Read All About It in the Los Angeles Express, 29-30 July 1874

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

This latest “Read All About It” post looks at the contents of the two issues of the Los Angeles Express, published on 29 and 30 July 1874 and follows last year’s post at this time that covered the edition of the 28th. One of the major stories in the latter concerned an incident in Anaheim in which a milliner, Flora Eldridge was attacked and robbed by two men. A constable, Dye Davis, tried to arrest José Moreno on the allegation that he was involved and, purportedly after the wanted man drew a pistol after insisting that he not be handled by the officer, Davis shot Moreno twice, inflicting mortal wounds.

The post from last year went into some detail about a piece in the issue of the 29th that raised questions about what actually transpired and Davis’ conduct, while also cautioning against the reports that citizens in Anaheim were considering lynching Moreno for the alleged assault against Eldridge, though there were also concerns about her ability to positively identify him. Noting that Moreno was not expected to survive his wounds, the Express called for “a severe and searching judicial investigation, but that, if he was to survive, lynching would be reprehensible.

It should be added that there’d recently been, in early June, the lynching of Jesús Romo for a crime he was reported to have committed at the store at the Workman Mill operated by William Workman’s Rancho La Puente foreman, Frederick Lambourn, and the miller, William F. Turner. Moreover, many in greater Los Angeles were on edge because that followed the pursuit and arrest of the famed bandido Tiburcio Vásquez, so the atmosphere at Anaheim was undoubtedly affected by this context.

The Express of the 31st, however, carried a lengthy letter from J.W. Clark, the justice of the peace and acting coroner, who countered the commentary in the paper by stating that Davis surrendered immediately following his shooting of Moreno and that Eldridge was adamant in identifying the latter, exclaiming, “there is the man” and asking a brother-in-law to summon Davis. Clark continued that several men were brought to the victim for possible identification, but only Moreno was positively identified by her.

The JP also expressed his unequivocal view that not only was Davis more than justified in acting as he did in shooting Moreno, but that, in the struggle between then, the latter’s gun was fired into the ground, after which the wanted men turned to flee and was hit with the second bullet. Clark claimed he was “no apologist” of the officer and continued that “only as an act of justice do I make these statements” because the Express received wrong information. Moreno died of his injuries and, apparently, so did a full resolution of the incident, including whether ethnic prejudice and bias played a part or not.

In the “Local Items” column of brief reports throughout the region, the Express noted that “Cuente Eleralde,” that last name almost certainly be Elisalde, filed a complaint with a Los Angeles justice of the peace seeking an arrest warrant for Davis, later said to have been a Mormon, for “making sanguinary [murderous] threats against his life.” Nothing seems to have done beyond this, but, in September 1876, one of Davis’ sons, playing with a firearm in their Los Angeles house, accidentally shot a sibling, who, apparently survived. Two years later, the former constable displayed his skill by shooting a bottle off a Boyle Heights’ man’s head.

There were a few criminal items in that column relating to fights and reported theft, as well as lectures by a trio of figures, including “Professor” William Denton of Boston, who, we’ve noted before here, offered a “People’s Course on Scientific Lectures” with a half-dozen expositions on the origins of life on the planet while also pursuing “psychometry,” in which, via the extraordinary perceptions of a sister, he would talk about a subject based on touching objects associated with it.

For his presentation the prior evening, the Express summarized that “the entire line of scientific argument” employed by the learned lecturer “was availed of in this to prove the truth of spiritualism.” This led to the result that “some of his auditors thought they had been gradually drawn into a proselytizing spiritual discourse by a skilfully [sic] devised plan,” but the paper concluded that Denton “opened a heavy masked battery of spiritual ammunition . . . upon his audience.”

Another “professor” was Edward Cain, an African-American man whose presentations designed to show the equality of the white and black races, but who was generally mocked for his pronunciation of words rendered in so-called “Black dialect.” The Express observed that Cain “will deliver a farewell lecture on the subject of prejudice governed by colors and the account ended with, “as he intends to start out upon a lecturing tour in behalf of his race immediately after delivering this discourse, he will charge the modest stipend of one dollar as an admission fee.” Cain appears to have given his talks in San Francisco and elsewhere in California for about a decade through the first part of the 1880s.

Finally, a Dr. York, from San Jose in the northern part of California, was set to give a four-part series of presentations starting that evening on the vague “Open Questions,” followed by “Wasted Power,” “Local Option,” this apparently concerning the movement to ban alcohol in local jurisdictions rather than seek state or federal prohibition, and, lastly, “How to be Happy.” The Express added that “Dr. York is favorably spoken of by the press where he has lectured.”

The aforementioned edition of the paper from the 28th had a piece on local oil prospecting, in which F.P.F. Temple was a prominent figure in the San Fernando field, situated in the mountains on the west side of today’s Interstate 5 in Santa Clarita. His Los Angeles Petroleum Refining Company, launched the prior year, was very active in Towsley Canyon, now part of a regional park and, following that brief article, the real estate transaction column included four concerning his claim, involving Ozro W. Childs, a noted nursery owner and capitalist, Charles Gerson, who ran, with Christian Fluhr, the Lafayette Hotel in town, and Rodolfo Carreras, who convinced Temple he had a process for refining crude oil that would be revolutionary, but turned out to be anything but that.

Also reported in the sheet was that a ball at Turnverein Hall on Spring Street for the support of the 38s, the city’s volunteer fire department “was a very enjoyable affair,” with 200 hundred dancers and many watching and listening to excellent music and enjoying a fine supper. On the evening of the 29th, the San Francisco Circus was to give a benefit on behalf of the firefighters and their need for a new hose cart, apparatus and more, with the 38s to “appear in full uniform on this occasion.”

Ina D. Coolbrith, a famous poet in California during the time, got her start in published versification in the 1850s when she was a teenage resident of Los Angeles known generally as Josephine Donna Smith, with her pen name being a shortening of her first name in Spanish—Josefina. The Express reprinted her “A Prayer for Strength,” which was recently published in The Overland Monthly, the literary journal that helped make her reputation. Here is that work:

O soul! however sweet

That goal to which I hasten with swift feet—

If, just within my grasp,

I reach, and joy to clasp,

And find one there whose body I must make

A footstool for that sake,

Though ever and forevermore denied,

Grant me to turn aside!

O, Howsoever dear

The love I long for, seek, and find anear—

So near, so near the bliss

Sweetest of all that is—

If I must win by cunning or by art,

Or wrong one other heart

Though it should bring me death, O soul! that day

Grant me to turn away!

That in the life so far

And yet so near, I be without a scar

Of wounds dealt others! Greet with lifted eyes

The pure of Paradise!

So I may never know

The agony of tears I caused to flow!

For the edition of the 30th, the Express reported that surveyors were expected to go that day to the Rancho Cucamonga to create homestead lots as well as irrigation ditches, with it stated that “there is a great sufficiency of water” so that every property would be guaranteed “an unlimited supply.” Additionally, the paper noted that “everybody who has visited this locality pronounced it one of the best natural places for a homestead settlement that could have been selected.”

With the backdrop of the San Gabriel (known then as the Sierra Madre) Mountains and in what was proclaimed “one of the most picturesque valleys found anywhere,” Cucamonga was touted for the fact that “the soil is rich; the temperature even and moderate, and the grape grows to its greatest perfection.” If all were to go well, given how “intelligently and liberally planned” the scheme was, the property of banker Isaias W. Hellman, former partner of Temple and William Workman, would “be worth forty times the original investment, and one of the most prosperous settlements in the State will be found at Cucamonga.”

In local news, the paper heart from an unnamed source in San Gabriel Canyon, above the Rancho Azusa and not far from Workman’s portion of Rancho La Puente, that “there is more water [there] than has been available there for the past seven years,” since the flood year of 1867-1868. Just below this was a statement from another unidentified figure that the North Fork of the San Gabriel River at the back of the canyon was “the best section in the Southern counties for bee ranches.” Apiaries became a major regional feature during this era.

Henry Roberts, a miner of long experience in the Canyon, was reported to have two hydraulic apparatuses there, while another man had one elsewhere. Diversion of water through a ditch was proposed for two more claims, while “a company is also being organized to turn the river, so as to work the bed.” This was called by the Express “a large and important work” that could mean that “a great deal of hold will be taken out.” Repeating the fact that a significant amount of water was found in the canyon, it was noted that there were “several inches more . . . in the lake at the head of the North Fork,” this being what is now known as Crystal Lake.

Returning to the matter of irrigation, however, in Los Angeles, the Express reprinted a quote from a writer to its competitor, the Star, in which it was said that

The meagerness of the water supply has rendered some quite lawless in its appropriation, and it is a common thing to see one man known another down, or to stand guard over water gates with a drawn revolver to maintain his rights . . . [while another local, Toby Lumpkins (whose name sounds like a Dickens character)] had to go after a citizen with a double-barreled shotgun to assert his right for the water . . . For a Christian and civilized community this seems to me to be a very deplorable state of affairs, but such are the facts.

At the eastern end of Los Angeles County, the paper observed, “a very extensive fire occurred near and west of Spadra yesterday afternoon,” blamed on the report that “a Mexican threw a burning cigarito upon the dry grass of a large field recently bought by Messrs. Beach & Butler.” The blaze spread very rapidly and, despite a concerted effort to knock it down, the conflagration “swept bare of all vegetation about twelve hundred acres.”

Wilson Beach and George R. Butler, the last the Los Angeles city treasurer, acquired the Rancho Los Nogales, which adjoined La Puente on the east, including parts of modern Walnut (named for the ranch), Diamond Bar and the City of Industry. The account went on that “the loss will be a severe one” to the pair, “for they were reserving this pasturage for their flocks to feed on after the exhaustion of their other ranges.”

While the fire was not said to be set intentionally, the unnamed accused was scored for “not promptly extinguishing it at the start” and the paper wondered if “the party was animated with a motive of malignity against the men who have to suffer the loss.” The property in question was south and west of the community of Spadra (situated along today’s Pomona Boulevard near the 57 Freeway) in what was later the ranch of Alvin T. Currier, who served as county sheriff and a state senator, much of which is in Industry, which moved his house to the Phillips Mansion historic site in nearby Pomona.

The account added that there were fears the flames would jump the watercourse “and destroy the town of Spadra; but the great exertions of the people, who all turned out and fought the flames, prevented this further calamity.” Whether the financial loss from the fire was the cause, or a major contributor along with the resulting economic depression that hit the region (including the failure of the Temple and Workman bank), Butler soon sold his interest, though Beach held on for a little while longer. Eventually, an expanded Rancho Los Nogales included the north end of the Chino Hills and the Tonner Canyon area that partially became the Tres Hermanos Ranch.

As always, these newspapers in the Museum’s holdings from the first half of the 1870s are among the best sources for what transpired during the region’s first boom, which began in the late Sixties and ended a little more than a year after this issue, so we’ll continued sharing the editions in our collection in the “Read All About It” series.