Billed as one who had "had the honor of appearing before King William IV. and all the principal crowned heads of Europe," Professor Courtier held forth with an exhibition of magic in the Temple Theatre; drawing the usual crowd of—royalty-haters!
In 1863, Santa Catalina was the scene of a gold-mining boom which soon came to naught, and through an odd enough occurrence. About April, Martin M. Kimberly and Daniel E. Way staked out a claim or two, and some miners agreed on a code of laws for operations in what was to be known as the San Pedro Mining District, the boundaries of which were to include all the islands of the County. Extensive claims, chiefly in Cherry and Joly valleys and on Mineral Hill, were recorded, and streets were laid out for a town to be known as Queen City; but just as the boom seemed likely to mature, the National Government stepped in and gave a quietus to the whole affair. With or without foundation, reports had reached the Federal authorities that the movement was but a cloak to establish there well-fortified Confederate headquarters for the fitting out and repair of privateers intended to prey upon the coast-wise traders; and on February 5th, 1864, Captain B. R. West, commanding the Fourth California Infantry, ordered practically all of the miners and prospectors to leave the island at once. The following September the National troops were withdrawn, and after the War the Federal authorities retained control of a point on the island deemed serviceable for lighthouse purposes.
In the spring of 1863, feeling ill, I went to San Francisco to consult Dr. Toland, who assured me that there was nothing serious the matter with me; but wishing to satisfy myself more thoroughly, I resorted to the same means that I dare say many others have adopted—a medical examination for life insurance! Bernhard Gattel, general agent of the Germania Life Insurance Company, at 315 Montgomery Street, wrote out my application; and on March 20th, a policy, numbered 1472, was issued, making me, since the fall of 1913, the oldest living policy-holder in the Southwest, and the twentieth oldest of the Germania's patrons in the world.
Californians, during that period of the War when the North was suffering a series of defeats, had little use for greenbacks. At one time, a dollar in currency was worth but thirty-five cents, though early in April it was accepted at sixty-five, late in August at ninety, and about the first of October at seventy-five cents; even interest-bearing gold notes being worth no more. This condition of the money market saw little change until some time in the seventies; and throughout the War greenbacks were handled like any other commodity. Frank Lecouvreur, in one of these periods, after getting judgment in a suit against Deputy Surveyor William Moore, for civil engineering services, and being paid some three hundred and eighty-three dollars in greenbacks, was disconcerted enough when he found that his currency would command but one hundred and eighty dollars in gold. San Francisco merchants realized fortunes when a decline occurred, as they bought their merchandise in the East for greenbacks and sold it on the Coast for gold. Los Angeles people, on the other hand, enjoyed no such benefit, as they brought their wares from San Francisco and were therefore obliged to liquidate in specie.
Among the worst tragedies in the early annals of Los Angeles, and by far the most dramatic, was the disaster on April 27th to the little steamer Ada Hancock. While on a second trip, in the harbor of San Pedro, to transfer to the Senator the remainder of the passengers bound for the North, the vessel careened, admitting cold water to the engine-room and exploding the boiler with such force that the boat was demolished to the water's edge; fragments being found on an island even half to three-quarters of a mile away. Such was the intensity of the blast and the area of the devastation that, of the fifty-three or more passengers known to have been on board, twenty-six at least perished. Fortunate indeed were those, including Phineas Banning, the owner, who survived with minor injuries, after being hurled many feet into the air. Among the dead were Thomas W. Seeley, Captain of the Senator; Joseph Bryant, Captain of the Ada Hancock; Dr. H. R. Myles, the druggist, who had been in partnership, opposite the Bella Union, with Dr. J. C. Welch, an arrival of the early fifties who died in 1869; Thomas H. Workman, Banning's chief clerk; Albert Sidney Johnston, Jr.; William T. B. Sanford, once Postmaster; Louis Schlesinger and William Ritchie, Wells Fargo's messenger, to whom was entrusted ten thousand dollars, which, as far as my memory goes, was lost. Two Mormon missionaries, en route to the Sandwich Islands, were also killed. Still another, who lost not only his treasure but his life, was Fred E. Kerlin of Fort Tejón: thirty thousand dollars which he carried with him, in greenbacks, disappeared as mysteriously as did the jewelry on the persons of others, and from these circumstances it was concluded that, even in the presence of Death, these bodies had been speedily robbed. Mrs. Banning and her mother, Mrs. Sanford, and a daughter of B. D. Wilson were among the wounded; while Miss M. Hereford, Mrs. Wilson's sister and the fiancée of Dr. Myles, was so severely injured that, after long suffering, she also died. Although the accident had happened about five o'clock in the afternoon, the awful news, casting a general and indescribable gloom, was not received in town until nearly eight o'clock; when Drs. Griffin and R. T. Hayes, together with an Army surgeon named Todd, hastened in carriages to the harbor where soldiers from Camp Drum had already asserted their authority. Many of the victims were buried near the beach at New San Pedro. While I was calling upon Mrs. Johnston to express my sympathy, the body of her son was brought in; and words cannot describe the pathos of the scene when she addressed the departed as if he were but asleep.
In June the Government demanded a formal profession of loyalty from teachers, when Miss Mary Hoyt and Miss Eliza Madigan took the oath, but Mrs. Thomas Foster and William McKee refused to do so. The incident provoked bitter criticism, and nothing being done to punish the recalcitrants, the Los Angeles Board of Education was charged with indifference as to the allegiance of its public servants.
During 1863 sectional feeling had grown so bitter on account of the War that no attempt was made to celebrate the Fourth of July in town. At Fort Latham, however, on the Ballona Ranch, the soldiers observed the day with an appropriate demonstration. By the end of July, troops had been sent from Drum Barracks to camp in the city—for the protection, so it was asserted, of Union men whose lives were said to be in danger, although some people claimed that this movement was rather for the purpose of intimidating certain leaders with known sympathy for the South. This military display gave Northerners more backbone; and on the twenty-sixth of September a Union mass-meeting was held on Main Street in front of the Lafayette Hotel.
Eldridge Edwards Hewitt, a Mexican War veteran who came to California in 1849 to search for gold, arrived in Los Angeles on July 31st and soon went on a wild-goose chase to the Weaver Diggings in Arizona, actually tramping with luggage over five hundred miles of the way! After his return, he did odd jobs for his board, working in a stationery and toy store on Main Street, kept by the Goldwater Brothers, Joe and Mike, who had arrived in the early sixties; and later he entered the employ of Phineas Banning at Wilmington, with whom he remained until the completion of the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad in 1870, when he became its Superintendent. When the Southern Pacific obtained control of that road in 1873, Hewitt was made Agent, and after the extension of the line from San Francisco he was appointed Division Superintendent. In that capacity he brought Senator Leland Stanford to me, as I shall elsewhere relate, to solicit H. Newmark and Company's patronage.
It was in 1863 that Dr. J. S. Griffin, father of East Los Angeles, purchased two thousand acres in that section, at fifty cents an acre; but even at that price he was only induced to buy it by necessity. Griffin wanted sheep-pasture, and had sought to secure some eight hundred acres of City land along the river; but as this would prevent other cattle or sheep from approaching the water to drink, the Common Council refused Griffin's bid on the smaller area of land and he was compelled to buy the mesa farther back. It seems to me that B. D. Wilson, J. G. Downey and Hancock M. Johnston, General Johnston's son, also had something to do with this transaction. Both Downey and Griffin avenues derived their names from the association of these two gentlemen with that section.
A smallpox epidemic which had started in the previous fall spread through Los Angeles in 1863, and owing possibly to the bad sanitary and climatic conditions much vigilance and time were required to eradicate it; compulsory vaccination not having been introduced (as it finally was at the suggestion of Dr. Walter Lindley) until the summer of 1876. The dread disease worked its ravages especially among the Mexicans and Indians, as many as a dozen of them dying in a single day; and these sufferers and their associates being under no quarantine, and even bathing ad libitum in the zanjas, the pest spread alarmingly. For a time fatalities were so frequent and the nature of the contagion so feared that it was difficult to persuade undertakers to bury the dead, even without funeral or other ceremony.