by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The close of 1875 found Alfred Beck Chapman still a partner in a prominent Los Angeles law firm, owner and developer of the town of Orange (formerly Richland) in what, nearly fifteen years later, became the county of that name, and relocated to a new house and estate in the recently established Angel City suburb of East Los Angeles (now the Lincoln Heights neighborhood).
The collapse of a Nevada silver mine stock speculation bubble, two years after the nation entered into what has been termed the “Long Depression,” which lasted through the remainder of the decade, hit San Francisco and then was relayed by telegraph to Los Angeles where, by far, the biggest casualty of the financial panic was the Temple and Workman bank.
The downturn meant that many new towns founded during the first boom, lasting from the late Sixties through mid Seventies, in greater Los Angeles, these including Artesia, Pomona, San Fernando, Santa Ana and, of course, Orange, largely went into a form of economic hibernation, not to be awakened until the early 1880s and then, when a direct transcontinental railroad line, built by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, reached the region, the Boom of the Eighties was something of a reboot for these places, as well as an impetus for a slew of new towns.
The Farm and Labor Review, a short-lived Los Angeles newspaper, of 17 October 1891 remarked briefly on Chapman’s place in East Los Angeles, recording:
About the opening years of the seventies [1873, when the subdivision was laid out], H.M. Johnston, Esq., a nephew of [founder] Dr. [John S.] Griffin, went over and built an adobe ranch house about where Workman [named for William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste and Hawkins [now Manitou] street[s] intersect, and proceeded to farm the land in earnest fashion. About 1875, General [Robert] H. Chapman bought a piece of land along what is now Downey Avenue [now North Broadway], and removed there, making a very attractive home. A year or two after [actually, the end of 1875] his brother, A.B. Chapman, Esq., now of San Gabriel, bought twelve acres from Hancock Johnston, on which an orange grove had been planted, and removed there to live.
The 1880 census, taken in June, shows Alfred, with his wife Mary [Glenny Scott] and five children from 6-18 years of age residing on Chestnut Street, which became Avenue 20 and, in turn, most of that was renamed San Fernando north of North Broadway. The thoroughfare was likely named for the fact that, as recorded by the Los Angeles Express of 20 October 1877, “Mr. A.B. Chapman has a large number of chestnut trees in prolific bearing at his beautiful place in East Los Angeles.”
Given that he’d moved there under two years previously and the article observed that the trees were bearing nuts, which would generally take three to five years, it seems certain that they were planted by Johnston when he settled on the tract, bordering the Los Angeles River to the east. The article continued that “the trees themselves are very symmetrical and shapely” and “form one of the most beautiful ornamental trees that could grace the grounds of an elegant and tasteful suburban residence.”
In spring 1878, a notable event took place as Chapman was working on an unstated project on his property, with the 9 April number of the Los Angeles Herald relating that,
Mr. A.B. Chapman, in making an excavation on his grounds at East Los Angeles, the other day, dug up a number of stone metates, or corn-grinders, and a quantity of stone cups, or mortars, and pestals [pestles]. They were found at some depth, and were doubtless the handiwork of the people who inhabited this locality at a very remote period.
A week later, the paper recorded that Paul Schumacher, a native of Hungary known for his extensive excavations on the Channel Islands from 1875 to 1878, with some of the Chumash material he unearthed sent to Philadelphia for the exposition marking the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and much material sent to the Smithsonian Institution, having read this account “about the exhumation of Indian relics” left the Rancho Los Cerritos, long owned by Jonathan Temple and, in 1878 by Jotham Bixby, and “returned to the city . . . and is now engaged in making further investigations at Mr. Chapman’s place.”
The Los Cerritos investigations were at so-called “Indian mounds,” but nothing was further was located with respect to the Chapman place at East Los Angeles, though the indigenous village of Yaagna (also Yaangna or Yangna) is often attributed to have been just southeast of the Plaza and about where U.S. 101 runs through downtown, so the presence of native artifacts along the river at various points in the area was, of course, to be expected.
A little over two years later, Chapman sold the East Los Angeles property. It may have been that, as the Long Depression was starting to end and development was likely to resume in places like that neighborhood, he could see that it was time to move further into the hinterlands. Moreover, at the end of 1878, he withdrew from his nearly 15-year law partnership with Andrew Glassell, his fellow Orange co-founder, during which time the two took on the brothers George and Henry Smith, though Chapman was listed as an attorney for the Southern Pacific Railroad the following year.
Before he left East Los Angeles, however, Chapman increased his involvement in horticultural and pomological organizations, so that, in fall 1877, for example, he joined the legislation committee for the Southern California Horticultural Society and then was part of a committee from Los Angeles working on a Horticultural and Agricultural Exhibition. When the organization built a wooden pavilion for these events, Chapman was part of a planning committee and he and his brother, William, contributed to its construction.
Earlier that year, Chapman was one of more than two-dozen signatories, including Luther Holt of Pomona, Thomas Garey of Los Angeles, George C. Gibbs of San Gabriel, several Pasadena figures and a few from the future Orange County, calling for an organization to determine “the best varieties of fruits and the best methods of cultivation” as well as “the best possible markets” for products among regional fruit growers for a meeting to be held at the end of April in the Good Templars Hall in Los Angeles.
In 1878, Chapman was on the irrigation committee of the Society and added to that a role on the legislation committee for the following year. When Professor Eugene W. Hilgard of the University of California in Berkeley came down in June 1879 to meet with the organization’s Committee on Adaptability of Soils, William Chapman was a member to consult with the academic.
This activity is reflective of the increasing emphasis on professionalization among greater Los Angeles’ farmers and growers with the Chapman brothers taking prominent roles, while Alfred and Glassell also were among dozens of Angelenos (including with prominent surnames such as Bixby, Childs, Hellman, Lankershim, Perry, Phillips and Widney) who signed a petition against a new California Constitution, which was, however, ratified in 1879—the argument was that the movement by populist Workingmen (who were virulently anti-Chinese) was “fraught with great perils for our future, with the paralysis of industry, the depreciation of real estate and grave disasters generally.
It was mentioned previously in this post that Chapman and Glassell purchased the Rancho La Cañada in 1869 and, while prices were depressed after the panic, they unloaded the ranch at the end of 1877, selling over 5,800 acres for $10,000 or about $1.71 an acre. When Chapman decided to move from the Angel City, he sold, in December 1880, his East Los Angeles holdings, but did well with this transaction.
The Express of 16 June 1880 reported,
Mr. A.B. Chapman yesterday sold his home place in East Los Angeles, containing a fraction over twelve acres, to Mr. Edward Scheiffelin [Schieffelin], one of the discoverers of the famous Contention mine, Tombstone District, Arizona The price paid was $21,000 cash. Mr. Scheiffelin, we understand, intends it as a home for his parents, who will make Los Angeles their future place of residence.
The same day’s Los Angeles Commercial added that “Mr. Schieffelin is the third person who has made a competency in Arizona and purchased a homestead in Los Angeles,” with another being his mining partner, Richard Gird, whose brother Henry previously settled in this area, and, also in 1880, acquired the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino and went on to found the town of Chino. The paper, a short-lived sheet in the Angel City, concluded with, “we trust that others will follow their example, and secure beautiful homes in our salubrious clime.”
During the lean years, there continued to be transactions with the Chapman Tract on the Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, including the town of Orange, and in the 3 April 1876 edition of the Express, Chapman, having visited his project and other areas of southeastern Los Angeles County, submitted notes to the paper of what he observed. The article noted:
He says the country looks splendid, and that we, who remain the city, have no adequate idea of the agricultural and horticultural progress visible everywhere. In the Santa Ana region, fruit tree culture has been gone into to a very great extent, and it has been attended with the most gratifying success. Young orchards are to be seen on all the farms, and new trees have been laid out by the thousand. He said that places that were utterly destitute of trees in 1871 are now turned into handsome orchards, and that even orange trees are blooming and will bear next fall.
Apple trees were also grown by many orchardists and experiments with bananas were, Chapman reported, very promising, such that the effort “shows that our climate is far superior to that of Florida for the culture of this delicious fruit.” It was claimed that only a year was needed for banana plants to mature, compared to three times as long in the Sunshine State.
Chapman added that he sold land in 1872 to a man named Hutchinson for $15 an acre and it would not be sold for $400, as there were “extensive and flourishing orange groves on it,” as well as other fruit trees. As for those growing grapes, he stated that everyone south of Anaheim was planting the Muscat, which was dried for raisins, while “the common Mission grape was far superior here to anywhere else in the State,” with more body, juice and sugar content. The conclusion was:
All well-informed people agree that Los Angeles will, in a few years, be a prodigious fruit grower. Our nursery men have sold over a million and a half of trees this year, and over a million of these have been planted in our county. There will be ample material for several fruit-preserving factories here in a few years.
With Orange well-developed (William T. Glassell, however, whose health was poor since he was a prisoner of war in the Civil War, died in 1876, so management was handled differently thereafter), Chapman increasingly turned to his other major regional landholding: his nearly 1,800 acres of the Rancho Santa Anita in the San Gabriel Valley, which he also purchased in the late Sixties.
His brother, William, resided on the ranch while Chapman lived in Los Angeles, but, in summer 1880, Chapman hired builder Spencer H. Buchanan, probably best known for his work on the Baker Block in downtown Los Angeles, to construct a house on the ranch. In October, the dwelling was completed at a cost of $8,000 and the Express of the 13th recorded that water was supplied from an artesian well 1,000 feet away and located 15 feet higher than the residence so that water, also used for irrigation, could be piped by gravity and reach the second floor.
The paper continued that, “Mr. Chapman has a large variety of choice fruit, including over one hundred acres of budded orange trees” and it added that “it will require but a short time for Mr. Chapman to build up in this favored locality one of the most attractive homes in Southern California.” The location of the residence was near the intersection of today’s California Boulevard and Rosemead Boulevard in east Pasadena and some of that area bears the name of Chapman Woods.
At the end of 1880, Chapman sold close to 40% of his ranch, some 685 acres, at $10 an acre to another mining magnate, this one earning his fortune in México. Lewis L. Bradbury ended up with a highly developed ranch property, some of which is now the exclusive residential enclave bearing his name, while he also expanded large sums on a lavish Los Angeles hilltop mansion, no longer with us, and on the uniquely designed Bradbury Building, which still stands at the southeast corner of Broadway and 3rd Street.
The 29 October 1877 number of the Express featured, as part of a travelogue of that portion of the San Gabriel Valley, a description of “the place of the Chapman Brothers, a portion of the Santa Anita.” William was present to guide the reporter through the property and was praised for “his practical intelligence, [and] a thorough acquaintance with all the book knowledge of orange culture.” Separate accounts included mention that there was also an apiary on the ranch, as commercial beekeeping was very popular in greater Los Angeles at that time.
At least three varieties of the fruit were recognized as well as tangerines and it was observed that “at this fine place there are five hundred acres planted in trees, principally orange” and “these are all just coming into bearing, and will soon afford a fair return for the great outlay endured by the Messrs. Chapman for the past eight years.” Aside from those in the ground, the brothers had some 30,000 in a nursery and it was added that, when the entirety of the nearly 1,800 acres were “set out” with trees, the place would “form one of the most valuable orange plantations in the lower country [southern California.” Not only, however, would a sizable chunk be sold to Bradbury, but the orange orchard did not embrace the lion’s share of what remained, even as it was still one of the largest groves in the region.
The article ended with the observations that,
It is watered from an artificial lake, covering about two acres, and which is suppled bounteously by springs rising in the premises and with water from the mountains. A charming and picturesque feature of this property is a drive of nearly a mile from the county road [Duarte Road, the southern boundary of the ranch] to the farm house, through an avenue lined on each side with walnut trees of full growth.
The Herald of 26 February 1893, in a feature on the “Joppa,” meaning the Joffa, orange, recorded that it was “a variety that originated [locally] in 1879 with A.B. Chapman of San Gabriel, with seeds imported from Joppa [Joffa, now part of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area of Isreael], Palestine, and named ‘Joppa’ by Mr. Chapman in order to indicate the locality of its original home in the holy land.”
So, as the 1870s (one of the three, along with the 1840s and 1920s, key decades of the Homestead’s interpretation) came to a close, Alfred Beck Chapman made substantial changes to his life, including moving from downtown Los Angeles to East Los Angeles and then to what is now East Pasadena; leaving his law practice after close to 20 years; and increasingly devoting himself to horticulture, most notable oranges, as that fruit was poised to rise to dominance in regional agriculture.
We’ll return soon with part four, taking the Chapman story into the 1880s and further development with citriculture, so be sure to join us for that.