About 1885, a Dr. Sketchley, who enjoyed some reputation for his work in the natural history field and had been a traveler through many remote countries, brought to Los Angeles quite a collection of ostriches and opened, about where Tropico lies, an amusement resort known as "The Ostrich Farm." Having provided a coach to connect with the end of the Temple Street cable cars and advertised the strange peculiarities of his finely-feathered animals, the Doctor soon did a thriving business, notwithstanding the task of caring for the birds in their new environment. Later, Sketchley removed from Los Angeles to Red Bluff; but there he failed and lost all that he had.
Soon after Dr. Sketchley arrived here with his ostriches and three or four men and one woman from Madras, Edwin Cawston, an Englishman now retired and living in Surrey, happening (while on a tour through America) to glance at an article in Harper's Magazine pointing out the possibilities of successfully raising ostriches, returned to London, secured the necessary capital and in 1887 began shipping these camel-birds from South Africa to Los Angeles. Many of the easily-affected creatures died at sea; yet forty, as good luck would have it, survived, and with them Cawston and a partner named Fox opened a second "ostrich farm" at Washington Gardens. In time, Cawston transferred his establishment to La Habra, associating with himself E. H. Rydall as publicity agent; and in 1908 the Cawston Ostrich Farm, between Los Angeles and Pasadena, was incorporated.
Quite naturally with the advent of the settler from the East and the Middle West, the zanjas, in early years so serviceable both for domestic and irrigation purposes and, therefore, more or less venerable, came to be looked upon as mere surface-conveyers and public nuisances; a sign, in 1883, at the corner of Sixth and Olive streets warning teamsters against crossing the ditch. By 1885, such opposition had developed that most of the zanjas were condemned, the one extending from Requena Street to Adams via Figueroa being, if I am right, one of the last that was buried from view.
For some time, East Los Angeles maintained its character as a village or small town, and in 1885 the East Side Champion, started and edited by Edward A. Weed, voiced the community's interests.
This year was marked by the demise of a number of well-known Angeleños. On the second of March, John Schumacher, a man esteemed and beloved by many, died here of apoplexy, in the seventieth year of his age. Six days later, General Phineas Banning, who had been sick for several months, expired at San Francisco, his wife and daughters being with him; and on March 12th, he was buried in Rosedale Cemetery. In his declining years, illness often compelled General Banning to remain at home in Wilmington; and when needing the services of his physician, Dr. Joseph Kurtz, he would send a locomotive to fetch him. On June 5th, Dr. Vincent Gelcich, the pioneer surgeon, died here at the age of fifty-six years.
In 1885, the first medical school in Los Angeles was founded in the house once occupied by Vaché Frères, the wine-makers, on Aliso Street between Lyons and Center. For years the school was conducted as a part of the University of Southern California, and Dr. J. P. Widney was Dean.
In the fall of 1885 Dr. M. Dorothea Lummis, a graduate in medicine of the Boston University, settled in Los Angeles and in time became President of the Los Angeles County Homeopathic Medical Society. Distinguished in her profession, Dr. Lummis became a leader in humane endeavor, reorganizing here the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and founding the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
The first train of the Santa Fé Railroad to enter the city of Los Angeles ran from Colton over the rails of the Southern Pacific, on November 29th, the two corporations having come to an agreement to use the one set of tracks until the spring of 1887, when the Santa Fé finished building from San Bernardino to its junction with the Los Angeles & San Gabriel Valley Railroad. The locomotive bore the name, L. Severy—a prominent director in the Company, and the father of the well-known resident of Pasadena—and the number 354.
After twenty years' association with the wholesale grocery business, I withdrew, on December 5th, 1885, from H. Newmark & Company, and on that day the business was absorbed by M. A. Newmark, M. H. Newmark, Max Cohn and Carl Seligman, and continued as M. A. Newmark & Company. This gave me the opportunity of renewing my association with one of my earliest partners, Kaspare Cohn, the new firm becoming K. Cohn & Company; and the change in my activities found me once again shipping hides and wool.
Looking through the haze of years, many are the recollections—often vague, it is true—of those with whom I had business relations. In the picturesque adobe days, the majority of my customers were simple-mannered natives such as Manuel Carizosa, on South Alameda Street; José María Dávila, in Sonora Town next door to José María Fuentes, his competitor; and M. G. Santa Cruz, in the same district. Jordan Brothers, Americans, kept store on Aliso Street opposite the Aliso Mill, and G. Ginnochio, father-in-law of James Castruccio, on Macy Street, near the river; while Bernardino Guirado, Mrs. John G. Downey's brother, and Max Schwed supplied the wants of Los Nietos. J. B. Savarots, who went to South America when he sold out to J. Salaberri & Company—a firm composed of two Basques, Juan Salaberri and Domingo Oyharzabel—was in general merchandise in San Juan Capistrano. Hippolyte Cahen (whose widow is a member of the Lazarus Stationery Company,) had an up-to-date general store at Anaheim; and Simon Cahen, son-in-law of Bernard Cohn, was similarly occupied in the Azusa district. Others of about the same period, were Dominico Rivara, who established himself on Main Street near Commercial, shortly to be succeeded by Vignolo & Sanguinetti, in whose store—known as La Esperanza and near Castruccio Brothers' La Mariposa—Jim Moiso bought an interest. Two more Main Street merchants were A. C. Chauvin, who conducted his El Dorado Store in the Lanfranco Building, and his neighbor, Joe Lazarowich. And near them Francisco Vassallo had his little fruit stand. The erratic Lucas Sciscisch, who terminated his life as a suicide, attended diligently to business on First Street, near Los Angeles; and not so very far away Thomas Strohm was laying the foundation, in his grocery trade, for that popularity which caused him, in the eighties, to be chosen Chief of the Fire Department. António Valle, who built on the northeast corner of First and Los Angeles streets (calling the block in honor of his five sons, the Five Brothers), for a number of years had a grocery store on Main Street near Requena and not far from the butcher shop of Vickery & Hinds.