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.

Misión Vieja and the 1920 Federal Census

This detail from a 1921 panoramic photograph published in a state report on the oil industry is taken from atop an oil derrick looking west.  The road is Durfee Avenue as it merges into San Gabriel Boulevard.  The newly-built bridge crossing the Rio Hondo (water is clearly seen in the river at the upper right) is near the Basye Adobe, headquarters at the time for Standard Oil Company's Montebello field operations.  The Montebello Hills are in the distance.  Click on the photo for a larger view in a new window.

In terms of demographics and the use of the land by its residents, especially, the Old Mission community changed relatively little from its earliest settlement before 1836 until well into the 20th century.  Matters accelerated, however, in the 1910s, specifically with the discovery of oil in the Montebello Hills.  A Whittier newspaper from 1915 attributed the local find to road crews driving bridge piles, presumably for San Gabriel Boulevard's new span across the Rio Hondo, and forcing a seepage of crude to the surface. 

Another version is that 9-year old Thomas W. Temple II, whose grandfather, F. P. F. Temple owned much of the land in and around Misión Vieja from the early 1850s, and whose father, Walter Temple, purchased in 1912 about 60 acres on and just below the very northeastern corner of the Montebello Hills, made a discovery in April 1914.  According to this account, young Thomas was playing in the hills after a rain and saw a pool of water bubbling and turning black, while a strong rotten egg-like smell emanated from the pool.  Knowing that there was oil there, the boy ran down the hill and crossed Lincoln Boulevard to the Temple family home, formerly the adobe store and saloon built by Rafael Basye and Jesús Andrade in 1869, to tell his father.  Walter Temple returned with a match and, riskily, struck it over the pool and flame shot out.  For those who remember the old television sitcom, The Beverly Hillbillies, this incredible tale might sound a little familiar! 

In 1915, the Temples arranged a lease with Standard Oil Company of California (now Chevron), while the daughters of Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, who took most of the area land about 1880 from F. P. F. Temple and Juan Matías Sánchez when Temple failed to repay a loan that Sánchez used his land as security for, arranged their own lease with Standard on hundreds of acres of the hills.

By 1916, a test well was drilled on the Baldwin portion and came in successfully.  The Temple lease was then drilled on and the first well came in there in late June 1917 with a gusher.  The bonanza was on!  Within a few years, leases were signed with area farmers and landowners by several companies and the Montebello oil field, centered on the hills and in the vicinity of Old Mission, was born.

Consequently, the 1920 federal censuses reflected an already-transformed community.  When enumerator Isaac F. Baker came through in late January and early February, many of the longtime families or older members of them were deceased or had moved away.  For example, Walter Temple, born in the neighborhood in 1869, used the proceeds from his immense stroke of luck and moved in 1917 to Monterey Park and then, later that year, to Alhambra.

One "old timer" who remained in Old Mission was Pedro Alvitre, son of Anastacio Alvitre and Eleuteria Verdugo, who lived long lives in the community and died during the 1910s.  Pedro assumed ownership of his father's share in the Rancho Potrero Chico, living in a section at the northwestern portion of the rancho, west of today's Rosemead Boulevard and east of the Rio Hondo.  His four sons, a daughter, and a nephew, Tony Bermudez, also resided with him on the farm, though there were attempts at finding oil on their land, as was the case with any property in the area.

The next family was that of the Salgados, whose head, Victoriano, a 50-year old native of Mexico, was listed as a farm laborer, perhaps assisting on the Alvitre farm.  Victoriano lived with his California born wife, Nasario and their four sons and two daughters.

Interestingly, the next household was that of Elizabeth Barry, who owned the middle of three sections of the western portion of the Potrero Chico ranch, and she listed her occupatiuon as "farm, oil wells."  Indeed, there were successful wells drilled on the Barry lease in the late 1910s.  Elizabeth, who was a Bermudez, before her marriage to Irish native George Barry (who died in the 1890s), was 70 years old in 1920 and lived with two unmarried daughters.  The adjacent household was that of her son, James, a 50-year old widower, who was shown as an "oil field laborer" and was living with three sons and a daughter, with the eldest son, age 15, working as a farm laborer.

Notably, the third landowner of the sections between the Barrys and Alvitres was Timoteo Repetto.  He and his wife Maria were counted, but on two sheets earlier than that of his neighbors.  Perhaps Baker visited the home out of order for some reason.  He also indicated that the Repettos were renters, which was clearly not the case.  Previous censuses and the 1930 count showed Timoteo as an owner of his own farm.

Another early family that still had some members residing at Misión Vieja in 1920 was the Manzanares clan.  Specifically, there were the brothers Pedro and Inocente, whose brother Victor had been in the area in 1910, but moved to Monterey Park by the end of the decade.  The two remaining in Old Mission were 51 and 48, respectively, and both single, working as farm laborers.

Next to them were step-siblings and the last of the long-standing families to still be in the neighborhood in 1920.  These were brother and sister, Antonio and Dominga Duarte.  They were the children of Maria Siriaca Valenzuela, whose father was one of the original grantees of Rancho Potrero Chico, and Francisco Duarte.  After their father died, Siriaca married Cristobal Manzanares, the father of the Pedro and Inocente noted above.  Antonio, like his step brothers, was also a farm laborer.

There were, however, many new residents of the general Old Mission community, most of whom were associated with the new and burgeoning oil industry.  For example, after Walter Temple left the neighborhood in 1917, the old Basye Adobe became the headquarters of the Standard Oil Company for the Montebello oil field.  Several dozen single men were listed on two sheets of the census as residents of "Boarding House Standard Oil Co."  The great majority of the workers were in their 20s, which was natural given the rigorous physical (and dangerous) work involved in much of the oil industry.  While a number of the employees housed at the boarding house were native Californians, most were from the Midwest, with a few from eastern or southern states.  Five were from other countries, including England, Austria Denmark, Norway and Russia.  Occupations included rotary drillers, tool dressers, derrick men, pumpers, gaugers, rig builders and roustabouts.  These latter were general laborers, doing whatever work they were ordered to by the foreman, while tool dressers prepared the tools to be used in the drilling and operation of the well.  Gaugers typically oversee the flow of crude in pipelines and into tanks.  There were two other employees to point out from the Standard boarding house: cook Katherine DeMaine, who was listed as born "on sea American vessel", and baker Rose Kalics, an ethnic Bohemian from Vienna, Austria.  These two were clearly essential to the maintenance of the workers trudging to and from the field every day!

Other oil workers in the general Misión Vieja community lived with families in separate housing often rented from the company or the lease owner.  While some of these men could be workers like those listed above, they also included the supervisors or foremen, such as Standard's drill foreman Romane Richardson, a native of Pennsylvania (the birthplace of the American oil industry) and machinist foreman August Segelhorst, both of whom had families with children, or Columbia Oil company's lease foreman William M. Talbot, a New York native of Scottish parents, who lived with his wife, two daughters and two "wards," these latter being two sisters who might have been orphans taken in by Talbot and his wife.

In any case, the onset of the oil industry at Old Mission from about 1917 dramatically changed the community, a process that would continue through the next decade and beyond, though later developments were more about another use of the land, as will be seen in later posts.

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

Misión Vieja and the 1910 Federal Census

A detail of a map of Rancho Potrero Chico showing plots owned by Julia Davis Cruz, Elizabeth Bermudez Barry, Timoteo Repetto, and Pedro Alvitre.  Notice at the bottom that there is "Temple Road," named for the Temple family, whose ranch was at the very bottom right corner below Durfee Avenue.  The small comment at the bottom left, however, indicated that Temple Road had just been changed to San Gabriel Boulevard.  Its path also was moved to just above the roadbed shown here and the fork where it meets Durfee is where what is now Rosemead Boulevard ended, though it was much later extended north into the Potrero Chico ranch.  Rancho La Merced (over 2,300 acres) is also partially indicated on the southern edge of the much smaller Potrero Chico (about 80-90 acres, depending on the survey.) Clicking on the map gives a slightly larger view in a separate window.  Courtesy: Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.

With the 1910 federal census, the Old Mission community probably had relatively little change from the previous count a decade earlier.  Many of the families who had resided in the community for decades were still there and engaged in various types of farming, including growing walnuts, fruits and vegetables or, in a few cases, grapes for winemaking.  They were enumerated in the census by Charles Soward, who had some of the problems working with Spanish-language given and surnames that his predecessors had, although his writing also could be a little tough to decipher, thanks as well to light fading on the original sheets.

On the first page covering the community appears the family of Paolo Briano, recorded in the 1900 census along with Giovanni Piuma.  Briano and Piuma, who were brothers-in-law (Briano married Piuma's sister) had been partners in a winemaking business and leased the old adobe and brick houses that comprised the Temple Homestead at the southeast corner of today's Rosemead Boulevard and San Gabriel Boulevard/Durfee Avenue intersection.  By 1910, however, Piuma moved into Los Angeles and opened a large winery that was well known for many years.  Briano, with his wife and four children, appears to have remained at the same property at Old Mission, but was listed as a store salesman in the census (a decade later, he ran a store in Monterey Park, and in both censuses his wife worked alongside her husband.)  His brother, Bartolo, however, is shown as a "vineyard laborer" which suggests that the grape growing and winemaking conducted on the Temple ranch for decades and then leased to Piuma and Briano continued.  The next household was of another Italian, Bartolomeo Pastorino and his wife Rosa, and Pastorino was also a "vineyard laborer."

The next household was that of Walter P. Temple, the last of his family to remain in Misión Vieja.  Temple's brother, Charles, had been living with his brother in 1900 on the remains of the family homestead, but after legal troubles (to be detailed later) and a new marriage to Susie Castino (whose sister Lucy Pegorari is mentioned below) after the mysterious death of his first wife, Old Mission native Rafaela Basye, found him moving out to Santa Monica.  In the meantime, Walter occupied a section of the homestead just south of Briano, having married Laura Gonzalez, a Misión Vieja native, in 1903 and started a family that included three children in the 1910 enumeration.  Temple, listed as a farmer, raised walnuts and apples on his portion of the homestead.  Included in the Temple household was Francisca Valenzuela, listed as Laura Temple's aunt, and who had resided in Old Mission since her birth in the early 1850s and Antonio Ramirez, a nephew of Mrs. Temples.

Next to the Temples was the large family of Felipe Rodriguez, his sister, and his seven children, with Rodriguez listed as a farmer.  Adjacent was a household of several persons headed by Indiana native Ira Corpe and his wife, also from Indiana, and three sons born in Washington and Oregon.  They seem to have occupied an area just north of Durfee Avenue and east of Rosemead. 

The next household was that of Julia Davis Cruz and her brother Thomas Davis.  These were the remaining members of a longtime Old Mission family, whose residence in the community goes back to the 1850s and their connection to Juan Matias Sanchez, once the half-owner of the Rancho La Merced, which covered much of the Misión Vieja area.  Notably, Julia Cruz is listed as living on her "own income," while her brother, Thomas, was denoted an "imbecile."  By this was meant that he was mentally disabled and was, therefore, under the care of his older sister.  Ironically, oil was later found on the just under 10-acre Davis/Cruz property (see the map above) on the north side of San Gabriel Boulevard/Durfee Avenue, before Rosemead Avenue pushed north from that point, and just weeks before drilling was to begin on the leased property in 1917, Julia Davis Cruz died at age 66.  Walter P. Temple, whose family was closely associated with the Davises, assumed management of the Davis/Cruz oil revenues from General Petroleum Corporation, which held the lease. 

Next was the family of Urbano and "Horavia" Estrada, who operated a dairy, an industry that was relatively new in the community, but which became prominent for years.  The couple had four young children, two sons and two daughters, and a newly arrived Italian immigrant, "Sam Pocanano", worked as a laborer there.

Another new family in the area was that of Frank and Delores Jeffredo.  Delores was the daughter of the abovementioned Juan Matias Sanchez and his wife Matilda Bojorquez and was born in the late 1870s.  In 1897, she married Jeffredo, whose father was French. and who was a resident of San Gabriel, and the two began their family and resided at Old Mission, where Frank was a farmer.

The adjacent household was that of Micaela Alvitre, a 69-year old native of Misión Vieja and daughter of Juan Jose Alvitre and Tomasa Alvarado.  Although the columns provided for listing number of total and living children each say one for her and her son, 48-year old Joe Malcolm was residing with her, there is a 20-year old man, Joseph "Leibas" or Leiva, living in the household and denoted as "son."  It seems likely that this identification was a mistake.  In any case, Malcom and Leiva are shown as "odd jobs laborer," rather than farmers, so it is not clear what land Micaela Alvitre and the others were residing on.  Was it property passed down through Alvitre connections to the old Rancho Potrero Chico, half of which went to the Alvitres back in the 1840s, or something separate?

Other families follow with the surnames of Rosas, connected through marriage with the Alvitres, with Ramona Alvitre, daughter of Jacinto Alvitre and Lugarda Moreno, having married Ramon Rosas about 1850; "Anguro," or Angulo and "Mongia" or Munguia--all of which were native to California.  These were followed by Mexican born heads of households in the Diaz, Romo and Reyes families, all of whom came to the U.S. between 1888 and 1907 and all working as "odd jobs laborer."

More recent Old Mission families followed including the Pegoraris, whose head, Peter, was from California, though his father was Italian.  His wife, Lucy, was a Castino, an Italian family who had lived in nearly "Fruitland" in the general Montebello/Bell Gardens area, and their five children were in the household and Peter's occupation was "carrying for cattle."  There was also Luis Lopez, a Montebello plumber, who lived with his wife, five children and mother.  Following was Luis Ortega, a native of Mexico and immigrant of 1893, who lived with his wife and six children and was an "odd jobs laborer."

Then, there is another longtime Old Mission family, that of Victor Manzanares, whose father Cristobal married Inocencia Alvitre.  Victor, who owned his own farm, lived with his wife, Librada, their seven children and a niece.  Nearby were Victor's two brothers, Pedro and Inocente, and relatives in the Melendrez family.

Another old connection to Misión Vieja is through the household of Encarnación Andrade, who married Rita Marina Gonzalez, daughter of Ramona Alvitre.  Andrade, born in Mexico about 1855, came to the United States in 1868 and married Marina, who went in this census by Mary, in 1887.  Mary Gonzalez Andrade gave birth, according to his census, to 16 children, of whom 11 survived and 9 were present in the household.  Later in the census was Encarnación's father, Secundino Andrade, his second wife and children from both marriages. 

After the household of Eufemio Bojorquez, a native of Mexico, who was a farmer, but had been a blacksmith at Old Mission in 1900, is the residence of Pedro Alvitre, who would remain at Old Mission long after most residents.  Alvitre, age 47, had his own farm and was married for seven years.  He and his wife had already had five children, of which three were still living.  Also in the household, however, was Pedro's parents, Anastacio Alvitre and "Elutria" or Eleuteria Verdugo.  Anastacio was listed as 99 years old, although he was actually 88, while his wife was correctly listed as 84.  The two had been married for 62 years and, remarkably, Eleuteria was listed as having had 20 children, of whom only three were still living in 1910.  The Alvitre property referred to here was 26 acres of the Rancho Potrero Chico, a portion of which is at the very top of the map shown above.

There was another unusual Anglo household that followed, that of John J. Fay, a farmer, with his wife Elaine and daughter Alice May.

Nearby was another old Misión Vieja clan, the Barrys.  Elizabeth Bermudez Barry, widow of George Barry, lived with six of her children (overall 10 of her 13 children were living in 1910), while a seventh, James, resided close by with his wife, Isidora, and their four children.  The Barrys occupied about 36 acres of Rancho Potrero Chico on either side of today's Rosemead Boulevard north of San Gabriel Boulevard/Durfee Avenue (see the above map.)

Close to the Barrys was another longtime family in the community.  This consisted of Maria Antonia Alvitre Basye, her son James and daughter Isabel.  Mentioned above was a deceased daughter, Rafaela, who was married to Charles P. Temple and whose mysterious death in 1899 caused a sensation in the community.  This was further inflamed when another Basye child, Thomas, was killed by Temple three years later--allegedly over Rafaela's death (again, this will be covered subsequently.)

Not far from the Basyes and Barrys is "Timotaio" or Timoteo Repetto, who had a fascinating history.  His mother was Maria de la Cruz Alvitre, daughter of the Juan Jose Alvitre and Tomasa Alvarado noted above with Michaela and Anastacio Alvitre, who were her sister and brother.  Cruz Alvitre married, in 1843, Jose Ygnacio Serradel (also Cerradel), but had Timoteo in 1866 through a common-law relationship with Alejandro Repetto, a colorful natve of Genoa, Italy with a medical background, who owned a large ranch in what is now Monterey Park on the hills just north of the 60 Freeway.  Alejandro Repetto raised sheep and was, evidently, well off when he became the final victim of famed bandido Tiburcio Vásquez in Spring 1874.  Although Vásquez was foiled in his attempt to steal from Repetto, fled and was soon captured in modern-day Hollywood (and then executed in San Jose in 1875), rumors persisted for generations about hidden loot stolen from Repetto and buried either in the hills near the Repetto adobe or in the Montebello Hills closer to Old Mission.  In any case, Alejandro died in 1881 and Cruz Alvitre about a quarter century later.

As for Timoteo, he was educated at the La Puente (later Temple) School on Durfee Avenue at Misión Vieja and assisted his father until Alejandro's death before engaging as a professional acrobat for twenty years.  Meantime, he married in 1887 Maria Hernandez, born in Jalisco, Mexico, and, although a biography of Timoteo says there were no children, the 1910 census shows an 11-year old son, whose name appears to say "Wangisus" or Juan Jesús, though the young man may have died before reaching adulthood.  After retiring as an acrobat, Timoteo and family returned to California from Mexico in 1902 and settled with his mother on the house and ranch where he was born, though this was not the Repetto ranch in Monterey Park, which had been sold years before.  Instead, Timoteo moved to Old Mission, on Alvitre land from Rancho Potrero Chico passed down to his mother (see the map above.)   Eventually, on the 16 acres, Timoteo farmed and had at least one oil well lease from which he derived revenue.  His wife died in 1930, but Timoteo lived until at least the mid-1930s.

Near Repetto and after Secundino Andrade was another relatively new arrival in the community, farmer Victoriano Salgado, an 1888 immigrant from Mexico, his wife and five children, and it appears that the enumeration of Misión Vieja ends about with the Salgado family.

As with previous censuses, Old Mission remained overwhelmingly Latino, although with a greater mix of fairly newly arrived Mexicans among the long-established families in the area and in California, generally.  There were only a few Americans and Italians and, just outside the community, was a household of five Chinese "truck farmers," meaning vegetable or fruit growers and, at another residence, one Japanese laborer. 

In 1910, the community was also still wedded mainly to agriculture, but within several years that was to change dramatically with something different emerging from the ground than walnuts, apples, strawberries, grapes, lettuce and whatever else was raised on farms and ranches.  Old Mission would not be the same fairly static place it had been for decades before.

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

Misión Vieja and the 1900 Federal Census

Lucinda Temple Zuñiga (1860-1928) standing in front of the store and saloon owned by her husband Manuel M. Zuñiga (1854-1928) at the Basye Adobe.  Rafael Basye and Jesús Andrade built the adobe and started the business and then Zuñiga assumed ownership after Basye's death.  Lucinda's brother, Walter P. Temple (1869-1938) bought the adobe in 1912 and moved his family into it.  Copy provided by Carlos Hartnell, a Zuñiga descendant, to the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.

With the 1890 federal census largely destroyed by fire, there is a major twenty-year gap between censuses, spanning from 1880 to 1900.  For example, in the Los Angeles region, the economic slump that began in 1875 continued for about a decade.  But, in 1885, a direct transcontinental railroad link reached the Los Angeles area from the east via the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad line.  Soon after, a massive real estate boom, called the "Boom of the Eighties," ensued, bringing many new residents to the region.  The boom went bust by the end of the decade and the 1890s was largely marked by a national depression, beginning in 1893 and compounding the local downturn, and several years of drought.

As to Old Mission, many of the old families remained, while there were a few new additions.  Though not technically within the neighborhood, there were several groups of Chinese settlers close by, including a group of four men who worked a farm and had four Chinese laborers with them.  It is noteworthy that all eight men had been in the United States for at least twenty years, the earliest of them migrating in 1862.  This is significant because, in 1882, an exclusion act was passed by Congress forbidding any Chinese to settle in the country.  Also just outside Misión Vieja, there was the unusual circumstance of Sing Hom, a farmer who came to California at age 10 in 1877, being married to Claire, a white woman from Pennsylvania and of English and French parentage.  Intermarriage was not only exceedingly rare, but in the El Monte area, known as a hotbed of racism during the 19th-century, it must have attracted some attention, given that the Homs had quite a few neighbors from Texas, Alabama and Missouri around them.

One of the first Old Mission families counted in the census by enumerator William P. Spence was that of Tomás Alvitre, then 65 years old, and married for 45 years to his wife Francisca Verdugo.  The two had three adult children, two sons and a daughter, residing with them, as well. 

Two households away were the brothers Charles and Walter Temple, the sole remaining members of the once-prominent family that owned a great deal of land in and around Old Mission prior to the failure of the family's bank in 1876.  The two, youngest of eleven children, inherited the fifty-acre Temple Homestead salvaged by their mother, Antonia Margarita Workman, after the bank's collapse.  She died in 1892, however, during a two-week period when the flu took the lives of her mother and son, also.  Walter, aged 30, and Charles, 28, still owned the early 1850s adobe and circa 1870 French Second Empire brick residence on the property.  They, however, were leasing the former, as will be seen below.  Meantime, the two had a boarder, a man only identified as "Camp," a 28-year old who was listed as married for five years, though his wife was not with him.  Moreover, no information was given as to his birthplace or that of his parents.  "Camp," however, was listed as the teacher at the La Puente School, which the Temple brothers were both involved in as trustees around this period.  Also of note is that Charles Temple was a widow--his first wife was Rafaela Basye of a well-known Old Mission family.  Therein lies a tale to be told at a later date (but, hopefully, not too much later)!

The next two households consisted of two men who leased the old Temple adobe from the Temple brothers.  These were Italians Giovanni Piuma and Paolo Briano.  Piuma was born in 1864 and migrated to the United States at age 21 in 1885.  His wife, Mary, came to this country a few years after he did, presumably to marry him, because their first child was born that same year, 1888.  Every two years another child followed, so that the brood was six by the time of the census.  Also in the household were Piuma's parents, Rosa and Frank and a sister-in-law, all of whom migrated from the old country a few years prior.  Briano, aged 28, and his wife Mary were migrants of 1896, having just married, and had a daughter and son after their settling in California.  Notably, while Piuma's occupation was "wine maker," that of Briano was "farm laborer," so it appears that the latter worked for the former, though later they were partners.

The next residence was occupied by Manuel Zuñiga (listed as "Sunaga"), his second wife, Lucinda Temple, sister of the Walter and Charles noted above, and his son, David, by his late first wife, Carmel Davis.  Zuñiga was proprietor of the store and saloon opened in 1869 by Rafael Basye in an adobe building he had constructed.  After Basye's death in the late 1880s, Zuñiga took over the business and ran it from an undetermined period of time.

A seemingly-new family to the neighborhood was adjacent to the Zuñigas, this being the household of "Alves" [Elva?] Maria Flores and her four children.  Next to the Flores family was that of Ramona Alvitre de Gonzalez, a member of the long-standing Alvitre family in the community, and long the widow of Feliz Gonzalez.  She resided with three sons, a daughter and two granddaughters.

Then there is Julia Davis Cruz, her brothers Peter and Thomas, and two nieces, Lenora and Lucinda.  There are direct connections here to Manuel Zuñiga from above.  Namely, Julia, Peter and Thomas were the siblings of Zuñiga's first wife, Carmel, and Lenora and Lucinda were his daughters.  Yet, though their brother David resided with his father and step-mother, the Zuñiga daughters were living with their aunt and uncles.  Also puzzling is that Julia's marital status box was left blank, though she had been twice married (in the 1880 census her last name was given as "Montigue") and it is not known if her second husband, Carlos Cruz, was dead or living in 1900.

A few households follow of relatively new families to the area, including one shown as "Emetino" and other of a woman, Gertrude Cordova and her two children.  These are followed by blacksmith "Eufemio" Bojorquez and his wife and three children.  Afterward is Martín Flores and his wife and three children.

Next come more members of the Alvitre (shown as "Alvetra") family, including siblings Michaela and Ramon Alvitre, children of Juan Jose and Tomasa Alvarado.  Michaela, listed as 60 years old, but five years older than that, had a boarder, while her brother, shown as 57 and widowed from Francisca Rayales, but also older (by about four years) had two sons, John and Ramon, with him as well as a boarder.

Another relatively new family to the neighborhood, shown as "Antoya," but most likely "Montoya" followed.  Household head, Alejandro, was Mexican-born and an immigrant of 1883 and he lived with his wife and two young sons.

Then is the household of Victor Manzanares, whose father Cristobal, was an 1850s arrival in Old Mission, and whose mother was Inocencia Alvitre.  Victor and his several siblings were listed in the 1880 census as orphans, but he was, by 1900, married and had give children.  Following was the family of Jessie Manriquez and her son and three daughters.

A few households away was Elizabeth (Adelaida) Bermudez Barry, whose mother was Maria Ventura Alvitre, and her eight daughters and two sons.  Elizabeth was recently widowed, her husband, Irish-born George Barry, having died in 1899.  The Barrys were a long-time family in Old Mission and are the subject of a new book by descendant James Aguirre.

Further down the list were members of the Andrade family, including Encarnación, who married Rita Marina Gonzalez, daughter of Ramona Alvitre.  The couple resided with their six children, three sons and three daughters.  Below was 75-year old Maria Siriaca Valenzuela, first married to Francisco Duarte and then to Cristobal Manzanares, and who was living with her Duarte children: Antonio, Francisca and Dominga, as well two grandsons.

Adjacent was Anastacio Alvitre, 75, and the son of Juan Jose Alvitre and Tomasa Alvarado and older brother of the Michaela and Ramon Alvitre noted above.  He was residing with his wife Eleuteria Verdugo, their son Pedro, and Eleuteria's sister, Salvadora Verdugo.  Interestingly, there were also two Chinese brothers in the house, whose names appear to read "Pun Luie" and "Ken Luie" and who were 38 and 40.  "Ken" was a migrant of 1875 and his brother three years later and the younger was listed as married for two years though there was no spouse present.

The next family, possibly the last in the Misión Vieja community for this census, was that of Felipe and Francisca Rodriguez, living with nine children.  Remarkably, Mrs. Rodriguez had given birth to 17 children with just that little more than half surviving.  Of course, larger families were more common then than now and the loss of children was frequent.  In fact, one woman, Antonia Andrade, lost five of twelve children; Elizabeth Barry lost three of thirteen; and Raymunda "Emetino" lost an amazing ten of sixteen.  Rare was the case where all of a large family survived, though this was the case with Francisca Alvitre, who bore eleven children.

The 1900 federal census revealed that some longtime families, such as the Alvitres, Zuñigas, Davises, Manzanareses, and Barrys still maintained a large presence in the community.  Yet, there were new residents, including the Italian Piuma and Briano families, a few Chinese and a couple of Mexican families.  Farming was the predominant occupation and would remain so for another fifteen or twenty years.  Future censuses would start to show a declining population, particularly as the oil  industry came to the area.

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

Misión Vieja and the 1880 Federal Census

A circa 1870 view of a portion of the Temple Ranch at Misión Vieja, southwest of today's intersection of San Gabriel Blvd. and Durfee Avenue just east of Rosemead Boulevard.  The 1850s adobe house is at the left of the water tower in the center.  Later, a brick residence was added.  By 1880, the Temple family's wealth had vanished in a disastrous bank failure and fifty acres including the area seen here were sold back to the family by Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin.  Courtesy of Phillip Nathanson, from an original stereographic photograph in his collection.

In the ten years since the 1870 federal census, significant changes occurred at Misión Vieja and the broader Los Angeles region.  The first half of the decade had seen an economic boom accompanied by a significant population growth throughout the county.  Mining activity in the deserts of Inyo and San Bernardino counties brought mineral ore through Los Angeles.  Agriculture was growing rapidly, including viticulture and wine-making and the developing orange industry.  Immigration, largely fueled by migrants from the eastern American states and Europe, swelled Los Angeles' population, but also that of established and newer towns in the county.  During the early 1870s, new communities like San Fernando, Artesia, Downey, Pomona, and Orange, among others, arose.  Transportation improvements were also notable, at the crude harbor at San Pedro, the new competing wharf at Anaheim Landing (Seal Beach), and new railroads, such as the Los Angeles and San Pedro line from the city to the port and the construction of local branch lines of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which finally made a direct connection to San Francisco in summer 1876.  The boom, however, came to a spectacular crash in late 1875 and early 1876, as silver mine speculation at Virginia City, Nevada engulfed San Francisco banks and the panic rode the telegraph lines to Los Angeles.  There, the bank co-owned and managed by Old Mission resident F. P. F. Temple, foundered.  With a loan from San Francisco capitalist, Elias J. (Lucky) Baldwin, the bank reopened, but only long enough for depositors to close their accounts and withdraw the borrowed cash, forcing the bank to close for good.  As collateral for the loan, Temple, his father-in-law William Workman of Rancho La Puente, and Juan Matias Sanchez, Temple's co-owner at Rancho La Merced, put up much of the land in and around Misión Vieja and then lost it to Baldwin after he foreclosed in 1879, just before the following year's federal census. 

When A. J. Howard, the census enumerator, came through Old Mission in mid-June 1880, he found many of its long-time residents still there.  As a small farming and ranching community, it did not likely change as much as Los Angeles or some of the bigger outlying settlements, like Los Nietos to the south or El Monte to the north.

The first recognizable name he came upon was Maria Duarte, this being Maria Inez Alvitre, daughter of Jose Claudio Alvitre and Asención Valenzuela.  Maria (really, Inez) was only 40 years old, but was already widowed three times, as she was listed without a spouse and with one son, Antonio, and four daughters, three under 18 and one, Maria, who was in the household with her husband and son.  Inez Duarte had outlived first husband Julio Duarte, who died in 1867. She then married Vicente Aragón, but he died shortly afterward.  Finally, she wedded Luis Reyes in 1870, but he obviously passed away within the decade.

Next was the household of Mexico native Juan Mora, whose wife Petra had been previously married, given that the rest of the family consisted of Mora's step-children with the surname of Silvas.  After this was a family of seven Manzanares brothers and sisters, orphaned, it seems, after their parents Cristobal Manzanares and Inocencia Alvitre, sister of the Inez mentioned above, seemingly passed away during the preceding decade.  The children ranged from 23-year old Victor to six-year old Trinidad, so the earliest either parent could have died would have been about 1874.

Then comes José Yorba, son of Teodosio of the notable Orange County ranchero family and his mistress and then wife, Inocencia Reyes.  José had been married to Eziquia Lopez in 1862 and she lived with him in 1870, but in 1880 he had a new wife, Francisca.  Also in the household were five children from two to sixteen years, consisting of a son and four daughters.  Unique among other men captured in the census from the neighborhood is José's occupation: gambler!

Afterwards is Ramon Rosas and his wife Ramona Alvitre, daughter of Jacinto Alvitre and Lugarda Moreno.  While the couple had no children, there were several people in the household including Francisco Alvitre, probably a cousin of Ramona, and his wife, three sons and a daughter.  Ventura Bermudez, cousin to Ramona (listed, however, as aunt) was also in the household.  She had long been widowed, her husband having been José Antonio Bermudez, and her children were grown.  José Antonio Bermudez's sister, meanwhile, Rita, lived next door to the Rosas clan and she resided with her daughter Ramona Gonzalez, whose father was Raymundo Alvitre.  Gonzalez had six children from ages seven to seventeen living with her and was widowed\, as her husband, musician Feliz died in 1873.

Next to this was Juan Jesus (listed as John J.) Davis, saloon keeper at the general store owned by his neighbor and cousin, Rafael Basye.  Juan Jesus and his brother, José, were the New Mexico-born sons of Martin Davis and Josefa Sanchez, a sister of Old Mission area  rancher Juan Matías Sanchez.  Another Sanchez sister married Rafael Basye's father in New Mexico, as well.  Juan Jesus married Guadalupe Alvitre and the two lived with a young son, Antonio, and Guadalupe's mother, Celestina Alvitre.  As for Basye, who also married an Alvitre, Maria Antonia, he was listed as a retail grocer and he and his wife had three sons and a daughter from a year to ten years old.

The next three households included Ramon Lopez and Juan Castillo, who were married to sisters.  Then was the large household of Juan Manriquez and his wife, Maria, which included three sons, two of them with wives and six children, for a total of twelve in the residence.  Following was Fecundo Reyes, long widowed from his wife Maria Dolores Verdugo, and his two teenaged children, as well as his 90-year old mother, the oldest resident in the community, Clara Cota.  Clara's daughter and Fecundo's sister was Inocencia Reyes, mentioned earlier as the mistress, then wife of Teodosio Yorba.  Another Manriquez son, José, resided nearby with his wife and five children from one to seventeen years of age.

Then came Tomás Alvitre, his wife Francisca Verdugo and their large clan of seven daughters and three sons, ranging from a year to twenty-six years, although the remarkable part of this is that Francisca was listed as age fifty and would have had a child at age 48 or 49!  Next door was another unusual occurrence for the time period, a divorcee.  This was Michaela Alvarado, age 42, living with her three year old daughter, Margarita and a 16-year old girl, listed as a cook, named Juana Temple.  There was the prominent Temple family elsewhere in the census, but it may be that Juana was an adopted member of that family, since it is known that she was not a birth child of that clan.

A few households down is that of Juana Bermudez, age 79, and her son-in-law Ramon Alvitre, son (14th child, in fact!) of Juan José Alvitre and Tomasa Alvarado.  His wife, Francisca, daughter of Juana, and their five children, from one to sixteen years old, were listed, as well.

Two residences down was Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple, whose husband, failed banker F. P. F. Temple (mentioned at the top), had died of a stroke less than two months prior.  Though Lucky Baldwin had foreclosed on thousands of acres of Temple and Workman land, he did sell 50 acres of the Rancho La Merced surrounding the Temple homes (and 1851 adobe and a later brick house) to Mrs. Temple.  In significantly reduced financial circumstances, she lived with a daughter and two sons, Margarita (14), Walter (12) and Charles (9), as well as an eight-year old girl, Andrea, listed as a daughter, but probably adopted (as was noted earlier with the Juana Temple who was a cook in the residence of Michaela Alvarado.)  Also in the Temple household was Mrs. Temple's mother, Nicolasa Urioste de Workman, age 74, two female Indian servants listed as a cook and laundress and "boarder" Julia Montigue.  This latter was Julia Davis, long attached to the Temple family and whose mother, Venancia Peña de Davis, resided next door with another daughter, Carmel, and three sons, Peter, Francis and Thomas.  Venancia's husband, José Davis, mentioned above in connection his brother, Juan Jesus, and who was likely an employee of the Temple family, died in 1875 in an accidental fall.

After the listing of another family, the Rangels, the census moved on northward to El Monte.  Our ability to track the future of the Misión Vieja community gets complicated by the fact that almost all of the 1890 federal census, including the California sheets, was destroyed by a fire decades ago.  Moreover, the population of the neighborhood began to decline, as will be seen in future posts touching on later censuses.

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

Misión Vieja and the 1870 Federal Census

In the ten years between the 1860 and 1870 federal censuses, enormous changes took place in Old Mission and in the Los Angeles region broadly.  First, the economic slump that arose in the latter part of the 1850s with the end of the Gold Rush and the resulting lessening of demand for the region's cattle met headon with the weather patterns with which we are familiar, but folks then were not:  El Niño and its counterpart, La Niña.  Christmas Eve 1861 it began to rain and, for most of the next month-and-a-half, it did not let up.  In fact, some estimates are that up to 50 inches, a staggering sum by any standard, fell on the Los Angeles area.  Without dams, channels and other means of flood control and with a largely undeveloped landscape, most of the area became a vast inland lake (mirrored by conditions in the San Joaquin Valley, most of which was underwater.)  Those cattle that were not drowned in "Noah's Flood" were then subjected to the torments of a two-year drought in which four inches of rain were estimated for the years 1862 and 1863.   Consequently, farming became the mainstay of the local economy as cattle ranching declined.

The flood and drought combination not only ravaged the region and the Misión Vieja community, but was even worsened by a smallpox epidemic that occurred in 1863.  While specific information on deaths in Old Mission is lacking, local rancher F. P. F. Temple paid for coffins for those who succumbed to the highly-contagious disease.

Meanwhile, Temple, his father-in-law, William Workman and their compadre Juan Matias Sanchez were consolidating their ownership of most of the land in the Old Mission area as the economy led owners to sell their land to the trio.  Between 1857 and 1863, the ranchos Potrero Grande, Potrero de Felipe Lugo and Potrero Chico were acquired by combinations of the three men.  Later, however, they would be on the other end of a similar consolidation of land by San Francisco capitalist Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin.

Population changes are also important to note.  Misión Vieja was part of the El Monte township and, in 1860, the Spanish-surnamed population of the larger El Monte area numbered near 500.  But, a decade later, that total dropped to below 400, a 20% decline.  At the same time, the proportion of American and European residents climed about 15%, from about 750 to over 850 persons.  While this growth of "Anglos" was actually the smallest in the county (Los Nietos, which bordered Old Mission to the south, saw an astounding 4650% increase in Americans and Europeans, from only 24 to over 1,100), it still represented a change that would only accelerate in coming decades.

So, in late July 1870, when assistant census marshal Horace Allanson, a resident of San Gabriel, ventured into Old Mission, he encountered a transforming community, as he would have anywhere else in the county where he conducted his enumeration.  As with 1860, the census included the listing of real estate and personal estate values, which were provided by the head of household and may have been under or overcounted according to what the person wished to be known.  Unfortunately, while the 1860 enumerator, James MacManus had poor (or no) command of Spanish names, but clear writing, the case was largely the reverse with Allanson: he seems to have done better with the names, but his legibility is somewhat challenging for viewers of the original sheets.

One of the first families he found in the neighborhood was that of Francisco and Ramona Estrada, natives of Mexico, who resided with seven children, all born in California.  Two households down was Cristobál Manzanares and his wife Inocencia (enumerated as Ygnacia) Alvitre, daughter of the José Claudio Alvitre and Asunción Valenzuela, whose deaths in 1861 were explained in the last post.  The household included five children from one to fifteen years of age.

A few households below the Manzanares family was that of Diego Nieto.  The son of Antonio Nieto (son of Jose Manuel Peréz Nieto, grantee of the massive Rancho Los Nietos, later divided into several smaller ranches like Los Alamitos, Los Cerritos, Las Bolsas, Los Coyotes and Santa Gertrudes, and Teresa Morrillo) and Josefa Cota, Diego was born at Las Bolsas, which has father had received when the Los Nietos division happened.  In 1864, Diego, at 40 years old, married Isabel Yorba, the widow of Felipe Santiago Duarte, who had married Isabel in Summer 1860.  A daughter, Josefa, age six, resided with the couple.

Adjacent to the Nietos was Isabel's brothers, Jose and Bautista Yorba.  All three were the children of Teodosio Yorba of the famed Orange County-area clan, who died in 1863, and his long-time mistress and then his wife, Inocencia Reyes.  Jose Asención married Esiquia Lopez in August 1862 and the couple had one son, Jose, aged one year.  Bautista, then 23 years old, was single and living adjacent to his brother, but in April 1873 married Maria Antonia Rowland of the prominent family that owned much of Rancho La Puente to the east.

Next was Inocencia's brother, Fecundo (a.k.a. Secundino), who was widowed (his wife Maria Dolores Verdugo, having died sometime in the previous decade) and living with his two sons, a daughter, and Clara Cota, mother of Inocencia and Fecundo who was listed as 90 years old, but was actually a decade younger.

Nearby were members of the Pérez, Duarte and Archuleta families, the latter almost certainly connected to the household of Juan Matias Sanchez, a major figure in the area as noted above, given his half-ownership of Rancho La Merced and 1857 acquisition of Rancho Potrero Grande.  Sanchez declared $30,000 as the value of his real estate and $15,000 for his personal property, making him far wealthier than anyone in Misión Vieja with one exception, noted below.  Sanchez presided over a household including his wife María Luisa Archuleta and six children ranging from 3 to 18 years of age.

A photo from about 1870 of members of the Temple family, residents of the Misión Vieja area for sixty-five years.  At center is Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple (1830-1892), wife of F. P. F. Temple, who is not in the photo.  On her lap is daughter Margarita (1866-1953) and flanking her are, left, son Thomas (1846-1892) and, right, Francis (1848-1888.)  Directly behind Mrs. Temple is her son John (1856-1926), while at the back row far left is daughter Lucinda (1860-1928.)  Seated at far left is Julia Davis (1851-1917), an Old Mission resident and a goddaughter of the Temples.  The young woman, standing second to the left, might be Margarita Burke, listed a few households away at Old Mission from the Temples in the 1870 census as a house servant, probably for the Temples.  The identity of the man seated at the far right is not known and the man standing at far right might be Mrs. Temple's brother, José Manuel Workman (1833-1901).  Photo courtesy of Bette Temple from the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.

Two households down from Sanchez is that of Feliz Gonzalez, a native of Mexico and a 38-year old musician, who married Ramona Alvitre, daughter of Raimundo Alvitre (son of Juan Jose Alvitre and Maria Tomasa Alvarado and grandson of family patriarch Sebastian) and Rita Maria Bermudez, whose parenets were Juan Hilario Bermudez and Ana Maria Lugo.  The Gonzalez family had nine children and there would be another daughter born in 1871 named Laura, who married Walter P. Temple of another Old Mission family.

Adjacent to the Gonzalez family was Rafael Basye, who was a nephew of Juan Matias Sanchez and had been in his uncle's household in 1860.  Basye had, in February 1869, married Maria Antonia Alvitre, daughter of Anastacio Alvitre and Eleuteria Verdugo, and they had a three-month old son, James.  Constructing an adobe house just west of the Rio Hondo, which had been the San Gabriel River until floods in the winter of 1867-68 changed the course to its current one, Rafael opened a store and there was also a saloon there.  Perhaps this is why Feliz Gonzalez resided next door, to provide entertainment in the saloon?!  Later, Basye's house, store and saloon passed to the ownership of Manuel Zuñiga who lived there with his second wife, Lucinda Temple.  Then, in 1912, Lucinda's brother, Walter (mentioned above) purchased the adobe house and moved his family, including wife Laura Gonzalez and four children into it.  While there, a couple of years later, oil was discovered and propelled the Temples into wealth (a future post will detail this remarkable history.)

Amidst these families and others, including the Figueroa and Manriquez clans, there was a rare American or European in the Old Mission community, James Ross, a 28-year old native of New York who was living alone and was listed as a farmer.

There was also a curious household in this grouping, number 231, which appears to have been headed by a "Maria Mesa," although Allanson's scrawl is difficult to decipher.  She was shown as a 67-year old native of Mexico, but what was interesting was that there were seven children, all girls, in the household with five different surnames.  These included Maria Renteria, age 11; Maria Castro, 7; Librada and Gertruds Quintana, ages 10 and 13; Maria Cerradel, 13; Ramona Alvitre, 7; and Zenobia Yorba, 7.  Was this some kind of small girls' school?  Could these children have been orphans?  Unfortunately, the census does not give any indication.  Also of note is that 10 year old Librada Quintana had $150 worth of personal property, a very unusual declaration for a child in a census.

Several households later is that of Tomás Alvitre, the 50-year old son of Jacinto Alvitre and Lugarda Moreno.  Tomás was first married to Magdalena Linares in 1849, but she seemed to have died very shortly thereafter, probably in childbirth, because, in 1852, he married Maria Francisca Verdugo.  In 1870, the couple resided with five childen, ages 2 to 16.  Three households away was Tomás' sister, Ramona, and her husband Ramon Rosas.  Notably, a brother of Tomas and Ramona, Felipe Alvitre, was notorious for the 1854 murders of El Monte resident James Ellington and a Peruvian and was executed by hanging at Los Angeles in early 1855.  This will also be covered in a future post on this blog!

Next to Ramona Alvitre de Rosas was her cousin, Maria Buenaventura, or Ventura, Alvitre, daughter of Juan Jose Alvitre and Tomasa Alvarado.  Ventura was a widow of José Antonio Bermudez, whom she had married in 1832 (Ventura's sister, Benita, had married José Antonio's brother, José Dolores) and was living with three sons and a daughter, aged 18 to 30.  Ventura's sister-in-law, José Antonio's sister, María Rita Bermudez, age 42, lived nearby in her own household.  Another Bermudez, 28-year old Petra, resided with four others in her household, including Felicita, age 29 (probably a sister) and two boys and a girl, aged 9, 10 and 12.

Another single household was that of 22-year old Francisca Valenzuela, member of the family that, with the Alvitres, were co-grantees of the Rancho Potrero Chico within the Old Mission community.

Adjacent to Francisca was George "Perry," actually Barry, a native of Ireland, who resided in El Monte in 1860 but then married Adelaida Bermudez, daughter of Jose Dolores Bermudez and Maria Benita Alvitre (Adelaida appears to be listed in the mangled 1860 census as "Avalangthum"!)  A 16-year old male named Dolores Bermudez lived next door and undoubtedly is a brother or other relation of Adelaida.  George and Adelaida then had two children, 2-year old Lucinda and four-month old Santiago or James.  Only a few years prior, in 1866, George Barry had been involved in a fight with a man that led to Barry's shooting and killing of his adversary.   Although convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to San Quentin, Barry was able to mount a successful appeal and was freed.  More on this incident in a future blog post!

Next to the Barrys was the Cage family.  Edward Cage, a native of Mississippi, was married to Macaria, from Guaymas, Mexico, had lived in Sebastopol in Napa County before moving to Misión Vieja and working as a farmer.  Three years later, however, his son Robert got into a dispute with Tomás Mianez, who was a sheepherder for the Temple family, over animals entering the Cage property and Robert Cage shot and killed Mianez.

As hinted above, rancher F. P. F. Temple and his family resided next to the Cage clan.  Owner of half the Rancho La Merced and portions of the neighboring three ranches: Potrero Chico, Potrero Grande, and Potrero de Felipe Lugo, Temple was also a partner in one of Los Angeles' first banks, Hellman, Temple and Company and was involved in real estate, oil, railroads, mining and other enterprises over the ensuing several years.  Indeed, his reported wealth was staggering, especially for Misión Vieja, comprising $180,000 in real estate and over $100,000 in personal property.  Temple and his wife Margarita Workman lived with six children ranging from a year to 21 years, including the youngest, Walter, mentioned above.

Over the next several households (and perhaps earlier ones) were employees of the Temple family, including Joseph Davis, a native of New Mexico, who had worked previously for Juan Matias Sanchez.  In fact, Davis' wife, Venancia and two of their children had been reported in the Sanchez household in 1860, though Joseph was not there himself.  In 1870, however, there were five children from two to 16 years.  One of them, Julia, seems to have been a nurse or nanny for the Temples, since she appears in several Temple family photographs.  Her sister, Carmel, went on to marry Manuel Zuñiga, who was mentioned above, before dying young.  Peter, age 5, was later a carpenter for Walter Temple, when Temple built his La Casa Nueva mansion at what is now the Homestead Museum in City of Industry in the 1920s.

After Davis is Samuel A. Jackson, a native of Vermont, who is listed as "Horse Trainer," a job he held for Temple, who had begun breeding thoroughbred horses earlier in the 1860s.  Jackson, his wife and two-year old son lived in their own household.  Then came Charles W. Hamilton, a 55-year old Massachusetts native, who was the school teacher at the Old Mission or Temple School, created in the early 1860s on land donated by F. P. F. Temple.  Following was Temple's nephew, Thornton Sanborn, son of F. P. F.'s sister, Lucinda.  Sanborn, age 45, was born in Reading, Massachusetts, and had worked for about fifteen years for his uncle, both at Rancho La Merced at Misión Vieja and in Springfield in Tuolumne County's gold country, where Temple ran cattle.  Another Temple employee was 63-year old Mathews Burke, who was from England, but had been married to a Latina, evidently deceased by 1870.  There were three children in the Burke household, ages 14, 15 and 16, one listed as a house servant and who was undoubtedly a Temple employee.  Burke is now buried at the El Campo Santo, the Workman and Temple family cemetery at the Homestead Museum.

There were some other families, including the Andrades and two single men, Lucas Rojas and Agustín Guerrero, who were laborers, probably for the Temples.  Jesus Andrade has been identified as a partner of Rafael Basye in the construction of the 1869 adobe house and general store that became known as the Basye Adobe.   Then, the Old Mission census ended with Henry Fogle, a 28-year old native of Illinois, who conducted dairy operations for F. P. F. Temple, but who also possessed a self-reported $6,000 value of personal property, a significant amount for the day.  Fogle resided with his Missouri-born wife, Mary Ann, and their two sons and daughter, between 4 and 8 years old.

The early 1870s was a period of significant growth and great prosperity for the Los Angeles region, which was experiencing its first true land and population boom.  While the 1870 census counted a little over 15,000 persons in the county, the next five years saw the population more than double.  Like most booms, however, the speculation in land and certain industries became unmanageable and, when the state's largest bank collapsed in San Francisco in summer 1875, the local economy faltered and a bank owned by F. P. F. Temple and his father-in-law, William Workman, collapsed.  More on this in a later post!

Meantime, next post will concern the 1880 census.

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

Misión Vieja and the 1860 Federal Census

In mid-July 1860, census marshal James McManus ventured south from El Monte and into the community of Misión Vieja or Old Mission.  Whereas McManus had no problem whatever in enumerating the names of such American and European denizens of the former like Irish-born Barnabas Newman or Texan Samuel Bryant, the marshal had a distinct lack of ability in recording the names of the Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the latter.  This, obviously, makes demographic and genealogical research that much more difficult.

For example, on the 18th, after leaving the home of farmer Ransom Moore, MacManus arrived at his next household and recorded the name of the head as Wauken Dwarty.  Next door was broher Hulio Dwarty.  Beyond that was Jose (at least that name came out all right!) Elvetre.  Some other choice examples:  Vicenta Malendas; Innosencia Rase; Catrudas Veha; Rafael Vasa; and Walupa Olivara.  It takes some basic familiarity with Spanish names, an understanding of the local history and some investment of time, but most of these can be teased out with some effort.  The first name, for instance, is Joaquín Duarte, followed by his brother Julio.  Then there is José Alvitre and the surnames Melendrez, Reyes, Vejar, Basye and Olivera, as well as given names like Inocencia, Gertrudes, and Guadalupe.  If only MacManus would have taken the time and a few dollars to hire a deputy marshal who knew Spanish, the results would have been much different (and clearer.)

The Duartes were an old Misión Vieja family and Joaquin was married to a woman from the earliest of the community's residents: Anastacia Alvitre, whose parents were Asención Valenzuela and José Claudio Alvitre.  Joaquin and Anastacia were, in 1860, the parents of two daughters, Crispina and "Powler," which would be Paula.  Next door, Julio Duarte, son of Manuel Duarte and Apolinaria Ontiveros (whose father built the Ontiveros Adobe, foundations of which are at Heritage Park in Santa Fe Springs), was living with his wife, Maria Ines Alvitre, Anastacia's younger sister.  Then, the next household after was that of Claudio and Asención (noted as "Sensona") Alvitre and their seven younger children.  As noted previously, Claudio was one of the youngest of the children of patriarch Sebastián Alvitre and his wife, Maria Rufina Hernandez.  Finally, the family following Claudio and Asención was that of their daughter, Inocencia and her husband Cristobal Manzanares, along with their son and two daughters.  Manzanares was from Abiquiu, New Mexico, from which many residents left for the Los Angeles area, especially in the early 1840s when the New Mexican communities of Agua Mansa, San Salvador and La Politana were established near today's Riverside. 

Disaster would soon strike all four families:  Less than a year after the census, Claudio, in a drunken rage, stabbed his wife to death and was hunted down and lynched by unidentified members of the neighborhood (more on this in a future post!)  Then, prior to 1867, Julio Duarte passed away.  Ines remarried, to Vicente Aragon, but he died within a couple of years and she entered into her third marriage in 1870, to Luis Reyes.

The next household from the Manzanares's was that of Vicente (shown as "Vicenta" although listed as a male!) Melendrez and his wife "Daruta" or Dorotea Valenzuela.  She was from the very large family that had many branches in the San Gabriel Valley, her parents being José María Valenzuela and María de Jesus Rodriguez and her father's father being an early Spanish soldier in California named José Pedro Gabriel Valenzuela, a native of Alamos, Sonora, origin of many early Spanish Californians.  Melendrez was a native of the Ensenada, Baja California area and he and Dorotea had eight children, seven of which were in the household for the census.  Sadly, Dorotea died very shortly afterward and Melendrez remarried, with his second wife being María Antonia Rodriguez.  The couple would have four children.

Mixed in with the Spanish-speaking denizens of Old Mission was Charles O. Cunningham, a Maine native who was a farmer on 160 acres (a section) of land in 1860.  Among the farm laborers in this household was José Duarte, a relative of those mentioned above.  Also present was Francis Baker, born in Massachusetts, who went on to be a Los Angeles policeman and police chief.  As for Cunningham, who was married to Mary Thompson, daughter of early El Monte hotel owner Ira Thompson, he was an El Monte Township constable and justice of the peace and later went on to some renown in Arizona Territory (perhaps a story for another day!)

Two households down was "Setternena" or Saturnina Lobo, widow of Juan José Lobo, whose mother, Casilda Soto, was grantee of Rancho La Merced, encompassing much of Misión Vieja.  A widow, Saturnina lived with her four children, including two sons and two daughters.  Not far away was another Lobo widow, Dolores, whose husband had been Juan Lobo, and who, at age 30, was raising her five children alone.

Nearby was Inocencia Reyes, who was discussed in this blog's post on the 1850 census as being the common-law wife of prominent rancher Teodosio Yorba.  What wasn't discussed last post was that she was the daughter of Maria Clara Cota, of the prominent Santa Barbara family, and who was married in 1816 at Mission San Gabriel to Antonio Faustino Reyes, whose mother was a Dominguez from that well-known South Bay clan.  Inocencia's brother, José Facundo, was an Old Mission resident, as well, and was married to María Dolores Verdugo, daughter of Joaquín Verdugo and Magdalena Vejar (brother of Ricardo, owner of much of what is now Pomona and widow of Juan Villalobo). 

Residing with her seven children, it is highly notable that the value of Inocencia's estate included $2000 in real estate and $4000 in personal property, putting her in financial circumstances far superior to anyone in Old Mission, excepting ranchers Juan Matias Sanchez and F. P. F. Temple, who, along with Temple's father-in-law William Workman (who had given Sanchez and Temple the Rancho La Merced after he foreclosed on the property that had been owned by Casilda Soto de Lobo) were the major landowners in the area.  It seems likely that her estate came at the behest of Yorba, who finally married Inocencia later in 1860.  Unfortunately, she did not live long, dying in 1863, perhaps during a smallpox epidemic that wreaked havoc in Los Angeles generally, but especially in Misión Vieja.

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

José (shown as "Hosa") A. Bermudez was residing in Old Mission with his Estefana and daughter Maria and it is presumed that he was Jose Antonio Bermudez and married to Maria Presentación Alvitre, daughter of Juan José Alvitre--the brother of the Claudio noted above--and Tomasa Alvarado.  This makes sense, even though the wife's name is different, because three households away was Tomasa Alvarado, who was widowed.  She lived with her daughter Micaela and the latter's husband merchant John Morrow, a native of Tennessee and her seven-year old son, Brown, from a first marriage to Henry Malcomb.  Micaela had married the latter in 1852, had her son that year or the next and then married Morrow in Spring 1858.

Next to Tomasa was her niece, "Johanna," actually María Ines Alvitre, her husband "Halina", that is, Julio Duarte (again shown as "Dwarty") and their two sons, "Hossuth" or Jesús and Jose.  Strangely, a few more households away is a "Flora A. Alvetro," but who was a 47-year old male, along with three sons and a daughter, Juan, Pedro, Felipe and Maria "Alvetre," but these members of the Alvitre family are not obviously identifiable.  The next household to these mysterious Alvitres was that of Sinforoso Rosas, widow of María del Refugio (Trinidad) Alvitre, and his youngest son Juan.

This detail of an 1861 California Land Claims survey map shows #s370, 371 and 372 as the ranchos Potrero de Felipe Lugo, Portrero Grande, and La Merced, all within the area described as "Mis Vicia" or Misión Vieja (Old Mission). Click on the photo to get a zoomed-in look at it.  Courtesy: Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.

The largest single household in Misión Vieja in the 1860 census is that of Juan Matias Sánchez, a native of New Mexico who came to California in the 1840s over the Old Spanish Trail and went to work as mayordomo (ranch foreman) for William Workman at Rancho La Puente.  As noted above, Sánchez was given half of the 2,363-acre Rancho La Merced from Workman after the latter foreclosed on the property on a defaulted loan to original owner, Casilda Soto de Lobo.  By 1860, Sánchez was a prosperous rancher and he, Workman and F. P. F. Temple began consolidating landholdings in the area that continued through the next few years.  Sanchez' household consisted of himself, wife Maria Archuleta and four children: Jose, Maria, Tomasa and Francisco. 

There were also six Indian servants, including a mother, "Vanancio" and her four children "Hula Ann," "Massemon," Alvino and Victoria.  This was the former Venancia Peña, a Luiseño Indian from Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside, San Diego County.  The children were Julia, Máximo, Peter and Carmel, whose father was Joseph Davis, but who was not listed in the census in 1860.  The Davises later became associated with the Temple family after leaving the employ of Sanchez. 

Notably, the last column on the census sheet was for comments about "whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper or convict," as if these all had a common thread!  The only time this column was utilized by Marshal MacManus was with Máximo Davis, who was only five years old.  The notation reads: "Blind at 3 days old caused by applying a mud by an Indian woman."  This is a fascinating and rare example of a record referring to Indian medicinal treatments, the "mud" evidently being a poultice applied to the face of the infant for some unspecified ailment, but the treatment of which seems to have caused the blindness.  In later years, Máximo was raised by his older sister, Julia.

Another noteworthy person in the Sánchez household was Rafael "Vasa" or Basye.  Basye was the son of Juan Matias Sanchez's sister and emigrated from New Mexico to California to live and work for his uncle.  Eventually, Basye was given a piece of land on which he built an adobe house and store.  More on him in our discussion of the 1870 census.

Not far from the Sanchez household was that of his La Merced co-owner, F. P. F. Temple.  The Massachusetts-born rancher was married to Antonia Margarita (shown as "Margaretta") Workman and the couple had four children, Thomas, Francisco, William and John (the couple lost two sons during the 1850s) and two Indian children as servants, 12-year old Rosa and ten-year old Juan.  The presence of several families of day laborers, farm laborers, and a washerwoman nearby might indicate employees of Temple, whose $18,000 estate was the highest in the area, a couple thousand more than that of Sánchez.

Close to the Temples was Francisco Vejar of the prominent family that owned half of Rancho San José in what is now Pomona.  His sister, Magdalena, as was noted above was married to George Morrillo, co-grantee of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo with Teodoro Romero, husband of Magdelena's daughter by a first marriage, Juana María Verdugo.

Near Vejar was Dolores Bermudez (son of Juan Hilario and Ana María Lugo) and his wife Maria Ignacia Dominguez, of that well-known family in the San Pedro/Compton area.  The couple had  two children, as well as a daughter from Bermudez' first marriage to Maria Benita Alvitre, who seems to have died about 1853.  Dolores's brother, José Antonio, had also been married to an Alvitre, María Ventura.

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

Another badly misspelled listing was for "Lafusio Sonia" and family, this mangled moniker was for Refugio Zuñiga, a 45-year old farmer married to Juana Maria Verdugo (widow of Teodoro Romero, the co-grantee of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo at the northeast portion of the Old Mission community along the west bank of San Gabriel River).  Also listed in the household were Domingo, 20, Juana Maria's son with Romero and her four children with Zuñiga, three daughters and a son, Manuel, who would later marry into the Davis and Temple families at Misión Vieja.

At the end of the Old Mission listings, finally, was "Anastasio Alvetre" and his wife "Lauterio" or Eleuteria Verdugo and their two sons and two daughters.  Another notable person to mention, though he wasn't living directly in Misión Vieja yet was George Barry, an Irishman working as a laborer in El Monte in 1860.  Within three years, he would move to Old Mission, marry Adelaida Bermudez, daughter of José Antonio Bermudez and Maria Ventura Alvitre, and work as a laborer in the area.  Barry will also be the topic of a future blog entry!

In 1860, Misión Vieja and the Los Angeles area generally were in the midst of transformation.  In the previous decade, the Gold Rush had flowered and then faded and the economy was in a serious downturn mirroring a national depression from 1857.  The cattle industry, the lifeblood of the regional economy, was suffering from overstocked herds and low demand.  Moreover, Californios, such as those who resided at Old Mission, were not only feeling growing economic pressure, but their political and social power was declining as Americans and Europeans took greater control in the area.

Matters would only get worse.  On Christmas Eve 1861, a heavy rain began and led to one powerful storm after another, with hardly a let-up before the end of January.  The resulting flooding, in the days before flood control, was devastating and the economy further suffered as many cattle drowned.  The El Niño effect, unknown then, became La Niña and a two-year drought, with an estimated four inches of rain for each, finished off most of the remaining cattle, which starved.  As noted above, there was an 1863 smallpox epidemic that ravaged the Indian and Californio/Mexican populations, including at Old Mission.  The post-Civil War years brought more American and European migration and the economy recovered, but the benefits largely did not accrue to the native Spanish speakers.

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

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