SIXTY YEARS
IN
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
1853-1913
CONTAINING THE REMINISCENCES OF
HARRIS NEWMARK
EDITED BY
MAURICE H. NEWMARK
MARCO R. NEWMARK
Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise.—Macaulay.
WITH 150 ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
The Knickerbocker Press
1916
Copyright, 1916
by
M. H. and M. R. NEWMARK
To
THE MEMORY OF
MY WIFE
In Memoriam
At the hour of high twelve on April the fourth, 1916, the sun shone into a room where lay the temporal abode, for eighty-one years and more, of the spirit of Harris Newmark. On his face still lingered that look of peace which betokens a life worthily used and gently relinquished.
Many were the duties allotted him in his pilgrimage; splendidly did he accomplish them! Providence permitted him the completion of his final task—a labor of love—but denied him the privilege of seeing it given to the community of his adoption.
To him and to her, by whose side he sleeps, may it be both monument and epitaph.
Thy will be done!
M. H. N.
M. R. N.
INTRODUCTION
Several times during his latter years my friend, Charles Dwight Willard, urged me to write out my recollections of the five or six decades I had already passed in Los Angeles, expressing his regret that many pioneers had carried from this world so much that might have been of interest to both the Angeleño of the present and the future historian of Southern California; but as I had always led an active life of business or travel, and had neither fitted myself for any sort of literary undertaking nor attempted one, I gave scant attention to the proposal. Mr. Willard's persistency, however, together with the prospect of coöperation offered me by my sons, finally overcame my reluctance and I determined to commence the work.
Accordingly in June, 1913, at my Santa Monica home, I began to devote a few hours each day to a more or less fragmentary enumeration of the incidents of my boyhood; of my voyage over the great wastes of sea and land between my ancestral and adopted homes; of the pueblo and its surroundings that I found on this Western shore; of its people and their customs; and, finally, of the men and women who, from then until now, have contributed to the greatness of the Southland, and of the things they have done or said to entitle their names to be recorded. This task I finished in the early fall. During its progress I entered more and more into the distant Past, until Memory conjured before me many long-forgotten faces and happenings. In the end, I found that I had jotted down a mass of notes much greater than I had expected.
Thereupon the Editors began their duties, which were to arrange the materials at hand, to supply names and dates that had escaped me, and to interview many who had been principals in events and, accordingly, were presumed to know the details; and much progress was made, to the enlarging and enrichment of the book. But it was not long before they found that the work involved an amount of investigation which their limited time would not permit; and that if carried out on even the modest plan originally contemplated, some additional assistance would be required.
Fortunately, just then they met Perry Worden, a post-graduate of Columbia and a Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Halle, Germany; a scholar and an author of attainments. His aid, as investigator and adviser, has been indispensable to the completion of the work in its present form. Dr. Worden spent many months searching the newspapers, magazines and books—some of whose titles find special mention in the text—which deal with Southern California and its past; and he also interviewed many pioneers, to each of whom I owe acknowledgment for ready and friendly coöperation. In short, no pains was spared to confirm and amplify all the facts and narratives.
Whether to arrange the matter chronologically or not, was a problem impossible of solution to the complete satisfaction of the Editors; this, as well as other methods, having its advantages and disadvantages. After mature consideration, the chronological plan was adopted, and the events of each year have been recorded more or less in the order of their happening. Whatever confusion, if any, may arise through this treatment of local history as a chronicle for ready reference will be easily overcome, it is believed, through the dating of the chapters and the provision of a comprehensive index; while the brief chapter-heading, generally a reference to some marked occurrence in that period, will further assist the reader to get his bearings. Preference has been given to the first thirty years of my residence in Los Angeles, both on account of my affectionate remembrance of that time and because of the peculiarity of memory in advanced life which enables us to recall remote events when more recent ones are forgotten; and inasmuch as so little has been handed down from the days of the adobe, this partiality will probably find favor.
In collecting this mass of data, many discrepancies were met with, calling for the acceptance or rejection of much long current here as fact; and in all such cases I selected the version most closely corresponding with my own recollection, or that seemed to me, in the light of other facts, to be correct. For this reason, no less than because in my narrative of hitherto unrecorded events and personalities it would be miraculous if errors have not found their way into the story, I shall be grateful if those who discover inaccuracies will report them to me. In these sixty years, also, I have met many men and women worthy of recollection, and it is certain that there are some whose names I have not mentioned; if so, I wish to disclaim any intentional neglect. Indeed, precisely as I have introduced the names of a number for whom I have had no personal liking, but whose services to the community I remember with respect, so there are doubtless others whose activities, past or present, it would afford me keen pleasure to note, but whom unhappily I have overlooked.
With this brief introduction, I give the manuscript to the printer, not with the ambitious hope of enriching literature in any respect, but not without confidence that I have provided some new material for the local historian—perhaps of the future—and that there may be a goodly number of people sufficiently interested to read and enjoy the story, yet indulgent enough to overlook the many faults in its narration.
H. N.
Los Angeles, December 31, 1915.
FOREWORD
The Historian no longer writes History by warming over the pancakes of his predecessors. He must surely know what they have done, and how—and whereby they succeeded and wherein they failed. But his
Mere Humans no longer read History—except in school where they have to, or in study clubs where it is also Required. But a plain personal narrative is interesting now as it has been for five thousand years. The world's greatest book is of course compulsory; but what is the interesting part of it? Why, the stories—Adam and Eve; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; Saul and David and Samson and Delilah; Solomon, Job, and Jesus the Christ! And if anyone thinks Moses worked-in a little too much of the Family Tree—he doesn't know what biblical archæology is doing. For it is thanks to these same "petty" details that modern Science, in its excavations and decipherings, has verified the Bible and resolved many of its riddles!
Greece had one Herodotus. America had four, antedating the year 1600. All these truly great historians built from all the "sources" they could find. But none of them quite give us the homely, vital picture of life and feeling that one untaught and untamed soldier, Bernal Diaz, wrote for us three hundred years ago when he was past ninety, and toothless—and angry "because the historians didn't get it straight." The student of Spanish America has often to wish there had been a Bernal Diaz for every decade and every province from 1492 to 1800. His unstudied gossip about the conquest of Mexico is less balanced and less authoritative, but far more illuminative, than the classics of his leader, Cortez—a university man, as well as a great conqueror.
For more than a quarter of a century it was one of my duties to study and review (for the Nation and other critical journals) all sorts of local chronicles all over Spanish and English America—particularly of frontier times. In this work I have read searchingly many hundreds of volumes; and have been brought into close contact with our greatest students and editors of "History-Material," and with their standards.
I have read no other such book with so unflagging interest and content as these memoirs of Harris Newmark. My personal acquaintance with Southern California for more than thirty years may color my interest in names and incidents; but I am appraising this book (whose proofs I have been permitted to read thoroughly) from the standpoint of the student of history anywhere. Parkman and Fiske and Coues and Hodge and Thwaites would join me in the wish that every American community might have so competent a memorandum of its life and customs and growth, for its most formative half-century.
This is not a history. It is two other much more necessary things—for there is no such thing as a real History of Los Angeles, and cannot be for years. These are the frank, naïve, conversational memoirs of a man who for more than sixty years could say of Southern California almost as truly as Æneas of his own time—"All of which I saw, much of which I was." The keen observation, the dry humor, the fireside intimacy of the talk, the equity and accuracy of memory and judgment—all these make it a book which will be much more valued by future generations of readers and students. We are rather too near to it now.
But it is more than the "confessions" of one ripe and noble experience. It is, beyond any reasonable comparison, the most characteristic and accurate composite picture we have ever had of an old, brave, human, free, and distinctive life that has changed incredibly to the veneers of modern society. It is the very mirror of who and what the people were that laid the real foundations for a community which is now the wonder of the historian. The very details which are "not Big enough" for the casual reader (mentally over-tuned to newspaper headlines and moving pictures) are the vital and enduring merits of this unpretentious volume. No one else has ever set down so many of the very things that the final historian of Los Angeles will search for, a hundred years after all our oratories and "literary efforts" have been well forgotten. It is a chronicle indispensable for every public library, every reference library, the shelf of every individual concerned with the story of California.
It is the Pepys's Diary of Los Angeles and its tributary domain.
Charles F. Lummis.
PREFACE
The Editors wish to acknowledge the coöperation given, from time to time, by many whose names, already mentioned in the text, are not repeated here, and in particular to Drs. Leo Newmark and Charles F. Lummis, and Joseph P. and Edwin J. Loeb, for having read the proofs. They also wish to acknowledge Dr. Lummis's self-imposed task of preparing the generous foreword with which this volume has been favored. Gratitude is also due to various friends who have so kindly permitted the use of photographs—not a few of which, never before published, are rare and difficult to obtain. Just as in the case, however, of those who deserve mention in these memoirs, but have been overlooked, so it is feared that there are some who have supplied information and yet have been forgotten. To all such, as well as to several librarians and the following, thanks are hereby expressed: Frederick Baker, Horace Baker, Mrs. J. A. Barrows, Prospero Barrows, Mrs. R. C. Bartow, Miss Anna McConnell Beckley, Sigmund Beel, Samuel Behrendt, Arthur S. Bent, Mrs. Dora Bilderback, C. V. Boquist, Mrs. Mary Bowman, Allan Bromley, Professor Valentin Buehner, Dr. Rose Bullard, J. O. Burns, Malcolm Campbell, Gabe Carroll, J. W. Carson, Walter M. Castle, R. B. Chapman, J. H. Clancy, Herman Cohn, Miss Gertrude Darlow, Ernest Dawson and Dawson's Bookshop, Louise Deen, George E. Dimitry, Robert Dominguez, Durell Draper, Miss Marjorie Driscoll, S. D. Dunann, Gottlieb Eckbahl, Richard Egan, Professor Alfred Ewington, David P. Fleming, James G. Fowler, Miss Effie Josephine Fussell, A. P. Gibson, J. Sherman Glasscock, Gilbert H. Grosvenor, Edgar J. Hartung, Chauncey Hayes, George H. Higbee, Joseph Hopper, Adelbert Hornung, Walter Hotz, F. A. Howe, Dr. Clarence Edward Ide, Luther Ingersoll, C. W. Jones, Mrs. Eleanor Brodie Jones, Reverend Henderson Judd, D. P. Kellogg, C. G. Keyes, Willis T. Knowlton, Bradner Lee, Jr., H. J. Lelande, Isaac Levy, Miss Ella Housefield Lowe, Mrs. Celeste Manning, Mrs. Morris Meyberg, Miss Louisa Meyer, William Meying, Charles E. Mitchell, R. C. Neuendorffer, S. B. Norton, B. H. Prentice, Burr Price, Edward H. Quimby, B. B. Rich, Edward I. Robinson, W. J. Rouse, Paul P. Royere, Louis Sainsevain, Ludwig Schiff, R. D. Sepúlveda, Calvin Luther Severy, Miss Emily R. Smith, Miss Harriet Steele, George F. Strobridge, Father Eugene Sugranes, Mrs. Carrie Switzer, Walter P. Temple, W. I. Turck, Judge and Mrs. E. P. Unangst, William M. Van Dyke, August Wackerbarth, Mrs. J. T. Ward, Mrs. Olive E. Weston, Professor A. C. Wheat and Charles L. Wilde.
CONTENTS
PAGE In Memoriam v Introduction vii Foreword xi Preface xv CHAPTER I. —Childhood and Youth, 1834-1853 1 II. —Westward, Ho! 1853 6 III. —New York—Nicaragua—The Golden Gate, 1853 14 IV. —First Adventures in Los Angeles, 1853 27 V. —Lawyers and Courts, 1853 45 VI. —Merchants and Shops, 1853 60 VII. —In and near the Old Pueblo, 1853 80 VIII. —Round about the Plaza, 1853-1854 97 IX. —Familiar Home-Scenes, 1854 112 X. —Early Social Life, 1854 128 XI. —The Rush for Gold, 1855 146 XII. —The Great Horse Race, 1855 157 XIII. —Princely Rancho Domains, 1855 166 XIV. —Orchards and Vineyards, 1856 189 XV. —Sheriff Barton and the Bandidos, 1857 204 XVI. —Marriage—The Butterfield Stages, 1858 220 XVII. —Admission to Citizenship, 1859 240 XVIII. —First Experience with the Telegraph, 1860 260 XIX. —Steam-Wagon—Odd Characters, 1860 274 XX. —The Rumblings of War, 1861 289 XXI. —Hancock—Lady Franklin—The Deluge, 1861 299 XXII. —Droughts—The Ada Hancock Disaster, 1862-1863 310 XXIII. —Assassination of Lincoln, 1864-1865 328 XXIV. —H. Newmark &
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE Harris Newmark. In his Seventy-ninth Year Engraved from a photograph Frontispiece Facsimile of a Part of the MS 2 Reproduction of Swedish Advertisement 3 Philipp Neumark 10 From a Daguerreotype Esther Neumark 10 From a Daguerreotype J. P. Newmark
SIXTY YEARS
IN
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA