Greek George
Nicolás Martinez
George H. Peck, County Superintendent of Schools between 1874 and 1876, was a Vermonter who came in 1869 and bought five hundred acres of land near El Monte. On his first visit to the Coast, Peck handled hay in San Francisco when it was worth two hundred dollars a ton; then he mined a little; and subsequently he opened the first public school in Sacramento and the first industrial school in San Francisco.
Andrew A. Weinschank, a veteran of the Battle of Vera Cruz who came to Los Angeles in 1856, died on February 16th, 1874. For a while, he sold home-made sauerkraut, pickles and condiments, and was one of a well-known family in the German pioneer group here. Carrie, one of Weinschank's daughters, married a circus man named Lee who made periodical visits to Los Angeles, erecting a small tent, at first somewhere in the neighborhood of the present Times Building, in which to conduct his show. Later, Polly Lee became a rider in the circus and with her father electrified the youth of the town when Lee, in the character of Dick Turpin, and mounted on his charger, Black Bess, carried off the weeping Polly to his den of freebooters. A son, Frank A. Weinschank, was a pioneer plumber.
In the early seventies, while the Southern Pacific Railway was building from San Francisco to San José, some twelve or fifteen bandits, carousing at a country dance in the Mexican settlement, Panamá (about six miles south of Bakersfield) planned to cross the mountains and hold up the pay-car. They were unsuccessful; whereupon, they turned their attention to the village of Tres Pinos, robbed several store-keepers and killed three or four men. They were next heard of at little Kingston, in Tulare County, where they plundered practically the whole town. Then they once more disappeared.
Presently various clues pointed to the identity of the chief bandido as one Tibúrcio Vasquez, born in Monterey in the thirties, who had taken to the life of an outlaw because, as he fantastically said, some Gringos had insolently danced off with the prettiest girls at fandangos, among them being his sweetheart whom an American had wronged. With the exception of his Lieutenant, Chavez, he trusted no one, and when he moved from place to place, Chavez alone accompanied him. In each new field he recruited a new gang, and he never slept in camp with his followers.
Although trailed by several sheriffs, Vasquez escaped to Southern California leading off the wife of one of his associates—a bit of gallantry that contributed to his undoing, as the irate husband at once gave the officers much information concerning Vasquez's life and methods. One day in the spring of 1874, Vasquez and three of his companions appeared at the ranch of Alessandro Repetto, nine miles from town, disguised as sheep-shearers. The following morning, while the inmates of the ranch-house were at breakfast, the highwaymen entered the room and held up the defenceless household. Vasquez informed Repetto that he was organizing a revolution in Lower California and merely desired to borrow the trifling sum of eight hundred dollars. Repetto replied that he had no money in the house; but Vasquez compelled the old man to sign a check for the sum demanded, and immediately dispatched to town a boy working for Repetto, with the strict injunction that if he did not return with the money alone, and soon, his master would be shot.