Temple Court House, after Abandonment by the County
In the height of the Winter season of 1881-82, when the semi-tropical glory of Southern California was most appealing, Helen Hunt Jackson, exploring the Southwest for materials of value in the study of the Indian, came to Los Angeles and met, as I have already related, Abbot Kinney, himself a student of the aborigines. She also met Don António F. and Doña Mariana Coronel; and finding in the latter a highly intelligent and affable lady, she passed some hours each day at the hospitable Coronel mansion, driving out there from her hotel and reclining under the broad palm trees. When Mrs. Jackson first came, with her pencils and note-books, the retiring Señora (as she used to tell me), having little comprehension of the Eastern lady's ambitious plans, looked with some suspicion on the motives of her enthusiastic visitor; but fortunately this half-distrust was dispelled by the warmth of the author's geniality, and Doña Mariana, opening both her house and heart, contributed inestimably to the success of the now famous Ramona, most of the rough notes for which were written at a little table on the Coronel veranda. On Doña Mariana's advice, Mrs. Jackson selected the Del Valle ranchhouse at the Camulos, as the best-preserved and most typical place for a background; although, disappointed in not finding the Del Valles at home, and consequently seeing the imagined headquarters of Ramona for but an hour or two, she was compelled to rely upon her Los Angeles hostess for many of the interesting and singularly accurate details. On departing from Southern California, Mrs. Jackson wrote for the Century Magazine a charming description of life at the old Coronel adobe, whence she never departed without a carriageful of luscious fruit. She also added her tribute to the attractions of the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys. Now the world at large has been made more conversant with the poetical past of Los Angeles for the most part through the novel Ramona.
In 1882, the telephone was first introduced here, H. Newmark & Company so early subscribing for the service that they were given 'phone No. 5, the old River Station having No. But it may amuse the reader to know that this patronage was not pledged without some misgivings lest the customary noises around the store might interfere with hearing, and so render the curious instrument useless!
On January 20th, Don Juan Forster died at his Santa Margarita rancho, in San Diego County; followed to the grave but a few months later by Mrs. Forster, a sister of Pio Pico.
As rugged as the climate of his native State of Maine, A. T. Currier, after the usual hazardous life of the pioneer on the plains and in mines, proved his good judgment when, in the late sixties, after riding through California in search of the best place to found a home, he selected a ranch close to that of Louis Phillips. For years, I had pleasant relations with Currier; and I must confess that it was not easy to decide, in 1882, when two such friends as he and Billy Rowland were the opposing candidates, how I should vote for Sheriff. Currier was elected.
The Arroyo Vista—later and more correctly named the Vista del Arroyo—kept by Mrs. Emma C. Bangs, was the only hotel in the Pasadena settlement in 1882, and not infrequently passengers who journeyed there by the narrow, stuffy stage, running every day except Sunday, found on arriving that they could not be accommodated. So small, in fact, was the hostelry that it became necessary to advertise when all the rooms had been taken. The stage left for Los Angeles at nine o'clock in the morning and returned at three; and the driver, who was a student of the classics from the East, doled out to the passengers both crossroad data and bits of ancient lore.
Fire having destroyed the State Normal School at San José, in 1880, then the only institution of its kind in California, the Legislature, on March 14th, 1881, provided for the establishing here of a branch; and the following March George Gephard, a German who had come in 1875, raised eight thousand dollars to purchase the orange grove at Bellevue Terrace, near Fifth Street and Charity, for a site. On August 29th, 1882, the school was opened with Charles H. Allen of San Francisco as first Principal, two other teachers and sixty-one students. In 1883, Allen was succeeded by President Ira More and the school became an independent institution. Edward T. Pierce, who followed Professor More, retired in 1904. An instructor there for twenty-two years was Professor Melville Dozier, who made for California, by way of Panamá, in 1868. Largely through the devotion of these pioneer teachers, as well as through those qualities which have marked the administration of Dr. Jesse F. Millspaugh, scholar and pedagogue, for nearly the last decade, this Normal School has grown, each year, from a very humble beginning until now it sends out hundreds of men and women into one of the noblest of all professions.
A commencement of the Los Angeles High School of particular interest to me was celebrated in June in the old Turnverein Hall, on Spring Street—Superintendent James M. Guinn presenting the diplomas—when my daughter Ella graduated. Among her instructors had been Mrs. Chloe P. Jones, for three years Principal of the school and for one year Superintendent (having been the last incumbent, at the same time, of both offices), and the late Mrs. Anna Averill, a noted club woman. Mrs. Jones came to California from Ohio in 1873, taught for a while in Santa Rosa and, after a year of grade work here, began to instruct in the new high school; and there, after a service of nearly four decades, she is still a highly esteemed member of the staff. Mrs. Averill was the first woman to enter the Board of Education; and in her honor a bell was placed on the Mission Road, El Camino Real, to celebrate her seventieth birthday.