Memorial Day Special Edition: French Angelenos in World War One

"War is the business of the French, and they do it very well."

                                                                               - Rudyard Kipling

World War One began in 1914.

The United States of America initially stayed out of the conflict, only entering the war in 1917.

Los Angeles' French community, however, rushed to the aid of their homeland.

The 1918 Los Angeles City Directory (i.e. phone book) lists a French Ambulance Service sharing space with the Alliance Francaise (the location is now Ace Hotel Los Angeles). Three blocks away, there was a French Society for the Relief of Wounded Soldiers. Since phone books are compiled in advance, the Ambulance Service and Society likely existed prior to 1918. (Note to self: check the 1915-1917 city directories the next time I'm deep in the bowels of Central Library. I can't believe I forgot to do that this time.)

Most notably, Georges Le Mesnager - 64 years old in 1914 - stepped away from all four of his jobs and his large family to go back to France and enlist in the French Army. He earned several medals for bravery, was wounded five times, and eventually acted as a special liaison to General Pershing. (Mesnager noted that his fellow French soldiers doubted the arriving American troops would be of much help. He assured them otherwise.) His last task before retiring to the Verdugo Hills was to establish a society for Los Angeles' French war veterans (presumably, there were enough French veterans of war in LA to merit founding such a society).

Dr. Kate Brousseau, a busy psychologist and professor, took a two-year sabbatical to put her French fluency and Ph.D to work in war-torn France. Dr. Brousseau, who was 55 when she left California, spent 1917 and 1918 examining French women called into war service and working with French soldiers in Lorraine, French-occupied Germany, and war-torn northern France. When the war ended, she helped to rehabilitate traumatized soldiers (today we'd call it treating PTSD).

And then there was Lucien Napoleon Brunswig.

Brunswig, a pharmacist by trade, was already active in immigrant support societies and social organizations when the war began. He soon became active in the American Committee for Devastated France and the Maisons-Claires (which supported French war orphans). In 1917 at the age of 63, Brunswig spent eight months in France, writing about his experiences. After the war, he vice-chaired the committee that placed the Doughboy statue in Pershing Square. (Brunswig, like Remi Nadeau, deserves his own biography. But give me time.)

Pershing Square is slated for a renovation. Happily, I have been informed that the Doughboy will remain in the park.

Take a moment to remember all the good people who have died in conflict. And take a moment to remember the French and French-speaking Angelenos who walked away from everything to do whatever they could.

Integrity: Judge Julius Brousseau

A previous entry was about Frenchtown's own Renaissance woman, Dr. Kate Brousseau. Today, we get to meet her father, Julius - an impressive Angeleno in his own right.

Julius Brousseau was born in New York in 1835. His parents were French Canadian immigrants.

Brousseau became an attorney. His career soon took him to Michigan, where he married Caroline Yakeley. Oldest child Kate was born in 1862. The Brousseaus moved to Illinois and had three more children (Mabel in 1871, Edward in 1875, and Ray in 1877) before moving to Los Angeles in 1877.

A few words should be said about Los Angeles in the 1870s: it was still the wild, wild west. The Brousseaus arrived less than seven years after Michel Lachenais was lynched (by his fellow Frenchmen, no less) and about six years after the deadliest race riot in U.S. history - the Chinese Massacre. In the 1860s, greater Los Angeles averaged 20 murders per year (with a population of about 7,000 people) - up to 20 times the murder rate for New York City at the time. Just three years prior to the Brousseaus' arrival, notorious bandit Tiburcio Vasquez was finally caught in modern-day Santa Clarita. Los Angeles had a well-deserved reputation for being tough, lawless, and just plain scary.

Somehow, that didn't deter the Brousseaus.

Julius set up a law office in units 56 and 57 of the ornate Baker Block (which would later be demolished in 1942 to make way for the 101 freeway). If you are driving on the 101 through downtown, the building would have been in the middle of the northbound lanes just north of where the freeway crosses Main Street.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Brousseaus joined the French Benevolent Society. In 1878, after just a year in LA, the Society selected Julius as a committee member (Constant Meyer, who had to leave town for an extended period of time, was stepping down).

By 1886, Julius had partnered with D.P. Hatch in a law firm. Brousseau & Hatch were based out of units 31, 32, and 56 in the Baker Block (presumably, Julius had kept his old office upstairs). Their names occasionally appeared in the real-estate transaction section of local newspapers - including  two plots of land in the San Gabriel Valley's Arcadia tract that year to Prudent Beaudry.

Julius was a patron of the Acacia chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic organization which is open to both men and women. The 1887 city directory also lists him as "Master of Robert Bruce Chapter, no. 6, Rose Croix". Julius was also a Shriner, belonging to the Al Malaikah Temple. Today, the Temple is headquartered at the Shrine Auditorium.

The fabled Brousseau Mansion - one of the first grand homes on Bunker Hill - was built around 1878.  Located at 238 South Bunker Hill Avenue (between Second and Third Streets), this was the house where eldest child Kate began her decades-long teaching career. Sadly, the house was torn down in 1966. The Broad now takes up most of the block.

Oddly for a man known for good moral character, Julius appeared on a list of delinquent taxpayers for a lot in the Starr tract and some personal property in 1893. He was on the list again the following year for two lots in the Leonis tract and some land in a subdivision. It isn't clear if the delinquent properties were all his or if the matter was related to his occasional handling of real estate transactions.

After Miguel Leonis died, much of his massive estate went to attorneys' fees. Per an 1896 newspaper article, one of those attorneys just so happened to be Julius Brousseau. One-sixth of Rancho El Escorpion was claimed by the Domec sisters - Espiritu Chijulla Menendez Leonis' sisters - but their claim was disputed by a Robert S. Baker.

Judge Clark also changed the guardianship of a minor heir during litigation proceedings, making Julius the child's guardian ad litem. The Domec sisters - one of whom was the mother of said child - considered this a conflict of interest. They asked Julius to step down and allow Montgomery & Son to represent them.

When Julius declined, he was accused of making disparaging comments about Montgomery, which he denied. As if the Leonis case weren't already convoluted enough, the accusations and the alleged conflict of interest had to be hashed out in court. Rabble-rousing Major Horace Bell, who was Baker's attorney, pointed out that he himself was in a similar position.

Brousseau, at one point, appeared confused about exactly how much of Rancho El Escorpion his clients were claiming. Judge Clark asked for clarification about how much of the rancho the Leonis estate was entitled to. Brousseau responded that if he had made a mistake in his earlier statement, he would amend his answer. He also asked to be relieved of his duty as the minor heir's guardian ad litem.

A few months later, a different newspaper article identified Julius Brousseau not just as an attorney, but as a judge. His father Julius Brousseau Sr., by now 83 and a widower, had been defrauded out of his house and property by Mrs. Lizzie Sage - Julius' sister.

Judge Brousseau testified in the ensuing fraud case. He gave his age as 61, prompting many in the courtroom to comment that he didn't look over 50 (many French people don't age...my own family is proof of this). He stated that before and after his mother's death the previous year, his father (who until then had consulted with him on financial matters) had behaved in an uncharacteristically irrational manner.

Dr. D.J. Le Doux, who had been the late Mrs. Brousseau's attending physician, backed up Judge Brousseau, stating that the elder Brousseau appeared to be mentally unbalanced by his wife's illness and death. Ultimately, the deed of conveyance was deemed null and void. Mrs. Sage was ousted from her father's house on Star Street, and the case effectively estranged her from her father and brother.

On October 15, 1903, Judge Julius Brousseau, who had been suffering from Bright's disease, passed away at his daughter Mabel's house. His obituary identified him as a former president of the Los Angeles Board of Education and a former Democratic nominee for Superior Judge (despite the judge's popularity and spotless reputation, he lost the election because Los Angeles was overwhelmingly Republican at the time). Brousseau's obituary added "No citizen of Los Angeles had a better reputation for integrity and good citizenship than Brousseau. Both as a lawyer and as a citizen, he commanded the respect of all who knew him, and he was greatly loved by his friends and intimate associates."

Six members of the Bar Association were appointed as pallbearers. The Brousseau sisters asked that as many members of the Bar as possible attend the funeral. The Masons took on the responsibility of transporting Judge Brousseau's body to Evergreen Cemetery and concluding the funeral ceremony.

If only every attorney in Los Angeles had Brousseau's good character...

International Women's Day Special Edition: Dr. Kate Brousseau

I realize this blog doesn't have a strictly linear timeline. Sometimes, one location will have a story spanning centuries; sometimes several generations of one family will have so many accomplishments that it makes no sense to split them up by date.

Also, the calendar sometimes encourages a change of plans.

I promise I will write a post about Judge Julius Brousseau soon. In honor of International Women's Day, today's post recalls one of the judge's four children: Dr. Kate Brousseau.

Kate Brousseau was born in Ypsilanti, Michigan on April 24, 1862. Her father, Julius, was born in New York to French Canadian parents; her mother Caroline (née Yakeley) was of German and English extraction. The Brousseau family moved to Los Angeles in 1877.

Kate enrolled in Los Angeles High School. But she wasn't done learning when she graduated. Not by a LONG shot.

Kate enrolled at the State Normal School (now known as UCLA). At the time, the university's campus was located on the present site of Central Library.

When she was about twenty years old, Kate began her teaching career, offering private French lessons for 75 cents each (50 cents per person for groups of 3 or 4) in the Brousseau family mansion at 238 South Bunker Hill Avenue.

As for her own education...Kate went on to further studies at the University of California, the University of Minnesota, University of Chicago Law School (!), an unspecified university in Germany, and the University of Paris (where she was the only woman in a Greek class of sixty students). I don't even want to THINK about how much money her education must have cost.

Kate returned to the State Normal School in 1891, this time as a French professor. She often translated French literature for the Los Angeles Times. But there were far better things in store for that brilliant bilingual mind of hers.

She returned to the University of Paris, this time earning a Ph.D in psychology in 1904. Her doctoral thesis, which concerned the education of African American children, can be read here in French (do note that she dedicated the book in part to Dr. Hubert Nadeau). In 1907, Dr. Brousseau became Professor of Psychology at Mills College in Oakland. Her specialty, little understood at the time, came to be called abnormal psychology. In time, she became head of the Department of Philosophy and Political Science.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kate was a suffragette. She was one of eight directors of the College Equal Suffrage League of Northern California, elected in 1911.

From 1914 to 1915, Dr. Brousseau conducted a psychological survey of the inmates at the Sonoma State Home for the Feebleminded, giving psychological examinations to about 1400 developmentally disabled children. At a time when such children were widely considered an embarrassment or a burden, Dr. Brousseau sought to understand their minds.

In 1917, with World War One raging, Dr. Brousseau left to assist the American Fund for the French Wounded, serving with the French Army (she was 55 years old at this point - I wonder if she knew Georges Le Mesnager!). She served as directrice des Foyers du Soldat ("director of soldiers' footsteps") on the front in Lorraine, then served with the French Army of Occupation in both Germany and war-torn areas of northern France. She put that Ph.D. in psychology to work rehabilitating traumatized soldiers after the war's end, and assisted the famed surgeon Dr. E. Toulouse in examining French women called into war service (as factory workers, railway employees, and other traditionally masculine jobs) in Paris. For her services to France, the French minister of war awarded her the Medaille Commemorative Francaise de la Grand Guerre.

Dr. Brousseau had some close calls during the war, which she related to her colleagues in letters. Before her steamer even reached France, a German submarine attacked, deploying a torpedo. Fortunately, gunners on board the ship hit the submarine. Dr. Brousseau was aware that she was in danger, but stated that she was more angry than afraid. Until the ship docked, the lifeboats were stocked with emergency supplies - just in case. A couple of months later, while serving in Paris, Dr. Brousseau was caught up in a zeppelin raid. She also wrote of the suffering experienced by French civilians - families living in basements, a child killed by a bomb while playing, German soldiers kidnapping a mother and her daughters. Still, she ended on a hopeful note, writing of the many American college students (including a group of young women from Smith College) who had volunteered to restore and rebuild villages and towns ravaged by bombs, and noting that the American army had arrived.

The Oakland city directory continued to list Dr. Brousseau as a Mills College professor during her absence. (The college, realizing her extensive education, expertise in psychology, and French fluency made her a valuable asset to war-torn France, kindly granted her a leave of absence.)

The professor returned to her teaching career at Mills College in 1919. During this time, she published additional books on race and education, and created a course in marriage and family living about fifteen years before other colleges saw the need for one. In 1925, Dr. Brousseau created "a psychological clinic for the diagnosis and treatment of problem cases in the Oakland public school system" (layman's terms: she taught schools how to help troubled kids). She did not retire until 1928.

Oh, and she supported her peers in academia. Dr. Brousseau belonged to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association of University Professors, American Association of University Women, American Women's Overseas League, and the Ligue d'Hygiene Mental de Paris.

Despite extensive travels and living in Oakland for the bulk of her career, Kate kept close ties to Los Angeles, and returned when she retired. In 1930, Dr. Brousseau was one of four former students who arranged a memorial service for Chloe Blakeman Jones, a Los Angeles High School teacher who had passed away.

Dr. Kate Brousseau passed away in 1938 and is buried at Evergreen Cemetery. There will never be anyone else quite like her.