Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913. Harris Newmark
as Mellus's Row. Finally, Bell repurchased the property, retaining it during the remainder of his life; and the name was again changed. This famous stretch of adobe, familiarly known as The Row, housed many early shopkeepers, such as Ferner & Kraushaar, general merchants, Kalisher & Wartenberg, and Bachman & Bauman. The coming to Los Angeles of Mr. and Mrs. Rich enabled me to abandon La Rue's restaurant, as I was permitted to board with them. None the less, I missed my brother very much.
Everything at that time indicating that I was in for a commercial career, it was natural that I should become acquainted with the merchants then in Los Angeles. Some of the tradesmen, I dare say, I have forgotten; but a more or less distinct recollection remains of many, and to a few of them I shall allude.
Temple Street had not then been opened by Beaudry and Potts, although there was a little cul-de-sac extending west from Spring Street; and at the junction of what is now Spring and Temple streets, there was a two-story adobe building in which D. W. Alexander and Francis Mellus conducted a general merchandise business, and at one time acted as agents for Mellus & Howard of San Francisco. Mellus, who was born in Salem, Massachusetts, February 3d, 1824, came to the Coast in 1839, first landing at Santa Bárbara; and when I first met him he had married Adelaida, daughter of Don Santiago Johnson, and our fellow-townsman, James J. Mellus—familiarly known as plain Jim—was a baby. Alexander & Mellus had rather an extensive business in the early days, bringing goods by sailing vessel around Cape Horn, and exchanging them for hides and tallow which were carried back East by the returning merchantmen. They had operated more or less extensively even some years before California was ceded to the United States; but competition from a new source forced these well-established merchants to retire. With the advent of more frequent, although still irregular service between San Francisco and the South, and the influx of more white people, a number of new stores started here bringing merchandise from the Northern market, while San Francisco buyers began to outbid Alexander & Mellus for the local supply of hides and tallow. This so revolutionized the methods under which this tradition-bound old concern operated that, by 1858, it had succumbed to the inevitable, and the business passed into the hands of Johnson & Allanson, a firm made up of Charles R. Johnson, soon to be elected County Clerk, and Horace S. Allanson.
Most of the commercial activity in this period was carried on north of First Street. The native population inhabited Sonora Town, for the most part a collection of adobes, named after the Mexican state whence came many of our people; there was a contingent from other parts of Mexico; and a small sprinkling of South Americans from Chile and Peru. Among this Spanish-speaking people quite a business was done by Latin-American storekeepers. It followed, naturally enough, that they dealt in all kinds of Mexican goods.
One of the very few white men in this district was José Mascarel (a powerfully-built French sea-captain and master of the ship that brought Don Luis Vignes to the Southland), who settled in Los Angeles in 1844, marrying an Indian woman. He had come with Prudhomme and others; and under Captain Henseley had taken part in the military events at San Bartolo and the Mesa. By 1865, when he was Mayor of the city, he had already accumulated a number of important real estate holdings and owned, with another Frenchman, Juan Barri, a baker, the block extending east on the south side of Commercial Street, from Main to Los Angeles, which had been built in 1861 to take the place of several old adobes. This the owners later divided, Mascarel taking the southeast corner of Commercial and Main streets, and Barri the southwest corner of Commercial and Los Angeles streets. In the seventies, I. W. Hellman bought the Mascarel corner, and in 1883, the Farmers & Merchants Bank moved to that location, where it remained until the institution purchased the southwest corner of Fourth and Main streets, for the erection of its own building.
Andrés Ramirez was another Sonora Town merchant. He had come from Mexico in 1844, and sold general merchandise in what, for a while, was dubbed the Street of the Maids. Later, this was better known as Upper Main Street; and still later it was called San Fernando Street.
Louis Abarca was a tradesman and a neighbor of Ramirez. Prosperous until the advent of the pioneer, he little by little became poorer, and finally withdrew from business.
Juan Bernard, a native of French Switzerland, whose daughter married D. Botiller, now an important landowner, came to California by way of the Horn, in search of the precious metal, preceding me to this land of sunshine. For awhile, he had a brickyard on Buena Vista Street; but in the late seventies, soon after marrying Señorita Susana Machado, daughter of Don Agustin Machado, he bought a vineyard on Alameda Street, picturesquely enclosed by a high adobe or brick wall much after the fashion of a European château. He also came to own the site of the Natick House. A clever linguist and a man of attractive personality, he passed away in 1889.
An American by the name of George Walters lived on Upper Main Street, among the denizens of which locality he was an influential person. Born at New Orleans as early as 1809, Walters had trapped and traded in the Rocky Mountains, then teamed for awhile between Santa Fé and neighboring points. Near the end of 1844, he left New Mexico in company with James Waters, Jim Beckwith and other travelers, finally reaching Los Angeles. Walters, who settled in San Bernardino, was at the Chino Ranch, with B. D. Wilson and Louis Robidoux, when so many Americans were made prisoners.
Julian Chavez, after whom Chavez Street is named, was here in 1853. If he was not native-born, he came here at a very early day. He owned a stretch of many acres, about a mile northeast of Los Angeles. He was a good, honest citizen, and is worthy of recollection.
Ramón Alexander, a Frenchman often confused with David Alexander, came to Los Angeles before 1850, while it was still a mere Mexican village. Pioneers remember him especially as the builder of the long-famous Round House, on Main Street, and as one who also for some time kept a saloon near Requena Street. Alexander's wife was a Señorita Valdez. He died in 1870.
Antoine Laborie was another Frenchman here before the beginning of the fifties. He continued to live in Los Angeles till at least the late seventies. A fellow-countryman, B. Dubordieu, had a bakery in Sonora Town.
Philip Rheim, the good-natured German to whom I have referred, had a little store and saloon, before I came, called Los dos Amigos, as the proprietor of which he was known as Don Felipe. Nor was this title amiss; for Felipe married a native woman and, German though he had been, he gradually became, like so many others who had mated in the same way, more and more Californian in manners and customs.
A month after I arrived here, John Behn, who had a grocery business at the northeast corner of First and Los Angeles streets, retired. He had come to Los Angeles from Baden in 1848, and, after forming one or two partnerships, had sold out to Lorenzo Leck, a German Dane, who reached here in November, 1849, and whose son, Henry von der Leck, married a daughter of Tom Mott and is living at San Juan Capistrano. Leck opened his own store in 1854, and despite the trials to which he was to be subjected, he was able, in 1868, to pay John Schumacher three thousand dollars for a lot on Main Street. Leck had a liking for the spectacular; and in the November previous to my arrival was active, as I have been told, with Goller and Nordholt, in organizing the first political procession seen in Los Angeles. The election of Pierce was the incentive, and there were gorgeous transparencies provided for the event. It was on this occasion that a popular local character, George the Baker, burned himself badly while trying to fire off the diminutive cannon borrowed from the Spanish padre for the event.
In the one-story adobe of Mascarel and Barri, on the corner of Commercial and Main streets, now the site of the United States National Bank, an Irishman named Samuel G. Arbuckle, who had come here in 1850 and was associated for a short time with S. Lazard, conducted a dry goods store. From 1852 to 1856, Arbuckle was City Treasurer.
In the same building, and adjoining Arbuckle's, John Jones, father of Mrs. J. B. Lankershim and M. G. Jones, carried on a wholesale grocery business. Jones had left England for Australia, when forty-seven years old, and a year later touched the coast of California at Monterey and came to Los Angeles. Twice a year, Jones went north in a schooner, for the purpose of replenishing his stock; and after making his purchases and having the boat loaded, he would return to Los Angeles. Sometimes he traveled with the round-bellied, short and jolly Captain Morton who recalled his illustrious prototype, Wouter van Twiller, so humorously described by Washington Irving