Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913. Harris Newmark
in Friend Dorsey's pistol, and was so unconscious of danger that my temerity seemed to impress him. I believe, in fact, that he must have found the experience novel. However that may be, the next day he called and paid his bill.
In relating this circumstance to friends, I was enlightened as to Dorsey's peculiar propensities and convinced that youth and ignorance alone had saved me from disaster. In other words, he let me go, as it were, on probation. Dorsey himself was killed sometime later by his father-in-law, William Rubottom, who had come to El Monte with Ezekiel Rubottom, in 1852 or 1853. After quarreling with Rubottom, Dorsey, who was not a bad fellow, but of a fiery temper, had entered the yard with a knife in his hand; and Rubottom had threatened to shoot him if he came any nearer. The son-in-law continued to advance; and Rubottom shot him dead. M. J. Newmark, Rubottom's attorney, who had been summoned to El Monte for consultation as to Dorsey's treatment of Rubottom's daughter, was present at the fatal moment and witnessed the shooting affray.
Uncle Billy Rubottom, as he was familiarly called, came to Los Angeles County after losing heavily through the bursting of Yuba Dam and was one of the founders of Spadra. He named the settlement, laid out on a part of the San José rancho, after his home town, Spadra Bluffs in Arkansas, and opened a hotel which he made locally famous, during a decade and a half, for barbecues and similar events, giving personal attention (usually while in shirt-sleeves) to his many guests. In his declining years, Uncle Billy lived with Kewen H. Dorsey, his grandson, who was also prominent in masonic circles.
CHAPTER XI
THE RUSH FOR GOLD
1855
As I have already related, I made fifteen hundred dollars in a few months, and in January, 1855, my brother advised me to form a partnership with men of maturer years. In this I acquiesced. He thereupon helped to organize the firm of Rich, Newmark & Company, consisting of Elias Laventhal (who reached here in 1854 and died on January 20th, 1902), Jacob Rich and myself. Rich was to be the San Francisco resident partner, while Laventhal and I undertook the management of the business in Los Angeles. We prospered from the beginning, deriving much benefit from our San Francisco representation which resulted in our building up something of a wholesale business.
In the early fifties, Los Angeles was the meeting-place of a Board of Land Commissioners appointed by the National Government to settle land-claims and to prepare the way for that granting of patents to owners of Southern California ranches which later awakened from time to time such interest here. This interest was largely due to the fact that the Mexican authorities, in numerous instances, had made the same grant to different persons, often confusing matters badly. Cameron E. Thom, then Deputy Land Agent, took testimony for the Commissioners. In 1855, this Board completed its labors. The members were Hiland Hall (later Governor of Vermont,) Harry I. Thornton and Thompson Campbell; and during the season they were here, these Land Commissioners formed no unimportant part of the Los Angeles legal world.
Thomas A. Delano, whose name is perpetuated in our local geography, was a sailor who came to Los Angeles on January 4th, 1855, after which, for fifteen or sixteen years, he engaged in freighting. He married Señorita Soledad, daughter of John C. Vejar, the well-known Spanish Californian.
Slowness and uncertainty of mail delivery in our first decades affected often vital interests, as is shown in the case of the half-breed Alvitre who, as I have said, was sentenced to be executed. One reason why the Vigilantes, headed by Mayor Foster, despatched Brown was the expectation that both he and Alvitre would get a stay from higher authority; and sure enough, a stay was granted Alvitre, but the document was delayed in transit until the murderer, on January 12th, 1855, had forfeited his life! Curiously enough, another Alvitre—an aged Californian named José Claudio—also of El Monte, but six years later atrociously murdered his aged wife; and on April 28th, 1861, he was hanged. The lynchers placed him on a horse under a tree, and then drove the animal away, leaving him suspended from a limb.
Washington's Birthday, in 1855, was made merrier by festivities conducted under the auspices of the City Guards, of which W. W. Twist—a grocer and commission merchant at Beaudry's Block, Aliso Street, and afterward in partnership with Casildo Aguilar—was Captain. The same organization gave its first anniversary ball in May. Twist was a Ranger, or member of the volunteer mounted police; and it was he who, in March, 1857, formed the first rifle company. In the early sixties, he was identified with the sheriff's office, after which, venturing into Mexico, he was killed.
Henry C. G. Schaeffer came to Los Angeles on March 16th, 1855, and opened the first gunsmith shop in a little adobe on the east side of Los Angeles Street near Commercial, which he soon surrounded with an attractive flower garden. A year after Schaeffer came, he was followed by another gunsmith, August Stoermer. Schaeffer continued, however, to sell and mend guns and to cultivate flowers; and twenty years later found him on Wilmington Street, near New Commercial, still encircled by one of the choicest collections of flowers in the city, and the first to have brought here the night-blooming cereus. With more than regret, therefore, I must record that, in the middle seventies, this warm-hearted friend of children, so deserving of the good will of everyone, committed suicide.
Gold was discovered at Havilah, Kern County, in 1854; and by the early spring of 1855 exaggerated accounts of the find had spread broadcast over the entire State. Yarn after yarn passed from mouth to mouth, one of the most extravagant of the reports being that a Mexican doctor and alchemist suddenly rode into Mariposa from the hills, where he had found a gulch paved with gold, his horse and himself being fairly covered with bags of nuggets. The rush by gold-seekers on their way from the North to Los Angeles (the Southern gateway to the fields) began in January, 1855, and continued a couple of years, every steamer being loaded far beyond the safety limit; and soon miles of the rough highways leading to the mines were covered with every conceivable form of vehicle and struggling animals, as well as with thousands of footsore prospectors, unable to command transportation at any price. For awhile, ten, twelve and even fifteen per cent. interest a month was offered for small amounts of money by those of the prospectors who needed assistance, a rate based on the calculation that a wide-awake digger would be sure of eight to ten dollars a day, and that with such returns one should certainly be satisfied. This time the excitement was a little too much for the Los Angeles editors to ignore; and in March the publisher of the Southern Californian, himself losing his balance, issued an "extra" with these startling announcements:
STOP THE PRESS!
GLORIOUS NEWS FROM KERN RIVER!
BRING OUT THE BIG GUN!
There are a thousand gulches rich with gold, and room for ten thousand miners! Miners average $50.00 a day. One man with his own hands took out $160.00 in a day. Five men in ten days took out $4,500.00.
The affair proved, however, a ridiculous failure; and William Marsh, an old Los Angeles settler and a very decent chap, who conducted a store at Havilah, was among those who suffered heavy loss. Although some low-grade ore was found, it was generally not in paying quantities. The dispersion of this adventurous mass of humanity brought to Los Angeles many undesirable people, among them gamblers and desperadoes, who flocked in the wake of the gold-diggers, making another increase in the rough element. Before long, four men were fatally shot and half a dozen wounded near the Plaza, one Sunday night.
When the excitement about the gold-finds along the Kern River was at its height, Frank Lecouvreur arrived here, March 6th, on the steamship America, lured by reports then current in San Francisco. To save the fare of five dollars, he trudged for ten hours all the way from San Pedro, carrying on his shoulders forty pounds of baggage; but on putting up at the United States Hotel, then recently started, he was dissuaded by some experienced miners from venturing farther up the country. Soon after, he met a fellow-countryman from Königsberg, named Arnold, who induced him, on account of his needy condition, to take work in his saloon; but disliking his duties and the rather frequent demands upon his nervous system through being shot at, several times, by patrons not exactly satisfied with Lecouvreur's locomotion and his method of serving, the young German quit the job and went to work