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Sixty Years in Southern California 1853-1913

<h2>CHAPTER XIV ORCHARDS AND VINEYARDS 1856</h2> During 1856, I dissolved with my partners, Rich and Laventhal, and went into business with my uncle, Joseph Newmark, J. P. Newmark and Maurice Kremer, under the title of Newmark, Kremer & Company. Instead of a quasi wholesale business, we now had a larger assortment and did more of a retail business. We occupied a room, about forty by eighty feet in size, in the Mascarel and Barri block on the south side of Commercial Street (then known as Commercial Row), between Main and Los Angeles streets, our modest establishment being almost directly opposite the contracted quarters of my first store and having the largest single storeroom then in the city; and there we continued with moderate success, until 1858. To make this new partnership possible, Kremer had sold out his interest in the firm of Lazard & Kremer, dry goods merchants, the readjustment providing an amusing illustration of the manner in which business, with its almost entire lack of specialization, was then conducted. When the stock was taken, a large part of it consisted, not of dry goods, as one might well suppose, but of—cigars and tobacco! About the beginning of 1856, Sisters of Charity made their first appearance in Los Angeles, following a meeting called by Bishop Amat during the preceding month, to provide for their coming, when Abel Stearns presided and John G. Downey acted as Secretary. Benjamin Hayes, Thomas Foster, Ezra Drown, 190 Louis Vignes, Ygnácio del Valle and António Coronel coöperated, while Manuel Requena collected the necessary funds. On January 5th, Sisters María Scholastica, María Corzina, Ana, Clara, Francisca and Angela arrived—three of them coming almost directly from Spain; and immediately they formed an important adjunct to the Church in matters pertaining to religion, charity and education. It was to them that B. D. Wilson sold his Los Angeles home, including ten acres of fine orchard, at the corner of Alameda and Macy streets, for eight thousand dollars; and there for many years they conducted their school, the Institute and Orphan Asylum, until they sold the property to J. M. Griffith, who used the site for a lumber-yard. Griffith, in turn, disposed of it to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. Sister Scholastica, who celebrated in 1889 her fiftieth anniversary as a sister, was long the Mother Superior. The so-called First Public School having met with popular approval, the Board of Education in 1856 opened another school on Bath Street. The building, two stories in height, was of brick and had two rooms. On January 9th, John P. Brodie assumed charge of the Southern Californian. Andrés Pico was then proprietor; and before the newspaper died, in 1857, Pico lost, it is said, ten thousand dollars in the venture. The first regular course of public lectures here was given in 1856 under the auspices of a society known as the Mechanics' Institute, and in one of Henry Dalton's corrugated iron buildings. George T. Burrill, first County Sheriff, died on February 2d, his demise bringing to mind an interesting story. He was Sheriff, in the summer of 1850, when certain members of the infamous Irving party were arraigned for murder, and during that time received private word that many of the prisoners' friends would pack the little court room and attempt a rescue. Burrill, however, who used to wear a sword and had a rather soldierly bearing, was equal to the emergency. He quickly sent to Major E. H. Fitzgerald and had the latter 191 come post-haste to town and court with a detachment of soldiers; and with this superior, disciplined force he overawed the bandits' compañeros who, sure enough, were there and fully armed to make a demonstration. Thomas E. Rowan arrived here with his father, James Rowan, in 1856, and together they opened a bakery. Tom delivered the bread for a short time, but soon abandoned that pursuit for politics, being frequently elected to office, serving in turn as Supervisor, City and County Treasurer and even, from 1893 to 1894, as Mayor of Los Angeles. Shortly before Tom married Miss Josephine Mayerhofer in San Francisco in 1862—and a handsome couple they made—the Rowans bought from Louis Mesmer the American Bakery, located at the southwest corner of Main and First streets and originally established by August Ulyard. When James Rowan died about forty years ago, Tom fell heir to the bakery; but as he was otherwise engaged, he employed Maurice Maurício as manager, and P. Galta, afterward a prosperous business man of Bakersfield, as driver. Tom, who died in 1899, was also associated as cashier with I. W. Hellman and F. P. F. Temple in their bank. Rowan Avenue and Rowan Street were both named after this early comer. The time for the return of my brother and his European bride now approached, and I felt a natural desire to meet them. Almost coincident, therefore, with their arrival in San Francisco, I was again in that growing city in 1856, although I had been there but the year previous. On April 9th, occurred the marriage of Matilda, daughter of Joseph Newmark, to Maurice Kremer. The ceremony was performed by the bride's father. For the subsequent festivities, ice, from which ice cream was made, was brought from San Bernardino; both luxuries on this occasion being used in Los Angeles, as far as I can remember, for the first time. To return to the Los Angeles Star. When J. S. Waite became Postmaster, in 1855, he found it no sinecure to continue even such an unpretentious and, in all likelihood, unprofitable news-sheet and at the same time attend to Uncle Sam's mail-bags; 192 and early in 1856 he offered "the entire establishment at one thousand dollars less than cost." Business was so slow at that time, in fact, that Waite—after, perhaps, ruefully looking over his unpaid subscriptions—announced that he would "take wood, butter, eggs, flour, wheat or corn" in payment of bills due. He soon found a ready customer in William A. Wallace, the Principal of the boys' school who, on the twelfth of April, bought the paper; but Waite's disgust was nothing to that of the schoolteacher who, after two short months' trial with the editorial quill, scribbled a last doleful adiós. "The flush times of the pueblo, the day of large prices and pocket-books, are past," Wallace declared; and before him the editor saw "only picayunes, bad liquor, rags and universal dullness, when neither pistol-shots nor dying groans" could have any effect, and "when earthquakes would hardly turn men in their beds!" Nothing was left for such a destitute and discouraged quillman "but to wait for a carreta and get out of town." Wallace sold the paper, therefore, in June, 1856, to Henry Hamilton, a native of Ireland who had come to California in 1848 an apprenticed printer, and was for some years in newspaper work in San Francisco; and Hamilton soon put new life into the journal. In 1856, the many-sided Dr. William B. Osburn organized a company to bore an artesian well west of the city; but when it reached a depth of over seven hundred feet, the prospectors went into bankruptcy. George Lehman, early known as George the Baker (whose shop at one time was on the site of the Hayward Hotel), was a somewhat original and very popular character who, in 1856, took over the Round House on Main Street, between Third and Fourth, and there opened a pleasure-resort extending to Spring Street and known as the Garden of Paradise. The grounds really occupied on the one hand what are now the sites of the Pridham, the Pinney and the Turnverein, and on the other the Henne, the Breed and the Lankershim blocks. There was an entrance on Main Street and one, with two picket gates, on Spring. From the general shape and appearance of the building, it was always one of the first objects in town 193 to attract attention; and Lehman (who, when he appeared on the street, had a crooked cane hanging on his arm and a lemon in his hand), came to be known as "Round House George." The house had been erected in the late forties by Raimundo, generally called Ramón, or Raymond Alexander, a sailor, who asserted that the design was a copy of a structure he had once seen on the coast of Africa; and there Ramón and his native California wife had lived for many years. Partly because he wished to cover the exterior with vines and flowers, Lehman nailed boards over the outer adobe walls and thus changed the cylinder form into that of an octagon. An ingenious arrangement of the parterre and a peculiar distribution of some trees, together with a profusion of plants and flowers—affording cool and shady bowers, somewhat similar to those of a typical beer or wine garden of the Fatherland—gave the place great popularity; while two heroic statues—one of Adam and the other of Eve—with a conglomeration of other curiosities, including the Apple Tree and the Serpent—all illustrating the world-old story of Eden—and a moving panorama made the Garden unique and rather famous. The balcony of the house provided accommodation for the playing of such music, perhaps discordant, as Los Angeles could then produce, and nearby was a framework containing a kind of swing then popular and known as "flying horses." The bar was in the Garden, near a well-sweep; and at the Main Street entrance stood a majestic and noted cactus tree which was cut down in 1886. The Garden of Paradise was opened toward the end of September, 1858, and so large were the grounds that when they were used, in 1876, for the Fourth of July celebration, twenty-six hundred people were seated there. This leads me to say that Arthur McKenzie Dodson, who established a coal- and wood-yard at what was later the corner of Spring and Sixth streets, started there a little community which he called Georgetown—as a compliment, it was said, to the famous Round House George whose bakery, I have remarked, was located on that corner. On June 7th, Dr. John S. Griffin, who had an old fashioned, 194 classical education, and was a graduate, in medicine, of the University of Pennsylvania, succeeded Dr. William B. Osburn as Superintendent of the Los Angeles City Schools. In these times of modern irrigation and scientific methods, it is hard to realize how disastrous were climatic extremes in an earlier day: in 1856, a single electric disturbance, accompanied by intense heat and sandstorms, left tens of thousands of dead cattle to tell the story of drought and destruction. During the summer, I had occasion to go to Fort Tejón to see George C. Alexander, a customer, and I again asked Sam Meyer if he would accompany me. Such a proposition was always agreeable to Sam; and, having procured horses, we started, the distance being about one hundred and fifteen miles. We left Los Angeles early one afternoon, and made our first stop at Lyons's Station, where we put up for the night. One of the brothers, after whom the place was named, prepared supper. Having to draw some thick blackstrap from a keg, he used a pitcher to catch the treacle; and as the liquid ran very slowly, our sociable host sat down to talk a bit, and soon forgot all about what he had started to do. The molasses, however, although it ran pretty slowly, ran steadily, and finally, like the mush in the fairy-tale of the enchanted bowl, overflowed the top of the receptacle and spread itself over the dirt floor. When Lyons had finished his chat, he saw, to his intense chagrin, a new job upon his hands, and one likely to busy him for some time. Departing next morning at five o'clock we met Cy Lyons, who had come to Los Angeles in 1849 and was then engaged with his brother Sanford in raising sheep in that neighborhood. Cy was on horseback and had two pack animals, loaded with provisions. "Hello, boys! where are you bound?" he asked; and when we told him that we were on our way to Fort Tejón, he said that he was also going there, and volunteered to save us forty miles by guiding us over the trail. Such a shortening of our journey appealed to us as a good prospect, and we fell in behind the mounted guide. It was one of those red-hot summer days characteristic of 195 that region and season, and in a couple of hours we began to get very thirsty. Noticing this, Cy told us that no water would be found until we got to the Rancho de la Liebre, and that we could not possibly reach there until evening. Having no bota de agua handy, I took an onion from Lyons's pack and ate it, and that afforded me some relief; but Sam, whose decisions were always as lasting as the fragrance of that aromatic bulb, would not try the experiment. To make a long story short, when we at last reached the ranch, Sam, completely fagged out, and unable to alight from his horse, toppled off into our arms. The chewing of the onion had refreshed me to some extent, but just the same the day's journey proved one of the most miserable experiences through which I have ever passed. The night was so hot at the ranch that we decided to sleep outdoors in one of the wagons; and being worn out with the day's exposure and fatigue, we soon fell asleep. The soundness of our slumbers did not prevent us from hearing, in the middle of the night, a snarling bear, scratching in the immediate neighborhood. A bear generally means business; and you may depend upon it that neither Sam, myself nor even Cy were very long in bundling out of the wagon and making a dash for the more protecting house. Early next morning, we recommenced our journey toward Fort Tejón, and reached there without any further adventures worth relating. Coming back, we stopped for the night at Gordon's Station, and the next day rode fully seventy miles—not so inconsiderable an accomplishment, perhaps, for those not accustomed to regular saddle exercise. A few months later, I met Cy on the street. "Harris," said he, "do you know that once, on that hot day going to Fort Tejón, we were within three hundred feet of a fine, cool spring?" "Then why in the devil," I retorted, "didn't you take us to it?" To which Cy, with a chuckle, answered: "Well, I just wanted to see what would happen to you!" My first experience with camp meetings was in the year 1856, when I attended one in company with Miss Sarah Newmark, to whom I was then engaged, and Miss Harriet, her 196 sister—later Mrs. Eugene Meyer. I engaged a buggy from George Carson's livery stable on Main Street; and we rode to Ira Thompson's grove at El Monte, in which the meeting was held. These camp meetings supplied a certain amount of social attraction to residents, in that good-hearted period when creeds formed a bond rather than a hindrance. It was in 1856 that, in connection with our regular business, we began buying hides. One day a Mexican customer came into the store and, looking around, said: "¿Compra cueros?" (Do you buy hides?) "Sí, señor," I replied, to which he then said: "Tengo muchos en mi rancho" (I have many at my ranch). "Where do you live?" I asked. "Between Cahuenga and San Fernando Mission," he answered. He had come to town in his carreta, and added that he would conduct me to his place, if I wished to go there. I obtained a wagon and, accompanied by Samuel Cohn, went with the Mexican. The native jogged on, carreta-fashion, the oxen lazily plodding along, while the driver with his ubiquitous pole kept them in the road by means of continual and effective prods, delivered first on one side, then on the other. It was dark when we reached the ranch; and the night being balmy, we wrapped ourselves up in blankets, and slept under the adobe veranda. Early in the morning, I awoke and took a survey of the premises. To my amazement, I saw but one little kipskin hanging up to dry! When at length my Mexican friend appeared on the scene, I asked him where he kept his hides? (¿Donde tiene usted los cueros?) At which he pointed to the lone kip and, with a characteristic and perfectly indifferent shrug of the shoulders, said: "¡No tengo más!" (I have no more!) I then deliberated with Sam as to what we should do; and having proceeded to San Fernando Mission to collect there, if possible, a load of hides, we were soon fortunate in obtaining enough to compensate us for our previous trouble and disappointment. On the way home, we came to a rather deep ditch preventing further progress. Being obliged, 197 however, to get to the other side, we decided to throw the hides into the ditch, placing one on top of the other, until the obstructing gap was filled to a level with the road; and then we drove across, if not on dry land, at least on dry hides, which we reloaded onto the wagon. Finally, we reached town at a late hour. In this connection, I may remind the reader of Dana's statement, in his celebrated Two Years before the Mast, that San Pedro once furnished more hides than any other port on the Coast; and may add that from the same port, more than forty years afterward, consignments of this valuable commodity were still being made, I myself being engaged more and more extensively in the hide trade. Colonel Isaac Williams died on September 13th, having been a resident of Los Angeles and vicinity nearly a quarter of a century. A Pennsylvanian by birth, he had with him in the West a brother, Hiram, later of San Bernardino County. Happy as was most of Colonel Williams' life, tragedy entered his family circle, as I shall show, when both of his sons-in-law, John Rains and Robert Carlisle, met violent deaths at the hands of others. Jean Louis Vignes came to Los Angeles in 1829, and set out the Aliso Vineyard of one hundred and four acres which derived its name, as did the street, from a previous and incorrect application of the Castilian aliso, meaning alder, to the sycamore tree, a big specimen of which stood on the place. This tree, possibly a couple of hundred years old, long shaded Vignes' wine-cellars, and was finally cut down a few years ago to make room for the Philadelphia Brew House. From a spot about fifty feet away from the Vignes adobe extended a grape arbor perhaps ten feet in width and fully a quarter of a mile long, thus reaching to the river; and this arbor was associated with many of the early celebrations in Los Angeles. The northern boundary of the property was Aliso Street; its western boundary was Alameda; and part of it was surrounded by a high adobe wall, inside of which, during the troubles of the Mexican War, Don Louis enjoyed a far safer seclusion than many others. 198 On June 7th, 1851, Vignes advertised El Aliso for sale, but it was not subdivided until much later, when Eugene Meyer and his associates bought it for this purpose. Vignes Street recalls the veteran viticulturist. While upon the subject of this substantial old pioneer family, I may give a rather interesting reminiscence as to the state of Aliso Street at this time. I have said that this street was the main road from Los Angeles to the San Bernardino country; and so it was. But in the fifties, Aliso Street stopped very abruptly at the Sainsevain Vineyard, where it narrowed down to one of the willow-bordered, picturesque little lanes so frequently found here, and paralleled the noted grape-arbor as far as the river-bank. At this point, Andrew Boyle and other residents of the Heights and beyond were wont to cross the stream on their way to and from town. The more important travel was by means of another lane known as the Aliso Road, turning at a corner occupied by the old Aliso Mill and winding along the Hoover Vineyard to the river. Along this route the San Bernardino stage rolled noisily, traversing in summer or during a poor season what was an almost dry wash, but encountering in wet winter raging torrents so impassable that all intercourse with the settlements to the east was disturbed. For a whole week, on several occasions, the San Bernardino stage was tied up, and once at least Andrew Boyle, before he had become conversant with the vagaries of the Los Angeles River, found it impossible for the better part of a fortnight to come to town for the replenishment of a badly-depleted larder. Lovers' Lane, willowed and deep with dust, was a narrow road now variously located in the minds of pioneers; my impression being that it followed the line of the present Date Street, although some insist that it was Macy. Pierre Sainsevain, a nephew of Vignes, came in 1839 and for a while worked for his uncle. Jean Louis Sainsevain, another nephew, arrived in Los Angeles in 1849 or soon after, and on April 14th, 1855, purchased for forty-two thousand dollars the vineyard, cellars and other property of his uncle. This was the same year in which he returned to France for 199 his son Michel and remarried, leaving another son, Paul, in school there. Pierre joined his brother; and in 1857 Sainsevain Brothers made the first California champagne, first shipping their wine to San Francisco. Paul, now a resident of San Diego, came to Los Angeles in 1861. The name endures in Sainsevain Street. The activity of these Frenchmen reminds me that much usually characteristic of country life was present in what was called the city of Los Angeles, when I first saw it, as may be gathered from the fact that, in 1853, there were a hundred or more vineyards hereabouts, seventy-five or eighty of which were within the city precincts. These did not include the once famous "mother vineyard" of San Gabriel Mission, which the padres used to claim had about fifty thousand vines, but which had fallen into somewhat picturesque decay. Near San Gabriel, however, in 1855, William M. Stockton had a large vineyard nursery. William Wolfskill was one of the leading vineyardists, having set out his first vine, so it was said, in 1838, when he affirmed his belief that the plant, if well cared for, would flourish a hundred years! Don José Serrano, from whom Dr. Leonce Hoover bought many of the grapes he needed, did have vines, it was declared, that were nearly a century old. When I first passed through San Francisco, en route to Los Angeles, I saw grapes from this section in the markets of that city bringing twenty cents a pound; and to such an extent for a while did San Francisco continue to draw on Los Angeles for grapes, that Banning shipped thither from San Pedro, in 1857, no less than twenty-one thousand crates, averaging forty-five pounds each. It was not long, however, before ranches nearer San Francisco began to interfere with this monopoly of the South, and, as, a consequence, the shipment of grapes from Los Angeles fell off. This reminds me that William Wolfskill sent to San Francisco some of the first Northern grapes sold there; they were grown in a Napa Valley vineyard that he owned in the middle of the fifties, and when unloaded on the Long Wharf, three or four weeks in advance of Los Angeles grapes, brought at wholesale twenty-five dollars per hundred weight! 200 With the decline in the fresh fruit trade, however, the making and exportation of wine increased, and several who had not ventured into vineyarding before, now did so, acquiring their own land or an interest in the establishments of others. By 1857, Jean Louis Vignes boasted of possessing some white wine twenty years old—possibly of the same vintage about which Dr. Griffin often talked, in his reminiscences of the days when he had been an army surgeon; and Louis Wilhart occasionally sold wine which was little inferior to that of Jean Louis. Dr. Hoover was one of the first to make wine for the general market, having, for a while, a pretty and well-situated place called the Clayton Vineyard; and old Joseph Huber, who had come to California from Kentucky for his health, began in 1855 to make wine with considerable success. He owned the Foster Vineyard, where he died in July, 1866. B. D. Wilson was also soon shipping wine to San Francisco. L. J. Rose, who first entered the field in January, 1861, at Sunny Slope, not far from San Gabriel Mission, was another producer, and had a vineyard famous for brandy and wine. He made a departure in going to the foothills, and introduced many varieties of foreign grapes. By the same year, or somewhat previously, Matthew Keller, Stearns & Bell, Dr. Thomas J. White, Dr. Parrott, Kiln Messer, Henry Dalton, H. D. Barrows, Juan Bernard and Ricardo Vejar had wineries, and John Schumacher had a vineyard opposite the site of the City Gardens in the late seventies. L. H. Titus, in time, had a vineyard, known as the Dewdrop, near that of Rose. Still another wine producer was António María Lugo, who set out his vines on San Pedro Street, near the present Second, and often dwelt in the long adobe house where both Steve Foster, Lugo's son-in-law, and Mrs. Wallace Woodworth lived, and where I have been many times pleasantly entertained. Dr. Leonce Hoover, who died on October 8th, 1862, was a native of Switzerland and formerly a surgeon in the army of Napoleon, when his name—later changed at the time of naturalization—had been Huber. Dr. Hoover in 1849 came to Los Angeles with his wife, his son, Vincent A. Hoover, 201 then a young man, and two daughters, the whole family traveling by ox-team and prairie schooner. They soon discovered rich placer gold-beds, but were driven away by hostile Indians. A daughter, Mary A., became the wife of Samuel Briggs, a New Hampshire Yankee, who was for years Wells Fargo's agent here. For a while the Hoovers lived on the Wolfskill Ranch, after which they had a vineyard in the neighborhood of what is now the property of the Cudahy Packing Company. Vincent Hoover was a man of prominence in his time; he died in 1883. Mrs. Briggs, whose daughter married the well-known physician, Dr. Granville MacGowan, sold her home, on Broadway between Third and Fourth streets, to Homer Laughlin when he erected the Laughlin Building. Hoover Street is named for this family. Accompanied by his son William, Joseph Huber, Sr., in 1855 came to Los Angeles from Kentucky, hoping to improve his health; and when the other members of his family, consisting of his wife and children, Caroline, Emeline, Edward and Joseph, followed him here, in 1859, by way of New York and the Isthmus, they found him settled as a vineyardist, occupying the Foster property running from Alameda Street to the river, in a section between Second and Sixth streets. The advent of a group of young people, so well qualified to add to what has truthfully been described by old-time Angeleños as our family circle, was hailed with a great deal of interest and satisfaction. In time, Miss Emeline Huber was married to O. W. Childs, and Miss Caroline was wedded to Dr. Frederick Preston Howard, a druggist who, more than forty years ago, bought out Theodore Wollweber, selling the business back to the latter a few years later. The prominence of this family made it comparatively easy for Joseph Huber, Jr., in 1865, to secure the nomination and be elected County Treasurer, succeeding M. Kremer, who had served six years. Huber, Sr., died about the middle sixties. Mrs. Huber lived to be eighty-three years old. José de Rúbio had at least two vineyards when I came—one on Alameda Street, south of Wolfskill's and not far from Coronel's, and one on the east side of the river. Rúbio came 202 here very early in the century, after having married Juana, a daughter of Juan María Miron, a well-known sea captain, and built three adobe houses. The first of these was on the site of the present home of William H. Workman, on Boyle Heights; the second was near what was later the corner of Alameda and Eighth streets, and the third was on Alameda Street near the present Vernon Avenue. One of his ranches was known as "Rúbio's," and there many a barbecue was celebrated. In 1859, Rúbio leased the Sepúlveda Landing, at San Pedro, and commenced to haul freight, to and fro. Señor and Señora Rúbio[16] had twenty-five children, of whom five are now living. Another Los Angeles vineyardist who lived near the river when I came was a Frenchman named Clemente. Julius Weyse also had a vineyard, living on what is now Eighth Street near San Pedro. A son, H. G. Weyse, has distinguished himself as an attorney and has served in the Legislature; another, Otto G., married the widow of Edward Naud, while a third son, Rudolf G., married a daughter of H. D. Barrows. The Reyes family was prominent here; a daughter married William Nordholt. Ysidro had a vineyard on Washington Street; and during one of the epidemics, he died of smallpox. His brother, Pablo, was a rancher. While on the subject of vineyards, I may describe the method by which wine was made here in the early days and the part taken in the industry by the Indians, who always interested and astounded me. Stripped to the skin, and wearing only loin-cloths, they tramped with ceaseless tread from morn till night, pressing from the luscious fruit of the vineyard the juice so soon to ferment into wine. The grapes were placed in elevated vats from which the liquid ran into other connecting vessels; and the process exhaled a stale acidity, scenting the surrounding air. These Indians were employed in the early fall, the season of the year when wine is made and when the thermometer as a rule, in Southern California, reaches its 203 highest point; and this temperature coupled with incessant toil caused the perspiration to drip from their swarthy bodies into the wine product, the sight of which in no wise increased my appetite for California wine. A staple article of food for the Indians in 1856, by the way, was the acorn. The crop that year, however, was very short; and streams having also failed, in many instances, to yield the food usually taken from them, the tribes were in a distressed condition. Such were the aborigines' straits, in fact, that rancheros were warned of the danger, then greater than ever, from Indian depredations on stock. In telling of the Sisters of Charity, I have forgotten to add that, after settling here, they sent to New York for a portable house, which they shipped to Los Angeles by way of Cape Horn. In due time, the house arrived; but imagine their vexation on discovering that, although the parts were supposed to have been marked so that they might easily be joined together, no one here could do the work. In the end, the Sisters were compelled to send East for a carpenter who, after a long interval, arrived and finished the house. Soon after the organization of a Masonic lodge here, in 1854, many of my friends joined, and among them my brother, J. P. Newmark, who was admitted on February 26th, 1855, on which occasion J. H. Stuart was the Secretary; and through their participation in the celebration of St. John's Day (the twenty-fourth of June,) I was seized with a desire to join the order. This I did at the end of 1856, becoming a member of Los Angeles Lodge No. 42, whose meetings were held over Potter's store on Main Street. Worshipful Master Thomas Foster initiated me, and on January 22d, 1857, Worshipful Master Jacob Elias officiating, I took the third degree. I am, therefore, in all probability, the oldest living member of this now venerable Masonic organization. 204 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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