The Basye Family of Misión Vieja

The 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.


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.


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.

This early 1900s map shows the Misión Vieja 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.

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."


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."

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.

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.


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.


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 Misión Vieja family profiled in this blog previously, in 1869.

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 Misión Vieja family.  Standing at the center is Zuñiga's second wife, Lucinda Temple, from another Old Mission family.

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.

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 Misión Vieja native, Lucinda Temple when he ran the store and saloon.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Misión Vieja 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.

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.

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.

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 La Misión Vieja and will make for an interesting addition to this blog.

Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.