by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Our understanding of the business and finances of Walter P. Temple following the fantastic and fortuitous fortune he derived from the discovery of oil on his Montebello-area ranch by son Thomas W. Temple II is significantly enhanced from donations by descendants of documents like the featured one for this post.
The “Report of Receipts and Expenditures” for the period “June 18th to July 17, 1921” shows us Temple’s economic picture just as he was moving into his own oil and real estate development projects, which involved large investments of capital, mainly from those oil royalties, in greater Los Angeles and elsewhere, principally over the next half-dozen years or so.
Temple began the month with a balance of just under $23,400 on hand and, if that doesn’t sound like much money, the average annual income reported on American tax returns was not quite $3,000. Moreover, the royalty on the Temple oil lease for petroleum and natural gas for that month period was a bit north of $30,000; meaning that he took in what 10 Americans reported as their net income for the entire year.
Aside from that income, there was interest received at about $800; rentals on some property Temple owned in San Gabriel, and on which he later built a trio of commercial buildings, while donating a lot to the city for its new City Hall, and which brought in $130; more than $5,500 received on principal, though for what is left unsaid; $1,500 on the sale of a Willys-Knight automobile (see below for why he sold it); and just over $300 for his share of oil royalties on the Cruz Lease not far from his oil property. This was land the late Julia Davis de Cruz (1852-1917) left to him and her siblings and which her mother Venancia Davis purchased from Temple’s father, F.P.F., in 1874, long before anyone could have dreamed there was oil there.
Having brought in more than $38,000 during the reporting period, Temple’s expenditures for that month totaled under $14,000—again, though, this was the amount of that reported annual net income for 4.5 people. The largest amounts paid out were for the Workman Homestead, though what specifically for was not indicated. Payments of $2,000 and $1,000 to the First National Bank of Puente, however, might have been monthly installments for the $40,000 purchase of the 75-acre ranch, acquired in November 1917. Another $375 were identified as Homestead-related, including $200 for carpenter Paul Peters, perhaps for renovations to the old wineries that were refitted into an auditorium, dining hall and garage.
The next largest amounts involved almost $2,100 to Feagans and Company, a jewelry establishment operated by George Feagans. Obviously, this is a significant sum and we know that Laura Temple, as well as Walter’s business manager and partner, Milton Kauffman, purchased from the business, with Walter almost certainly doing so, as well. Kauffman had about $750 in expenses paid for, including for his chauffeur, Stanley Benson, along with banking, insurance and personal listings and money to Don Lee, the well-known Los Angeles Cadillac dealer.
Then, there was $1,500 paid to California Securities Company, a Pasadena firm, for a Packard 6 automobile and this would explain why the Willys-Knight was sold, while another $400 went to a car loan at the First National Bank of Montebello. There were also several automobile-related payments to garages, service stations, the Valvoline Oil Company, and a battery provider. Barker Brothers, a major furniture company in Los Angeles, was paid $1,000, presumably for the Temple residence in Alhambra.
That same amount was expended for a loan to W. Rowland Hudson, though for what purpose is not known. Hudson was a grandson of John Rowland, long the owner, with Temple’s grandfather, William Workman, of the Rancho La Puente. Hudson’s mother, Victoria, and father Josiah, inherited the 1855 Rowland House, which is still with us and owned by the La Puente Valley Historical Society, after her mother Charlotte died in the mid-Nineties. After Victoria passed away in 1914, Rowland and his siblings, Lillian and Whitcomb, inherited the house and estate.
Rowland lost his first wife, Patti, in 1918 and remained in the Puente area for a few more years, but, after remarrying later in 1921, he relocated to Alhambra, where lived just a few blocks from the Temples and worked for a utility company as an engineer. Perhaps he borrowed the money from Temple for his upcoming nuptial and/or the purchase of the house, in which he lived until his death more than a half-century later. This loan, one of many Temple made to friends and family members, shows the ties kept with the Rowlands.
Another loan of $200 was made to Edmund Fickewirth, whose name is on a La Puente street just east of Hacienda Boulevard on both sides of Amar Road not far north of the Homestead. Born in Germany, Fickewirth migrated in 1870 to the United States at around age 30 and settled in Detroit, where he married. He and has family came to Los Angeles in the mid-Seventies and occupied a farm in the Compton/Lynwood area.
There were also small payments made to the Title Insurance and Trust Company to two women, Refugia Gonzales and Elena Gastelum, who look to have been family friends being helped out with mortgage payments on their houses. Temple ended up filing a foreclosure action on Gastelum for her property, due, it appears, to her not repaying him for these expenditures.
During the 1890s, the Fickewirths moved to a portion of Rancho La Puente that was owned by Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin, after he acquired many thousands of acres of William Workman’s property after foreclosing on a loan to the bank Workman and Walter’s father, F.P.F., owned in Los Angeles. After raising grain on about 300 acres, Fickewirth became an early walnut grower, with his ranch being in portions of Baldwin Park and West Covina near Interstate 10, near the intersection of Pacific and Willow avenues. Fickewirth died in 1928 at age 88.
A third loan, of $100, was made to Elmer Potter, who was the manager for Temple’s business office and which was formalized later as the Temple Estate Company. Potter also pulled in a salary of $125 monthly. Sarah H. Murphy, who appears to have been an administrative assistant received two $25 payments for salary, while Edward G. Seely, who served as a chauffeur was given three $35 salary payments and a $20 bonus. A single $100 expenditure was made as salary for Manuel Zuñiga, who was married to Temple’s sister, Lucinda, and was listed in the 1920 census as gardener at the Temple residence in Alhambra.
There were further and vague sums paid out for personal expenses and totaling $2,500, with some of these identified by a specific recipient. For example, attorney Johnstone Jones was sent $100, almost certainly for his work on a Temple family history book, which, however, he was unable to continue working on by the following year. J. Perry Worden came on board late in 1922 and remained on Temple’s payroll through the rest of the decade, though he, too, failed to finish the project.
A drug store, the Ellis music club, The Literary Digest magazine subscription, telephone and water companies, the San Gabriel Country Club, and the Pasadena Military Academy, which the two youngest Temple children, Walter, Jr. and Edgar attended, were other specified recipients of personal expense funds. Some of the utility payments were personal and others for Temple’s business office.
The first item on the expenditures list was $300 on Walter’s account at the well-known Los Angeles clothing store of Harris and Frank, which had roots in the Angel City going back to the 1850s. Leopold Harris (born Lewin Hirschkowitz) migrated there with his fellow townsperson from Löebau, Germany, Harris Newmark and he became, as most early Jews, a merchant. Among his subsequent partners were the five Jacoby brothers, also from Löebau, as they took over Herman W. Hellman’s store and reopened as Harris and Jacoby.
For some years, Harris and brother-in-law Benno Jastrowitz were partners and, in 1888, the latter sold his interest to Herman W. Frank, a native of Walla Walla, Washington who was a clerk in the store and later married a daughter of Harris. By 1921, after several moves, Harris and Frank were on Spring Street between 4th and 5th streets. Another relocation came in 1925 to Hill between 6th and 7th and the firm survived until 1959 when it was purchased, though the name remained on stores into the 1990s.
A pair of $400 expenditures included one to the “Alhambra City Park Fund,” this being for a wading pool for children that Temple bestowed to the city park, though the pool no longer exists there. The other one was paid to trustee William R. Fee, an Alhambra resident who was president of the Bank of San Gabriel, with which Temple had dealings. Fee was a business partner with F.M. Townsend, who had a quicksilver mine in Arizona and the payment was stated to be for “Townsend Mine Stock.” It is not believed that the modest investment paid off, however.
There was a contribution of $10 to the San Gabriel Settlement Association, which was formed in 1916 during a period of increased migration from México because of the tremendous turmoil of the Revolution of 1910 with the idea of providing assistance, such as the providing of clothing and food, to recent immigrants living in substandard conditions, though the thinking then was far different than today in terms of how to go about dealing with the issue.
The plan among its founders, among them William Fee, was to have a home for the Association at the adobe, known at the time as “Ramona’s Home” and where the famed old grapevine was situated, though this did not come to pass. At one point, it seemed that Temple had a property in San Gabriel to offer to the Association, but it is unclear what resulted from any discussions held, though there was a settlement house that was in use at one point. The latest found in news accounts for the organization was in 1937 during the Great Depression.
1921 was something of a watershed year for Walter Temple and his fiscal fortunes. For the previous few years, he received substantial sums from the Montebello oil field wells and mostly spent money on his Alhambra residence and the Homestead, the latter involving major renovations and improvements to the Workman House, the 1860s wineries and fundamentally rebuilding El Campo Santo Cemetery, including the construction of the Walter P. Temple Memorial Mausoleum, dedicated in April 1921.
In 1920 and 1921, the Temples hosted several large-scale events at the ranch, including consecutive summer picnics for the Elks fraternal order. Not long after this report was generated, the Pasadena Post of 28 July remarked on the “Great Picnic To Be Held On Rancho,” as it stated that more than 2,000 persons were expected “on the Workman Homestead Rancho, on the Ocean to Ocean [Valley] Boulevard.” This included the statement that “in a building that has been especially built for the occasion,” this being the largest of the wineries that was large rebuilt, in which new initiates were to be welcomed into the order.
Two days later, the paper corrected the anticipated number to half of what it stated before and it noted:
The ranch where the general celebration is being held was formerly owned by Mr. Temple’s grandfather. About a year ago [actually closer to four] the well-known Alhambran acquired possession of part of it and since that time has spent a vast sum of money improving it into one of the most attractive places to be found in southern California—a place ideal for holding such events as that which is being enjoyed today.
Upon the premises were two [actually, three] large wineries, one of which Mr. Temple has converted into a luxurious amusement place, finished in hardwood and having a fine large stage and all other equipments to make it a first class show house or amusement hall.
At the same time he has had constructed on his ranch what is declared to be the finest private plunge in Southern California. This plunge was patterned after the public pool in Brookside park, Pasadena [south of the Rose Bowl, completed the next year], and is very similar to it. The Elks’ guests today were given full access to the fine plunge as well as to all other amusement and pleasure places on the large ranch.
On Labor Day, 5 September, traditionally marking the end of summer, the Temples hosted a gathering from All Souls’ Catholic Church, which was their home church in Alhambra and to which Laura Temple donated an organ later in the year. The Covina Argus of the 9th reported that “the country home of Walter P. Temple” was the scene of an all-day picnic and that “approximately 1000 persons enjoyed the affair.”
It added that proceeds from the event were to be directed towards the newly-erected parish school, to be opened on the 19th at the church campus on the southwest corner of Main and Electric streets where it remains today. The priest, Henry W. Gross, who assisted at the mausoleum dedication, was congratulated for the day’s successes and the Argus added that,
The chief amusements consisted of bathing in the private plunge, dancing, billiards [these two held in the Auditorium, where the Homestead Gallery is now], and field day sports. Those feeling lucky played against the concessions, which raffled everything from live pigs and goats down to candy and less substantial things.
The summer also marked the Temple family’s deep involvement in commemorating the 150th anniversary of the founding of Mission San Gabriel, to which they had strong ties both in its current and original locations. At the latter, in the community of Old Mission and where Walter Temple and wife Laura González grew up, a granite marker was dedicated for the anniversary on the same day as the Elks picnic and remains there today.
The rest of 1921 included the construction of the Temple Theatre, a movie-house on the north side of Main Street between 3rd and 4th streets in Alhambra and which was the first of many real estate projects in that city, as well as downtown Los Angeles, El Monte and San Gabriel. In late spring 1923, he launched the Town of Temple, renamed Temple City five years later. Additionally, he poured large sums into oil projects throughout greater Los Angeles and beyond.
The levels of expenditures that were found prior to the last part of 1921, such as those in this financial statement that were less than half his oil revenue, would become those of inordinately greater magnitude from then on. The essential problem was that these highly speculative ventures in oil and real estate, involving greater monetary outlays, were countered by rapidly declining royalties from Montebello, and elsewhere, so Temple resorted to taking out bonds i early 1926.
This, in turn, meant long-term debt that, by the time the Great Depression came in late 1929, were simply insurmountable. Assets were quickly sold off, but the Homestead, the last and obviously most prized of his possessions, was lost in summer 1932 as waves of bank failures worsened the Depression.
Having documents like this financial statement are very useful in telling the story of Temple family during the Roaring Twenties and placing them in the context of the boom times of that period and the terrible bust that followed. There are more of these records to share, so look for them in future posts here.