What’s in Store: An Account Ledger Book for Merchant and Ranchero Henry Dalton, 30 September 1845, Part Three

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

This third and final part of our look at the first recorded sales of Henry Dalton’s Los Angeles store, recorded on 30 September 1845 in a ledger that was the first of more than twenty that he kept to track commercial activity at the Angel City mercantile for about a decade and from 1855 onward at his Rancho Azusa, turns to the Spanish-speaking Californio clientele with which the England native dealt, as well as some general transactions at the end of the listing.

After the first customer, Jonathan Temple, the next was Juan Capistrano Sepúlveda, who on the 8th purchased a pair of mangas (translated as sleeves and possibly an undershirt) and one “sarapito,” or a small sarape, or a garment worn by men as a blanket-type of scarf or shawl. A week later, a pair of rebozos for a “niña,” apparently meaning a shawl for a daughter, a tapalo, which would be a scarf and four mascadas, or silk scarves. In all, the purchases totaled seven pesos.

Sepúlveda (1814-1897) was the son of José Dolores, who ran cattle on a portion of the 75,000-acre Rancho San Pedro that was denoted as “Palos Verdes,” often rendered as “green trees.” This was done by an informal arrangement with the Dominguez family, grantees of San Pedro, but a conflict soon arose about the use and ownership of the peninsula, resulting in a separate land grant made to Sepúlveda for the Rancho Palos Verdes, well north of 30,000 acres.

When Sepúlveda died in 1824, his young sons, Juan Capistrano and José Loreto succeeded to his interests until a grant was issued in the 1840s. While the ranch was successful for grazing cattle, including during the Gold Rush, the end of that boom, followed by years of flood and drought and the expenses of the mandatory land claim under American law. The family eventually lost most of their interests in the ranch, but, in September 1845, they occupied the entirety of Palos Verdes.

Customer #14 was Juan Bandini (1800-1859), a native of Peru, where Dalton long resided and worked, as noted in part one of this post, and it seems very likely the two knew each other in Lima. Bandini’s father, José, who hailed from Cádiz, Spain, was a ship captain and moved his family to San Diego in the early 1820s after Mexican independence. In 1828, the elder Bandini wrote a Description of Alta California, a notable document of the remote “department” that has been called the “Siberia of México.”

Juan married Dolores Estudillo, daughter of the San Diego Presidio’s commanding officer, and they had three daughters and a son, with the family residing in a dwelling now the Cosmopolitan Hotel in the Old Town San Diego state historic park. After her death in 1833, he wedded María del Refugio Argüello, whose father Santiago was a major Californio figure in San Diego.

Bandini also was granted the Rancho Jurupa near modern Riverside, though this was sold to Benjamin D. Wilson after this American arrived in California with the Rowland and Workman Expedition of 1841. Among Bandini’s children was Arcadia, who married Abel Stearns, the Massachusetts-born merchant in Los Angeles mentioned in part one, as well as Ysidora, who later married Cave Couts, an American soldier. Bandini was the only purchaser from Dalton with two separate listings. The first was “for 1 harpa & 1 guitarra for Dn. Isidora,” totaling three pesos and the second for two tapalos de Burato, or shawls, and one mantilla.

José Rubio (1822-1890) planted a thirty-acre vineyard east of the Los Angeles River in what was then known as Paredon Blanco, or “White Bluff,” a name given when flooding from the watercourse exposed hillsides and showed that color of substrata. The young man bought a bale of sugar and a pair of sayales, which look to be coarse woolen garments, spending 5.60 pesos for these. In 1858, Rubio sold his Paredon Blanco property to Andrew Boyle, for whom the area was renamed Boyle Heights and he moved to the south part of town along the river not far from William Wolfskill’s vineyard and orchard.

Customers 20 and 21 were the brothers Manuel (1803-1882) and Pedro (1812-1883) Dominguez, whose father José Cristóbal inherited half of Rancho San Pedro and legal battles with José Dolores Sepúlveda, as noted above, ensued with an 1841 agreement settling the matter of dividing the two properties. Manuel became a particularly important figure in the Los Angeles area, serving twice as alcalde (mayor) of the pueblo, including in the early 1830s and just prior to the period of the Dalton ledger, and, in 1849, serving as a local delegate to the convention that wrote and ratified California’s first constitution. The brothers’ purchases included coffee for Manuel and sugar, a metate, a rebozo and a sarapito for Pedro.

Pedro Carrillo (1818-1888) was part of another important Californio family and was married to Juan Bandini’s daughter Josefa (if it hasn’t become abundantly clear that these elite ranchero families were closely tied by marriage, it should by now!). Pedro remained in Santa Barbara, where his family had long been prominent until he relocated to Los Angeles in the 1860s and he died at Santa Monica. Like many others of Dalton’s customers that first month, he purchased the very valuable bale of sugar. The same product was acquired by J.A. (like Pedro’s cousin, José Antonio), also a Santa Barbara-area rancher in 1845, while Pedro’s father, who was customer 32, did likewise.

Almost certainly the most prominent Californio of the time was Don Pío Pico (1801-1894), governor of the department of Alta California since February, when he seized control of the chief executive office after a military standoff at Cahuenga Pass, during which Pico was assisted by William Workman and other extranjeros. Born at Mission San Gabriel, where his father was serving in the Spanish Army, Pico was a San Diego merchant before amassing land grants and rising high in the highly insular political world of California.

Pico could not have foreseen that, within six months of his purchase of sugar, scarves and mangas from Dalton, war would break out when the United States manufactured a reason to declare against México. Under a year from these ledger entries, Pico fled south, ostensibly to seek support for the defense of Alta California and remained there until after the war’s end in 1848. He went on to be one of the few Californios with significant landholdings and financial resources, those these dwindled, including after he sold much of his ranch property to build the Pico Building (1868) and Pico House hotel (1869) and then was swindled out of his Rancho Paso de Bartolo not long before his death.

Customer #31 was Ignacio Coronel (1795-1862), a native of Mexico City who was an important part of the Hijar-Padres Colony that settled in Los Angeles in 1834. He was the grantee of the Rancho La Cañada, where the city of La Cañada-Flintridge is situated today, though he resided in the pueblo. Coronel’s son, Antonio Franco, became a major figure in Los Angeles and California and was one of the few Latinos to hold a statewide office when he was state treasurer from 1867 to 1871. His listing is hard to understand, as it appears to read, “1 Sett Feb. Mex.” and “1 Escriche” and, if anybody can help discern what these concern and leave a comment, that would be appreciated.

Coronel’s nephew, Agustín Olvera (1820-1876), came with him in the 1834 colony and became a very important Los Angeles figure. He was a brother-in-law of Juan Bandini, having married Concepción Argüello and, after her death, María Ortega. The owner of two ranchos, he soon became an officer in the Californio defense against the American invasion during the ensuing war and was one of three signees, with Andrés Pico and José Carrillo, of the Treaty of Cahuenga, which Pico negotiated with John C. Frémont.

Shortly after the American seizure of Alta California, the military governor appointed Olvera to be the regional Judge of the First Instance and this was followed by his election as the the first county judge. This meant presiding over the Court of Session, which included two local justices of the peace and which also was administrative body of the county, until a board of supervisors was established by state law in 1852. Notably, Olvera simultaneously served on the Los Angeles Common (City) Council and, from 1855 to 1857 was a county supervisor.

After completing that last term, Olvera became an attorney and he maintained ownership of suburban property, as well. Long a resident of an adobe building at the northeast corner of the Plaza, where Wine and Marchessault streets intersected, Olvera died on 6 October 1876 and, the following year, he was honored with renaming of Wine Street to Olvera Street. More than a half-century later, the dirt thoroughfare was thoroughly remade into the tourist attraction that remains today as part of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

Reflective of the young man’s scholarly attainments and predictive of his prestigious future among the legal fraternity in Los Angeles, Olvera’s purchases of not too far shy of six pesos included three books, including Montesquieu’s famous, The Spirit of the Laws, one on litigation and another that appeared to concern writing techniques. Other acquisitions were a silk tunic or shirt, tea and (to go with that beverage and plenty else), sugar.

The thirty-fourth customer was Ricardo Vejar (1805-1879), who, with Ygnacio Palomares, was owner of the Rancho San José, adjacent to the east of Rowland and Workman’s Rancho La Puente. While Palomares owned by alta, or upper/northern, section of San José, Vejar held the abajo, or lower/southern, portion, though he lost his holdings during the dire years of floods and droughts during the early 1860s with Louis Phillips acquiring that domain. Vejar moved to the adjacent Rancho Los Nogales in modern Walnut, living there until his death. His purchases from Dalton included a pair of rebozos and four mascadas.

Jordan Pacheco (1782-1852) hailed from Lisbon, the capital of Portugal and came to Los Angeles in 1829. He was a merchant, as were several others of Dalton’s customers and he purchased a pair of mascadas and a barrel of aguardiente, the grape brandy that was a very popular product of local vintners as well as a stimulant for a good deal of violence and source of rampant alcoholism. Another merchant and a rancher was José Salazar, who also picked up a pair of mascadas, along with a thousand calabongas seeds for an ornamental plant related to the oleander.

The only woman customer on this inaugural listing was Ramona Serrano de Sepúlveda (1787-1870), a native of Mission San Gabriel, wife of Francisco, a former soldier and grantee of the Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica, and mother of fifteen children, including seven sons and daughters who married into the Avila, Machado and de la Guerra families. She purchased a rebozo, while customer 44 was José Sepúlveda, likely her son (1803-1875), who picked up a metate.

Another buyer of a metate was “Ignacio Valle,” this almost certainly being the prominent figure, Ignacio/Ygnacio del Valle (1808-1880), whose life was sketched in a previous post here. One of the other purchasers from outside the Los Angeles area, testament to Dalton’s trading activities throughout Alta California, was Joaquín Gómez of Monterey, who bought two cases of copper at north of sixteen pesos.

There were separate listings for a “Hide Sale (prompt),” which involved seven cattle hides; “Cash Sales (prompt) and involving those cabalonga seeds (these were sent, as well, to the merchant’s Rancho Azusa), mascadas, a penknife, a tapalo burato, muslin and other items; “Charges de Govierno Departmental,” meaning the California government, “for amt. of duties allowed in payment per Julia,” this concerning the payment of excise taxes for Dalton’s ship, the Julia Ann and at above 613 pesos; charges “for duties Store rent on Sundries per Julia,” and totaling over fourteen pesos; and accounts to that craft’s captain, Charles Walter, including 514 pesos “for amt. of his Invoice from Guadalajara” for merchandise and over 1,819 pesos “for amount of his account of disbursements till date.”

We’ll return at some future date to look at more transactions and other customers of Henry Dalton at his Los Angeles store, so check back for more, likely this fall.