by Paul R. Spitzzeri
In the years after Francisca Wolfskill, former owner of the settee recently given to the Homestead by Joan Hedding, a descendant of Francisca’s brother Luis, married Charles J. Shepherd, he parlayed the family’s connection to the citrus and fruit industry into a successful career as a fruit dealer. So, while we speculated previously in this post that at least some of Francisca’s real estate dealings might have involved her husband in some way, it seems likely that his new career was directly tied to her family’s longstanding interests.
An early reference to this work is from an advertisement Charles placed in the Los Angeles Herald of 8 September 1883, in which he sought someone to invest $100 in a manufacturing business asking for those interested to apply to his fruit warehouse located on Pacheco Street near Main Street. Don’t go searching on a map for Pacheco Street because it no longer exists, though it was an east-west thoroughfare apparently north of Washington Street and running from Main west to at least Figueroa (another Pacheco Street existed later in the Rampart area of town west of downtown.
The Los Angeles Times of 17 July 1885 reported that Charles “closes his shipments for the orange season to-day” and that “he has employed twenty-five men for picking and packing, and has shipped altogether seventy carloads of fruit.” Presumably, these were at least partially, if not completely, from Francisca’s groves on the Wolfskill Orchard.
In the 10 September 1886 edition of the paper Charles advertised for another crop, stating that “the highest market price [is] paid for walnuts” with “liberal advances made on contracts,” while he also offered 5,000 gallons of vinegar for sale, with two addresses given, one on Pacheco just west of Main and another on the west side of Main between 15th and 16th streets (this latter becomes Venice Boulevard west of Main today).
Earlier that year, Charles was listed as one of four shippers loading some 100 railroad cars filled with oranges for destinations outside the region, with the others including the Germain brothers, the Porter Brothers (likely of San Fernando Valley) and Coleman and Company. Others on the list included the San Gabriel Valley’s L.J. Rose of Sunny Slope and Luther H. Titus of Dew Drop Ranch (70 cars together), Dr. Orville H. Conger of Pasadena (70), the Reverend Charles F. Loop of Pomona, Charles’ brother-in-law Joseph Wolfskill (20) and William H. Workman (10), who was elected Los Angeles mayor at the end of 1886.
It was at this time that the Boom of the Eighties burst forth throughout greater Los Angeles following the completion of a direct transcontinental railroad line from the east to the region and the rapid expansion of the city, including to the south, meant that Charles’ fruit warehouse had to move quite a bit to the south, as well as bringing about the subdivision of the Wolfskill Orchard.
By the dawn of 1888, he’d moved his facility south, when an advertisement in the New Year’s Day edition of the Times for Harvard Place tract, south of Jefferson Boulevard between Main and San Pedro streets, stated that the subdivision was “Convenient for Business” because “the cannery of C.J. Shepherd, the well-known fruit dealer [at the corner of Jefferson and Main streets], gives a market for surplus fruit productions.”
This location proved advantageous because of its location along the line of the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad, of which F.P.F. Temple was a key figure, when that branch to Santa Monica, built in 1875, turned out to be the only track completed. The line originally ran from 6th and San Pedro streets, right at the Wolfskill Orchard property—this likely facilitated because of Temple’s close ties to Luis Wolfskill—and went southwest to Agricultural (now Exposition) Park before making its way west and north to the newly established seaside resort town.
When the L.A.&I.R.R. went belly-up following an economic panic that included the failure of the Temple and Workman bank, its assets were acquired by its only local railroad rival, the mighty Southern Pacific, which later improved the route. This included the construction of what was called the Winthrop Station in the Harvard Place Tract vicinity and Shepherd was appointed the station master.
Today, the Metro E Line from Exposition Park to Santa Monica follows this route, while the track to the east and northeast was long ago torn out—though some of the right-of-way still exists from Hope Street, where Exposition Boulevard starts, passes through where the Winthrop Station and Shepherd’s warehouse once stood at Main and Jefferson, and continues up to about where San Pedro and 30th streets meet now.
As the boom devolved into the inevitable bust, Shepherd was highlighted by the Herald of 27 July 1889 “as an indication of the magnitude of our resources in one or two directions.” The paper reported that,
Mr. Shepherd has sent out from his packing house, at Winthrop Station, Southern Pacific railroad, corner Main and Jefferson streets, during the season just closed, 60,600 boxes of oranges and about 1,000 boxes of lemons; or 208 carloads altogether. In addition to the above, he has shipped sixty carloads of potatoes and twelve carloads of cabbages and other vegetables, and he is still shipping these latter products.
The 19 November edition of the paper informed readers that the Los Angeles district produced about 50 carloads, weighting ten tons each, of walnuts and added that “C.J. Shepherd, one of the heaviest shippers, [and] who handles more than half the crop, reports nearly all of it [has] gone east.” A goodly amount went to the market at New York City and the Herald commented “it is a most gratifying fact that the nuts of Southern California are of so excellent a quality that they compete with perfect success with the best imported article, which comes from Grenoble, France.”
With this fairly early description of the growing walnut industry in the region, although there was an orchard at the Workman Homestead before this date and would later be one when Walter P. Temple owned the 92-acre remnant from 1917 to 1932 and the Puente Valley had the largest walnut packing house in the world, it was remarked that “there is plenty of room for a hundred or two [hundred] people to become rich in the business of raising walnuts in this district” because, it asserted, “the profits of an orchard are about $500 an acre.”
In summer 1891, Charles was indicted, tried and convicted for selling diseased fruit packed at his facility, but the verdict was then overturned, though there was no explanation for the reversal. He continued to expand his operation, with the installation of a fruit dryer at the South Los Angeles plant, advertising in the 27 June 1892 edition of the Los Angeles Express that “cash [is] paid for apricots, peaches and all classes of drying fruits.”
Charles also moved into related and other lines of business during the last years of the 19th century, including as a stockholder in the Consumers’ Gas Light, Heat and Power Company, a founder of the Southern California Box and Supply Company, a stake in the San Gabriel Wine Company and board membership with the California Sewer Pipe Company.
He also invested in real estate, purchasing, in 1893, 57 acres on the Rancho San Rafael in the Glendale area, owning a tract in downtown Los Angeles between Broadway and Hill Street and 8th and 9th streets. Moreover, Charles recognized that, as more land in Los Angeles city limits and immediate surrounding areas were continuing to give way to relentless expansion and development, he invested in property further in the hinterlands.
By 1894, he acquired property in Rivera, now part of Pico Rivera, were that October he was mentioned in the Herald as being among the first to ship walnuts from that area, where citrus was already being raised. At the end of 1896, observed the paper, Shepherd “has contracted for the bulk of the orange crop in this vicinity” and commenced operations at a local packing house.
The Times of 28 March 1897 reported,
C.J. Shepherd of Los Angeles, who is buying the orange crop of [the Downey] valley, has shipped forty-five carloads, up to date. He says the Washington navel oranges of Downey will compare favorably with any navel oranges raised in Southern California. His foreman, J.J. Tweedy [a prominent figure in that area], thinks there will be about twenty more carloads to ship from this station.
As the 19th century came to a close, the Whittier News observed that he acquired an orchard at Rivera and was to pack fruit from that location, adding further to his substantial presence in the portion of the county. In 1897, he purchased a lot at Monrovia and built a fruit drying facility in that San Gabriel Valley foothill town, with the Herald of 15 July informing readers that “the Shepherd dryer is employing 125 hands” who were working primarily with apricots and peaches.”
With the dawn of the new century and a new boom, the biggest since the 1880s, underway, Charles turned more attention to real estate. He and Francisca, apparently around the time that she lost her First Street Cut lawsuit, moved to a fashionable area near the University of Southern California with their new home at Jefferson Boulevard and Flower Street now the site of the landmark Felix Chevrolet dealership.
They also had a valuable piece of Bunker Hill property comprising two lots at the southwest corner of Fourth and Olive streets and just east of the well-known mansion of L.J. Rose that was sold in May 1901 to Thomas Pascoe. Hiring well-known architect, John C. Austin, Pascoe built the Mission Revival Fremont Hotel, containing some 100 rooms on the site. The hostelry was named for the late John C. Frémont, a notable figure in mid-19th century California, former Civil War general and Arizona Territory governor and his wife Jessie was the first registered guest. The structure was razed in 1955 and the site is now part of an A.T.&T. complex.
At the Shepherd property in South Los Angeles, there was another legal tussle with the City of Los Angeles and its Board of Water Commissioners over a proposed water storage system for which more than 40 acres were sought, but Charles and Francisca sought far more money per acre than the City was willing to pay. In May 1904, the Express reported, a civil trial was held and a jury decided to more or less split the difference, though it does not appear that anything was done relating to water supply on the site.
Two months later, though, Charles offered nine lots at Trinity and 40th Street (now Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard) for what became Trinity Street Elementary School. This seemed to be part of his plan to take advantage of further growth in this section of the Angel City with the area known generally as Woodlawn.
In spring 1905, he began advertising for what he called “the largest tract in the city” and dubbed South Woodlawn. The property, in what is today Historic South-Central, was within a triangular shaped area between San Pedro and Main and 35th (just south of Jefferson) to Vernon Avenue. In addition to promoting “the best street work in the city” as well as five-foot wide sidewalks and alleys, a high school along 40th (MLK, Jr. Blvd.) was also promoted, though it would be about another decade before Jefferson High was opened to the east.
In early July, not long after his 60th birthday, Charles died at the family home, with the funeral conducted at St. Vincent’s Church on Washington Boulevard, where a stained glass window in honor of the Shepherds only child, Mary, was located (the church was razed and the current St. Vincent de Paul Church, built by oil magnate Edward Doheny, is at Figueroa and Adams. He was interred at Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles.
Charles left behind an estate of about $350,000, with his two sisters and Francisca as the heirs. Early in 1906, she bought a property on Jefferson Boulwevard, a short distance east of her previous residence and built a house there. While she made some transactions with the South Woodlawn Tract, Francisca kept a very low profile for the nearly two decades after Charles’ death. She and Charles raised at least two of the children of her late brother, Luis, these being Herbert and Julian and the last resided with her during her later years.
On 20 May 1923, she passed away at home not long after she turned 80. Little was said about her passing and she was survived by siblings, Joseph and Magdalena Sabichi. The Times of 24 May 1924 reported that her estate was nearly $870,000, a substantial sum, particularly for a woman, and was divided among her brother, sister and a grand-niece Mary Alice Weyse. Mary Alice, who taught in Los Angeles city schools, was the daughter of Henry D. Barrows, who was first married to Francisca’s sister, Juanita, and his second wife, Mary Alice Woodworth, widow of Thomas H. Workman (nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste.
As for the settee, it survived all these years and came into the possession of Joan Hedding, a great-grand niece of Francisca and direct descendant of her brother Luis. Her gift of it to the Homestead, as noted earlier in this post, is not just one of a beautiful piece of 19th century furniture, but one tied to the history of a well-known Los Angeles family with notable ties to the Workmans and Temples.