USA > California > San Diego County > San Diego > City of San Diego and San Diego County : the birthplace of California, Volume I > Part 16
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George B. Hensley, a native of England, was another of the period. He too came in 1869 and, like High, went to ranching, his land being in the Tia Juana Valley. He and a brother have been credited with the discovery of the famous Stonewall gold mine at Julian. In 1872 he was made deputy county clerk, held the place a year and then opened an abstract office. He was active later in real estate business in the development of Pacific Beach and the attempt to build a railroad from San Diego to Old Town.
Still another who came here in 1869 was D. Choate, whose loyalty to San Diego is matched by that of his son, Rufus Choate, whose services in the Chamber of Commerce, in harbor development and in other ways in recent years have been such as to entitle him to much praise. The older Choate came from Maine to California with the gold-hunters of '49, landed at San Francisco when it was a straggling hamlet and went to the mines near Yuba. There he met with scant success, so went into the mercantile business at Ophir, where he remained for 17 years. Then, the mining business being none too good, he entered business in San Francisco, and after several months there came to San Diego on a visit, largely for his health. He did not even return north but wrote instructions for the closing out of his business and went into the real estate field in San Diego. He bought much of what was then "outside" property by the acre and split it up into city additions. In 1888 he had laid out 10 different additions and marketed them. The map of the city gives ample evidence of his activity, the Arnold and Choate addition being one of the best known in all the wide expanse of San Diego. He was postmaster of San Diego from 1875 to 1882.
A notable addition to those who reached San Diego in 1869 is the name of W. T. McNealy. He was a young Georgian who though only about 17 years old when the Civil War was ending was attached to the Confederate troops in the last few months of the great struggle.
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He studied law for three years thereafter in Florida and then came to California, to which at the time many southerners were attracted. He went first to San Francisco, then came south to Los Angeles and, after a visit of a few days there, came by the old stage line to San Diego. He remained and soon became one of the city's leading attorneys. How rapid his progress was may be judged from the fact that after being here only a few months he was nominated and elected district attorney on the Democratic ticket. He was re-elected at the next election. He made an excellent and popular record in office and in 1873 was elected judge of the district court, his district comprising San Diego and San Bernardino counties. In 1879 the district court was abolished, and Judge McNealy was elected to the superior court which had been created, and thus was the first to hold that distin- guished place in San Diego County. He resigned in 1886 on account of ill health and for a time practiced law in the city, but retired in 1888 after a remarkable career.
Still another prominent citizen who came to San Diego in 1869 and who was active in the city's life of 50 years ago was A. Klauber, whose name has been carried on through the years by the firm of Steiner & Klauber, its successor, Steiner, Klauber & Co., then Klau- ber & Levi, and, in recent years the Klauber-Wangenheim Company. wholesale dealers in groceries. The firm began as a general mer- chandise store in the early days, dry goods being included in its list of extensive transactions. In all the years it has been one of the largest houses in the Southern California field. Klauber was an Austrian, born in 1830, who came to this country when young. Soon after his arrival here the firm of Steiner & Klauber was organized and although San Diego of course was only a small town in those days. it was growing and the surrounding country was building up gradu- ally and surely. Meeting the demands of the time, the firm's import- ance grew with the years. In 1871, the period to which this section of the book is devoted, Steiner & Klauber's store was at Seventh and I streets, as has already been noted. It was not until about 15 years later that the firm gave up retail business and devoted itself to the wholesale field. At that time the firm, then Klauber & Levi, had quarters at Fifth and Market (then H) streets. Klauber was prominent in the Masonic order, as was his old partner Simon Levi. Both took active part in the building up of San Diego in the early days, Levi entering the local field in 1876, after spending several years in general merchandise business at Temecula.
Another "Sixty-niner" of San Diego history was Charles J. Fox. the civil engineer whose name already has been mentioned in connection with a survey ordered as a preliminary to a railroad between Old Town and New Town in 1871. He was elected county surveyor twice, and was identified with a number of surveys in- portant in the development of San Diego as a railroad terminus. Among these were surveys for the old Memphis & El Paso Railroad the Texas & Pacific and the California Southern, the beginning of the Santa Fe's line into San Diego. He and his partner. H. I. Willey, afterwards surveyor-general of the state, prepared an official map of San Diego County, an important and arduous task in those days of difficult travel. He also was identified with the enterprise by
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which a road was built through San Diego County and across what was then the desert of Imperial Valley to Fort Yuma; he was active in real estate transactions and in 1876 organized the Bee Keepers Association of San Diego County. All in all, his was a pretty notable contribution to San Diego's advancement that began in the early seventies. He belonged to a noted Massachusetts fam- ily and was born in Boston in 1834.
Another on the role of those who came to the city in 1869 was William Jorres, whose name was plainly stamped into San Diego history by what became known as the Jorres wharf, the first started in San Diego although not the first finished, for the Horton wharf, project of the indefatigable A. E. Horton, was rushed to completion in accordance with his plans to speed the progress of the town which he had mapped out. Jorres was a German who left his native land when a young man and spent several years in Buenos Ayres and Montevideo, then sailed to San Francisco with the later of the Argonauts and went to the gold mines. When the San Francisco fire of 1851 occured he went to that city to help build it up again, became a contractor and remained in that business until he came to San Diego. Here he formed a partnership with S. S. Culverwell and built the Culverwell & Jorres wharf, to which reference has been made. This was generally known at first as the Culverwell wharf at the foot of F street, but in 1872 Jorres bought out his partner's interest, and the enterprise took his name. The year before he had started work on the new courthouse, as already noted, and that structure was completed by him in 1872. Several other old-time structures in San Diego-large and important buildings for those days-were put up by Jorres as contractor. Among them were the Commercial Bank, Fifth and G streets, and the Central Market, above the bank on Fifth street. He was county treasurer from 1878 to 1884. His son, G. W. Jorres, who had been connected with several banks of San Diego and was postmaster of the city from 1885 to 1887. died in 1921.
Of course Judge Oliver S. Witherby was in San Diego. With a residence spanning nearly half a century in San Diego, he built up a real reputation as a jurist and citizen and in a striking way linked the life of old San Diego, the life of the Spanish Old Town, with the life of the new San Diego, the town that Horton pushed into actuality. He was a veteran of the Mexican war, having gone into the service from Butler County, Ohio, where he had been prosecuting attorney, and came to San Diego with the boundary commission whose duty was to fix the line between the United States and Mexico. Here he remained and was elected to represent San Diego County as assemblyman in the first California legislature which met at Monterey in 1850 to frame the first laws of the Golden State. In 1851 he became the first judge of the Southern district of California and held that place until 1853, when President Pierce appointed him collector of customs for the port of San Diego. Leaving that post in 1857. Judge Witherby bought a ranch in Escondido and made a success of it, according to accounts of the period. After about ten vears of ranching, he returned to San Diego, where he died Dec. 18, 1896.
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Here too at the time was Ephraim W. Morse, who was one of the most noted of the early citizens of San Diego, a man of fine character, from the best of pioneer stock, and a real force in the upbuilding of the new city. Like many others who came to Cal- ifornia at the height of the gold rush, he was a Massachusetts boy- he was only 26 years old when he sailed from Boston in 1849 with a company made up largely of friends and acquaintances. After a few weeks in the Yuba River section he fell a victim to illness and left with many of the company who were in similar plight for San Francisco. There, still ill, he heard of San Diego, and came here to regain health and gain a competence. He got back his health and got a start on a competence. In 1851 he went home to claim a bride, Miss Lydia A. Gray of Amesbury, his old home, and brought her back to San Diego with him. She died five years later but left him a son, Edward W. In 1852 Mr. Morse was elected associate judge of the court of sessions of San Diego County and in 1853 was made a member of the board of trustees. In 1865 he took another wife, Miss Mary O. Walker, who had come from Manchester, N. H. to teach at the Old Town school. In 1869, when Horton's "boom" had begun to make the New Town's influence felt, Morse moved from Old Town to South San Diego, as it then was, selling out his mer- cantile business when he made the change. He was one of the founders of the Bank of San Diego in 1870 and also aided in organiz- ing the Consolidated National Bank, which succeeded the Bank of San Diego in later years, and was a director of the new institution for many years. He was active in many lines which the city took in its advancement, including, of course, the railroad agitation, and held two county offices. He was identified with the erection of two of the largest buildings put up in San Diego in the '80s ; one of these was the five-story Pierce-Morse Block, at Sixth and F streets, which he built in partnership with James M. Pierce, and which was described at the time as "the first building thoroughly metropolitan in appear- ance erected in San Diego." The other was Morse, Whaley and Dalton building on Fifth Street next to the old home of the First National Bank. Mr. Morse was active also in the improvement of San Diego's growing school system and in the preservation of the great city park, now Balboa Park. He died Jan. 17, 1906.
The Whaley associated with Morse in the Fifth Street building just mentioned was Thomas Whaley, who came from New York to San Diego. AAlthough not so fortunate in business as his activities warranted, he left a real mark in local history and deserves more than mere passing mention-all the more so because of the interesting details of his career. He was an associate at various times of E. W. Morse, Philip Crosthwaite, Charles P. Noell and R. H. Dalton, all well known San Diegans. Mr. Whaley, who was of Irish ancestry, came around the Horn in 1849 with the gold-seeking swarm of Americans who sought fortune in California, and went into mer- cantile business in San Francisco. Prosperity was looming up for him in his venture when a change of grade was made on Montgomery Street that left his building 15 feet below the mark set by the authori- ties. The tenants of the building which he and his associates had erected moved out and his business was lost. In 1851 two new
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business associates who had joined with him-Lewis A. Franklin and George H. Davis-came to San Diego and decided to stay here. They persuaded Whaley to follow them. With Franklin he formed a partnership and opened a general store on the old plaza at Old Town. After a few months of that business connection Mr. Whaley went in with John Hinton in another similar venture in Old Town which was remarkably successful. It is related that the net profits in the first year were more than $18,000. The next year, 1853, Morse entered the firm, and that summer Mr. Whaley went on a visit to New York. There he married Miss Anna E. Lannay, a descendant of two French families, and brought his bride from the comforts and culture of the Eastern metropolis to share his fortunes in the rough little settlement on the shores of far away San Diego Bay. Mrs. Whaley's impressions of the place on her arrival and shortly there- after are themselves of no small interest. It is not strange that the young bride found it hard to accustom herself to the wild- looking Indians and the rather primitive customs of some of the whites here at that time. Morse retired from the store partnership three years later, and Whaley carried it on alone for some time, also engaging in brick-making. His brick house, erected in 1856, is said to have been the first of the kind built on the California coast south of San Francisco. In 1859 he went to San Francisco to act as com- missary for the Government and later went to Alaska, on its transfer from Russia. He did not return to San Diego until late in 1868, when he engaged again in business at Old Town. Although Old Town was still a hustling little place, the new town was acquiring an importance which pointed to its success, and in 1869 Whaley went there, buying out his old partner, Morse, to get a site, as related in Van Dyke's history of the county, in order to obtain a good site. He was not successful, however, and a few years later went to New York, where he remained for five years. When he came back in 1879 it was, it is related, with only a small amount of money. He entered the real estate field, however, and did so well that he was able to retire in 1888. For a time, as has been mentioned, the county records were kept in a building owned by Whaley at Old Town and were removed from that place to the new town in 1871. His daughter, Miss Whaley, has been for some time a valued member of the public library staff and instrumental in preserving many of the valuable historical data of San Diego. At one time he was a large property owner in San Diego.
Mention already has been made of Judge M. A. Luce, who had been prominent as a citizen and attorney for nearly fifty years. He has seen San Diego from the days of the Tom Scott boom to the present and in many of those days he had been an active figure- spare of figure and far from robust but still keenly active. He was born in Illinois in 1842 of New England parents and lived with them until he left to prepare for college at Hillsdale, Mich. He spent part of his time educating himself and the rest in educating others that he might have the money to go ahead with his own train- ing. In 1861 when the call to arms was sounded in the great Civil war, he left his studies and enlisted. He not only saw all the fighting that one man could well see but took an active part in it and acquitted
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himself with notable bravery and fidelity. The space alloted to the writer does not permit a full account of it all here, but it may be said that his record was one of which any patriot might be proud. His record extends from Bull Run to Gettysburg and through to Cold Harbor and Petersburg. The war over, he went back to Hillsdale. graduating in 1866. Then he studied law and soon began practice in his native state.
"I came here," said Judge Luce recently, "because I had de- veloped a weak throat. It troubled me so much that I could not well deliver an address to a jury, and I thought that it was time that I was coming to a gentler climate. I had subscribed to the San Diego Union in the fall of 1872, and what I read in that newspaper about San Diego proved so satisfactory that I started here, arriving in May, 1873. My first office was on the south side of the Plaza, in a two- story building on the site of what is now the Cabrillo theatre. My first partner was H. H. Wildey, a former soldier in the Confederate army. I had been in the Federal army, of course, but we got along very well. Mr. Wildey afterwards became district attorney of San Diego County."
In 1875 Mr. Luce was elected judge of the county court and served in that capacity for four years, when the new state constitution abolished that court, or, rather, combined that court and the district court in the superior court of the present day. Soon after leaving the bench he became identified with the work which succeeded in bringing the Santa Fe to the Pacific shore. He was vice president and attorney of the California Southern Railroad Company, organized in 1880 as the connecting link for the Santa Fe. He also has served as attorney in several other notable ways, was for a time active in politics and has been prominent and active in the affairs of the First Unitarian Church of San Diego ever since its organization. He and Mrs. Luce, who was Miss Adelaide Mantania of Avon, Illinois. have had six children, one of whom is Edgar A. Luce, Superior Judge of San Diego County, formerly state senator.
A little less than a year after Judge Luce arrived in San Diego there came to the city a man of truly remarkable attainments and ability-a young surgeon of foreign birth who had served through part of the American Civil war and all of the Franco-Prussian war and who had started to San Diego to build up a physique which had undergone a hard strain in his service abroad. He is Dr. P. C. Remondino, the dean of the medical fraternity in San Diego. Still living, and still working. he has not only retained his ability but has continued to add richly even through his later years, to his vast store of knowledge. Possessed of a marvelously retentive and accurate memory, he is a perfect storehouse of information and historical facts. Doctor Remondino was born in Turin, Italy, Feb. 10. 1846. and received his early education in a Catholic school. His father brought him to America in 1854 and settled at Wabasha. Minne- sota, where the older Remondino engaged in mercantile business. When he was only sixteen years old he entered Jefferson College at Philadelphia and began the study of medicine. The Civil war had started at the time and in 1864 the demand for surgeons to attend to wounded Federal troops was so urgent that the young student volun-
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teered with some of his college mates and was assigned to hospital duty. Later he did field duty with a Pennsylvania artillery regiment, with which, at the close of the war, he was mustered out. Then he went back to his home in Minnesota and practiced there until the Franco-Prussian war broke out. Love of adventure and admiration for the French took him overseas for service with the French army. With him he took enthusiastic credentials from State and Washington officials and had no trouble in getting an appointment as surgeon. Not only that, he obtained a commission which Doctor Remondino recently said was the only one thus granted to an American-a fact which caused one of the French high officers some surprise when the mustering-out process began. The French commander at the time was paying the way of each man to his home, and when the officer learned where the young surgeon's home was he was nonplused. The best he could do was to pay Doctor Remondino's way to the most convenient seaport. Doctor Remondino, however, delayed his de- parture for the United States until he had made an extensive trip through Italy, Switzerland and England. He resumed his practice late in 1871. Coming here in January, 1874, he met an old classmate, Dr. Robert J. Gregg, who had started practice in Old Town in 1868 and had moved to the new town ; Doctor Remondino opened an office next door on the west side of Fifth street between E and F and began practice in his new home. He was city physician in 1875 and 1876 and was several times county physician, besides being surgeon for several corporations. In 1879 he built a hospital in partnership with Dr. Thomas C. Stockton, a pioneer physician of the new town, but had to abandon the plan because it did not pay. In 1885 Doctor Remon- dino built the old St. James Hotel which was at Sixth and F streets and which was opened in February, 1886-a fine building for the times. He has not only remained in practice but has kept in touch with developments of his profession and has written a number of works on medical subjects which have commanded attention both at home and abroad. In addition he has been an expert student of climatology and has contributed a valuable addition to its literature, his subject being San Diego's climate. He is now at work on an exhaustive history of medicine. His library is a remarkable collection of books. His home also contains a remarkable collection of rifles and other guns in which he has taken a marked interest. It may be added that Doctor Remondino has upheld the finest traditions of his calling by paying devoted attention to many cases when little or no monetary remuneration for his services could be expected. He was married in 1877 to Miss Sophie Earle. They had four children, Carrie Katherine, now Mrs. B. V. Franklin, wife of Doctor Frank- lin : Frederick Earle Remondino. Louise Remondino, now Mrs. Alfred Stahel, and Dr. Charles Henry Earle Remondino.
George W. Hazzard, whose name has become well known by San Diegans and who is credited with having opened the first grocery store in San Diego, came to the city late in 1868. He was a native of Indiana. His first venture here was to take up 160 acres of land in the Otay valley. He found, however, that he could not improve it and after several changes came into the city and opened a grocery at Fifth and I streets. Success followed this step, but in 1871, be-
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lieving that National City, by reason of the proposed Texas & Pacific Railroad, was to be important, he went there, taking some land from the Kimball brothers. Three years later, he returned to San Diego and soon erected a brick store building, one of the first in the city, at Sixth and H streets, and engaged in general merchandise business until 1882 when he sold out. Later he entered the real estate field and was highly successful. Mr. Hazzard was one of the incor- porators of the San Diego Water Company, was interested in the city's gas company in the late '70s and early '80s, was an incorporator of the Masonic Building Association and was active for years in the Chamber of Commerce, of which he was president in 1880 and 1881. He retired from active work some years ago. He was born in February, 1845.
Another San Diegan of the same period is Philip Morse, who has been identified with the lumber business in San Diego almost continuously since his arrival here in March, 1869, when he came from San Francisco to represent a firm of that city. For about four vears-from 1879 to 1883-he was in Arizona on lumber business, being associated with Jacob Gruendike. On his return he and his father-in-law, George W. B. McDonald, formed the firm of Mc- Donald and Co. Soon after that Mr. Morse became associated with several San Francisco men in the formation of the San Diego Lum- ber Company, of which Morse was made general manager. He also was interested at times in other business enterprises and for some time, in recent years, has been a director of the Southern Trust and Commerce Bank. In 1875 and 1876 he served as city treasurer, has served on the city board of education and has taken an active interest for many years in the Y. M. C. A. Mr. Morse's literary accomplish- ments have induced him to make a number of contributions to news- papers and magazines, his verse and humor finding ready acceptance. He was born in Fayette, Maine, on May 23. 1845. On Mav 23, 1870, he married Miss Sarah McDonald of San Diego, daughter of a prominent resident of the city.
Of influence in the civic and religious life of San Diego in those davs was George W. B. McDonald, well remembered by many older residents of the city. He came to San Diego from San Francisco in 1869 and was one of the founders of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, of which for many years he was Sunday school superin- tendent. He was one of the carly supervisors of the county, served later as deputy collector of customs at this port and was one of the leaders in the Philharmonic Society, which during the first six years of the city did much to provide wholesome enjoyment for San Diegans. He died on Feb. 8, 1886. One of his two daughters is Mrs. Philip Morse.
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