by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with our look into the pages of the 7 September 1874 edition of the Los Angeles Express during the height of the region’s first boom, one of the feature articles concerned a “Frightful Accident” which was all-too-common in American households during the era. Ambrosia Salazar, residing two-and-a-half miles south of the Angel City, though it is unknown if this referred to beyond city limits, which, in those days was not far below Interstate 10, was lighting a fire in a wood stove when “a blazing stick fell from the stove, coming in contact with her dress and setting it on fire.”
Salazar hurried to a window and called for a sister and then ran out of the house and fell to the ground. A neighbor, Juan Buelna, rushed over “and commenced to tear the blazing dress from the girl, and a whole barrel of water was procured and poured over the person.” Both rescuers received burns on their hands, while Salazar suffered from terrible injuries to most of her body and her hair and eyebrows totally singed away.
It turned out that two men, including a doctor, rode by as the incident took place with the physician saying that Salazar would survive but need substantial recovery time, adding that “her features will not be marred by the accident, but her body will be permanently scarred.” The Express offered its opinion that it was strange that “there is not someone with sufficient presence of mind to simply smother the flames with a blanket of cloth of some kind” and then pondered “why will women to the very thing they ought not to do when their garments are on fire, rush out in the open air, where the fire may be fanned, and a trifling accident be rendered certainly serious?” Obviously, the answer was sheer panic and one wondered what the journalist would’ve done in the same situation.
The Board of Supervisors (of which F.P.F. Temple was on the first board when it was established in 1852) meeting earlier in the day had a summary that seems remarkable compared to the minutes of any such gathering today, especially considering that, despite the astronomical growth of the county over 175 years, there is still the same number of members: five.
The business consisted of ordering the advertising of proposals for bridges for the Wilmington to Anaheim road, this presumably over the Los Angeles or San Gabriel rivers with Anaheim Street in Wilmington and Long Beach almost certainly being this route (though where it went beyond that is a good question), and the other from Anaheim to Spadra (Pomona) and this being through Brea Canyon where the 57 Freeway runs now; a denied petition to declare Alameda Street from the city to Compton a public highway; and the certification of the victory of Gabriel Allen as first district supervisor with a grand total of 273 votes cast.
Speaking of Anaheim, a town approaching its 20th birthday, news from that city’s Californian newspaper included mention of the subscription of $50,000 in stock for the Bolsa Chica Wharf Company. A prior post here went into some detail about this project in what much later became Huntington Beach—the gist being that the bust that followed the boom brought a swift end to the wharf. Alexander Henry, owner of 200 acres just west of Anaheim and a grape-grower and wine and brandy manufacturer, found water at 320 feet in an artesian well, with this said to be important for that area, especially because the presence of rock led others to think such an effort could not successfully be realized.
On the editorial page, the same paper’s report on Santa Ana, formed at the end of the 1860s, was printed, with the note that “threshing still continues in this section of the county” for field crops, presumably wheat, barley, corn and the like, and that “there seems to be an abundant yield,” though “many on account of want of room” for storage “are compelled to haul their produce to the landing for proper storage.” The picking of corn, meanwhile, was taking place as the crop was “ripening rapidly on the highlands.”
Moreover, “the fruit season is here,” but it was added that those “who live beyond the limits of the bearing belt have much difficulty in procuring enough to satisfy the appetite.” While peddlers were about during the week, they did not have enough to sell to meet demand. This is interesting given how much of that region became devoted to citrus in succeeding decades, leading to the obvious name for the formation, in 1889, of a new county in that vicinity!
Another item connected to the future county was a reprint of the Californian‘s report concerned settlers on lands in modern Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach and Westminster who were overjoyed to learn from Juan Bautista Manriquez and Manuel Duarte, both over 70 years of age, who completed an affidavit that the residents of what was called the “Devil’s Elbow” were not living within the bounds of the Rancho Las Bolsas, as claimed by the Los Angeles and San Bernardino Land Company, successors to the vast holdings of the late Abel Stearns.
Another item of interest was the “Los Angeles Fruit Dryer” with George B. Davis, owner of the Alden Fruit Dryer manufacturing process, in town and readying to get his operation established. The Express quoted the San Francisco Alta California as reporting that the superintendent for the works, Frank Pyle, was heading south to the Angel City “to see that the factory for drying fruit is properly constructed, and to start the furnace and drying-rooms.”
The account continued that
If Mr. Pyle can make raisins of the Los Angeles grapes, as he has of those of other localities, in addition to the drying of many varieties of Los Angeles county products, such as oranges, lemons, etc., he will add tens of thousands of dollars to the wealth of that county. From his past experience we feel that he will be successful.
The dollar amount is a reminder of just how light “light manufacturing” really was in Los Angeles, decades before heavy industry became a vital feature of the regional economy. As noted here in another post, the fruit drying works were established next to the Los Angeles River in the newly founded East Los Angeles neighborhood, now Lincoln Heights, with F.P.F. Temple and his son Thomas as key investors, but it, too, failed with the bust of 1875-1876.
Lastly, there was a short piece concerning the fact that the county Board of Examination concluded its four days of testing and issued teaching certificates to fourteen persons, seven women and the same number of men. There were three grades, depending on how many subjects and how much advancement there was for these, so that the third grade was the lowest level, with successful candidates demonstrating a minimum competency on subjects for the youngest students and three unmarried women qualified. Often, these were granted for a single term of generally three or so months.
The second grade was the middle level enabling those who surpassed minimum qualifications to teacher at grammar schools and there were two men and three women, including the only married female, who received their certificates. Finally, the first grade involved the determination of competency in the greatest number and complexity of subjects and allowed for instruction through high school. Notably, it was one woman and five men who achieve success. The two levels usually involved certification for the entire school year.
It is worth adding that public education made tremendous strides nationally during the 19th century with literacy rates climbing by leaps and bounds. Los Angeles County began public school operations in the mid-1850s, about a half-decade after California statehood and, not surprisingly, the early years were often difficult ones, especially for rural schools, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that compulsory education was not yet statutorily required; there was often indifference among some families, particularly those of farmers, laborers and others; and adequate funding was also a chronic problem.
Whereas men generally were the vast majority of public school teachers, this abruptly changed with the onset of the Civil War, when women filled gaps, but, in this case, unlike with other professions in wartime, then and later, they did not cede their numerical dominance. In any case, pay was always poor and thus best suited for young, unmarried persons of either gender, with some as young as their late teens, such as high school graduates, working as teachers. For young women, this was often a situation in which this work was done until marriage, while for men, it was until they could find a higher remunerated position elsewhere. Careers of many years and decades were not nearly as common as they are today.
A major advancement in California education came with the establishment in 1859 of a state Board of Examiners to test and issue licenses to teachers, though there were no standards that applied throughout the state and the matter of determining successful qualifications was left to local districts. Even a change in 1863 to put more of this authority in the hands of the state board did not fundamentally alter existing practices and the issuance of certifications at the county level continued to be the norm into the 20th century.
Another milestone was achieved in 1862 with the founding of the State Normal School for teacher education at San Jose—this evolved into San Jose State University. Some two decades later, a branch opened at Los Angeles where the Central Public Library now stands, while the institution morphed into the University of California, Los Angeles. Mary Julia Workman, daughter of former Los Angeles mayor and future treasurer William H. Workman and Maria E. Boyle, went to the normal school in Los Angeles and was certified to teach kindergarten.
One of those awarded a first grade teaching certificate was Herman A. Saxe (1836-1918), a career educator whose life embodied the challenges of working in the profession, especially as he was married and had four children. Saxe was born in a farming family in Sheldon, Vermont, in the northwest corner of the Green Mountain State very close to the Canadian border, though he also lived in Albany, the state capital of New York for part of his childhood.
When he was 18, Saxe joined his family in a move to Saxeville, Wisconsin, situated northwest of Oshkosh and Lake Winnebago and founded by his brothers. Except for a summer spent in Minnesota, he remained there for five years before migrating overland with a brother, Dr. Arthur Saxe, with the two ending up at the mission town of Santa Clara adjacent to San Jose. He attended the senior preparatory portion of the University of the Pacific at Stockton in 1861 and then taught for three years in Solano County southwest of Sacramento.
A return to Santa Clara for a year was followed, after marriage to Flora Daniels, by a stint farming back in Solano, after which there was a five-year period of teaching again at the mission town, lasting the second half of the Sixties. He tried running a bookstore at San Francisco and then settled in Porterville in Tulare County, where he again taught. It was from there that he and his family came south in 1873 to Los Angeles, where Saxe may have thought the growing city gave him opportunities not otherwise available in the north.
Having participated in previous teachers’ institutes, Saxe was an active member of one in the Angel City that November. He completed three years in the public school system, earning $1,000 teaching 56 3rd-grade students, for the 1875-1876 year, but decided to open his own private school in 1876, just after an economic downturn in California placed it in general alignment with the “Long Depression” that burst forth nationally three years before and lasted through the decade. Though Saxe closed his enterprise and went back to public school teaching for the 1876-1877 school, he sold his home (he resided near Sixth Street Park, now Pershing Square, before moving to 4th and Charity [Grand]) and headed back to San Jose and was a school principal.
Saxe remained in the general Bay Area for most of the remaining forty years of life, though in the late 1880s he was a principal of a school in a small town between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, where he was credited with staying with a dying pupil who was run over by a train as he stumbled trying to cross a track. Saxe, in later life, became a Christian Science practitioner, who use prayer, or treatment, based on Biblical and sources from Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the religion, for healing. At the end of January 1918, almost thirty years after his ministrations to his student, Saxe was hit by a train as he tried to cross the track and was killed.
While he found more stability in his fifties and remained dedicated to his profession for decades, Saxe moved around considerably as teaching could be a challenging vocation from a financial standpoint, especially for someone raising a family and one working in rural communities or small towns like 1870s Los Angeles.
With plenty more Los Angeles newspapers from the first half of the Seventies in the Museum’s collection to share, we’ll return with future installments of the “Read All About It” series, so check back for those.