An illustrated history of Los Angeles County, California. Containing a history of Los Angeles County from the earliest period of its occupancy to the present time, together with glimpses of its prospective future and biographical mention of many of its pioneers and also of prominent citizens of to-day, Part 20

Author: Lewis Publishing Company. cn
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Chicago, Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1092

USA > California > Los Angeles County > An illustrated history of Los Angeles County, California. Containing a history of Los Angeles County from the earliest period of its occupancy to the present time, together with glimpses of its prospective future and biographical mention of many of its pioneers and also of prominent citizens of to-day > Part 20

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After the close of the war in 1815, William, with his two sisters, went back to Kentucky, to attend school. In 1817 he returned to Mis- souri, and remained with his father at " Boone's Lick " till 1822, when, at the age of twenty- four, he started out in the world on his own account to seek his fortune, to penetrate still farther into the far West, aud to find " a better country " iu which to build him a home.

In May, 1822, with others, he set out for Santa Fé, New Mexico, where he remained till the following January, when he went down the Rio Grande to El Paso del Norte. On this trip down the river, accompanied by a single companion, a New Mexican, he trapped for beaver. One night whilst sleeping in their camp, some twenty miles from Valverde, Mr. Wolfskill was shot by his worthless companion, apparently for no eause, unless it was for the possession of his old rifle and a few worthless beaver traps, for they were about all Mr. W. had in the world. They had never quarreled, and there was no hard feeling between them. The rifle-ball would have entered his breast, if it had not been warded off partially by his

blankets and his arın. The wounds on his arm and breast he carried till his dying day, and were, as he thought, the remote cause of tlie heart disease from which he suffered in his lat- ter days, and from which finally he died.

Mr. Wolfskill returned to Santa Fé in Au- gust, and about Christmas he went to Taos. In February, 1824, with a large company, he fitted ont a trapping expedition for the head-waters of the Colorado, or as it was then called, the " Rio Grande of the West." The company took down the San Juan and other tributaries, and gradually became separated till only two eoui- panions, Slover and Young, remained with Mr. Wolfskill, whose object was to get outside of where trappers had ever been. They remained out till the beaver season was over, and arrived again at Taos in June. From here Mr. Wolfs- kill started off sonth with a Captain Owens and party, after horses and mules to take to Louisi- ana. They bought up animals in Chihuahua, and took them as far as the Presidio del Norte, where they were attacked by Indians, and sev- eral of the men, including Captain Owens, were killed, and the animals stampeded. Here Mr. Wolfskill and a companion, Beleher, stopped awhile to care for another member of their party, Dudley, who had been wounded by the Indians. Meanwhile some of the mules which had got away from the Indians strayed back to the Presidio, and others were bought, and Mr. Wolfskill and Beleher started with thein for home, by way of the settlements and the Gulf, to avoid the Indians. Belcher promised to meet Mr. Wolfskill at Natehitoches with the animals the next Fourth of July, and so the latter pushed on alone, via the Mississippi River, etc., to his father's home, where he ar- rived in ill health, June, 1825. Thus ended his first expedition westward, he having been gone something over three years, and having penetrated as far as thie tributaries of our great Colorado River on the Pacific Slope.

He soon after, however, started back for Natchitoches to meet Belcher, where he was to get the inules and take thein East and sell them

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for the benefit of Captain Owens's family, to whom they belonged, lie being authorized to act as their agent. He found Belcher at San Felipe, on the Brazos. Mr. Wolfskill took the animals across Louisiana and Mississippi to Greensboro, Alabama, where he wintered and disposed of them, when he returned via Mobile and New Orleans and the Mississippi to Mis- souri, where he made returns to Captain Owens's family, who were neighbors of his father. Here he found Mr. Young, with whom he first went to Santa Fé in 1822, and with whom he liad trapped on the Pecos and the Rio Grande of the West, etc.

After a very short stop at home, he engaged with him the same season (1826) to go again to Santa Fé. On arriving there Young was taken ill, and he hired Mr. Wolfskill to go with a party (Sublette and " Peg-Leg Smith" being of the number) that he (Young) had fitted out, to trap on the waters of the Rio Gila of the far West. This expedition was unsuccessful. The party being only eleven men strong, was at- tacked by Indians and driven back to Taos. Soon after its return, Young started out with about thirty men for the same place, where he chastised the Indians, and his party was enabled to trap unmolested.

During this winter (1826-'27), in company with Willian and Robert Carson, Talbot and others, Mr. Wolfskill made a trip to Sonora, Mexico, to buy stock to take back to Missonri. He went as far as Arispe, Oposura and other towns in the northern part of that State, where he and Talbot gathered about 200 animals and started back with them by way of Taos, but they lost all but twenty-seven of them by the Indians. With these they finally arrived at Independence a little before Christmas. Most of this winter he spent at home, only making a short visit to Kentucky, on business for his father.

The next spring (1828) Mr. Wolfskill left home finally, never after returning thither. He bought a team and started with goods, on his own account, for Santa Fé. There were about

100 wagons (in two companies) that went out at the same time. He sold his goods to his old friend, Young, who had returned from his Gila expedition. Some time after, Young, with whom lie had formed a co-partnership, made another trip to the Gila, whilst Mr. Wolfskill went to Paso del Norte after a lot of wines, brandy, ponoche, etc., which he bronght to Taos in the spring of 1829. IIe remained at Taos the bal- ance of the year, awaiting the return of Yonng, who it seems had in the meantime come on into California.

In 1830, as soon as the trading companies from the States got in, which was not till July, he got ready himself for an expedition to Cali- fornia to hunt beaver, expecting to find Young somewhere in the country. Of the company, consisting of about twenty men, that started with Mr. Wolfskill, only himself and Branch, Burton, Yount, Shields, Ham and Cooper re- mained west of the Rocky Mountains. Proba- bly not one of this company is now (1889) living. Yount settled in Napa, Branch in San Luis Obispo County, Louis Burton in Santa Bárbara, and Mr. Wolfskill in Los Angeles. Nearly all these became large land-owners, married Spanish or Mexican wives, and raised families of children. Their descendants, of the same names or of other names acquired by in- termarriage, already, within sixty years, con- stitute a great multitude.

The expedition which left Taos in September, 1830, with Mr. Wolfskill at its lead, arrived in Los Angeles in February, 1831. It came by way of the Colorado, which it crossed at the head of the Great Canon and the Cajon Pass.

Here the party broke up, being mostly with- ont means. Very few of its members had any intention of stopping permanently in California. Mr. Wolfskill, with several others, built a schooner at San Pedro, which they named the Refugio, with which to hunt otter among the islands off the coast. This was one of the first vessels built in California.

They only made one trip with her down the coast as far as Cedras Islands; and they after-

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ward sold her to a Captain Hinkley, who took her to the Sandwich Islands.

Mr. Wolfskill then directed his attention to vineyarding and to the cultivation of citrus and deciduous fruits, which, together with stock- raising, he followed till his death, with great success. He bought and moved on to his home- stead, now occupied by his son, J. W. Wolfskill, in March, 1838, with his brother John, now of Yolo County, who had come to California the preceding year. He married Doña Magdalena, daughter of Don José Ygnacio and Doña Ra- fæla Romero Lugo, of Santa Bárbara, in January, 1841, by whom he had six children, only three of whom are now living, namely: Joseph W. Wolfskill, Mrs. C. J. Shepherd and Mrs. Frank Sabichi. His eldest daughter, Jnana, who mar- ried H. D. Barrows, died in 1863; Luis, his youngest son, who married a daughter of Henry Dalton, of Azuza Rancho, died in March, 1884; and the youngest died in childhood in 1855. Mrs. Wolfskill died in 1862, at the age of fifty- eight years.

From 1841, Mr. Wolfskill devoted himself mostly to improving and enlarging his vineyard and orchards, in the culture of which he took great pride to the last.

Ile planted a small orange orchard that year (1841), and as it came to bearing in after years he found what the San Gabriel Mission fathers and a few other parties had learned by experi- menting in a small way, that citrus culture was not only possible in Southern California, but that it could be made very profitable; so when Dr. Halsey raised a large orange and lime nurs- ery, the seed of which he planted in 1854, on the Rowland place (since known as the Bliss tract), Mr. Wolfskill bought it for $4,000, and planted out in 1858 the then largest orange or- chard in the United States. The lime trees, several thousand in number, he threw away, as they are easily frost-bitten when young, and he considered them of no value for that reason.

This orange orchard, as added to and im- proved by his son, has produced as high as 25,000 boxes, or something over 5,000,000

oranges and lemons in a single year. But the rapid growth of the city, and the ravages of the terrible " white scale" insect, have caused it to give way, and it has already become a thing of the past. The inagnificent continental passenger depot of the Southern Pacific Rail- way Company now occupies a portion of the estate.

Mr. Wolfskill went north in 1841 to look for a ranch on the then 'vacant public domain. He selected lands lying on both sides of Puta Creek, (now in Yolo and Solano counties), and the next year obtained a grant in his own name from Governor Alvarado, of four square leagues. His brother John took up stock to put on the ranch in 1842, and he still lives on the grant, having received one-half of the same from his brother William. There were three other brothers, two of whom are still living-Mathus, in Suisum, and Milton, in Los Angeles. Mr. Wolfskill in after years sold off his stock and eventually his interest in the ranch, and bought land in Los Angeles County. He bought and stocked the rancho " Lomas de Santiago," which he after- ward sold to Flint, Bixby & Co. He purchased the Santa Anita Rancho of Corbitt & Dibblee for $20,000, and bequeathed it to his youngest son, Luis, who lived on it some years after his father's death, when he sold it for $85,000. "Lucky" Baldwin, the present owner, paid $200,000 for it. Mr. Wolfskill acquired title to a portion of the San Francisquito Rancho, on which Newhall is located. He sold his interest to the Philadelphia Oil Company for six bits (75 cents) an acre.

Mr. Wolfskill was an earnest friend of educa- tion. Besides aiding the public schools in early times when short of funds, he maintained a pri- vate school in his own family for many years. One of the first teachers he employed was Rev. J. W. Douglas, the founder of The Pacific newspaper. Besides his own children, to whom he gave a thorough English and Spanish as well as musical education, his brother Mathus's two sons, J. E. Pleasants, Lemuel Carpenter's children, William and Robert Rowland and

HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY.

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others received much, if not most, of their edn . cation at Mr. Wolfskill's private school.

Before fruit was raised to any great extent in the central and northern part of the State, and even down to the '60s, Mr. Wolfskill and other vineyardists here used to ship to San Francisco large quantities of fruit. Sometimes he shipped as many as 500 boxes of grapes on a single steamer. For a number of years after Kohler & Frohling started in the wine business, they bonght the grapes of Mr. Wolfskill's vineyard.

In 1855 Mr. Wolfskill had bronght from the Mediterranean, by Mr. Teschemaker, formerly mayor of San Francisco, sweet almonds, from which he planted out and successfully raised quite an extensive almond orchard. But though the soft-shelled ahnond of commerce grows here well, and the tree produces nuts that are not excelled in flavor anywhere, yet for some canse it does not produce enough to make its culture profitable. In after years, his son Lnis engaged extensively in raising the Languedoc variety, but with similar discouraging results.

Mr. Wolfskill died after a long and painful illness, on the 3d of October, 1866, at the age of sixty-eight years.

During his long and useful life, he saw much of the world, and picked np not a little of hard, sound sense. He gathered an extensive and valnable library; he was a great reader, and being possessed of a wonderfully retentive mem- ory, he gained a store of information on most subjects of practical human interest, that would not have shamed those who have had a more liberal education, and who may have passed their lives withi books instead of on the frontier. Mr. Wolfskill was essentially a pioneer and a inan of great force of character.

It is interesting in looking back, to observe the inevitable tendency westward of the early American frontiersmen-ever westward, till stopped by the barrier of the Pacific; and then, when they could go west no farther, they had no resource but to go north, up the coast, or off south, unless they returned with the refinent wave, as some few did; or else, as happened with stil

fewer, become fixtures here and give over " pioneering." Where else now can therestless " backwoodsman " go? There is a little show yet in Oregon and Washington, and so on north- ward to Alaska, or perhaps in Mexico; but none of these present that charm of a boundless pros- pect ahead such as the Kentucky hunter-settler of three quarters of a century ago saw with half a continent before him yet unexplored and unobstructed by other races of men save the savage.

Mr. Wolfskill was a man devoid of mere pro- fessions; what he was, he was without any pre- tenses whatever. Industry and economy, honesty and the most transparent truthfulness and sin- cerity, with him were among the prime virtues in the conduct of life. In religion he believed in the teachings of the Bible, and at the last he received the consolations of the Roman Catholic church. But in all things he loved simplicity. He was one of that large nninber of whom there are some in all churches, and more in the great church of outsiders, who believe that a loyal heart and a good life are the best possible prepa- ration for death.

Mr. Wolfskill had one quality that was as rare as it was admirable, which seemed to have become second nature to him, viz., a disposition to construe charitably the motives of everybody, friends and foes alike. When others' acts or words were criticized, he would always seek to suggest a charitable motive for their condnet, that they may have had this or that good motive for acting as they had. Apparently he had originally adopted this rule of universal charity from principle, and finally practiced it from the spontaneous promptings of a naturally kind heart. He believed there was no room for malice in this world.

He was one of the most sociable of men, and in his intercourse with others he was direct, and sometimes blunt and brusque; but, in the lan- guage of Lamartine, " bluntness is the etiquette of sincere hearts." In reality he had one of the kindliest of natures. Finally, in honesty and most of the sterling qualities that are accounted

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the base of true manhood, he had few supe- riors.

ANDREW A. BOYLE, after whom the important suburb of Los Angeles, east of the river, known as Boyle Heights, is named, was a native of County Galway, Ireland, where he was born in 1818. He came to New York when fourteen years of age, where he worked a couple of years at coloring lithograph maps. The family of brothers and sisters went with a colony to Texas and settled at San Patricio, on the Nueces River.

On the breaking out of the Revolution he enlisted, Jannary 7, 1836, in Westover's Artil- lery of the Texan army, and his command was ordered to Goliad, where it was incorporated with the forces of Colonel Fanning. After various engagements with greatly superior forces, the Texans were captured, and Mr. Boyle, who had been wounded, expected to be shot, as all of his comrades were, to the number of over 400 men, notwithstanding the fact that by the terms of their capitulation they were guaranteed their lives. Mr. Boyle, who under- stood Spanish, learned that this was to be their fate; but before their execution an officer asked in English if there was any one among their number named Boyle, to which he answered at once that that was his name. IIe was immedi- ately taken to the officers' hospital to have his wound attended to, where he was kindly treated by the officers. Mr. Brooks, Aid to Colonel Fanning, who was there at the time with his. thigh badly shattered, knew nothing of what had happened, and upon being informed he re- marked, " I suppose it will be our turn next !" In less than five minutes four Mexicans carried him out, cot and all, placed him in the street not fifteen feet from the door, in a position in which . Mr. Boyle could not help sceing him, and there shot him. Ilis body was instantly rifled of a gold watch, stripped and thrown into a pit at the side of the street. A few hours after the murder of Mr. Brooks the offiecr, who had previously inquired for Mr. Boyle, came into the hospital and, addressing him in Eng-

lish said, " Make your mind easy, sir; your life is spared." Mr. Boyle responded, " May I inquire the name of the person to whom I am indebted for my life?" "Certainly; my name is General Francisco Garay, second in command of General Urrea's division." It seems that when General Garay's forces had occupied San Patricio, that officer had been quartered at the honse of the Boyle family, and he had been hospitably entertained, and Mr. Boyle's brother and sister had refused all remuneration from him, only asking that if their brother should ever fall into his hands he would treat him kindly. Afterward, by order of General Garay, Mr. Boyle obtained a passport and went to San Patricio, where he remained.

After the battle of San Jacinto and the capt- ure of General Santa Ana, and the retreat of the Mexican forces, General Garay, in passing through San Patricio, called to see Mr. Boyle, who, at the General's request, accompanied the latter to Matamoras. The General also invited Mr. Boyle to accompany him to the City of Mexico; but as he was anxious to see his rela- tives in the United States lie was compelled to decline; and so he set out on foot for Brazos Santiago, at which point he took passage on a brig for New Orleans, where he soon after arrived.

Being out of money and in rags, he engaged at $2.50 a day in painting St. Mary's Market, although he had never painted except in water colors. After working long enough to buy some clothes, he availed himself of the Texan Consul's offer of a free passage on a schooner to the mouth of the Brazos River, where Gen- eral Burnett, the first President of the Republic of Texas, gave him a letter to General Rusk, at that time in command of the army on the river Guadalupe. Mr. Boyle walked to General Rusk's camp, a distance of 150 miles, in five days, although in daily expectation of an advance by the Mexicans. General Rusk dis- charged Mr. Boyle from further service in the army on account of his impaired health. After recovering from a severe sickness at Victoria,

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where General Rusk's headquarters were, he went to Columbia, the seat of Government of Texas, and obtained a passport for New Orleans.

The foregoing facts are condensed from " Reminiscences of the Texas Revolution," dictated by Mr. Boyle before his death, dated December 15, 1870, and published in the Daily News of this city, in June and July, 1871, after Mr. Boyle's death.

After his return to New Orleans and the reestablishment of his health, he engaged in merchandising on the Red River till abont the year 1842. In 1846 he married Elizabeth Cristie. The only surviving issne of this mar- riage is one daughter, now the wife of Mayor William H. Workman, of this city. Mr. Boyle, after his return from Red River, went to Mexico, where he engaged in business some time with success. In 1848 he set out for the United States with about $20,000 in Mexican dollars, which he had packed in a claret box. At the mouth of the Rio Grande, in attempting to board a steamer in a small skiff with his treas- ure, the motion of the paddle-wheels of the steamer caused his skiff to capsize and his money went to the bottom and he came near losing his life. He tried afterward to recover his money but without success, and thus he lost all of his $20,000 !

He finally returned to his home in New Orleans, to find that his wife, who was in deli- cate health, had died two weeks before (October 20, 1849), from a fever caused by hearing that he had been lost at the month of the Rio Grande. From then on all his interest in life centered in his infant daughter, then a year and a half old. An aunt of hers helped to take care of her and bring her up; and she has lived with her foster-child till the present time. About a year after the family started for San Francisco, by steamer and the Isthmus, arriving in the early part of 1851. Here Mr. Boyle engaged in the boot and shoe business, but he was burned out by both the fires that occurred that year. In company with Benjamin Hobart he then went into the wholesale boot and shoe

business, and they built up a very large trade. In 1858 he sold out his interest and came to Los Angeles. IIere he bought a vineyard (planted in 1835) on the east side of the river, under the bluff. Ile made his home on the edge of the bluff, where in after years, 1862 or 1863, when he commenced making wine, he dug a cellar in which to store it. At first, or before 1862, be shipped his grapes to San Francisco, as did many other vineyardists at that period, grapes then bringing high prices in that market. Mr. Boyle was of a very genial, social nature, and all who visited his hospitable home were cordially received and entertained. The writer of these lines has only pleasant memories of his visits to the Boyle mansion during the life-time of its former owner-as so many others since have of their visits to the present hospitable owners.

Mr. Boyle was a member of the city council several years during the '60's. It is an interest- ing fact that when the city granted the franchise to the City Water Company in 1868 for thirty years, Mr. Boyle and Mr. Caswell, the latter now an employee of the Water Company, were the only members who voted against the grant, solely, however, because they thought the in- terests of the city were insufficiently protected.

GENERAL PHINEAS BANNING. Conspicuous among the noted men whose public spirit and untiring energy have given a name and fame to Southern California world- wide stands General Phineas Banning. Leaving the parental roof and starting out to carve for himself a fortune and a name when just entering npon his teens, he was emphatically a self-made man. He was born in Oak Hill, New Castle County, Dela- ware, September 19, 1831. Descended from early colonial settlers who figured prominently in the Revolutionary struggle which gave birth to the world's greatest Republic, he was a noble son of worthy sires. He was the ninth of a family of eleven children of John A. and Eliza- beth (Lowber) Banning.

Phineas Banning, the parent stem of the Banning family, was an Englishman, who, on

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immigrating to America, settled in what is now Kent County, Delaware. Ofhis four sons John, the grandfather of the subject of this memoir, was a merchant in the town of Dover, and was distinguished for his patriotism and his finan- ciering ability. Being a member of the " Coun- cil of Safety " during the Revolutionary war, he contributed liberally, in both money and services, to organizing and establishing the State Government of Delaware; and, as a mem- ber of the first Electoral College, was one of three from that State to cast the electoral vote which made General George Washington the first President of the United States. His son, John A. Banning, the father of General Phineas Banning, was graduated from Princeton College with high honors and enjoyed a local distinction for his scholarly attainments. The Lowber family descended from Mathew Lowber, who came from Amsterdam in the seventeenth cen- tury and settled on the western shore of Mary- land. Peter Lowber, his eldest son, settled in one of the three counties now composing the State of Delaware. Michael Lowber, Peter's eldest son, married Miss Mary Cole, of an Eng- lish family. William, the second son of this marriage, wedded Alice Ponder, and their second child was Elizabeth Lowber, the mother of Gen- eral Banning. She was a woman of great strength of character which she imparted, both by transmission and early training, to her chil- dren, infusing into their plastic minds energy and self-reliance. She was noted for her hospi- tality and kindness to the poor. The first twelve years of Phineas Banning's life were passed on his father's farm, with meager school advantages, but with intellectual home sur- roundings, among which was association with his aunt, the wife of Hon. IIenry M. Ridgely, of Dover, a member of both branches of Uni. ted States Congress. Mrs. Ridgely was noted in Washington for her beauty and intel- lectuality. The plodding life on the farm among the Brandywine Hills was too slow for the vivacious youth of twelve years; and, with 50 cents in his pocket as his entire cash capi-

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Author: Lewis Publishing Company. cn Publication date: 1889 Publisher: Chicago, Lewis Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1092

Author: Lewis Publishing Company. cn
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Chicago, Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1092