Misión Vieja and the 1860 Federal Census

In mid-July 1860, census marshal James McManus ventured south from El Monte and into the community of Misión Vieja 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.

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 Joaquín Duarte, followed by his brother Julio.  Then there is José Alvitre and the surnames Melendrez, Reyes, Vejar, Basye and Olivera, as well as given names like Inocencia, Gertrudes, and Guadalupe.  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.)

The Duartes were an old Misión Vieja 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 Paula.  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. 

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.

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 Dorotea 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.

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!)

Two households down was "Setternena" or Saturnina Lobo, widow of Juan José Lobo, whose mother, Casilda Soto, was grantee of Rancho La Merced, encompassing much of Misión Vieja.  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.

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). 

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 Misión Vieja.

Another household in which the surname of the family was mangled by Marshal MacManus was that José "Clouthaalis," which might be Gonzalez, this group consisting of a husband, wife (Mary or Maria) and son (Francisco.)

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.

Next to Tomasa was her niece, "Johanna," actually María Ines Alvitre, her husband "Halina", that is, Julio Duarte (again shown as "Dwarty") and their two sons, "Hossuth" or Jesús and Jose.  Strangely, a few more households away is a "Flora A. Alvetro," but who was a 47-year old male, 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.

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 Misión Vieja (Old Mission). Click on the photo to get a zoomed-in look at it.  Courtesy: Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.

The largest single household in Misión Vieja 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 mayordomo (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. 

There were also six Indian servants, including a mother, "Vanancio" and her four children "Hula Ann," "Massemon," Alvino and Victoria.  This was the former Venancia 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. 

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.

Another noteworthy person in the Sánchez household was Rafael "Vasa" or Basye.  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.

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.

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.

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.

Next door to Bermudez was "Hosa Alvetre" or José Alvitre, who was probably José Apolinario, and his wife "Marea" who would then have been María Antonia Soto, along with five children.

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 Misión Vieja.

At the end of the Old Mission listings, finally, was "Anastasio Alvetre" and his wife "Lauterio" or Eleuteria Verdugo and their two sons and two daughters.  Another notable person to mention, though he wasn't living directly in Misión Vieja 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!

In 1860, Misión Vieja 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, Californios, 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.

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 El Niño effect, unknown then, became La Niña 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 Californio/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.

Next, we'll examine the 1870 census, which did not suffer so much from poor spelling as from sheer difficulty in readability!

Contributed by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Collections Manager, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry