by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The fourth offering of guided tours of the nearly 2,500-acre Tres Hermanos Ranch, owned by the City of Industry and located in Chino Hills (about 70% of it) and Diamond Bar (the remaining 30%) and managed by a conservation authority comprised of the three municipalities, was held today in cool and cloudy conditions. Participants were the last of those on a waiting list of hundreds following the significant public interest in the tours when the first was held two years ago.
I’ve had the privilege of staffing the second of three stations (the first, given by James Framsie of CNC Engineering, a contractor to the City of Industry, dealt with the rebuilt dam for the Arnold Reservoir, and the last was conducted by Cal Poly Pomona professor emeritus Dan Hostetler concerning the natural history of the ranch) and giving some of the history of Tres Hermanos from indigenous uses, through the rancho period of the Spanish and Mexican eras, the continuation of livestock raising in the later 19th and early 20th centuries and the purchase of the land in 1914 by “three brothers.” I was once again joined by John Arnold, who provided fascinating information and shared photos and family cattle brands related to his family’s lease of the ranch from 1941 to 2001.
Previous posts here have discussed aspects of the ranch’s history and provided some biographical detail on two of the three hermanos, these being William R. Rowland (1846-1926), who grew up on the adjoining Rancho La Puente, which his father John co-owned with William Workman, founder of the Homestead, for some 35 years and was a two-term county sheriff and developer of the Puente oil field, and William B. Scott (1868-1920), who, in partnership with Rowland and on his own, was a major oil figure in our region. While Rowland and Scott built their fortunes on oil, their Tres Hermanos partner, who had petroleum interests, as well, rose to prominence and wealth in other areas.
This was Harry Chandler (1864-1944), who was best known to the public in our region as the powerful publisher of the Los Angeles Times, but also amassed massive real estate holdings in California, Baja California, New Mexico and other places and wove an intricate web of other business dealings, as well as civic involvement. Here, we’ll provide some early history of this seemingly all-pervasive figure in greater Los Angeles.
Chandler was a ninth-generation American with ancestors migrating from Hertfordshire, northeast of London, England in the 17th century. From near Boston, Massachusetts, which is where the Temple family settled in the 1630s, his line went to neighboring Connecticut and then headed north to New Hampshire. He was born in Landaff, also the hometown of his father Moses and grandfather Joseph, while his mother Emma Little hailed from Warren, not far to the south.
The Chandlers were farmers and lived for some years in neighboring Lisbon, where, in the 1880 census, the 16-year old, as well as his father, worked in the J.K. Atwood bobbin mill, which supplied these products for the textile mills that were prominent in the New England industrial economy and which is said to have been one of the largest such enterprises in the country.
He then enrolled at Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school southwest of his home area, but, as a freshman, he accepted a dare (one source says from a cousin) to jump into a vat of starch (or water, as another variation suggests) during the winter. The result was that he became very ill, with a version of the story stating that there was a fear he would contract tuberculosis, which was then a virtual death sentence.
Chandler’s Times obituary stated that he migrated to the Angel City in 1883, though why this location was chosen was not stated. There were, however, many persons who left other parts of the United States for the salubrious climate of greater Los Angeles to recover their health, so there may have been reports sent to New Hampshire about our area and its opportunities for ill persons like Chandler to get well.
That article continued that, “he soon determined to seek shelter outside the city, which was beginning to be hostile to those with lung trouble,” perhaps because the growth of Los Angeles, and this preceded the great boom that burst forth a few years later, meant that the air in town was beginning to become befouled. Whatever the case, it was noted that “his good fortune led him to San Fernando Valley, where he was taken on horseback by a chance acquaintance.” There, the account continued,
They fell in with an old man living about two miles north of present Hollywood—a squatter on government land. He offered the frail youth a share of his rough quarters. Mr. Chandler lived with him for more than a year, spending all possible time in the open. The squatter had some colts and some fruit trees and he offered the lodger a share in the fruit for breaking the colts and working about the trees.
Such origin stories, especially as they play up the poverty of the subject and the Horatio Alger aspect of hard work and self-determination on the ladder to success—that is, the “rags to riches” archetype—proliferated during this era and are integral to our understanding of this particularly American concept. On the other hand, there is no way to disprove, much less verify, the assertions made here from a factual standpoint. For instance, squatters on government land (and those earlier on ranches like those owned by the Workman and Temple family) such as in the Santa Monica Mountains near Hollywood were present.
Whatever the veracity of this account, it went on that Chandler sold fruit from this illicit orchard to crews working in the wheat fields on massive Van Nuys and Lankershim ranch which was the southern half of the Rancho Ex-Mission San Fernando—which land Chandler and others in a syndicate later bought to great profit when the Los Angeles Aqueduct was completed. It was recorded that Chandler did so well at this fruit peddling that, in under two years, he saved some $2,000, not an insubstantial sum, “and with his health apparently restored he returned to Dartmouth.”
His assumptions about his lung troubles, however, were incorrect and, after his health again took a turn for the worse, Chandler “returned to California to stay.” The earliest media reference to him in the Angel City is from March 1884 when the Los Angeles Herald of the 19th had Chandler among those on a “Gentlemen’s List” of mail waiting to be picked up from the post office. Perhaps some of that nest egg went towards the $2,000 purchase of land west of downtown that was made in May 1886 by Harry and a Joseph Chandler, who might well have been his grandfather—Chandler’s parents and parents also came to the Angel City during this period.
This acquisition was several months after the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad completed a direct transcontinental line to the region at a location near San Bernardino. That vital event was a catalyst for what was known as the Boom of the Eighties and Los Angeles was soon hurled into the fevered ferment with William Henry Workman, nephew of the late La Puente ranchero, as mayor of the city. Chandler was busy with a goodly number of real estate transactions during the boom, which lasted about two years, though, of course, it went bust by 1889.
A major early purchase of land by Chandler was a ranch that, by 1891, encompassed 300 acres in a town, laid out in 1883, called Dundee, but which is now in the Sun Valley and Shadow Hills areas at the eastern edge of the San Fernando Valley. An article in the Times of 4 December (the paper’s 10th anniversary edition) observed that not quite half the ranch was cultivated, including a 30-acre orchard of apricots, peaches and raisin grapes. The account added that Chandler “came to California ‘busted’ and in poor health in 1882” and “for two years he peddled fruit among the great grain ranches of the San Fernando Valley, and in 1884 bought his mountain ranch, which he has since gradually improved, planting some trees every year.”
Chandler’s return also meant an important change in vocation when, at 21 years of age, “he formed a connection with the Times circulation department.” His obituary remarked that,
He soon saw a way to be his own boss and, after a brief apprenticeship, bought newspaper routes, handling his own delivery and collections. When carriers failed to appear, he carried the routes himself. In addition to the Times circulation he soon took on that of other newspapers.
Mr. Chandler was in good position to size up newspaper properties and he began to demonstrate his faith in the Times by buying its stock. There was a business slump then [1889 and after?] and stock was not difficult to acquire.
Nothing could be found showing that he owned stock until 1896 when the Times-Mirror Company filed papers to double its issue to 480 shares and the price per share was $1,000. If there were only 240 shares prior to that and at least half were held by its president, Harrison Gray Otis, while others were held, it is unclear how many shares Chandler could acquire, especially because of the high price.
The obituary stated that Chandler, being “a square-shooter,” believed that it was not fair to the other newspapers to handle their circulation efforts while being a stockholder with the Times, so he severed connections with the others in 1893. What we do know is that, by the end of 1888, Chandler was one of the staff in the circulation department of the Times and his background in delivery and collections undoubtedly led him to become very active in events related to the “newsboys” or “newsies.”
These were boys who, throughout the country, were hired and, therefore, paid low wages assumed to be appropriate for their age, to sell papers on the street, deliver them to businesses and residences and collect subscription payments. While the image of the “newsies” tended to be presented in a humorous light, many of them came from poor families or were homeless or orphans (in fact, a newsboy home was established in Los Angeles during this era).
Still, the Times-Mirror Company occasionally had events for these young workers (a Victorian form of the gig economy, perhaps?) including a Christmas dinner to which the paper devoted colorful descriptions. The first of these feasts was held in 1888 concerned what the paper, in its 26 December edition, called “the one all-absorbing, and only topic of interest and general discussion, during the past week in newsboys circles.” This involved the “wholesale invitation to all the newsboys of the city, regardless of race, color, age or previous condition or servitude” to a dinner at the Vienna Bakery at Spring and 1st street.
Featuring slang-filled quotes purportedly from the excited young guests, with names like “Nibsey” and “Noodles,” such as “say, fellers, that’s dandy layout, sure” and “I’m good fer a whole turkey myself,” the account went on to observe that “before noon, although the invitations bore the hour of 2 for the dinner to be served, the office of the Times-Mirror Company was besieged by a joyful mob of over fifty boys” while “larger and larger grew the crowd as the moment of bliss approached and a chance at the turkey drew nearer.” Chandler, along with a circulation department colleague and the general manager “brought order out of chaos” and got the dinner organized for the youngsters.
For the 1889 edition of the holiday meal, the Times averred that
It is not designed that this annual feast shall be considered in the light of charity at all, but simply a tender of hospitality and goodwill toward the little fellows who have business relations with the paper all through the year, and whose manly struggles to earn a livelihood for themselves or to assist their families are appreciated in their true light. Some may not be overburdened with Christmas cheer, it is true, but every boy Jack of them is proud and independent, and considers himself competent to earn a dinner for himself every time he chooses.
An addition for this second annual gathering was the presentation to 40 newsies of stockings filled with candy, nuts and other items, while the 74 youngsters, ages 7 to 14, played marbles and otherwise kept occupied until called to order outside the newspaper offices, then located on Fort Street (renamed Broadway the next year), by Chandler, who gave them tickets and sent them in double file in marching order the six blocks or so to the Vienna Bakery.
In its 26 December 1891 issue, the paper blared that “The Times Building was attacked yesterday by a troop of Los Angeles citizens who stormed the business office” because of the announcement of the Christmas dinner, held at 1:30 at the Hollenbeck Café, located in the business block, including a hotel, built by the late John E. Hollenbeck and owned by his widow, Elizabeth Hatsfeldt—both prominent residents of Boyle Heights and close associated and friends of ex-Mayor Workman.
As “over fifty boys made a raid on the business office” and noisily asked for their meal tickets, it was noted that,
Harry Chandler, whom the boys regard almost in light of a patron saint because he has so often officiated on these delightful occasions, was on hand, and, with the skill of a general, marshalled the boys out upon the street and formed them into line, giving each one a slip of pasteboard which entitled the holder to a No. 1 Christmas dinner.
It may well be that Chandler took the lead role in these annual events because of his own background coming to Los Angeles as a young man with little to his name and working his way up into a position of responsibility at what was the Angel City’s preeminent newspaper. He, however, had just experienced profound tragedy the prior year, something that, notably, was omitted from his obituary.
On 6 February 1889, the 24-year old wedded Magdalena (May) Schlador, born northwest of San Antonio in Texas to German immigrants, and who came to Los Angeles in 1881 after a period in a town near Salem, Oregon. She and her family resided in a working-class neighborhood north of the Plaza in what was long known as Sonoratown and her parents ran a boarding house across from the Southern Pacific railroad depot where today’s Los Angeles State Historic Park is situated.
Perhaps Chandler was a resident of the boarding house when getting his start in the Angel City, but, whatever the case, the couple, after a honeymoon at the Hotel del Coronado next to San Diego, settled into a house in what is now Chinatown, just a short distance southwest of the Schlador residence, located on Rosas Street, now Hill Street. Two daughters, Franciska, named for May’s mother, and Alice, known as May, were born in 1890 and 1892, respectively, but, eleven days after Alice’s birth, Magdalena succumbed to puerperal, or childbed, fever and died at age 29.
The devastated widower with his two young children continued his work with the Times and, likely, threw himself into his career as a result of his grief. Two years later, he married Otis’ daughter, Marian, who worked in the paper’s business office and the trajectory of Harry Chandler’s life, not surprisingly, changed radically. We’ll look to continue this story soon, so keep an eye out for that.
Regardless of whether Harry Chandler’s success story was exaggerated, Paul’s highlighting of Horatio Alger’s “rags-to-riches” model is intriguing.
However it is unfortunate today, that Alger’s uplifting formula of perseverance, self-determination, and hard work seems to be embraced more by immigrants than by native-born Americans. The reasons cited often include structural and social obstacles such as high taxes, steep housing costs that limit opportunities for the younger generation, and social welfare systems that can sometimes make work seem less necessary.
While the American Dream still inspires many young immigrants, the other virtues emphasized by Alger, particularly moral character, are often overlooked in general.