by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The Homestead is pleased to again take part in Doors Open California, a program of the California Preservation Foundation in which dozens of historic sites throughout the Golden State offer special programming and access. Last year, we showcased La Casa Nueva, of which we are celebrating the centennial of its lengthy construction, giving guests a rare look at the house and its history.
For this year and this coming weekend, Saturday the 14th and Sunday the 15th at Noon, 1, 2 and 3 p.m., we are focusing on El Campo Santo Cemetery and specifically its being the final resting place of Don Pío Pico, the last governor of Mexican Alta California, and his wife, Doña María Ygnacia Alvarado, both of whom were relocated from the Old Calvary Cemetery at the base of the Elysian Hills (and below today’s Dodger Stadium) when the Walter P. Temple Memorial Mausoleum was completed in spring 1921.
Prior posts here have summarized some of the remarkable and lengthy life of Don Pío, who was born on 5 May 1801 at the Mission San Gabriel, the son of a Spanish Army soldier and a housewife and who rose to be a storekeeper, ranchero, member of the department legislature including serving as its head and, finally, the governor in 1845-1846 just prior to the American invasion, as well as the reburial in El Campo Santo of he and his wife.
Pico left Alta California, ostensibly to seek some support for the defense of his department, and didn’t leave without issuing a fiery statement of defiance with his proclamation, following the onset of the Bear Flag Revolt, an independent movement in the north by Anglo-Americans prior to the formal United States invasion, exhorting his fellow Californios that “you are Mexicans . . . and that you will not fail in the defense of her liberty and independence.
The governor asked his fellow citizens, “will the grievous groans of the country not move you?” and “will you, with serene brows, see destroyed the fundamental pact of our sacred and dear institutions?” To these rhetorical questions, Pico thundered,
No! No! Far from every such suspicion! It is not believed, from your patriotism, your blind love of country, that you will permit the beneficent and fruitful tree of sacred liberty to be profaned. The North American nation can never be our friend . . .
Fly, Mexicans, in all haste in pursuit of the treacherous foe! Follow him to the farthest wilderness! Punish his audacity! And in case we fail let us form a cemetery where posterity may remember to the glory of Mexican history the heroism of her sons . . .
Shall we suffer human blood sold at a price for vile gain? . . .
Compatriots, run swiftly with me to crown your brows with the fresh laurels of unfading glory. In the fields of the north they are scattered ready to spring to your noble foreheads. Respond gladly, Mexicans, to the desire of your fellow citizen and friend.
Though after this expected full-throated denunciation of the American enemy, Pico soon decamped for México, his brother, Andrés, serving as a general of the Californios forces, who were badly outfitted to fight against the invading army, pulled off a spectacular victory at San Pasqual, near San Diego. The younger Pico was aided by a terrible decision by American commanders to encamp in a depression in the landscape, allowing themselves to be surrounded by Californios who rushed down with their skillful use of horses and lances to decimate their foes.
Despite this and such examples as the citizens of Los Angeles rising up to evict American troops left in garrison after a bloodless seizure of the pueblo and taking back the town, a final battle at what is now Vernon in early January 1847 completed the conquest. William Workman was involved in several important events during this period, including securing the release of Americans and Europeans captured and imprisoned by Californios; meeting with Navy Commodore Robert F. Stockton at San Juan Capistrano prior to that last battle to seek an amnesty for the Californios defending their homeland; and, on 10 January, bringing the white flag to surrender Los Angeles to the Americans.
When Pico returned home in summer 1848, he stayed for a period at the Workman House at the Homestead and, when this was reported to Los Angeles garrison commander, Jonathan Stevenson, he angrily referred to Workman as “ever hostile to the American cause” in not turning his friend in as the commander expected.
The above excerpts from Pico’s 1846 proclamation were published in the Los Angeles Herald of 30 September 1894, not quite three weeks after the venerable Californio’s death on this date, the 11th, and very nearly a half-century after his statements. The remainder of this post will touch on some aspects of Don Pío’s last years and, we hope, entice some of you reading this to consider signing up for the program and joining us this weekend for a slide-illustrated presentation on Pico and El Campo Santo, followed by a tour of the burial ground and the crypt in which he and Doña Ygnacia are interred.
Despite his impassioned plea in 1846, Pico automatically became an American citizen, per the provisions of the war-ending of Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, through a negotiated article protecting land grands, including a great many by the governor in his final days in office, was struck from the treaty by Congress when it ratified the document in spring 1848. While he and all other grantees, including Workman and Temple family members, had to endure the long and expense land claims process that lasted from 1852 until, on the average, about 1870, Pico retained large tracts of land and significant wealth.
He established a permanent residence on his “Ranchito” on the Rancho Paso de Bartolo, adjacent to Workman’s La Puente in what is now Whittier and Pico Rivera, while taking advantage of Los Angeles’ first development boom to sell a large section of the San Fernando Valley, which he acquired from his brother.
Don Pío used the proceeds to construct, in 1870, the Pico House hotel, an effort to keep the Plaza area viable as Americans were moving downtown business activity further south of Main Street. Two years earlier, he built the Pico Building in that very section and it housed the bank of Hellman, Temple and Company, co-owned by Workman and his son-in-law, F.P.F. Temple.
Unfortunately, the Pico House never succeeded financially to meet expectations and expenses, while the former governor had a tendency to get embroiled in costly and lengthy law suits over the hotel and other issues. After borrowing money from Bernard Cohn of Los Angeles and then believing he’d satisfied the terms of the contract, which he did not understand as not reading English and relying on interpreters, by paying Cohn some $65,000 to redeem the mortgage, Pico was stunned to find that the courts believed Cohn’s claim that Pico signed a contract of sale.
After a Supreme Court ruling in September 1891 in favor of Cohn, Pico was evicted from his Ranchito and, with Margarita Workman de Temple, residing just a few miles north and on the way to Los Angeles, the ex-governor, who’d just turned 90, stopped to stay with her and her family for a short period. In the Workman House, we have a chair and footstool that were donated three years ago by the Josette Temple estate and which are said to have been gifts from Pico to the Temples for their long friendship and hospitality in his time of need.
Well before the high court decision and after Pico lost his suit at the local Superior Court, efforts were undertaken to assist the aged Californio. One such example, by Eliza Otis, wife of the powerful publisher of the Los Angeles Times included touching letters by children offering their small sums of money to aid Pico. The 29 March 1891 edition of that paper contained a letter from young Emma Frances Fair, who wrote to Otis,
We have been reading about Don Pio Pico and his unhappy situation and it is so kind of you to take such an interest in him. It seems so strange that out of so many children there are so few who are so kind-hearted . . . My grandpa has a large ranch and he has given my brother and me two apricot trees each and we are going to sell the fruit and send the money for Don Pio Pico . . . How jolly it would be if the boys and girls could meet and . . . have a May-day picnic, and crown the little girl who loves old people, and tried to help Pio Pico, queen of the May. Will you help us, dear Mrs. Otis?
In her reply, Otis told readers “I have been hoping to receive some more money from the children for ex-Gov. Pico, for he needs it sadly.” She went to remark that she felt bad for Don Pío “for he seems to me like a brave, honest old gentleman, and he ought not to be left to suffer.” She requested “my boys and girls” to send in a dime as “an Easter offering” and this would constitute “a nice little sum I should have to carry to him,” so she concluded by asking her readers, “how do you like the idea, children?”
There was also a proposal at this time from Pico’s friend and neighbor in the University Park area of the city, not far from the University of Southern California, Jonathan Trumbull (Juan José) Warner, to secure a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors or a state legislature appropriation as something like a small pension to keep Pico from penury.
Despite the pleas of the immigrant from nearly seven decades prior, the Herald objected, raising “constitutional objections” at the state level and added that it seemed unlikely that anything could be done so late in the legislative session. After remarking that, had Pico avoided so much litigation, he might have had some money to live on, despite the clear case of fraud in the Cohn case, the paper acknowledged that Don Pio “found himself confronted with a new civilization, with laws and practices he was not familiar with and which operated to his ruin” and that this “is sufficient excuse for his having failed to hold his own in his later years.”
On the other hand, continued the Herald, Pico “is not alone or peculiar in this respect” as “some of the brightest and sharpest of the pioneer Americans have come to grief as well as he.” The paper then observed that,
It is due to our people that this historical figure, so intimately and conspicuously connected with the ante-American annals of our state, and particularly of this section of it, should not be permitted to want for any of the necessities or even the superfluities of life for the few years he may yet be with us. Perhaps some of our public-spirited people will suggest a plan by which the last of the Mexican governors of our state may be rescued from the sharp sting of dependence in his closing years.
In the end, the view of the paper that nothing should be done from a governmental perspective, but that Pico and others in need should rely on private charity, prevailed. It added in another issue that Pico reportedly received $50 a month from a nephew and that there was a standing offer for him to occupy a house on the Rancho Santa Margarita in San Diego County—this ranch was a point of major legal contention between Pico and his sister’s husband, John Forster, decades before and is the subject of an award-winning book by the late Paul Bryan Gray. This led Warner to send a rejoinder to the Herald, which published it in its 4 April 1891 edition and he chided the paper for misrepresenting what he told the Board of Supervisors.
Warner noted further that the paper claimed that Pico “was not in want” leading Don Juan José to inform the editors that “I was compelled to make further inquiries, which furnish me with conclusive proof that no offer of such a home as the one mentioned by the HERALD had been made to Don Pio Pico, and the monthly payments referred to were not gratuitous [that is, charitable] offerings, but were made in fulfillment of a contract or agreement negotiated by the attorney of Mr. Pico, and with the expectation that the money so advanced would be of mutual benefit to the interested parties.”
It was fitting that Pico, like many Californios very fond of horses and horse racing—he was once reported to have lost tens of thousands of dollars on an 1850s contest when Gold Rush-derived wealth filled his coffers—was the beneficiary of the gate proceeds for races at Agricultural, now Exposition, Park in mid-March 1891. As a token of good will, the Historical Society of Southern California bestowed an honorary membership on Pico along with Dr. John S. Griffin, another figure of note in the region for nearly a half-century.
Again, we hope that some of you reading this post will be spurred (!) to join us this weekend for the Doors Open tours. With the weather to be delightful in stark contrast to the blistering furnace that was last weekend, come out and join us—a takeaway is an excellent zine about Don Pío put together by my colleague, Beatriz Rivas, and that is worth the price of the all-inclusive $20 to all participating sites through the next three weekends!
Pio Pico’s final years of poverty in the 1890s, following a legal defeat, mirrored the penury of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States, primarily due to an investment loss in the 1880s after his presidency. Both men failed to receive a pension despite efforts by their sympathizers to secure one on their behalf. Near the end of his life, Pico was often portrayed as squatting alone in front of the Pico House hotel – a scene as poignant as the image of Grant in his final days, struggling against cancer to finish his memoir in hopes of raising funds to be inherited by his family.