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 16
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Thomas Banbury was here from Canada without his family. He was working for B. D. Wilson on the San Pasqual ranch, and knew of his plan for making a new subdivision of colony lands, so he bargained for a ten acre lot and staked it off himself before any survey had been made. This was in December, 1875. Mr. Banbury planted a patch of potatoes on his lot, just about where the Pasadena Manufacturing Co.'s big planing mill is now located, and on December 27 started back east to bring his family. His was the first lot ever taken in the Lake Vineyard Colony tract. On his return he took three more ten-acre lots, making a 40-acre block extending from Fair Oaks Avenue to Marengo Avenue. In 1877 he sold the south 20 acres of his land to W O. Swan, Sr., which was the first sale from the Lake Vineyard Tract made to second parties. Glendale street now runs through this 20, and the Santa Fe freight depot stands upon it.
These new colony lands, with water, were held at $75 per acre, in small lots, in 1876. But L. D. Hollingsworth, just arrived from Iowa, sought better terms, on condition that he would induce a number of Iowa families to come and settle here and so give the newly opened lands a good start for settlement and sale. Upon this, Mr. Wilson agreed that if he and his friends would take one hundred acres at once they might have it at $55 per acre. Then Mr. Hollingsworth made up a syndicate of buyers, as follows :
L. D. Hollingsworth [in the family] - 50 acres.
Charles Legge
20
Solomon Dunton (by his son-in-law, Col. J. Banbury) 10 66
Col. Jabez Banbury 5 S. Washburn 5
This made 90 acres [the other ten being guaranteed], and was the original purchase and start for the new colony except T. Banbury's lot. But Mr. Hollingsworth had obtained a special concession that any of his Iowa friends who should come here to settle within a year should have land
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at the same price. This concession, however, was afterward extended to others, and under it lands were bought the same year at the same price by David Townsend, 30 acres ; John Lowe, 20 acres; A. Ninde, 20 acres ; P. G. Wooster, 10 acres.
Thomas Banbury gives a little different version of the matter from the Hollingsworth people. He says the low price of the lands sold in 1876 was conditioned on their "making up a pot," as Mr. Wilson expressed it. of 200 acres; and that the total sales that year, including his first 10 taken in December, 1875, amounted to 210 acres-so Mr. Wilson was satisfied, as the " full pot " had been made up.
These purchases, and the occupancy and improvements which went forward in rapid succession, had now given the "east side colony" as it was called, a good start ; and the price of Company lands, with water, was thereafter held at $75, $80 and $100 per acre.
The work of getting a water supply down to these lots now had to be pushed as rapidly as possible. The original ditch was enlarged and extended down to Reservoir No. I, and finally cemented from Devil's Gate to the reservoir. Of course all this took time; and for several months the "east- siders " had no water supply but what flowed in a plow-furrow ditch from the reservoir site down through the body of land they had chosen. Then the gophers would often push fresh loose dirt into the stream and muddy it, or make their holes where the water would all run into them and disappear, leaving none for the new comers above ground ; and occasionally hogs were found wallowing in the ditch where it crossed the old ranch lands up near the Arroyo. These were some of the tribulations of pioneer life in Pasadena. It was the daily business of the settlers to go with their canteens, buckets, barrels, tubs, etc., to the ditch and secure a supply of water for the day, or longer. Dr. Allen tells that, having no horse, he had to roll his water barrel back and forth by hand, a distance of half a mile from house to ditch.
The construction and cementing of the permanent main ditch was done by Thomas Banbury under contract, superintended by Hon. J. De Barth Shorb, who relates with much satisfaction that two distinguished U. S. army engineers, Gen. B. S. Alexander and Col. Geo. H. Mendel, estimated that it would cost at least $5 per running foot, but he built it at a cost a little under $2.75 per running foot. The cement or lime for this job was dug out of the hillside at Lincoln Park by Thomas Banbury, and burned there, where the Mission Fathers had done the same thing asearly as 1780-81. In construct- ing this cement ditch there was a certain point where a pike or causeway had to be made some distance across a depression in the land. Mr. Shorb and his engineer, named E. T. Wright, had set the stakes for this fill, and A. O. Bristol had charge of a gang of Chinamen doing the grade work. One day John W. Wilson reported to his uncle B. D. Wilson down at his Lake Vineyard home, that there was something not right about that ditch
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work. The old man called Mr. Shorb in from the winery above the house for some explanation, and they took the buggy and drove in haste up to where the work was going on. Seeing the bungle of it at once, the old man was deeply vexed, and reproached Bristol for making such a blunder. Bristol very calmly replied that he was following the stakes just as they had been set and marked by the engineer. Mr. Shorb thought this could not be so. Mr. Bristol replied, " Well, here are the stakes; I have saved them from being covered up or broken ; You can see for yourselves." Mr. Wilson looked at them sharply a few seconds and then burst out -" Well, I never did depend on any of these scientific fellows but what I got fooled. Here, Bristol, bring your old crooked level-stick and make this thing right."
And Bristol with his "old crooked level-stick " made the line right. The trouble with the engineer was that he had drank wine freely and it made him see crooked.
The first house on the Lake Vineyard side was a rough board cottage built by L. D. Hollingsworth, on one of his 10 acre lots, early in 1876. It was afterward improved and a neat front added-and it still stands in the same place, being the third house on west side of Marengo Avenue south of Kansas street.
The lots selected by the original Hollingsworth syndicate have all be- come points of historic interest. Mr. Legge chose liis twenty acres on the south side of Walnut street from Fair Oaks to Marengo Avenues ; and on it are located the Baptist church, the Crown Villa Hotel, the Public Library, and his home place where he still resides.
Col. Banbury selected for his father-in-law, Rev. S. Dunton, the ten acres on north side of Walnut street and east of Fair Oaks. During the "boom " days (1885 to 1888), Chestnut street and Raymond Avenue were opened through it ; and the Universalist church, besides the East Hall and West Hall of Throop Polytechnic Institute are now located on the original Dunton purchase.
Mr. Hollingsworth's son, Henry, had chosen ten acres south of Wal- nut and east of Marengo (which was included in his father's fifty), and the Wilson High School and Lincoln School are both now on this land.
L. D. Hollingsworth took three 10-acre lots on north side of Colorado street, from Fair Oaks Avenue eastward, which reached a little beyond Worcester Avenue, and built his own home on the east lot, just about where the Presbyterian church now stands. He also proposed to put up a build- ing, and open a store and get a postoffice located in it, at the corner of Colorado street and Marengo Avenue, because he thought that elevated site would be the finest point for the colony village or business center. But the " west siders," as the Orange Grove people were then called, pulled so hard for a location at least on the street line between the two settlements that he yielded the point, and built his store near the corner of Fair Oaks Avenue
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and Colorado street, where McDonald, Brooks & Co.'s real estate office now stands. Then J. H. Baker moved his original colony blacksmith shop from Walnut street, west of where Rev. W. C. Mosher now resides, down to a location just east of the new store. A man named Watson started a meat market just north of the store. O. R. Dougherty started a shoe shop. And thus the trading center became established. Then, in August, 1876, Mr. Wilson donated five acres on the south side of Colorado, eastward from Fair Oaks Avenue to where the Santa Fe railroad now runs, to the colony for school purposes. [See Chapter 9, "Annals of the Schools."] The district voted a tax to erect a school-house there, large enough to accommo- date 200 pupils. And this was the final nail which clinched the town cen- ter, and fastened it so firmly that half-a-dozen or more strong efforts to change it since, in the interest of some speculative scheme, have proved disastrous and memorable failures.
The five acres chosen by Col. Banbury for himself was that where the M. E. church and parsonage and "The Tabernacle " now stand. And the five chosen by S. Washburn was on the opposite side of Marengo Avenue, the Brockway block being the only important building on it as yet, 1895.
The ten acres which P. G. Wooster bought about the same time, but not in the syndicate, comprised the ground now occupied by the Santa Fe R. R. depot, the Hotel Green, the Post Office or Morgan block, and the Wooster block. The Townsend, Lowe and Ninde purchases of that year were farther out in different directions and have not won any special historic prominence, up to 1895.
CHAPTER VI.
OLD SETTLER EXPERIENCES .- Eleven personal narratives of first experiences in Pasa- · dena, in response to questions sent out .- Who the "Old Settlers " were, and where they were from.
OLD SETTLER EXPERIENCES.
OLD SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION .-- About 1882-83 two or three informal meetings were held to talk up the matter of organizing an Old Settlers' As- sociation ; and A. O. Porter served as chairman. [Mr. Porter died January 17, 1888.] But the same difficulty that occurs in all such cases came up here also-that of agreeing upon a time limit for determining who should be reckoned as "old settlers" and who should not. No agreement was reached, and the whole matter gradually dropped out ; so that no such or- ganization was ever really effected, although I found some who thought there had been. It is true that at these " talks" on the matter a prelim- inary list was made up to see who were here and when they came, etc., but
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that was all ; and Rev. Farnsworth used it in making up the Pasadena Directory part of his book, a "Southern California Paradise," published in 1883.
On commencing the preparation of this History of Pasadena, I gave out by mail or personal delivery to about 130 different persons a blank pre- pared for noting down such items of their first experiences here as might form an interesting little historical sketch. Only eleven of them ever took the trouble to fill out the blanks and return them to me ; and to these eleven I devote this chapter, taking the names in alphabetical order.
HENRY G. BENNETT.
Came from Ann Arbor, Michigan, by way of Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads to San Francisco, thence by boat to San Pedro, and reached Los Angeles October 23, 1873. Settled in Pasadena in February, 1874. Built a two-room cottage on west side of Orange Grove Avenue, where Bellefontaine Avenue now runs westward, and this pioneer house is still in use at the west end of that street. It was the fourth house built in the colony. Building material, fuel and provisions all had to be brought up from Los Angeles. My first crop was barley ; then wheat, corn, vegetables, and fruits. 1876- 77 were dry or drouth years ; wheat and barley grew only one foot high ; yet during the following summer we had fruit of finest quality. [It is curious to note that the first four houses built in the colony were by B-men : I-Bristol ; 2-Baker ; 3-Col. Banbury ; 4-Bennett .- ED.]
D. M. BERRY.
In Chapter 5 will be found a full account of Mr. Berry's first visit to Rancho San Pasqual, and the part he bore in deciding the colony settlement here. Mr. Berry died at San Fernando, December 22, 1887. His daugh- ter, Mrs. Jessie Berry Waite, resides there ; and in a letter of September 16, 1874, she says of her father : " He selected the location [Pasadena] from the garden spots of Southern California. He was at first much pleased with Santa Barbara, but let its sleepy beauty go by, feeling assured that there would be greater things yet in store for Pasadena, with her large val- ley and fine climate."
Mrs. Waite loaned me a scrap book which she had made when a little girl at their old home in Indianapolis ; and in it I found the following ac- count of our new colony, written by Mr. Berry from Los Angeles, May 30, 1874, to the Indianapolis Daily Journal :
"In this valley of beauty the cabin of the writer had been built, and a gallant hunter from Indianapolis, with another from Chicago, started in the morning for the valley to gather venison, rabbit and quail, to inaugurate the ranch house with a sumptuous feast, while the 'Secretary' himself was to arrive at sunset to join in the opening feast. But -
"' In vain ! alas ! in vain, ye gallent few !
From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew."
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" It is sad to say, the game flew too, and at the sunset hour when the hopeful party gathered for the feast, the disconsolate hunters unpacked their stores, consisting of one ancient owl. Finding nothing in Nordhoff, Black- stone or Euclid, by which we could adapt the bird of wisdom to our necessi- ties, it was left to the culinary skill of the coyotes, and all tried their skill at cooking on an alcohol fire. The bill of fare was brief and the cooking sus- ceptible of criticism.
"Owing to a disappearance of the carpenter, the roof of the house had been omitted, so the building was well ventilated, and there was no necessity of putting in a sky-light. But as the season of rain was supposed to be gone on a summer vacation along the Mississippi, no inconvenience was an- ticipated from the absence of a roof. The first attempt at sleeping was in- terrupted by a company of owls that perched on the rafters, to hiss their indignation at the sleepy sinners beneath, for shooting their venerable com- rade. The shooters devoutly wished the defunct bird re-animated and back in the canyon with all his noisy tribe. On the third night, during the most slumberous hours, a heavy rainstorm put in an unexpected appearance. The agility and zeal displayed in improvising a shelter in midnight darkness was worthy of a good cause. It was then discovered that even so trifling a thing as a roof to a house was not to be despised at all times. As soon as the spring rains were apparently passed, the carpenter appeared and the roof was put on, to lie in idleness during all the summer time.
"In the few weeks since the Hoosiers took possession of their lands great activity has prevailed. Three miles of flume and ditch have been made; three miles of large iron pipe made, laid, and covered below the depth of a plow ; a reservoir with the capacity of three million gallons has been constructed on the highest land of the settlement, and the water has been let in. An occasional mountain brook trout takes an unexpected trip through three miles of darkness, and is hurried into the reservoir at the speed of a railway train. Eighty acres of grain have been raised for hay, 100,000 grape cuttings have been planted, and a large quantity of orange and lime seed ; about ten thousand small trees for nursery planting have been purchased ; and a large area of land prepared for corn and semi-tropical fruits.
" Potatoes and other garden products, planted in February and March, are now yielding a good return without irrigation. Our company has been recently re-enforced by Major Erie Locke, who is actively at work as a ranchero, and seems to enjoy the business as a pleasure. Tree planting will be commenced in a few days."
In a letter published in the Los Angeles Herald, Nov. - , 1874, Mr. Berry again wrote :
" Major Erie Locke has just completed his residence at San Pasqual, (Orange Grove Association) and gave a house warming last night to cele- brate the event. * Within the past month Dr. Conger of Salt * Lake, Mr. Cooley of Marysville, Mr. Weldon of Truckee, and Mundell of Los Angeles, have built comfortable residences, and Messrs. Porter and Green are preparing to build. Messrs. Berry, Elliott and Conger have con- structed private reservoirs to hold from 75,000 to 100,000 gallons, and Messrs. Berry, Locke, Banbury, and Bennett have planted out a considerable number of orange, lemon and lime trees."
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When the opening of the S. G. V. railroad to Pasadena occurred, Sep- tember 16, 1885, Mr. Berry was city editor of the Los Angeles Daily Herald, and of course came out to report the great historic event. And from an in- terview with him the Pasadena Union gave a graphic account of his first ex- periences in the colony, which I here condense :
"As soon as the colony was started I hired a man to go out from Los Angeles and build me a little house. He got the walls up, floor laid, etc., but no roof, then he got dry, and went to Los Angeles and got drunk-and forgot to come back and get my roof on. Meanwhile I came out, supposing my house was all ready for me, but found it roofless and no carpenter at work. I rolled in my blankets, lay down on some shavings, and dreamed that I slept. Before morning there was a pouring rain and I was soaked to the marrow. It seemed as if my house would become the first reservoir of the colony, from the amount of wetness that filled up around me."
I. B. CLAPP.
I arrived here in September, 1876, by railroad to San Francisco, and boat thence to San Pedro. Came from Hartford, Conn. The first of the colony men I met was Dr. T. B. Elliott, who brought me out from Los Angeles. My first lodging was on top of a pine box, softened a little with some hay borrow- ed from a neighbor's stack. I bought a 23-acre lot and built on it the first two-story plastered house that had a solid concrete foundation in Pasadena. It was located on Orange Grove Avenue south of California street-now owned by James North. Building stone and fuel we hauled up from our Arroyo lot ; but lumber, provisions, hardware, etc., had to be procured from Los Angeles. The eatable wild game was deer, ducks, rabbits, and quail ; and for want of turkeys or chickens, we made our Thanksgiving dinner of rabbits that year. There was no rain until January, 1877, and my house- hold goods had lain out doors until then. The first crops we raised were corn, wheat and barley. A year or two after we built our house a rattle- snake attempted to crawl in at the back door : but we captured him, and found that he was an older settler than we were, for he had seven rattles and a button. None have been seen thereabouts, however, for many years.
DR. O. H. CONGER.
Mrs. Conger writes: "We arrived here August 24, 1874, by steamer from San Francisco. We had lived two years in Salt Lake City, but form- erly in New York City. The first colony people we met were Judge Eaton and D. M. Berry ; and we first lodged in Mr. Berry's board shanty on Orange Grove Avenue. Fuel was hauled from the mountains [canyons]; but provisions, building material, laundry work and mail, were procured from Los Angeles. Our first house was on the site of our present home, and consisted of one long room built of matched redwood boards, with a sash door in each end ; and we moved into it on September 28, 1874. The first crops we raised were potatoes, white beans, lettuce and onions. The
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following June we set out 300 two-year-old orange trees west of the house. A few months later grasshoppers came. We bought a lot of muslin and Doctor and I covered every tree and saved them. Our thirty acres were all set to oranges, grapes, and a full variety of deciduous fruits. Our first raisins were cured by hanging the large bunches of grapes on nails driven along the south side of the house and covering them with mosquito netting. Our daughter, Lulu N. Conger, born August 4, 1875, was the second child born in Pasadena-the first one being a daughter of the Wentworth family then living on the Joseph Wallace place. Mr. Wentworth went back east soon after the grasshopper raid, saying he was tired of wearing old clothes with no money in his pocket. He had formerly been a railroad conductor.
JUDGE EATON'S NARRATIVE.
I arrived in California in August, 1850, coming across the plains on horseback, with ox teams to haul our provisions. Came to Los Angeles in the autumn of 1851, by sea, on a little tug boat called the "Ohio," from San Francisco .* It took four days to steam down the coast. Came onto the San Pasqual ranch, the present site of Pasadena, in December, 1858. [A part of this narrative, pertaining to his temporary occupancy of the old Garfias adobe ranch house, from December, 1858, till July, 1859, is embodied in Chapter IV., Division 1, which see. He left the ranch in 1859, and did not return to it until February, 1865 .- ED.]
I must here recur to a little history foreign to myself personally, as it involves the incipient steps toward turning this ranch from a stock range into the thriving, beautiful city that it now is.
After the death of General Albert Sidney Johnston [Confederate Gen- eral], his widow determined to remain here ; and her brother Dr. Griffin re- quested her to visit San Pasqual ranch and select a spot for her future home. She fixed upon the spot now known as "Fair Oaks "-the property of J. F. Crank [1894]. Accordingly a square mile of the ranch, including that spot, was segregated and a partition made of the lands (for in the meantime B. D. Wilson had become the owner of an undivided one-half interest), | Mrs. Johnston thereby becoming the owner of the Fair Oaks property, and B. D. Wilson owner of what is now the Allen estate. Mrs. Johnston immediately built a comfortable but unpretentious cottage for her home. This was the second house built on the ranch .¿ She first occupied it with hier family about Christmas, 1862. The following May the loss of her oldest son, Albert,§ a young man of splendid promise, destroyed her plans, and in a
*In 1851 there was seemingly some danger of a general revolt of Mexicans against American rule, and a company of volunteer troops was formed, under Gen J. H. Bean. B. S. Eaton was one of the cor- porals in this company. - [See Centennial History of Los Angeles County.]
+It was in 1858 that Dr. Griffin had loaned Garfias $8,000, but this transaction did not appear of record ; hence Garfias's first deed of the entire ranch was made to B. D. Wilson, Jan. 15, 1859, as shown in my sketch of the " Chain of Title." on page 74. But just when and how Wilson and Griffin arranged their undivided joint ownership I failed to find .- ED.
ĮThis is a mistake. The Jose Perez adobe house ou south slope of Raymond hill was built in 1839. Dona Encarnacion Abila built an adobe house for Camacho, her major domo, in 1844. near the Garfias spring. Carlos Hanawald and John Pine, the gold hunters. built their adobe cabin at foot of Hanaford's bluff, in 1850-51. Garfias built his great adobe ranch honse in 1853. Mrs. Johnston's house came next, in 1862.
¿In the explosion of the little stcamer, Ada Hancock, April 20, 1863, near Wilmington, among many lost were, of our merchants, Wmn. T. B. Sanford, Dr. Henry R. Miles, Loeb Schlessinger; with Capt. Thomas Workman, the young ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON, son of General Albert Sidney Johnston. Miss Medora Hereford, sister-in-law of Hon B D Wilson, died soon after of injuries received in this deplorable calamity .- Centennial Hist. Los Angeles County, p. 57.
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few weeks she left the ranch never to return. [NOTE .- Mrs. Johnston's husband was killed in the battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing in April, 1862. Her brother Dr. Griffin's wife was sister to Judge Eaton's first wife ; and her son, Hancock M. Johnston, married Judge Eaton's daughter Mary. When Mrs. Johnston sold the Fair Oaks ranch and gave a deed of it, she made special reservation of the space occupied by the grave of her son, Albert Sidney Johnston, who had been buried there .- ED.]
About two years after she left I entered into a contract (1865) to bring the waters of Eaton Canyon out, and moved with my family into the Johnston house. The terrible drouth of 1864-65 had swept away my stock and I turned my attention to agricultural pursuits. Cleaning off the sage- brush and cactus, I planted 5,000 grape vines as an experiment-for no one in Southern California had ever tried to carry a vineyard through the sum- mer without flooding it with water from three to five times, and I knew from the small supply of water that I had I could not give my vines a drop. In fact, for the first two years of my residence there, I had to haul all my water for stock and domestic use from Wilson's and Rose's, a distance of three miles and a half. When the Savans and older inhabitants heard of my reckless undertaking, they unanimously voted me a leather medal for being the greatest fool that ever struck this country. But my vines did so well that the year following I planted 30,000 more, and in two years (it had always taken four years before this) produced a wine that made old manu- facturers open their eyes, for it brought prices that they had never before heard of.
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