by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As the 1860s came to a close and greater Los Angeles entered into its first boom, though modest compared to the many that followed, Alfred Beck Chapman was well positioned to take advantage of opportunities available, especially in real estate, but also with the law firm he shared with Andrew Glassell.
The partnership’s business was heavily based on real estate representation and with enormous changes in land use, mainly with Spanish and Mexican-era ranchos being subdivided into smaller farm and town plots, Glassell and Chapman built a thriving and profitable business. Among their clients were William Workman and F.P.F. Temple, who were among the biggest landowners in the region during the period.
It was noted in part one of this post that it looks like Glassell was more of the “legal eagle” in terms of handling trials and general representation, while Chapman was the business mind of the enterprise. In mid-May 1869, the two welcomed a new partner, George Hugh Smith (1834-1915), who hailed from Philadelphia, but whose family were Virginians.
Smith was a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, with a cousin in his class being George Smith Patton, Sr., and, after briefly teaching at the VMI, practiced law in Virginia, the Washington Territory and Baltimore. With the eruption of the Civil War, Smith enlisted in a Virginia infantry regiment, but was captured in an early battle. After he was exchanged and paroled, also made a colonel, Smith was wounded in two conflicts, including the Second Bull Run.
Among his activities during the rest of the war was participation in the battles of Gettysburg, New Market and Cold Harbor and the Shenandoah Valley campaigns. After war’s end, he went to Cuba and then México before settling in San Francisco and, finally, in 1869, Los Angeles. In June 1870, Smith married Glassell’s sister, Susan, the widow of George Patton (a Confederate colonel who died at the Third Battle of Winchester in 1864.) She and Patton had five children, including George S. Patton II, father of the World War II general, and there were two children with Smith.
A brother of Smith, Henry Martyn, was a Confederate captain and joined his brother in México, San Francisco and Los Angeles. For a couple of years, Henry was a real estate agent with former Angel City mayor John G. Nichols and, at the dawn of 1873, joined the law firm that went by the moniker of Glassell, Chapman and Smiths. With the addition of the Smith brothers, it may well be that Chapman’s active role in the firm diminished as he pursued other interests, though he had a notable role as a trier of bias concerning jury selection for one of the criminal cases following the horrific Chinese Massacre of October 1871.
These included his becoming a founding stockholder of the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank of Los Angeles, founded in February 1871 by ex-Governor John G. Downey and Isaias W. Hellman, after the latter dissolved his partnership with Workman and Temple (who went on to form their own private institution.) In spring 1874, Chapman was among the stockholders in the establishment of the Los Angeles County Savings Bank.
In 1872, he joined the Board of Trustees of the local branch of the Life Association of America insurance company, of which Downey was president, Temple the vice-president and the Temple and Workman bank as depositor of funds. Chapman was also among the citizens of the Angel City who met at the Merced Theatre, just off the Plaza on Main Street and still standing, to form the Los Angeles Public Library, which has served the city for over 150 years.
As mentioned in part one, Chapman was active politically during the 1860s, serving as Los Angeles City Attorney, Los Angeles County District Attorney and the county’s superintendent of schools. While he held no further elected offices, he remained an active and ardent member of the Democratic Party, which dominated regional politics until the later 1880s, and, in 1873, he was among a bloc of adherents who encouraged William H. Workman, nephew of the Homestead founder William Workman, to run for the California Assembly, though he lost that bid.
In August 1872, Chapman, as well as Glassell, were among dozens of signatories to a petition to the county Board of Supervisors asking that a subsidy to the Southern Pacific Railroad for local lines construction be placed on the ballot for the fall election. The SP was required by an 1871 act of Congress to build a line from the north to Arizona through the Angel City and negotiated with local capitalists, including Temple, for the subsidy.
When, however, the on-paper Los Angeles and San Diego Railroad, which planned to link the two cities, requested to appear as an alternative on the ballot, Glassell and Chapman were among a number of locals who petitioned the Supervisors to deny the request. The board, however, allowed for the addition, but, when the subsidy was approved by voters, it was for the SP, and involved some $600,000 and the absorption into the railroad company of the only local line, the Los Angeles and San Pedro, connecting the city to the port at Wilmington.
In early 1875, as the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad, the first president of which was Temple before he moved to the treasurer role, sought subscriptions to build a line from the Angel City to the eastern California town near burgeoning silver mines, Chapman signed up for $4,000 in stock, one of the largest of the subscribers to the project.
The LA&IRR, however, only got as far as building a branch to the coast, where the second president of the railroad, United States Senator from Nevada John P. Jones, was building a town called Santa Monica. When that subdivision was readied for sale in summer 1875 and auctions of lots were conducted, Chapman was among the buyers of property there, though he soon disposed of his lot. Before that, however, Chapman had involvement in the land there as, in September 1872, Robert S. Baker, a partner of Jones, deeded interests in the Rancho Boca de Santa Monica to him. The nature of this, however, is unclear as to actual ownership or use.
After Chapman’s 1859 marriage to Mary Glenny Scott, the couple resided at the southwest corner of Main and Second streets (the 1910 Higgins Building stands there now) in Los Angeles, this property likely given to her by her stepfather, attorney and judge Jonathan R. Scott. To the west, Chapman acquired a lot, which, in September 1871, he sold for $3,000. The same year, he sold 18 acres that he’d acquired from the City to Prudent Beaudry—the French Canadian soon became the developer of the Bunker Hill and and Bellevue Terrace projects in the hills west of downtown.
Another outlying area in which Chapman was involved was the Rancho Tujunga, located below the canyon in which the Kentucky Copper and Silver Mining Company was working several years before with him as a stockholder. The Tujunga bordered La Cañada, which, with the adjoining San Rafael to the south, Glassell and Chapman acquired in 1869 for nearly $60,000. In 1869, William M. Tileston bought the 6,660 acre Tujunga for a dollar an acre, this, however, was close to double what the ranch fetched just four months prior. Two years later, Chapman filed suit with a justice of the peace over trespassing and the cutting of timber and taking of wood from Tujunga—this may have been an example of legal representation, rather than ownership.
Concerning San Rafael, Glassell and Chapman, who acquired it in 1869 from a sheriff’s sale of foreclosure, ended up dealing with a raft of other claimants to portion of the ranch, which was one of the first Spanish land grants back in 1784. They and other interested parties, including Beaudry and Ozro W. Childs, filed a suit against three-dozen persons who asserted interests and, at the end of November 1871, a “great partition” was effected.
This involved 31 parcels to 28 persons, with Glassell and Chapman securing not far under 5,800 acres. Close to two decades later, Glassell built a home on a section near the Los Angeles River in area that was called, and remains, Glassell Park, that neighborhood of the Angel City, annexed in 1912, now bisected by the 2 Freeway and adjoining Glendale to its south.
In its edition of 5 April 1869, the Los Angeles News reported that, on 29 March, there was the sale by “Lewis Wolfskill to A.B. Chapman, et. al., $19,500, [of] a portion of the Rancho Santa Anita adjoining lands of L.D. [Leonard J.] Rose on said Rancho.” The Santa Anita, one of the most desired and oft-described tracts of land in the region because of its location at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, its abundant water flowing down from the range and its fertile soil, was purchased by Wolfskill’s father, William, in 1865, shortly before his death. The “et. al.” included Chapman’s brother, William S., Jr., who left Talladega, Alabama in 1868 or 1869 to come to this area and settled on the Santa Anita.
Lewis, who soon married Luisa Dalton, daughter of Rancho Azusa owner Henry Dalton, sold just under 1,800 acres to Chapman, who immediately began to improve a portion of his new holding. A 1912 account in the Covina Argus stated that Thomas Rivers, whose nursery in Sawbridgeworth, England, northeast of London, marked its 300th anniversary last year, sold Bahia, or Washington, navel orange trees “to A.B. Chapman of San Gabriel, California, in 1870 or 1871” and that “some of these were propagated and sold by Mr. Chapman as the Rivers Navel.”
As has often been noted on this blog, oranges were brought to greater Los Angeles by the Spanish missionaries and the first commercial grove in California was established in 1841, during the late Mexican era, by William Wolfskill. Chapman’s purchase of the navel orange trees appears to have been for planting at his Santa Anita property and the San Gabriel district was a hub of citrus growing in our region.
The 8 March 1874 number of the Star reprinted an article about orange cultivation and observed that it was highly praised by Childs (whose place was eight or so blocks south of Chapman’s Los Angeles residence), Andres Briswalter, Chapman and others “who are conversant with the system of successful orange culture.” Early the following year, the paper, from its 10 February issue, reported that fruit dealer George B. Davis, who also introduced a fruit drying establishment at East Los Angeles (now Lincoln Heights), with financial support from F.P.F. Temple, sold trees to Chapman and others in the region.
In March 1872, Chapman deeded Lewis Wolfskill “112 acres of land situate near the mouth of the Santa Anita cañon, with water rights,” while Wolfskill’s brother, Joseph, did the same for the identical amount of acreage. This was so that Wolfskill could sell the balance of Rancho Santa Anita, securing the water rights from the canyon, to Los Angeles merchant Harris Newmark, this being 8,000 acres, plus the 112 acres from either his brother or Chapman, for $85,000.
A little over three years later, the 25 May 1875 edition of the Star informed readers that there was “a fine section of land for sale out on the celebrated Santa Anita Ranch” and that William Chapman on site or Alfred in Los Angeles could be contacted concerning the 100 acres that were on offer, though where on the property was not stipulated in advertisements.
Chapman’s principal project during the first half of the Seventies, however, was in the southeastern portion of Los Angeles County on the large section of the Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana that he and Glassell acquired late the previous decade. The Los Angeles News of 13 May 1871 briefly recorded that
A contract for the excavation of a new irrigating ditch, was filed in the County Recorder’s office. It is intended to convey water from the Santa Ana rancho. The company is designated as “The A.B. Chapman Canal Company.”
One of the largest sales of this new tract was to Elmore W. Squires, who previously resided in the Whittier Narrows area where the grist mill he erected off the San Gabriel River was later acquired by F.P.F. Temple. Squires bought 2,080 acres for a little under $6,700 or just over $3 an acre and a prior post here covers some of his history, including transactions dealing with the Santiago de Santa Ana involving Glassell and Chapman as well as future Los Angeles mayor James R. Toberman.
The 8 August edition of the News concisely informed readers in its “Anaheim and Vicinity” section that, “a new town, called Richland, has been laid out on the Santa Ana ranch, by Chapman & Co.” The lesser-known part of the entity was Glassell’s brother, William, who managed just about everything having to do with the development of the site, including managing surveying, construction, advertising and sales, while not getting enough credit for his vital efforts there.
A week later, the Star listed a trio of agreements between Chapman and buyers for “Richland farm lots.” The paper’s edition of the 22nd cited the Anaheim Gazette of three days earlier as it promoted developments in that area, including at Fairview (now Costa Mesa), Westminster, the “thriving town, Santa Ana, [which] has sprung up,” and “the new town of Richland has also been started,” while a “new port” on “San Joaquin Bay” was also mentioned. Also noted was that “Chapman & Co., alone have expended some $20,000 upon their new canal and flume” to provide the vital fluid to their new project.
The 10 October issue of the Star stated,
We learn that the Richland Farm Lots . . . have nearly all been sold. The construction of cisterns and a system of iron water pipes connecting with the canal of Chapman & Co., have had much effect in causing their speedy sale and at advance figures. It is said of land in this locality, that such as were sold some months ago at $15 per acre cannot now be bought of the purchasers for $25 gold coin per acre. And from a personal knowledge of the country we believe that the next six months will again cause this same land to double itself in price.
The News of 5 December modified that first statement by observing that over a half of the lots were bought and that a half-dozen houses were completed and the Star of the 18th cited an Anaheim Landing (a port where the New San Gabriel River emptied into the ocean where Seal Beach meets Long Beach) lumber official that there were 10 finished residences and eight more on the way.
Early in 1872, the Richland School District was created and Chapman gave two-and-a-half acres at the southeast corner of Lemon and Sycamore streets where the schoolhouse was finished that June at a cost of about $750, with the outside and inside white, except a sky blue ceiling, and the edifice “said to be an excellent piece of workmanship.” Today, Chapman University (named for Charles Clarke Chapman of Fullerton) has a parking structure next to its student services center and law school building on the site. A month later, that San Diego to Los Angeles railroad enterprise mentioned above sent surveyors through Richland.
The first located advertisement for Richland is from 9 May as a “Notice to Settlers” for “irrigable lands for sale or rent” and “under the A.B. Chapman Canal.” Moreover, it informed potential buyers that the tract offered a “healthy location, abundant water power, and the best fruit lands in Los Angeles county, protected from winds and frosts.” Five days later, the paper touted, in a somewhat fragmented and disjointed fashion, that,
Splendid crops have been raised this year at Richland. Grain five feet high, without irrigation and corn as fine as any in this county. The big canal is now flumed across the Santiago [Creek], by a flume 700 to 800 fees [sic] long, and supplies water to alt [sic] purchasers on the Chapman Tract who delsire [sic] it. Crops there are entirely uninjured by frost, and experience shows that this locality is not subject to frost at all, not being visited by it at all.
The same day, the 14th, the Star reported on several places in the county, including “La Puenta,” said to be “the home of two of our most wealthy and prominent citizens,” including Sheriff William R. Rowland and William Workman, of the bank of Temple and Workman, who “at his private expense, has erected here a Catholic church for public worship,” although St. Nicholas’ Church was completed around a decade prior.
Above this was a brief statement about Richland, described as “a village and settlement . . . in a region of excellent land, known as the Chapman tract, owned principally by A.B. Chapman, Esq., of Los Angeles.” Noting the completed canal, the piece continued that “Richland is near the center, and lots ranging from ten to forty acres, many of which are sold to actual settlers,” as opposed to speculators, “surround it in all directions.”
Lots continued to sell regularly in the next year-and-a-half (in May 1873, Chapman advertised Richland and 2,400 acres bordering the Los Angeles River and pushed for alfalfa growing and sheep raising at Rancho San Rafael together) or so and, in early December 1873, real estate transaction listings started to reflect the change to “the town of Orange, formerly Richland.” Apparently this was because of the existence of a town of Richland in Butte County in the northern part of California, though, of course, the orange was becoming an important feature of agriculture there and Glassell’s birthplace was in Orange County, Virginia.
In any case, a store opened at Orange in summer 1874, followed by the building of a hotel that fall and a certified and filed townsite map as 1875 dawned. The 21 February number of the Los Angeles Herald featured a detailed description of the hamlet, of which it was stated that it “is scarcely three years old, and yet, numbers hundreds of inhabitants.” The school had over 100 students and there was talk of building a larger one, while a Sunday school had almost that many attendees.
By this time, the Southern Pacific branch railroad line from Florence (South Los Angeles) reached Anaheim and “a narrow-gauge railroad connecting with the Anaheim branch is much talked of, and the Railroad Company” was said to be talking to Orange residents about a bridge to cross the Santa Ana River. Cited as measures of progress in town were a church and Grange (a farmers’ organization) Hall; Grange store; post-office; and shops for a blacksmith, carpenter and the selling of paint.
In the “progressive and admirable colony,” the piece went on, “the pleasures of polite society are not forgotten” including a literature and music society, the Triple O.O.O., which had a fundraiser nine days prior for a library. The correspondent, identified only as “LOTE” betrayed a literary ambition in concluding with this florid mouthful of purple prose:
And so, delightful Orange, we leave you . . . No! nothing could we say, nor nothing could we add to your perfection. All we might do is to hope that other communities, while they may not be blessed in full measure as you are blessed, may yet have a little of your energy, something of your congeniality, and may strangers feel, as we have felt, the sweets of Orange hospitality.
The paper’s 1 April issue, observing that Chapman effected a pair of sales of two tracts, linked that to “the movement inaugurated by the Centinela Company,” led by F.P.F. Temple for a project in the modern Inglewood area, as evidence of the myriad transformations underfoot in greater Los Angeles. In late August, however, news of a financial panic in San Francisco traveled telegraph wires south and the boom of several years suddenly and starkly came to an end, affecting Orange as every other new and established town in the region.
Chapman, whose house was inevitably in the way of commercial development in an expanding downtown, decided to move to another part of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Express of 30 December 1875 recorded that, for $11,000, he bought the 12-acre estate of Hancock M. Johnston (whose father, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston was killed in 1862 at the Battle of Shiloh) in East Los Angeles, the first suburb in Los Angeles when developed in 1873 by Johnston’s uncle, Dr. John S. Griffin and other investors and now Lincoln Heights.
We’ll return tomorrow with part three, taking our look at Chapman’s life and career into the second half of the 1870s, so please check back in then.