by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Rare as they are, the few surviving documents, letters and other material relating to the Workman and Temple family in 19th century Los Angeles are vital to helping us understand, as best we can, their personal and professional lives in a region that changed massively during the years, after 1828, that they lived here.
Among the most important of these materials are letters that were sent back and forth between the City of Angels and Reading, Massachusetts, where the brothers Jonathan and Pliny (F.P.F.) Temple were born and where their siblings remained. A small cache of missives have survived as samples of irregular communication that was maintained across a distance that was far more than the roughly three thousand miles between the two vastly different places as they were, but also reflected the fact that delivery of such an item could easily take well over 100 days.
We are obviously used to instant digital and electronic communication, obviating the need for archaic letters, and there is much in these documents that not only show how differently people expressed themselves in those days, but how physical distance and gaps of time manifested in the writing. Such is the case with today’s “Reading Between the Lines” post comprising a letter to F.P.F. Temple from his sister Cynthia and penned on Friday and Saturday, 28 and 29 January 1842.
A prior post here featured a missive from her to him from nearly fifteen years later, in summer 1856, after the recent death of their mother, Lucinda Parker, and when F.P.F. commissioned a large tombstone for Temple family members at Reading’s Laurel Hill Cemetery and when Jonathan forwarded $500, a substantial sum, for her expenses, perhaps including those concerning the funeral and the monument.
In this letter, however, she was writing just over a year after her brother left home to join Jonathan in far-flung Los Angeles and the most heartfelt and compelling content dealt with that still-fresh separation that weighed heavily on Cynthia as she sought to know whether her brother was getting along well enough in the Mexican California pueblo and if there were any yearnings to return home.
Typically, envelopes were not used, so two connected sheets of paper were folded in such a way that a address “box” would be created. In it, she inscribed “Mr. Pliny F. Temple / City of Angels / Coast of California / By Ship Barnstable Com[mande]d Capt Hatch.” As another post here noted, James B. Hatch, third mate of the craft Richard Henry Dana sailed on when he went to California in the mid-1830s and wrote about in the once-widely read Two Years Before the Mast, was captain of the Barnstable, which regularly plied the route from Boston, around the Horn of South America, to California. This included commercial goods, soldiers during the American invasion of the Mexican department during the 1846-1848 war, and letters like these.
Immediately, Cynthia got to the point in pouring out her sentiments to her sibling (she, born in 1818, and he, in 1822, were the youngest of a large family and apparently very close as children). This extract is long, as sentences tended to be at the time, but it is very revealing of her deep-seated feelings towards Pliny—who did not adopt the baptismal name of Francisco until immediately before his September 1845 wedding to Antonia Margarita Workman and which led to the moniker of F.P.F., by which he was thereafter known:
Neither time, nor distance, can efface the memory of those we love, although one year has passed since we parted[,] although the vast waters of the Ocean separate us[,] yet my affection for you has not in the least abated, my mind often unconsciously reverts to the happy scenes of childhood through which we have passed[,] then we bounded over hill and dale as light as the roe [?] o’er the mountain of youth when we gathered around the paternal hearth participating in each other joys and sorrows, and now we have arrived to years of manhood we are separated where we can longer enjoy each other’s society, but may I not be permitted to hope that this shall not always be the case! Can it be that we shall never again meet this side of eternity? God only knows, but if not, may we be prepared through sanctifying grace to meet in Heaven where parting is not known.
We should stop here and note that the standard of education achieved by the Temple children in their town, located under 15 miles north of Boston, was higher than a great many Americans of the time, especially for women, who were typically provided far less instruction than men. Aside from a spelling error here and there (these corrected in the samples shown here), Cynthia’s writing reveals the extent of her schooling. It also shows her deep seated religious belief, with the Temples raised in the Congregational faith.
She followed by telling Pliny that “with great joy we received your letter on the 9th of Oct, bearing date June 26th” and that “by it, we learned of your safe arrival to the Coast and of your good health which gave us unspeakable satisfaction.” The 26 June date corresponds with that he gave in 1877 to an interviewer collecting data on pre-American California for publisher and historian Hubert Howe Bancroft, in which F.P.F. stated that he landed around that date at Monterey.
Cynthia added that the family learned through press accounts of “the scarcity of provisions occasioned by the drought” and added “we are extremely anxious to hear whether you have had any rain.” Small wonder she and other Temples were concerned when a brief New York Sun account quoted from a letter, remarkably dated from Monterey on 26 June 1841, though it is hard to believe the letter was from F.P.F., and which said, “California is in a most wretched state” as “there has not been a drop of rain for over thirteen months.”
Moreover, it continued that there wasn’t more than a month’s supply of basic foodstuffs and “no cattle will be killed this year” so the trade in hides simply ceased” and the final judgment was “the distress will be dreadful.” A Metropolitan Water District study from 1931 on rain and run-off from streams in southern California since 1769 recorded that there was flooding during the winter of 1841-1842, so respite was found from the punishing period prior, though, without any flood control, damage could still have been done to cattle populations and whatever crops were planted that year.
Cynthia also wrote that the family wished to know “how you succeeded in getting to brother J, with F.P.F. relating in the aforementioned interview that he stayed in Monterey for a few days and then traveled by land, likely taking a few days, to get to Los Angeles, where, for the first time, he met Jonathan, who was 26 years older (they had the same father, but different mothers, with Jonathan being the oldest of the first family and Pliny the youngest of the second).
She informed her brother that his request, in that June letter, for a frock coat was taken care of and that it cost $14.00, “the best one of the price” that could be located, though she seemed to be joking when she offered “perhaps you may think your Coat is not nice enough” and then added “mother thought it would do more service than a nice one.”
What followed was very commonplace in letters of the period, news of the health of the writer and others, because, in that era the threat of infectious disease was ever-present. In fact, Cynthia died early in 1857 of tuberculosis, which afflicted so many Americans during that period. In this case, she was feeling well, though added that she and brother Seth continued to care for their mother, who continued being feeble. Generally, she noted that there were fewer deaths in Reading the past year than was typical.
Cynthia also briefly alluded to the fact that “there has been quite a Temperance excitement in B[oston,” as the drive to reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption. Some sources indicate that, by 1830, the per capital consumption of intoxicating beverages was a staggering 7.1 gallons, with that figure being 2.3 today, though, by 1860, the total was said to be around 3.5. She mentioned the formation of Washington Total Abstinence Society chapters throughout New England—the first launched in Boston in 1841, as she noted. She continued that “thousands of confirmed inebriates have been reclaimed and have become useful members of society,” though there had to have been a significant number of relapses. As one source states, the Washington organization ended within two decades, as it emphasis on moral instruction to alcoholics gave way to a more determined prohibition-focused movement.
Local news included the building of three houses near the Temple family residence and a fair held the prior October to raise money for window coverings and aisle carpeting at the meeting-house (church). She then set aside the letter to resume it again the following evening after “the labors of the week are now over,” Saturday being a normal work day at the time. As she did the previous evening, she emphasized her sense of loss over F.P.F.’s absence profusely:
I have sat down dear brother to converse with you with ink and paper, but how much more pleasant it would be to have a personal interview with you. Have you not often sighed for the comforts of home which you are deprived, of the various means of intellectual and moral improvement which happy New England affords? Here every facility for intellectual improvement is introduced, here internal improvements are continually going forward, here we enjoy every comfort and almost every luxury which every climate affords and here everyone can worship God after the dictates of his own conscience. I hope you will curtail the period of your tarrying and you and brother J return to happy New England.
Cynthia’s stark contrast between New England and the remote “Siberia of México” that was California is striking, especially as regards the moral component. She was obviously concerned that her brother was amid Roman Catholics and appears to have assumed that other faiths could not be observed in the City of Angels (as mentioned above he readily converted to Catholicism when he married, so one wonders if he had much religious faith). She not only abruptly called for F.P.F.’s return, but suggested that Jonathan, who’d been absent at least two decades, do so, as well, and she reiterated “there is no place on earth, like the land of our birth.”
In concluding, she reaffirmed the importance that he write home frequently, especially for the benefit of their mother (and, pulling the heartstrings even tighter, she added “nothing would give her more pleasure [that this earth affords] than to see you.”) Mrs. Temple was paraphrased as “wishing your life was spared and that you might again in due time visit the home of your birth.”
There are a few marginal inscriptions relating to sundry topics including that the winter was, thus far, abnormally warm, as expected for April—in fact, a Boston television station report from a couple of years ago noted strange very cold weather in the summer of 1842 and noted that volcanic eruptions in the Philippines, Italy (Vesuvius, which consumed Pompeii in ancient days) and in the Pacific Northwest could well have played a part in this—and that “we have been to meeting [church services] once only in a sleigh. Then came one more emotional prod:
Write when you think you shall return if you are prospered. I want to see you very much. Good bye.
References to drought in California, temperance movements in Massachusetts, and F.P.F’s safe arrival aside, what stands out in this letter is Cynthia’s sense of loss as her younger brother left home for a foreign country 3,000 miles across the North American continent and her direct and poignant expressions of her feelings. As noted above, letters from this period relating to California and few and far between and we are fortunate that this one, preserved by F.P.F.’s son, John, and donated by the estate of her great-granddaughter Josette after her death a few years ago, has survived in the Museum’s collection.