The Temple Family of Misión Vieja

In 1851, shortly after foreclosing on Casilda Soto de Lobo on a loan that used the Rancho La Merced as collateral, William Workman, owner of half of the massive Rancho La Puente east of Old Mission, executed a deed that transferred the ranch to his son-in-law, F. P. F. Temple and to Juan Matias Sánchez, who had been Workman's foreman at La Puente.

While Sánchez moved to the Soto adobe on a bluff overlooking the Rio Hondo (then the San Gabriel River) and built a wing to the structure soon afterward, Temple and his wife, Workman's daughter, Margarita, began construction on an adobe home to the east of the river.  The Temples completed their L-shaped adobe the same year and it became the centerpiece of one of the more notable residences in the Los Angeles region and the headquarters of their half-share of the 2,363-acre La Merced ranch.



F.P.F. Temple and Antonia Margarita Workman, co-owners of Rancho La Merced.  From the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.

Pliny Fisk Temple was born in Reading, Massachusetts, northwest of Boston, in 1822.  Named for a famed Congregationalist missionary who had done his work in Egypt and Palestine, Pliny was the youngest of his family of eleven children and was the son of Lucinda Parker and Captain Jonathan Temple.  After spending most of his youth in his hometown, Pliny decided at the age of eighteen to make the long journey to Mexican California to meet his oldest sibling, a half-brother, also named Jonathan.

The Temple brothers were twenty-six years apart in age, enough for Jonathan to be old enough to be Pliny's father, and the elder Temple left Massachusetts before the younger was born.  Jonathan sailed for what was then known as the Sandwich Islands (more commonly Hawai'i) within a couple of years of the arrival of Congregationalist missionaries from Massachusetts, who soon became dominant figures in the island kingdom.  As was often the case, missionaries were soon followed by merchants, who established their own power base in Hawai'i. 

While little is known about Jonathan Temple's years in the islands, it was recorded that he was imprisoned briefly for political reasons unstated and his stay was relatively brief.  In 1827, Jonathan left Hawai'i for San Diego, where he was baptized a Roman Catholic.  The following year, he migrated to Los Angeles, becoming the second American or European to live in the town (the first was an American, Joseph Chapman, who was a shipwreck from an Argentinian vessel captained by a French pirate named Bouchard--but that's another story!)

Shortly after settling in Los Angeles, Jonathan opened the pueblo's first store and over the years a small number of Americans and Europeans joined him in a small, but well-connected, community of merchants and traders.  When Pliny made his voyage from Boston, leaving in mid-January 1841, to Los Angeles, arriving about the first of July, his brother was owner of some prime property in the town, as well as the Rancho Los Cerritos, comprising much of today's Long Beach and nearby areas.

Pliny, it appears, intended only to visit for about a year before returning home, but found Los Angeles to be to his liking, so he remained.  Surviving letters from his family in Massachusetts indicate their concern for his well-being, but he adapted to life in Mexican California quickly.  Working as a clerk in his brother's store, Pliny was here less than a year when he began selling gold dust, through a brother back east, in Philadelphia from a March 1842 discovery at Placerita Canyon near today's Santa Clarita.

In 1845, Pliny was baptized (as Francisco, hence his new moniker of F.P.F.) and married at the same ceremony.  His wife was Antonia Margarita Workman, daughter of William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, the latter a native of Taos, New Mexico, where the Workmans lived prior to migrating to California in late 1841 as part of a group commonly known as the Rowland-Workman Expedition.  The couple lived in Los Angeles and their first two children, sons Thomas and Francis, were born during the late 1840s.  Pliny had no involvement in the invasion of California by American forces in 1846-47, though he did write home about it.

With the outbreak of the Gold Rush in the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1848, Pliny left his brother's employment and ventured to the gold fields.  Eventually, though, he found another way to take advantage of what the Gold Rush had to offer, in terms of supplying fresh beef from Los Angeles-area cattle.  Namely, he developed a series of enterprises involving grazing lands, slaughterhouses and butcher shops in the Tuolumne County area near the towns of Springfield, Sonora and Columbia.  At the latter, now a state historic park, two surviving structures were owned by Temple, though his area residence was near Springfield.  For over a quarter century he maintained an active presence in the region.

The gift of half of La Merced from Workman in 1851, then, made sense in terms of Temple's growing involvement in the cattle industry.  Along with Workman and Sánchez, Temple made many thousands of dollars in annual cattle and sheep runs from the San Gabriel Valley to the gold country, and he even had an interest in ranch lands along the Grapevine north of Los Angeles to rest his herds on the long journey north.  While the Gold Rush peaked before 1855 and declined steadily afterwards, the Temples still had about 1,200 head of cattle on the ranch.

The Temple Ranch from a stereoscopic photograph by William M. Godfrey, ca. 1870.  One end of the adobe house is at the left center, a water tower is in the center and some of the fencing that bounded the Temple portion of La Merced is in view.  The road in the foreground might be San Gabriel Boulevard.  Courtesy of Philip Nathanson, owner of the original photo.

Meanwhile, as his wealth grew, so did his residence and headquarters at La Merced.  Visitors in the late 1850s through 1860s described some of the Temple family's domain there.  For example, John Q.A. Warren, who published a livestock and farming magazine in San Francisco during the first part of the 1860s, spent some time at the Temple's home in 1860 and commented that "the mansion is adobe, built in substantial and comfortable style, and like the usual Spanish [?] houses forms a half-square 110 feet by 70 feet."  This reference to a "half-square" indicated that the adobe was L-shaped and, if a standard of about 20 feet wide is accepted, the house probably measured about 3,600 square feet, which was quite large for "usual Spanish houses," whatever that might mean!

As to the Temples' roughly 1,200 acre share of La Merced, Warren observed that there was "a large variety of fruit trees, pear, peach, plum, apricot, olive, figs, and English walnuts," with some 200 of the walnuts in the orchard.  As to field crops, there was corn, wheat, barley and rye.  Some of this was ground at a mill that was built by another man, but purchased by F. P. F. Temple in the 1850s and which, by 1860, had an inventory of corn meal and flour valued at $21,000, a small fortune for the time.  To irrigate the field crops, Temple constructed, in 1854, an irrigation ditch to run water from the San Gabriel River, a total of four miles through his property, both at La Merced and at the Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo, which was adjacent to the northeast.

Typically, ranchos were so large that fencing them was cost-prohibitive and too labor intensive, at least until "fence laws" forced ranchers to put up barbed-wire fencing later on.  But, F. P. F. Temple had developed enough wealth to spend, according to one source, $40,000 in lumber from Phineas Banning of Wilmington so that he could fence in his part of La Merced.

As prosperous as the 1850s were, the following decade largely proved the opposite.  The decline of the Gold Rush and lowered demand for local beef (affected, as well, by imported longhorn cattle from Texas and other locales), a national economic depression in 1857 and the vagaries of the weather caused major disruptions in the Los Angeles-area economy.

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

On Christmas Eve 1861, rainfall started that hardly let up for several weeks up through most of January 1862.  As this was roughly a 40-day period, the resulting inundation was called "Noah's Flood," and many cattle, crops, and some structures were washed away.  Much of southern Los Angeles County became an inland sea, as was a significant part of the San Joaquin Valley.  A short notice in the Los Angeles Star newspaper in January observed that, with their adobe home flooded, the Temples "effected their escape from the house on a raft."  In hindsight, it's amazing the building survived for as long as it did, because the area is now a restricted floodplain controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which built the Whittier Narrows Dam, just a short distance south of the adobe.

The El Niño effect (not known to locals, obviously) was then followed by La Niña and two years of devastating drought ensued in 1863 and 1864.  What cattle and crops were still left were ruined by the calamity, further driving the economy downward.  Eventually, though, as the drought ended and the Civil War concluded, Los Angeles experienced, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, its first significant period of population and economic growth.   While F.P.F. Temple continued to maintain his ranching and farming interests, especially increasing his investment in sheep-raising, he turned more towards business interests in Los Angeles and nearby areas.

With real estate, for example, Temple and El Monte resident Fielding Gibson purchased and subdivided, by 1867, a tract of land between Los Angeles and San Pedro that was initially known as Centerville and Gibsonville.  When a major part of the tract was purchased by George Compton in 1870, however, the developing community took his name.  Later, Temple became a major investor in projects with the Rancho Centinela, in what is now the Inglewood area, and the Lake Vineyard tract of today's Alhambra and San Marino, among others.

Temple was also heavily involved in local mining, in such places as Santa Catalina Island, the White Mountains of Inyo County and the mountains of southwest Kern County, while keeping some of his Tuolumne County properties until the 1870s.  He also was an early entrepreneur in oil drilling, concentrating his work in what was called the San Fernando field in the mountains in present-day Santa Clarita.  He built the first steam-powered refinery in California, part of which survives as a state historical landmark in Newhall, and did produce a small amount of oil through his Los Angeles Petroleum Refining Company, the product being used for gas lighting.

With lumber interests in the San Gabriel Mountains above modern Claremont and in the San Jacinto Mountains near today's Idyllwild, as well as a stake in the import and raising of eucalyptus trees (intended for lumber, the wrong "gum" was imported and the trees wound up being used as wind breaks for farmers) through the Forest Grove Company, Temple sought a place in the lumber industry as the area grew.

He also was invested in railroads, becoming a major negotiator to bring the Southern Pacific Railroad's line from the north through Los Angeles and then forming his own railroad, the Los Angeles and Independence, which was aiming to tap silver mines in Inyo County where he had a water and mining company actively working.  He was the first president of the line, but needing outside funding, Temple and his partners convinced Nevada senator John P. Jones to take a majority stock ownership.  Jones was building a seaside resort called Santa Monica, so the railroad constructed a line from Los Angeles to the new town before starting work east towards Inyo County that was only partially completed.

Members of the Temple family and household workers in the garden next to the Temple family residence at La Merced.  From an original stereoscopic photograph at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.

To fund much of his projects, Temple and his father-in-law Workman got involved in banking.  They had a partner, the brilliant Los Angeles merchant, Isaias W. Hellman, and the firm of Hellman, Temple and Company opened, in 1868, the second bank in Los Angeles.  The enterprise was short-lived, though, because Temple and Hellman differed on loaning policy and other management questions.  While Hellman went on to found Farmers and Merchants Bank, run Wells Fargo and other San Francisco banks, and became the wealthiest man on the west coast, Temple and Workman opened their own bank in 1871, known simply as Temple and Workman.

The bank was popular, but often for the wrong reasons.  A genial and highly-popular man, Temple too easily loaned money to people who lacked the ability to repay and did not have proper collateral to collect on loans that were delinquent.  In addition, Temple was so busy with his many business projects and political ambitions (he ran for county supervisor in 1871 and county treasurer in 1873 and 1875, winning the last one), that he left day-to-day management of the bank to a cashier who did not properly administer its affairs.

When the overheated California economy, heavily dependent on silver mine stocks in Nevada, collapsed in late August 1875, the Temple and Workman bank faced a run by depositors and could not pay out due to low cash reserves.  It suspended business on the day of the county elections (at which Temple, ironically, was elected county treasurer) and remained closed for over three months.

Desperate for funds to reopen and save the bank, Temple finally secured a loan from Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, a San Francisco capitalist, who was acquiring Los Angeles-area real estate and saw that Temple and Workman, the two biggest local landowners, were in dire straits.  The loan was set up to be impossible to repay, but determined to avoid bankruptcy and shame, Temple signed on anyway, telling his father-in-law in a surviving letter that the loan was "on hard terms" but that everything would work out.

The opposite proved true.  After a grand reopening celebration in early December, depositors quietly closed their accounts and withdrew the borrowed funds.  Baldwin added $130,000 more dollars and then turned off the spigot.  In mid-January 1876, the doors of Temple and Workman closed for good and assignment proceedings began to sort our assets and liabilities.

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

If the partners had declared bankruptcy when the bank first closed, they could have sold much of their assets to pay creditors and still been left with enough to live comfortably.  Their gamble with Baldwin's loan, however, proved to be a disaster.  Mismanagement was starkly revealed in the inventory of the books and it was quickly realized that with Baldwin holding a mortgage on most of the assets held by Temple and Workman, depositors would get almost nothing.

Remarkably, Temple was not asked to resign his office as county treasurer and served his two-year term without incident, although a deputy was assigned to conduct day-to-day work.  Having declared bankruptcy, six months after the bank's failure, Temple had the dubious distinction of being the county's only bankrupt financial manager while in office.

He was also beset by tremendous stress, suffering a series of strokes from within months after the bank's failure and continuing until his death in April 1880 at age 58.  Though some sources claimed he died in a sheepherder's hut on a corner of the ranch, this was not the case.  He still retained possession of his 1851 adobe house and a substantial brick French Second Empire home built around 1870.

Just before Temple's death, Baldwin, having waited over three years to allow interest to accumulate, foreclosed on his mortgage in 1879, with the required sheriff's sale held early the next year.  Baldwin did allow Temple's widow to purchase the family's houses and 50 acres surrounding them and Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple remained the owner of what was called the "Temple Homestead" for over a decade afterward.

The family held on to the land, growing crops and raising animals and selling off other lands that were in her name and not subject to Baldwin's mortgage.  In early 1892, the flu carried off Mrs. Temple, her mother and her oldest child within two weeks.  Ownership of the Temple Homestead passed to her two youngest sons, Walter and Charles, both in their early twenties.

A circa 1900 view of the houses at the Temple Homestead at Misión Vieja.  The building at the left is the same adobe house shown in earlier photos with the addition of a wood second-story and other additions.  To the right is a ca. 1870 brick French Second Empire residence.  This photo was taken when the adobe was leased to winemaker Giovanni Piuma, whose sign is atop the roof at the left.  From the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.

The two leased out the old Temple adobe to Italian winemarkers, Piuma and Briano, and continued to farm--Charles owned the northern half of the spread and opened a club called "La Paloma."  Wild and prone to drinking, Charles was involved in several notable incidents, including a duel with his brother-in-law after Charles' young wife died suddenly not long after the marriage.  A few years later, and newly remarried, Charles got into a dispute with another brother of his first wife and shot him to death.  While he was acquitted of murder charges and freed, Charles soon sold his interest in the Homestead to Walter and left the area.

Walter, now full owner of the property, continued to farm and worked at other jobs, including as a teamster and insurance agent, among others.  Struggling often financially, he frequently borrowed money, using the Homestead as collateral, though he didn't lose the property.  In 1903 he married Laura Gonzalez, who grew up in the Misión Vieja community and was a household worker for Walter's brother, Francis, at the Workman Homestead.  Walter and Laura even had a secret romance as teenagers and did not marry for over 15 years.  Between 1905 and 1910, they had five children, four living into adulthood.

Then came a staggering stroke of good fortune.  Walter Temple sold the Homestead in Fall 1912 and bought a similar sized property just to the west at the northeast corner of the Montebello Hills and some land next to it that was also adjacent to the Rio Hondo,  An adobe house, built in 1869 and lived in by the Basye family (later to be profiled here), was occupied by the Temples.

It has been speculated that Temple acquired his new spread because a friend, Milton Kauffman of El Monte, worked for oil companies and knew that attention was being given to places near the newly-developed fields of Fullerton and Whittier, such as Montebello.  Remarkably, Temple lacked the funds to buy the 60-acre property outright, so borrowed from its owners.  These happened to be the daughters of Lucky Baldwin, who foreclosed on the same property over thirty years before from Temple's father.  Maybe the barren Montebello Hills didn't seem a likely place for a fortune, so loaning Temple the money seemed as much an act of charity as anything else?

In any case, in Spring 1914, Temple's oldest child, nine-year-old Thomas, was playing on the hillside above the family's house when he breathlessly ran down to tell his father he'd found oil.  Sprinting back up the hill, Walter verified that a pool of water that was bubbling, smelling like rotten eggs and turning black, was, indeed, crude oil.  For those that remember the old television show, "The Beverly Hillbillies," here was "The Montebello Hillbillies"!

The Walter and Laura Temple family at the middle of the first row at a barbeque celebrating their first oil well at Montebello, July 1917.  Behind the dense thicket of trees is the Basye adobe, built in 1869, which was the Temple family home.  From an original photo at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.

There is another story, reported in a local newspaper, that oil was also found by crews driving piles for a new bridge along San Gabriel Boulevard as it crossed the Rio Hondo within yards of the Temple's home, but the one involving a kid's stumbling on a pool of "a-bubblin' crude" sounds more interesting.

Whatever happened, the Temples executed a lease with Standard Oil Company of California (now Chevron) in 1915.  The already-rich Baldwin daughters, Anita Baldwin Stocker and Clara Baldwin, did the same and a test well on their land in the Montebello Hills in 1916 proved to be a producer.  The following year, Temple well #1 was drilled and, in late June, a gusher was located, just yards from the Baldwin test well.  At age 48 and after a quarter-century of owning parts of Rancho La Merced within the Old Mission community, Walter Temple and his family were on their way to wealth.

As Standard Oil moved aggressively to drill more wells and extract crude from the small, but significant Temple lease on the Montebello Oil Field, the Temples decided to move.  They lived for a time in Monterey Park (known then as Ramona Acres) before buying a substantial home in Alhambra.

The Basye Adobe became the headquarters for Standard Oil at the Montebello field and Temple built a gas station at the southeast corner of San Gabriel Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue.  He also erected two historic monuments at the southwest corner of the same intersection.

Walter and Laura Temple with their children (left to right) Walter, Junior; Agnes; Edgar and Thomas, October 1919.  From the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.

The first, put up in 1919, was in honor of Joseph Kauffman, his business partner's brother, who died in the Argonne Forest in France at the end of the recently-concluded First World War.  This cenotaph, said to be the first private memorial to a World War I soldier in the state, was moved to Temple City in 1930 and remains there today, along with one of two cannons that were said to have been unearthed by Temple from the Rio Hondo and to have been used during the American invasion of California in 1846-47.

The second marker was placed in 1921 to commemorate the founding of the Mission San Gabriel.  As mentioned here before, the marker misleadingly states the mission was founded on that spot, which is a small flat piece of ground beneath a steep hillside, not exactly a location for a mission complex, which was almost certainly across San Gabriel Boulevard a short distance to the northwest.  This monument, a protected state historic landmark, is still in its odd location next to the hills, where an occasional oil well is still in operation, though there have been plans, so far not much beyond the discussion stage, of developing the Montebello Hills into housing tracts, shopping, schools, parks and so on.

Walter Temple kept ownership of his sixty-acre oil lease property throughout the 1920s. About two dozen wells were drilled, some of them producing and a few becoming gushers.  Well number 9, completed in Spring 1919 was, for a time, the most active well in the United States, according to newspaper references, churning out some 30,000 barrels a day for a spell.  The Montebello field, however, proved to be a short-lived major producer and the Temple wells slowed down considerably by the mid-1920s.

Temple went on to build office buildings, post offices, movie theaters and other structures in Los Angeles, Alhambra, San Gabriel and El Monte and developed the Town of Temple, changed to Temple City in 1928.  He was an investor or owner of oil projects in Mexico, Texas, Alaska and many places in California, including Ventura, Huntington Beach, Signal Hill, and Whittier, but did not realize anywhere near the results he had at Montebello.

Finally, he bought the Workman Homestead near La Puente, which had been whittled down to 75 acres, the family home and cemetery and some outbuildings and owned by two of Walter's brothers in the late 1800s before passing to other ownership.  In 1917, the week he bought his Alhambra residence, Walter and his wife purchased the Workman place.  Over the following decade, the ranch was extensively renovated and a large Spanish Colonial Revival mansion, a showplace of adobe construction and all manner of decorative tile, woodwork, stained and painted glass, and wrought iron was constructed.

Charles and Walter Temple, their wives Susie Castino (front center) and Laura Gonzalez (front right) and their two sons, Charles, Junior and Thomas (in their father's arms), with an unknown woman, probably at Santa Monica, ca. 1906.  The Temple brothers jointly owned the family homestead at Old Mission from 1892 to about 1903.  From the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum.

All of this activity quickly drained the family's finances, however, and, by 1926, money was borrowed from a bank.   If this sounds familiar, so will the outcome.  As the economy worsened with the onset of the Great Depression, Temple was unable to salvage any of this holdings.  He lost the oil lease property and the Workman Homestead by the early 1930s.  Pioneering, probably, the concept of Americans living "on the cheap" in Baja California, at both Ensenada and Tijuana, Temple developed cancer and returned to Los Angeles, where he died in 1938.

Physically, there is little left of what the Temples had at Misión Vieja.  The Mission San Gabriel marker still stands in its lonely little corner.  Yellow metal markers dot the oil fields indicating where the Temple wells once stood.  A palm tree east of Rosemead Boulevard and south of where San Gabriel Boulevard meets Durfee Avenue indicates where Walter and Laura built a simple wood-frame home in the early 1900s. 

And, on Durfee, outside Rancho La Merced and just inside Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo, stands the local headquarters of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the floodplain on which the Temple Homestead once stood.  A few of the buildings date back to the 1930s, when the site was the Temple School, originally La Puente School, opened in 1868 on an acre donated by F.P.F. Temple.

The Temple family history at Old Mission was lengthy and significant, as was the case with many other families, more of whom will be discussed here in the future.

The Lobo Family of Misión Vieja

It was uncommon for Spanish and Mexican-era land grants in California to be made to women, but it did happen in the case of Rancho La Merced, granted by Governor Manuel Michetorena to María Casilda Soto de Lobo in 1844.  Señora Lobo was born in Los Angeles in 1799 to Guillermo Soto (1751-1819), a solider with the Spanish army who had just arrived in the pueblo the previous year with his wife, Juana María Pérez (1772-1832).  A major arterial roadway, Soto Street, in Boyle Heights and surrounding areas is named for this family.

By 1820, Casilda married José Cecilio Villalobo (a.k.a. Lobo), who was born in 1785 in Los Angeles to Maria Beltran (1756-1792) and Juan José Villalobo (1741-1792), with Juan José being among the soldiers recruited to accompany the original 44 pobladores from Mexico to the newly-created village of Los Angeles in 1781.  The family, including seven children, appeared in the first census taken of the community in 1790 (there were only 31 families in Los Angeles then,) at which time Juan José had retired from the military and was working as a muleteer, but both of Cecilio's parents died soon after.

Cecilio and Casilda had at least eight children, of whom only a few survived childhood and had their own families.  Among them were Juan José, Jr. (1816-1854), who married Saturnina Féliz in 1836.  Saturnina came from another early Los Angeles family, whose patriarch was her grandfather José Vicente (1740-1809).   He came to Spanish Alta California with the famous Anza Expedition of 1775 and then was, like Juan José Villalobo, an escort for the founders of Los Angeles.  Their shared connection might explain why their children married.  Vicente Féliz was a chief administrator in Los Angeles during the 1780s and 1790s before he retired from military service and received a land grant called Rancho Los Féliz, now largely comprised of the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles and Griffith Park.

Another son, José (born in 1820) married María Dolores Verdugo, whose family owned the Rancho Verdugo in the present-day Glendale area.  Finally, there was Felipe Santiago (1821-1850), whose wife was María Presentación Alvitre, of the family profiled on this blog's most recent post.  Her parents were José Claudio Alvitre (1811-1861) and Maria de la Asunción Valenzuela (1808-1861) and her grandparents were Sebastian Alvitre and María Rufina Hernández.  Because Sebastian Alvitre and Juan José Villalobos, grandathers of Felipe and Presentación, were from the same hometown, Villa de Sinaloa in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, this might explain how they became married.

This ca. 1920s aerial photograph looks down on the Old Mission community.  The Rio Hondo flows from the top center to the lower left.  At an angle at the center and going to the lower right is "Temple Road," now San Gabriel Boulevard, leading to Siphon Road with Durfee extending north and east.  San Gabriel Boulevard leaves the Rio Hondo at the center and curved upward towards the top.  What was called "Valley Road" and is now Rosemead Boulevard comes up from the bottom center and ends at San Gabriel Boulevard.  Lincoln Boulevard heads south from San Gabriel Boulevard along the base of the Montebello Hills and the Soto-Sanchez Adobe, then owned by oil magnate W. B. Scott, is towards the lower left corner, just to the right of a dark spot. Most of the left half of the photo consists of the Montebello oil field and is largely within Rancho La Merced.  To the upper right across the Rio Hondo is the roughly 90-acre Rancho Potrero Chico and then east of that much of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo.  At the extreme lower right is a section of Rancho Paso de Bartolo.  Click the map to see it in a different window and in a larger view.

The connection to Rancho La Merced also could be tied to the Alvitres, because Sebastian moved out to what was then called the Rancho Nieto, a vast land grant given to the family of that name in the 1780s (in fact, the Nieto and Verdugo rancho were among the first three land grants when they were issued in 1784) after some troublesome stays at the pueblos of San Jose and Los Angeles.

After Cecilio Villalobo died around 1836, perhaps not long after he and his family were counted the first Los Angeles district census, it might be that his widow and children moved out to Misión Vieja.  Notably, although one of the sons, Juan José was enumerated in the 1844 census as living in "Angeles" with wife Saturnina and their children, none of the other family was to be found.

This was striking because it was that same year that the grant of La Merced to Casilda Soto de Lobo was made.  As noted in the post on that rancho, Casilda and her family built an adobe house that forms one part of today's Sanchez Adobe historic site in Montebello and occupied it and the ranch for about five years.

Things changed rapidly, however, when Casilda borrowed a little over $2,000 from one of her neighbors, William Workman, co-owner of the Rancho La Puente east of La Merced.  The loan entailed interest, which was common enough in Workman's experience, but not likely in that of Señora Soto's.  At any rate, she was unable to repay the loan and, at the end of 1850, Workman took possession of the ranch, which had been used as collateral.

Interestingly, California, seized by force from Mexico by the United States in 1847, had just been admitted as the 31st state in September and a census was quickly organized and conducted early in 1851.  When the census taker came through Old Mission he found Casilda living with her son Juan and daughter-in-law Dolores Verdugo and their two children, as well as with son Felipe Santiago and his wife Presentación Alvitre.  The adjacent household consisted of her son Juan José, who notably was listed as Villalobo, his wife Saturnina Feliz and their four children.

Tragedy struck within a few years as Doña Casilda and two of her sons, Juan José and Felipe Santiago died in the early 1850s.  When the 1860 federal census was conducted, the latter's widow Saturnina was still at Misión Vieja with four children, ranging from three to ten years old.  Moreover, nearby was Dolores Verdugo with her five children, who were three months to twelve years old, though for an unknown reason, her husband Juan Lobo was not counted.

At some point afterward, the Lobo family left Misión Vieja.  Juan José and Saturnina's son, Felipe, left for San Juan Capistrano where he lived for several decades, married Marcelina Gutierrez and had a family.  Presentación Alvitre de Lobo headed east and settled in what later became the Walnut/Pomona area, close to what was the settlement of Spadra, about where the 57 Freeway and Valley Boulevard come together at Cal Poly Pomona.

Eventually, other members of the family made the Pomona area their home, as well, including her daughters Inocencia and Magdalena and sons Felipe, Jesús, Porfirio and Pablo, some of whom lived for a time at the city and county limits near Reservoir Street close to Chino.  Jesús, whose wife María Francisca Fraijo came from a family that owned where Irwindale later developed, lived for a time in downtown Chino, his mother Presentación also being in their household in 1900, before relocating to south Pomona.  Pablo was, for a while, an employee on the Diamond Bar Ranch, which was created in 1918, and he was one of a about a dozen workers there when the census was taken two years later.  By 1930, he was living with his mother on Hamilton near White in south Pomona and close to Jesús.

Unlike the Alvitres and other families, as will be discussed in subsequent posts, the Lobos did not live particularly long at Misión Vieja, living there for perhaps a couple of decades or somewhat more.  But, because of the fact that Rancho La Merced was granted to Doña Casilda, they should be remembered as among the community's earliest and nost notable residents.

UPDATE, 11 December 2014.  Thanks to a question on another post from this blog, it has been learned that Juan (or perhaps his brother Santiago) Lobo may be one of the Californio heroes in the Battle of San Pascual, which took place near San Diego at the end of 1846 during the American invasion of California in the Mexican-American War.

According to Richard Griswold del Castillo's 2003 article in The Journal of San Diego History, "one Californio solider recalled that Juan Lobo, a twenty-three year old vaquero from Mission Vieja, led the main Californio assault on Kearny's forces."  The footnote for part of the article cites a 1973 University of San Diego master's thesis and a manuscript in the papers of Benjamin Hayes, a longtime Los Angeles County District Court judge and later a San Diego resident.

Yet, the thesis, written by Sally Cavell Jones, lists the soldiers who fought under General Andrés Pico at San Pascual and the name on the list is "Santiago Lobo," not Juan.  Juan did have a younger brother, Santiago, whose age in the 1850 federal census (actually, taken in early 1851), was given as 21.  If this is true, Santiago would only have been 16 or 17 years old at the time of the battle.

In any case, there may not be any further available information, but this does raise intriguing questions about whether members of the Lobo family of Misión Vieja were heroes of the Californio  resistance against the American invaders during this highly-controversial war, the first of American imperialism.

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

The Alvitre Family of Misión Vieja

Among the earliest European-derived families to settle in the Misión Vieja community were the Alvitres.  Moreover, members of the family continued to live at Old Mission until about the time that the area was declared a federal flood zone and residential uses of the neighborhood were ended in the mid-1900s.

The origins of the family in Spanish Alta California date to Sebastian Alvitre, a soldier and native of Villa de Sinaloa, Sinaloa, México, who was among the original nine landholders in the pueblo of San José in 1783 (the town was formally organized in 1777, but it does not appear that land was issued until the later date) and who received, as did the others, two lots in the town. 

It is evident, though, that Alvitre had been in the department for some years before as Hubert Howe Bancroft, who compiled a massive history of California in the 1880s, noted that "Alvitre was a pioneer soldier of the earlier years."  In the first volume of Spanish-Mexican Families of Early California: 1769-1850 it was stated that Sebastian was a "Soldado de Cuero [leather-jacket soldier] of 1769 Portolá Expedition."  If this is true, then he was part of the first land-based expedition by Europeans in Alta California, and Alvitre would have camped with the party in what became Misión Vieja at the beginning of August 1769. 

It turns out, though, that Sebastian's years in San José were turbulent.  According to Bancroft, "Sebastian Alvitre had proved unmanageable at San José and after four or five years of convict life at the presidio had been sent to [Los] Angeles for reform."  It was not stated what he had actually done to warrant being thrown into the abogado (jail) at the pueblo, though undocumented sources offer that Alvitre had relations with an Indian woman that put him in the crosshairs of authorities.

Bancroft followed this with a statement often made about early California, namely that "the settlers were not a very orderly community," and this seemed especially to apply to soldiers, who were widely known for their mistreatment of Indians at the missions and elsewhere in the department.

As noted by Bancroft, Alvitre came south and arrived in Los Angeles about 1786, when the lands of the pueblo, founded five years earlier, were redistributed among the original settlers (there had been 44 in 1781), save one who had left, and twenty new residents, among these being Alvitre.

Apparently, matters still continued to be problematic for Alvitre in his new home, as Bancroft cited a 1791 report of Governor Pedro Fages, in which that official "tells the tale of three or four incorrigible rogues, Alvitre and Navarro of Angeles, and Pedraza, a deserter from the galleon, whose scandalous conduct no executive measure has been able to reform." 

Again, no specifics were provided as to what Alvitre might have done to anger the governor, but Bancroft did write, citing official reports of the era, that "Sebastian Alvtire of Los Angeles and Francisco Avila of San José were usually in prison, in exile, or at forced work for their excesses with Indian women and with the wives of their neighbors."

The historian went on to note that "Concubinage and all irregular sexual relations were strictly prohibited and the authorities seem to have worked earnestly in aid of the friars to enforce the laws."  These included "warnings, threats, exposure to husbands, and finally seclusion in respectable houses with hard work," though, as seen above, exile to another part of the department took place and there were others put in irons, in the stocks, or whipped.

In any case, it does appear that Alvitre finally settled down, as about 1795 he was married in Loreto, Baja California, to María Rufina Hernández, and the couple bore their first child, Jacinto, in that mission community.  By 1798, the family had moved back to Alta California and it appears that Sebastian was stationed at Mission San Gabriel, where the remaining eight children were born.  These were Juan José (1798), José Gabriel (1801), José Antonio (1803), María Dominga (1805), José Vicente (1807), María Florentina (1808), José Claudio (1811) and María Dolores (1814).

This detail of a ca. 1920s map of Rancho Potrero Chico (or Potrero de la Misión Vija) shows the portions owned by Pedro Alvitre and Timoteo Repetto, both of whom descended from Juan José Alvitre, an original grantee with his brother-in-law Antonio Valenzuela (whose wife was Dominga Alvitre) of the rancho in 1844.  Courtesy of Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

Having been dismissed as an "incorrigible scamp" by Bancroft for his wayward years at San José and Los Angeles in the 1780s, it might well be that Alvitre's later years were more on the "straight and narrow" and he remained at Mission San Gabriel until his death in February 1817.  As those who died there were buried under the old stone church until about 1850, it is assumed that his last resting place is there.

As to the nine children of Sebastian and Rufina, a few died as young adults, including José Gabriel, who passed away in late 1830; José Vicente, who died in September 1828; and María Dolores, whose death occurred in November 1832.  Of the six others, José Antonio, appears to have joined the military and moved north.  He was married at Mission San Juan Bautista in central California and, though he did live in Los Angeles in the 1830s, he spent most of his later life at Monterey where he died in early 1862.

The remaining Alvitre children settled in the general Old Mission area in subsequent years.  For example, in the 1836 Los Angeles district census most of them were counted in the Rancho Santa Gertrudes place name listed in that enumeration.  Juan Crispín Pérez, whose father was about the same age as Sebastian Alvitre and from the same hometown of Villa de Sinaloa, México, had been, according to Bancroft, a part-owner of that rancho, part of the enormous Nieto grant of 1784 that was late subdivided, since 1821.  In 1835, Pérez was grantee of the Rancho Paso de Bartolo (which, after 1851, was the property of Pío Pico).  More importantly, he was the majordomo (foreman) for the remaining Mission San Gabriel lands not taken by secularization of the California missions in the 1830s, and served in that position from 1841 to 1845.

In that 1836 census, Jacinto with his wife Lugarda Moreno, Juan José with his spouse Tomasa Alvarado, Dominga, who was the wife of José Antonio Valenzuela, Florentina, the spouse of Manuel Antonio Pérez, and José Claudio and his wife María Asención Valenzuela, were all at Santa Gertrudes, although where exactly has not been (and may not be) determined.

Eight years later, though, the 1844 district census, showed a definite change.  The place name Misión Vieja was delineated and its residents consisted solely of the Alvitre family.  These included Jacinto and Lugarda; Juan José and Tomasa; José Claudio and Asención; and Dominga and Antonio Valenzuela. 

Notably, at the end of that year, on 9 December, Governor Manuel Micheltorena granted to brothers-in-law Antonio Valenzuela and Juan José Alvitre the Rancho Potrero de la Misión Vieja de San Gabriel also known as Rancho Potrero Chico, a very small grant of under 100 acres. 

This was after the district census, so it seems obvious that, perhaps with Juan Crispín Pérez as majordomo at San Gabriel, his influence might have brought the Alvitres to the Old Mission area and then helped secure the land grant. 

A few months later on 8 April 1845, under new governor Pío Pico, Manuel Antonio Pérez (known on the document as "Manuel Antonio, an Indian," perhaps associated with Mission San Gabriel) received a grant to the Rancho Potrero Grande, just north and west of Potrero Chico, which was over 4,400 acres.  Manuel Antonio was married to Florentina Alvitre, the remaining sibling, and they may have been living on that property before the grant, which might explain why they weren't in the Misión Vieja place name in the 1844 census.

So, from at least 1844 (and perhaps earlier), the Alvitre family were directly associated with the place name of Misión Vieja.  For a century, they remained in the area, where they farmed and ranched, raised families, and experienced the ups and downs of life that most families do.  There were some dramatic incidents involving some members that will be touched upon here subsequently, but it bears remembering that it was a large family and everyday events do not get recorded the way dramatic ones do. 

In any case, the Alvitres deserves remembrance  as an early family of the Old Mission community.

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

The Kizh/Gabrieleño People and Misión Vieja

While this blog refers to the specific place name of Misión Vieja or Old Mission as the first European site established in Los Angeles County, there was thousands of years of habitation in the area by the native indigenous peoples.  While these first settlers are often called Gabrieleño (or Gabrieliño), because of their "association" with the Mission San Gabriel, which started at Misión Vieja in 1771 but relocated to the current site within a few years because of flooding from the San Gabriel River, a more recent appellation has been Tongva.  This latter term, however, has no real historical basis, whereas the name Kizh does have a legitimacy in the record and will be used here.

For example, in William McCawley's 1996 book, The First Angelinos, he cites the statement of Raimundo Yorba, who was a consultant to the archaeologist John P. Harrington stated to him that the natives living in the Old Mission area were "what they called a Kichireño, one of a bunch of people that lived at that place just this side of San Gabriel which is known as the Misión Vieja.  Kichireño is not a placename, but a tribename, the name of a kind of people."

While the Kizh/Gabrieleño, like most so-called pre-literate peoples throughout the world, did not have a written language, they, naturally, had an oral one.  This, in turn, meant that there was a vast oral record passed down through the generations among the Kizh/Gabrieleño, having to do with their religious beliefs, history, cultural and social practices, and much else.  The fact that these attributes were not written down do not, in any way, make them subordinate to the written word—it is simply a different way of recording.

This 1925 United States Bureau of Ethnology map (click on it for a larger view in a separate window,) made by the United States Geological Survey, shows "Gabrielino" tribal villages in the broader Los Angeles region.  Note "Hout" in the upper center, corresponding with the term Houtg-na identified by Hugo Reid in 1852 as on "Ranchito de Lugo," probably Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo within the general Misión Vieja area.  While Reid also identified Isanthcag-na as specifically in Misión Vieja, it does not appear on this map, which was provided courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

This makes documenting the history of native peoples anywhere on the planet troublesome for those who need written sources to determine what is valid.  When it comes to the Kizh/Gabrieleño and their thousands of years of residence in the Old Mission area, it has been reported that there were at least two or three villages.  One was noted as Isanthcag-na at "Misión Vieja" by Hugo Reid, a Scotchman who was married to Victoria Comacrabit, a native from the Mission San Gabriel and published 21 letters, the first written analysis, about the "Los Angeles County Indians" in the Los Angeles Star newspaper in 1852.   Notably, while Reid provided names for 28 villages and their 1852 locations, he also observed that "there were a great many more villages . . . probably some forty."

McCawley cited another source who claimed that the name, rendered as 'Iisanchanga, derived from a name for wolf, this being 'isawt, though Harrington considered this linkage "not clear."  McCawley, however, stated that "it is curious that 'Iisanchanga does not appear as a recognizable name in the mission registers" and, therefore, wondered if it "was a small settlement consisting of a few families, or simply a geographical placename."

Bernice Eastman Johnson's 1962 publication for the Southwest Museum, California's Gabrieliño Indians, states, however, that near the first mission site, "perhaps on the rounded hills where oil wells now pump day and night, lay the Gabrielino village of Isantcangna.  Men from this settlement helped the soldiers and the muleteers to raise the first rude structures of poles and 'tules' and gave their attention to the religious observance." 

There are several questionable aspects to this statement, one being that the natives would settle on bare hills rather than in the fertile lowlands closer to water, game and usable plant material. Another is the inference that the Kizh/Gabrieleño were as helpful in work and dutiful in the Spaniards' religious ceremonies as Eastman described.  Her statement, however, that the original 1771 mission structures "were built of materials as flimsy as those from which were formed the huts of neighboring Isantcangna," is notable for two reasons.  First, the demeaning use of "flimsy" (as opposed to, say, "flexible"?) and the suggestion that the Spanish were willing to copy native building materials for their new facility.

Johnson also mischaracterized the later settlement of Old Mission, writing that "years later a little Mexican village of adobe buildings grew up nearby and took the name 'Old Mission,' but this was destroyed in the floods of 1867 and now lies in the rubble behind the new flood-control dam."  This last statement about the 1867 floods is simply untrue:  the Temple adobe of 1851, built just a few hundred yards from the river and which was flooded in 1862, survived into the 20th-century and two years after the 1867 deluge, Rafael Basye built an adobe house adjacent to the Rio Hondo.  Moreover, the Old Mission community existed for decades beyond that flood.

Archaeological investigation, however, as pointed out in early posts on this blog, have not been able, with certainty, to establish this site, primarily because of the total disturbance of the area from flooding, ranching and farming, oil and gas development and the like.  It is thought, though, that a site just to the west of the Rio Hondo, the old course of the San Gabriel River prior to 1867, and north of San Gabriel Boulevard, which is roughly along the old road between the old and new mission sites, is the likeliest spot.

This map from William McCawley's The First Angelinos purports to show Gabrielino villages in the San Gabriel Valley, but does not show any in the vicinity of Old Mission, at the lower center, despite Reid's identification of two, one of which, Houtg-na (or Huunang-na/Hout) appears on the 1925 U.S. Bureau of Ethnology map above. 

McCawley also discussed "the community of Wiichinga [which] was also located in the Whittier Narrows area" and which was said to have been a "ranchería, that is to the east of this Mission on a plain closed by water on all sides."  According to McCawley, "this may have been a small settlement rather than a large community" and reported that there was only one entry in the mission records, from the earliest baptism recorded from Mission San Gabriel in 1771.

The other mentioned village was Huunang-na, although McCawley makes no mention of this site.  Johnson, however, cited Hugo Reid in noting "Houtg-na" as being on the "Ranchito de Lugo," which, stated Johnson, "lay in the vicinity of El Monte."  She linked that name with the term "hukngna" offered by Harrington as meaning willow trees, but then stated that "the Gabrielino word for willow is saxat and a village in the San Bernardino area, Saxangna, was based on that root." 

Confusingly, Johnson went on to say that, "here only the Spanish name El Monte refers to the thickets that bordered the swamps and streams."  She continued with a reference to an "old man who recalled this place [and] seemed to be referring to an incident which had occurred in his father's time," this being a lashing of Indians with willow switches.  On the 1925 map included in this post, there is a placename of "Hout" that appears to conform with the location of the Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo and it has been said that the village was located just north of today's Whittier Narrows Nature Center, south of the 60 Freeway and west of today's San Gabriel River.

There is another notable place associated in the general area surrounding Misión Vieja worth noting.  According to an account compiled by Harrington, the oral tradition of the natives cited a place called Xarvo, Xarvat, or Qarvat, where sorcerers were said to engage in witchcraft and the locale is also said to be connected to the oft-cited tale of Chengiichngech, in that this supernatural figure sent avenging creatures, such as bears, vipers and dog-like animals, to punish those people who did not obey his commands.  Another tradition related that shamans in this area called up windstorms to fight their enemies  from the coastal areas and that this occurred "near Punta de la Loma [a hilltop] by old S. G. Mission and Xarvut."

In any case, this site was said to be in "a deep gulch back of Petissier's [Pellissier's] place, opening to the west (near Bartolo Station)" and that "there is a big canyada opening through the hills.  Indians used to live there."  To McCawley, the likely location is Sycamore Canyon at the west end of the Puente Hills in Whittier, now a natural preserve managed by the Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Preservation Authority.

Despite what is probably inevitable differences and contradictions in available written sources, some of what appears in print clearly showed that native peoples lived in the Whittier Narrows area when the Spaniards arrived to establish the first Mission San Gabriel there in 1771.  Why Reid would acknowledge two villages in his 1852 work, being much closer to the period of their existence, and McCawley choose not consider them as true villages is curious. 

There are, however, many descendants of the Kizh/Gabrieleño in the area and their oral traditions are there, as well.  This confirms their sense of place in Misión Vieja relating to their presence there for thousands of years regardless of inconsistencies in the written historical record.

Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo and Misión Vieja

The fourth and last of the ranchos that was associated with the Old Mission/Misión Vieja community was Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo.  This approximately one-half league, or 2,042-acre, ranch was granted by Governor Pío Pico to George (Jorge) Morillo and Teodoro Romero in April 1845.  Potrero de Felipe Lugo was also known as Rancho Dolores, though the origins of that name are not yet known.

The rancho's common name, however, relates to Felipe Lugo, whose father, Antonio María, was grantee of the Rancho San Antonio, a large land grant south and east of the pueblo of Los Angeles.  Felipe was likely allowed to graze some of his cattle from San Antonio in the meadows (which is what potrero means) owned by the Mission San Gabriel and west of the San Gabriel River.

Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo's boundaries run roughly in the following way:  the western boundary of the ranch follows a straight line from south of Santa Anita Avenue as it heads north from Durfee Avenue and then turns northeast very close to the old Lexington-Gallatin Road (an old thoroughfare that ran from today's Pico Rivera, where the townsite of Gallatin was once located, to El Monte, with Lexington being a name for a village in that area) and then just east of Mountain View Road through El Monte until that line hits Valley Boulevard. 

The northern line goes along Valley Boulevard very close to its intersection with Garvey Avenue at the Five Points area of El Monte until just about where Valley meets the 605 Freeway close to Mountain View High School. 

The east line then zigs and zags along the San Gabriel River and cuts within portions of the California Country Club in the City of Industry east of the river and the 605 Freeway.  The boundary then crosses the 605 and river just north of the 60 Freeway, moves over to Durfee Avenue and then moves south across the 60, crosses the San Gabriel River again and turns a corner within the Pico Rivera Bicentennial Park. 

The short southern line of the rancho then turns westward across the river for the last time, moves within the lower or southern section of the Whittier Narrows Nature Center and meets up with the western boundary at Durfee Avenue and Santa Anita Avenue.

As to the grantees, George Morrillo was married to Magdalena Vejar, whose brother Ricardo was, for many years, the owner of the southern or lower portion of Rancho San José, covering modern day Pomona and parts of neighboring areas.  Prior to marring Morrillo, Magdalena was the wife of José Joaquin Verdugo, of the family who received one of the first California land grants back in 1784, including the Glendale and surrounding areas.

A daughter of Magdalena Vejar and José Joaquin Verdugo was Juana María Verdugo and she was first married to Teodoro Romero.  So, when the 1845 grant was made by Governor Pico it was to father-in-law (Morrillo) and son-in-law (Romero.)  By 1850, however, Romero died, so Juana María married Refugio Zuñiga, who came to the marriage with one son and then the couple had several more children.  One of these, Manuel, who was born in 1854, was a long-time fixture in the Old Mission community.

With the conquest of Mexican California by the United States, the striking of a provision protecting Spanish and Mexican land grants from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the ensuing Gold Rush and struggles over land ownership, Congress enacted the land claims process with a March 1851 law that set up a commission and created a court structure to hear and decide land grant claims. 

On 1 November 1852,  a claim was put forward to the land commission in the name of George Morrillo and Juana María Verdugo de Romero.  The commission heard the case within a year and, on 18 October 1853, ruled in favor of the claimants. 

Because the federal government automatically appealed all successful commission decisions, the matter went to the local federal district court in Los Angeles and the case heard on 19 September 1855, where, once again, Morrillo and his step-daughter were successful.

Once again, though, the U. S. government appealed the court case, as was the strategy in all such matters, and the local federal district court heard the matter on 23 February 1857 and dismissed the government's appeal.

This is the first page of the December 1858 map of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo by Los Angeles County Surveyor Henry Hancock, made for the land claim initiated by original grantee George Morrillo and his partner's widow, Maria Verdugo Romero, in 1852 and finally patented in 1871.  It shows the southwestern portion of the ranch and its borders with neighboring ranches La Merced, Potrero Grande, and San Bartolo.  Winding along as the eastern boundary at the right is the San Gabriel River.  The signature at the bottom from 15 June 1871 is by the federal General Land Office commissioner for the issuance of the patent that day.  Click on the image to open a larger version in a separate window.  This copy was provided by the El Monte Historical Society.

While this all seemed well for the Morrillo/Romero family and their ranch, there were enormous financial and personal costs in pursuing these claims.  Lawyer's fees, charges for having required official survey maps drawn, and other expenses could be onerous, especially as the local economy, which boomed in the beef cattle trade with northern mining areas during the Gold Rush earlier in the 1850s, was starting to experience a tightening as the Gold Rush waned.  In addition, there was a major national economic depression that broke out in 1857.

Given all of this, it is not surprising that Juana María Verdugo and her second husband, Refugio Zuñiga, sold their half-interest, or just over 1,000 acres to F. P. F. Temple on 7 January 1857 for $3,000, which was a substantial sum at the time. 

Temple, who came to the Old Mission community in 1851 after receiving half of the neighboring Rancho La Merced from his father-in-law, William Workman, owner of the Rancho La Puente (which bordered Potrero de Felipe Lugo on the east) was busy with Workman and the other owner of La Merced, Workman's former La Puente mayordomo (foreman), Juan Matias Sanchez, in acquiring as much land in the Old Mission ranchos, including Potrero Chico and Potrero Grande, as they could. 
For example, also in 1857, Sanchez took possession of Potrero Grande and gave half of it to Workman and Temple.  Six years later, in 1863, Workman and Temple acquired ownership of much of the tiny Potrero Chico grant.

Notably, though, the Verdugo/Zuñiga deed to Temple included all but one of the 20 lots comprising the ranch, which seems to indicate that the couple reserved lot 8 for themselves as part of the deed. 

Beyond this, Temple moved quickly over the next year to secure quit claims, which would avoid any later attempts to claim portions of the ranch.  For example, on 25 April 1857, a quit claim was filed in Temple's favor by Maria Tifania Romero, a daughter of Juana Maria Verdugo and Teodoro Romero, and her husband Jose Espinosa, as potential heirs of Tifania's mother's half of the rancho.  A couple of weeks later, Walter Shay, who had acquired a 160-acre section from the Verdugo/Zuñiga half of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, filed a quit claim to Temple.  In early 1858, Temple secured another quit claim from Juana Maria Verdugo through her children José and María's potential interest as heirs.

In May 1858, Temple made another purchase, acquiring the interest of Elmore and Louisa Squires in parts of 9 lots that included what was referred to as the "Old Mill."   This was followed up two years later, in April 1860, with the acquisition from Richard and Margaret Chapman of their interest in what was called the "Old Squires/Davis Mill."

What this referred to was a grist mill for grinding wheat, corn and other field crops and which was built by Elmore W. Squires and Edward Davis (or Davies.)  Squires (1826-1906) was a native of Kentucky who lived in Missouri, where he married his wife in 1848.  The couple then migrated on the famed wagon trail to Oregon, where their first child was born, but traveled south to Santa Clara, near San Jose, by 1852.  Then, the family came down to Los Angeles County and settled on Potrero de Felipe Lugo.  After selling out to Temple, Squires moved to the Rancho Sausal Redondo at what was commonly called "Halfway House," a stop on the main road from Los Angeles to the harbor at San Pedro.  Squires remained there for nearly twenty years, lost land in a foreclosure, and then moved to Orange, where he remained the rest of his life.

Edward Davis/Davies (1807-1859) was from Wales, as was his wife Margaret and apparently the two were Mormon converts (there was a significant conversion and migration of British subjects to the Mormon Church in the 1840s) because the two were married in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1850 and their first two children were married there.  A third child, Caleb, was born in San Bernardino in 1856 and that town had been established by Mormons sent to California by the church to establish a colony.  Somehow, Davis/Davies wound up at Potrero de Felipe Lugo and made the acquaintance of Squires and they established their mill, about 1856 or 1857, though why it was referred to as "old" is puzzling, unless it was built earlier by Morrillo and Romero.  In any case, Davis passed away in November 1859 at La Puente, just east of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, and his widow Margaret married Richard Chapman, an Englishman, but the couple then disposed of their property to Temple.

Temple continued to operate this grist mill for grinding wheat, corn and other field crops for some years and expanded his holdings on Potrero Lugo.  First, with his father-in-law Workman, the two obtained the remaining 1/2 interest in the ranch, or the other 1,000 acres, from Morrillo and Magdalena Vejar.  Then, Temple acquired another 160-acre section that had been owned by Cyrus Lyon, who later went on to operate a well-known stage stop at Lyon's Station near Newhall in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles.

Then, in conjunction with his father-in-law Workman, Temple obtained a quit claim in February 1859 from Morrillo and Magdalena Vejar for their half of the ranch; that is, the remaining 1,000 acres.  Three years later, in October 1862, Workman quit claimed his interest in Potrero de Felipe Lugo to his daughter, Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple.  It was a common matter to place property in the hands of wives and daughters as a way to protect assets in case of financial issues or to merely provide something for grandchildren in the event of the untimely death of a husband or father.  In any case, for about thirteen years, the ownership of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, except for lot 8, was held by the Workman and Temple families.

The next major change came in the early 1870s, when the brothers George (1823-1896) and James Durfee (1840-1920) formally acquired just under 70 acres of the ranch from F. P. F. Temple.  The Durfees became prominent farmers and ranchers in the area and rented land from Temple before acquiring the property from him.  There will be a separate entry on this blog about the interesting background of the Durfees, but they were early walnut farmers on their ranch, of which 60 acres was west of Durfee Avenue near South El Monte High School and 9 acres on the east side of the road within the Whittier Narrows Nature Center.  While George later moved to Los Angeles, where he died, James remained at the ranch until his passing.  James was also a founder, with Temple, of the La Puente School District, which organized in 1863 and of which there will be a separate post.

Meantime, the land claim filed for Potrero de Felipe Lugo, as noted above, in 1852 and approved by both the land claims commission and federal district court, finally ended with the issuance of a patent by the federal government on 15 June 1871.  This long delay was common, as most claims were approved by 1860, but then the Civil War and its aftermath meant that most patents were unissued until much later.

In late 1875, the ownership of Potrero de Felipe Lugo changed dramatically when the Workman and Temple families were beset by financial problems through their Los Angeles bank of Temple and Workman, which had opened in late 1871, but had also been heavily invested in oil, railroad, real estate and other projects, as well as poorly managed.  When the state economy went into a tailspin in late Summer 1875, the bank suspended operations for a few months while seeking loans. 

Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, a San Francisco mining magnate, who had purchased Rancho Santa Anita to the north, was looking for more property acquire and saw that Temple and Workman, the largest landowners in Los Angeles County, were in deep trouble.  He arranged a loan to float the bank and also made a separate acqusition at the same time, in December 1875, for 297 acres of Potrero de Felipe Lugo along its northern edge for $10,000.  The same day Baldwin had arranged to acquire from Workman, F. P. F. Temple and Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple another 203 acres from either Potrero de Felipe Lugo or Potrero Grande, its western neighbor, for $30 an acre, or just over $6,000, though it appears he selected that parcel from the latter rancho.

The remainder of the rancho, excepting the land held by the Durfees and the separate property of Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple that was not included in the 297-acre sale, was put down as collateral for the bank loan, which was also made in early December 1875.  Within six weeks, however, the bank failed, as depositors rushed in to close their accounts and left with Baldwin's borrowed money, and the loan was defaulted.  After three years, to allow the interest to accumulate far beyond repayment, Baldwin foreclosed and, in 1879, took possession of the lion's share of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo.

Mrs. Temple, having retained her property, distributed her Potrero de Felipe Lugo holdings to some of her children, obviously in the hopes that they could do something to make a living in the aftermath of the devastating bank failure, which brought bankruptcy to the Temple family.  In November 1876, she deeded 100 acres to her son Thomas, who had been a cashier in the bank, and who had just married.  Thomas evidently tried farming for a period, but with a bad economy and a punishing drought that occurred in 1876-77, he could not pay his taxes and portions of the property was sold at a tax auction in March 1879.  Thomas eventually disposed of the remainder of his land and then moved to Mexico before returning in later years to Los Angeles.

An additional 400 acres of Mrs. Temple's was given to other children of hers, most notably John Harrison Temple, who had just returned from schooling in Massachusetts after the bank failure.  Only 21 years old, John took possession of land east of Durfee Avenue, comprising most of what is now the Whittier Narrows Nature Center, built himself a residence and planted over 130 acres to walnut trees.  Unlike his older brother Thomas, though, John was able to make his ranch profitable and remained on it for over a decade.  There was, though, a lawsuit against John filed in February 1887 by Lucky Baldwin, who claimed that Temple illegally occupied some of his land.  The case dragged on until March 1889, when the court ruled that Temple had a good, valid title and there was no infringement.  By then, however, Temple's second oldest brother, Francis, had died in 1888 at the Workman Homestead in La Puente, and John became its new owner.  He moved from the Potrero de Felipe Lugo ranch, but appears to have rented it until it was sold in 1892 to A. N. Davidson.

Mrs. Temple also placed 100 acres of land in the hands of her mother, Nicolasa Workman, and this property was rented out by tenant farmers, though there was also a tax payment lapse in 1882 for the parcel.  As is often the case, the term "land rich, cash poor" applies, because if a property could not be made profitable to cover expenses and taxes, it would often wind up sold at a tax sale, auction or private sale and the Temple and Workman holdings at Potrero de Felipe Lugo definitely apply, as they lost everything on the ranch by 1892.



This is page 2 of the 1858 Hancock survey for Potrero de Felipe Lugo, showing the northeastern section, including the northern boundary being the "Road from Los Angeles to San Bernardino" or today's Valley Boulevard, as well as neighboring lands of the ranchos La Puente and San Francisquito and the "Lands of the Mission San Gabriel."  Snaking along the right side of the ranch is the "San Gabriel or Azusa River."

Meantime, Lucky Baldwin, along with partner Richard Garvey, subdivided their 1,500 acres of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, for sale during the great land boom of the 1880s.  In a publication called the Illustrated Herald in August 1888, Baldwin's nephew and estate manager, Henry Unruh, published their offering of the land in ten-acre parcels.  The price was $175 to $250 an acre and the claim was that "this tract will produce anything which grows in Los Angeles county, with perhaps the exception of citrus fruit," although it was then stated that "oranges, indeed, will grow here . . . but these trees do their best on the mesa land." 

Still, it was observed that "The Felipe Lugo is what is known as moist land.  On this are grown to greatest perfection all leguminous crops, potatoes, corn, tomatoes, and wheat and barley, as well as alfalfa.  They will produce a ctop of any of these without any artificial irrigation in our years of least rainfall.  In the more favorable years two crops can be raised on such lands in the twelve months.  The soil is free of stiff clay, and is most easily worked at all seasons."

The piece went on to note that "cereals and vegetables are not all that grow on such rich bottom lands as the Felipe Lugo.  Many of the finest vineyards in the county are found in just such localities.  These, at their best, could not be bought for $500 an acre, when in bearing.  These damp lands, too, are admirably adapted to the growth of the English walnut—one fo the most profitable crops of this section.  The orchards require the very minimum of care, and pay not less than $100 an acre, when at their best.  Then, here, is the choicest home of the apple, the pear, and many similar varieties of deciduous fruit."

And, there was more!  The Felipe Lugo was deemed perfect for dairies and alfalfa, the latter being the common feed for cattle, who could graze year-round in the mild climate of the area.  The bottom line, the sales pitch went, was "the thirfty and industrious farmer who enters on these pursuits, with intelligence, will be able to make for himself a very pleasant home in a lovely climate, and in time he will grow into affluent circumstances on such farms as are now offered so cheap as the Felipe Lugo."

Well, it was a boom time that was just about to go bust in 1888.  Four years later, in the same periodical, Unruh made another pitch, this time combining Potrero de Felipe Lugo with the La Merced and San Franciscquito ranches, also acquired by Baldwin by foreclosure from Temple, Workman and, the case of La Merced, Juan Matias Sanchez.

A total of 3,000 acres was subdivided and 800 had been sold by March 1892.  Terms were $150 to $200 an acre with a third down in cash, and the rest due in five years and 8% interest.  The lands were described as "soil is exceedingly rich black loam of great depth; always moist and producing enormous crops of corn, alfalfa, potatoes, etc., without irrigation; admirable for walnuts and deciduous fruits."

In 1893, however, came another national economic depression and there were six years of drought in the Los Angeles region, so it is likely that sales were lacking at Potrero de Felipe Lugo until after 1900.  In fact, after Baldwin's death in 1909 and with the disposition of his estate, much of his San Gabriel Valley land, including, presumably, Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo, was sold off to farmers. 

After a series of floods, especially in 1914 and 1938, some of the southern part of the rancho was earmarked for flood control purposes held by the federal government and managed by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.  Some of that land is leased to the county for the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area and Whittier Narrows Nature Center.  The northern part, over time, became developed for housing and commercial uses in the cities of South El Monte and El Monte.

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

Rancho Potrero Grande and Misión Vieja

The final of the four ranchos in and surrounding the community of Misión Vieja, or Old Mission, was Potrero Grande.  This former ranch of the Mission San Gabriel was granted to, as records show, "Manuel Antonio, an Indian," meaning a neophyte of the mission, and who was otherwise known as Manuel Antonio Pérez. 

Born about 1798, Pérez may have received his surname (the native peoples, of course, not having there prior to the Spanish occupation) from Eulalia Pérez, the famed llavalera (or keeper of the keys) at Mission San Gabriel.  One of the few documents mentioning him noted that he was an "Indio viudo de Margarita," or "Indian widow of Margarita," this wife obviously being another native person. 

The document, in fact, was a reference to Manuel Antonio's marriage in 1824 to María Florentina Alvitre.  Florentina was a daughter of Sebastian Alvitre and María Rufina Hernandez, early settlers of Alta California in the Spanish era, and many of whose children were among the earliest, if not the first, settlers of the Misión Vieja community.  The couple had at least six children, though some sources indicate that only two daughters lived.

It has also been stated that Manuel Antonio was a Mission San Gabriel mayordomo, or ranch foreman, and that this was the primary factor in his receiving the grant to Potrero Grande.  This was done on 8 April 1845 by Governor Pío Pico, and the amount of land specified was one square league, or 4,432 acres.

The shape of the rancho is a slanted parallellogram with the southern line running fairly straight to the west diving the rancho from its neighbor, Rancho La Merced, from Rosemead Boulevard a short distance above the intersection of San Gabriel Boulevard/Durfee Avenue, crossing the Río Hondo and then San Gabriel Boulevard a short distance west of Lincoln Avenue, skirting the southern edge of the Montebello Town Center, crossing the 60 Freeway at the Paramount Boulevard exit and running along the south edge of Resurrection Cemetery and crossing Potrero Grande Drive before turning northeast.

The western boundary, then runs west of Potrero Grande Drive and crossed Del Mar Street, Graves Avenue, San Gabriel Boulevard and Walnut Grove Avenue before coming to a point just below Interstate 10 along Burton Avenue in Rosemead.

The northern boundary moves on a slight southeasterly angle crossing Rosemead Boulevard, the Río Hondo, Merced Avenue and the intersection of Garvey Avenue at Santa Anita Avenue before moving past Tyler Avenue and Peck Road before coming to a point at Mountain View Road just north of Elliott Avenue in El Monte.

The eastern line travels in a southwest direction along Mountain View and then east of Tyler and Santa Anita through South El Monte neighborhoods, crossing the 60 Freeway and then into the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area.  Once the line crossed Santa Anita Avenue after it turns in towards Durfee Avenue, it follows the northern edge of Rancho Potrero Chico and through Legg Lake.  Crossing Rosemead Boulevard the line heads toward the Río Hondo and then turns sharply to the southeast and back to the beginning at Rosemead.

In all, large sections of the cities of South San Gabriel, Rosemead, South El Monte and El Monte are within the rancho, along with unincorporated Los Angeles County lands falling within the flood plain of the San Gabriel River system and managed by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.

As to Pérez, his ownership of the rancho appears to have lasted only about seven years.  He does appear in the 1850 federal census, which was taken in early 1851 (Pérez and family were enumerated on 11 February) because California was not admitted as a state until September 1850.  There, he is listed as 52 years old, and is shown as a farmer with a self-declared value of real estate as $2,000.  Listed with him is "María," meaning María Florentina, age 40, and three children: María Bárbara, 21, María Antonia, 16, and Juan, 7.

In addition, the agricultural schedule of that census shows that Manuel Antonio had 20 unimproved acres of land valued at $200.  This is a curious item, because there was a column next to that for improved land and there is a blank there.  How his self-declared value of $2,000 is to be squared with the agricultural census valuation of one-tenth of that and only twenty listed acres is not clear.  In any case, he was shown as having $20 worth of farm implements, eleven horses, two oxen, 100 cattle, and sixty sheep and the the value of his animals was given as $1,440.

Within a little more than a year, however, much had changed.  On 9 June 1852, Manuel Antonio sold 172 acres of Potrero Grande to Inocencia Reyes, who happened to be his neighbor in the aforementioned census.  Inocencia, as noted elsewhere in this blog, was the common-law wife of Teodocio Yorba, of the prominent family of what is now northeast Orange County, and bore him a large family until they were married in 1860, three years before Yorba's death.  In the 1850 (1851) census, Inocencia had five children, ranging from a few months to sixteen years.  Perhaps she raised her family on this property she acquired from Pérez.

Four months later, on 13 October 1852, a land claim to Potrero Grande, under the terms of the California land claims act of 1851 concerning Spanish and Mexican grants, was not made by Manuel Antonio, but by Juan Matias Sánchez, half-owner of the neighboring Rancho La Merced.  There doesn't appear to be a located deed for the sale of everything but Inocencia's property to Sánchez and a reason is certainly not known.  Did Pérez sell because of financial problems, even though the Gold Rush was in full flower and money was made in copious amounts by southern California rancheros supplying fresh beef to mining region residents?  Perhaps he passed away in 1851 or 1852 and his widow decided to sell the property.  At this point, there is no way to tell.

This detail from a copy of an 1877 map of southern California shows the Rancho Potrero Grande, which is noted as having 4,431 acres.  There are some subdivided areas, including at the northeast portion by Lucky Baldwin, who bought 203 acres of the ranch in December 1875, prior to foreclosing on most of the rest of the property a few years later.

As to the descendants of Manuel Antonio and Florentina Pérez, it appears that two daughters survived of their several children. In the 1860 census, no one by that name appears in the El Monte township count. But, a decade later, there was María Pérez, 31, and daughter Josefa, 7, living next to Pedro Archuleta and his wife Bárbara. It would seem that these would be the two oldest daughters and the 1880 census showed them living in the same houseshold. Juan Matias Sánchez, the new owner of Potrero Grande, married Luisa Archuleta, the recent widow of Rafael Martinez, and Luisa's brother, Pedro, married Barbara Pérez.  The Archuletas like Sánchez were from New Mexico.  Aside from these census listings, little information is known about the Pérez descendants (though someone might see this and help fill in the gap?)

What is known is that Sánchez owned the vast majority of the rancho and, interestingly, there is a record of a mortgage that Sánchez executed with Andrés Pico, a well-known Californio hero of the resistance against the Americans during the Mexican-American War and younger brother of the governor who granted the rancho to Manuel Antonio.  By October 1853, however, the mortgage was released, as Sánchez obviously repaid a loan for which the rancho was used as collateral.

In March 1857, Sánchez sold half of his stake in Potrero Grande to his compadres F. P. F. Temple and William Workman.  As stated elsewhere in this blog, Sánchez had been mayordomo for Workman at the latter's portion of Rancho La Puente, east of Old Mission.  Workman obtained Rancho La Merced, below Potrero Grande, by foreclosure from Casilda Soto de Lobo in the early 1850s and then granted it to his son-in-law Temple and to Sánchez. This friendship between the three men was further manifested in Sánchez' sale of the half of Potrero Grande to Workman and Temple, but there may have been a more practical reason.

The land claim initiated by Sánchez in 1852 came, as they all did, with great cost.  Lawyers to represent the claimant and surveys to submit to authorities required ample funds.  Sánchez did have his claim confirmed in October 1854 by the commission that heard the initial cases.  As with all land claims cases, the federal government automatically appealed, regardless of who the claimant was, so that they could try to free up as much land as possible in a California that was the site of huge numbers of migrants who wanted land when their golden dreams in the mines failed, as they usually did.

Still, Sánchez prevailed at the local federal district court at the end of 1856, to which the feds appealed the claim to the same court.  This was rejected in March 1858 and there was an option for the government to pursue the appeal to the Supreme Court in Washington.  Not only was this not exercised, but Sánchez had the distinction of being the first claimaint in the Los Angeles region to receive his patent, which was issued in July 1859.  Whereas the average time to get to that level was seventeen agonizing, expensive years, Sánchez was able to get through the process in just under seven.

However, the land claims papers reveal that there were problems.  First, Gold Rush-era migrations brought large numbers of people from the American South to the area in the early 1850s, leading to the settlement of the "New American Town", otherwise known as Lexington and then El Monte.  Some of these new arrivals occupied lands that were within the Potrero Grande boundaries.  Richard Fryer, one of these migrants who later moved to Spadra in today's Pomona, filed an affidavit that, when he arrived, Manuel Antonio had placed "flag polls" with white rags atop them to mark his boundary along those areas, mainly to the north and east, where the settlers were locating their new homes.  According to Fryer, he decided to move two miles north to avoid any conflict.  There were others, however, who did not.

Meantime, the sale of half of the Potrero Grande property to Temple and Workman came along three months after Sánchez had his claim heard successfully in federal court in Los Angeles.  It may be that Temple and Workman agreed to help with the thorny problem of squatters if Sánchez sold them half the ranch, and that half probably included the disputed area.  It also turned out that the official ranch survey for the land claim, drawn up in 1857 by county surveyor Henry Hancock (whose Rancho La Brea was later part-owned by his son and is the location of the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles), was paid for by Workman.

Indeed, more affidavits were filed, by William W. Rubottom (another Southerner who came to El Monte, later ran a tavern and hotel at Rancho Cucamonga, built a cut-off road with Temple from Los Angeles to Cucamonga, and then settled and named Spadra for his home area in Arkansas) and Doctor Nehemiah Beardslee, who lived in the Azusa/Duarte area.  Beardslee stated that, in 1854, Sánchez walked him along the rancho boundaries, perhaps to show the doctor that he had a legitimate border over which squatters had breached. 

Rubottom, meantime, stated that Workman offered to sell him, in 1857 shortly after acquiring his part of Potrero Grande, his new lands at $6 an acre, but that Rubottom was concerned that "as this affiant and many others had settled upon what they supposed to be public land, but by the owners of said grant was claimed to be upon said grant," he turned down the offer.  Workman asked Rubottom to have Sánchez walk the boundaries with him. 

Further, Rubottom noted that, "he had a conversation with the said William Workman after Hancock had made the survey of said Rancho or grant, and that said Workman stated to him that he had paid to said Henry Hancock, the sum of Seven thousand dollars [underlining originally in the affidavit here and below] . . . and that he had loaned him Seven thousand dollars more."  It might be noted that Hancock was also part-owner of Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas and lost it to Workman in foreclosure in 1862, perhaps because of his loan.  Workman retained ownership of that section of Rodeo de las Aguas for seven years before selling it, not knowing this would later by Beverly Hills (and its famed Rodeo Drive!)

This detail from an 1861 map showing land claims in California includes #371 at the left side, which refers to the Rancho Potrero Grande, the first patented claim in the Los Angeles region.  From an original at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.

With the issuance of the patent in 1859, Sánchez, Temple and Workman were able to pursue legal action against twenty-seven settlers/squatters and filed an ejectment suit in local district court.  The settlers tried first to have the patent rescinded and then claimed that there was an expired two-year statute of limitations that prevented the owners from pursuing eviction against their clients.  They also stated that the lands were swampy from overflow from the Río Hondo and San Gabriel River and were perhaps not accurately surveyed and that any surveys had fraudulently located their property in the rancho rather than on public land.

District Court Judge Benjamin Hayes, however, issued a ruling in early 1862 that favored the owners (at the same term of that court, Workman filed for a foreclosure on Hancock and others and got his "Beverly Hills" property that Fall.)  Yet, it appears that at least some of the squatters remained on disputed property for years afterward.

In early 1874, F. P. F. Temple requested the county sheriff, William R. Rowland, to eject Bernard Newman from land on Potrero Grande.  When a deputy was dispatched to serve papers, Newman shot and badly wounded the peace officer, who did survive.  Newman, meantime, was convicted for the crime and went to prison.  Stories of "land grabbing" by Temple, Workman and Sánchez appeared in Los Angeles newspapers even after this, but those stories were to be halted by a sudden turn of events.

As Temple and Workman moved further into business and development in Los Angeles' first growth boom, from the late 1860s into the middle 1870s, they got into banking, first with a partner, Isaias W. Hellman (who later ran Wells Fargo among other successful endeavors) and then on their own.  When the economy in California crashed in late August 1875 due to a silver mining stock bubble bursting in Virginia City, Nevada, a panic erupted.  The bank of Temple and Workman lacked cash reserves but faced hordes of depositors and were unable to satisfy their demands.  Consequently, the bank closed until a loan could be arranged with Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin of San Francisco, who had pocketed millions of dollars in profit in Virginia City stock sales that helped bring the crash and then began investing in San Gabriel Valley real estate, notably Rancho Santa Anita earlier in 1875.  In December 1875, just before the loan was executed, Baldwin purchased 203 acres for just over $6,000 of either the Potrero Grande, the Potrero de Felipe Lugo to the east, or both, from Sánchez, Temple and Workman.  The 1877 map shown above seems to indicate that he chose property on Potrero Grande.

The loan, however, required the participation of Sanchez and his shares of the La Merced and Potrero Grande ranchos, a tale that will be told later in this blog.  Regardless, the loan was provided but was futile, as depositors closed their accounts.  The bank failed in early 1876 and Temple, Workman and Sánchez were ruined.

Baldwin waited three years to foreclose, allowing the interest to accumulate so that it would be impossible, as if it weren't already, to redeem the mortgage and its rising principal.  After assuming ownership of Potrero Grande, he sold 566 acres of the ranch in the northwest corner to Richard Garvey.  Garvey, an Irishman who came to Los Angeles in the late 1850s, was involved in mining and became associated with Baldwin at a gold mine near today's Big Bear Lake.  He was an agent of Baldwins for many years and was also the court receiver sent to William Workman's residence on 17 May 1876 to serve him notice about pending court proceedings for Workman's estate in the aftermath of the bank failure.  Distraught at the prospect of losing a real estate empire carefully constructed over thirty years, Workman took his own life that evening.  Later, Baldwin and Garvey had a falling-out over how rents were collected on the ranchos near Old Mission that the former had acquired and the latter was helping to manage.  Garvey was a shrewd businessman and amassed a substantial estate that made him a founder of Monterey Park and lived well into the 20th century.

Meanwhile, William Workman, in October 1862, decided to transfer his 1/4 share in the Potrero Grande to his daughter, Margarita Temple and her children, probably as a safeguard to keep land in the family's hands in case of any unforeseen problems.  This 1100 or so acres remained in Workman's control until his death.  Not long after Mrs. Temple took possession, she deeded the parcel to two of her sons, Francis and William, who then filed for a legal partition to distinguish their land from that of Baldwin.  William, however, borrowed money from the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Los Angeles, using his 550 acres as collateral, and, after not repaying the loan, faced foreclosure and lost his land in June 1880.  A few months later, Francis Temple deeded his 550 acres over to Baldwin and Garvey, he having taken possession of the home and 75 acres of his grandfather William Workman, which Francis had managed and occupied since Workman's death.  Perhaps the sale of his Potrero Grande land was his way of acquiring the Workman Homestead, which took place at about the sae time in 1880.

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

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