Rancho Potrero Chico and Misión Vieja

In the general community of Old Mission or Misión Vieja, there were several ranchos created out of the former lands of the Mission San Gabriel, which was originally established along the Rio Hondo just north and east of San Gabriel Boulevard and west of Rosemead Boulevard in 1771 and then moved to its current location within about three years.  Before that, the Gabrieleño Indian villages commonly known as Shevaanga or Siba and Isanthcag-na was likely on or near the same spot.

Although the secularization of the missions took place in the mid-1830s, it was about a decade before the ranchos at Old Mission were granted.  The smallest, but the most historically significant, was Rancho Potrero Chico known also as Potrero de la Misión Vieja de San Gabriel.

A potrero is pasture land, so with the well-watered lowlands around the Rio Hondo (the old channel of the San Gabriel River) being so desirable for the maintaining of cattle, it is easy to see why the three ranchos named as potreros were of interest to potential grantees.

This detail from a very large 1877 map of southern California shows Rancho Potrero Chico in the "Old Mission" district with Rancho La Merced to the south, Rancho Potrero Grande (identified by the 4431 acres mark) to the north, west and east, and the 45 degree angle line marking the boundary between Potrero Grande and Potrero de Felipe Lugo to the east.

Rancho Potrero Chico was granted on 9 December 1844 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Juan Alvtire and Antonio Valenzuela and the size of the land in the grant was said to have been 1,200 by 450 varas.  A vara is a unit of length that varied throughout Spanish-controlled areas, but in California was generally acknowledged to be 33 inches.  Using this, the size of this rancho would have been in the neighborhood of about 96 acres.  By any standard, this is an extraordinarily small rancho and it is not known why the grant was so small, unless it was understood to be specific pasture land held over from the original Mission San Gabriel's 1771-1774 occupation of the area.  Although Manuel Requena, alcalde (mayor) of Los Angeles, conducted a survey or diseño, this map does not appear to have survived. 

Basically, the Potrero Chico lies north of San Gabriel Boulevard and Durfee Avenue and is bisected by Rosemead Boulevard, with more of the ranch to the east of the latter road than to the west.  To the north is Legg Lake and the Whittier Narrows Regional Park.  While this is not entirely clear, it does appear as if the Alvitres took the western portion of the small ranch, while the Valenzuelas occupied the eastern section.  The reasons for this assumption are below.

As to the original grantees, Juan José Alvitre was born on 30 August 1798 in Los Angeles.  His mother, María Rufina Hernandez was a native of the presidio of Loreto in Baja California.  His father, Sebastian Alvtire, was born in Villa de Sinaloa in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico.  A soldier in the Spanish army of New Spain (Mexico), Alvtire married Rufina at Loreto.  He was one of the soldados del cuero (leather jackets) who were the military guard for the first European land exploration of California, the Portolá Expedition of 1769-1770.  He was, then, present when the expedition stopped at the San Gabriel River (which Portolá called San Miguel) and camped.  Father Juan Crespí, another member of the expedition who was scouting potential mission sites, found this area to be excellent for a mission, though considered the area now known as La Puente to be superior. 



This 1924 map of oil fields in the Montebello/Whittier districts shows the Rancho Potrero Chico as being separate from much of the land denoted as the Barry, Repetto and Alvitre holdings, which was clearly not the case from other maps, as seen below.  Clicking on any map in this post will show them in separate windows and in a larger size.

In any case, Sebastian Alvitre remained in the military for some years and was then a settler of San José in 1783 before migrating to Los Angeles seven years later.  Still later, Sebastian settled on the enormous Rancho Nieto and died in 1817 on what became the subdivided Santa Gertrudes rancho within the larger Nieto grant of 1784.  There'll be more about him and others in his family in subsequent posts on this blog, but at the Mission San Gabriel in October 1817 Juan José married María Tomasa Alvarado, who was born in 1799, at the Mission San Miguel in Baja California.  The couple settled on the Nieto rancho with Juan José's parents and had 14 children, of whom five died in infancy or childhood, and by the time their last child was born in 1839 the area they lived on had been subdivided into Santa Gertrudes.
Five years after that, the grant to Potrero Chico was made and the Alvitres resettled.  The couple appeared in the 1850 federal census, actually taken in early 1851 because California's statehood did not become official until September 1850, but they do not appear in the 1860 enumeration, so they evidently died in the interim. 

The other grantee, José Antonio Valenzuela, was the brother-in-law of Juan José Alvitre, being married to Juan's younger sister, Maria Dominga Alvitre, who was born in Los Angeles in 1805.  Valenzuela was almost a decade older than his wife, being born in 1796.  His father, Jose Manuel, was, like Sebastian Alvitre from Villa de Sinaloa, Sinaloa, Mexico and came to California for the 1781 expedition to Mission San Gabriel, which would evidently been the same that brought the original 44 pobladores to found the new pueblo of Los Angeles.  José Antonio and María Dominga had five children, including three sons and two daughters.  She passed away in 1853 and he followed a decade later.

Another 1920s era map that seems to show the Cruz, Barry, Repetto and Alvitre sections as clearly within the boundaries of Rancho Potrero Chico.  This is getting confusing!

Within a few years of the Alvitres and Valenzuelas receiving the Potrero Chico grant, the American invasion of Mexico, including its department of Alta California, took place.  While the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which followed the conclusion of fighting in 1848, was drafted to protect land grants made under Mexican or Spanish rule, the article covering this was removed by the United States Senate before ratification.  Consequently, Congress passed a land claims act pertaining to California grants in March 1851, establishing a commission to hear testimony and receive evidence of legitimate claims to grants by their owners.  Although the commission approved 85% of the 800 or so claims put before them, the federal government pursued an automatic appeal of successful claims to the federal courts, going as far as the United States Supreme Court, if needed.

Alvitre and Valenzuela filed their land claim on 23 October 1852 when the commission held sessions in Los Angeles.  A little more than a year later, on 13 December 1853, the commission ruled in favor of the claimants, but, as noted above, the inevitable appeal by the feds was filed.  Two hearings before the Los Angeles federal district court were held in late January and early March 1856 and, again, Alvitre and Valenzuela, were successful.  Another year passed by and, in late February 1857, the district court officially dismissed a federal appeal.  Believing, evidently, that their grant was fully confirmed, the owners had a survey drawn up by county surveyor Henry Hancock in 1858, which gave the acreage as 100.07, although a 1956 engineering report submitted by Valenzuela heirs stated that Hancock recorded 96 acres, divided into two even sections of 48--presumably one for each family, with Alvitre to the west and Valenzuela to the east (as noted above.)  This report also gives 1850s tax figures showing that the two men were assessed for 48 acres each.

Within a few years, however, both Alvitre and Valenzuela were dead and a number of issues developed that greatly changed the situation at Potrero Chico.   First, although the 1858 survey was filed, there was no delivery of the patent by the federal government nor was any effort by heirs to seek one made.  In addition, whatever income might have been made from the ranch, whether by farming and cattle grazing, the economy in the United States generally and in California and the Los Angeles area specifically soured in the late 1850s as a national depression erupted in 1857 and the end of the Gold Rush took place in the state.  Then, in the winter of 1861-62, enormous flooding took place that ravaged the area, especially the Potrero Chico situated within the Whittier Narrows, where torrents of water from the San Gabriel (then called the Sierra Madre) Mountains rushed south toward the ocean.  Once the area dried out, a two-year drought ensued that brought further devastation to farmers and ranchers.

Continuing the confusion:  this map, also from about the 1920s or so, shows considerable sections of the Alvitre, Repetto, Barry and Davis properties outside, but some are inside, of the rancho boundaries.

It is not surprising then to find that two of Valenzuela's daughters decided to sell their inherited lands, probably because of the severe economic depression that existed in the early to mid 1860s.  In early March 1863, just after their father José Antonio Valenzuela's death, Salome and her husband Lauriano García and Siriaca and her husband Francisco Duarte deeded their inheritance, which was not specified in acres, to William Workman, F. P. F. Temple and Juan Matias Sánchez.  These three men were the wealthiest land owners in the general area.  Workman, who owned half of the enormous Rancho La Puente to the east had obtained the Rancho La Merced, immediately south of Potrero Chico in 1850 by foreclosure against its grantee, Casilda Soto de [Villa]Lobo and gave that ranch to his son-in-law, Temple and his La Puente mayordomo (foreman), Sanchez.  Over several years, during the depressed economic period of 1857 to 1863, the three began acquiring ranch lands in the Misión Vieja area, including portions of Potrero Chico.

Notably, the sale price was only $1, which suggests that Workman, Temple and Sanchez had perhaps loaned money to the sisters or, more likely, to their father or that there was some other consideration that would lead the Valenzuela women and their husbands to transfer the property for literally nothing.  Also of interest is that the land described was "known by the name of Potrero en media de Potrero Chico originally granted to Antonio Valenzuela and Juan Alvitre."  The italicized name indicates that this was half of the overall Potrero Chico consisting of separate pasture lands--in other words, this would be what Valenzuela had separate from Alvitre.

Meantime, another portion of Potrero Chico was sold a few weeks later, in early May 1863.  This was a tract, described as in the northeast portion of the ranch and measuring 350x250 varas in extent.  This is about 15 acres or so.  This tract had been sold in March 1853 by Antonio Valenzuela to Francisco Vejar, of the well-known family that owned much of present today Pomona, and Vejar was assessed for 1850s taxes on 13 acres.  Vejar, in turn, appointed his son Juan to be his "attorney in fact," handling the sale of this parcel to Workman, Temple and Sanchez.  This was another $1 deed, but the reason for it is also not known.

And, yet . . . this map, another early 20th century example, shows the Cruz, Barry, Repetto and Alvitre parcels as being mostly within the rancho and only partially without!  Again, click on any map here to see them in a different window.

This left approximately 40 acres or so that was retained by the Alvitre family on the western side of the ranch.  After the deaths of Juan José Alvitre and his wife Tomasa Alvarado, their estate administrator was their son José Anastacio, who was born in 1822 and lived into the 1910s and who took possession of the northwestern portion of the ranch.

Just below this was a section that was inherited by Anastacio's sister, Maria de la Cruz.  Although she was married in 1843 to José Ygnacio Cerradel, she had a later common-law relationship with Alessandro Repetto, a native of Genoa, Italy, who raised sheep on a ranch he owned in the hills of today's Monterey Park.  In 1866, Maria de la Cruz gave birth to a son named Timoteo, who claimed his birthplace as the Rancho Potrero Chico, presumably on his mother's land. 

In a parcel below Maria de la Cruz was one inherited by her sister, María Ventura, who was married to José Antonio Bermudez.  Finally, there was about 6 acres held by another sibling, Micaela Alvitre.  All four of these Alvitre tracts, owned by Anastacio, Cruz, Ventura, and Micaela, survived the the difficult years of the late 1850s and early 1860s, although Micaela did sell her tract to F. P. F. Temple in the early 1875.

Temple, Workman and Sanchez, however, experienced their own financial disaster, when the bank owned by the former two collapsed in 1876 due to poor management, bad investments, and a souring national and state economy.  Desperate to save their institution, Temple and Workman took out a loan from San Francisco capitalist Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, putting down their many landholdings as collateral.  Baldwin would not execute the loan without getting Sanchez to include his land in the deal.  The loan failed to prevent the failure of the Temple and Workman bank and the three men were ruined.  Subsequently, Baldwin foreclosed and took over the eastern portions of Potrero Chico deeded by the Valenzuela daughters and Vejar to Temple, Workman and Sanchez.  After Baldwin's 1909 death, his daughters Anita Baldwin Stocker and Clara Baldwin became owners of these areas of the ranch.

Meantime, Temple had deeded the Micaela Alvitre tract shortly after he acquired it to Venancia Peña de Davis, who had been associated for years with Sanchez, and Mrs. Davis occupied it with her children.  After Venancia died, her daughter Julia Davis de Cruz assumed ownership and resided on the property until her death in 1918.  By 1930, a man named Stearns was said to have bought her land, shown as a little over 8 acres.  As to the Ventura Alvitre de Bermudez tract, this soon passed to her daughter Adelaida (Elizabeth) Bermudez de Barry, who was married Irish-born George Barry.  After the death of Cruz Alvitre in 1907, her tract went to her son, Timoteo Repetto, who had lived for years in Mexico and worked as a professional acrobat with his Mexican-born wife, Maria before moving in with his mother on her 16-acre spread in 1902.  Finally, after Anastacio Alvitre died in the 1910s, his land went to son Pedro.  Timoteo Repetto and Pedro Alvitre proved to be the last of the original ranch descendants to live on Potrero Chico, remaining there well after the 1940 census (as shown in the last post on this blog.)

Still, there was an essential problem.  Despite the 1856-57 court judgments in favor of the Alvitre-Valenzuela land claim, no patent had been issued by the United States for Potrero Chico.  There were also serious questions about the actual boundaries and acreage of the ranch and, as was often the case with Henry Hancock's work, the survey he did in 1858 was seriously questioned.  Consequently, in 1920, the Joy Survey was conducted and came up with about 95 acres in total.  This map was accepted by the California Surveyor General and the commissioner of the federal General Land Office.  With a new survey on file, the heirs, presumably that of the Alvitre family, were able to request, finally, their government patent, which was dated 4 April 1923.

By 1923, some of their residents and heirs on Potrero Chico were leasing their properties for oil development, which had swept the area since the discovery of oil in the Montebello Hills several years prior.  In many cases, prospecting was unsuccessful, in others there was moderate production, with the best wells generally being the hills or very close to them.  In at least, possibly more, cases at Potrero Chico, there was at least some production, as Adelaida Bermudez de Barry and the estate of Julia Davis de Cruz (who died just weeks before oil drilling started on her land), in the southwestern sections closest to the hills, did receive at least some royalties.

In later years, though, oil or at least the potential of it seems to have driven the effort of the Valenzuela heirs to look into possible claims for the Potrero Chico lands they had once owned.  The 1956 engineering report mentioned above was created to advance the Valenzuela family's assertion that they had been deprived, by bad surveying, other legal actions, and even an unsourced report of violence, of oil-bearing (or potentially so) lands that they were entitled to as descendants of one of the original ranch grantees. 

A reading of the document, however, seems to show that the engineer was seeking to identify the location of the Potrero Chico ranch as being further west and south than the official maps show (basically over a reading of the original grant--the map of which is long gone--that indicates a reference to crests of hills that could have been the Montebello Hills to the southwest), including "covering" land owned by such successful oil leasors as Walter P. Temple (who was actually south of San Gabriel Boulevard) and William Prugh (whose land was on San Gabriel Boulevard, but near Darlington Avenue quite a distance north and west of Potrero Chico.)  Moreover, the engineer, who did a great deal of research which is useful, also made some erroneous statements about deeds and grants. 

One example is the claim that the 1853 deed from Valenzuela to Vejar was invalid because "having been made in 1853 over a year during which period the Mexicans could retain their old citizenship after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified, the transfer would clearly come under American Law . . . which would bar further action."  The problem with this interpretation is simply that the treaty guaranteed that citizens of Mexican California would automatically receive American citizenship with the transfer of California to the U. S. unless they elected otherwise within five years.  There is no evidence that Valenzuela elected to forego American citizenship and remain only a Mexican citizen and if he did nothing, he was automatically an American citizen and, therefore, entirely capable of issuing deeds.

In any case, it is hard to get around the fact that, in 1863, Salome and Siriaca Valenzuela, with their husbands, sold their interest in Potrero Chico to Workman, Temple and Sanchez and that there were many owners, residents and users of the land over the following 90 years.  In addition, the surveying clearly was a mess (as the examples of maps shows above does demonstrate), but the assertion that the ranch boundaries would be so much further west and south is based on reading very vague statements made in the 1840s and then from witness statements from Valenzuela descendants who were not alive when the original grant was made. 

Notably, one of them said that Valenzuela asked for land in the Montebello Hills (where valuable oil wells were located--some still operating today, though not for long) because he wanted to raise potatoes on them where it was drier than the land near the Rio Hondo.  Yet, how would raising potatoes have been conducted on rocky hilly slopes with little soil in which to plant and no easily obtainable water supply for irrigating?  If that were the case, than owners over the following decades, including Temple, Sanchez and Baldwin, would have been able to have farmed the hills before oil was found in 1917--but the hills apparently were only used for grazing animals.

Rancho Potrero Chico, though one of the smallest ranchos found in the Spanish and Mexican eras of California, is significant.  Home for thousands of years to Gabrieleño Indians whose village of Isanthcag-na was located in the area, the rancho also has an important connection to the first European settlement in Los Angeles County, the Mission San Gabriel.  Granted to descendants of early Spanish-era immigrants to California in the Alvitre and Valenzuela families, the rancho was occupied, ranched and farmed for a few generations with much of its parcels sold and deeded to others over the decades.  The oil industry coming in after 1917 transformed the rancho and, after World War II, the creation of the Whittier Narrows flood control district also meant great changes as residential use was banned.

Finally, the Bosque de Rio Hondo park opened at the northwest corner of Rosemead and San Gabriel boulevards and part of it may (depending on whether surveys are believed!) be within the rancho, while other sections have commercial, government and recreational use in and around Whittier Narrows Regional Park.

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.

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