by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As we celebrate Thanksgiving and its different meanings to various people, this post takes a look at the ties the Temple family had to the holiday season over the course of about twenty five years during the first decades of the 20th century. The holiday is generally understood to have been derived from a 1621 harvest feast held at Plymouth, Massachusetts, by about 50 Pilgrims, who were astonished and unnerved when some 90 members of the indigenous Wampanoag tribe arrived, but the combined group celebrated together over the following couple days.
There were frequent days of “thanksgiving” over the resulting couple of centuries, such as when the Constitution was ratified in 1787 and the federal government left it to the individual states to oversee what was largely a religious holiday comprised of prayer as well as socializing. During the Civil War, a movement in the Union states to establish a federal day of Thanksgiving resulted in President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation early in October 1863 that such a day was to be held on Thursday, 26 November.
Generally, each president thereafter proclaimed the last Thursday of November to be Thanksgiving Day, though President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to move the holiday back a week to extend the Christmas shopping season as the country looked to emerge from the lengthy Great Depression. In 1942, he issued a proclamation that the fourth Thursday would be devoted to the holiday.
Among holiday traditions are football games, beginning with a contest in 1876 between the Ivy League universities of Yale and Princeton, parades starting at the end of that century and culminating in such famous ones as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade which began in 1924. Not generally known in the U.S. is that our northern neighbor has had an even longer history of a Thanksgiving Day with Canada’s dating back almost a half-century before ours, to 1578, though it celebrates on the second Monday in October.
In 1903, Thanksgiving Day was Thursday the 26th, but for Walter P. Temple and Laura Gonzalez, their holiday extended to their wedding two days later. In its “Events in Local Society” column, the Los Angeles Times of the 28th reported that “today at noon W.P. Temple and Miss Laura Gonzales, both of Los Angeles [actually, he resided at the family homestead at Misión Vieja, or Old Mission, south of El Monte, where Laura was also raised], will be quietly married at San Diego.” Notably, the couple brought their own officiant, a justice of the peace, and other than “one or two intimate friends there will be no witnesses” as “quietness is the great object of these young people in their nuptials.”
The paper observed that Walter was the son of “pioneer banker” F.P.F. Temple and “is an extensive walnut grower in the San Gabriel Valley,” while Laura was described as “a charming native [that is, Latina] daughter.” In fact, however, the couple were hardly young for marriage given the standards of the day, being 34 and 32 years of age, respectively, but there was a reason for that as the Times noted
Today’s wedding is a culmination of a pretty romance of years’ standing. For several years the heart interest has been growing in this affair, and for a very long time even the wedding date has been set, although no one but the parties most deeply concerned knew of it.
What the paper meant by “years’ standing” is unclear, but we know that Walter and Laura first engaged in their “pretty romance” as teenagers a full sixteen years before they tied the knot, as surviving letters penned by Walter in English and Spanish to his beloved ardently demonstrate. In 1887 and 1888, when these missives were written, however, Laura was employed at the Homestead by Walter’s much older brother, Francis, and essentially ran the 75-acre ranch while Francis was away for long spells as he struggled with the tuberculosis that claimed his life in August 1888.
It was clear that the young lovers had to keep their romance a secret, likely because Laura was not considered of suitable standing. In the 1970s, Leonora Hartnell, a step-daughter of Walter’s sister, Lucinda, remembered that Walter once received flowers from an unnamed admirer and his mother, Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple, threw them to the floor and stomped on them in anger. One wonders if the bouquet was sent by Laura?
After leaving the Homestead after Francis’ death, Laura spent much of the next fifteen years living in Boyle Heights and downtown Los Angeles, where she taught piano. It seems that the reference above to “several years” indicates that the couple were reunited in the late 1890s and long planned to marry before going south to do so. An obvious question seems to be whether leaving the area for the ceremony with only a couple of friends as witnesses was not just a matter of “quietness” but also of some lingering disapproval.
In any case, the newlyweds spent part of their honeymoon at the famous Hotel del Coronado, which opened at the beginning of 1888 and remains a very popular destination for those who have just gotten hitched, and the Times account concluded with the note that “later they expect to visit Ensenada and other points in Lower [Baja] California.” Less than a decade prior, Walter and a friend spent almost a half-year traveling through México and he had two brothers (Thomas and William) who lived in our southern neighbor during the last couple of decades of the 19th century.
In summer 1922, Walter and Laura, enriched a half-decade before with a fortune derived by oil wells found on their Misión Vieja ranch, took their four children (Thomas W. II, Agnes, Walter, Jr., and Edgar) on a several weeks’ trip through the country. The couple returned inspired to design and construct La Casa Nueva at the Homestead, though Laura’s death at the end of that year, naturally, drastically altered their plans for the 12,400-square foot Spanish Colonial Revival mansion.
As the Roaring Twenties came to a stunning end with the onset of the Great Depression, Walter ended up in severe financial distress and, having lost all of his once substantial landholdings except the Homestead, slightly expanded to 92 acres, tried to save it by moving to Ensenada to economize. After stints in Tijuana and San Diego, he returned to Los Angeles and died in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood in November 1938 just days before Thomas married Gabriela Quiroz at the Mission San Gabriel.
It was a deliberate choice of Agnes Temple to get married on the same date as her parents and it so happened that it was Thanksgiving Day when she and Luis Fatjo, a former University of Santa Clara classmate of Thomas, were wed. The Los Angeles Express of 28 November 1929 reported
Of wide interest in California, is the wedding of Miss Agnes Eveline Temple and Luis Fatjo of San Francisco, which was solemnized at St. Joseph’s Church in Puente, in the presence of a large number of friends. An elaborate breakfast at the Temple home [La Casa Nueva] followed.
Agnes was noted as “a member of a pioneer family of Southern California,” though the emphasis was entirely on her Anglo heritage, rather than the fact that she descended from some of the early Spanish and Mexican-era settlers of Alta California. Her father, grandfather F.P.F. Temple and great-uncle Jonathan Temple were mentioned, the latter two for the recently razed Temple Block, where the City Hall was completed the prior year, and Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles.
The Express also noted that “the late William Workman was her maternal [paternal] grandfather and it is at the old Workman home place in Puente that the bride has made her home.” It was added that “a few years ago [1927] her father built their present home, one of the most beautiful Spanish mansions in California.” Within five months, however, that would not be the case as the family vacated La Casa Nueva and the Homestead as mentioned above.
Agnes, however, was not present for that emotional parting, as she and Luis, described as a graduate of Santa Clara and Columbia University in New York and as descended from the “Malaria” family—it was actually “Malarin,” showing the total lack of understanding of Californio families—embarked on a honeymoon to the East Coast and Europe, including Spain, where he had relatives on his father’s side. The couple did not return until late spring 1930 and then settled in San Francisco, amid wealth that belied the Depression and the situation facing her father and brothers, whom she helped.
While the Express mangled Luis’ name, the Times did worse, identifying him as “Luis Fatju y Valaria,” though it did note that he was the great-grandson of General Romualdo Pacheco, the only Latino governor of California in the American period, having served in that office for most of 1875. As for Agnes, it followed its observance of her Anglo antecedents in Los Angeles with the note that she graduated high school at St. Mary’s Academy in the Angel City and “is a musician of more than usual talent, receiving her bachelor of music degree from the Dominican College, San Rafael [north of San Francisco], being the first to receive the honor.”
One of Agnes’ pair of bridesmaids, along with Gretta Consuelo Houser (who was half-Mexican and half-American), was Marie Jeanne Dupuy, the daughter of Sylvester Dupuy, a close friend and partner with Walter Temple in the development of Temple City. A prior post here discussed some of the history of Dupuy and his 8,600-square foot “Pyrenees Castle,” built atop a hill at the west end of Alhambra, but we’ll add a bit to it through a quartet of place cards from a party held at the mansion on Thanksgiving Week 1929, just after the marriage of Agnes and Luis.
One of the cards (which feature a Betty Boop-like figure in what may be a wedding dress, suggestive that the event was for the newlyweds) is inscribed “Mr. Temple” and on the reverse, in his hand, is “In remembrance of our gracious host and hostess Mr. & Mrs. Sylvester Dupuy, Monday Nov. 25.” Below is his name and that of another guest. A second card has Luis Fatjo’s name on it along with that of three others, including Marie Dupuy—presumably Agnes was present, but we can assume her card was lost. The third card has “Mrs. Bassity” on the front and “Mrs. Maude Bassity,” this being the name of Walter Temple’s paramour, and another guest’s name on the back. Finally, there is Sylvester Dupuy’s card with his signature on the reverse, including the French spelling of “Sylvestre.”
While the Pyrenees Castle was planned as early as 1924, it took a couple of years to complete, purportedly at the great cost of $200,000 (the average American home was probably more than 30 times cheaper), though La Casa Nueva was built over a five-year period and a vague estimate by Walter P. Temple, Jr. was that the edifice cost about $150,000 to build. Like the Temple home, which stood out in the rural farming area of Puente, the Dupuy mansion was likewise an unusual sight in Alhambra, with a Pasadena Post photo from 30 April 1927 observing that “every motorist [on Valley Boulevard] will recognize this beautiful French Chateau . . . overlooking the San Gabriel Valley” from a hill next to the Midwick tract.
Like his friend Temple, Dupuy was adversely affected by heavy investments in oil and real estate, including with Temple City, though he was able to hang on to his mansion, while Temple lost his in 1932. Dupuy died in 1936 and the residence was occupied by his widow Anna and several of their children until, being too expensive and time-consuming to maintain, it was sold a decade later. It was converted to apartments by 1950 and sold over a quarter century later to a Hong Kong business figure who invested heavily in returning it to a single-family house, though it was lost to a bank. In the late 1990s, the notoriously eccentric music producer Phil Spector purchased it and resided there until he shot and killed Lana Clarkson in the foyer of the dwelling—Spector died in 2021 after being imprisoned for almost a dozen years of a 19 years to life sentence.
A few other artifacts from the Museum’s holdings related to the Temples and Thanksgiving during the Twenties are letters from Thomas to his father Walter. The earliest is from 25 November 1923, with Thomas writing of his excitement about taking the train home from the University of Santa Clara, where he was a sophomore. The 19-year old expected that, when he disembarked at Puente, “no doubt you’ll have the Municipal Band of Puente, along with Mayor Casimir Didier to render me ovation at the station.”
He also suggested his father attend a football game (between which teams was unstated,) adding it would be good for Walter to get a respite “from the cares and labors of the Rancho.” Notably, nothing was said about Laura Temple, who’d passed away under a year earlier, though Thomas frequently referred to her in his letters to his father over the years.
While Thomas was close enough at Santa Clara to return home for some holidays in addition to the summer and winter breaks, this changed when he and his younger brothers were sent in 1926 to Massachusetts, the Temples’ ancestral home state, to go to school. In Thomas’ case this was the prestigious and rigorous Harvard Law School (from which his uncle William matriculated in 1874).
For his first Thanksgiving in the East, Thomas wrote to Walter about the purchase of turkeys for their Bancroft cousins (who “don’t know what to do with your grateful gift”) and the the headmaster of Dummer (that’s right!) Academy, which Walter, Jr. and Edgar attended, and how this “true California hospitality” was welcomed in New England. He added there were no local football games, but the Temple brothers, staying at Thomas’ room at the Brattle Inn near Harvard for the holiday—their only day off for the week—were to see a movie. After asking whether Agnes would go to the Homestead for the holiday or if Walter would go to San Rafael to visit her, Thomas wrote
It’s very lonesome without you and her, Dadup dear, but we must bear up with it. The first Thanksgiving we are apart & hw we miss you. It will be harder at Christmas time. I hope this reaches you before Thanksgiving. My love & kisses to you all. We all wish to be remembered to the Tias [Walter’s sisters, Lucinda Zuñiga and Margarita Rowlan]. We shall think of you while playing a tune on the drumsticks.
In 1927, Thomas wrote his father about his brothers visiting for the Harvard-Yale football game, known simply as The Game, though the home team lost 14-0 and Thomas lamented that “Harvard plays such old fashioned ball. He then reported that the Bancrofts “are planning a great feast for Thanksgiving,” but didn’t add much, while also expressing satisfaction that Agnes would be home for the holiday.
Thomas also excitedly wrote of plans for a winter break excursion to be taken by him and his brothers to Montreal before turning to a recollection of five years before when he was in his only semester at the California Institute of Technology. He remembered “coming home for Thanksgiving [and] found Meema quite ill.” After musing that time flies, he added
God rest her soul. I’m sure she prays for us and watches over us with as much care as she did when we had her, and if we have managed well without her, it is that we did not lose her entirely but that a times we feel her very close to us.
He then wrote, “I hope you have a dandy Thanksgiving” and requested that Agnes take some photographs of the family’s dogs, Duke and Maxie, as well as of the recently completed La Casa Nueva—whether she did or not is unknown. Thomas closed with a request to be remembered to his father’s business partners, including Milton Kauffman, who managed Walter’s projects in oil and real estate, attorney George H. Woodruff, and Dupuy, denoted as “The Basque on top of the Hill.”
However you celebrate and commemorate Thanksgiving, we at the Homestead hope you enjoy the company of family and friends!