On Saturday afternoon, May 18th, 1872, a public meeting was held in the Los Angeles Court-house. Governor Downey called the assembly to order; whereupon H. K. S. O'Melveny was elected President and Major Ben C. Truman, Secretary. Speeches were made by Downey, Phineas Banning, B. D. Wilson, E. J. C. Kewen and C. H. Larrabee; and resolutions were adopted pledging financial assistance from the County, provided the road was constructed within a given time. A Committee was then appointed to seek general information concerning railroads likely to extend their lines to Los Angeles; and on that Committee I had the honor of serving with F. P. F. Temple, A. F. Coronel, H. K. S. O'Melveny, J. G. Downey, S. B. Caswell, J. M. Griffith, Henry Dalton, Andrés Pico, L. J. Rose, General George Stoneman and D. W. Alexander. A few days later, Wilson, Rose and W. R. Olden of Anaheim were sent to San Francisco to discuss terms with the Southern Pacific; and when they returned, they brought with them Stanford's representative, Hyde. Temple, O'Melveny and I were made a special committee to confer with Hyde in drawing up ordinances for the County; and these statutes were immediately passed by the Supervisors. The Southern Pacific agreed to build fifty miles of its main trunk line through the County, with a branch line to Anaheim; and the County, among other conditions, was to dispose of its stock in the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad to the Southern Pacific Company.
When all this matter was presented to the people, the opposition was even greater than in the campaign of 1868. One newspaper—the Evening Express—while declaring that "railway companies are soulless corporations, invariably selfish, with a love for money," even maintained that "because they are rich, they have no more right to build to us than has Governor Downey to build our schoolhouses." Public addresses were made to excited, demonstrative audiences by Henry T. Hazard, R. M. Widney and others who favored the Southern Pacific. On the evening of November 4th, or the night before the election, the Southern Pacific adherents held a torchlight procession and a mass-meeting, at the same time illuminating the pueblo with the customary bonfires. When the vote was finally counted, it was found that the Southern Pacific had won by a big majority; and thus was made the first concession to the railroad which has been of such paramount importance in the development of this section of the State.
In 1872, Nathaniel C. Carter, who boasted that he made for the Government the first American flag woven by machinery, purchased and settled upon a part of the Flores rancho near San Gabriel. Through wide advertising, Carter attracted his Massachusetts friends to this section; and in 1874 he started the Carter excursions and brought train-loads of people to Los Angeles.
Terminating a series of wanderings by sea and by land, during which he had visited California in 1849, John Lang, father of Gustav J. (once a Police Commissioner), came to Los Angeles for permanent residence in 1872, bringing a neat little pile of gold. With part of his savings he purchased the five acres since known as the Laurel Tract on Sixteenth Street, where he planted an orchard, and some of the balance he put into a loan for which, against his will, he had to take over the lot on Spring Street between Second and Third where the Lang Building now stands. Soon after his advent here, Lang found himself one of four persons of the same name, which brought about such confusion between him, the pioneer at Lang's Station and two others, that the bank always labelled him "Lang No. 1," while it called the station master "Lang No. 2." In 1866, Lang had married, in Victoria, Mrs. Rosine Everhardt, a sister of Mrs. Kiln Messer; and his wife refusing to live at the lonesome ranch, Lang bought, for four hundred dollars, the lot on Fort Street on which Tally's Theater now stands, and built there a modest home from which he went out daily to visit his orchard. Being of an exceedingly studious turn of mind, Lang devoted his spare time to profitable reading; and to such an extent had he secluded himself that, when he died, on December 9th, 1900, he had passed full thirty years here without having seen Santa Monica or Pasadena. Nor had he entered the courtroom more than once, and then only when compelled to go there to release some property seized upon for taxes remaining unpaid by one of the other John Langs. Regarded by his family as idealistic and kind-hearted, John Lang was really such a hermit that only with difficulty were friends enough found who could properly serve as pall-bearers.
On June 2d, B. F. Ramirez and others launched the Spanish newspaper, La Cronica, from the control of which Ramirez soon retired to make way for E. F. de Celis. Under the latter's leadership, the paper became notable as a Coast organ for the Latin race. Almost simultaneously, A. J. King and A. Waite published their City Directory.
On the seventeenth of July our family circle was gladdened by the wedding festivities of Kaspare Cohn and Miss Hulda, sister of M. A. Newmark. The bride had been living with us for some time as a member of our family.
I have spoken of the attempt made, in 1859, to found a Public Library. In 1872, there was another agitation that led to a mass-meeting on December 7th, in the old Merced Theatre on Main Street; and among others present were Judge Ygnácio Sepúlveda, General George H. Stoneman, Governor John G. Downey, Henry Kirk White Bent, S. B. Caswell, W. J. Brodrick, Colonel G. H. Smith, W. B. Lawlor and myself. The Los Angeles Library Association was formed; and Downey, Bent, Brodrick, Caswell and I were appointed to canvas for funds and donations of books. Fifty dollars was charged for a life membership, and five dollars for yearly privileges; and besides these subscriptions, donations and loans of books maintained the Library. The institution was established in four small, dark rooms of the old Downey Block on Temple and Spring streets, where the Federal Building now stands, and where the Times, then the youngest newspaper in Los Angeles, was later housed; and there J. C. Littlefield acted as the first Librarian. In 1874, the State Legislature passed an enabling act for a Public Library in Los Angeles, and from that time on public funds contributed to the support of the worthy undertaking.
On January 1st, 1873, M. A. Newmark, who had come to Los Angeles eight years before, was admitted into partnership with H. Newmark & Company; and three years later, on February 27th, he married Miss Harriet, daughter of J. P. Newmark. Samuel Cohn having died, the associates then were: Kaspare Cohn, M. J. Newmark, M. A. Newmark and myself.
On February 1st, 1873, two job printers, Yarnell & Caystile, who had opened a little shop at 14 Commercial Street, began to issue a diminutive paper called the Weekly Mirror, with four pages but ten by thirteen inches in size and three columns to the page; and this miniature news-sheet, falling wet from the press every Saturday, was distributed free. Success greeted the advertising venture and the journal was known as the smallest newspaper on the Coast. A month later, William M. Brown joined the firm, thenceforth called Yarnell, Caystile & Brown. On March 19th, the publishers added a column to each page, announcing, rather prophetically perhaps, their intention of attaining a greatness that should know no obstacle or limit. In November, the Mirror was transferred to a building on Temple Street, near the Downey Block, erected for its special needs; and there it continued to be published until, in 1887, it was housed with the Times.
Nels Williamson, to whom I have referred, married a native Californian, and their eldest daughter, Mariana, in 1873 became the wife of António Franco Coronel, the gay couple settling in one of the old pueblo adobes on the present site of Bishop & Company's factory; and there they were visited by Helen Hunt Jackson when she came here in the early eighties. In 1886, they moved opposite to the home that Coronel built on the southwest corner of Seventh Street and Central Avenue. Educated here at the public and the Sisters' schools, Mrs. Coronel was a recognized leader in local society, proving very serviceable in the preparation of Ramona and receiving, in return, due acknowledgment from the distinguished authoress who presented her with the first copy of the book published.