by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The riches of information about the Workman family in “Loose Leaves from the Family Tree,” a binder that was established in 1937 and added to over the subsequent three decades in the copy owned by Mary Workman Dugan and donated to the Museum by her grandson, Vincent Hurteau and his family continues with a series of letters in the 1950s between Mary Dugan, then living in New Jersey, and her relations here in Los Angeles.
The first of these, dated 2 September 1951, is from her Aunt Mary Julia, who was a storehouse of family lore, and who wrote to Mary Dugan, “I have not forgotten about your interest in the old English letters,” about which we’ve discussed earlier in the post, “and shall do what I can to have you see them before I send hem to Conrad Krebs,” a cousin descended from Elijah Workman, the brother of Mary Julia’s father and Mary Dugan’s grandfather, William H, and who was in possession of the missives passed down to Krebs through Elijah’s daughter Gilleta.
There is some Temple family content here, as well, as Mary Julia added that, when it came to a 13 February 1826 letter to David Workman, the father of William H. and Elijah and living in Franklin, Missouri, by his brother William, then recently settled in Taos, New Mexico, “Thomas Workman Temple [II], great-grandson of William Workman of the Puente Rancho, also wishes to see them” and a copy was made for him in case he wanted to provide it to the Huntington Library in San Marino, which repository has a wealth of historical materials pertaining to greater Los Angeles, California and the western United States. Other institutions with an interest in that document was the New York Public Library and, specifically, its manuscript department, and the New Mexico history museum.
After saying she wanted Mary to have one of the letters written by Mary Workman, sister of David and William, Mary Julia provided some recollections of the trip she made in 1912 with her father and mother to the family hometown of Clifton, England and how “Mr. [Christopher] Fairer, the old man who had been the solicitor for the family” showed the visitors around. Being one of the few people then alive who knew the Workmans well was fascinating, it was added, and “he said that Mary Workman was ‘a little lady in a black silk dress’, who used to come to talk with him on family business,” including the rental of Workman property, from which she and her siblings lived.
Mary Julia remarked that, “Uncle Elijah, father’s brother, inherited the property when [Mary, then Thomas, the last of the family] died as he was the oldest surviving son of the oldest son, David Workman.” Elijah, who went in 1884 to deal with the estate, “sold the property to Lord Lonsdale,” Hugh Cecil Lowther, who became the Earl of Lonsdale two years prior and whose descendants “owns the magnificent estate where Lowther Castle is situated.” After noting that an agent of the current Earl was residing in the Workman house and a tour was provided by his wife, Mary Julia commented that Fairer told the visitors,
In the yard were fruit trees that were taken to England by William Workman of the Puente Ranch. The trees were still bearing fruit, pear trees.
William made his only return trip home in 1851-1852, but this a particularly interesting recollection, leading to the question of whether William transported seedlings all the way from his ranch or how he did so, but we’ll likely never know the answer. If so, this fact attests to his diversity of operations at Rancho La Puente, which was largely devoted to cattle raising, though we know he had a vineyard and was making some wine by the early 1850s, as well.
A little more than three weeks later, on the 24th, Mary Julia’s next piece of correspondence acknowledged receipt of missive from Elizabeth Gowan Haskins Workman, widow of William H., Jr., who died at the end of April, and she observed that she was working on a floor plan of the “old house,” built in the early 1860s by her grandfather Andrew Boyle in what was then called Paredon Blanco (White Bluff) and later Boyle Heights. She continued that,
The original house included Father and Mother’s bedroom, the hall, a large dining room and two small bedrooms, with a kitchen at the north end of the west veranda and a room occupied by the cook just east of the cellar arch.
Also mentioned was that there were Chinese cooks, while a second kitchen was where food was cooked and served for the estate’s workers and Mary was reminded that it was “the little brick kitchen that was stranded off by itself in your time.” These laborers included those employed in the orchard and vineyard. As Maria and William H. had more children, “a frame wing, with an upstairs and a downstairs, was built” this located “next to Father’s and Mother’s bed room on the south and it included a living room, a dining room, a stairway, and connected with the original kitchen, on the south.”
In the late 1870s, the “new house” was built close to the Boyle residence and “this frame wing was moved and attached to the new house” and that brick kitchen was, once more, “stranded.” Returning to the earlier dwelling, Mary Julia observed that “there was no bath room, until a bath tub was placed in the tank house across from the little brick kitchen in the yard. Five of the seven children (born from 1868 to 1879) were born in the Boyle house, with Gertrude (born 1885) and Thomas (1890) the two who came into the world in the new edifice.
The frame addition that was on both houses originally had a bedroom and a space to store a variety of items, including trunks. When it was attached to the new building, the former became William H., Sr.’s bedroom, while the storage space remained. Downstairs, however, “was a big kitchen and dining room.” Mary Julia remarked on Elizabeth’s daughter, Mary Dugan, and her health issues over the past year, referred to Mary’s daughter, Mary, who was then 12 years old and is still living, and then reflected on her late brother, adding “he loved the old place and had such a clear remembrance of it all.”
On the last day of September, Mary Julia answered a letter from her niece, observing that she was fascinated by papers that her brother, William H., Jr., Mary’s father, inherited, stating that “Mother [Maria Boyle Workman] must have given him those papers.” She continued that, “she was particularly close to him always” as “they had congenial tastes, both loved flowers and books, etc.,” with the former interest such that they were devoted horticulturists around the houses they occupied adjacent to each other at the family estate in Boyle Heights.
Discussion then turned to Maria’s parents, Andrew Boyle and Elizabeth Christie and how she died in her early twenties, “from worry over him, he had gone to Mexico on business; which crossing the Rio Grande River [sic] with $30,000 in silver, his boat capsized and he lost his fortune.” She fretted that he drowned, but he returned home to New Orleans to find he was a widower with a two-year old daughter, Maria [pronounced Mar-aye-uh] and a baby boy, John, who soon died and whose birth may have weakened the mother. Strikingly, Elizabeth’s sister Charlotte raised Maria and, when the latter died in 1933, she called for her aunt in her last moments.
Next, Mary Julia told her niece, “I sent you a rough drawing of the old [Boyle] house at 325 South Boyle Ave.,” this, shared earlier in this post, being what Mary’s father, William H., Jr., rebuilt using the foundation, with the wine cellar beneath, but otherwise removing all else, as he erected an Italianate-style villa there. She added that it was not drawn to scale, while remarking that the central hall, at twelve feet or more in width, was something of a reception room and the doors at either end were correspondingly wide and had glass sidelights.
While most sources state that the new residence, built by William H., Sr. and Maria, was built in 1878, Mary Julia recollected that, although construction began then, “when we moved from that house to the new one at 357 South Boyle Ave. . . . it was on October 31, 1880.” This is similar to when her mother, Maria, remembered that the Boyle House, commonly attributed to 1860, was not moved into for four more years when it was finally completed.
Returning to the “English letters,” Mary Julia said she would mail them once her brother, Thomas, was finished them and suggested that a typescript be made, especially for the missives by Mary Workman, since Mary Dugan was a namesake. She then remarked, “you know that in my Will I have left you the book she made, it is the most beautiful penmanship I ever saw, the 91st psalm in illuminated lettering like the fine old medieval manuscripts.” The missive concluded with the musing that,
Her brother, William, must have shocked her with his spelling and grammar, evidenced in his letter [from 1826 to David?]. But he lived a frontier life, in the wilds of America.
The next pair of letters in the series were from Mary Julia to Mary Dugan and written on 23-24 November 1953. After some mention of adding new family members to the Workman genealogy, as well as some family letters that were being copied it was stated that,
I understand that David Workman came first to America from England and that William followed in two years. David came about 1820, as nearly as I can guess. This may be corrected depending on future information [in fact, it is now known he left England in 1818 and returned in 1822, with William going back to the United States with him.] I think that Mary never forgave David for “enticing” William to leave England. There were letters written by her after David’s death that indicate this. There was also a letter from Thomas Workman [Sr.] in England to William. These were copies given to me by Thomas Workman Temple II.
Mary Julia included some information about the Hook family, ancestors of David Workman’s two wives, the sisters Mary (married in 1825 and who died soon after) and Nancy, observed that there were other family letters owned by Conrad Krebs, credited Thomas Temple with learning that the wife of Thomas Workman, Sr., the patriarch, was Lucy Mary Cook and then concluded the letter with mention to Elijah H. Workman. This involved a son, Walter, born to Elijah’s “first wife and greatest love,” Julia Benedict, but the death of both of them, when young, was “a terrible sorrow to Uncle Elijah” and Mary Julia revealed that her middle name was from Julia Benedict Workman.
The next day’s missive began with a request to return a document that was an original and that Mary Julia wanted to keep, asking Mary to make a copy. She then gave information as to the Workman brothers migrations to California, including that William came from New Mexico in 1841 and that a bronze marker in Los Angeles City Hall was dedicated on the centennial. She also observed that Workman and his friend and business partner John Rowland acquired the Rancho La Puente.
With regard to their common ancestor, David, Mary Julia informed Mary that at Franklin, Missouri, he “had opened a shop for the outfitting of exploratory parties with saddles, harness, etc.” She continued,
Later, he traveled over the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and Santa Fe, to supply his brother who was in the general merchandising business in Santa Fe [actually, Taos, to the north].
David visited Gold Rush California in 1850 but did so, it was recorded, “to visit his brother at the Puente Rancho.” It was added that David went home to Missouri and then came out with his family in 1854, though it was later learned that there was a period in between, in which he went to Sacramento, close to the northern mines, and opened a store. A massive fire in November 1852 level most of the city, including David’s business, and he came south to see his brother and it was then that William asked him to get his family and move to Rancho La Puente.
As we have seen, David ran livestock to the southern gold mines for William, but was killed by an accidental fall in summer 1855. Mary Julia commented that he “was buried in a private plot [within El Campo Santo Cemetery] on the ranch and his body now lies in the mausoleum erected there by his brother’s grandson, Walter Temple,” this done in 1921.
The Los Angeles branch of the Workman family established a large monument at Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights, not far from their estate, and had David’s name inscribed there, apparently under the impression that they would someday have his remains reinterred there next to those of Nancy Hook, who moved to Los Angeles from La Puente when her three sons (Thomas, Elijah, and William H.) bought here a home on Main Street. Mary Julia then remarked,
But the removal was never made to consideration for the desire of Walter Temple to keep the mausoleum as a historic memorial.
It’s an interesting way to put it and there were statements made later that a dispute arose over that wish and denial, as well as over a request for financial assistance from Walter Temple, who made a very large sum of money from a fortuitous discovery of oil, in the late 1910s, on his ranch near Montebello, that, evidently, was also denied.
After a short paragraph about the Hook family, the letter concluded. Because the next set of missives, from 1955-1956 are more numerous, we’ll halt here and return with the ninth part of this post. Check back in for that!
If the fruit trees in the yard of the Workman family’s property in Clifton, UK were indeed introduced from the United States by William Workman during his homecoming visit in 1851–1852, I believe what he carried were fruit seeds.
Given the months-long overland travel and transatlantic crossings of the period, the transport of compact, durable seeds with no need of fresh water and proper care along the way would have been practical and plausible.
Hi Larry, thanks for the comment and, yes, this makes the most sense. It would certainly be interesting to know what he may have done with horticulture in the decade since he settled on the Rancho La Puente. His son-in-law, F.P.F. Temple, had seeds sent to him by a brother in Massachusetts during the 1840s, so perhaps that was a source.