by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As the United States prepared early in 1876 for the celebration of the centennial of the nation’s founding through the issuance of the Declaration of Independence, efforts were undertaken in Los Angeles to support the broader effort, including the holding for much of the year of an exposition in Philadelphia, where that foundational document was ratified, as well as how the Angel City could make its contributions.
In early February, however, the citizens of the city were confronted with the cold, hard reality of the Long Depression, which began in the east in 1873 and came home to Angelenos when a panic broke out at San Francisco at the end of August 1875 and which led to the closure of the Temple and Workman bank, one of only two commercial institutions in town. As difficult as the news of the failure of the bank was when it was broadcast on 13 January, no one seemed prepared for what the inventory of the institution revealed, when that was made public in early February.
The Los Angeles Star of the 4th said it all when it thundered that the report was “A DOCUMENT THAT SHOCKS A COMMUNITY” as it was filled with examples of “MISMANAGEMENT, WILD SPECULATIONS, AND A BETRAYAL OF TRUST” involving “AN UNPARALLELED ARRAY OF DEAD BEATS” whose existence involved “AN INTERESTING ETHNOLOGICAL STUDY.” With the financial hard times at hand, there is no doubt that there was a significant effect on what could and would be done with respect to centennial celebrations.
The same day, the Los Angeles Herald featured the presence in Los Angeles of Paul Petrovitz (Pavle Petrovic, 1818-1887), a Serbian artist who studied at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts, but traveled the world plying his trade. Among the locales where he lived and worked were Egypt, Hawaii, India, Italy, Malaysia, Thailand and the United States and the paper expressed no small degree of excitement when it marveled, “who dreamed that Los Angeles is now the home of one of the finest artists of America?”
It continued that “many of our citizens are saving up the dimes in order to pay their way to Philadelphia for the laudable purpose of looking up the paintings of the masters” at the centennial exposition. If, however, residents were to go to the Pico House hotel and see Petrovitz “you will see some as fine specimens of paintings as will be exhibited at the Centennial.” It advised locals with an interest in and talent for art to consider taking lessons and developing their skills.
Petrovitz remained in Los Angeles for about a year or so, painting portraits of Mayor Prudent Beaudry and ex-Governor Pío Pico, as well as William Workman (the original was stolen from the Temple family house, La Casa Nueva, in the early 1970s when the building was unoccupied) and his grandson, Thomas W. Temple—this painting was donated to the Homestead five years ago from the estate of Josette Temple. The reference to the Centennial is a notable one.
Another possible indication of the economic issues of the time affecting support of the Philadelphia exposition is from the Star of the 9th, which reported, after it and other local papers discussed efforts by local women to subscribe to stock being sold to build a structure at the expo to document the achievements and contributions of women, that only five shares, at $10 each, were taken up to date. These purchases were made by the wives of banker Isaias W. Hellman, nursery owner and rancher Ozro W. Childs, former Governor John G. Downey, and two others, though it was hoped that others would follow their leads.
In Washington, D.C., Congress spent weeks deliberating how to provide financial support for the exposition and an interesting report from the Herald of the 10th concerned how a floor speech from a North Carolina member of the House of Representatives was such that “it appears that the debate on the amnesty question,” this having to do with lifting all remaining restrictions on Confederate officials and military personnel following an act of 1872, “has not alienated the South from the [celebration of] the Centennial, and that the Southern people are still anxious to cast the mantle of oblivion over the past,” meaning the Civil War.
Two days later, the paper reported that the Senate approved the appropriation bill by a vote of 41-15 and the sheet expressed some frustration that
The Centennial, which ought to be a jubilee of freedom, peace and good will, and a return to honest and patriotic government, is ushered in through the grim file of skeleton dead-issues and prophetic fears, of this being the first and only Centennial of the Republic.
In its number of the 20th, the Herald remarked that, concerning what it called the “Centennial grab,” 86 members of the Republican Party voted for the bill and only 18 against it, while 55 Democrats signaled support and 106 showed opposition. The narrow level of support meant further negotiations were required and amendments to be made “to again run the narrow gauntlet” at the House. Eventually, appropriations totaled nearly $3 million, including a million for buildings and the remainder for programmatic expenses and other costs.
An advertisement running in Los Angeles papers pronounced a “Centennial Proclamation” from the Chicago and North-Western Railway, which offered transcontinental tickets over what it called the “Pioneer Route.” Because the Southern Pacific was still constructing its line to this area from the north, Angelenos headed to Philadelphia were taking steamships from San Pedro/Wilmington to San Francisco and then ferried across the Bay to Oakland for rail transport, unless they chose a sea route to the east coast.
Among the names mentioned were the Downeys, Leonard J. Rose of the San Gabriel Valley, merchant Harris Newmark and the Shaw family, who farmed south of town. John Harrison Temple, who owned the Homestead from 1888 to 1899, was completing a business college course in Massachusetts, where his father F.P.F. was born and raised, that spring, but took in a visit to Philadelphia for the centennial exposition before returning home to find his family in dire financial straits.
One of the ways in which efforts were undertaken to promote greater Los Angeles in Philadelphia was through extolling our region’s wine industry. In part one, we mentioned Mathew Keller inaugurating an initiative to market and sell his product in Philadelphia and the Herald of 19 February, after commenting that the 1875 season was a poor one due to a late frost in April and the closure of the well-known Tarbox distillery, informed readers “we may reasonably expect a season of unusual success for the wine trade” for the current season.
This was based on news that Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin, who acquired the Rancho Santa Anita not quite a year before and whose loan to the shuttered Temple and Workman bank would, on foreclosure, soon yield him many thousands acres more land in the San Gabriel Valley, “has stated his intention of planting a hundred acres in vines.” Between the loss of grapes because of the prior year’s poor conditions “and the interest created by the Centennial and increasing fame of the California wines,” it was anticipated that the demand for and prices of local grapes would rise appreciatively.
Moreover, the Herald observed, the festivities at Philadelphia meant a chance for “foreign buyers to test [local wines’] quality and extensive preparations are being made with a view to this end.” Keller, it was added, shipped 40,000 gallons of wine to the City of Brotherly Love and was looking to increase that by another 60,000, and it was hoped that the quality of local wine would be appreciated by Centennial expo visitors.
Another enterprise to publicize the region and provide profit for its entrepreneur was observed by the Herald in its edition of the 20th, as it remarked,
Mr. H[enry]T. Payne, well known in our city as a photograph artist of considerable merit, has a project on hand of exhibiting stereoscopic views of Los Angeles county and Southern California in general at the coming Centennial celebration in Philadelphia.
It was added that, if his carefully calculated plans came to fruition, the shutterbug would mount a tour of the eastern states “exhibiting his views and accompanying them with explanatory lectures.” The paper went on to note that “the last year he has devoted almost exclusively to taking views of important objects in this country, and he has now some two hundred pictures prepared” with plans to increase the total to 500.
Among those mentioned were ones of enormous pears, sweet potatoes, radishes and pumpkins, as testaments to the fecundity of our local soil, while it was added that “a view of La Belle cascade, in Eaton cañon,” this where the devastating fire of January 2025 that ravaged adjacent Altadena originated, “would make a fit subject to the painter’s canvass.” The Herald concluded,
The subjects which Mr. Payne has taken comprise almost everything to be found in the country, from a flower to the finest stretch of natural scenery . . . We hope that Mr. Payne will meet with abundant success in the prosecution of his enterprise.
The tie-in of the Centennial to Washington’s Birthday was made nationally explicit in a proclamation by President Ulysses S. Grant, while, locally, observed the Star of 20 February, “our friend [John E.] Tipton. out at his new hotel, at El Monte,” formerly Jones’ Hotel, while Tilton was recently proprietor of the Heartsease House in the recently established town of Duarte, “will inaugurate the Centennial festivities in that section by a grand hop” on the 22nd.
Another local event incorporating the nation’s 100th birthday was that held by the 38s volunteer fire department, one of two in Los Angeles and which predated the mid-1880s establishment of the professional Los Angeles Fire Department. The organization, reported the Los Angeles Express of the 23rd, held an entertainment and ball at the Turnverein Hall on Spring Street with the finale of the first part of the evening comprising an offering which the paper told readers “the Centennial tableau[x] brought down the house.”
Early in March came the news that the Centennial Light Association sought to use special memorial lamp posts, illuminating the way for evening visitors to the expo, to have every state in the Union represented at Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, where the expo was held on 285 acres. The California entry, said to cost $5,000, was to have a pedestal representing a “big tree,” likely a sequoia, with gold quartz at the base, as well as grape vines, fruit and flowers on the trunk, while the state coat-of-arms and the figure of a gold miner were to be at the top.
The Express of the 15th ran a piece titled “Los Angeles at the Centennial,” in which Benjamin B. Redding, a former Assembly member, Sacramento mayor and California Secretary of State, as well as namesake of the northern California city, but who was the land agent of the Central Pacific (which operated the western portion of the transcontinental railroad) and Southern Pacific (the dominant rail company in the Golden State), called for “specimens that will illustrate the products of the railroad land and other lands of this coast” to be displayed at Philadelphia.
Local Southern Pacific agent Eldridge E. Hewitt was to assist in the free transport of items to the expo and their return by steamship from San Pedro/Wilmington to San Francisco. What was solicited from farmers, miners and others were products of the soil, like fruits, grains, nuts vegetables, as well as wool, building materials, precious metals and “shells, fossils and antiquities.” For crops, it was asked that entrants provide a description of the soil, cultivation methods, when planting and harvesting were conducted, and yields per acre.
It is interesting and instructive to note that the paper also printed statistics gathered by the state surveyor general for Los Angeles County during 1875, including the acreage and bushel counts for grain crops, pounds of butter and cheese, products of citrus and deciduous fruits, the gallon counts for wine, brandy and other alcoholic beverages, and more. There was also information concerning real estate values, those of improvements and more in the county that was home to close to 27,000 persons, of which 8,200 were registered voters. These statistics could well have been included in displays at the centennial expo.
Mrs. B.C. Whiting, who headed the effort to get local women to subscribe to stock sold to raise funds for a woman’s building at the exposition, handed the Herald a copy of a flyer issued by the Woman’s Centennial Executive Committee, as that body sought to promote the work of women in charitable and philanthropic endeavors of all kinds. These included homes for orphans, seniors, young working women, the hearing and sight impaired and more; missionary societies; hospitals for babies and children; industrial organizations; training schools for nurses; animal welfare; and more.
Reports were requested to be sent to the Centennial Commission office and it was concluded that,
The Women’s Executive Committee hope by this to draw into fellowship many of the foremost women of our country to take part in the Women’s Department, that in their meeting and working together, to celebrate the hundredth birthday of our beloved country, they may gain new strength and love to continue women’s best work.
With all of the attention paid to the national exposition, it was in late March that local newspapers began to devote more space to the impending celebration at home. To this end, the Express of 29 March asked, “would it not be well for some of our leading citizens to take steps immediately to arrange for our centennial celebration of Independence Day?” It was added, “we want something more on this memorable year than the usual humdrum observance.”
The paper continued, “every considerable community in the country will make an extraordinary effort to render the observance of the day this year exceptional” and it warned that “we of Los Angeles should not be behind the others.” In particular, it was highlighted that,
The suggestion by the National Centennial Committee, that the day should be availed of to bring out, in a shape for permanent preservation, the local history of each county, is an excellent one, and in our case it would result in solid benefits. The generation which can furnish us with reliable memorabilia of an epoch of peculiar interest is fast passing away. Year by year the actors in scenes of singular historical moment are becoming less, and before long, the events which we can now preserve in the amber of certainty will be remanded to the domain of illusory tradition. We owe it to the future as well as the present to make an effort to save our annals from oblivion, and place them within reach of the future historian. There are those now in our midst well fitted for this gracious task. Let us invite them to it before it is too late.
The idea of producing centennial county histories was one that had wide currency throughout the country, including in Los Angeles County, and we’ll return next with part three to continue our coverage of the centennial celebration of 1876, so check back in for that.
While people across the nation were joyfully preparing to celebrate the American Centennial in 1876, it was, ironically, a year of profound tragedy for the William Workman family. Their patriarch, William Workman, took his own life in May following the collapse of the bank he co-owned with his son-in-law, F. P. F. Temple.
Of Temple’s eleven children – Workman’s grandchildren – most lived out their lives in a humble life after the dramatic fall of what had once been one of Southern California’s most prosperous families.
Among them, John Harrison Temple (1856–1926) is particularly noteworthy. In 1899 – the centennial of William Workman’s birth – ironically, another tragedy for the family took place. The family’s original homestead was lost again – this time, from John’s hands while he was operating the property as a vineyard.
Fortunately, John lived until 1926, long enough to witness his younger brother, Walter P. Temple, strike oil and restore the family’s fortunes to an extraordinary height. Fortunately, he did not live to witness another family tragedy, as Walter’s financial decline began only a couple of years after John’s death.