For nearly a couple of decades after the organization of Los Angeles under the incoming white pioneers, not very much was known of the vast districts inland and adjacent to Southern California; and one can well understand the interest felt by our citizens on July 17th, 1855, when Colonel Washington, of the United States Surveying Expedition to the Rio Colorado, put up at the Bella Union on his way to San Francisco. He was bombarded with questions about the region lying between the San Bernardino Mountain range and the Colorado, hitherto unexplored; and being a good talker, readily responded with much entertaining information.
In July, 1855, I attained my majority and, having by this time a fair command of English, I took a more active part in social affairs. Before he married Margarita, daughter of Juan Bandini, Dr. J. B. Winston, then interested in the Bella Union, organized most of the dances, and I was one of his committee of arrangements. We would collect from the young men of our acquaintance money enough to pay for candles and music; for each musician—playing either a harp, a guitar or a flute—charged from a dollar to a dollar and a half for his services. Formal social events occurred in the evening of almost any day of the week. Whenever Dr. Winston or the young gallants of that period thought it was time to have a dance, they just passed around the hat for the necessary funds, and announced the affair. Ladies were escorted to functions, although we did not take them in carriages or other vehicles but tramped through the dust or mud. Young ladies, however, did not go out with gentlemen unless they were accompanied by a chaperon, generally some antiquated female member of the family.
These hops usually took place at the residence of Widow Blair, opposite the Bella Union and north of the present Post Office. There we could have a sitting-room, possibly eighteen by thirty feet square; and while this was larger than any other room in a private house in town, it will be realized that, after all, the space for dancing was very limited. We made the best, however, of what we had; the refreshments, at these improvised affairs, were rarely more than lemonade and olla water.
Many times such dances followed as a natural termination to another social observance, transmitted to us, I have no doubt, by the romantic Spanish settlers here, and very popular for some time after I came. This good old custom was serenading. We would collect money, as if for dancing; and in the evening a company of young men and chaperoned young ladies would proceed in a body to some popular girl's home where, with innocent gallantry, the little band would serenade her. After that, of course, we were always glad to accept an invitation to come into the house, when the ladies of the household sometimes regaled us with a bit of cake and wine.
Speaking of the social life of those early days, when warm, stimulating friendships and the lack of all foolish caste distinctions rendered the occasions delightfully pleasant, may it not be well to ask whether the contrast between those simple, inexpensive pleasures, and the elaborate and extravagant demands of modern society, is not worth sober thought? To be sure, Los Angeles then was exceedingly small, and pioneers here were much like a large family in plain, unpretentious circumstances. There were no such ceremonies as now; there were no four hundred, no three hundred, nor even one hundred. There was, for example, no flunky at the door to receive the visitor's card; and for the very good reason that visiting cards were unknown. In those pastoral, pueblo days it was no indiscretion for a friend to walk into another friend's house without knocking. Society of the early days could be divided, I suppose, into two classes: the respectable and the evil element; and people who were honorable came together because they esteemed each other and liked one another's company. The "gold fish" of the present age had not yet developed. We enjoyed ourselves together, and without distinction were ready to fight to the last ditch for the protection of our families and the preservation of our homes.
In the fall of 1855, Dr. Thomas J. White, a native of St. Louis and Speaker of the Assembly in the first California Legislature convened at San José, in December, 1849, arrived from San Francisco with his wife and two daughters, and bought a vineyard next to Dr. Hoover's ten-acre place where, in three or four years, he became one of the leading wine-producers. Their advent created quite a stir, and the house, which was a fine and rather commodious one for the times, soon became the scene of extensive entertainments. The addition of this highly-accomplished family was indeed quite an accession to our social ranks. Their hospitality compared favorably even with California's open-handed and open-hearted spirit, and soon became notable. Their evening parties and other receptions were both frequent and lavish, so that the Whites quickly took rank as leaders in Los Angeles. While yet in Sacramento, one of the daughters, who had fallen in love with E. J. C. Kewen when the latter was a member of the White party in crossing the great Plains, married the Colonel; and in 1862, another daughter, Miss Jennie, married Judge Murray Morrison. A son was T. Jeff White, who named his place Casalinda. In the late fifties, Dr. White had a drug-store in the Temple Building on Main Street.
It was long before Los Angeles had anything like a regular theater, or even enjoyed such shows as were provided by itinerant companies, some of which, when they did begin to come, stayed here for weeks; although I remember having heard of one ambitious group of players styling themselves The Rough and Ready Theater, who appeared here very early and gave sufficient satisfaction to elicit the testimony from a local scribe, that "when Richmond was conquered and laid off for dead, the enthusiastic auditors gave the King a smile of decided approval!" Minstrels and circuses were occasionally presented, a minstrel performance taking place sometime in the fifties, in an empty store on Aliso Street, near Los Angeles. About the only feature of this event that is now clear in my memory is that Bob Carsley played the bones; he remained in Los Angeles and married, later taking charge of the foundry which Stearns established when he built his Arcadia Block on Los Angeles Street. An Albino also was once brought to Los Angeles and publicly exhibited; and since anything out of the ordinary challenged attention, everybody went to see a curiosity that to-day would attract but little notice. Speaking of theatrical performances and the applause bestowed upon favorites, I must not forget to mention the reckless use of money and the custom, at first quite astounding to me, of throwing coins—often large, shining slugs—upon the stage or floor, if an actor or actress particularly pleased the spendthrift patron.
In October, 1855, William Abbott, who was one of the many to come to Los Angeles in 1853, and who had brought with him a small stock of furniture, started a store in a little wooden house he had acquired on a lot next to that which later became the site of the Pico House. Abbott married Doña Merced Garcia; and good fortune favoring him, he not only gradually enlarged his stock of goods, but built a more commodious building, in the upper story of which was the Merced Theater, named after Abbott's wife, and opened in the late sixties. The vanity of things mundane is well illustrated in the degeneration of this center of early histrionic effort, which entered a period of decay in the beginning of the eighties and, as the scene of disreputable dances, before 1890 had been pronounced a nuisance.
During the first decade under the American régime, Los Angeles gradually learned the value of reaching toward the outside world and welcoming all who responded. In 1855, as I have said, a brisk trade was begun with Salt Lake, through the opening up of a route—leading along the old Spanish trail to Santa Fé. Banning & Alexander, with their usual enterprise, together with W. T. B. Sanford, made the first shipment in a heavily-freighted train of fifteen wagons drawn by one hundred and fifty mules. The train, which carried thirty tons, was gone four months; having left Los Angeles in May, it returned in September. In every respect the experiment was a success, and naturally the new route had a beneficial effect on Southern California trade. It also contributed to the development of San Bernardino, through which town it passed. Before the year was out, one or two express companies were placarding the stores here with announcements of rates "To Great Salt Lake City." Banning, by the way, then purchased in Salt Lake the best wagons he had, and brought here some of the first vehicles with spokes to be seen in Los Angeles.
The school authorities of the past sometimes sailed on waters as troubled as those rocking the Educational Boards to-day. I recall an amusing incident of the middle fifties, when a new set of Trustees, having succeeded to the control of affairs, were scandalized, or at least pretended to be, by an action of their predecessors, and immediately adopted the following resolution: