Boyle Heights at 150: Some History of Andrew A. Boyle (1818-1871), Part One

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

As we continue to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding, by William H. Workman (nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste), Isaias W. Hellman and John Lazzarovich, of the eastside Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights, this seemed an apt day to provide some history of the community’s namesake, Andrew A. Boyle (1818-1871), because this is his birthday. Thanks to Diana Ybarra, who grew up in Boyle Heights and has a long tie to the preservation of its history, for the reminder.

A prior post here featured the original pocket diary kept by Boyle as he left New Orleans, where he’d resided for about 15 years, for San Francisco early in 1851. That post gave a brief introduction to his early life, including his coming to America at age 14 with his siblings for an unsuccessful search for their father, who’d left their native Ireland some years before after his wife’s death. It also mentioned his years in an Irish colony (San Patricio) in Mexican Texas, including his remarkable escape from execution during the American revolt that led to an independent Texan nation before annexation to the United States.

There was then a brief summary of his years in New Orleans as a merchant who traveled frequently for business in México, his marriage to Elizabeth Christie, a native of British Guyana, his misfortune in losing a large sum of money in a shipwreck and her death from a fever resulting from the belief he drowned in the disaster, and his decision, after a short time, to leave for Gold Rush California.

The post then concerned his diary entries, which abruptly stopped as he approached California, with an ending discussing in the barest of outlines his life in San Francisco and, especially, Los Angeles. What we’ll do here is provide more information about his life and activities as a way to mark his birth 207 years ago as well as to continue our observance of the sesquicentennial of the founding of the neighborhood that bears his name.

All that a biographical sketch published in Los Angeles stated about Boyle’s youth is that after he, born Andrew Michael O’Boyle in County Galway (some sources state it was County Mayo and that he took Aloysius as his middle name when he was confirmed in the Catholic Church) to Hugh O’Boyle and Maria Kelly, migrated to the United States he lived for two years in New York City. In early January 1836, he enlisted in an artillery unit of Americans in Texas who revolted against the Mexican government, but how long he’d resided there was not stated, though it seems to have been up to about two years as part of the Irish colony of San Patricio (St. Patrick), established in 1829 and located just northwest of Corpus Christi, the port city on the Gulf of México.

In 1834, when Boyle seems to have settled with some of his siblings at San Patricio, it was named a pueblo with an alcalde (mayor) and a council. Apparently, the Irish colony was not originally part of the revolutionary fervor among the Americans in Texas, but the force led by Captain Ira Westover and which came from Goliad some 65 miles to the northeast to capture the nearby Fort Lipantitlán at the end of 1835 recruited locals as a Mexican Army force came up from Matamoros, a city on what is now across the Mexico-U.S. border from Brownsville along the Río Grande.

There will be a separate post on Boyle’s reminiscences, published shortly after his death, about his experiences at the Battle of Goliad, which took place on 27 March 1836 and which was followed by his being spared because of a request by a brother and sister to a Mexican general. Again, more about this very soon, but, shortly after this fortunate escape, Boyle went to New Orleans. After a half-dozen years in the Crescent City, he “engaged in the mercantile business on the Red river,” evidently that section of the watercourse in Louisiana northwest of New Orleans.

The biographical sketch in James M. Guinn’s 1901 Historical and Biographical Record of Los Angeles and Vicinity states that, after he closed that enterprise in 1842 “he went to Mexico, where he was a successful merchant.” Though not clearly indicated, he obviously spent much time in New Orleans over the next several years because on the last day of January 1846 he married Elizabeth Christie, also of Irish extraction but who hailed from British Guyana and looks to have settled in the Louisiana metropolis in 1838.

In March 1847, their daughter Maria (pronounced Mar-eye-uh) was born and Boyle continued his mercantile work in México. The 21 November 1848 edition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune recorded that he was one of nearly twenty individuals and firms who returned to the Crescent City with over $200,000 specie brought from México, Boyle’s amount being $6,600. A son, John Andrew, was born in July 1849, but, shortly after the father was off on another business venture to México.

The 21 October issue of the New Orleans Delta published a death notice stating that Elizabeth, who was 23 years old, died the previous day at the Boyle residence on Bacchus Street, now Baronne Street, near Thalia Street, not far from today’s National World War II Museum and the Superdome. Six days later, the paper printed a lengthy letter from J.J. Connolly, who wrote to protest the behavior of an Army major regarding an incident involving Connolly and Boyle.

The account stated that,

Returning recently by way of the Rio Grande, in company with Mr. Andrew A. Boyle, of the firm of Boyle & Maccory, from a trading tour through the interior of Mexico, our boat was nearly upset near opposite Camargo [a town in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas on the south side of the river], and all our property—consisting of $15,000 in specie—consigned to the deep, barely escaping with our lives. This serious accident, which occurred on the 24th of September last, was caused by the steamer Colcross running too close to our trail skiff while passing us on the river.

Other sources have stated that the incident occurred in the Gulf of México, but Connolly’s first-person account clarified otherwise. He continued that an appeal was made to Major Joseph H. La Motte of Fort Ringgold, located at Rio Grande City, across the river from Camargo, for the use of a government boat, not otherwise utilized, “in order that we might make an effort to recover our lost property.”

Connolly continued,

We applied to him with every confidence, believing that an American officer, commanding a frontier post, would be among the first to offer his protection and assistance when called upon, to American citizens in distress. The temporary use of a boat was refused us by Major La Motte, and the chance of recovering our property indefinitely postponed, if not totally defeated, by the heartless conduct of an officer, who could or would allege no other excuse for his refusal, than that he could not lend the use of a boat to save the property of American citizens from destruction because the boat was government property!

This was contrasted with the exertions of another Army officer on the Brazos River in Texas who helped many persons during a hurricane in the Gulf and the letter concluded with thanks to H. Clay Davis of Rio Grande City “for his attention and kindness to Mr. Boyle and myself; while we remained at his ranch [as] he left nothing undone, in his disinterested exertions, to recover our property.”

The money, though, was lost and, while $15,000 seems a relatively minor sum today, it represented a small fortune 175 years ago. Devastating as this financial loss was to Boyle, nothing compared to what he discovered when he returned home to New Orleans to find his wife dead, apparently of brain fever which was said to have developed when Elizabeth believed, based on reports, that Boyle drowned in the accident.

This left the widower with his 2 year old daughter and infant son. The Delta made a very brief reference to the tragedy in its issue of 9 November when it thanked Boyle for a copy of a Brownsville, Texas newspaper he brought with him to New Orleans and it then sadly reported that,

Mr. Boyle, after having lost the fruits of years of unremitting industry in the Rio Grande, returns home to find his hearth desolate, his wife having died after a brief sickness, during his absence in Mexico.

What Boyle’s 1901 biography, however, recorded is that “in 1848 he started to return home” from his success in mercantile pursuits “bringing $20,000 in a claret box. At the mouth of the Rio Grande, in attempting to board a steamer, his skiff capsized and his money went to the bottom, he barely escaping with his life.” With “the savings of years . . . lost in a moment,” Boyle headed back to New Orleans to find Elizabeth dead and he left with Maria, though there was the baby John, who, however, died on New Year’s Eve 1850.

That last tragedy, not mentioned in that biography or in other accounts of Boyle’s life may have spurred his decision to leave New Orleans for California. He was again away on business earlier in December 1850 and was on a steamship at Brazos Santiago near Brownsville and Matamoros and perhaps was able to earn enough money on that trip to finance his travels to California. Less than a month after his son’s death, Boyle boarded the steamship Philadelphia at New Orleans headed for Chagres in what is now Panama.

The 17 February 1851 edition of the Times-Picayune published a card from 29 persons who were on the ship and who extended their thanks, while at sea on the 6th, to its captain “for your united acts of kindness during the voyage, while also expressing appreciation to the purser for seeing to the comfort of passengers. Adding that they were grateful for “the good qualities of your ship,” those who took out the card, including Boyle and a fellow passenger, Miss A.E. Thompson, whose ticket was with that of Boyle and his diary donated to the Homestead by a descendant of Boyle, the group concluded, “wishing you a long and happy voyage through life.”

Boyle landed in San Francisco in March 1851 and it is to be wondered if at least part of his reason to go to California was to seek gold and a revival of his fortune. We don’t know if that was a consideration and the 1901 biography recorded “early in 1851 Mr. Boyle arrived in San Francisco, where he started in the boot and shoe business,” though it is not known whether he had any prior experience in that line.

It was added that he “suffered materially in the two fires of that year,” the fifth major fire to hit that city since the end of 1849 when the Gold Rush was in full swing and taking place on 3-4 May and consuming up to three-fourths of the municipality, which was largely constructed of wood. This was followed by the sixth and last of the great conflagrations in the metropolis during that era, as a blaze on 22 June destroyed an area of several blocks in both directions. This led to the formation of a citizen volunteer fire department the next year.

Boyle left Maria in New Orleans in the care of his wife’s family and there is at least one record of his return to the Crescent City as his name appears in a passenger list for a steamer sailing to California in February 1854. Shortly afterward, Maria and her aunt Charlotte Dardier joined him in San Francisco. In January 1858, a rare mention of Boyle was found as he was serving as an estate administrator for a man who’d lived in Oroville, north of Sacramento.

In short order, however, Boyle decided to move to Los Angeles, where he may have had some business dealings through his boot and shoe business. Francisca López de Bilderrain, whose grandfather, Esteban López, acquired land in 1835 on the east side of the Los Angeles River, recorded how her step-grandmother, Petra Varela, widow of Esteban, “advertised for sale her part of the land” that was called Paredon Blanco, or White Bluff, because of the sunlit material in the cliff that overlooked the river.

Señora Bilderrain remarked,

It happened that a new arrival in town was seeking a site suitable for a home. The new arrival was none other than the affable and jovial Irish gentleman, Mr. Andrew Boyle. He saw the land and took a fancy to it. In a short time the widow had delivered the key of the adobe home to Mr. Andrew Boyle, who soon after moved into the new home with his family, Maria, the only child . . . and her maiden aunt [Charlotte].

Boyle acquired 22 acres from Señora Varela for $4,000, including property on “the flats” adjoining the river and mesa land east of the bluff. Esteban López had extensive vineyards, as well as fruit orchards and grain fields on the lower section, while Boyle, his daughter and his sister-in-law moved into the existing adobe house. A couple of years later, the first brick house east of the river was built near the edge of the bluff.

Boyle’s obituary commented that he “was for years a merchant in San Francisco, where he acquired a competence,” meaning a good sum of money, “and came here [Los Angeles] to enjoy the result of his labors in early life.” In addition to working the López property, however, he continued in the boot and shoe business. With that, we’ll conclude this first part and return next with part two, detailing his baker’s dozen of years in the Angel City, so keep an eye(let) out for that.