by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The town of Pomona, of which Patrick C. Tonner may be called a founder, foundered shortly after its creation amid the financial panic of 1875-1876, which included the failure of the Temple and Workman bank, lenders of the funds to develop the new burg, which, however, survived, albeit with little growth until the early 1880s. The Pomona Land and Water Company took over in 1882 as the regional economy was in recovery.
Four years later, the Boom of the Eighties burst forth and Pomona experienced dramatic growth as did most of greater Los Angeles. Patrick C. Tonner, who came to the area in the early 1870s to teach school in what was known as San Jose, name after the ranch which was long the domain of the Palomares and Vejar families, was heavily involved in the first phase of the town and saw opportunities in this second one.
During the peak years of the boom, 1887 and 1888, Tonner acquired large tracts of land for significant sums, given the rocketing prices of property. The first of those years involved at least seven large transactions involving over 250 acres, plus unspecified amounts of land and lots, for the expenditure of over $103,000. There was also the sale of 138 acres formerly owned by Tomás Palomares and fetching $35,000.
The year 1887 also found Tonner as a founder of a pair of water companies, the Del Monte and the Palomares, which the Los Angeles Times noted were “incorporated for the purpose of supplying water to those persons to whom the Pomona Land and Water Company have sold water rights, and others,” while a third, the Claremont Water Company was specifically established to provide the precious fluid for that new boomtown adjacent to Pomona.
Among the partners in all three of the firms, which had varying amounts of capital stock, were Pomona resident Frank L. Palmer and his uncle, Henry, former a banker in Oakland and who was a founder of the Pomona Land and Water Company; civil engineer, surveyor and realtor Henry E. Stoddard, involved in mapping out local subdivisions and tracts; and Dr. Benjamin S. Nichols, who was a Pomona Land and Water director.
Other notable figures at the time were Carlton Seaver and Stoddard Jess, the president and cashier, respectively, of the First National Bank of Pomona. After Tomás Palomares sold some 500 acres, whether the 138 noted above were included is not clear, to Tonner, he conveyed this tract to the bankers. What was noted in the Los Angeles Times of 22 March 1887, however, is that Isaac W. Lord and others in a syndicate were “operating heavily in the Mud Spring Valley, adjoining Pomona,” acquiring some 500 acres of land, including “140 acres of the old Thomas Palomares tract,” bought for $35,000. Lordsburg was the new town developed there, this now being La Verne.
Seaver owned a place called Indian Hill (a major thoroughfare in Claremont and part of Pomona bears this name) and his son Frank became a major figure at Pomona College, which is the oldest of the Claremont Colleges. As to Jess, he moved to Los Angeles in 1904 and became vice-president and then president of the First National Bank of Los Angeles and director of Los Angeles Trust and Savings Bank, later Security-First National Bank. He was also a prime mover in the annexation by the Angel City of the port city of San Pedro and was president of the harbor commission as the Port of Los Angeles dramatically grew.
Another of Tonner’s projects in 1887 was the formation of the Orange Grove Street Railroad Company, which was incorporated early the following year and which intended to build a streetcar line from downtown Pomona to the northwest along Orange Grove Avenue, with a connection to a new park that Tonner established and named Ganesha. It does not appear, however, that the line had a long operating life as rails were reported to be torn out as Second Street was being paved not quite a decade later.
With respect to that park, the Times of 13 September 1888 reported from a Pomona source that,
About a mile north of Pomona there used to be a swamp or cienega. The moist ground was covered with a dense growth of underbrush, weeds and some few trees. It was considered almost worthless except for the water that could be developed. Last spring Mr. P.C. Tonner purchased the property and informed the public that he intended to convert it into a pleasant park. Few believed that he could accomplish much with such a poor foundation, but pluck and money, judiciously expended, will accomplish wonders.
This work included removing the unwanted plant material, keeping taller trees, cleaning out the stream channel, seats placed under remaining trees, a bandstand built and other elements. The result, the paper approvingly, was that “what was once an unsightly spot on the face of nature, has been converted to a place of beauty.”
Moreover, streetcar access (though it was not stated if Tonner’s Orange Grove line was involved) was such that the park “is much visited by the citizens of Pomona” and, because there was no fee for admission “many of our civic and church societies have picnics there.” Projected was a lake of several acres, tapping “springs of water that supply the stream [evidently San José Creek, which ran south of the Workman House on its way to emptying into the San Gabriel River] come from the base of the San José hills, which are quite near,” and the water kept in place by a dam to be 15 feet high.” Also anticipated were “bathing-houses” and boats so that “next summer we will have one of the pleasantest resorts in the county.” The piece ended with the disclaimer that, “(I don’t want you to think this is a free ad for Tonner. It is not. He has no land for sale in that vicinity.)”
By the time this article appeared, the boom was over and the inevitable bust was underway, but Tonner was still engaging in large-scale land purchases, as evidenced by one in May, in which he bought nearly 67 acres on the Rancho San José from Ramón and Teresa (Palomares) Vejar, including water rights, for not far under $5,000. In August 1889, however, the couple sued him and the Pomona Land and Water Company, to which he apparently sold an interest, for well more than half that sum that was due on a promissory note. This was an indication of mounting fiscal problems for Tonner.
Early in 1889, he arranged to purchase 20 acres on the ranch from a couple for $25,500, though this was followed at the end of April by the sale of two parcels to Susan Mills, the widow of the Rev. Cyrus Mills (the two ran Mills College in Oakland, which still exists), a co-founder of the Pomona Land and Water Company, for $25,000. The same amount was realized at the same time for the sale of 22 acres on San José to that firm.
By fall, lawsuits were filed against Tonner as further examples of economic troubles, with one instituted by Samuel Temple Alexander, whose late father, David, was a close friend of the Workman and Temple family and who was seeking to quiet title on some property in Pomona. The other was brought by a man “to recover $1,350 due on a land purchase,” likely in the town and this ended up with a sheriff’s foreclosure sale early in 1890. That March, another court action was decided against Tonner concerning a promissory note, showing that he was unable to pay on purchases of land.
Perhaps these growing problems manifested in erratic behavior, such as that likely indicated when Tonner was scheduled to recite one of his versifications at the Independence Day celebration at Pomona in 1889. The Times of 9 July reported that he “failed to put in an appearance, [and] is still among the missing” and it added,
It seems that he composed his poem all right, and read it to several of his friends, who pronounced it one of the best of the kind they had ever listened to, but for some unaccountable reason Mr. Tonner failed to connect, and up to yesterday his friends were unable to find him.
He has not been seen in Pomona, and his most intimate friends are at a loss to know what has become of him. There is no reason for his sudden disappearance, and there is some fear that he has met with foul play.
While Tonner did soon return to town, nothing further was stated about why he’d vanished, but a strange incident took place early in 1890, with the Los Angeles Express of 18 February citing the Pomona Times in reporting that there were rumors that Tonner, his off-and-on law partner, Len Claiborne and another attorney, Henry B. Westerman, were arrested because “of an alleged offer of the witnesses in the liquor case to receive a bribe to leave the State.”
As was happening nationwide with the temperance movement gaining momentum, teetotalers in Pomona were on a crusade to end the manufacturing, sale or consumption of alcohol in town. The Los Angeles Herald of the 25th recorded that a pair of miners, named Huntley and Nolan, from nearby Glendora were recruited by prohibitionists and paid $150 to purchase liquor and, when they did this, arrests were made and a justice of the peace heard the case of one them, named King.
The account continued that,
The blue noses did not come up, though, with the $150, and, it is alleged, Jonathan Whitcomb, acting for the men, made an offer to Len Claiborne, P.C. Tonner and H.B. Westerman, attorney for the defense in the King case, to get the men out of the country for $300 before the case came to trial. Tonner made an appointment to meet the men at his house on the evening of the 7th instant, and posted Frank Slanker, a constable and deputy sheriff at the open window, where he could see and hear distinctly all that went on inside.
The gathering commenced and it was remarked that “Tonner, affecting a merry mood, compelled the conspirators to raise their voices to such a pitch” that the officer could easily hear their suggestion that the money be used to buy tickets for the miners to México. Apparently, it was arranged that one of the attorneys would meet the pair in Glendora to give them the cash.
Westerman then arranged to have the miners and the man, Jonathan Whitcomb, who brought them to Tonner’s house arrested and charged with accepting a bribe “and the town became wildly excited over the matter.” This, reported the Los Angeles Times of the same day, was because “it had been the intention to have Westerman arrested, but he forestalled the enemy and got his work in before they moved upon his position.”
Seeking to exact revenge, Whitcomb had Westerman apprehended for his bribery attempt, though it looks like Tonner and Claiborne were not seized, and a trial was held all day and during part of the evening, with it remarked that “a very bitter feeling existing in Pomona between the opposing factions was developed.” When Whitcomb took the stand, he told the court that Tonner told him, “this is the place I go when I want to violate ordinance No. 45 [the anti-alcohol local law] of Pomona.”
As to Westerman’s defense, the report was that he and his compatriot attorneys “did not deny the conversations and propositions . . . but boldly asserted that they knew a conspiracy had been formed against them and decided to let it work out as fate decreed.” The testimony “was productive of considerable merriment,” leading Justice Lockwood to try and stem the responses, though evidently to little avail.
The jurist then released Westerman, stating that, despite the talk about money being given to the miners to leave the area, “he felt there was no intent on the part of the defendant to bribe anybody.” Acknowledging that the incident involved “jockeying on both sides” and came from “the fight in Pomona for the suppression of the liquor traffic,” Lockwood admonished the defendant that Westerman, Clairborne and Tonner “had been engaged in a dangerous business” and “not to form any combinations of the sort” in future.
Tonner, however, gloated through verse in a work titled “Lamentation of the Twelve Saints,” referencing the vanishing act of one of the Glendora miners:
We mourn thee, Nolan
With tears and with sighs;
Let us gaze but once more
On thy dear, squinting eyes
The saints all adore them,
The sinners as well;
One squints to high heaven
The other to hell.
Ah Nolan, dear Nolan,
Come back once again;
Your figure, so handsome,
Though brother to Cain,
Will shield us from those
Who are trying to vex us.
Some say you’re in hell,
Some say you’re in Texas.
As the Eighties came to close, Tonner pursued another project that drew attention in the 4 October 1890 number of the East Los Angeles Citizen, a weekly published in what is now the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, and which cited the Pomona Progress that “there seems to be no cessation of water projects in Southern California, and hundreds of schemes are being prosecuted for the purpose of adding to the already large supply of water.”
Though that last point was arguable given the increasing need to obtain the precious fluid from sources outside the region, leading to the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct not quite a quarter century later, it was commented upon that, “P.C. Tonner has a force of men at work on his fine property at the mouth of San Antonio canyon, and he reports most gratifying results so far.”
We’ll find, though, that, in short order, a new controversy would arise that was far from gratifying to Tonner, so we’ll return with part four and be sure to check back with us then.