Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913. Harris Newmark
his creed. Recalling this efficient organization, I may say that I believe myself to be one of but two survivors among the charter members—S. Lazard being the other.
Kiln Messer was another pioneer who came around the Horn about that time, although he arrived here from Germany a year later than I did; and during his voyage, he had a trying experience in a shipwreck off Cape Verde where, with his comrades, he had to wait a couple of months before another vessel could be signaled. Even then he could get no farther toward his destination—the Golden Gate—than Rio de Janeiro, where he was delayed five or six months more. Finally reaching San Francisco, he took to mining; but, weakened by fever (an experience common among the gold-seekers), he made his way to Los Angeles. After brewing beer for a while at the corner of Third and Main streets, Messer bought a twenty-acre vineyard which, in 1857, he increased by another purchase to forty-five or fifty acres; and it was his good fortune that this property was so located as to be needed by the Santa Fé Railroad, in 1888, as a terminal. Toward the end of the seventies, Messer, moderately well-to-do, was a grocer at the corner of Rose and First streets; and about 1885, he retired.
Joseph Newmark brought with him to Los Angeles a Chinese servant, to whom he paid one hundred dollars a month; and, as far as I know, this Mongolian was the first to come to our city. This domestic item has additional interest, perhaps, because it was but five or six years before that the first Chinese to emigrate from the Celestial Kingdom to California—two men and a lone woman—had come to San Francisco in the ship Eagle from Hong Kong. A year later, there were half a hundred Chinamen in the territory, while at the end of still another year, during the gold excitement, nearly a thousand Chinese entered the Golden Gate.
The housekeeping experiences of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Newmark remind me that it was not easy in the early days to get satisfactory domestic service. Indians, negroes and sometimes Mexicans were employed, until the arrival of more Chinese and the coming of white girls. Joseph Newmark, when I lived with his family, employed, in addition to the Chinaman, an Indian named Pedro who had come with his wife from Temécula and whose remuneration was fifty cents a day; and these servants attended to most of the household duties. The annual fiesta at Temécula used to attract Pedro and his better-half; and while they were absent, the Newmark girls did the work.
My new home was very congenial, not the least of its attractions being the family associations at meal-time. The opportunities for obtaining a variety of food were not as good perhaps as they are to-day, and yet some delicacies were more in evidence. Among these I might mention wild game and chickens. Turkeys, of all poultry, were the scarcest and most-prized. All in all, our ordinary fare has not changed so much except in the use of mutton, certain vegetables, ice and a few dainties.
There was no extravagance in the furnishing of pioneer homes. Few people coming to Los Angeles expected to locate permanently; they usually planned to accumulate a small competency and then return to their native heaths. In consequence, little attention was paid to quality or styles, and it is hard to convey a comprehensive idea of the prevailing lack of ordinary comforts. For many years the inner walls of adobes were whitewashed—a method of mural finish not the most agreeable, since the coating so easily "came off;" and only in the later periods of frame houses, did we have kalsomined and hard-finished wall surfaces. Just when papered and tinted walls came in, I do not remember; but they were long delayed. Furniture was plain and none too plentiful; and glassware and tableware were of an inferior grade.
Certain vegetables were abundant, truck-gardening having been introduced here in the early fifties by Andrew Briswalter, an Alsatian by birth and an original character. He first operated on San Pedro Street, where he rented a tract of land and peddled his vegetables in a wheelbarrow, charging big prices. So quickly did he prosper that he was soon able to buy a piece of land, as well as a horse and wagon. When he died, in the eighties, he bequeathed a large estate, consisting of City and County acreage and lots, in the disposition of which he unrighteously cut off his only niece. Playa del Rey was later built on some of this land. Acres of fruit trees, fronting on Main, in the neighborhood of the present Ninth and Tenth streets, and extending far in an easterly direction, formed another part of his holding. It was on this land that Briswalter lived until his last illness. He bought this tract from O. W. Childs, it having originally belonged to H. C. Cardwell, a son-in-law of William Wolfskill—the same Cardwell who introduced here, on January 7th, 1856, the heretofore unknown seedling strawberries.
One Mumus was in the field nearly as soon as Briswalter. A few years later, Chinese vegetable men came to monopolize this trade. Most of their gardens neighbored on what is now Figueroa Street, north of Pico; and then, as now, they peddled their wares from wagons. Wild celery grew in quantities around the zanjas, but was not much liked. Cultivated celery, on the other hand, was in demand and was brought from the North, whence we also imported most of our cabbage, cauliflower and asparagus. But after a while, the Chinese also cultivated celery; and when, in the nineties, E. A. Curtis, D. E. Smeltzer and others failed in an effort to grow celery, Curtis fell back on the Chinese gardeners. The Orientals, though pestered by envious workmen, finally made a success of the industry, helping to establish what is now a most important local agricultural activity.
These Chinese vegetable gardeners, by the way, came to practice a trick[11] designed to reduce their expenses, and at which they were sometimes caught. Having bargained with the authorities for a small quantity of water, they would cut the zanjas, while the Zanjero or his assistants slept, steal the additional water needed, and, before the arrival of the Zanjero at daybreak, close the openings!
J. Wesley Potts was an early arrival, having tramped across the Plains all the way from Texas, in 1852, reaching Los Angeles in September. At first, he could obtain nothing to do but haul dirt in a hand-cart for the spasmodic patching-up of the streets; but when he had earned five or six dollars in that way, he took to peddling fruit, first carrying it around in a basket. Then he had a fruit stand. Getting the gold-fever, however, Potts went to the mines; but despairing at last of realizing anything there, he returned to Los Angeles and raised vegetables, introducing, among other things, the first locally-grown sweet potatoes put on the market—a stroke of enterprise recalling J. E. Pleasants's early venture in cultivating garden pease. Later he was widely known as a "weather prophet"—with predictions quite as likely to be worthless as to come true.
The prickly pear, the fruit of the cactus, was common in early Los Angeles. It grew in profusion all over this Southern country, but particularly so around San Gabriel at which place it was found in almost obstructing quantities; and prickly pears bordered the gardens of the Round House where they were plucked by visitors. Ugly enough things to handle, they were, nevertheless, full of juice, and proved refreshing and palatable when properly peeled. Pomegranates and quinces were also numerous, but they were not cultivated for the trade. Sycamore and oak trees were seen here and there, while the willow was evident in almost jungle profuseness, especially around river banks and along the borders of lanes. Wild mustard charmingly variegated the landscape and chaparral obscured many of the hills and rising ground. In winter, the ground was thickly covered with burr-clover and the poetically-named alfilaria.
Writing of vegetables and fruit, I naturally think of one of California's most popular products, the sandía or watermelon, and of its plenteousness in those more monotonous days when many and many a carreta load was brought to the indulging town. The melons were sold direct from the vehicles, as well as in stores, and the street seemed to be the principal place for the consumption of the luscious fruit. It was a very common sight to see Indians and others sitting along the roads, their faces buried in the green-pink depths. Some old-timers troubled with diseases of the kidney, believing that there was virtue in watermelon seeds, boiled them and used the tea medicinally.
Fish, caught at San Pedro and peddled around town, was a favorite item of food during the cooler months of the year. The pescadero, or vender, used a loud fish horn, whose deep but not melodious tones announced to the expectant housewife that he was at hand with a load of sea-food. Owing to the poorer facilities for catching them, only a few varieties of deep-water fish, such as barracuda, yellowtail and rockfish were sold.
Somewhere I have seen it stated that, in 1854, O. W. Childs brought the first hive of bees from San Francisco at a cost of one hundred and fifty dollars;