The Big One and Noah’s Flood

The catastrophic earthquake in Haiti and this week’s torrential downpours in the Los Angeles area are reminders that we live in areas highly susceptible to powerful forces of nature. 

In the space of four years between 1857 and 1861, the Los Angeles region experienced an earthquake of unparalleled magnitude (no stronger quake has hit the area since)  as well as a period of rainfall that, in severity, has also not been repeated.

Concerning earthquakes, we have been talking for years about the inevitability of the “Big One,” the major earthquake due to strike the Los Angeles region someday.  The last major temblor, over 150 years ago, was the Tejon earthquake of January 1857 that has been estimated to be about 7.9 on the modern Richter scale, the same magnitude as that of the 1906 San Francisco quake. 

Because the region was so sparsely populated, with about 4,000 people in the city of Los Angeles and fewer than 10,000 in the county, the Los Angeles Star newspaper reported in its January 17, 1857, edition that “on the whole, no damage of any consequence, has been sustained by our citizens, although elsewhere considerable property has been destroyed, and we regret to say, severe personal injuries inflicted, and one life even sacrificed by the awful visitation.”  As for damages in Los Angeles, a school house and several homes received cracks.

The worst impact was felt in the “Grapevine,” the mountainous region north of Los Angeles.   At the Reed Ranch near today’s Gorman, several people sought to flee a house and all made it to safety “except a woman, who was killed by the falling of the house.”   There was also significant structural damage at the relatively new Army outpost of Fort Tejon.  This is why the quake was named “Tejon” even though its activity was really to the northeast, along the San Andreas Fault (from where a future “Big One” is expected to come).

Meanwhile, “on a ranch belonging to Mr. Temple, on the San Gabriel River, the earth for a considerable distance was rent asunder, leaving a ditch some three feet wide.  The disruption was traced for miles along the river, which was turned out of its bed for many rods in length.”  This description referred to the Rancho La Merced, co-owned by F. P. F. Temple and Juan Matías Sanchez.  The San Gabriel River at that time was actually today’s Rio Hondo, the current river not “created” until severe flooding in 1867-68 led to its new course.

Excerpt from the Los Angeles Star newspaper, January 17, 1857. From the Homestead Museum Collection.

Speaking of flooding, in the winter of 1861-62, rain fell almost continuously, often in downpours, between Christmas Eve and the end of January.   While there weren’t advanced weather stations to measure precipitation levels, estimates range from thirty to fifty inches in that four- to five-week period.

Again, the damage was extraordinary and references made in the press and in autobiographies tell of the destruction wrought upon houses, as well as the washing away of crops and cattle.  Large portions of the town of San Bernardino and the new German-American settlement of Anaheim were destroyed. 

The Temple family at La Merced was again affected, as reported in the Star on January, 25 1862: “MERCED RANCHO, the residence of F. P. F. Temple, Esq., was flooded.  The family effected their escape from the house on a raft.  No injury sustained by house or property.”

Excerpt from the Los Angeles Star newspaper, January 26, 1862. From the Homestead Museum Collection.

 

Indeed, the area around the Temple ranch was later declared a 100-year flood plain by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Whittier Narrows Dam was built just to the south of where the family’s adobe house once stood.  Given these circumstances, it is incredible that the dwelling, built in 1851, survived for nearly sixty years.  It appears that a fire, of all things, led to the building’s demise before 1910.

Widespread catastrophic flooding has since been prevented by our intricate flood control system, but we anxiously await the next “Big One” that will strike someday.

Account Closed

As our recent economic crisis has shown, the failure or near-failure of banks can threaten to bring down a significant portion of the American economy.  From the time that banks were introduced in the nineteenth century, this issue has always been a concern, especially as regulation was virtually non-existent and banking laws few.  Until the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in 1933, there was no government-mandated protection of depositors, and banking laws were not set for most of the 1800s. 

In Los Angeles, banking did not formally begin until 1868 with the opening of two banks: Hayward and Company, run by former California governor John G. Downey; and Hellman, Temple and Company, featuring William Workman and F. P. F. Temple as partners with the brilliant young merchant Isaias W. Hellman.  The latter bank closed three years later.  Hellman went on to form Farmers and Merchants with Downey, and Temple and Workman continued with their own bank. While Farmers and Merchants had stockholders and a board of trustees, Temple and Workman’s bank was entirely private.  Another difference between the two was that Farmers and Merchants was managed conservatively by Hellman, who insisted on strong collateral by borrowers and maintained a significant cash reserve.  With Temple and Workman’s bank, its lending policies were considerably looser; its heavy investments in emerging industries, railroads, and real estate projects ensured low reserves. 

Cover from Temple & Workman Bank passbook, 1870s. From the Homestead Museum Collection.

When the California economy went into a tailspin in late August 1875 because of the collapse of silver mining speculation in Virginia City, Nevada, among other factors, the Los Angeles banks encountered a panic.  While Farmers and Merchants soon recovered, Temple and Workman struggled to secure loans to keep the business afloat.  Bank president F. P. F. Temple finally arranged a loan with San Francisco capitalist Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin, but on near-impossible terms.  Within six weeks of the bank’s December reopening, depositors skeptical of the bank’s management removed the borrowed funds and the institution closed on January 13, 1876. 

Along with a November 1875 letter written by Temple to Workman (Temple’s “silent”—that is, inactive—partner and father-in-law) about the “hard terms” involved in securing the Baldwin loan, there is no more relevant artifact in the Homestead’s collection concerning the bank than Workman’s passbook.  The leather-bound book begins in November 20, 1871, with the bank opening, and ends with an entry dated December 15, 1875.  Workman, who had over $50,000 when he opened his account, was down to just under $7,000 on the last entry. 

About a month later, the bank closed.  While it would have been notable to have had a dramatic red line written through the passbook as the account was closed, there is no such notation.  In February, an inventory of the bank’s assets and liabilities revealed mismanagement, speculation, and, as a local paper expressed it, a long list of “deadbeats” who owed the bank money and were not likely to pay.  Despite the wealth of its millionaire owners, most of it was “in hock” to Baldwin through the terms of his loan.  The disaster of the Temple and Workman bank was a significant part of the end of Los Angeles’s first growth boom in the late 1860s and into the 1870s. 

As to Workman, he learned on May 17, 1876, that his property and assets would be placed into receivership and managed by a court-appointed representative as part of the settlement of the bank’s affairs.  Devastated and fearful of losing everything, Workman took his life that evening. His passbook survives as a reminder of the bank’s failure and the economic uncertainties that we face periodically through our history.

Pages from Temple & Workman Bank passbook, 1870s. From the Homestead Museum Collection.

Christmas and Wartime

Thomas Nast, "The Union Christmas Dinner" lithograph, Harper's Weekly magazine, December 31, 1864. From the Homestead Museum Collection.

Lithograph details, top to bottom: (1) Centerpiece, (2) The Home Toast—Bless Our Soldiers and Sailors, (3) Unconditional Surrender, (4) Lay Down Your Arms and You Will Be Welcome, (5) Victory Holding Out The Olive Branch to Submission, and (6) The Return of the Prodigal Son. From the Homestead Museum Collection.

The connections between war and the media have many significant aspects.  In the United States, the Civil War (1861-65) marked a turning point in the use of the visual image in depicting wartime issues.  The rise of illustrated weekly and monthly magazines brought powerful images of the war to a greater number of Americans.  While most of these lithographs depicted battles or showed wartime leaders, some dealt with other subjects.

As American troops spend their seventh holiday season overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, this seems an appropriate time to show a particularly compelling subject dealing with Christmas and the Civil War.  In the December 31, 1864, issue of Harper’s Weekly magazine is a remarkable two-page lithograph entitled “The Union Christmas Dinner,” drawn by Thomas Nast. Nast’s representations of Christmas are famous; his depiction of Santa Claus defined a visual standard for Old St. Nick. 

In the image are six vignettes that symbolize the tide of war that, after three-and-a-half years of intense fighting, was turning in the favor of the Union Army against Confederate forces.  

The centerpiece shows President Abraham Lincoln welcoming weary-looking Confederate soldiers as they peer inside a doorway at a sumptuous feast that fresh-faced Union Army personnel are enjoying.  Around this main depiction are five smaller scenes.  One shows a large family at the Christmas dinner table offering “The Home Toast—Bless Our Soldiers and Sailors.” Another calls for “Unconditional Surrender” and foreshadows the capitulation of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to Union General Ulysses S. Grant.  A third states “Lay Down Your Arms and You Will Be Welcome.”  Then, there is  “Victory Holding Out The Olive Branch to Submission.”  Finally, the last vignette is “The Return of the Prodigal Son.”

Within four months or so, the war would be over, though President Lincoln’s assassination and the tortured post-war Reconstruction period hardly brought about the “welcome” and reconciliation implied in this Christmas lithograph.

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Objectives: New Life Wine Tonic

Objectives will be an occasional series highlighting artifacts from the Homestead Museum Collection.

In that singularly unsuccessful social experiment called Prohibition—introduced in 1919, repealed in 1933, and the only one in American history brought about by changing the Constitution—a wealth of interesting artifacts have survived the ravages of time.  A few of these items reside in the collection of the Homestead Museum.

New Life Wine Tonic box, front and back, 1928. From the Homestead Museum Collection.

Liquor manufacturers had many clever ways to skirt the law and present products that were legally made and sold under Prohibition. The most successful of these was the “medicinal wine.”  The artifact highlighted in this post is New Life Wine Tonic, a product produced by Vida Nueva Company of Los Angeles under a 1928 copyright.  Vida Nueva was sure to include on the bottle that New Life “is mfg. [manufactured] under authority of [the] Internal Revenue Department” via a permit for medicinal wine use.

Made from muscatel grapes, which are fermented into sweet dessert wines and fortified with “aromatic herbs,” New Life Wine Tonic was 42 proof (that is, made of 21% alcohol, a staggeringly high percentage for what was essentially a dessert wine!) and was marketed as a “tonic and system builder” that also served as a “world known appetizer, blood stimulative and nerve builder.”  Consumers of the “tonic” were informed that the product “may be taken Pure or with Seltzer Water, Coffee, Tea or Broth,” though, surely, most people took their “medicine” pure!   The recommended dosage?  “One-half Wine Glass Before or After Meals!”

The accompanying photos include the front and back panels of the box, including the image of the shirtless “Adonis” whose mere tasting of the muscatel grape transformed him into the very picture of vigorous health and manly vitality.

Within five years, however, Vida Nueva no longer had to mask their muscatel dessert wines as “medicinal wine,” though little is known about the company and whether it survived the Great Depression that was affecting America (and providing some reason for Prohibition’s repeal in 1933).

Picture This! Pico House and Neighbors, circa 1870

Picture This! will be an occasional series featuring (hopefully) interesting and enlightening photographs from the Homestead Museum Collection. 

This inaugural post concerns an image of the Pico House hotel, Merced Theater, and Masonic Lodge, taken around 1870 by William M. Godfrey.  This detail from a stereoscopic photograph is one of the earliest published views of the hotel and theater.

Detail of a stereoscopic photograph showing the Pico House hotel, Merced Theater, and Masonic Lodge, taken from Fort Moore Hill by William M. Godfrey, ca. 1870. From the Homestead Museum Collection.

The Pico House, at center, was built by Pío Pico (1801-1894), the last governor of Mexican-era California, who sold his land holdings encompassing much of the San Fernando Valley to build this structure.  Engaging Ezra F. Kysor, the first professional architect to practice in Los Angeles, Pico sought to build a modern brick structure that would keep the Spanish-era Plaza viable in the face of businesses migrating south on Main and Spring streets.  The 33-room hotel, the first three-story structure erected in town, was built between September 1869 and June 1870 and opened to great fanfare.  Unfortunately, the Plaza area continued to grow isolated, and the hotel struggled.   A severe economic downturn after 1875 led Pico to lose the hotel by 1880.  Although it continued to operate as a hotel and boarding house, the structure became rundown and was threatened with demolition.  Saved as part of today’s El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, the building has had intermittent, but never completed, restoration and remains empty most of the time, excepting occasional exhibits and functions.

To the right of the Pico House is the Merced Theater, also designed by Kysor.  Built by William Abbott and named for his wife, Maria Merced Garciaalso, the theater was completed in December 1870 and began performances in early 1871.  It had the distinction of being the tallest structure in Los Angeles, besting its neighbor by four feet because of the design of the façade.  The 400-seat auditorium was on the second floor and had a connecting entry from the neighboring hotel.  The Abbott family occupied the third floor and the ground level was rented out as commercial space.  As was the case with the Pico House, the theater failed to maintain a long presence. By 1876, competition from other venues led to a decline in theater patronage and the Merced closed two years later.  The building continued to be used for commercial purposes.

To the right of the Merced Theater is the building that housed Lodge 42 of the Free and Accepted Masons (F & AM), the first Freemasonry lodge in town.  Completed in 1858, the structure’s second floor remained lodge headquarters until 1868 when Lodge 42 relocated south to a building built by prominent mason F. P. F. Temple.  Over the years, the building was used for commercial purposes as a boarding house and, perhaps, a brothel.  After its preservation, the structure was, for some time, used as a masonic museum until earthquake safety issues ended that use.  For now, the structure remains empty and awaits retrofitting and, hopefully, a viable future.

Other notable aspects of this photograph include a portion of the Plaza at the far left; several long, one-story adobe houses, most visible on the left side of the photograph; New High Street running along the base of Fort Moore Hill; a modern frame house on the hillside at the far right; and the wooden tanks of the Los Angeles Gas Works, from which pipes crossed under Main Street to the Pico House and its neighbors for lighting and other uses.  The number 19 etched into the original negative appears to be an identification number used by the photographer.

About the photographer:

William Moloch Godfrey was born in New York in 1825 and moved with his family to Michigan in the 1840s, working as a dentist and dabbling in photography.  In 1850, he took a wagon train to California and tried gold digging.  Failing at this, as most did, he bought a dauguerreotype camera from another miner and tried his hand at making a living as a photographer.  By 1860,  Godfrey settled in Redwood City, south of San Francisco, where he was identified in the census as a painter. 

In 1870, he was in San Bernardino as a photographer, but lived for a time in Los Angeles and owned the Sunbeam Gallery.  He took many photographs of the wider southern California region, including the earliest known photo of the Workman House.  In 1872, Godfrey sold the gallery to Valentine Wolfenstein and had a short-lived partnership with David Flanders.  He eventually went back to San Bernardino to practice photography, run a newspaper, and work occasionally as a dentist.  By 1880, the stagnant economy seems to have led him to other non-entrepreneurial occupations, notably as a janitor and stagecoach driver.  In 1900, at age 74, Godfrey died in San Bernardino leaving a widow and two children.

Views of the Pico House and Plaza area from the hill were many in the 19th-century, but Godfrey’s is among the earliest published.

An Account of the Wake for Tiburcio Vasquez

The Homestead isn’t just concerned with the history of the Workman and Temple families, but also the broader context in which they lived, which includes the Los Angeles area and beyond.

When discussing Los Angeles and California in the 1840s and ’70s, crime and criminal justice are among the most important topics to consider. This is because Los Angeles all-too-easily belied its name when it came to the extraordinary level of crime, and the underlying ethnic and racial tension that fueled much of it.

A notable figure during this time was Tiburcio Vasquez, second only to Joaquin Murieta in the myth and legend, as well as history, of the bandidos whose heyday was from the 1850s to the ’70s. Although Vasquez was from Monterey and his most famous criminal activities were in that region, his first arrest and conviction took place in Los Angeles County, as did his last arrest leading to his execution.

Vasquez was captured in 1857 for stealing horses from a rancher named Juan Francisco, probably in what is now the Antelope Valley. Tried at the Court of Sessions, Vasquez was found guilty and sentenced to ten years at San Quentin, the state prison. Within a few years, Vasquez escaped, though he was recaptured and served a long stint in prison. In the early 1870s, he was released, promptly returning to his criminal ways. After he and his men committed murder in a botched robbery at Tres Piños in San Benito County in 1873, Vasquez was on the run.

His last foray occurred in May 1874 when he robbed rancher Alessandro Repetto at his hillside adobe in present-day Monterey Park. Learning that Repetto had an account with the bank of Temple and Workman (hence the museum connection), Vasquez sent Repetto’s nephew (or son) in to town to withdraw $800. When the nervous young man asked for the money, bank president F. P. F. Temple became suspicious and called Sheriff William R. Rowland (son of John Rowland, William Workman’s long-time friend and co-owner of Rancho La Puente).

The sheriff immediately gathered a posse and rode out to Repetto’s, but the nephew/son dashed ahead and, fearing for the rancher’s life, gave Vasquez advance warning about the coming of the sheriff. This gave Vasquez and his gang ample time to escape, despite a long and desperate chase by the sheriff up the Arroyo Seco above present Pasadena (indeed, he stopped to rob two men doing survey work for the Indiana Colony, the founders of that city) before rushing into the mountains.

For the time being, Vasquez escaped, but, having decided to stay in the Los Angeles area, he was eventually discovered at a home in present-day Hollywood. Sheriff Rowland, who remained in Los Angeles to avoid detection by Vasquez, sent a posse to capture the bandit and bring him into Los Angeles. This caused a sensation, as visitors flocked to see the legendary bandit. Photos of him were sold for his defense, and a farcical play about him was hastily written and performed at the Merced Theater.

Eventually, Vasquez was extradited to Santa Clara County to stand trial for the Tres Piños murders. Found guilty, he was sentenced to hang with the execution carried out on March 19, 1875.

Recently, a letter was acquired by the Homestead written by a Charles Brimblecom (now there’s quite a surname!) to his sister, Fannie. Dated March 22, 1875, from Santa Clara, the letter contained this fascinating passage:

The principle [sic] sensation around here lately was the hanging of Vasquez the robber and murderer, at San Jose last Friday. He went out with the greatest coolness. His relatives and friends brought his remains over here to the house of relatives in town here. Great numbers of people went down there to see him, and so after I finished work I went round there on my way up to grandma’s. A crowd of men and boys were looking in at the windows, and I stepped up, and looked in. On each side of the room sat a long line of greaser women and children, sitting very still and quiet, in the middle of the room, on a kind of bier, lay the body of Tiburcio Vasquez, the noted bandit and outlaw, with tall candles burning at the head and feet. He was a small man, face not very dark, black hair, black mustache, and very think black whiskers. He did not look particularly like a hard case, in fact I did not see a horrible monster, but simply a dead greaser. . . I could have gone in if I wanted to, but I just wanted to take a look so I could say that I had seen him. His friends made a great parade over him.

Brimblecom, a youth of eighteen years, used a common and demeaning term of the time in referring to Latinos as “greasers.”  Otherwise, his account is a relatively straightforward and unique document of the end of one of California’s most controversial and famous nineteenth-century figures.

Excerpt of a letter written by Charles Brimblecom, about Vasquez, dated March 22, 1875.

The Mystery of the Concealed Shoes

Woman's shoe, ca. 1870-1900. This shoe was found in a floorboard in the Workman House attic.

In December 2008, electrician Kirk Steinke was installing track lighting on the first floor ceiling of the the Workman House when made a strange discovery while tracing old wiring in the home’s attic.

Secreted under some nineteenth-century floorboards were four ladies’ shoes, none matching. After Steinke brought these to the museum staff’s attention, there was a bit of puzzlement, although a volunteer immediately identified them as “concealed shoes.”

A quick Internet search on the subject of concealed shoes led staff to contact the Northampton Museum in England, which has a notable shoe collection and a database of some 2,000 concealed shoe findings reported from all around the world.

Meantime, in July 2008, the archaeological firm of Greenwood and Associates in Los Angeles had completed a survey of the attic area seeking to better understand the development of the Workman House. The discovery of the shoes became a part of that larger project.

Through research done by both Greenwood and Associates and a staff member at Northampton Museum, it was determined that these shoes were manufactured some time between 1870 and 1900.

The Homestead was occupied during the 1880s by Francis W. Temple, grandson of the original owners, William and Nicolasa Workman.  Temple was unmarried and so it seemed highly unlikely that the shoes would have come from his occupancy.  After Francis died in 1888, however, the home was occupied by his brother, John, who was married and may well have built several rooms in the previously unfinished attic.  Perhaps John’s wife, Anita Davoust, placed the shoes there?

This leads to the question of “why?”  According to the Northampton Museum and other sources, there were several reasons why concealed shoes (and other objects) were hidden in houses.  Chiefly, persons in more superstitious eras were concerned about keeping bad luck, witches, the devil, or other nefarious elements out of their homes.   This would often be indicated by the placement of the shoes in proximity to a door or window.  Indeed, the Workman House shoes were found just a few feet (pardon the pun) from the doorway of the room.   Alternatively, a person’s desire to make their mark on the bedroom could be a reason for leaving objects.  The most common place for secretion of shoes has been the chimney, fireplace, or hearth, while the runner-up in frequency has been under floors or above the ceiling.

Shoes have been symbols of authority and fertility, as well as good luck, and they also speak to durability, given that, until our disposable society deemed otherwise, people repaired their shoes until they could no longer be worn.  Further, shoes were expensive.  Finally, women tend to have greater emotional attachment and interest in shoes than men, so the placement of female footwear could also reflect their strong feelings about this important belonging.

We do not, of course, know who put the shoes under the attic floorboards, or why, and this will almost certainly remain forever a mystery.  Yet, someone carefully and thoughtfully placed them there for reasons very personal to themselves.  Strange as it may seem, these concealed shoes now take their place, after well over a century, as an indelible part of the history of the Workman House.

A Rare Image of Pío Pico

Pío Pico, 1873. Donated by Jeannine Raymond.

Among the many interesting items that were donated to the Museum this spring from Temple family papers (see post from May 12) was this carte de visite photo of Governor Pío Pico.  Although badly damaged, to the extent that exposure to liquids caused the image to adhere to the glass from the frame the photo was housed in, this is a rare view of Don Pío.

The image was taken by early Los Angeles photographer Valentine Wolfenstein, a native of Sweden who came to the city by 1870 and operated the Sunbeam Gallery in the Temple Block, home of the Temple and Workman bank.  In it, we can see the white-haired ex-Governor turned slightly to his left and sporting a full beard.  He wears a black, three-piece suit with a white dress shirt and, presumably, a cravat or tie.

Notably, there are some inscriptions in red ink.  On the front, above the image is “76 years old,” and at the bottom is “Don Pio Pico 1st Governor Cal.”  Actually, Pico was the last governor of Mexican-era California, serving from 1845-46.  On the reverse is:

From Thornton

General Champagne Dinner

at Pico House, Sunday Evening April 13th 1873

Don Pio at head.  I was there

T

Thornton Sanborn was a nephew of F. P. F. Temple, a neighboring rancher, and long-time friend of Pico.  Sanborn migrated west from his native Reading, Massachusetts, in the 1850s and worked as a ranch foreman for his uncle at the Rancho La Merced near today’s Whittier Narrows Dam (close to South El Monte).  For a time, he supervised ranching operations at Temple’s property in Springfield in the Tuolumne County gold fields before returning back to the Los Angeles area.  After the failure of his uncle’s Temple and Workman bank, Sanborn returned to his hometown and remained there until his death.

In the meantime, sometime after April 1873 and before 1877, when he left Los Angeles, Sanborn sent this rare photo of Pico back home to relatives.  In 1926, when Walter Temple, F. P. F.’s son and Sanborn’s cousin, visited Reading to meet his relatives, he was presented with the photo.  It remained in the family’s hands until a few months ago when it was donated to the Museum.

As for Pico, whose life spanned nearly the entirety of the nineteenth century, from his 1801 birth to his death in 1894, he lost his Rancho de Paso Bartolo, near the Temple ranch at La Merced, to fraud in the early 1890s.  On his way to Los Angeles to live with relatives, he was said to have stayed with Walter Temple, leaving him a bench and other effects.  This bench was later given to Julia Davis, Temple’s childhood nurse, and eventually made its way to the Pío Pico State Historic Park, where it remains today.

In 1921, with permission from Pico’s heirs, the remains of the ex-Governor and his wife, Maria Ygnacia Alvarado, were moved from the old Calvary Cemetery near Elysian Park, to the newly-completed mausoleum erected by Walter Temple at the Workman Homestead ranch, founded by his grandfather William Workman, now the Homestead Museum.

Today visitors can walk the Pío Pico Memorial Walkway and pay their respects to Don Pío in the mausoleum.  This photo, then, is a reminder of the close connection between Pico and the Workman and Temple families.

Immigration, Labor, and Politics: William H. Workman’s Campaign for Mayor of Los Angeles, 1886

Throughout American history, the controversial and complex subject of foreign immigration and labor has been heatedly debated.  Whether it involved the forced slavery of Africans and subsequent importation and migration of the Irish, Eastern Europeans, Chinese and other Asians, Mexicans and Latinos generally, and many others, the question of lower-wage labor and the effect on “native” Americans (as opposed to the American Indian) has been at the center. 

William H. Workman, c. 1887. Courtesy of David A. Workman.

In 1886, William Henry Workman, nephew of William Workman, ran for mayor of Los Angeles.  Already a political veteran with several terms as a school board member and council member under his belt, Workman ran at a crucial time in the small city’s development.  A direct transcontinental railroad link to Los Angeles was completed the year before and a land boom of unprecedented proportions was in full flower.  Workman, who as a Democrat was once part of the dominant party in the city, found himself in the distinct minority in 1886 as Republicans “ruled the roost.”  Indeed, as a moderate, he enjoyed rare popularity among members of both parties and later served three terms as Los Angeles city treasurer from 1901 to 1907.

In the 1886 campaign, though, a hot contemporary issue arose that required a direct and vigorous defense from the candidate: whether Workman, a successful grape and citrus grower in Boyle Heights, had employed Chinese laborers to the detriment of “white” workers.  The Los Angeles Tribune newspaper had, indeed, asked, “Is it true that W. H. Workman is the steadfast friend of the Chinese…?”

While Workman replied that he hired white men regularly, he also noted that “to save my crops from perishing I have sometimes been compelled to employ Chinamen, but I have never done so when white help was available… I am opposed to the employment of Chinese, but there are cases where persons in my situation are absolutely forced by the necessities of the situation to accept their work.” 

To back up these statements, Joseph Walter Drown, Workman’s ranch foreman and son of a former county district attorney, offered that, “there are some classes of business incident to vine and tree growing which white men do not wish to perform, and which are of such a character as to endanger the health of persons attempting to do the labor… Mr. Workman had two Chinamen employed, who do this kind of work.” 

How much of this defense was based on political expediency is hard to say, but Workman was a surety for a bond offered by a Chinese defendant in a criminal case directly connected to the infamous Chinese Massacre of October 1871.  That notorious blot on the city of Los Angeles involved a mass lynching of nineteen Chinese men by an uncontrolled mob of hundreds and the Chinese defendant was tried for his role in the shooting of another Chinese man that was a factor in the subsequent bloodshed.

Workman’s candidacy seemed largely unaffected by the Chinese labor question and he was elected by a solid majority.  Interestingly, a year later, on October 23, 1887, Mayor Workman received an invitation from Ah Foy requesting  that

Yourself and family are respectfully invited to visit the Chinese Temple where the closing religious ceremonies of Ah Dieu will take place at 9 o’clock AM Monday morning the 24th instant. 

We remember your uniform kindness to our people these many years past and desire you to take notice of our people [and] how kindly they feel…towards yourself as Mayor of this City of Los Angeles.

And, the reason for the Ah Dieu ceremony?  In remembrance of the Chinese Massacre of sixteen years before.

The Tale of Sarah Ann Horn and the Workman Brothers

In the violent and racially-charged intersection between Native Americans and whites in the West, there were many incidences of women and children taken captive by natives as part of their retaliation for the incursion of whites into their ancestral homes.  In at least one instance, this had a direct connection with William Workman and his lifelong friend, John Rowland. 

In 1834, the Beales colony of British subjects settled in southern Texas, then part of Mexico, but the project was doomed from the beginning because the land was poor for farming and there were constant threats from Comanche Indians.  Matters worsened not long after American residents of Texas revolted against Mexico and formed their own country.  Finally, in 1837, a Comanche raid destroyed the colony and a small group tried to flee, but was decimated.  All eleven men were killed and two women, a Mrs. Harris and Sarah Ann Horn, and Mrs. Horn’s two young sons, James and John, were captured.

For a year and a half, Mrs. Horn was held by the Comanches while her sons were kept at a distance and only allowed to see her for brief visits on rare occasions.  Finally, an American merchant in New Mexico named Benjamin Hill ransomed Mrs. Horn, but treated her with very little respect; she was nothing more than a household servant to him.  Eventually, she was able to leave that household and move into a better situation, though she was still hopeful of being reunited with her sons.

Meanwhile, her plight came to the attention of merchants John Rowland and William Workman, longtime residents of Taos.  When they learned that Mrs. Horn was ready to give up on retrieving her children, they implored her to allow them to help her.

As she expressed it:

In the month of February [1838], I received a present of two dresses, presented by Messrs. Workman and Rowland, of Taos, with a note, bearing their kind respects, and a request, that I should delay my intended journey to the States, until after they should make another effort to recover my children; and further, if I should think it best to go the ensuing spring, that I should by all means come to Taos in season to spend as much time as I could before I should leave the country; and, at the same time, they gave me to understand, that all they possessed was at my command, as far as my wanted should require;–all of which, (with an inexpressible sense of gratitude do I record it.) they performed to the letter.

Mrs. Horn traveled to Taos, arriving at John Rowland’s house on March 10.  She recalled, “I spent my time about equally with this excellent family, and that of Mr. Workman, until the 22nd of August.”  Prior to her ransom, she learned, Rowland had sent out a party to rescue her, her sons, and Mrs. Harris, but the Indians fended off that group.  Further, Mrs. Horn noted, “Messrs. Workman and Rowland sent by two trading companies . . . authorizing them to obtain my children at any price.”  In this latter case, however, the terrible news was received that her younger boy, John, had been forced to guard a horse in the midst of a winter storm and died of exposure.  Meanwhile, Joseph, her elder son, could not be ransomed and was never heard from again.

After Sarah Ann Horn lost all hope of being reunited with her children again, she went from New Mexico to Missouri and lived at the home of William Workman's brother, David, where she died within a year.

Without any hope of seeing or reuniting with her children, Mrs. Horn joined a caravan bound for Missouri via the Santa Fe Trail.  As she remembered:

I left Santa Fe under the protection of my sympathizing and honored friends, Messrs. Workman and Rowland . . . I arrived at the house of Mr. David Workman, (a brother of my kind friend William Workman,) New Franklin, Howard County, Missouri, and beneath whose hospitable roof I have since continued to share the kind attentions of him and his amiable lady.

While in Missouri, Mrs. Horn dictated her memoir for publication to raise funds for her return to England.  The book, titled A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Horn and Her Two Children With Mrs. Harris by the Camanche [sic] Indians, was published in St. Louis in 1839, just before she died.  It was stated that Mrs. Horn’s death was caused by the physical wounds and mental and emotional abuse she sustained at the hands of the Comanche.

The Sarah Ann Horn incident, however, is a rare example of the connection between these naturalized Mexicans of American and British descent and the native peoples whose world was being lost to the incursions of the whites.

Source: Carl Coke Rister, Comanche Bondage (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press,) 1989.  This work, originally published in 1955 by the Arthur H. Clark Company, has a complete reprint of the Sarah Ann Horn narrative.  Also, thanks are expressed to Rowland and Workman descendant Jason Klascius-Fernandez for bringing the Sarah Ann Horn narrative to our attention.