On May 9th, F. G. Walther issued the first number of the Los Angeles Chronik, a German weekly journal that survived scarcely three months.
The tenth of May was another red-letter day for the Pacific Coast, rejoicing, as it did, in the completion of the Central Pacific at Promontory Point in Utah. There, with a silver hammer, Governor Stanford drove the historic gold spike into a tie of polished California laurel, thus consummating the vast work on the first trans-continental railroad. This event recalls the fact that, in the railway's construction, Chinese labor was extensively employed, and that in 1869 large numbers of the dead bodies of Celestials were gathered up and shipped to Sacramento for burial.
William J. Brodrick, after wandering in Peru and Chile, came to Los Angeles in 1869 and started as a stationer; then he opened an insurance office, and still later became interested in the Main Street Railway and the water company. On May 8th, 1877, Brodrick married Miss Laura E., daughter of Robert S. Carlisle. On October 18th, 1898, Brodrick died, having been identified with many important activities.
Hacks and omnibuses first came into use in 1869. Toward the end of May of that year, J. J. Reynolds, who had long been popular as a driver between Los Angeles and Wilmington, purchased a hack and started in business for himself, appealing to his "reputation for good driving and reliability" as a reasonable assurance that he would bring his patrons right side up to their scattered homes; and so much was he in demand, both in the city and its suburbs, that a competitor, J. Hewitt, in the latter part of June ordered a similar hack to come by steamer. It arrived in due time and was chronicled as a "luxurious vehicle." Hewitt regularly took up his stand in the morning in front of the Lafayette Hotel; and he also had an order slate at George Butler's livery-stable on Main Street.
During the sixties, Dr. T. H. Rose, who had relinquished the practice of medicine for the career of a pedagogue, commenced work as Principal of the Boys' Grammar School on Bath Street, and in 1869 was elected Superintendent of City Schools. He held this office but about a year, although he did not resign from educational work here until 1873. During his incumbency, he was Vice-Principal of the first Teachers' Institute ever held here, contributing largely toward the founding of the first high school and the general development of the schools prior to the time when Dr. Lucky, the first really professional teacher, assumed charge. On leaving Los Angeles, Dr. Rose became Principal of the school at Healdsburg, Sonoma County, where he married a Mrs. Jewell, the widow of an old-time, wealthy miner; but he was too sensitive and proud to live on her income and, much against her wishes, insisted on teaching to support himself. In 1874, he took charge of the high school at Petaluma, where the family of Mrs. Rose's first husband had lived; and the relationship of the two families probably led to Rose and his wife separating. Later, Dr. Rose went to the Sandwich Islands to teach, but by 1883, shortly before he died, he was back in Los Angeles, broken in health and spirit. Dr. Rose was an excellent teacher, a strict disciplinarian and a gentleman.
The retirement of Dr. Rose calls to mind a couple of years during which Los Angeles had no City School Superintendent. While Rose was Principal, a woman was in charge of the girls' department; and the relations between the schoolmaster and the schoolmistress were none too friendly. When Dr. Rose became Superintendent, the schoolma'am instantly disapproved of the choice and rebelled; and there being no law which authorized the governing of Los Angeles schools in any other manner than by trustees, the new Superintendent had no authority over his female colleague. The office of Superintendent of City Schools, consequently, remained vacant until 1873.
Dr. James S. Crawford had the honor, as far as I am aware, of being one of the first regular dentists to locate in Los Angeles. As an itinerant he had passed the winters of 1863, 1864 and 1865 in this city, afterward going east; and on his return to California in 1869 he settled in the Downey Block at Spring and Main streets, where he practiced until, on April 14th, 1912, he died in a Ventura County camp.
In 1864, the California Legislature, wishing to encourage the silk industry, offered a bounty of two hundred and fifty dollars for every plantation of five thousand mulberry trees of two years' growth, and a bounty of three hundred dollars for each one hundred thousand salable cocoons; and in three years an enormous number of mulberry trees, in various stages of growth, was registered. Prominent among silk-growers was Louis Prévost, who rather early had established here an extensive mulberry-tree nursery and near it a large cocoonery for the rearing of silk worms; and had planned, in 1869, the creation of a colony of silk-worms whose products would rival even those of his native belle France. The California Silk Center Association of Los Angeles was soon formed, and four thousand acres of the rancho once belonging to Juan Bandini, fourteen hundred and sixty acres of the Hartshorn Tract and three thousand one hundred and sixty-nine acres of the Jurupa, on the east side of the Santa Ana River, were purchased. That was in June or July; but on August 16th, in the midst of a dry season, Louis Prévost died, and the movement received a serious setback. To add to the reverses, the demand for silk-worm eggs fell off amazingly; while finally, to give the enterprise its death-blow, the Legislators, fearful that the State Treasury would be depleted through the payment of bounties, withdrew all State aid.
The Silk Center Association, therefore, failed; but the Southern California Colony Association bought all the land, paying for it something like three dollars and a half an acre. To many persons, the price was quite enough: old Louis Robidoux had long refused to list his portion for taxes, and some one had described much of the acreage as so dry that even coyotes, in crossing, took along their canteens for safety! A town called at first Jurupa, and later Riverside, was laid out; a fifty thousand-dollar ditch diverted the Santa Ana River to a place where Nature had failed to arrange for its flowing; and in a few months a number of families had settled beside the artificial waterway. Riversiders long had to travel back and forth to Los Angeles for most of their supplies (a stage, still in existence, being used by ordinary passengers), and this made a friendly as well as profitable business relation with the older and larger town; but experiments soon showing that oranges could grow in the arid soil, Riverside in course of time had something to sell as well as to buy.
Who was more familiar both to the youth of the town and to grown-ups than Nicolás Martinez, in summer the purveyor of cooling ice cream, in winter the vender of hot tamales! From morning till night, month in and month out during the sixties and seventies, Martinez paced the streets, his dark skin made still swarthier in contrast to his white costume—a shirt, scarcely tidy, together with pantaloons none too symmetrical and hanging down in generous folds at the waist. On his head, in true native fashion, he balanced in a small hooped tub what he had for sale; he spoke with a pronounced Latin accent, and his favorite method of announcing his presence was to bawl out his wares. The same receptacle, resting upon a round board with an opening to ease the load and covered with a bunch of cloths, served both to keep the tamales hot and the ice cream cool; while to dispense the latter, he carried in one hand a circular iron tray, in which were holes to accommodate three or four glasses. Further, for the convenience of the exacting youth of the town, he added a spoon to each cream-filled glass; and what stray speck of the ice was left on the spoon after the youngster had given it a parting lick, Nicolás, bawling anew to attract the next customer, fastidiously removed with his tobacco-stained fingers!