USA > California > Los Angeles County > Pasadena > History of Pasadena, comprising an account of the native Indian, the early Spanish, the Mexican, the American, the colony, and the incorporated city, occupancies of the Rancho San Pasqual, and its adjacent mountains, canyons, waterfalls and other objects of interest: being a complete and comprehensive histo-cyclopedia of all matters pertaining to this region > Part 10
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COMPLETE CHAIN OF TITLE OF RANCHO SAN PASQUAL, FROM 1769 TO 1874.
There has been some variance of opinion and an occasional dispute as to who originally owned the Rancho San Pasqual ; and semi-occasionally a rumor is whispered around that somebody, somehow, somewhere, is going to rip up the title, and play smash generally with the conveyance tenures of its present occupants. I have therefore taken pains to collect and prepare a succinct schedule of dates, names and conveyance of title from the first-a body of most valuable historical matter which has never before been collect .. ed or made public.
In 1769 the Spanish crown first took formal possession and made occu- pancy of Upper California, under Gov. Portola, although certain navigators had claimed the country for Spain nearly a century before. (See Chap I.)
In 1771 the Mission San Gabriel was established, and it took possession of the territory now comprised in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties. Its tenure and jurisdiction of this territory was in ac- cordance with Spanish law, and had the special sanction, confirmation and support of the Spanish sovereign.
In March, 1826, Father Zalvidea was removed from his position as Friar Superior of San Gabriel, which he had held for twenty years, and sent to San Juan Capistrano. He had overworked himself and everybody else at
*In the county assessment of 1858 B. D. Wilson is taxed on $20,648 valuation ; Dr. J. S. Griffin on $15,000 ; and Abel Stearns on $186,586. But Stearns' assessment included property which rightly be- longed to his father-in-law, Don Juan Bandini, who had trusted him to manage his estates.
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HISTORY OF PASADENA.
San Gabriel, in his zeal to make it a great success, till he had fallen into a state of exploitive monomania ; for he was then negotiating for an enormous purchase of iron to build iron fences around the gardens and orchards of the Mission-a preposterous and crazy project .* These were reasons enough for his removal, without imagining "jealousy," as Bancroft and other writers have done.t
At San Juan Capistrano he prepared a deed for three and a half square leagues of land to Eulalia Perez de Guillen and sent it to Father Sanchez, his friend and successor at San Gabriel. The Mexican government having become independent of Spain in 1822, had already twice passed decrees for secularizing the Missions ; and although these decrees were not enforced, the work of disintegration and gradual breaking up had commenced- and these two priests wished to provide for this faithful and devoted woman in her old age, for her life had been " full of good works." Zalvidea had ver- bally promised or given her the ranch some time before, but no deed of it was made out until after he went to San Juan Capistrano. Then he sent it to Padre Sanchez, who accordingly [as the story goes] on Easter Day ("San Pasqual" in Spanish), 1826,į confirmed and ratified at San Gabriel the deed to Eulalia Perez de Guillen, of the body of land thenceforth known as " Rancho San Pasqual." This was in due accord with Spanish and Mexi- can law at the time, and was thus a valid title as far as it cent ; but Eulalia was old, and had no skill or knowledge in matters of law and had no one to act for her who knew any more as to what further steps were necessary on her part than she did herself; and the result was that her deed was never entered on the civil records. Likewise the law required certain buildings to be erected on such land grants, and a prescribed amount of horses, sheep and cattle to be maintained there, etc., in order to complete the title ;§ but she and her family failed to fulfill these conditions, and consequently of course her claim became forfeited. I did not succeed in finding this original deed nor any copy of it, but I did find and talk with people who had seen it while it was preserved in the family, for her death did not occur un- til June 8, 1878, at San Gabriel. Her grandson, Theodore Lopez, told me
*" He purchased large quantities of iron with the intention of railing in all of the vineyards and gardens."-Hugo Reid.
1"Two aged missionary friars resided here [San Juan Capistrano, April, 1829], Padre Geronimo Bos- cana, and Padre Jose Maria Zalvidea-the latter though at this time secluded and apparently weak in mind, once took an active and laborious part in the management of the Missions."-Robinson's "Life in California," p. 28.
Boscana was afterward sent to San Gabriel, and died there July 5, 1831. Padre Zalvidea was still living in 1840-41, in active service among the Mission Indians of San Juan Capistrano and vicinity. He died at San Luis Rey early in 1846, while still on duty as a missionary to the Indians, especially those of San Pasqual village.
ĮZalvidea was transferred in March, only two or three weeks before Easter Sunday, and he sent the deed up to San Gabriel in time to have it officially ratified by Sanchez on that day, 1826 (1827, in top line of page 62, is a misprint).
¿ At that time Monterey was the capital, and the deed would have to be taken there for record, a transaction which of course would involve considerable expense ; and she was very poor, besides being then already very old. Also, she had no money to buy stock for the ranch, nor to build a house and live there. This explains how it happened that she failed to complete her title and hold the ranch.
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DIVISION ONE - PRE-PASADENIAN.
that the last he heard of the deed was that Felipe Lugo had it. Don Felipe was justice of the peace in 1840 (when the ranch was granted to Enrique Sepulveda and Jose Perez), and again in 1850.
Some years after the ranch had been given to old Eulalia, there came to San Gabriel a fine appearing gentleman of straight Castilian blood, recently from Spain, Juan Marine by name, who had held for a while some public office at San Diego. He wooed the aged Eulalia and married her. But they did not get along well together ; so they agreed to divide their property and go apart. Eulalia took his bit of land and house where the San Gab- riel public school now stands, for her portion, and gave to Marine the Rancho San Pasqual, which was solely hers.
[NOTE .- I made nine unsuccessful trips hunting for documents on this Marine case, to E. Sorabjee, and the district court, and the federal court, and to G. W. Hughes, and to Hervey Lindley ; but a tenth effort proved successful after this chapter was in type, ready for press. And I find that in 1833, Don Juan Marine [pronounced Mar-e-nay] was in possession of " Rancho el Rincon de San Pascual." December 27, 1833, the governor made inquiry about it of the City Council of Los Angeles. They replied : "Juan Marine has all the requisites required by law to be heard in his petition." In February, 1835, Governor Figueroa granted the ranch to Marine. In 1838 Marine died. April 1, 1839, Fruto Marine, his son, sold his interest in the ranch to Jose Perez for "six horses and ten head of cattle." In July of same year Antonio Silva and Deciderio Belardi (sons- in-law of Marine) and his two other sons, Filomeno and Rafaela Marine, sold their interests to Jose Perez,-but as to Chino Silvas, another son-in- law, I did not find whether he sold or not. The Marine family had some crops on the ranch, but apparently never built any permanent house on it, nor stocked it according to law. Jose Perez built the adobe house which still stands, and lived there in 1839-40. His heirs finally sold their interest to Dona Encarnacion Abila ; she stocked the place as the law required, being the first person to do this ; and her rights all passed over to her son-in-law, Don Manuel Garfias .- ED.]
The first white man who ever made a home on Rancho San Pasqual was Jose Perez, a son of Eulalia's cousin, Esteban Perez. Jose's wife was Merced Lugo, sister to his uncle Eranio Perez's wife ; but after Jose's death she married the American, Stephen C. Foster, who was the first alcalde [mayor and judge] of Los Angeles under American rule- 1847-48-49, and was a member and secretary of the first State Constitutional convention of California, being a graduate of Yale College and a proficient scholar in the Spanish language. Jose Perez built the west L of the old adobe house recently occupied by E. Sorabjee, as manager of the Raymond Improvement Company's large tract south of Raymond Hill, and lived there in 1839.
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HISTORY OF PASADENA.
HOUSE BUILT BY JOSE PEREZ ON RANCHO SAN PASQUAL IN 1839. Still standing, 1895.
Senora Maria Lopez told me that he was a favorite violin player for the young people to dance. He was now sick -thought he was going to die, and sent word to her to come up to his house and hear him play on his violin for the last time ; so she walked from San Gabriel up there to visit him. She could not tell what year it was. I asked which one of her children was a baby at that time, and in this way she made out that this incident occurred in 1839. He removed to Los Angeles for medical treatment soon after, and did not die at once - for in 1840 Gov. Alvarado made a grant of Rancho San Pas- qual to Jose Perez and Enrique Sepulveda. But neither of them ever stocked the ranch with horses, sheep and cattle, as the law required - hence their claim was "abandoned " and the ranch was still public land, open for somebody else to take.
On November 28, 1843, this ranch was granted by Gov. Manuel Micheltorena to Don Manuel Garfias, a young officer of the Mexican army who had come here with the governor. And this grant was confirmed to him by the Departmental Assembly and Gov. Pio Pico on May 7th, 1846. [See Los Angeles records, Book 1, page 14, of Patents.]
March 9, 1850, Manual Garfias conveyed to Carlos Hanewald a body of land " one mile square," with no boundaries given, but simply this vague description : "Commencing where the Arroyo turns upward on the tillable lands there." For this he was to pay $2000 ; but he failed to pay - and on December 3, 1850, one John Pine appears with Hanewald in a new contract for the purchase. They were to pay $600 down, and the balance of purchase money was to draw 4 per cent. per month, (or 48 per cent.
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DIVISION ONE -- PRE-PASADENIAN.
annual interest !) - all to be paid within one year ; or, failing of this, they were to forfeit all payments and improvements they had made, without recourse. It was an iron-clad contract. Their plans failed ; and all their claims, interests and improvements reverted to Garfias .* Thus the Spanish Don was nearly forty years ahead of the Yankees as a "boomer " of these lands. His prices (according to the times) and his rate of interest beat any record of Pasadena's famous "boom " period -so the "boom class " will have to let this historic old Spaniard go up head.
On April 25, 1854, the United States Board of Land Commissioners passed judgment on the validity of the Garfias claim above mentioned, and confirmed it -and thus the Rancho San Pasqual entered upon its first legal status and recognition under the United States law.+
On September 18, 1858, a document was issued at San Francisco and signed by I. W. Mandeville, United States Surveyor General for California, from which I quote the following points of historic record in regard to this ranch. [Book I, p. 14 of Patents, Los Angeles Co.]
" Whereas, it appears from a duly authenticated transcript, filed in the General Land Office of the United States that, pursuant to the provisions of the Act of Congress, approved the third of March, one thousand eight hun- dred and fifty-one, entitled, " An Act to ascertain and settle the Private Land Claims in the State of California, Manuel Garfias, as claimant, filed his petition on the sixteenth day of September, 1852, with the commisioners to ascertain and settle the Private Land Claims in the State of California, sitting as a Board in the City of Los Angeles, in which petition he claimed the confirmation of his title to a tract of land called San Pasqual, contain- ing three and one-half square leagues, a little more or less, situated in the County of Los Angeles and State aforesaid : said claim being founded on a Mexican Grant to the petitioner, made on the 28th day of November, 1843, by Manuel Micheltorena, then Governor of the Department of the Californias, and approved by the Departmental Assembly on the 7th day of May, 1846. And, Whereas, the Board of Land Commissioners aforesaid, on the 25th day of April, 1854, rendered a Decree of Confirmation in favor of the claimant, which Decree or Decision was on appeal affirmed by the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of California. And the said Court further adjudged and decreed that the claim of the above mentioned Appellee is good and valid, and the same is confirmed to him, to the exent of three and one-half square leagues within the bound-
*Some of our pioneer settlers in 1870-74 noticed the crumbling walls of an adobe house on the Arroyo bottom at foot of Hanaford's bluff, a short distance above Sheep Corral Springs ; also remains of old water ditches there and at other places along up the Arroyo. It has always been a great mystery who made them. They were simply relics of work done by Hanewald and Pine, who believed they could wash gold from these Arroyo sand beds.
+August 27th, 1852, the United States Land Commissioners reached Los Angeles. September 16th Garfias filed his petition on his San Pasqual claim. September 23rd, says the Centennial History, p. 44, " there was a grand ball at the dwelling of Don Manuel Garfias, in honor of the Land Commissioners." This of course was a social affair at the very top of the scale in Los Angeles society. The Garfias man- sion was a spacious structure of adobe, and fronted on Main street at corner of First street, where the Lichtenberger block now stands. Mr. G. W. Robinson, now 86 years old, and his wife (of 441 Commercial street), then lived in a part of the Garfias house and were at this grand ball. The commissioners had rooms in the same building. Mr. Robinson was deputy sheriff several years; and at another time had a lot of his own stock on Rancho San Pasqual, and built for himself a house made of tules. up against Dona Encarnacion Abila's adobe house, before Garfias ever lived on the ranch. Mr. and Mrs. Robinson were the parents of the first child ever born in Southern California whose parents were both Americans.
.
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HISTORY OF PASADENA.
aries described in the grant and the Map to which the grant refers, to-wit : On the east of the Rancho of "Santa Anita," on the west by the bluff of the Arroyo Seco, on the north the Sierra, and on the south the range of hills near the road to Los Angeles, these the said hills being included in the said described premises, provided that should there be a less quantity than three and a half square leagues within the said boundaries, then confirma- tion is hereby made of said less quantity.
" And, Whereas, it further appears from a duly certified transcript, filed in the General Land Office, that the Attorney General of the United States having given notice that it was not the intention of the United States to prosecute the appeal heretofore taken in this cause, the aforesaid District Court, at the December term, 1856, ordered that the order of appeal heretofore granted in this cause be and the same hereby is vacated, and the Appellee has leave to proceed under the Decree of this Court heretofore rendered in his favor as a final Decree.
" The said tract has been surveyed in conformity with the grant thereof and the said decision. And I do hereby certify the annexed map to be a true and accurate plat of the said tract of land as appears by the field notes of the survey thereof made by Henry Hancock, Deputy Sur- veyor, in the month of August, A. D. 1858, under the direction of this office, which having been examined and approved, are now on file therein. And I do further certify that under and by virtue of the said confirmation and Survey, the said Manuel Garfias is entitled to a Patent from the United States upon the presentation hereof to the General Land Office for the said tract of land,
Surveyor Hancock's field notes showed 28 different courses in the bound- ary line of the ranch, which illustrates the curiously irregular shape of the body of land described ; and this was equally true of nearly all of the old Mission or Spanish land grants.
On January 15th, 1859, Manuel Garfias and Luisa Abila, his wife, ex- ecuted a deed to Benjamin D. Wilson,* of "all right, title, interest, claim and demand, both at law and in equity, as well in possession as in expect- tancy of, in and to the real property known as the Rancho de San Pasqual," etc. Consideration, $1,800. This deed is recorded in Book 4, page 310 of Deeds, Los Angeles County. That was four years before Garfias had obtained his United States patent for the land, and said patent was the "expectancy" referred to in the above quoted recital of what in- terests were conveyed. In fact, besides monetary interests, Wilson had a special reason of a personal nature for aiding the Garfias claim before the U. S. Land Commissioners. The rival claim, based on the prior grant of 1840, had become a sort of Lugo family affairt-and the Lugos were
*'There is a biography of B. D. Wilson in the History of Los Angeles County, published by Thomp- son & West in 1880, on pages 36-37.
+ As this is au interesting historic episode touching Pasadenland, I will make it more clear. Old Don Antonio Lugo originally owned the San Antonio ranch, 29,513 acres, and the Chino ranch, 16,000 acres. In 1835 to 1840 he was listed as owning 37,000 head of cattle. and 2,400 horses. He had five sons. as follows : Jose Maria Lugo, Felipe Lugo, Jose del Curmen Lugo, Vicente Lugo, Jose Antonio Lugo ; and four daughters-Vicente. wife of Eranio Perez and aunt of Jose Perez to whom (with Enrique Sepulveda) the ranch had been granted in 1840 ; Merced, wife of Jose Perez, and after his death wife of Stephen C. Foster, and claimant of the ranch before the U. S. Commission ; Maria Antonio, wife of - Yorba : Maria Jesus, wife of Isaac Williams whom B. D. Wilson believed had betrayed him at the battle of
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DIVISION ONE-PRE-PASADENIAN.
specially obnoxious to Wilson. In the affair at Chino, in September, 1846, when Wilson and his company of U. S. soldiers were all captured, he al- ways believed that Isaac Williams betrayed him ; and Williams's wife was one of the Lugo women. Then when they were being marched to Los Angeles as prisoners, it was Capt. Jose del Carmen Lugo who wanted to shoot Wilson and all the rest ; and they were only saved from this fate by the heroic and soldierly honor of Capt. Serbulo Barelas. Mrs. Merced Lugo de Perez de Foster, the rival claimant of the ranch against Garfias, was sister to Mrs. Williams and to Jose del Carmen and Felipe Lugo- while Mrs. Garfias was cousin to Wilson's first wife,* so here was a call for him to take a hand in the fight for the ranch, and bring discomfiture upon his old enemies the Lugos. He therefore went into the contest, aided in its management, and won the case,
On December 11, 1862, John S. Griffin and Louisa, his wife, deeded to Benjamin D. Wilson and Margaret S. Wilson, his wife, for the consider- ation of $500 a tract of 640 acres " on the Rancho San Pasqual, out of which said Rancho the herein described lot of land is carved." [Book 6, p. 51.] This conveyance included what was afterward known as the "Fair Oaks" and the Allen property ; and the same day, to-wit :
On December 11, 1862, Benjamin D. Wilson and Margaret S. Wilson his wife made a deed to Eliza G. Johnston of 262 acres, of which the docu- ment says : "The said tract hereby conveyed being part of the San Pas- qual Ranch, and the southwesterly half of the land this day conveyed by John S. Griffin and Louisa his wife, to the parties of the first part herein ;"' etc. The consideration was $1,000. [Book 6, p. 53.]
This Mrs. Johnston was sister to Dr. Griffin, and wife of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, who was in command of the Department of California when the war of 1861 commenced. Unionists at San Francisco reported to Washington that Gen. Johnston was planning to turn the resources of his command over to the confederate cause, as Gen. Twigg had done in Tex- as ;; and he was thereupon superseded by Gen. Sumner .¿ Johnston re-
Chino. Don Felipe Lugo, justice of the peace, had the original deed that was made of theland to Eulalia Perez de Guillen by the padres, and was trying to aid his sister Merced Foster, widow of his nephew Jose Perez, in her case. However, their claim had the fatal defect of failure to put such build- ings and such live stock on the ranch as the Mexican law of land grants required, this failure being due to the death of Jose Perez before he could complete his undertaking.
*Dona Vicenta Yorba, widow of Don Tomas Yorba, and then managing the great Santa Ana ranch herself, [January, 1847], " was the aunt of Mr. Garfias, wife of the American Consul at Tepic, Mexico."-See " Sixty years in California, pp 432-3-4.
¡Geo. Stoneman was a captain in command of Fort Brown, Texas, and was ordered by Gen. Twigg to surrender the Fort to the secessionists. He refused to obey this order of the commanding General but marched out with his own troops under the old flag and took steamer for New York, and afterward became famons as a Union cavalry officer. And this was our Pasadenaland Gen. Stoneman, Governor of California from 1883 to 1887. Gen. Stoneman first came to California in 1847, arriving at San Diego Jan- uary 29th of that year as Lieut. in Ist U. S. dragoons and quartermaster of the Mormon battalion.
¿Gen. Sumner was sent from Washington to San Francisco so secretly that the newspaper men did not get hold of it. He went by steamer to the isthmus, then by steamer up the coast The vessel ar- rived off Golden Gate in the daytime but the General held her from running in until after nightfall ; then instead of going directly to her own dock she landed him and his staff at another wharf a mile nearer the Presidio or fort where Gen. Johnston had his headquarters. Gen. Sumner was met by the U.
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HISTORY OF PASADENA.
signed instead of reporting at Washington as ordered ; went south and joined the confederacy ; and was in joint command with Gen. Beauregard of the confederate army at the battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, where he was killed April 6, 1862. Mrs. Johnston occupied the land above men- tioned, built a house on it, and named it "Fair Oaks," after the old planta- tion home of her childhood in Virginia. April 27, 1863, her oldest son, Albert Sidney, was killed in the historic steamboat explosion at San Pedro, his body not being recovered until the 29th. This sad event affected her mind and plans so disastrously that in a few weeks she left the place and never returned to it. Dr. Griffin's wife and Judge B. S. Eaton's first wife were sisters; and Mrs. Johnston's son Hancock married Judge Eaton's daughter Mary ; and out of this interblending familyhood came the fact of Judge Eaton's settling on this "Fair Oaks " place in 1866, where he still resided (and owned it) when the Orange Grove colony settlement was made in 1873-74.
On April 3, 1863, a United States patent for the land comprised in Rancho San Pasqual, was issued to Manuel Garfias, with Abraham Lin- coln's signature attached. [Book I p. 14 of Patents.]
On March 27, 1865, B. D. Wilson and John S. Griffin conveyed to Phineas Banning, John G. Downey, Matthew Keller, George Hansen, and R. W. Heath, trustees of the Los Angeles Pioneer Oil Co., "all their riglit, title and interest to any and all brea, petroleum, rock oil or other oleaginous substances in the Rancho San Pasqual." But it was stipulated that they must "commence boring or sinking wells for the extraction of oil within six months ;" and the Oil Company was to pay Wilson and Griffin "a roy-
S. naval officer and the postmaster, and a few others known to be loyal unionists, besides a squad of lo- cal militia in citizens' dress, with sidearms only, in command of Capt. D. M. Greene, now of Pasadena. These formed his escort to the fort, where they arrived after midnight. Gen. Sumner went in alone, and had Johnston called up out of bed. The two Generals had been classmates at West Point, were in- timately acquainted, shook hands cordially, then Sumner delivered the sealed documents from Wash- ington directing Johnston immediately upon the receipt of these orders to turn over his command to Gen. Sumner. Johnston opened and read the papers, and then with a forced smile said, " General, the command is yours." Sumner spent the rest of the night in preparing orders, putting his own staff in command, etc., so that when daylight arose California was saved to the union instead of being (as it would have been in three days more) held in control by open adherents of the pro-slavery rebellion-for this element was strong, boastful and bullying in California at that time. R. H. Williams of Pasadena lived in San Francisco then, and was a member of Co. D Washington Light Infantry-a local militia or- ganization, and also vouches for these events. Mr. Williams afterward served in the California Battal- ion of 2d Mass. cavalry. He is adjutant of John F. Godfrey Post G. A. R., in 1895.
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