Don Cristóbal Aguilar, several times in his career an Alcalde, several times a City Councilman beginning with the first organization of Los Angeles, and even twice or thrice Mayor, was another resident near the Plaza. His adobe on upper Main Street was fairly spacious; and partly, perhaps, for that reason, was used by the Sisters of Charity when they instituted the first hospital in Los Angeles.
A short distance from the Plaza, on Olvera Street, had long stood the home of Don José María Ábila, who was killed in battle in the early thirties. It was there that Commodore Stockton made his headquarters, and the story of how this was brought about is one of the entertaining incidents of this warlike period. The widow Ábila, who had scant love for the Americans, had fled with her daughters to the home of Don Luis[7] Vignes, but not before she placed a native boy on guard, cautioning him against opening either doors or windows. When the young custodian, however, heard the flourishes of Stockton's brass band, he could not resist the temptation to learn what the excitement meant; so he first poked his head out of a window, and finally made off to the Plaza. Some of Stockton's staff, passing by, and seeing the tasteful furniture within, were encouraged to investigate, with the result that they selected the widow Ábila's house for Stockton's abode. Another Ábila—Francisco—had an adobe at the present southeast corner of San Fernando and Alpine streets.
Francisca Gallardo, daughter of one of the Sepúlvedas, lived in the vicinity of the Plaza.
The only church in Los Angeles at this time was that of Nuestra Señora la Reyna de los Angeles, known as Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels, at the Plaza; and since but few changes were made for years in its exterior, I looked upon the edifice as the original adobe built here in the eighties of the preceding century. When I came to inquire into the matter, however, I was astonished to learn that the Church dated back no farther than the year 1822, although the first attempt at laying a corner-stone was made in 1815, probably somewhat to the east of the old Plaza and a year or two after rising waters frustrated the attempt to build a chapel near the river and the present Aliso Street. Those temporary foundations seem to have marked the spot where later the so-called Woman's Gun—once buried by Mexicans, and afterward dug up by women and used at the Battle of Dominguez Ranch—was long exposed to view, propped up on wooden blocks. The venerable building I then saw, in which all communicants for want of pews knelt on the floor or stood while worshiping, is still admired by those to whom age and sacred tradition, and the sacrifices of the early Spanish Fathers, make appeal. In the first years of my residence here, the bells of this honored old pile, ringing at six in the morning and at eight in the evening, served as a curfew to regulate the daily activities of the town.
Had Edgar Allan Poe lived in early Los Angeles, he might well have added to his poem one more stanza about these old church bells, whose sweet chimes, penetrating the peace and quiet of the sleepy village, not alone summoned the devout to early mass or announced the time of vespers, but as well called many a merchant to his day's labor and dismissed him to his home or the evening's rendezvous. That was a time of sentiment and romance, and the memory of it lingers pleasantly in contrast with the rush and bustle of to-day, when cold and chronometrical exactitude, instead of a careless but, in its time, sufficient measure of the hours, arranged the order of our comings and our goings.
Incidental to the ceremonial activity of the old Church on the Plaza, the Corpus Christi festival was one of the events of the year when not the least imposing feature was the opening procession around the Plaza. For all these occasions, the square was thoroughly cleaned, and notable families, such as the Del Valles, the Olveras, the Lugos and the Picos erected before their residences temporary altars, decorated with silks, satins, laces and even costly jewelry. The procession would start from the Church after the four o'clock service and proceed around the Plaza from altar to altar. There the boys and girls, carrying banners and flowers, and robed or dressed in white, paused for formal worship, the progress through the square, small as the Plaza was, thus taking a couple of hours. Each succeeding year the procession became more resplendent and inclusive, and I have a distinct recollection of a feature incidental to one of them when twelve men, with twelve great burning candles, represented the Apostles.
These midwinter festivities remind me that, on Christmas Eve, the young people here performed pastoral plays. It was the custom, much as it still is in Upper Bavaria, to call at the homes of various friends and acquaintances and, after giving little performances such as Los Pastores, to pass on to the next house. A number of the Apostles and other characters associated with the life of Jesus were portrayed, and the Devil, who scared half to death the little children of the hamlet, was never overlooked. The buñuelo, or native doughnut, also added its delight to these celebrations.
John Jones