by Paul R. Spitzzeri
In a prior post here, following a presentation to a Glendora genealogical association on Henry Dalton, owner of the Rancho Azusa north of John Rowland and William Workman’s Rancho La Puente, it was mentioned that an audience member inquired if I knew of any Dalton descendants. My answer was that I had not met any, but a couple of week ago that changed. Clarissa Shurtleff as a surprise to her father, Mike Dalton, for Father’s Day and his birthday brought him to the Homestead for a tour and a look at a few Dalton-related artifacts in the Museum’s collection.
This included photographs of ancestor María Guadalupe Zamorano de Dalton, Henry’s wife, as well as their son, Henry Francis, from whom Mike and Clarissa (as well as her young daughter) are directly descended, but it also included a ledger book kept by Henry from the last day of September 1845 through mid-December 1855. Most of its 162 pages concerned transactions handled through Dalton’s Los Angeles store, though the last thirteen related to “sundries” but mostly products processed through his Azusa Mills, the grist mill that was one of the few private ones in the region at the time—John Rowland had one at La Puente from 1847 onward.
Dalton’s biographer was Sheldon G. Jackson, whose A British Ranchero in Old California: Henry Dalton and the Rancho Azusa was published in 1977, but the book remains about as definitive as is likely to be given Jackson’s half-dozen years of probing into the voluminous records pertaining to the subject at the Huntington Library. As noted in the acknowledgments section, the collection includes 57 bound volumes of account books, diaries and letterbooks, over 1,300 business documents, more 1,100 letters and more.
Amazingly, of more than 20 account books, that institution has all but one, the first, which I was extremely fortunate to be able to acquire nearly two decades ago. This bridges the late Mexican and early American periods and is fascinating for its transactions with many locals, including members of the Workman and Temple family, providing detail of goods sold and prices (in pesos) fetched.
Jackson noted in his work that the London-born Dalton was apprenticed at age fifteen to his brother Thomas in the family trade, the mercantile business, but, within two years, shipped out, perhaps under the employ of the mercantile firm of Alexander Gibbs and Sons, for South America. Specifically, Dalton landed at the new port of Callao, still the major harbor in Chile adjacent to the capital city of Lima, where worked for a Gibbs branch, and where a sizable British expatriate community lived and worked.
After an authorized purchase and sale of goods, however, Dalton was cut loose and formed his own firm of Enrique Dalton y Compañia, which engaged in export and import trade in South America, Europe, and Africa and included a small fleet of ships. He also operated an informal bank, had substantial investments in mines, and was a British consular agent, while one of his employees in Callao was Scotland native Hugo Reid. When Reid opened a branch store in Hermosillo in the northern Mexican state of Sonora and then moved to Los Angeles, this helped determined Dalton’s destiny.
This was accelerated in the early 1840s as financial and health problems led him to take his remaining ship, the Rose, and head north with the remodeled vessel with goods, half of which he purchased on credit with a year to dispose of the items to avoid heavy interest. In late November 1841, Dalton sailed, with stops in Peru and Ecuador before stopping at San Blas in México, where he smuggled goods (a common practice) to avoid duties.
With economic conditions poor in that country, however, and after a successful smuggling operation in Mazatlán, he returned to Ecuador. Borrowing heavily again, he made another expedition to México, but an arrangement to sell his goods in Mazatlán on the prior trip went wrong. A lifeline of sorts came when two English merchants, with dreams of a British conquest of California, convinced Dalton to go there and acquire a ranch as part of their plan. In 1843, he sold his ship, leased another and, as Jackson wrote, “continued to purchase goods for the California venture, getting together a cargo independent of European and American goods so that it would readily sell” for hides and tallow to be sent to England and Peru, respectively.
Learning of the 1842 discovery of gold north of Los Angeles, as well as the tar ponds west of the pueblo that are the famous La Brea pits, Dalton sailed north, arriving at the rudimentary port of San Pedro, a far cry from Callao and other harbors of his acquaintance. Reid was away in Asia, but two friends, American Abel Stearns, a merchant, and Juan Bandini, whose daughter was married to Stearns, assisted Dalton. The new arrival rented space in Stearns’ El Palacio adobe on Main Street, where U.S. 101 runs through downtown now and Dalton, finding nothing exciting at La Brea and getting some gravel samples at the mines, returned to his ship and headed for Monterey and Yerba Buena (San Francisco).
In the first part of 1844, Dalton returned to Mazatlán to transact business, but with an eye to settling permanently in Los Angeles. He acquired a ship called the Julia Ann from two American merchants in California and retained Captain William A. Leidesdorff, who was half-Black, for a couple of years. He was succeeded by Charles Wolter, a German sea captain, who, Jackson noted, “made two journeys in 1845 between Mazatlán and Monterey, in May and August,” though the historian observed that Dalton quickly tired of constant complaining from Wolter. In November 1845, the vessel was sold to Antonio Aguilar and Jackson added,
Dalton himself worked like a fanatic, buying in Mexico, merchandising in California, chartering additional vessels as needed, and always widening his circles of business contacts . . . Within a year Dalton had sold goods to nearly every prominent Californian and to a host of lesser lights up and down the coast.
Despite his frenzied efforts and networking and sales throughout Alta California, the expected financial windfall was not forthcoming and the gold mines near the Angel City were also not as copious with the precious metal as hoped. Dalton extended credit to many of his California customers and smuggling looks to have continued with his goods. Still, Jackson commented, “by the spring of 1846, Henry Dalton had established himself in the California coastal trade and had become a prominent figure in the California commercial world.”
With respect to that latter, Dalton, in summer 1844, acquired from Rafael Guirado a 300-foot long block on Main Street in “the sleepy pueblo of 1800 souls” that was the City of the Angels. The property had frontage on Spring, as well, with the future Court/Franklin street across that last thoroughfare, and the historian recorded that “on the Main Street front Dalton built an adobe store to which he moved his stock from the room formerly rented from Stearns.” Moreover, “this adobe tienda now became the center of Dalton’s California operations, as well as an important retail store for the people of the city.”
It bears noting here that, aside from Stearns, the pioneer merchant in Los Angeles was Jonathan Temple, who arrived in 1828 by way of San Diego after several years in Hawai’i, though, in subsequent years, many others followed, mostly American and a few Latino. Jackson continued,
The arrival of each additional Dalton vessel increased the inventory of the store. Much of the trade was still be barter, though, as he exchanged his wares for hides, tallow, wine, grain, and an occasional coin. A manager was on hand to handle the merchandising, but Dalton himself took care of the bookkeeping, giving attention to it between voyages. The name of practically every important inhabitant of the Los Angeles region appeared on his books.
In addition to the store, though, Dalton invested in ranchos, evidently according to that plan regarding a British occupation, but also tied to the particularly contentious political situation in Alta California. The department was already prone to frequent internal upheavals along with the usual revolt when México City, which, as the capital of an evolving young republic, was torn by strife between factions and largely ignored or under-supported its far-flung “Siberia of México,” occasionally sent a governor.
When Dalton settled in Los Angeles, the chief executive was Manuel Micheltorena, who was widely abhorred by Californios (whose largely forced self-sufficiency led to that adopted name) including because he had an armed force, called cholos by locals who found that they were paroled prisoners. When Pío Pico, head of the small legislature, and José Antonio Carrillo fomented a revolution and needed money for the effort, the alcalde, or mayor, of Los Angeles, Luis Arenas, who owned the government $1,000 and who was tired of living in the hinterlands, agreed to sell his San Gabriel Valley ranch.
This was Azusa, named for the local indigenous village of Asuk and Jackson observed that, if Arenas, “could sell his ranch he could pay the government what he owned and the government [that is, Pico’s faction] could then raise and equip a force for its protection.” The historian claimed that the deal was “one of the quickest real estate transactions in Alta California” as “red tape was cut to a minimum” and everything handled by Christmas Eve 1844. The original document in the Dalton Collection specified that the sale was approved by Pico “to aid him to suffocate a conspiracy” and “to assist him with a force of citizens,” while Dalton’s cash “is the only resource on which we can depend to engage the force we are preparing to augment the forces” of Pico.
While Jackson stated that there was difficulty in obtaining volunteers, William Workman was named captain, and his Rancho La Puente co-owner John Rowland was lieutenant, of the extranjeros, or foreigners, serving in the revolt. An engagement near Cahuenga Pass in February 1845, with the skirmish called “a comic opera battle” by the historian, led to Micheltorena’s return to México and Pico’s ascension to the governorship, though it was to be a short one with the impending American invasion.
Arenas not only got the $1,000 to pay his debt, but $3,000 of Dalton’s goods “at inflated prices,” and the same amount in produce due within two years, and the deal included a third interest held by the former in the Rancho San José, adjacent to the east and the main owners of which were Ricardo Vejar and Ygnacio Palomares, and including the western addition of that ranch. The buyer noted with satisfaction that, because the ranch lands included livestock worth $3,000, a vineyard with 7,000 vines valued at half that, and a new adobe house and outbuildings pegged at another $1,500, not to mention plenty of water from a dam on the San Gabriel River, he came out well ahead. Crops were planted, a sawmill and the grist mill constructed, and much other activity introduced.
Not satisfied with his Azusa property, Dalton received a grant into San Gabriel Canyon and, across the river, he picked up more land that became the Rancho San Francisquito. Adjacent to that on the west was the remarkable Rancho Santa Anita, with abundant water including a rare local natural lake and, not unlike Arenas, Dalton’s former employee and friend Reid was ready to dispose of the ranch, also being in debt. The purchase in 1847 was for $2,700, but this included $1,000 in cash and the remainder comprising the cancellation of a debt owned by the latter to the former.
As Jackson summarized about his subject,
Within less than three years after first setting foot on California soil he had become a great land owner, had established a thriving business in the town of Los Angeles with an inventory of almost $50,000 in merchandise, and had a booming business along the coast. He wore three hats in California [coastal trader, Angel City merchant, and San Gabriel Valley rancher] and found them all to his liking.
With this context, we’ll return on Friday, after an Independence Day post tomorrow, with part two of this post, concerning that first ledger from the “thriving business in the town of Los Angeles,” so be sure to check back in with us then.