by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Among the many Workman and Temple artifacts we are fortunate to have in our collection, thanks mainly to donations from descendants, the many letters by Thomas W. Temple II to his father, Homestead owner, Walter P. Temple during the 1920s are some of the most interesting and instructive we have. A large cache of these was presented to the Museum in 2017 by Ruth Ann Michaelis, Thomas’ niece, who has given many important family-related objects to us over many years.
This post in the “Reading Between the Lines” series highlighting letters in the collection features one written by Thomas to his father in the evening of 10 February 1929 and mailed the next day, and it begins by mentioning that “the boys,” these being the youngest two Temple children, Walter, Jr. and Edgar (Ruth Ann’s father), “were here,” this being in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Thomas was in the last few months of his studies at Harvard University’s law school while his brothers were finishing high school at Dummer Academy in South Byfield, north of Boston.
The reason for the visit was that it was Walter, Jr.’s 20th birthday, so their elder brother “took them out to dinner and then to a show and [we] had a dandy time.” Observing that the youngest Temples “are looking fine,” the eldest commented,
They seem much more mature and steadier in their opinions and convictions than when they came here three years ago. They returned [to Dummer] taking much [sheet] music with them. Certainly they haven’t forgotten that.
The Temple sons were sent to Massachusetts in summer 1926 to enroll in their respective schools and it would certainly be expected that they would all have grown substantially during their time in New England. The reference to music was notable as, while Thomas was a superior scholar, as was only daughter, Agnes, who remained in California and was completing her bachelor’s degree in music with a minor in English, Walter, Jr. and Edgar were less studious and far more interested in athletics and music—this last being a common family interest, as their father played the guitar quite well and their late mother was a music teacher before marriage.
Thomas went on to inform Walter, Sr. that “I went driving toward Wellesley Hills this P.M. and saw Edward and the family,” this referring to cousin Edward Bancroft, whose late mother Ellen (who died in 1928) was a first cousin to Walter, Sr.—their fathers being brothers. After adding that the Bancrofts were in good health, Thomas reminded his father than “I told them you were sending on a box of oranges,” presumably raised at the Homestead and just harvested.
The inquiry of the Bancrofts about how Walter, Sr. was doing was relayed with Thomas telling them that “to the best of my knowledge you were in excellent spirits.” Edward’s sister Edith was in Brookline, best known as the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, teaching in the city’s high school, and it was observed that “the old [Bancroft] home at Reading not having been sold as yet,” following Ellen’s passing.
Thomas also told his father that, “one of the professors here at [the] Law School is a Los Angeles Man—Mr. Sayre Macneil, who was formerly associated with [Henry] O’Melveny.” McNeil, it was remarked, “married a California girl named Drake, who[se] forebears were Spanish.” Daphne Drake Macneil was the granddaughter of María Antonia Argüello, a prominent San Diego family, and Alfred H. Wilcox.
The letter continued that Sayre Macneil “is writing a genealogy of the girl’s family along with a general history of the Southland & intends to have the book published by the time the 1931 Celebration comes out and he’ll capitalize on it.” The event was the 150th anniversary of the founding of Los Angeles and the reference to the genealogy and history Macneil was working on leads to the question of whether Thomas was influenced by this in his own future course in life, as he forsook the law for a profession as a genealogist and historian.
In fact, Thomas wrote that “I have been to see him & his family several time & he knew your brothers and remembers the Puente,” meaning the Homestead. He also noted that the Macneils “now own the ‘Cacomites’ ranch at Azusa,” a property that was formed by Macneil’s maternal grandfather, the prominent banker Jonathan S. Slauson, namesake of the street that stretches from Whittier to Culver City, after he acquired much of the Rancho Azusa in the late 19th century.
The reference to Macneil was a segue into a longstanding topic of dispute: the publication of a Temple family history that was planned for about a decade, most of that time with J. Perry Worden as the author. Several posts on this blog have shared the remarkable missives from the fussy historian, whose fawning and sycophantic ways are alien to how historians usually act with their patrons now, but Worden became increasingly agitated as the project dragged on and, especially, as his regular payments were becoming sporadic as Temple’s financial situation became increasingly strained.
Thomas then launched into a passionate exhortation:
Now why can’t we have our book ready by the end of this year. Why must we go on fighting with Worden and refusing him money, at least that was the state of affairs when I left [to return east after the winter break.] Now he’s been off the pay roll for quite a while and they have been living on their savings. Isn’t it time we paid them something. He’s the only one that sticks up for us, in any way and it has cost him much embarrassment with the Newmarks and they way Graves slanders grandfather [F.P.F. Temple] in his book, is enough to make any one’s blood boil & why haven’t we guts enough to stand up for our rights and get this book finished and published and justify our stand & give old Grave[s] something to really talk about. I can’t believe that your father was a thief & never will. If any one said that about you I’d be the first one to defend my father. Why should you then & the rest of us stand by idle and swallow Graves’ muck when by putting this book out we can get the facts before every body and justify & clear his name.
From the beginning of his association with Temple, Worden made it very clear that his primary aim was to make his subjects look as good as possible for posterity, including restoring F.P.F. Temple’s name from that of a failed banker. The reality was that the collapse and closing of the Temple and Workman bank in 1875-1876, this being the first large business failure in the Angel City’s history, was the result of poor management and its president did have some questionable transactions in the institution’s books, including ones related to his successful campaign for county treasurer just as the bank went into suspension in September 1875.
Jackson Graves was a recent arrival in Los Angeles when the economic disaster hit and one of his first assignments was to pore through the bank’s records, so he had a first-hand knowledge of the situation with Temple and Workman. His 1927 book, My Seventy Years in California, was something of a descendant of merchant Harris Newmark’s 1916 work, Sixty Years in Southern California, which Worden had an essential role in turning a rough manuscript into a narrative as well as providing ample notes to supplement the text.
When Graves, however, offered his assessment of the Temple and Workman bank debacle, including addressing rumors that Los Angeles Jews played a significant part in its failure, this seemed to implicate Worden, thus apparently explaining Thomas’ reference to the embarrassment involved. In a May 1929 letter, moreover, Worden wrote Thomas and told him that he’d discussed the bank collapse with Newmark’s sons and the editors of the book and “when they opposed me, I said that I had much evidence to show that the JEWS of that time and locality, in support of I.W. Hellman, had contributed to suspicions agains[t] and a run a run of the T—W bank.”
Worden then stated that he did not believe the matter would go beyond him and the Newmarks but that they inquired with Graves concerning Worden’s assertions and the answer was, “It’s a damned lie,” while a letter referring to the controversy appeared in My Seventy Years in California. One of the Newmarks purportedly told Worden that he was unaware of Graves’ memoir, which led the latter to rejoin that “Graves was NO GENTLEMAN to print [the] letter.”
Thomas continued to appeal to his father that,
After all this money & time has been expended it would be foolish and highly detrimental to our cause to call it quits and let 6 years [actually, more like 10] work go by, with nothing to show for it. It takes time to write history, to write a story pleasing to the reader, the historian and collector & you can’t expect a man who is fighting with you to do your family any justice. Now Worden is going to finish that book and I’m sure he can do it by the end of the year. Why not give him support now, if you lose him as a friend, he can do a lot on the other that won’t do us any good.
Here is an interesting element to the argument, that Worden had the potential to further harm the family if he was not to get paid for his work and complete the book, though what specifically it was thought he could do obviously went unexplained. Still, it was clear that Worden’s pleas and arguments to Thomas had an effect and we know that he implored the young man to argue his case before Walter Temple.
Whatever the situation, Thomas then turned to another approach to try to get his father to agree to continue work on the book:
Now let’s be sensible about this thing, you may not care any thing about what your children & grandchildren will think of you not going ahead at this time and finishing this thing once & for all, but I do & your [other] children do, & if I had the money I would finish the thing myself. We need such a thing to get our name before the public again, you may no longer have need of it, but your sons are going up and they want to be known just your brothers were known by all, when they finished their schooling. It’s part of our privilege as sons of an old family and if we can finish the book why not do this now at a very opportune time just before the sesquicentennial of Los Angeles when such human documents will be very much in demand.
This personal approach, with no small amount of shaming and guilt piled on, is very striking and emblematic of Thomas’ own growth and confidence in speaking (writing) plainly and bluntly to his father. Also notable is the naked ambition to get the Temple name out to the public and, again, in a way that would be seen by the family as a restoration and a redemption.
Moreover, he returned to the 150th anniversary of the establishment of Los Angeles as a selling point, with the Macneil portion of the letter making even more sense in this context. Importantly, Thomas, who’d definitely decided to pursue his avocation in genealogy and history by fall 1931, established himself in the Angel City scholarly community by researching and writing on the founding date of 4 September, though some later came to question that conclusion.
Perhaps realizing he was too passionate in his promotion of finishing the family history book, Thomas assured his father, “please bear in mind it’s no selfish motive that leads me to write this, but I am touched with the duty & the necessity of doing this” because Worden was “a man who knows his business and who has stood by us in the past.” Despite the glacial pace of the progress of the work, Thomas insisted that “Rome wasn’t built in a day, and he’s the one to do it” and he requested Walter to “encourage him instead of fighting with him & let him have some of his back pay.”
Feeling, though on what basis is not known, that “things should be looking up now” and that he’d rather have funds expended for the book rather than the track the Temples pledged to pay for at Thomas’ alma mater, the University of Santa Clara (this was never realized), he added, “now let’s not be stubborn, but broad-minded and think of future generations [who] will also thank you & revere the memory of those of their clan who put such a document before the world in defense and in memory of his fathers.”
Bringing his missive to a close, Thomas implored Walter, “let that be our duty! I am going to write the Dr. [Worden] and see how things are coming along & also to [Walter’s attorney and business partner, George] Woodruff [who set up the original Worden contract]. He sent love to his father on behalf of his younger brothers, thanked him again for the fruit and added that “I expect Maud’s package soon,” this referring to Walter’s paramour, Maud Romero Bassity, and her frequent packages sent to the Temple boys while they were away.
Given that a letter from Thomas to Walter from just several days prior referred excitedly to a proposed European tour in summer 1929, despite the growing dire circumstances in which the Temples were economically ensconced, it seems quite obvious that the patriarch did not let on to his children how bad things were becoming. All of them graduated from their respective schools several months after this letter and, just after they returned home, Walter sold off large portions of his real estate holdings in Alhambra.
Mounting debt, including interest payments on bonds taken out in 1926 to pay for future development, including in Walter’s Temple City project, was such that efforts by Woodruff to find some relief proved elusive. In spring 1930, the Homestead was leased and the family moved out and Walter sold all his remaining interests at Temple City, though this only prolonged the inevitable for a short time, culminating in the loss of the Homestead in summer 1932 as the Great Depression, which began in October 1929 worsened considerably.
This letter, then, proves to be another valuable document in understanding the Temple family dynamic on multiple levels and we’ll certainly look to highlight other letters in the “Reading Between the Lines” series.