by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing our look at some of the history of the La Puente/Temple School, which operated for ninety years at a location on the west side of Durfee Avenue, just south of the city limits of South El Monte near Whittier Narrows Regional Park and now the Los Angeles District headquarters for the United States Army Corps of Engineers, we turn to some early newspaper references through the 19th century.
The 11 November 1874 edition of the Los Angeles Herald contained two references, including one regarding the talk given at the County Teachers’ Institute, an annual event, by the school’s teacher, M. Whaling. Addressing the demographics of the school, which was reflective of the area called Misión Vieja, or Old Mission, because the first site of the Mission San Gabriel was just a short distance west of the school off the west bank of the Río Hondo, the old channel of the San Gabriel River prior to a flood-induced realignment in the winter of 1867-1868, the paper reported,
Mr. Whaling, of La Puente [School], said that his school was almost exclusively made up of Spanish [Latino] children who knew little or no English. He had taken a class of 40 pupils who did not know a letter and in four months they could read in the Second Reader. He used the word-method exclusively . . . Mr. [Thomas A.] Saxon [later superintendent of county schools] regarded Mr. Whaling’s success as something extraordinary [as he included arithmetic, geography and grammar in his class].
In his featured address to the participants of the Institute, Superintendent George H. Peck, a Vermont native who came with the Gold Rush ’49era to California and was in the north for two decades upon which, in 1869, he bought 500 acres north of El Monte and for whom Peck Road from South El Monte to Monrovia is named, told the attendees of his views of the state of the county’s schools.
He touted the “progress and promising condition” of the institutions and learning and observed that, as greater Los Angeles was nearing the peak of its first growth boom, which dated back to about the time he came to the region, “the increase of school children in this county for the year has been over one thousand.” Moreover, Peck noted that “it is believed that our population is growing faster than that of any other agricultural county” in the Golden State because “a large number of the most desirable elements in various parts of the East are looking to Southern California, and especially to Los Angeles County with a view to emigration.”
The superintendent continued that it wasn’t just good land “but the quality of our schools” that was a point of attraction for new arrivals and he suggested that settlers believed that even a perfect climate along with property and other attributes were “of inferior value if the moral and intellectual culture of their children is to be neglected.” Consequently, he remarked, “the importance of the school in attracting population is fully recognized by many of our leading real estate capitalists.”
Among the improvements Peck cited was that “there has been a noted increase of attendance of the Spanish element” and “referring to the La Puente school,” the superintendent reported,
At my last visit there, over forty pupils were present. Excepting about a half-dozen, the children are Spanish. It is scarcely four months since the third division, third grade, a heavy class of Spanish, began the alphabet. [Echoing Whaling, he observed that] They are now nearly ready to go into the second reader. The school house, but recently an overgrown building, is too small. This favorable revolution has been occasioned by an active teacher, supported and assisted by stirring and intelligent trustees. It is a mistake to suppose that there is any class in this county, that cannot be reached and elevated by the schools.
Always a core issue, however, was adequate funding for buildings, as Peck pointed out, books, supplies, furniture and teacher salaries. In fact, just several months after Whaling’s discussion and Peck’s report, the Los Angeles Star of 13 May 1875 published a letter, from a half-dozen days before, by M.W. Donnelly, who wrote that, after being one of those new settlers Peck mentioned, he had “taken quite an interest in public schools.”
Moreover, Donnelly wrote that “I have been forced to conclude that the Schoolmaster fills a greatly needed desideratum [want] in Southern California, and especially in Los Angeles county,” and that these principals “will prove an invaluable friend to teacher and parent.” Beyond this, he continued, “I desire to call your attention to what I believe a rare occurrence among those who are considered our best and noblest specimens of humanity in California.”
Donnelly told readers that “a few days ago we were at the residence of a banker of this city, who is one of the School Trustees of the district in which he resides, and he was informed by the teacher that the school was about to close as the funds were exhausted.” To this, the trustee rejoined, “continue the school, sir, at least one month more, and I will pay you myself.” As part one of this post noted, the salary at La Puente for Whaling was then $100 per month.
The writer gushed that “this is what I consider a truly noble and praiseworthy act” and “a sacrifice we fear, few of our millionaires are ready or willing to make,” while this was considered to be further remarkable because the trustee did not have any of his children attending the La Puente School. Donnelly finished his missive by exclaiming,
It may not be amiss to add that the name of the Trustee is the genial, quiet, unpretentiuos [sic] F.P.F. Temple, Esq. Long may he live! We hope he will ever be actuated by this noble and truly generous spirit.
As the first part of this post remarked, Temple was a founding trustee of the La Puente District in 1863 and donated the acre on which the school was located, with the current building finished soon after the district was reorganized in 1868 with Temple, George Durfee and James W. Cate as the prime movers. Lauded and also mocked by some for his unsecured loan of $150 to a poor Oregon family that came to settle in town two years prior, Temple was widely known for his charity and generosity.
Four days later, though, the Los Angeles Express of the 17th opined,
We have some generously eccentric bankers in Los Angeles. When a school threatens to suspend on account of having no funds, Mr. F.P.F. Temple simply tells them to go on for another month and draw on him for salaries, etc. And yet Linton is not happy!
The remark may have been somewhat sarcastic about the Rev. George W. Linton, who the paper accused of sending accounts to the East that were less than glowing about the Angel City. The next day’s Star referred to its contemporary’s comment, observing that the Express “has paid particular attention to a certain nomadic Disciple of Christ” in Linton. Meanwhile, the Herald, which was owned by a company of which Temple was treasurer, erroneously reported on the 18th that “banker Temple carries the city schools on his financial shoulders when the school tax is exhausted.”
Just over three months later, however, a financial panic rocked Los Angeles when news of the collapse of the Bank of California, the Golden State’s largest, traveled down the wires and burst through the ticking telegraph. Coming two years after the nationwide Depression of 1873, the downturn, actuated by a stock bubble in silver mine companies operating at Virginia City, Nevada, led to a rush of depositors clamoring for funds at the two commercial banks of Farmers’ and Merchants’ and Temple and Workman.
Temple, elected county treasurer the day he and ex-Governor John G. Downey closed their respective institutions (Farmers’ and Merchants’ managing cashier Isaias W. Hellman rushed home from Europe and reopened as soon as he arrived) to try and calm the roiling economic waters, was in dire straits and badly needed a loan for his bank and wanted to avoid bankruptcy. While he was successful, the loan from “Lucky” Baldwin, who wanted the large landholdings of Temple and Workman as collateral, could not assuage jittery depositors, who promptly closed accounts and withdrew the borrowed funds.
In early January 1876, the Temple and Workman bank failed (La Puente School teacher Whaling had a small overdraft of $35 among a distressing inventory that plainly revealed the terrible mismanagement of the institution) and the effects were devastating for the community and for its owners. William Workman, Temple’s father-in-law and silent partner, committed suicide in despair and Temple, who was permitted to serve his two-year term as treasurer, suffered a series strokes and died four years later. When his last term as La Puente trustee ended in 1877, he did not seek reelection.
The first part of this post noted that there were some signs of declining enrollment, as well as population at Misión Vieja, which had been growing during the boom, and the financial malaise continued through the decade and into the 1880s. George Peck’s successor, William P. McDonald, did, however, pay a visit to La Puente and reported on it in the 10 April 1878 edition of the Herald. After leaving the Ranchito School, on the Rancho Paso de Bartolo of former Governor Pío Pico and taught by McDonald’s brother, the superintendent wrote,
I next called at La Puente school. The teacher, Mr. D[ayton] A. Reed, was at his post. His school-house is good enough, but too small for so many scholars. He took pleasure in explaining to me the Trustees’ plans for enlarging and improving their school accommodations. These are to be made during the Summer vacation. The grounds are enclosed with a neat white fence, and shade trees [including poplars] are set out. Among other things, the trustees contemplate erecting a tower and procuring a bell to place in it. They think this will answer a good purpose by reminding parents when it is time to send their children to school.
The bell tower was completed along with the other improvements and the bell, remarkably, has survived nearly 150 years and is at the New Temple School in South El Monte that is the latest iteration of the institution. The photo featured in part one shows the tower and another image shared here from the same 1950 newspaper shows the bell.
The economy did slowly recover through the first half of the Eighties and, after the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad was completed to the San Bernardino area at the end of 1885, the second regional boom, the Boom of the Eighties, peaking during the Los Angeles mayoral administration of William H. Workman, ensued. Old Mission, however, did not witness as much benefit from the burst as other areas of greater Los Angeles.
References to La Puente School in the last two decades of the 19th century are sparse. Frederick Victor Cazaux de Mondran, a native of France who came to Gold Rush California and was a teacher at Santa Barbara and Los Angeles in Spanish and French and was a secretary to Pío Pico, briefly worked at the school. The Herald of 2 July 1886 published the list of apportionments of monies gathered in the last quarter from delinquent county and railroad taxes, with La Puente receiving a modest amount among more than 80 districts, sharing around $8,500 with Los Angeles taking its proportional share of more than 40%.
Another reference from 1890 showed that the school house, not surprisingly, was used as a precinct polling place for a county election, while a more general item in the 1 March 1896 edition of the Los Angeles Times, under a heading of “Gooseberries and Currants,” remarked that,
In La Puente School District, south of El Monte, and betweenn [sic] the Old and New San Gabriel rivers, lies about six thousands acres of land similar to the peat land of Westminster [in Orange County]. It is partly settled and more decomposed than the Westminster peat land, and is overlaid with ten or twelve inches of sediment soil. Water comes to the surface but is easily drained off to a depth of four feet. It is suitable for vegetables, berries, alfalfa, etc.
An El Monte farmer, John T. Haddox, had some land in the Misión Vieja area and had, “as a side line, experimented with gooseberries and currants” with promising indications, even if they did not do well elsewhere in the region.
There was mention of the school at Memorial Day 1898, about a month after the United States declared war on Spain as it continued its push as an empire, much as European nations had during that era and prior. The 5 June edition of the Herald cited a Whittier source concerning “a unique entertainment . . . at La Puente school house” as “there being no cemetery in convenient distance for the children to participate in decoration [Decoration Day being the typical name for the holiday] services.”
Consequently, the principal, James N. Stewart, a Whittier resident, “wishing to inspire his pupils with laudable respect and patriotism for the day, conceived and carried out a novel plan.” Gathering his students, he had them elect a secretary to record on the blackboard, a study by the pupils of important battles fought since the Revolution of casualties incurred in these engagements. Stewart, the piece ended,
explained to the pupils that it was in remembrance of the suffering and losses of those various wars that the day is set aside, and that at that very hour many thousands of patriotic people all over our land were strewing flowers over the graves of our noble slain, the blue and gray [Union and Confederate for the Civil War] alike.
By 1898, the Temple family, close to a quarter century after the disastrous collapse of their Los Angeles bank, were still in the area, though their large landholdings dwindled from thousands of acres to just 50 at the Temple Homestead, just a short distance south of the La Puente School.
After the death of Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple, her youngest children, Walter and Charles inherited the tract. Walter was census marshal for the district, responsible for tallying the number of children, as we noted in part one, in 1893, 1895-1896, 1899-1901 and 1903-1906, while his elder brother John served for the year 1902. Having reached the end of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th, we’ll return tomorrow with part three.