by Paul R. Spitzzeri
This afternoon, it was a pleasure to return again to speak in Fullerton to the Orange County chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, with the topic being Alfred Beck Chapman (1829-1915), who was a founder of the city of Orange in the early 1870s, but had a life and career in our region spanning more than a half-century that was very wide-ranging.
Incidentally, a recent post here dealt with Charles C. Chapman, who was of no known relation, though the two are frequently confused and understandably so. For one, there are major east-west thoroughfares in Orange County bearing the Chapman moniker, one in Fullerton and Placentia and named for Charles, and the other in Orange and Garden Grove and named for Alfred. Yet, Chapman College in Orange has Charles as a key benefactor and had nothing to do with Alfred.
In any case, Alfred was born in Greene County, in the west-central portion of Alabama, and was an eighth generation American with it reported that his ancestor Robert migrating from his native Hull, England to Connecticut in 1635. His great-grandfather Jedediah, a Yale University graduate and Presbyterian minister had pastorates in New York and Jersey.
Alfred’s grandfather Robert was born in Orange in the latter and graduated from Princeton University. After being a minister in New Jersey and New York, Robert Chapman accepted the presidency of the University of North Carolina, holding that position from 1812 to 1816, amid strife during the War of 1812. After a decade with pastorates in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, he moved in 1829 to Covington, Tennessee and remained there until his death four years later.
The new Southern branch of the family included Alfred’s father, William, who, though born in New Jersey, when Robert was a pastor in Rahway, attended the University of North Carolina just after his father stepped down as its head and graduated with highest honors in 1823. William then took up a law practice, but why he relocated to Alabama is not known. In 1827, William married another New Jersey native, Coziah Beck, and the couple had five children. While he was a lawyer, William also farmed and the 1830 census shows that he owned a dozen slaves.
Early in 1836, William Chapman died and his widow raised her children without remarrying. Four years later, when the next census as taken, she had 31 slaves, indicative of a substantial enterprise, likely cotton-raising. Her oldest son, Robert H., who was a year older than Alfred, went to the Chapman home state of Connecticut to attend Yale, from which he matriculated in 1850.
Robert returned to Alabama and taught for two years before reading law with John T. Morgan, who went on to be a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and a United Senator for 30 years. In 1856, he was admitted to the bar and practiced law, while also briefly running a newspaper in Talladega. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Robert enlisted with the Confederate Army and served in the 23rd Alabama Infantry Regiment, mustering out with the rank of Captain.
William S., Jr., born in 1832, stayed in Alabama for his education, attending the university at Tuscaloosa, not far from the Chapman family home. He graduated in 1852 and followed Robert into both the law and running the Talladega newspaper. When the war erupted, he enlisted with the Alabama rifles and was commissioned a lieutenant, serving with it in campaigns in the Florida panhandle.
One news account on Christmas Day 1861 reported that he commanded the Rifles at the Battle of Santa Rosa Island and “is a gallant officer” in “one of the best volunteer companies in the Confederate service. He mustered out the following year and returned home, which included ownership of slaves, though with the defeat of the South, he had to execute a contract with a dozen freedmen and women for labor on his cotton plantation.
As for Alfred, he secured an appointment to West Point, the Army academy in Orange County, New York, which had to be done by a nomination from a member of Congress or a senator after which an entrance examination was taken. He entered the institution in September 1850 and graduated in the class of 1854, ranking 29th among the 47 who matriculated, including J.E.B. Stuart, a widely regarded Confederate general who died in battle in 1864, and George W.C. Lee, son of Confederate commander General Robert E. Lee and who was aide-de-camp to President Jefferson Davis.
Commissioned as Brevet Second Lieutenant in an artillery company, Alfred was sent to Florida, where he was involved in the third Seminole Indian wars in 1855. This was followed by stints at Albuquerque and two other forts in New Mexico the next couple of years, after which he was assigned to a unit in California. A reminiscence from 1889 concerning the celebration of Independence Day in Los Angeles in 1857 included note that dragoons from the recently founded Fort Tejon, now a state park along Interstate 5 in the “Grapevine” north of the city, included Chapman.
This was almost certainly off by a year, as a summary of Chapman’s service record states that he was at Tejon in 1858 and 1859, while the Los Angeles Star of 3 July 1858, obviously the day before the national holiday, recorded that two companies of dragoons arrived in San Bernardino on 18 June from Fort Buchanan, south of Tucson, Arizona after a march of just over a month. The paper concluded its brief report with mention that “Lieuts. B.F. Davis and A.B. Chapman are with the command.”
Perhaps it was during a stay at Los Angeles after the march headed in from San Bernardino that Chapman met Mary Glenny, who came with her mother Harriet and stepfather Jonathan R. Scott (who abandoned a family in New York State to run off with Harriet Glenny) to the Angel City overland from Missouri in 1850. Harriet died shortly afterward, evidently in giving birth, and Scott, a towering and imposing figure at 6’4″, became a prominent lawyer and judge.
Alfred and Mary were wed on 4 May 1859 at El Palacio, the rambling, single-story adobe house of the prominent merchant Abel Stearns (U.S. 101 runs through the site now) on Main Street, with the nuptials conducted by Father Blas Raho of the Los Angeles Plaza Church. Mary, whose mother was Irish, was a Roman Catholic, but Chapman was a Protestant, which seems to explain why the nuptials were conducted at Stearns’ house rather than the church.
In any case, the couple soon resided in Shasta County in northern California where Alfred was stationed with the 1st Dragoon Regiment, almost certainly because of conflicts with indigenous people in that region. The Chapmans were enumerated in July for the 1860 census at Fort Crook near Fall River Mills, with the 30-year old Alfred serving as First Lieutenant under Captain John Adams. The couple had a four-month old daughter, Mary Ada, as well.
In less than a year, the Civil War erupted and Chapman wasted little time in tendering his resignation, doing so on 14 May 1861, as did many Southerners in the Army. Unlike many, however, he did not join the Confederate forces, perhaps because of his young family. In any case, the trio returned to Los Angeles and Chapman secured appointment as a notary public as well as a locating agent dealing with federal lands in the Golden State—this latter likely his entre into his real estate future.
Chapman also began reading law with his father-in-law, Scott, while he was also named the deputy of County Clerk John W. Shore. By early 1863, he was the Los Angeles City Attorney and, at the end of August, he opened a law practice in “Temple’s building,” this likely being either a two-story adobe structure at the north end of the Temple Block, the site now being City Hall. Then, in the September county election, he won the office for superintendent of schools and seems to have held this office while also serving as city attorney, to which office he was reelected in May 1864.
Chapman’s next electoral effort came in 1865 when he became a candidate for Los Angeles County District Attorney, but he was defeated by Volney E. Howard. Two years later, Chapman challenged the incumbent and there was a third candidate, so the polling found Chapman eking out a two-vote victory over Howard, while A.N. Merrick was 86 votes behind—this out of some 1,700 total votes. Mathew Keller, likely acting for Howard, challenged the results and, though Chapman filed for a change of venue claiming that County Judge William G. Dryden was biased (why was not explained), Dryden overturned the results. When Chapman appealed to the state Supreme Court, it overruled Dryden and restored Chapman to office.
In 1902, Michael F. Quinn, a long-time El Monte resident, provided a remarkable statement concerning what he said was an 1860 election, though this was not possible because Chapman was still in the Army, but it was 1867. He stated that he was tasked by the all-powerful Democrats—note that this is during the Civil War and Confederate support was rampant—with making sure that Chapman, running for District Attorney, and Asa Ellis, an El Monte farmer seeking an Assembly seat, were victorious. The article related that,
A canvass showed plainly that there were not enough Democratic votes, but there was no Great Register [of Voters] than [sic], and so [Quinn] went to Azusa and hired 100 Indians. This gang of naked redskins was brought to El Monte, where they were voted as Mexicans in squads. There were only twelve suits of clothes, so that number of Indians would be voted and return to the stockade and undress so that another dozen could vote. The Indians carried the day for the Los Angeles county Democracy.
Other anecdotal evidence exists concerning indigenous people being paid, or given alcohol, in exchange for their votes, so Quinn’s claims may well have been true. If so, Chapman needed only three of the 100 persons that apparently voted in this creative fashion at El Monte during the 1867 campaign. It would certainly be interesting to know what the basis was for Keller’s petition to invalidate Chapman’s election.
It turned out that this was the last time Chapman held office, but, by 1868, conditions were changing dramatically in Los Angeles, which was ravaged by floods and drought during the first half of the decade, leading to dire financial conditions, with enormous losses of livestock that were the backbone of the regional economy and severely depressed prices of land. For example, William Workman slaughtered some 2,000 head of cattle during the 1863-64 drought, while, in 1866, Jonathan Temple moved to San Francisco and sold his Rancho Los Cerritos for only 50 cents an acre.
But, 1868 marked the earliest stages of greater Los Angeles’ first boom and Chapman was poised, with his growing real estate acumen, to take advantage of whatever opportunities came his way. During the lean years, he invested in the Kentucky Copper and Silver Mining Company (1864), which worked claims at Big Tujunga Canyon, northeast of town, as well as the Pioneer Oil Company (1865), which drilled the area’s first wells near what is now MacArthur Park and near today’s Santa Clarita north of the Angel City.
A vital part of the future was Chapman’s opening of a law partnership with Andrew Glassell (1827-1901). Born in Orange County, Virginia, Glassell and his family migrated to the same area of Alabama where Chapman resided as Glassell’s father became a cotton planter. Like William Chapman, Jr., Glassell attended the University of Alabama and graduated in 1848. A few years later, during the Gold Rush, he migrated to San Francisco and secured an appointment as a deputy federal attorney.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, Glassell resigned his government position—his brother William was in the Army and quit to join the Confederate Navy, being captured by the Union and held in a prisoner of war camp until the end of the conflict. With the war concluded, Glassell headed south to Los Angeles and in late November 1865, the firm of Glassell and Chapman was launched.
It has been stated that, while Glassell handled most of the trial load, Chapman was the business mind of the partnership. With the economic chaos of recent years leading to significant debts by ranch owners, especially the Spanish-speaking Californios, who weren’t as familiar with the intricacies of American land law nor with the ramifications of compound interest on loans, and the ranches gradually being sold and subdivided, Glassell and Chapman were well positioned to take on the lion’s share of real estate representation in greater Los Angeles.
One method that they, and other attorneys, employed concerned accepting land in lieu of money for fees in court actions, including representing estates in probate. Some of their clients, like William Workman and F.P.F. Temple, had the funds to pay, but others were compelled to provide interests in their holdings to the lawyers so they could have their day in court. Unfortunately, too many landholders, particularly Californios were not able to stave off losses of land and their financial positions during this period and it was often said that some lawyers manipulated their clients, unethically if not illegally.
It was small wonder that Chapman secured landholdings at the ranchos Triumfo and El Conejo at the west end of the San Fernando Valley and over the line in Ventura County, as well as the Rancho Tajauta, southwest of Los Angeles in modern Watts and Willowbrook. He also acquired an interest in the Rancho Los Nogales adjacent on the east to Workman’s La Puente.
Another major purchase was with the San Rafael (Verdugo) and La Cañada properties encompassing thousands of acres from the Los Angeles River northeast through Glendale to La Cañada-Flintridge. For this latter, Chapman spent close to $60,000, a very substantial sum for the period. He also was part of an early real estate corporation, the Aliso Homestead Association, which acquired the Sainsevain property along Aliso Street near today’s U.S. 101 for a subdivision project.
As the Sixties neared a close, there were two other important parcels that were acquired by Chapman, including about 1,300 acres of the Rancho Santa Anita in the San Gabriel Valley, considered one of the most prized pieces in the region, and, with Glassell, hundreds of acres of the Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana. But, we’ll halt there and return tomorrow with part two to carry this story forward—come back and see us for that.