One little incident may be worth relating. While I was standing in the midst of the machinery one day, the gendarmes suddenly began to force the crowd back, and on retreating with the rest, I saw a group of ladies and gentlemen approaching. It was soon whispered that they were the Empress Eugénie and her suite, and that we had been commanded to retire in order to permit her Majesty to get a better view of a new railroad coach that she desired to inspect.
Not long ago I was reading of a trying ordeal in the life of Elihu B. Washburne, American Minister to France, who, having unluckily removed his shoe at a Court dinner, was compelled to rise with the company on the sudden appearance of royalty, and to step back with a stockinged foot! The incident recalled an experience of my own in London. I had ordered from a certain shoemaker in Berlin a pair of patent-leather gaiters which I wore for the first time when I went to Covent Garden with an old friend and his wife. It was a very warm evening and the performance had not progressed far before it became evident that the shoes were too small. I was, in fact, nearly overcome with pain, and in my desperation removed the gaiters (when the lights were low), quietly shoved them under the seat and sat out the rest of the performance with a fair degree of comfort and composure. Imagine my consternation, however, when I sought to put the shoes on again and found the operation almost impossible! The curtain fell while I was explaining and apologizing to my friends; and nearly every light was extinguished before I was ready to emerge from the famous opera house and limp to a waiting carriage.
A trifling event also lingers among the memories of this revisit to my native place. While journeying towards Loebau in a stage, I happened to mention that I had married since settling in America; whereupon one of my fellow-passengers inquired whether my wife was white, brown or black?
Major Ben C. Truman was President Johnson's private secretary until he was appointed, in 1866, special agent for the Post Office department on the Pacific Coast. He came to Los Angeles in February, 1867, to look after postal matters in Southern California and Arizona, but more particularly to reëstablish, between Los Angeles and points in New Mexico, the old Butterfield Route which had been discontinued on account of the War. Truman opened post offices at a number of places in Los Angeles County. On December 8th, 1869, the Major married Miss Augusta Mallard, daughter of Judge J. S. Mallard. From July, 1873, until the late summer of 1877, he controlled the Los Angeles Star, contributing to its columns many excellent sketches of early life in Southern California, some of which were incorporated in one or more substantial volumes; and of all the pioneer journalists here, it is probable that none have surpassed this affable gentleman in brilliancy and genial, kindly touch. Among Truman's books is an illustrated work entitled Semi-Tropical California, dedicated, with a Dominus vobiscum, to Phineas Banning and published in San Francisco, 1874; while another volume, issued seven years later, is devoted to Occidental Sketches.
A fire, starting in Bell's Block on Los Angeles Street, on July 13th, during my absence from the city, destroyed property to the value of sixty-four thousand dollars; and the same season, S. Lazard & Company moved their dry goods store from Bell's Row to Wolfskill's building on Main Street, opposite the Bella Union hotel.
Germain Pellissier, a Frenchman from the Hautes-Alpes, came to Los Angeles in August, and for twenty-eight years lived at what is now the corner of Seventh and Olive streets. Then the land was in the country; but by 1888, Pellissier had built the block that bears his name. On settling here, Pellissier went into sheep-raising, scattering stock in Kern and Ventura counties, and importing sheep from France and Australia in order to improve his breed; and from one ram alone in a year, as he demonstrated to some doubting challengers, he clipped sixty-two and a half pounds of wool.
P. Beaudry began to invest in hill property in 1867, at once improving the steep hillside of New High Street, near Sonora Town, which he bought in, at sheriff's sale, for fifty-five dollars. Afterward, Beaudry purchased some twenty acres between Second, Fourth, Charity and Hill streets, for which he paid five hundred and seventeen dollars; and when he had subdivided this into eighty lots, he cleared about thirty thousand dollars. Thirty-nine acres, between Fourth and Sixth, and Pearl and Charity streets, he finally disposed of at a profit, it is said, of over fifty thousand dollars.
John G. Downey having subdivided Nieto's rancho, Santa Gertrudis, the little town of Downey, which he named, soon enjoyed such a boom that sleepy Los Angeles began to sit up and take notice. Among the early residents was E. M. Sanford, a son-in-law of General John W. Gordon, of Georgia. A short time before the founding of Downey, a small place named Galatin had been started near by, but the flood of 1868 caused our otherwise dry rivers to change their courses, and Galatin was washed away. This subdividing at once stimulated the coming of land and home-seekers, increased the spirit of enterprise and brought money into circulation.
Soon afterward, Phineas Banning renewed the agitation to connect Los Angeles with Wilmington by rail. He petitioned the County to assist the enterprise, but the larger taxpayers, backed by the over-conservative farmers, still opposed the scheme, tooth and nail, until it finally took all of Banning's influence to carry the project through to a successful termination.
George S. Patton, whose father, Colonel Patton of the Confederate Army, was killed at Winchester, September 19th, 1864, is a nephew of Andrew Glassell and the oldest of four children who came to Los Angeles with their mother and her father, Andrew Glassell, Sr., in 1867. Educated in the public schools of Los Angeles, Patton afterward attended the Virginia Military Institute, where Stonewall Jackson had been a professor, returning to Los Angeles in September, 1877, when he entered the law firm of Glassell, Smith & Patton. In 1884, he married Miss Ruth, youngest daughter of B. D. Wilson, after which he retired to private life. One of Patton's sisters married Tom Brown; another sister became the wife of the popular physician, Dr. W. Le Moyne Wills. In 1871, his mother, relict of Colonel George S. Patton, married her kinsman, Colonel George H. Smith.