USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Pomona Valley, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the valley who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 6
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Stockton and Fremont entered Los Angeles without opposition. A new government was soon organized and proclaimed, with Stockton as Governor and Fremont as military commander of the territory. Those who had enlisted in the · opposition were declared free on parole. Then occurred another mistake. Believ- ing there would be no further resistance, Stockton selected a young man of his own type, a Lieutenant Gillespie, left him in command with a small company of men at Los Angeles, and sailed away to Monterey, at the same time sending Fremont and his army back to Yerba Buena (San Francisco). The rancheros also returned to their ranches. But the end was not yet. In fact, the conditions were now just right for a great conflagration-on the one hand a young officer exercising his new authority over a sensitive people, issuing harsh regulations and punishing trivial offenses, and on the other, a company of hot-blooded young Mexicans, rebellious against the new regime. On the twenty-third of September a score or so of these young men, led by Serbulo Varela, attacked the American garrison under Gillespie. This is not the place for an extended account of the Mexican war or revolution in California ; all this is told at length in other histories. Yet, for the people in this Valley in 1846 the conflict was of transcendent impor- tance, and it is necessary to review the essential features of the story in order to understand what part they had in these stirring events, and why they were of such supreme consequence.
Here, as everywhere in the Southwest, men prepared in earnest for the war which was now seen to be inevitable. Those who had served with Castro or with the Picos, hurried to Los Angeles to join Varela. Here also were Andres Pico and José Antonio Carrillo, leaders in insurrections of othier days against Victoria and Alvarado and José Maria Flores, whose advances had been spurned by Stock- ton at San Pedro. Some of these had fought against each other in the past, but all were united now against a common foe. Flores was chosen as "Commandante General." At the ranches, little bands were organized to defend the haciendas against attack, and vaqueros were set to guard against stampeding the cattle,-an effective means of attack sometimes, when arms and ammunition failed.
While the Californians were gathering in Los Angeles or strengthening their garrisons on their ranches, the handful of Americans in the Valley had chosen the Chino Ranch House for their rendezvous, and others joined them from Los Angeles. Here, though ill-supplied with guns and ammunition, they fortified themselves as well as they could. There was danger of attack not only from the Mexicans of California, but also from those of Old Mexico, whence Castro might return with reinforcements. From the neighboring hills they watched the road toward Warner's Ranch and Mexico, and the trails from the Valley, north and west. It was a hardy band of pioneers, thirty-six in all, that were gathered in the well-known adobe ranch house. First of all, there was Colonel Williams himself ; then there was George Walters from San Bernardino, a New Orlean by birth, who had hunted over the Rocky Mountain trails and driven mule teams in New Mexico before he came, a couple of years before, to Los Angeles. There was Louis Robidoux,* a loyal American of French descent, who had ridden over from
* This spelling, says Newmark, is in accord with the usage of Robidoux himself.
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his great estate on the Jurupa Rancho, whereon the city of Riverside has since arisen by the mountain which bears his name. And there was the captain, Benja- min Davis Wilson, generally known as Benito, a pioneer from Tennessee, who had come from New Mexico in 1841 with William Workman and John Rowland of La Puente. Already he was a man of considerable means and influence. Married to Ramona, daughter of Bernardo Yorba, he and his party from New Mexico had fought with the Picos hitherto, first against Micheltorena, and in June of this year against Castro, and now, like Colonel Williams, he stood with the Americans. Possessing, later, thousands of acres in what is now Pasadena, his name also is perpetuated in Mount Wilson, formerly Wilson's Peak. With these Americans were a number of Indians who had not forgotten their sufferings at the hands of Vallejo and of Pio Pico, when he became governor again in 1845. And there were also with them two or three Mexicans, bound to the Americans by ties of friendship or of marriage, which proved stronger than those of race. Among the latter was Juan (called Chicon) Alvarado, of the San José Rancho.
Captain Wilson and Colonel Williams, with their men, had not very long to wait. On the 27th Serbulo Varela, with sixty or seventy caballeros, from Los Angeles and from the ranchos on the way, appeared before the adobe ranch house. Riding up to the house, they fired a volley into the windows and doors at close range, and the Americans returned the fire. For a little time the fighting was fast and furious. Though protected somewhat by the adobe walls, the Americans were outnumbered three to one by the Californians, and their ammunition soon gave out. Then a number of caballeros, dashing up close to the building with torches, managed to set fire to the roof. As the building began to burn, the rooms were filled with smoke and the Americans were compelled to come out and surrender. Among the Mexicans who had joined the attacking party were a number from the Rancho San José, some of them relatives and one a brother of Juan Alvarado, who had gone over to the Americans. Against him they were especially furious. "Be sure to get Chicon," they cried .*
Not all the Mexicans who rode to the scene of the battle were in the attacking party. Some were not ready to shoot down their old friends. And there were boys who looked on as at a realistic circus, not realizing fully its significance. Ramon Vejar, then a boy of sixteen, watched the battle with keen interest, wit- nessing the death of the one Californian who was killed. Others on both sides were wounded, but this one, shot through the temples, died very shortly. During the fighting Ramon discovered his horse, which had been seized among others by one of the soldiers, and recaptured it ; riding it home in spite of his father's advice not to take it lest he provoke the soldiers' anger. "The horse is mine," he said, "and I am going to have it."
Another incident of the battle is narrated by Don Ramon Vejar concerning Captain Benito Wilson and the Mexican leader Varela. When the Americans were driven out by the flames, their ammunition practically exhausted, and Benito Wilson, who commanded much respect and confidence from the Californians, marched out before the others and surrendered to Varela, there were many who wished to put the Americans to death at once. But Varela, facing his men with a gun in each hand, said: "These men have surrendered to me and I am bound to
* And that had heen the charge of the people left at home on The Rancho: "Te encargo garar Chicon;"-I charge you to get Chicon.
3
.
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protect them. I will kill any man who shoots one of them." And though there was much bitter and vengeful feeling, there was no more shooting. They were all taken as prisoners to Flores, the commander at Los Angeles, and treated with much consideration.
With this battle at the Chino Ranch House began the Mexican War in Cali- fornia. Flushed with victory and determined to avenge the death of the one who fell at Chino, the Californians returned to Los Angeles, where the war now cen- tered. Others hearing of the fight at Chino hurried to the Pueblo and swelled the armed force under Captain Flores. Far outnumbered by the Mexicans, Gillespie and his men gathered at the Fort on Fort Hill .* A bloody battle with many fatalities was imminent. Only a miracle could save Gillespie and his pioneers from extermination, but in the struggle many old-time friends must die at each other's hands. Among the Californians were the chief men of the Pueblo, the Dons with large estates, whose hospitable homes surrounded the Plaza, and the leading rancheros from every part of the Valley. Within the adobe fort were their neigh- bors and intimate friends, and not a few who were sons-in-law, members of their own families. Captain Flores, leading the Californians to the fort, urged Gillespie to surrender, and promised his free release "with all the honors of war." These generous terms were happily accepted. Prisoners were exchanged and the soldiers under Gillespie, with some of the American settlers, left for San Pedro, where they were taken on board an American ship lying in the harbor. The subsequent events of the war need not here be narrated. The reader who is not familiar with the story will find it elsewhere, especially in McGroarty's graphic narrative. But the full details do not belong to a local history. After the surrender of the Americans and the departure of the soldiers from the town, many of the ranchers and business men returned to their homes, and a number also of the American pioneers. Some of the latter were held as prisoners, others were released on parole. But they followed with keenest interest, and doubtless also with much chafing at their fate which held them at home, the movements of the following months,-the attempt of the Americans to regain Los Angeles after the arrival of some of Stockton's men under Mervine, when the combined forces of Gillespie and Mervine, num- bering over three hundred, were defeated and driven to the ships; the arrival of Stockton at San Pedro and his departure with all his men to San Diego; occasional skirmishes like that of Natividad near Salinas, between Captain Burroughs and Manuel Castro, a brother of the General José.
Early in December, Mexican riders from Warner's Ranch told of the arrival there on the second, of Stephen W. Kearney, now a General in the United States Army, with Kit Carson and a hundred men. For several days all watched for news from Warner's Ranch, wondering whether he would march south to join Stockton and Gillespie at San Diego, or north and west to join Fremont, who was said to be on his way south from Monterey and Santa Barbara. In the latter case he would come down the road through the Chino and San José Ranchos and La Puente.
Warner's Ranch had more than once before this been the scene of action since the beginning of the war. Far removed from presidio or pueblo or mission, on the very frontier of the Province, it had been, more often than other ranches, the object of attack from bands of desperadoes, both Indian and Mexican, who took advantage of the war to pillage and plunder. It was on account of his courage and
* It was this fort which gave the name to Fort Street, later changed to Broadway.
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command during many such encounters that the owner, Jonathan Trumbull Warner, was known as Colonel, though commonly called Juan José or Juan Largo (Long John), on account of his great height. Once he barely escaped with his life from an attack by Antonio Garra and his bandits. On another occasion he was wounded while fighting off a company sent out under Espinosa to search the hacienda. "A man's house was his castle" in those days. In 1837, while living in Los Angeles, he had married an adopted daughter of Pio Pico, and knew and practiced the free hospitality of those days. But the report soon came from Warner's Ranch that Kearney had moved south ; and then came the news of the battle of San Pasqual on December 6th, "the bloodiest battle," it is said, "that ever took place on California soil," when Kearney and his men, weary and footsore from their long march from New Mexico, attacked a band of riflemen under Andres Pico, fresh and well mounted and looking for a battle with Gillespie. Although Kearney and Kit Carson and Gillespie had all escaped without serious wounds, and although Pico's forces had at last withdrawn, yet the great general and his noted leaders had been worsted. Three of their officers had been wounded in the fierce hand-to-hand conflict, while the Californians had suffered little, and were greatly elated by their victory.
This, however, was their last occasion of rejoicing. With the opening of the new year, 1847, came stories of the stiffening of the American forces at San Diego, of their march northward toward Los Angeles, of Fremont's southward march toward the same goal, and then of the battle on the banks of the San Gabriel River, when with a united force of some five hundred men Flores and Pico for two days held back the troops of Kearney and Stockton, but at last surrendered and allowed the Americans to enter the town without further resistance. The end came soon. Two days later Fremont arrived at San Fernando, and the Cali- fornians realizing that continued opposition was useless, and preferring to treat with him rather than with Stockton or Kearney, sent a delegation to arrange for terms of peace. Here at the San Fernando Mission he promised them favorable terms, and the next day, January 13, 1847, after Colonel Fremont had marched south through the Cahuenga pass, a treaty of peace written in the two languages, Spanish and English, was drawn up and signed. This document, so important in the history of California, was signed not by the principals in the struggle, those who had been the chief officers in the war, but by Andres Pico as Commandante of the California forces and by Colonel John C. Fremont, commander of the American forces on the ground. And so ended, practically, the insurrection and California's part in the Mexican War, although the war itself was not formally concluded until a year later, when, by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848, Mexico ceded New Mexico and California to the United States.
After the capitulation of January had brought to a close the strenuous months of 1846, life on the ranchos of the Valley resumed its normal course, and for several years there was no great change in their condition or surroundings. The laws and the taxes remained practically the same,-that is, the lack of laws and the excess of taxes,-for Congress had failed month after month to take any action providing for suitable government for the new country, which so far was neither province, state nor territory. But the closing months of 1849 brought each its important event in the history of the State, and so in the history of every section of it. Doubtless men from this Valley, Palomares, Workman and Colonel Williams perhaps, were present at the historic convention held at Monterey on the third of September, when the State Constitution was framed and the boun-
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daries of the State determined. October 13th witnessed its signature. On November 13th a general election was held and Mexicans and Americans alike from this Valley shared with others throughout the State in the vote which ratified the Constitution, elected a Governor (Peter H. Burnett), a lieutenant Governor (John McDougall), two members of Congress, and a legislative body. Finally, in December there was held in San José the first session of the new State legislature, and John C. Fremont and William Gwinn, senators-elect from the young, self-constituted State, set out for Washington. Not until the following year, however, on September 9, 1850, as everyone should know, was California `finally admitted to the Union.
THE GOLD FEVER
More exciting even than the days of 1846 and the events attending the seizure of California for the Union, were "the days of '49," in the northern part of the State, when the cry of "Gold" turned the eyes of the world toward the Hesperides, and set the feet of many thousands on the road that led over the Rockies or through the Golden Gate to the wildest, strangest scenes the world has ever known. One writer says that by February, 1849, ninety vessels had sailed from Eastern ports with eight thousand men bound for the new "El Dorado." It was a far call in those days from the Valley of San José to Sutter's Mill on the American River, yet even as a great earthquake, rocking the earth at San Francisco and crumbling its finest monuments in dust, is felt to the remotest bounds of the State, tumbling over chimneys here and at San Jacinto and emptying house-dwellers into the streets, so the tremendous upheaval which was created when James W. Marshall picked up those flakes of gold in the tail-race of his mill at Coloma, was quickly felt, though with lesser force, in the mountains and valleys of the South. At times there was much excitement. Young men and old, by boat, or riding, or on foot, set out for the mines with a shovel and pan and a kettle on their backs. Some even searched the canyons and mountains of the Sierra Madre in prospect of gold nearer home. But the South was far less moved by the fever of those days than the country around the Bay, and the native Mexican was slower to rush from home than the more recent adventurers of American and foreign blood. Indirectly, however, the throbbing, adventuresome life of the North was to be reflected in the South during the coming decades, in a new life of greater activity, as the rest- less, motley human stream flowing toward the gold fields of California was later diverted or turned back, some of it to the south, leaving in every valley its deposit, both good and bad.
CHAPTER THREE
THE QUARTER CENTURY FOLLOWING THE CESSION OF CALIFORNIA TO THE UNITED STATES
WILLOW GROVE, LEXINGTON AND MONTE-EARLY SETTLERS AND LIFE AT EL MONTE-BEGINNINGS OF SPADRA-SCHLESINGER AND TISCHLER FORECLOSURE -LOUIS PHILLIPS AND HIS RANCH-THE RUBOTTOMS AT SPADRA-THE FRYERS AND OTHER SETTLERS-THE OVERLAND STAGE-BUTTERFIELD AND HOLLIDAY-THE STAGE AT SPADRA-DEATH OF HILLIARD P. DORSEY-OTHER TRAGEDIES-KEWEN DORSEY.
Neither the victory of the Americans in 1846, the cession of California to the United States by Mexico in 1848, nor its admission as a State in the Union in 1850, brought any radical change, at once, to the people who lived on the ranches of Southern California. Momentous as were the changes which these events ushered in, yet these changes began slowly, almost imperceptibly. In the Pomona region itself there were at first none whatever. Life upon the ranches continued as before ; the cattle and herds increased, and the families of the native Mexicans became more and more firmly established on their estates. The whole country was still essentially Mexican, and throughout Southern California most of those who had come from the East and established themselves here were real settlers, and in spite of their part in the war were bona fide Californians. Perhaps the first indication of the activities of the promoter appeared in the Azusa region, where Henry Dalton, in 1851, formulated a plan for the subdivision of his land into smaller tracts to be sold to less ambitious ranchers. With headquarters in Los Angeles and with various other interests elsewhere, Dalton regarded his holdings in this region as material for speculation and was not in any true sense a rancher or homesteader. But it was not for a good many years that purchasers came in any considerable numbers to encourage these speculations. Among the first to buy of Dalton was Fielding W. Gibson, who purchased 250 acres in the southern part of the rancho and near to what became El Monte. Hither he drove the remnant of a large herd of cattle which he had undertaken to bring from Sonora, Mexico, but of which he had lost much the greater part by the depredations of Indian herders. Here later he raised large quantities of broom corn.
WILLOW GROVE, LEXINGTON AND MONTE
About this time, that is, during the year 1851, two events occurred marking the beginnings of two movements which were to influence more or less directly the future of the San José Valley, although considerably removed from each other and from the center of the valley.
In this year a party of Latter Day Saints from Salt Lake City came to San Bernardino and established themselves there. Others followed, and so a small stream of pioneers began to flow into the San Bernardino Valley from Salt Lake
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and from the Eastern States by way of Salt Lake. But not all of the immigrants from Salt Lake City were Latter Day Saints. Some even came by the southern trail to San Bernardino, and so to San Gabriel and Los Angeles, to escape the persecutions of the Mormons in Utah. The Mormon Church under Brigham Young had only come to Salt Lake in 1847, but its hierarchy was already firmly entrenched and they had assumed absolute authority over all the lands of the state, which they called the State of Deseret. Travelers to California in caravans by way of Salt Lake were compelled to pay heavy tribute to the church authorities. To the terrible sufferings of the long journey across the plains in "prairie schoon- ers" were added here the theft of horses and cows and sometimes the murder of men by Indians incited by the Mormons. The green fields and mild climate of the San Bernardino Valley must have been very welcome after the long weeks of painful trekking over the cold, dry uplands of the Rockies, and a good many were content to make their homes and open up farms here at San Bernardino. Land was purchased from Diego Sepulveda and from the Lugos-José del Carmen, José Maria and Vicente.
In 1853 the great county of San Bernardino was cut off from Los Angeles County. In the division of the state into counties, which was effected by the first legislature in 1850, the whole of Southern California was comprised in the two counties of San Diego and Los Angeles, the latter containing all of what became later San Bernardino, Orange and Riverside counties, as well as a part of Kern County. The line of division between Los Angeles County and the new San Bernardino County, according to an Act of Legislature of April 26, 1853, ran as follows:
"Beginning at a point where a due south line drawn from the highest peak of the Sierra de Santiago intersects the northern boundary of San Diego County ; thence running along the summit of said Sierra to the Santa Ana River, between the ranch of Sierra and the residence of Bernardo Yorba ; thence across the Santa Ana River along the summit of the range of hills that lie between the Coyotes and Chino (leaving the ranches of Ontiveras and Ybarra to the west of this line) to the southeast corner of the ranch of San José ; thence along the eastern boundaries of said ranch and of San Antonio, and the western and northern boundaries of Cucamonga ranch to the ravine of Cucamonga ; thence up said ravine to its source in the Coast Range; thence due north to the northern boundary of Los Angeles County," etc. The consequences of this act on the future of the Valley were far reaching. By it the waters flowing from San Antonio Canyon and its great water basin were divided. By it also the streams of development and progress were divided. The natural relations and interests which had held the ranchos of San José and Chino and San Antonio together were now artificially broken, and the rather vague, unfenced line between the neighborly estates of Chino, San Antonio and Cucamonga on the one hand and San José on the other, became a very real partition. As the waters of San Antonio, which, draining a large watershed of mountain forest far east of this line, flowed naturally all westward toward the ocean, were now divided between the ranches of two counties, so henceforth the people and lands of the Valley on one side of this line were to be tributary to the county seat at San Bernardino on the east, and those on the other to the county seat at Los Angeles on the west. Thus gradually the communities of North Ontario (now Upland), Ontario and Chino, normally friendly to those of Pomona and Claremont, and maintaining many cordial relations in spite of divisive condi- tions, have inevitably become, to some extent, strangers to each other.
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Returning to the San Bernardino settlement, we find an increasing number of immigrants from "the States" streaming into the Valley throughout the fifties. Many of these were an overflow from the Mormon city at Salt Lake, and for many years San Bernardino was chiefly a Mormon village. Others who came in by the same route were hostile to the Mormons, and these usually moved on to San Gabriel and El Monte and Los Angeles. This hostility naturally became more intense during the open conflict between the Mormon power and the Federal Government, from 1857 to 1859. Some of these immigrants had just escaped the Mountain Meadow massacre of September, 1857, which is now known to have been instigated by leaders among the Latter Day Saints.
Among those who came across the plains in 1854 and entered San Gabriel by way of San Bernardino was the party of Cyrus Burdick, a pioneer of Pomona, to whom fuller reference is made later.
Attention has been called to two rather distinct movements which took place in the early fifties, one to San Bernardino and the other to El Monte. From these two currents of migration, unrelated and apart, the San José Valley was to receive its quota of early settlers, as we shall notice later. A considerable number of these settlers were to come from El Monte to Spadra, and we may now turn to this old town of Monte. One of the notable events of the year 1851 was the arrival at "Willow Grove," not far from the San Gabriel River, of a company of settlers from "the States." Attracted here by the opportunities which the fertile soil and the rare climate presented for farming, they purchased land or took up claims and established homes, thus planting what was called by Newmark "the oldest Ameri- can settlement in the county"; for it was the first village settled entirely or chiefly by Eastern colonists. These people came from various states. There were the Macys, Obed and his son Oscar, from Indiana, the father a physician, who later owned for a time the Bella Union in Los Angeles. There were Samuel Heath and David Lewis of New York, also a number of families from Texas. Notable among this first group was Ira W. Thompson, a Vermont Yankee, who soon became a leader in the settlement.
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