Misión Vieja: The Ancestral Center of the Los Angeles Region

Before 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.

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.

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.

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, Rancho Paso de Bartolo, which includes much of today's Whittier, the unincorporated area historically called Los Nietos and other adjacent locations.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It should be noted that the Spanish referred to the native peoples under their regime as Kichireños when the original mission site at the Narrows was in operation.  Later, at the current site, the term Gabrieleños was employed.  Accounts published in 1846 and 1856, however, make use of the term Kizh in reference to the natives, the descendants of which hold that the Whittier Narrows/Misión Vieja/Old Mission area is a central, sacred place of immense cultural and religious significance to the tribe.

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.

The Temple Family of Misión Vieja

In 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.

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.



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.

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.

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. 

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!)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

A view of workers cutting beef near a zanja (water ditch) in front of the Temple adobe at Rancho La Merced, ca. 1870.  Copy provided by Philip Nathanson.

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 Los Angeles Star 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A portion of the gardens at the Temple residence at Rancho La Merced, ca. 1870.  Copy provided by Philip Nathanson.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A circa 1900 view of the houses at the Temple Homestead at Misión Vieja.  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.

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.

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 Misión Vieja 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.

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.

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?

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"!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Physically, there is little left of what the Temples had at Misión Vieja.  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. 

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.

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.

Rancho Potrero Grande and Misión Vieja

The final of the four ranchos in and surrounding the community of Misión Vieja, 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. 

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 llavalera (or keeper of the keys) at Mission San Gabriel.  One of the few documents mentioning him noted that he was an "Indio viudo de Margarita," or "Indian widow of Margarita," this wife obviously being another native person. 

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 Misión Vieja community.  The couple had at least six children, though some sources indicate that only two daughters lived.

It has also been stated that Manuel Antonio was a Mission San Gabriel mayordomo, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?)

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 Californio 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.

In March 1857, Sánchez sold half of his stake in Potrero Grande to his compadres 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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 Seven thousand dollars [underlining originally in the affidavit here and below] . . . and that he had loaned him Seven thousand dollars more."  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!)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

From 1880, then, Baldwin and Garvey assumed ownership of all of Potrero Grande and subdivision gradually ensued, accelerating after Baldwin's death in 1909.

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

Misión Vieja and the 1940 Federal Census

A 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.

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.

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 Misión Vieja.  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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Finally, the last family counted in the census in Misión Vieja 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.

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.

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

Misión Vieja and the 1930 Federal Census

This photograph shows one of the several dairies located at Misión Vieja 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. 
Courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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, El Aliso (The Cottonwood), on it.  Prugh enjoyed his wealth another few years and died in October 1933.

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.

In a few weeks, the 1940 census will be made available for the first time and it will be interesting to see what Misión Vieja was like a little over 70 years ago.

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