria's son with Romero and her four children with Zuñiga, three daughters and a son, Manuel, who would later marry into the Davis and Temple families at <em>Misión Vieja</em>.<br />
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At the end of the Old Mission listings, finally, was "Anastasio Alvetre" and his wife "Lauterio" or <em>Eleuteria </em>Verdugo and their two sons and two daughters. Another notable person to mention, though he wasn't living directly in <em>Misión Vieja</em> yet was George Barry, an Irishman working as a laborer in El Monte in 1860. Within three years, he would move to Old Mission, marry Adelaida Bermudez, daughter of José Antonio Bermudez and Maria Ventura Alvitre, and work as a laborer in the area. Barry will also be the topic of a future blog entry!<br />
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In 1860, <em>Misión Vieja</em> and the Los Angeles area generally were in the midst of transformation. In the previous decade, the Gold Rush had flowered and then faded and the economy was in a serious downturn mirroring a national depression from 1857. The cattle industry, the lifeblood of the regional economy, was suffering from overstocked herds and low demand. Moreover, <em>Californios</em>, such as those who resided at Old Mission, were not only feeling growing economic pressure, but their political and social power was declining as Americans and Europeans took greater control in the area.<br />
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Matters would only get worse. On Christmas Eve 1861, a heavy rain began and led to one powerful storm after another, with hardly a let-up before the end of January. The resulting flooding, in the days before flood control, was devastating and the economy further suffered as many cattle drowned. The <em>El Niño</em> effect, unknown then, became <em>La Niña</em> and a two-year drought, with an estimated four inches of rain for each, finished off most of the remaining cattle, which starved. As noted above, there was an 1863 smallpox epidemic that ravaged the Indian and <em>Californio</em>/Mexican populations, including at Old Mission. The post-Civil War years brought more American and European migration and the economy recovered, but the benefits largely did not accrue to the native Spanish speakers.<br />
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Next, we'll examine the 1870 census, which did not suffer so much from poor spelling as from sheer difficulty in readability!<br />
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Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Collections Manager, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of IndustryUnknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-53082528340035099782011-01-27T15:48:00.000-08:002011-11-15T10:16:41.465-08:00Misión Vieja and the 1850 United States Census<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9-8taBol4IwustT63s2bYksSX4uZjCvvQAWzKfY_3MAMqpyab4PfYEojEWejlhH4gW-yO66rn9tInDJ-k1bdr1R45t7hizMfV-_EjwWvEydnIYI2Kd6BL8HNIamqmMu6G4eb317H22uAF/s1600/1877+Potrero+Grande.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" s5="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9-8taBol4IwustT63s2bYksSX4uZjCvvQAWzKfY_3MAMqpyab4PfYEojEWejlhH4gW-yO66rn9tInDJ-k1bdr1R45t7hizMfV-_EjwWvEydnIYI2Kd6BL8HNIamqmMu6G4eb317H22uAF/s320/1877+Potrero+Grande.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>As spotlighted in previous posts, there were two Mexican-era censuses of the Los Angeles district: in 1836 and 1844. With the controversial conquest of California and other portions of northern Mexico by the United States came a long delay by Congress in acting upon the status of the possession. In fact, citizens of California, most of whom very new arrivals due to the explosion of the Gold Rush, took matters in their own hands late in 1849, writing their own constitution and setting up their own government. Forced into making a decision, Congress finally admitted California into the Union in September 1850.<br />
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That year was also one in which the decennial (every ten years) federal census was taken, but California became a state too late in the year to be counted along with the others, so the enumeration was delayed until the first two months of 1851. Los Angeles County was much larger than it is today, including all of San Bernardino County (formed in 1853, it remains the largest county in area in the U. S.) and Orange County and portions of Kern County. Though it was sparsely populated, this massive area and the taking of the census within it was entrusted to just one person: John R. Evertsen, later a resident of San Gabriel.<br />
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It must have been a very difficult job. Evertsen not only had to deal with a huge territory, but also the flux of people in Gold Rush California made it hard to track down residents in the county. While it wouldn't be surprising that Evertsen would miss those who were coming and going within the county, it is striking that he grossly undercounted the native aboriginal peoples (Gabrieliño Indians), only listing about 200 of them. Overall, Evertsen counted 1,610 persons in Los Angeles city and about 3,500 in the county, clearly very low.<br />
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Indeed, the federal count throughout California was less than 100,000 and, because representation in Congress was based on population, the state's leaders decided to conduct a census in 1852. Notably, the county population was determined in this count to be just under 8,000, with almost half of these being native people.<br />
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So, examining the 1850 federal census poses the obvious problem. The count was highly inaccurate and so a look at those who lived at <em>Misión Vieja </em>has to be looked at not just who is listed, but who was not. Of course, there were also omissions in the 1844 census. Another issue is that Evertsen didn't break down his county into the existing townships, so determining where a place like Old Mission started and stopped is impossible, though there is a run of six census sheets in which the general area is noticeable.<br />
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Essentially, <em>Mission Vieja</em> included several major family groups including those with the surnames Bermudez[s], Lugo, Morrillo, Vejar, Alvitre, [Villa]Lobo, Valenzuela, Zuñiga, Rosas and Duarte, most of whom had appeared on the Mexican-era censuses of 1836 and 1844, discussed in earlier posts on this blog.</div><div><br />
Relative to the Bermudez family, there was José Antonio Bermudez and his wife María Buenaventura Alvitre (daughter of Juan José Alvitre and María Tomasa Alvarado), who were in the 1836 Mexican census, though not in the followup eight years later. The Bermudez family resided with their seven children and an elderly woman named María Santa Anna. José's sister María Antonia and her husband Claudio Rayales appear on the other end of the census listing with their four daughters. <br />
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The next household was José Lugo, his wife María, and three other persons. They were followed by Tomasa Olivarez [Ontiveros], widow of Juan Crispín Pérez [Nieto], also captured on the 1836 census along with her son Pedro and his family and another son Juan.</div><br />
Two households down, is George [Jorge] Morillo and his wife Magdalena Vejar with four children and Anastácio Alvitre and his wife Eleúteria [shown as Luteria] Verdugo. Anastácio was the son of Juan José Alvitre and María Tomasa Alvarado, and the brother of Buenaventura Bermudez. Morillo had been the co-owner of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo with Teodoro Romero, who was married to Magdalena Vejar's daughter, Juana María Verdugo. Juana María, however, was widowed and then married Refugio Zuñiga (listed as Sunega). Her five children by Teodoro Romero appear on the census as does José Jesus Zuñiga, a 12-year old boy.<br />
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Also listed was Joaquin Soto, his wife Petra Rodriguez and their five children. Soto's sister, María Casilda Soto de Lobo, will be discussed below and another sister, Trinidad, was married to Ricardo Vejar, grantee in 1837 of Rancho San José, now the general Pomona area.<br />
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<div>The next household was that of Refugio Zuñiga [shown as Suñega], whose family had a long history at <em>Misión Vieja</em>. Zuñiga was just recently married to Juana María Verdugo, who was previously wed to Teodoro Romero. The five Romero children were in the household as was Jose Jesus Zuñiga, a 12-year old boy, presumably Refugio's son from an earlier marriage.<br />
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Another family was that comprised of Francisco Vejar [shown as Bejar] who was the brother of Magdalena Vejar Morrillo. He resided with his wife María, 22, and two daughters Francisca, 5, and Asención, 3.<br />
Another major Old Mission family was the Valenzuelas [shown as "Balenzuela" on the sheets] and two brothers were represented in the 1850 census, Antonio and José. Antonio, age 45, was married to María Dominga Alvitre, daughter of the Sebastian Alvitre, who was patriarch of the family discussed in the posts on the 1836 and 1844 Mexican-era censuses. Living with the couple was their daughter Salomé, her husband Lauriano García and their children Antonio and Lugarda. Antonio's younger brother, José, was residing with his wife Soledad Duarte, along with Teresa Gonzalez, a one-year old boy presumed to be her son and two other Duartes, Basilio and Julio, assumed to be Soledad's brothers. <br />
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Another early family, at household 358, was Sinforoso Rosas and his four children. Rosas had been married to María del Refugio (Trinidad) Alvitre, but she died in early 1849, probably in childbirth not long after marrying Rosas. The four Rosas children obviously came from an earlier marriage.<br />
Next to the Rosas family were two households comprising the Lobos. The heads of the families were brothers Juan and José, but it is interesting to note that one, Juan, used the Lobo name, while José retained the original and more common surname of Villalobo. Each was married, Juan to Dolores Verdugo (who later married Fecundo Reyes, sister to the Inocencia Reyes noted below) and had children. Living with Juan was another brother, Santiago, and his wife Presentación Alvitre, as well as the matriarch of the family Casilda Soto, grantee in 1844 of the Rancho La Merced.<br />
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Towards the end of the Old Mission listings were the Alvitres, specifically brothers Jacinto (whose listed of 70 is about fifteen years off--he was in his mid-50s!), Juan and José Claudio, sons of the Sebastian noted above. Their sister, Dominga, was listed earlier in the census with her husband, Antonio Valenzuela. Jacinto and his wife Lugarda Moreno also had their daughter Ramona and her husband Ramon Rosas in their household. Ramon and his brother Sinforoso (see above) had married Alvitre sisters. Juan and his wife María Tomasa Alvarado had two sons with them, Reimundo and Diego, as well as Diego's wife María Cerradel and their two sons. There was also a fifteen-year old girl whose connection is not known. José Claudio resided a short distance from his brothers and was with his wife María de la Asunción Valenzuela. As noted above, their daughter, Presentación, was married to Santiago Lobo. A future post will relate the unfortunate circumstances in 1861 surrounding the deaths of José Claudio and Asunción Alvitre.<br />
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Next to José Claudio was his sister, María Florentina, who was married to Manuel Antonio Pérez. Pérez was shown as owner of $2,000 worth of real estate because he was grantee, in the mid-1840s, to Rancho Potrero Grande. The couple lived with their daughters, Barbara and Antonia and their son Juan. It has been said that Pérez, who in the grant to the Potrero Grande was simply listed as "Manuel Antonio, an Indian," was given the surname because he was baptized by the well-known Eulalia Pérez de Guillen, the <em>llavalera </em>or keeper of the keys, at Mission San Gabriel.<br />
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Also in <em>Misión Vieja</em> is the household of Inocencia Reyes and five children ranging from a few months to sixteen years old. While there is no husband listed and the children's names are only listed with their given, or Christian, ones, as if their last name was Reyes, the father of the children was Teodosio Yorba, son of Antonio Yorba and María Grijalva and brother of well-known rancher Bernardo Yorba. Teodosio had been married to María Antonia Lugo, whose father, Antonio María owned the Rancho San Antonio southwest of <em>Misión Vieja</em> and was the original grantee of the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino in modern Chino and Chino Hills, and had a daughter with her. He then had a <em>hija natural</em> (or daughter out of wedlock) with Catalina Manriquez. By 1835, Teodosio and Inocencia were together and had several children, including the five shown in the 1850 census. A decade later, on 5 September 1860, Teodosio and Inocencia were married and their children assumed the Yorba name officially. At that time, Teodosio, who, in 1846, had been granted the Rancho Lomas de Santiago in what is now Orange County, experienced financial problems during a troubled economy and sold the ranch to William Wolfskill, a Los Angeles orange grower. Teodosio suffered a stroke and died three years later at Old Mission. It should be noted that <em>hijos natural</em> were not neceesarily uncommon.<br />
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Finally, it is noteworthy that, of all the persons who can be confidently identified as residents of <em>Misión Vieja</em>, everyone was a Latino from California or Mexico, except for one person. There is a household of thirteen persons, all of whom were male, excepting two persons, and which consists of a Mexican laborer named Tomás de la Porrillo and his wife and son along with several single men. All of these, with last names of Villa, Morales, Ballesteros, Villareal, and Estrada, were laborers and from Mexico, evidently working for local ranchers. There are also two young adult Indians, but the name that stands out is Levi J. Woods, the only American and European in the community. He was a 51-year old laborer from Vermont and it would be interesting to know why he was in <em>Misión Vieja</em> and for whom he worked.<br />
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As stated above, there were many persons who were not counted and the much higher tally in the 1852 state census leads to the suspicion that a fuller representation of residents of Old Mission is far from present in the federal enumeration. Still, a look at the 1850 count provides some information about those living at <em>Misión Vieja</em> during the crucial time after the American conquest of California and the earliest days of the Gold Rush.<br />
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The image at the top of this post is from a reproduced 1877 regional map and shows the ranchos Potrero Grande and Potrero Chico just above the place name "Old Mission." To the right is a part of the Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo and the snaking "New" San Gabriel River, created by flooding in 1867 (the "Old" San Gabriel River or Rio Hondo is, for some reason, not included.)<br />
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Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-77531571366205468392010-05-06T15:07:00.000-07:002010-05-17T14:18:49.290-07:00Misión Vieja and the 1844 Los Angeles District Census<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhThInQ-6HamFEUFENroTbKas2Ft9KKGi6rPRQb-3Ze6v3Wa5I6g7u6ba51vrmKHi85WZ7nKZ4CjRYpsUGCbzoetOB01lbopXjwPMjffJHhkrKeIbVjcseIbI0DjwUQd7NTRIdupTDkf8b3/s1600/1844+census+Old+Mission0001.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 87px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5468296567317437762" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhThInQ-6HamFEUFENroTbKas2Ft9KKGi6rPRQb-3Ze6v3Wa5I6g7u6ba51vrmKHi85WZ7nKZ4CjRYpsUGCbzoetOB01lbopXjwPMjffJHhkrKeIbVjcseIbI0DjwUQd7NTRIdupTDkf8b3/s400/1844+census+Old+Mission0001.JPG" /></a> Only eight years elapsed between the first area census in Mexican-era Los Angeles and the next, yet the references to geography did involve some significant changes. First, the reference to "Rancho Santa Gertrudes," which seems to have embraced the <em>Misión Vieja</em> area was not followed up in 1844. Moreover, some of the persons listed there in the first census had evidently moved on by the second.<br /><div></div><br /><div>For example, Antonio Alvitre and his wife Concepción Amesquita (listed here as "Amesti") were, with their nine children, listed as living in "Angeles," meaning the pueblo of Los Angeles. Shortly after this census, however, Antonio and Concepción relocated to Monterey and stayed there the remainder of their lives.</div><br /><div></div><div>Juan José Lobo, son of Cecilio Lobo and Maria Casilda Soto, appears in the census in "Angeles" with his wife, Saturnina Feliz and their five daughters, but there is no mention at all of his parents and siblings, of which there had been four in the previous census.</div><br /><div></div><div>Maria Siriaca Valenzuela, whose parents were Antonio Valenzuela and Maria Dominga Alvitre, was married to Francisco Duarte and also listed as living in "Angeles." As for her parents, see at the end of the post below.</div><br /><div></div><div>"Angeles" was also the listed place of residence for Jorge Morrillo and Magdalena Vejar, enumerated in Santa Gertrudes in 1836. The two had seven children in the household--three the two bore together and four from Magdalena's first marriage to José Joaquin Verdugo. The Morrillos were living near Magdelena's Vejar relatives and next to them were Magdalena's daughter with Joaquin Verdugo, Juana Maria, and her husband Teodoro Romero, with their two children. The next year, however, Morillo and Romero were granted the Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo (whose namesake, a son of famed rancher Antonio Maria Lugo of Rancho San Antonio, evidently grazed his cattle in the area after Mission San Gabriel lost it in the secularization process of the 1830s.) This rancho was also known as Rancho Dolores.</div><br /><div></div><div>Meanwhile, at "Santa Ana," in present Orange County were Nasario Duarte and Maria Silvas with their four children. The couple had resided in Rancho Santa Gertrudes in 1836. </div><br /><div></div><div>As for Nasario's brother, Manuel and his wife Polinaria Ontiveros, they were not shown in the 1844 enumeration. Neither seemingly were Urbino Tapia and Mariana Lorenzana, Manuel Romero and Gregoria Ontiveros, Antonio Bermudez and Buenaventure Alvitre, or Ana Maria Lugo, widow of Hilario Bermudez—all of which appeared in Santa Gertrudes eight years before. </div><br /><div></div><div>Also notably absent was, as said earlier, Maria Casilda Soto de Lobo, who was, in fact, granted the Rancho La Merced, encompassing the area south and west of <em>Misión Vieja</em>, in the same year as the census. There were, however, several persons listed as residing at "R. de la Merce," which almost certainly is the same rancho. These were five men and boys, Domingo Salgado (10 years old), Juan Ochoa (40), Francisco Granillo (25), Nicolas Dias [Diaz] (40) and José Maria Ramirez (20.) This latter may be the one by that name who lived in the Los Nietos/Whittier area with his wife Josefa Rangel and very large family of at least fifteen children until his death in 1883, after which he was buried at the <em>El Campo Santo </em>Cemetery on the grounds of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.</div><br /><div></div><div>Finally, there is a section listed in the 1844 census under "<em>Misión Vieja</em>." Within this delineation were four families, consisting of brothers and sisters in the Alvitre family. This included the older of the four, Jacinto and his wife Lugarda Moreno with their four children; Juan and his spouse Tomasa Alvarado with their five progeny; Claudio and his wife Asención Valenzuela along with their five children; and Dominga with her spouse Antonio Valenzuela, listed with a son. It appears that Asención and Antonio Valenzuela were not related, their familes coming from the Mexican states of Sonora and Sinaloa, respectively.</div><br /><div>Next comes an examination of the United States Census of 1850, which carried its own confusing circumstances!</div><br /><div>The above scan is from a page of the published census transcript in the <em>Southern California Quarterly</em>, December 1960.</div><div></div><div>Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-18756027205701470612010-04-20T10:46:00.000-07:002010-04-20T13:59:55.623-07:00Misión Vieja and the 1836 Los Angeles District Census<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSUhsISgbnKdE1Q60xhyCi07Qfsuviyl8OclKG27Epv9VbZnZPbX_XBD8yvMdAH-P_j3zx-bYDniQwIyqsJqLAgci00mMu1bDSzLtRgZVSbf47GFmZ4nG3PFKaj9B2QvR5Ktm0xoIv6Xi3/s1600/1836+census+Old+Mission.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 669px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 347px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462325984886331362" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSUhsISgbnKdE1Q60xhyCi07Qfsuviyl8OclKG27Epv9VbZnZPbX_XBD8yvMdAH-P_j3zx-bYDniQwIyqsJqLAgci00mMu1bDSzLtRgZVSbf47GFmZ4nG3PFKaj9B2QvR5Ktm0xoIv6Xi3/s400/1836+census+Old+Mission.JPG" /></a><br /><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>There were two censuses of the Los Angeles district taken in the Mexican era. This post focuses on the first, taken in 1836, and the counting of those persons who were likely residing in the <em>Misión Vieja</em> area some sixty years after the Mission San Gabriel left that Whittier Narrows location and moved to its current site.</div><br /><div>The problem in identifying a specific Old Mission location in the census is that the place name <em>Misión Vieja</em> was not used. Rather, "Rancho Santa Gertrudes" was employed. This was the name of one of the several ranchos carved out of the enormous Nieto land grant, which was one of the first private land grants issued under Spanish rule back in 1784. Santa Gertrudes was in the area now including Downey, a corner of Bellflower, southern Pico Rivera, northern Norwalk, parts of Whittier (including unincorporated Los Angeles County areas with Whittier zip codes) and much of Santa Fe Springs. In fact, the name "Los Nietos" was utilized for most of this area as a township when the American period began and a community within Santa Fe Springs retains this moniker.</div><br /><div>The first listed name in the 1836 census in Rancho Santa Gertrudes was Juan [Crispín] Perez, son of Juan Crispín Perez Nieto, who was the original co-owner of that rancho with his brother Manuel Perez Nieto. </div><br /><div></div><div>After Perez and his family, including wife Tomasa Ontiveros, there is Jacinto Alvitre and his wife Maria Lugarda Moreno. Alvitre was the son of one of the first <em>soldados del cuero</em> (leatherjacket soldiers) of the Spanish settlement of California, Sebastian Alvitre and his wife Maria Rufina Hernandez. The Alvitre family would live in the <em>Misión Vieja</em> area for well over a century. </div><div></div><div>One of the daughters of Jacinto and Lugarda, Maria Buenaventura, was living next to her parents along with husband, Antonio Bermudez ("Mermudes" in the census) and daughter, Petra. His mother, Ana Maria Lugo, was listed further down the census (see below.) </div><br /><div>Later down the list was Jacinto's brother, Juan, and his wife Tomasa Alvarado and their eight children. Among their offspring was Felipe, only a year old in this census, and who had a dramatic and untimely end (more on that later!) Also present was another brother, Antonio, and his wife Maria Concepción Amesquita and their five children. Antonio would, by the mid-1840s, leave the Los Angeles area and move to Monterey in the north.</div><br /><div>Also present was another Alvitre brother, Jose Claudio, and his wife Asención Valenzuela, daughter of another <em>soldado del cuero</em> and their four children. More on the tragic story of Jose Claudio and Asención in a later post!</div><br /><div></div><div>With all of these Alvitre brothers, there were also sisters! Maria Dominga and her husband Antonio Valenzuela resided near Jose Claudio. The couple had four children and were later grantees with Dominga's brother, Juan Jose, of the Rancho Potrero Chico or <em>Misión Vieja</em>. Jose Antonio Valenzuela's father, Jose Manuel, was another leatherjacket who enlisted in his hometown of Villa de Sinaloa, Sinaloa, Mexico for a 1781 expedition to Mission San Gabriel.</div><br /><div>Next was another longtime <em>Misión Vieja </em>family, the Duartes, represented by Manuel Duarte and wife Polinara Ontiveros, sister of the Tomasa married to Juan Crispín Perez. A couple of households away was Manuel's brother, Nasario and his wife, Maria Silva, and their son. The Duartes were sons of Sonora, Mexico native Juan Jose Duarte and Maria Gertrudes Guadalupe Moreno.</div><br /><div>After this was Cecilio Lobo [Jose Cecilio Villalobo] from Santa Barbara and his wife Maria Casilda Soto along with their five children. More on them in subsequent posts!</div><br /><div>Another early family was that of Urbino Tapia and wife Mariana Lorenzana. Tapia was from San Jose in northern California and his wife was an orphan from Mexico City who came with eighteen other children who adopted the name of Bishop Lorenzana, who ran the orphanage there.</div><br /><div>Also present were several New Mexicans, including Julián Vargas, Juan Vigil, Jesus Maria Herrera, Jesus Maria Rivera and Jesus Perez, who may have been on some of the trading caravans that traveled the "Old Spanish Trail," which was opened from Santa Fe to Los Angeles in 1829.</div><br /><div>Romero is the name of another long-associated <em>Misión Vieja </em>family and rancher Manuel Romero, native of Santa Barbara, and his wife Gregoria Ontiveros, sister of the Tomasa and Apolinaria mentioned above. The Romeros had four children present in the household.</div><br /><div></div><div>Another notable resident was Ana Maria Lugo, widow of Juan Hilario Bermudez. A native of San Buenaventura Mission (Ventura), she married Bermudez, who hailed from Sonora, Mexico and came as a child of six to San Gabriel. He was in the military and was stationed at Santa Barbara, where he probably met Ana Maria, and later at San Gabriel. The couple had eight children, six living to adulthood, but Hilario was killed after being thrown from his horse somewhere in the Rancho Santa Gertudes area. As for his widow, she went on to become the <em>mayordomo</em> (overseer) at the Mission San Gabriel during the Mexican-American War.</div><br /><div></div><div>An interesting resident of the area was Maria del Rosario Guillen, who was the daughter of the famed Eulalia Perez de Guillen, long time keeper of the keys (<em>llavelera</em>) at Mission San Gabriel, and who was said to be over 140 years old at her death in the 1870s. Though this was, of course, inaccurate, she was undoubtedly over a century old. Rosario was the youngest child of Eulalia and married Michael White, a British sailor who came to Los Angeles in the 1831. By the time of the census, however, White was in New Mexico conducting a trading business and left his young wife and two children, Jose and Juana. White, known as <em>Miguel Blanco</em>, later built an adobe near the San Gabriel Mission that still stands on the grounds of San Marino High School, though it has been earmarked for demolition.</div><br /><div>George Morrillo and Magdalena Vejar were other long-time residents of <em>Misión Vieja</em>. Morrillo, a native of the Baja California mission town of Loreto, was the second husband of Vejar, whose brother, Ricardo, was then raising cattle on Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas (today's Beverly Hills) but who was granted (with Ygnacio Palomares) the following year the Rancho San José in what is now the Pomona area. Magdalena was previously married to Jose Joaquin Verdugo, of the family that received the second Los Angeles area land grant in the Glendale and surrounding region, but he had died in the early 1830s. Morrillo received a land grant to Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo (Lugo was a son of noted <em>ranchero</em> Antonio Maria Lugo and a judge of the plains handling ranching issues) in the mid-1840s.</div><br /><div>Morrillo's co-owner of the Potrero de Felipe Lugo was Teodoro Romero, who married Magdalena Vejar and Jose Joaquin Verdugo's daughter, Juana Maria.</div><br /><div>There were other residents of the Rancho Santa Gertrudes area, but those listed here, including the families of Alvitre, Bermudez, Duarte, Valenzuela, lived in the <em>Misión Vieja</em> community for decade upon decade.</div><br /><div>The next post will examine the 1844 census.</div><br /><div>Information for this post, including the scan of the page that shows the first "Rancho Santa Gertrudes" listings, came from the reprint of the 1836 census published in the <em>Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly</em>, 1936.<p></div><div></div><div></div><div>Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-62519298569248095972010-03-30T12:13:00.000-07:002010-03-31T09:32:16.841-07:00Where Was The Original Mission San Gabriel?In July 1921, a ceremony was held at the southwest corner of San Gabriel and Lincoln boulevards, newly incorporated into the City of Montebello, during which a granite marker was unveiled proclaiming the site to be that of the original Mission San Gabriel. The land was owned by Walter P. Temple, who paid for the monument in commemoration of the sesquicentennial (150th anniversary) of the founding of the mission.<br /><br />Fourteen years later, the site was given California Registered Landmark status, giving some official credence to the idea that this, indeed, was the Mission San Gabriel's first location. The problem is that the only reason why Temple placed the marker where he did is because he owned that land. The plot on which the monument rests is against the base of the Montebello Hills and could not possibly have been the actual site of the mission compound. The facility would also not have been up on the hill behind the marker and could only have been north or east.<br /><br />Research conducted in the 1980s by archaeologists has identified a potential location, in an area to the north and slightly west. The place is known as CA-LAN-1311H and would be along the west bank of the Rio Hondo (the original San Gabriel River), north of the intersection of San Gabriel and Lincoln boulevards.<br /><br />As described in Greenwood and Associates' report "The First Historical Settlement in Los Angeles County: Investigations at Whittier Narrows,"<br /><br /><em>The setting is a river terrace overlooking the San Gabriel River flood plain at the base of a major ridge system. The river bank rises steeply to a narrow terrace approximately 15m[eters] wide, and then rises again to the second terrace which contains the site. This area gently slopes to the south to a small drainage channel that parallels San Gabriel Blvd., which is situated at the base of the ridge. To the east, the upper terrace curves to the south, forming the east edge of the site. To the west the upper terrace ends at the base of a small hill that has been greatly altered by the construction of a gas processing plant. </em><br /><br />The report does state, moreover, that "the site is located in a natural gas field." The problem with archaeological investigation was that "the activities related to the drilling and placing of the wells, installation of pipelines, building and maintenance of roads, extensive grading, and other ground altering activities have seriously impacted the site and may have greatly altered the landform."<br /><br />Archaeological investigation was conducted in May and June 1987, using shovel test pits, excavation areas, and surface collection. In two areas, Indian materials were located including flakes, cobbles and ground stones (manos), though there were also many items from later periods located throughout the investigation area. The issue was that there didn't appear to be any items from before the late 19th century or after Spanish and Mexican settlement, making a definitive identification of the site as the original mission somewhat problematic. Finally, the amount of disturbance, especially in the post-1917 period when heavy oil exploration and drilling was occurring, meant that "much of the information has been lost to past activities."<br /><br />What has, in the historical record, most strongly pointed to the area north of San Gabriel Boulevard and west of the Rio Hondo is the <em>diseño</em> or map for the Rancho Potrero Grande, made about the time of its 1845 grant to Manuel Antonio Perez. This rough tracing, which was not conducted according to strict surveying (as was the case with all of the <em>diseños</em>), clearly shows the downslope from the hills to the west, the road coming from the current Mission San Gabriel [roughly today's San Gabriel Boulevard] and a water course marked "zanja onda," which would obviously seem to refer to the Rio Hondo. Between the road and the "zanja onda" is markings showing another change in grade in the landscape, or a short decline or hill. Between that downslope and the "zanja onda" are the words "corral Mision Vieja" and a series of hatch marks in a circular pattern.<br /><br />Could this have been the original Mission San Gabriel site? It seems to correspond with the general area that was CA-LAN-1311H. If one interprets Father Palou's site description as on a "rising ground" rather than "hill," this also seems to make sense. The problem, once again, is that the mission structures were tule and wood, subject to decay and removal, and the landscape was dramatically altered by flooding, ranching and farming, oil development and other activities. On the other hand, Walter Temple's 1921 plaque site is plainly implausible, with the only rationale being that he owned that land and not the property to the north.<br /><br />We'll never know the exact site because there just isn't enough evidence, but it seems that CA-LAN-1311H is about the closest we'll get.<br /><br />Link to the 1840s diseño of Rancho Potrero Grande:<br /><br /><a href="http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb967nb58f/?layout=metadata&brand=oac">http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb967nb58f/?layout=metadata&brand=oac</a><br /><br />Sources:<br /><br />Lois Roberts and James Brock, <em>Cultural Resources Archival Study: Whittier Narrowes Archaeological District</em>, prepared for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District (Newport Beach: Archaeological Advisory Group,) March 1987.<br /><br />Roberta S. Greenwood, John M. Foster and Anne Q. Duffield with contributions by Gwendolyn R. Romani, A. George Toren, and Sherri M. Gust, <em>The First Historical Settlement in Los Angeles County: Investigations at Whittier Narrows</em>, prepared for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District (Sonora: Infotec Research Incorporated,) January 1989.<br /><br />"Diseño del Potrero Grande vic. Misión Vieja," ca. 1845, U. S. District Court. California, Southern District. Land Case 243 SD, page 63; land case map B-1279, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.<br /><br />Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-36450421145585327072010-03-24T09:44:00.000-07:002010-03-31T09:23:29.950-07:00The Anza Expeditions of 1774-1776 and Misión ViejaOne of the newer national historic trails established and maintained by the National Parks Service is the Anza Trail, commemorating the route taken by Juan Bautista Anza in his colonizing expedition of 300 settlers from Sonora, Mexico [the trail starts at Nogales, Arizona at the Mexico-U. S. border] to San Francisco in 1775-76.<br /><br />There was a preliminary exploration in 1774, during which the Anza group, which was looking to establish an overland road, stopped at the original Mission San Gabriel site at Whittier Narrows. Anza and his compatriots stayed for almost three weeks before continuing their journey north. On the return trip, the group stopped at the mission, in early May, resting for two days before proceeding southward.<br /><br />While it is not certain when the move of the mission was made from Whittier Narrows to the current site, the closest documentation after Serra’s February 1775 report (see the last blog entry) is the arrival of the Anza-led colonization expedition early in 1776.<br /><br />This large group left Sonora in late September 1775 and reached Mission San Gabriel on 4 January 1776. The difference was that this second visit was not to the original mission at Whittier Narrows, but to the newly-selected site, on higher, drier ground at the current location. This is referred to in the diary of Father Pedro Font from the colonists’ expedition, after the group reached the San Gabriel River on the 3rd: “I celebrated holy Mass. We moved away from the Arroyo de San Gabriel at nine in the morning, and at eleven we arrived at the Mission of San Gabriel.”<br /><br />From 1775 onward, the original site at Whittier Narrows became a relic and its tule and wood structures were undoubtedly pillaged for use elsewhere or were inundated by the occasional flooding occurring from intense rain seasons. Very little survives in the historical record for decades afterward. The next post looks at the first census of the Los Angeles area, taken under Mexican rule in 1836, for clues on who was occupying <em>Misión Vieja</em>.<br /><br />Source: Zephyrin Englehardt, <em>San Gabriel Mission and the Beginnings of Los Angeles</em> (San Gabriel: Mission San Gabriel,) 1927.<br /><br />Link to the Anza Trail website: <a href="http://www.nps.gov/juba/index.htm">http://www.nps.gov/juba/index.htm</a><br /><br />Contribued by Paul R. Spitzzeri.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8881258098307298306.post-39251779247158349902010-03-16T13:32:00.000-07:002018-06-01T23:19:24.858-07:00Father Serra's 1773 and 1775 Reports on the Original Mission San GabrielThe Reverend Junipero Serra, founded of most of the California missions, was supposed to have been present at the founding of Mission San Gabriel in September 1771, but was not informed of the decision to send out the priests Somera and Cambón, who established the site at Whittier Narrows.<br />
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Serra did, however, visit the mission in May 1773 and submitted a long report to the viceroy of New Spain (Mexico), in which he stated that<br />
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<i>The place together with the circumstances of soil, arroyos, timber, fire-wood, and other facilities, is beyond dispute that most excellent of all discovered. Without doubt, this one alone, if well cultivated, would be sufficient to maintain itself and all the rest</i> [of the missions.]<br />
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Recall in the first post of this blog that Father Juan Crespí, in his diary on the Portolá expedition of 1769-1770, considered that "La Puente" a few miles to the east was superior, but that the Whittier Narrows location was also a prime one for a mission site.<br />
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According to Serra, Alta California departmental governor Pedro Fages instituted restrictions on native access to the mission compound that soured relations between them and the Spaniards. In addition to detailing the rape and consequent violence that was also covered by Father Francisco Palou in his report of the same year, Serra criticized the behavior of the soldiers stationed at San Gabriel for their laziness, violent tendencies and impudence, including the continued rape of Indian women and the killing of men.<br />
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Serra also made reference to attempts to develop the mission and noted a problem that proved to be insurmountable to keeping the facility at Whittier Narrows: "the Fathers in the first year planted a piece of land with wheat, which went up and promised well; but owing to the lack of experience in that territory, they sowed in too low ground, so that the copious rains, which set in, submerged and destroyed it." On other hand, he did state that "what did thrive very well is a garden sufficiently large and fenced in. When I passed there, it abounded in various kinds of vegetables, melons, water melons, etc."<br />
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Serra returned to Mission San Gabriel early in 1775 and sent another report to the viceroy in February. In it, he documented that the increase of livestock was to 65 cattle, 66 sheep, 34 goats, 18 pigs, 19 horses, and 16 mules. In the preceding year, harvests of wheat, corn and beans were moderately successful and wheat was sown for the new season with the land for the other two crops in preparation.<br />
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As to the neophytes, Serra reported that, from 8 September 1771 to 31 December 1774, “there have been baptized 148 Indians of all ages, of whom eight have died. Nineteen Indian marriages have been blessed. Hence the Mission is composed of 19 new Christian Indian families with 154 persons, all of whom live at the Mission in their little huts of poles.”<br />
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Yet, there was an important set of statements about the inherent problems of the site of the Mission. In this regard, Serra wrote that<br />
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<i>from the last day of December, 1773, till the last day of December, 1774, they have constructed no new buildings at the Mission, except a structure of poles . . . for the smithy, and another . . . which is to be used as a granary for corn.</i><br />
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As to why this was,<br />
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<i>The reason is that for greater convenience and utility they want to move the Mission to where the land is cultivated in the same valley, only about half a league distant. </i><br />
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Indeed, it was not long afterward that the move was approved and made. The next entry will detail the visits of famed explorer Juan Bautista de Anza to both the original and current sites of the Mission San Gabriel.<br />
Sources:<br />
Zephyrin Englehardt, <i>San Gabriel Mission and the Beginnings of Los Angeles</i> (San Gabriel: Mission San Gabriel,) 1927. <br />
Chester Lyle Guthrie, "Site of Mision Vieja: Registered Landmark #161," State of California, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks, 1933, found in <i>Cultural Resources Archival Study: Whittier Narrows Archaeological District,</i> prepared for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District by Lois Roberts and James Brock, Archaeological Advisory Group, March 1987. <br />
Roberta S. Greenwood, John M. Foster and Anne Q. Duffield (with contributions by Gwendolyn R. Romani, A. George Toren and Sherri M. Gust), <i>The First Historical Settlement in Los Angeles County: Investigations at Whittier Narrows</i>, prepared for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District, January 1989.<br />
Contributed by Paul R. SpitzzeriUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0