Tax Day! Assessments for the Workman and Temple Families in the 1860s, Part One

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

As we either reluctantly pay out our tax liability or happily accept our refund today, this post takes us back 160 years ago or so with a look at what the assessments were to members of Workman and Temple family during a decade of extreme challenges and, towards the end, manifold opportunities.

The 1860s began with greater Los Angeles several years removed from the end of the Gold Rush as well as a few years from a severe national depression. The cattle industry, the backbone of the regional economy, was not just affected by the decrease in demand for beef but from the increase in competition from longhorns and other breeds of the animal imported from elsewhere.

The region was also ravaged by the climactic conditions we know as El Niño and La Niña, from which heavy precipitation in the winter of 1861-1862 dumped up to 50 inches of rain causing havoc from near-universal flooding in the days without any control measures not to mention saturated soil. In the deluge, not only were the relatively small amounts of crops severely affected, but cattle were washed away and drowned.

What followed over the next two years were severe droughts, with estimates of about 4 inches per year, and this brought further degradation for agriculture and ranching. While the Workman and Temple family was able to send many of their animals to, of all places, the high desert near modern Victorville and Apple Valley were water was located, John H. Temple, William Workman’s grandson, recalled, as a 7-year old, watching his grandfather shoot some of the 2,000 animals killed because of starvation.

Further, during this period which was also during the Civil War years, there was an invasion of grasshoppers that caused significant damage to crops, as well as a terrible outbreak of smallpox the was particularly devastating to indigenous and Latino residents. It was small wonder that the population of Los Angeles dropped during the decade, with one prominent figure leaving being Jonathan Temple, a resident of more than 35 years when he moved to San Francisco and sold his 27,000-acre Rancho Los Cerritos, encompassing Long Beach and surrounding areas, for a paltry fifty cents per acre.

As the 1850s came to a close, Temple, who’d been the highest taxpayer in Los Angeles County in 1852 and then was second to Abel Stearns a half-dozen years later, retained that position in 1860, with a total of just over $2,800 in taxes remitted, about a tenth of the total. His half-brother, F.P.F., was eleventh among the wealthy at not quite $550, while the latter’s father-in-law, William Workman, placed ninth at nearly $620. This post will focus primarily on the assessments for state and county taxes of Workman and F.P.F. Temple.

With the new decade, the 1861 tally for Workman concerned three properties, with the main one being his share of Rancho La Puente with 6,600 acres assessed. Notably, the second grant to the property, made in July 1845 by Governor Pío Pico, expanded the ranch from under 18,000 to nearly 49,000 acres, but the ongoing land claim, initiated with the federal government in 1852 and not settled until 1867, meant that Workman could claim the total found on the assessment and which was valued at $8,500.

Rancho Potrero Grande, situated west of La Puente and mainly embracing South El Monte and parts of El Monte, involved a quarter-share, totaling 1,100 acres (another 25% was owned by F.P.F. Temple and the remaining half by their compadre and Workman’s former La Puente foreman, Juan Matias Sánchez), valued at $1,000. Then, there was the Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo, which adjoined Potrero Grande on the east and La Puente on the west, and of which Workman owned a quarter share. No acreage was listed but his portion was about 500 acres of the 2,043-acre tract and the value was pegged at $500.

Also of note was that Workman’s personal property was valued at just shy of $13,000. This included $200 in household and kitchen furniture; $50 in farming utensils; 2000 cattle, which involved more than two-thirds of the value; 620 horses at just north of $3,000; seven mules at a little over $100; two horse-drawn wagons at $60; two buggies at $50; four ox-carts at $80; and a yoke of oxen at $20. It should be noted, before we get too much further along, that these values, of not quite $25,000, are not what the items would command on a market, but were for tax purposes only.

The 1862 assessment was exactly as for 1861, an indication that, while the economy did not grow, it also did not diminish or at least neither appreciably. F.P.F. Temple’s 1861 listing was not available when research was done nearly three decades ago, but that of the following year, showed that his half-interest in the 2,363-acre Rancho La Merced, acquired by Workman in 1850 by foreclosure of a loan and then turned over to Temple and Sánchez, was worth $1,500.

As with Workman, Temple’s quarter of Potrero Grande was at $1,000, while he held a 5/8 share of Potrero de Felipe Lugo and that was set at $1,100. The improvements on the latter constituted a grist mill built several years prior by Elmore W. Squires and acquired by Temple and unidentified other items, perhaps a house, and valued at another $1,000.

In Los Angeles, Temple owned a vineyard on the east side of the Los Angeles River, this being in the “flats” of what became Boyle Heights (founded a dozen years later by his father-in-law’s namesake nephew, William H. Workman) and occupied by Jose Buelna and George Boreham and valued at $2,500. Also owned in the City of the Angels was a house on a lot, though the location was not unidentified until the following year, and these were set at $500 for the land and $400 for the dwelling. As was the case with many ranch owners whose trips to town would involve stays of at least a night, it is likely that this was Temple’s “town house.”

For his personal property, Temple’s items involved $200 in household furniture; $50 in farming utensils; five wagons, an ox-cart and a carriage, all not quite $250; six yoke of oxen at $120; 400 horned cattle at $1,800, this being more than 40% of the total; 180 horses at $1,100; seven mules at $90; 700 sheep at $700; 18 goats at $18; and 20 hogs at $40. Soon, Temple would invest in purebred horses and hogs, but this was when he raised animals without pedigree. His total property value was about $14,350.

For 1863, both men, as with the other property owners in the county, mired in the drought on the heels of the floods, values declined, though the amount was less for Temple, about $300, than for his father-in-law, where the difference was north of $4,000. For Temple, there was a slight lowering of about $250 in the value of his property, but here it was divided into five tracts (La Merced: $4,000; Potrero Grande: $1,000; Potrero de Felipe Lugo: $1,600; the Los Angeles vineyard: $2,000; and a lot on the west side of Main Street, extending to Spring: $1,150.

Workman’s personal property dropped by $1,500 and this included an increase in his farming equipment to $200 and 500 additional head of cattle, but with the value of these falling dramatically from $4.50 to $3 a head—this, in fact, accounted for the change. There were 150 more horses and colts, ten more gentle (broken) horses and the same amount of animals and vehicles as in the prior two years.

Temple had 100 more cattle, though why these were valued at 50 cents more than those owned by Workman is not known and he also possessed 40 more horses than the previous year, but the values of these animals did not change. Moreover, he took on a half-interest in 1,000 sheep, valued at $750. He, too, had more farming tools and equipment, while his inventory of goats, pigs and oxen were essentially the same, as was the valuation of his household furniture.

The 1864 assessments again do not include Temple, while for Workman there was no change in the value of acreage and improvements at La Puente. With personal property, household and kitchen furniture well more than doubled to $500, which may reflect some upgrading of one or both of these portions of what was in the Workman House. Farming utensils, however, dropped back to $50. What is most striking is the decline in cattle from 2,500 to 600, while there was also a dramatic decline in horses from 1,160 to just 270, which takes us back to John H. Temple’s childhood recollection of the mass shooting of the emaciated animals. The total was just $3,800 compared to the $11,490 of the prior year.

Workman kept his interests in the Potrero Grande and Potrero de Felipe Lugo, but the recording of the amounts for these was very confusing and showed amounts far higher than for La Puente, which does not make sense. Improvements of $5,000 on the Potrero Grande were also shown, though what this entailed is not known. Yet, perhaps because of bargains in the market due to the terrible weather of the previous couple of years or because Workman foreclosed on other loans, he added three tracts to his portfolio.

One of these was the vineyard of Henry Hancock, long-time surveyor (including of ranches like La Puente) and real estate investor, situated below the Elysian Hills near Dodger Stadium along the west side of the Los Angeles River and which was deemed to be worth $3,000. To the north, on the east side of the river was the 1,000 acre wheat field, part of 4,600 acres of Rancho San Rafael recently owned by the lawyer Jonathan R. Scott, who died in 1864, and this was valued at $500. Lastly, there were a quarter interest in about 5,000 acres of the former Mission San Gabriel (a claim to all of which Workman pursued with others until the United States Supreme Court invalidated the grant of Governor Pico, made as the American invasion of Mexican Alta California was underway in 1846, in spring 1864), with a value of $850.

For 1865, we have both the listing for Temple in the official assessment books, now housed at the Seaver Center for Western History Research at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in Exposition Park, and Workman’s original list in the Homestead’s collection—this is important because there is no listing in the books. For Workman that list, dated 23 May, shows $3,000 for his half of La Puente, another drop of $500, and “improvements on the same including vineyard” of $3,500. There continued to be a decline in his cattle, to 400, while his horse inventory climbed to not quite 300, while there were also seven mules and a yoke of oxen, so the total was pegged at just shy of $1,300.

Not listed, however, were the interests at Potrero Grande or Potrero de Felipe Lugo and this is because he deed over these to his daughter, Antonia Margarita, wife of F.P.F. Temple. A new holding is a 1/6 interest in the tiny Rancho Potrero Chico, embracing just under 100 acres, so he had roughly 16 of them and this was valued at all of $50. While he still had the “Scott Ranch” at $500 and the “Hancock Vineyard in town” at $500, there was another addition, this being the “Hancock Ranch” at $300. This seemingly low-value property, as the region emerged from the drought, was a portion of the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas, now embracing the exclusive Beverly Hills area.

As for the personal property, this involved the $50 in farming utensils, the $200 in household furniture, four ox-carts at $80, a pair of buggies at $50 and $30, respectively; and two horse wagons totaling $60. The total assessed property for Workman for the year was a mere $10,810, a drop of more than 55% in four years, so here is a tangible and clear example of how the first half of the Sixties were very difficult times economically for residents of greater Los Angeles, even as Workman added to his landholding portfolio.

For Temple, however, there was a slight increase in his overall assessment. For his half portion of La Merced, the value was the same at $4,000, though it was noted that involved “a portion of which is cultivated [and] here said Temple now resides, imp[rovemen]ts houses, Fences, Corals, and Vineyard.” It has been stated that he acquired, from Phineas Banning, the “Port Admiral” of Wilmington and a dealer in lumber, some $40,000 in that material to fence the entirety of his nearly 1,200 acres of the ranch—though this number sounds exaggerated.

As for his other property holdings, these remained the 1,000 acres of Potrero Grande though the value went up to $1,500; an increase to 60% of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, but, notably, with a significant increase with improvements to $7,500 (though that might have been an error); and, like Workman, a sixth portion of Potrero Chico—he and Workman acquired their interests through 1863 from members of the Alvitre and Valenzuela families who were the grantees of the ranch two decades prior. There was no change to the Los Angeles properties.

With respect to personal property, Temple greatly expanded his 50% stake in sheep, from 750 two years prior to 2,000, with a value of $1,500. This is another instance of a marked change in ranching in greater Los Angeles as sheep became far more common that cattle. Of these latter, he had 300 at $2 each (a dollar less than those owned by his father-in-law), while there were 110 horses, a significant drop from 1863, a half-dozen mules, 40 goats, three hogs and four yokes of oxen.

His household furniture and farming equipment totaled $250 and he owned seven carriages, carts and wagons valued at $225. Allowing for reductions of $950 in land and improvements approved by the Board of Supervisors, who served as the local Board of Equalization, Temple’s assessment for 1865 was just under $20,000, but this was almost double that of Workman, which is striking.

We’ll return with part two of this post tomorrow, so please check back then!