Thomas J. Scully, a pioneer school teacher who came to Los Angeles the same year that I did, died here in 1895. For some time Scully was the only teacher in the county outside of the city, but owing to the condition of the public treasury he actually divided his time between three or four schools, giving lessons in each a part of the year. After a while, the schoolmaster gazed longingly upon a lovely vineyard and its no less lovely owner; and at last, by marrying the proprietress, he appropriated both. This sudden capture of wife and independence, however, was too much for our unsophisticated pedagogue: Scully entered upon a campaign of intemperance and dissipation; his spouse soon expelled him from his comfortable surroundings, and he was again forced to earn his own living with birch and book.
Inoffensive in the extreme, yet with an aberration of mind more and more evident during twenty years, Frederick Merrill Shaw, a well-informed Vermonter born in 1827, shipped for California as cook on the brig Sea Eagle and arrived in San Francisco in September, 1849, where he helped to build, as he always claimed, the first three-story structure put up there. Well-proportioned and standing over six feet in height, Shaw presented a dignified appearance; that is, if one closed an eye to his dress. Long ago, he established his own pension bureau, conferring upon me the honor of a weekly contributor; and when he calls, he keeps me well-posted on what he's been doing. His weary brain is ever filled with the phantoms of great inventions and billion-dollar corporations, as his pocketful of maps and diagrams shows; one day launching an aerial navigation company to explore the moon and the next day covering California with railroad lines as thick as are automobiles in the streets of Los Angeles.
On September 21st, my brother, J. P. Newmark, to whom I am so indebted, and who was the cause of my coming to California, died at his home, in the sixty-ninth year of his age; his demise being rather sudden. During the extended period of his illness, he was tenderly nursed by his wife, Augusta; and I cannot pay my sister-in-law too high a tribute for her devoted companionship and aid, and her real self-sacrifice. Mrs. Newmark long survived her husband, dying on January 3d, 1908 at the age of seventy-four.
The reader will permit me, I am certain, the privilege of a fraternal eulogy: in his acceptance and fulfillment of the responsibilities of this life, in the depth and sincerity of his feeling toward family and friend, my brother was the peer of any; in his patient, silent endurance of long years of intense physical suffering and in his cheerfulness, which a manly courage and philosophical spirit inspired him to diffuse, he was the superior of most; and it was the possession of these qualities which has preserved his personality, to those who knew him well, far beyond the span of natural existence.
In May, 1896, the Merchants' Association consolidated with the Manufacturers' Association (of which R. W. Pridham was then President), and after the change of name to the Merchants & Manufacturers' Association, inaugurated the first local exhibit of home products, using the Main Street store of Meyberg Brothers for the display. On August 1st, 1897, Felix J. Zeehandelaar, later also Consul of the Netherlands, became the stalwart, enthusiastic and now indispensable Secretary, succeeding, I believe, William H. Knight.
This same year Major Ben. C. Truman, formerly editor of the Star, together with George D. Rice & Sons established the Graphic, which is still being published under the popular editorship of Samuel T. Clover. In 1900, Truman was one of the California Commissioners to the Paris Exposition. After his foreign sojourn, he returned to Los Angeles and, with Harry Patton, started a weekly society paper called the Capitol. Rather recently, by the advantageous sale of certain property early acquired, Ben and his good wife have come to enjoy a comfortable and well-merited degree of prosperity. Clover came to Los Angeles in 1901; was editor and publisher of the Express for four years; and in 1905 started the Evening News, continuing the same three years despite the panic of 1907. A year previously, he purchased the Graphic, more than one feature of which, and especially his "Browsings in an Old Book Shop," have found such favor.
W. A. Spalding, whose editorial work on Los Angeles newspapers—dating from his association with the Herald in 1874, and including service with both the Express and the Times—in 1896 assumed the business management of his first love, the Herald. After again toiling with the quill for four years, he was succeeded by Lieutenant Randolph H. Miner.
The magnificent interurban electric system of Los Angeles is indebted not a little to the brothers-in-law, General M. H. Sherman and E. P. Clark—the former a Yankee from Vermont, and the latter a Middle Westerner from Iowa—both of whom had settled in Arizona in the early seventies. While in the Territory, Sherman taught school and, under appointment by Governor Frémont as Superintendent of Instruction, laid the foundation of the public school system there. Both came to Los Angeles in 1889, soon after which Sherman organized the Consolidated Electric Railway Company. In 1896, the old steam railroad—which about the late eighties had run for a year or so between Los Angeles and the North Beach, by way of Colegrove and South Hollywood—was equipped with electrical motor power and again operated through the enterprise of Eli P. Clark, President of the Los Angeles Pacific Railroad Company. Together, Sherman and Clark built an electrical road to Pasadena, thus connecting the mountains with the sea.
In 1896, I dissolved partnership with Kaspare Cohn, taking over the hide business and, having fitted up a modest office under the St. Elmo Hotel, revived with a degree of satisfaction the name of H. Newmark & Company.
A notable career in Los Angeles is that of Arthur Letts who in 1896 arrived here with barely five hundred dollars in his pocket and, as it would appear, in answer to a benign Providence. J. A. Williams & Company, after a brief experience, had found the corner of Broadway and Fourth Street too far south, and their means too limited, to weather the storm; so that their badly-situated little department store was soon in the hands of creditors. This was Letts' opportunity: obtaining some financial assistance, he purchased the bankrupt stock. His instantaneous success was reflected in the improvement of the neighborhood, and thereafter both locality and business made rapid progress together.