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 7
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In the following year the small colony was increased by a good many more families, especially from Texas and Arkansas. Among these are a number of well- known names, such as A. J. King and his father, Samuel: William and Ezekiel Rubottom, Jonathan Tibbets, and Thomas A. Garey, the horticulturist. On account of the dense growth of willows which extended for some miles east of the river, the place was commonly called "Willow Grove" by the Americans. By the Mexi- cans it was known as "El Monte," the word meaning thicket, and not mountain, as many erroneously suppose. Almost from the first the settlement was grouped about two centers, one called "Willow Grove" and the other "Lexington." But when finally a post office was secured the whole place was called officially Monte. Thus, although the town was unique in its large proportion of American settlers, yet in its name it has helped to perpetuate the Spanish traditions of the country, and its later population has been sufficiently Spanish to justify its designation. The first postmaster of Monte was Ira W. Thompson, already mentioned, a fine type of pioneer, who had moved westward with the advancing frontier of the country from Massachusetts to Indiana, from Indiana to Wisconsin and Iowa, and finally to California. Born in Vermont in 1800, he was now, in the 1850's, in the prime of life. As postmaster and keeper of the first tavern he became well known throughout the Valley. At Willow Grove, the eastern nucleus of the town, the
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post office and Thompson's "Willow Grove Hotel" were naturally the center of gravity. For a time this tavern was the only stopping place between San Gabriel and San Bernardino, and when later the overland stage followed the course of the old Camino Real through El Monte, the Willow Grove Hotel became an important station of the route. Not only as a public official and servant, but also as a farmer and as the head of a good family, Ira W. Thompson was a valuable man in the region. His oldest daughter. Susan, who was a woman of unusual culture and ability, married David Lewis, one of the party of first settlers at Willow Grove, and their home, in turn, was a center of good influence in the progress of the place, their children being well known in the town and state. Among them are Ira D. Lewis, and Abbie, who is Mrs. Albert Rowland of Puente.
In the strenuous days of the pioneer in California, life was full of action; humor and pathos were strangely blended, and romance and tragedy followed each other in quick succession. In the first group of settlers who came to Willow Grove in the summer of 1851 was an attractive young woman, who had lost her husband early on the journey across the plains. The long weeks dragged by as the slow ox carts rolled their weary way overland. A new day dawned as the new world of Southern California opened to the tired travelers. Few women had come to California with the '49ers, or since. Before night of the first day Charlotte Gray had refused four proposals of marriage. The next day she rode over to the Rowland ranch at Puente, where she was told she could buy fresh fruit and vege- tables. There she met John Rowland, one of the original grantees of the Puente Rancho, who since the death of his first wife had been living alone with his chil- dren on the old adobe homestead. He, too, was captivated by the charming young widow, and before night had ridden over to Willow Grove and secured her consent to wed. Two weeks later they were married, and the fine two-story brick house was begun which was to be their home, and in which were born the two children of this second marriage, Albert and Victoria.
About a mile west of Willow Grove, and nearer the river, a new townsite was laid out in 1852 by Samuel King and others who came with him in 1851, or who followed in 1852. This new town was called by its promoters "Lexington," and became the second center in the Monte, as above mentioned. Here many of the families who had journeyed together from Texas and Arkansas purchased lots and made their homes, and it soon became the larger of the two villages. Besides the general farming in which most of its people were engaged, vineyards were also planted, and large hop fields, and a few raised quantities of broom corn. The development of oil, which is of such importance today, did not begin until much later. At Lexington, in 1853, there were two small stores and three saloons. Gam- bling was rife, night and day. One who lived here in the fifties says he has often seen the little tables in these saloons, about six feet in diameter, loaded with stacks of gold slugs a foot deep, each slug an eight-sided fifty-dollar piece. So notorious was the sport that Lexington was more familiarly known as Hell's Halfacre, or Pokerville. Nor was gambling the only sport of the west-enders, if we may judge from such accounts as this by Newmark:
"Another important function that engaged these worthy people was their part in the lynchings which were necessary in Los Angeles. As soon as they received the cue, the Monte boys galloped into town; and being by temperament and train- ing, through frontier life, used to dealing with the rougher side of human nature, they were recognized disciplinarians. The fact is that such was the peculiar public
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spirit animating these early settlers that no one could live and prosper at the Monte who was not extremely virile and ready for any daredevil emergency."
When the band of desperadoes under Pancho Daniel and Juan Flores terror- ized the country in 1857 and killed Sheriff Barton and his deputies in Santiago Canyon, the El Monte boys took an active part on the Vigilance Committee which rounded up the villains, lynching some and bringing others to more formal trial.
Fortunately, however, there were older heads in El Monte, who were not so impetuous. Among these was Richard C. Fryer, who came across the plains with the party from Arkansas in 1852, and who engaged not only in farming but in preaching. Ordained in 1854, the first Baptist minister in Southern California, he served as a missionary in that church, preaching for fifteen years in the commun- ities of Southern California, until he moved with his family to Spadra in 1867. He also served as a member of the county board of supervisors, and in 1870 was elected to the State Assembly.
Another of the old-timers of the region of El Monte who crossed the plains from Arkansas in 1852, probably in the same party with the Fryers, was John Thurman, coming first to San Gabriel and then, in 1853, to El Monte. Here he bought land, at first near the Temple ranch to the south, later between Savannah and El Monte, west of the ravine, and finally at Willow Grove, where he lived till his death in 1876. Through his children, especially the three sons, R. Monroe, Stephen and Alexander, the name of Thurman is well known in the Valley. As in so many other cases among those who crossed the plains in those days, the family suffered great hardship on the way, and the mother was buried in Arizona. With the fortitude and courage developed by such trials, the sons contributed much to the upbuilding of the communities in which they lived. Alexander remained upon the old Willow Grove property owned by his father ; Stephen D. retained an alfalfa ranch and house on the land south of El Monte ; and R. Monroe, after 1887, moved to Pomona, where he has been an influential citizen. In 1868 R. Monroe married Dora Belle Fuqua, daughter of another old family who came to El Monte in 1854 from Virginia. Conspicuous among the early settlers of El Monte was Thomas Andrew Garey, who became a leading horticulturist, and was later one of the incorporators of the town of Pomona.
In the Arkansas party, with the Rubottoms, Thurmans and Kings, who reached California in 1852, was the family of W. T. Martin, now one of Pomona's oldest citizens. Though now (in 1919) seventy-five years of age, Mr. Martin remembers vividly many incidents and circumstances of the nine months' journey in ox teams by way of El Paso and Tucson. Most vivid of all is the memory of the halt at Warner's Ranch, where the family was obliged to rest because of the grave .illness of both father and sister ; while others of the party pressed on to El Monte.
Here at Warner's Ranch the father soon recovered, but the sister succumbed, a victim of the terrible hardships of the journey. In 1853 the family moved on to El Monte and the father, Wm. C. Martin, soon became prominent in the affairs of the town. Born in Texas in 1824, when Texas was still Mexican territory, he was schooled in adversity. His father was killed by Indians when William was only a boy of ten. December 31, 1843, at La Mar, Texas, he married Rebecca C. Miller, the daughter of an Alabama cotton planter, and the helpmeet who braved with him all the hardships of a pioneer life and then survived his death to live with her son, William T. Martin, in Pomona, until her own death at the ripe age of eighty-two. In El Monte Mr. William C. Martin, the father, familiarly called
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"Uncle Billy" Martin, conducted for years the Lexington Hotel,-like the Willow Grove Hotel, a popular tavern on the old stage road. Both Mr. and Mrs. Martin were in the South consistent members of the Methodist Church South, and were active in the organizing of school and church in the new settlement. Like others in the colony who, in 1853 and 1854, "took up" what they supposed to be govern- ment land and laid out ranches with many acres of trees and vineyards, they were driven from their possessions in 1864, when by a new survey it was discovered that much of these ranches south of El Monte was a part of the Puente Rancho, a portion of which was now owned by the Temples. As Mr. Martin says, "The first survey of the rancho did not include the Monte at all, but the second survey flopped over and took about the whole of it."
It would be most interesting if one could look into the public school of Monte during the fifties; for there one should find gathered together as children those who were to play, nearly all of them, an active part in the beginnings of most of the towns and cities soon to spring up in Southern California. There was "Toots" Martin, there were Ira W. Thompson's children and those of Samuel Thompson (Nannie became later the wife of William T. Martin) ; and there were the Kings, of whom we shall learn more later, and the Rubottoms, the Dorseys and the Fryers. Later on "Toots" Martin himself was a teacher in the old Mission district farther east.
There was only one church building in Monte as late as 1860, and this was occupied by three or four denominations, each in turn providing a preacher, on succeeding Sundays. Among them were the Methodist South and the Baptist. Here and in the camp meetings at Willow Grove there was usually good feeling and harmony between these various denominations, and "they got on fine," as one old-timer has narrated. The Willow Grove by Thompson's Inn was also the scene of a number of big political mass meetings, at which the people of the outlying districts came together to discuss county or state affairs. Newmark tells of one of these mass meetings in August, 1859, at which a great barbecue was served and "benches were provided for the ladies, prompting the editors of the Star to observe with characteristic gallantry, that the seats were fully occupied by an array of beauty such as no other portion of the state ever witnessed."
The Los Angeles Star, or La Estrella de Los Angeles, which appeared first in 1851, was for years the only paper in Los Angeles, and by the same token, in the county. Its editor was Ben C. Truman, and it was published weekly, half in Spanish and half in English, and its circulation and influence were not confined to the pueblo alone, but the sheet carried to the outlying settlements at San Gabriel, El Monte and San Bernardino, and to the haciendas on the ranchos, the gossip of the Plaza and the news brought from the states by the latest arrivals around the Horn or overland. Daily world news was, of course, unimagined, and that from Los Angeles was often days in arriving. An unbridged torrent might fill the banks of the San Gabriel, which no rider could cross. At this time there was no broad ramification of "wash," but the river was about fifty feet wide and flowed, in season, in a regular channel. Not until the floods of the winter of 1861-1862 did the river leave this channel and broaden its rocky bed, and the heavier floods of 1867-1868 still further widened this wash. The bridging of the river at El Monte was a public work undertaken by the county years later, when W. T. Martin was supervisor, a work in which he took great satisfaction, after the many years
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in which as boy and youth he had forded the stream or watched the advance riders try place after place to find a spot for the stage to cross and escape the quicksands.
Some have wondered why the town of Puente (meaning bridge) should have no conspicuous bridge, while the town of Monte (whose name is so much like mountain) should have not even a hill, but should be marked by a long bridge across the river. But as we have pointed out, Monte means thicket and not moun- tain, and before ever a bridge was thought of across the San Gabriel there was a bridge well remembered by all old-timers across the Puente Creek, a bridge made of large poles laid across the stream, with a floor of smaller poles and brush athwart them. It was this which gave to Puente its name. Over this bridge "Toots" Martin and other children, set on horseback with bags of corn or wheat, would ride from Monte to Rowland's mill at Puente, and then home again with the flour which the mill had ground for them.
BEGINNINGS OF SPADRA
During the fifties and, of course, before that time, there were no merchandise stores outside of Los Angeles, except one or two small country stores at El Monte and one at the Mission. Ranchers were obliged to ride or drive to Los Angeles for every needed thing that could not be made or produced on the ranch. Always in the Plaza were to be found the fine mounts of the vaqueros and caballeros who had come to town to trade. These men were to be found talking or having a social glass at the saloons or at the Bella Union, or they might be at one of the adobe stores which were scattered along the "Calle Principal" (Main Street ), Aliso and other streets leading into the Plaza, while their carretas might be resting by the roadside in front. Some of the earliest shopkeepers were French, like Ducommun, Mascarel and Ramon Alexandre, but more were of German descent. There were Newmark and Kremer, Schumacher, Ferner and Kraushoar, Kaisher and Wartenberg, Bachman and Bauman, Hellman, Meyer and Loewenstein, and Baruch-Marks. All were shrewd, keen men of business, and some whose sagacity was balanced with honest integrity have established great business houses and their names are associated with well-known and highly respected banking firms. There were others whose names are still remembered, but with associations not so agreeable. In the firm of B. Marks & Co., and later engaged in business for them- selves, were two merchants, Louis Schlesinger and Heiman Tischler, who are more closely related to this historical narrative than others. Their headquarters were at Mellus Row and they occupied a storeroom later in the Temple Block, but they were engaged chiefly in handling grain, a pursuit which took them all over the Valley, and they were always alert for bargains in cattle or in land. Many of the rich Mexican land owners were their regular customers, and these they encouraged to trade on long-time credit, never urging a. settlement, but from time to time taking their notes for some hundreds of dollars.
Among the regular patrons of Schlesinger & Tischler, at Mellus Row, were Ricardo Vejar and his friends of the San José Rancho. They were always wel- come, for they were easy-going men who bought freely and whose large estates were ample security for any amount. Honest themselves, they were not suspicious as to the accounts against them and did not examine or verify items charged. As time ran on these accounts grew. Nothing was specified as to interest and rates of three and four per cent. per month were boldly charged and frequently com- pounded. Finally the day of reckoning came, and an account of some twenty
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thousand dollars was presented against the old ranchero Don Ricardo Vejar ! Schlesinger & Tischler demanded prompt settlement and obtained the signatures of Señor Vejar and his wife to the mortgages they had prepared. Two mortgages there were, one a chattel mortgage covering "all the horned cattle, horses, mares, colts and sheep belonging to the mortgagor and bearing his brand earmark, that may be found in the counties of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego, with the respective increase thereof"; and the other mortgaging "all interest and right in the San José Rancho," etc .; both as security for a promissory note of $19,763.62, due in ninety days with interest at two per cent. per month. At the same time Schlesinger & Tischler got a lease on the land and cattle for such time as the mortgages should remain unforeclosed. This was in April, 1861. By April, 1864, note and interest amounted to more than $30,000. Thirty thousand dollars does not seem like an amount to ruin the owner of thousands of acres of rich pas- ture land, feeding many hundred head of cattle. But the years 1863 and 1864 were years of great financial stress, especially in Southern California. Though far from the active scenes of the Civil War, the general depression of the country was keenly felt. Three years of drought-three succeeding seasons almost without rain-had wrought terrible havoc in a country whose sole production practically was of grain and cattle, and at a time before irrigation was known, save at one or two points in a very small way. Horses and cattle died by the thousands and there was no possibility of the sale of land. Newmark, writing of the financial condition at this time, says: "With a total assessment of something like two million dollars in the county, not a cent of taxes (at least in the city ) was collected. Men were so miserably poor that confidence mutually weakened, and merchants refused to trust those who, as land and cattle barons, but a short time before had been so influential. How great was the depreciation in values may be seen from the fact that notes given by Francis Temple, and bearing heavy interest, were peddled about at fifty cents on the dollar, and even then found few pur- chasers."
At such a time as this, $30,000 was a great fortune. Though every effort was made to delay the issue and to raise enough to transfer the mortgage, the Vejars were powerless to escape. Time passed quickly and the mortgage was foreclosed. The final deed was signed by Señor Vejar April 30, 1864, though Doña Maria, his wife, of the fine old Spanish family of Soto, realizing that it was in effect a deed of sale of all their lands, steadfastly refused to sign the papers. By this transaction the half interest in the San José Rancho belonging to the Vejar family passed into the possession of Schlesinger & Tischler. According to the partition of 1846, this included all of the southern half of the rancho-the San José de Abajo-the old homestead and its adobe rancheria, together with all the herds of cattle and sheep. It was a sad day for the family when, at last, they were compelled to leave the old place, a princely estate of more than 10,000 acres of the finest land in the world, with streams of water, and trees and buildings, which had been their home now for more than a generation. Nor is it strange that the feeling of resentment and hatred was intense, not only among the immediate family of the Vejars, but also throughout the whole populace of Spanish rancheros and all their people.
Neither Schlesinger nor Tischler lived long to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. But while they were both cut off, it may be said, by the hand of an avenging fate, there was no restoration to the old Spanish owners of their fair acres. These were lost to them forever. Just how these Jewish merchants met their fate is of more
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than passing interest, but the fate of one, at least, will probably always be some- what of a mystery. Louis Schlesinger was a passenger on the "Ada Hancock," a Banning boat, which was sunk by an explosion in San Pedro harbor when loaded with passengers for a San Francisco steamer, and he was doubtless lost in this catastrophe. There is a persistent story still told by old-timers, that Tischler was killed by a party of Mexicans while on a trip to San Bernardino. Newmark's account of their doings, however, is as follows :
"Shortly after this transaction" (that is, after their foreclosure of the Vejar mortgage), "Schlesinger was killed while on his way to San Francisco, in the Ada Hancock explosion ; after which Tischler purchased Schlesinger's interest in the ranch and managed it alone. In January, Tischler invited me to accompany him on one of the numerous excursions which he made to his newly acquired posses- sion, but, though I was inclined to go, a business engagement interfered and kept me in town. Poor Edward Newman, another friend of Tischler's took my place. On the way from the ranch to San Bernardino the travelers were ambushed by some Mexicans, who shot Newman dead. It was generally assumed that the bullets were intended for Tischler, in revenge for his part in the foreclosure; at any rate, he would never go to the ranch again, and finally sold it to Don Louis Phillips, on credit, for thirty thousand dollars." There is a slight discrepancy in this narrative, for the date of the foreclosure is given as 1864 and the Ada Han- cock disaster is mentioned as having occurred "shortly after," whereas the latter event happened on April 27, 1863.
There is another source from which a new light is shed on these events-the murder on the road to San Bernardino, the disappearance of Tischler, and the transfer of Vejar's property to Louis Phillips. This source is found in the vivid story of an old vaquero recently told to the writer in such clear-cut form and assurance as to give the impression of authenticity. When the firm of Schlesinger & Tischler acquired their large herds of cattle and sheep in the Valley, they em- ployed a number of vaqueros and borregueros to look after them. The foreman of vaqueros, who worked for Tischler from the first, was a young man by the name of José Antonio Perez. Tischler rode out from Los Angeles from time to time to look after the interests of the firm, but with other business interests in Los Angeles and other parts of the Valley, he could only spend a small part of his time on the San José Ranch. Much responsibility fell upon Perez and he was a good manager. Early and late, from one end of the rancho to the other, he rode his fine horse, directing the work of the vaqueros. Weighing over 200 pounds, tall and handsome, he always rode the largest and best horses on the ranch. "Born in the saddle," and riding as only a Mexican can, man and mount made a com- manding and striking picture wherever they went. But though Perez was a faithful foreman, Tischler felt the need of a partner who should have a personal interest in the business and could be on the ground all the time to direct it. Doubtless, also, he was conscious of the hostile feeling of the Mexicans toward him, and was willing to pass as little time on the ranch as possible. So it came about that Tischler went to Louis Phillips, then a young man living on a small ranch east of Los Angeles, in what is now Boyle Heights, and proposed that he should come out to the San José Ranch and take charge. He was to have $100 a month, and in addition to this was to receive as his share in the enterprise, half of the beceros and the ganado-i.e., half of the increase in calves and colts and sheep that were born each year should be his. Louis Phillips had come to San Francisco from Prussia in
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1850 as a young man of about twenty, and for two or three years kept a store at Long Wharf. On the way to California he had trudged across the Isthmus of Panama afoot, his pack on his back. In 1853 he had made his way to Los Angeles. Here he had engaged in various occupations. Without any funds or income at first, by the thrift and enterprise which characterize his race, he had succeeded in purchasing some land on the San Antonio Rancho east of Los Angeles. But he was still a young man of slender means, and readily accepted the offer of Tischler. It was in this way that Louis Phillips, the first resident in Spadra after the Mexican grantees, came to the Valley to live. When Tischler brought Phillips out to the ranch he said to Perez, "Phillips is to have charge. Work for him as you have worked for me, and I will pay you just the same." Though Tischler was regarded as rich and Phillips certainly was not, the latter was always careful to pay his bills, while Tischler never did if he could help it, or, as Perez said, he was "poco malo a pagar." Among the helpers who worked for Tischler was a boy who had not been paid his wages for a long time. At last the boy grew restless, and when Tischler came out to the ranch one day he said he "wanted to have a reckoning,"- a settlement. Tischler meditated. Then and there came into his head an evil thought, as Perez said, and he said to the boy: "Very well, come with me to San Bernardino, and I will pay you." Putting a carbine in his wagon, he started off with the boy on the road to San Bernardino. From this moment no one saw them again till Tischler drove wildly into San Bernardino with the body of the boy, shouting that they had been attacked by brigands, who had killed the boy, and he had barely escaped. A posse of armed men rode back with him to the spot on the desert where he said the attack was made, and searched the country over. But they found no trace of brigands, nor yet any tracks, or signs of any struggle. Some were suspicious of Tischler's story from the first, and he was sharply ques- tioned ; but he was a rich man and no one dared to accuse him of the crime. More and more, however, people became convinced that he had killed the boy himself, and their hatred for the Jew became so bitter that he feared to come out to the ranch at all. Finally, one day he drove out in a fine new carriage with a splendid span of horses. That night he spent with Phillips on the ranch and the next morning they rode away together. When Phillips returned the ranch was his and Tischler was never seen again. The papers, deeding to Phillips all the Vejar interest in the San José Rancho and the cattle that Tischler had owned, were made out in Los Angeles, April 30, 1864, a year after Schlesinger was killed in the Ada Hancock disaster. The amount of the sale, which was nominally about $28,000, was largely covered by a note for a sum far less than this, it is said, which Phillips later redeemed, as we shall see.
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