by Paul R. Spitzzeri
We at the Homestead are very fortunate to have a good-sized archive of Workman and Temple family papers in our collection as these obviously help us better understand and discuss their history during our interpretive period from 1830 to 1930. Donations from descendants comprise almost all of this material and this “Reading Between the Lines” post draws from two gifts, as letters from Walter P. Temple to his future wife Laura González, dated 14 May 1887, and to their son, Thomas, dated 14 May 1933, were gifted to the Museum from Jeannine Raymond and Ruth Ann Michaelis, respectively.
Thomas, who became the family historian and archivist, as well as the official historian of the City of San Gabriel and the Mission San Gabriel, had both documents in his possession until his death in 1972. After that, as his massive collection was divided among his heirs, the 1887 letter remained with his widow, Gabriela Quiroz Sutter, and then passed to her step-daughter, Jeannine Raymond, while the 1933 missive was left to Ruth Ann, the eldest child of Thomas’ brother, Edgar.
Jeannine’s 2009 gift was a substantial one of hundreds of documents of a wide variety, many of them featured in posts here, including financial reports and statements, as well as letters, dating from the 1840s onward, while Ruth Ann has made several large donations over the years with her 2017 one including over 150 Temple family letters, most from the 1920s and 1930, including the 1933 missive.
Despite the nearly half-century gap between the two, there is a common link, namely Laura. In spring 1887, the 15-year-old had a clandestine romance with Walter, who was two years her senior. The two grew up together in the Misión Vieja, or Old Mission, community south of El Monte in the Whittier Narrows, where the Mission San Gabriel was founded in 1771. Laura’s evident intelligence and maturity led to her going to the Homestead during the period of the letter to help Walter’s brother, Francis, manage the 75-acre ranch and the Workman House.
Walter’s correspondence had to basically be kept secret because of disapproval from his family and this is alluded to right off the bat in his letter written “At Home” at the Temple Homestead in the Narrows:
As the ill health of Pancho [a nickname for males named Francisco] is gradually disappearing, I think it time to resume my correspondence, for it has hindered me from writing to you sooner to such an extent of uneasiness that I cannot rest joyous any longer without hearing from you, yet I have had occasion to see you during his illness, which is the same as writing.
What this seems to mean is that Francis, who had chronic tuberculosis which was the cause of his death in early August 1888, was confined to his bed and this apparently made it harder for Walter and Laura to send and receive letters, whereas if “Pancho” was tending to ranch responsibilities and was otherwise distracted, it reopened opportunities for written contact. As for those occasional visits Walter made to the Homestead, he indicated that it was same as sending a letter, but one wonders what was able to be directly communicated.
With written channels opened, however, he acknowledged that “I received your kind letter in which I found joy and pleasure, for I assure you, there is nothing that creates more pleasure and happiness than to be the recipient of a sweet letter.” There was more, however, and with springtime meaning the blossoming of flowering plants but also the spreading of illness, he continued, “Laurenza, I cannot well appreciate the agreeable odour [sic] of the lovely violet, which you placed in your letter, because I have caught a severe cold,” this purportedly stemming from a cold bath.”
The result, he went on was that his “smelling powers are not very odoriferous,” though he added that “of your first letter I caught all of the perfume it was capable of difusing [sic], and I oftened [sic] took it out to inhale its fragrant properties, and also to venerate it as a token of remembrance and love.” Clearly, the teen sought to express himself as poetically as possible to his beau, this being a core component of correspondence in the late Victorian period.
Walter then turned to a bit of family news, telling Laura that “the girls are very anxious to have a handsome garden, particularly Maggie,” his 20-year old sister and this garden, if it did get established, would have been at the Temple Homestead. This was more than a decade after the failure of the Temple and Workman bank, which decimated the family’s finances and involved the loss of most of their once-substantial landholdings, and the Workman House and Temple Homestead were, at one time, noted for their flower gardens.
The letter continued with Walter observing that “Maggie she has been gathering flowers from different places” and “also brought some violets of unsurpassing beauty to decorate our garden.” Moreover, he told Laura that “you may rest assured that in their first blooming I will send you my letters well perfumed with their agreeable odour.” With this, Walter concluded, “I close this epistle by sending you my best love, and kind wishes” while asking his beau to “excuse the shortness of my letter.”
After Francis’ death (he left bequests to Laura and her mother, Francisca Valenzuela), the Homestead was left to two brothers, William and John. The former was living out of state and sold his interest to the latter, who moved with his wife and two young sons from his 130-acre ranch near the Temple Homestead where the Whittier Narrows Nature Center is today. Laura ended up residing for much of the next fifteen years in Los Angeles and its Boyle Heights neighborhood, teaching music, before she married Walter on Thanksgiving Day 1903, when she was 32 and he was 34.
Walter built a wood-frame house on the Temple Homestead, which he inherited with his younger sibling Charles after their mother, Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple, died in early 1892 (a terrible period in which her mother, Nicolasa Workman, and eldest child, Thomas, died during a flu epidemic.) Walter and Laura resided in that house for not quite a decade, with their four children, Thomas W. II, Agnes, Walter, Jr. and Edgar, born there.
In 1912, Walter arranged to purchase 60 acres, formerly owned by his father before the bank failure and lost to Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin after he foreclosed on a loan made to the institution, from Baldwin’s estate executor. Two years later, 9-year old Thomas stumbled upon indications of oil on the property and, in summer 1917, the first well came in with several major producers following and this propelled the Temples to a startling level of wealth.
For about a dozen years, including after Laura’s 1922 death from cancer, the family enjoyed a standard living far above and beyond most people, but, unsuccessful investments in oil and real estate, the high cost of building the remarkable La Casa Nueva, the Temples’ house at the Homestead, and other factors brought another financial failure as the Great Depression dawned by 1930.
Walter moved to Ensenada in Baja California to economize, while hoping to save the Homestead, but this, his last landholding, was lost in 1932. He then relocated to Ensenada and San Diego before returning to Los Angeles and residing with his partner Modesta (Maud) Romero Bassity in a cottage behind her parents’ house in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood.
It was from there that Walter wrote Thomas on 14 May 1933 with his son staying, presumably, with friends in Monterey. The missive, mailed the next day, began with the statement that “since my arrival here I have been on the boards off and on” with a cold but was doing better. After mentioning that the weather was cool, he acknowledged receiving his son’s recent missives and added that he wrote Agnes “thanking her for the nice time we had at her home” as well as her husband, Luis Fatjo, “who certainly was nice in every way.”
Continuing that life was comprised of “the usual routine style,” Walter reported that
Maud has had several parties, one at the Casa de Adobe, Sycamore Grove, where the Fiesteras had a sort of anniversary luncheon gotten up, I think, by Mrs. Schoneman. The affair was very successful. Mrs. Schoneman and Miss Parks have been to other dinners at the house. You were sadly missed and much in demand.
Florencia Dodson Schoneman, whose mother Rudecinda was from the Sepúlveda family of Rancho Palos Verdes while her father James H. Dodson descended from the Dominguez clan of Rancho San Pedro. She grew up in San Pedro and became a prominent clubwoman as well as the curator of the Casa de Adobe, a replica adobe house built as part of the Southwest Museum and located at the Sycamore Grove Park. Walter’s business manager, Milton Kauffman, purchased part of the Dodson Ranch at San Pedro to pursue possible develop and the Temple Estate Company owned some of these lots until it was forced to sell them when Walter’s financial situation deteriorated.
There was at least one publicized event in a newspaper account from 1935 organized by Schoneman at Casa de Adobe for which Maud Bassity prepared food as part of a family tradition including her father José Romero’s regional fame as a “barbecue king” until his death in July 1932. Maude’s son Anthony, whose education was paid for by Walter Temple, and her brother Frank and his son Jack also kept the barbecue tradition going in later years, while Maude ran a couple of restaurants before her death in 1942.
Marion Parks had a long-standing interest in Los Angeles history, writing the book In Pursuit of Vanished Days and working with Thomas W. Temple II on projects together during the early Thirties as he was pursuing his passion for history and genealogy. Walter seemed to indicate that these two women were guests at the Romero house to enjoy the cooking in which the family specialized.
Walter also informed his son of the death of Andres H. Yorba, who ran a Mexican restaurant in San Gabriel, where Walter formerly owned several surviving buildings across from the mission. Yorba, a descendant of the family that was prominent in much of Orange County and which married into the Rowlands on Rancho La Puente, died in a car accident in the mission town. Walter remembered “the old Burro and cart he sold us at the time of Agnes’ St. Mary’s [Academy] Picnic at the Puente,” this being her high school graduation party held at the Homestead in spring 1925.
After following up with hearing that a beer garden was to be opened where the famous “mother grapevine” stands next to the Mission Playhouse (to which Walter contributed $15,000), even though Prohibition was not abolished until the end of 1933, he told Thomas that
The boys [the younger Temple sons] are well and today, Mother’s Day, Walter went to the Puente to place some flowers in the Mausoleum [at Laura’s crypt.]
Walter closed by asking Thomas to let him know when he was returning home so that Walter and Maude could meet him at the train station. At the time, Thomas was residing with his mother’s sister, Luz Vigare, in her historic adobe house just south of the Mission San Gabriel and pursuing his avocation as a historian and genealogist.
We’ll continue sharing family letters as part of the “Reading Between the Lines” series, as well as other Workman and Temple documents donated by descendants as part of our ongoing efforts to discuss their history as part of that of greater Los Angeles during that century from 1830 to 1930, so be on the lookout for those posts.