Wake Up, Sheeple! Part 2: The Sentous Brothers and LA Live

It's hard to believe that the pocket of downtown containing the LA Convention Center, Staples Center, and LA Live was ever quiet and rural. Back in the pueblo days, this land was on the outskirts of town and populated by Californio families.

But that changed when two brothers arrived - separately - from the French region of Haute-Garonne in the 1850s.

Louis Sentous, born in 1840**, came to California in 1853 to do some gold prospecting (there were a few smaller gold rushes after the big one) before moving to LA. Before long, he was raising cattle, selling dairy products, and running a butcher shop.

Louis married Bernath "Bernadette" Lasere, who was also from Haut-Garonne, in 1871 or 1872 (it isn't clear which date is correct). Their son Julius John was born in December of that year, followed by Marie-Louise (1873), Narcisse (February 1880), and Adele (December 1880).

I should note that some sources cite Louis arriving in 1871. However, there is plenty of evidence he was in California in 1853 and for years after. I surmise Louis traveled home to France to get married (it's possible he needed to find a bride; there weren't many single women in LA back then) and the census taker may have mistakenly put down 1871 as the year of arrival for both Louis and Bernadette.

The Sentous Brothers Ranch was near modern-day Jefferson and Western and may have been established as early as 1860. Their cattle are long gone; today, two fried-chicken chains, a bus stop, and a car wash can be found at Jefferson and Western.

In 1874, Louis moved his family to a farm in Calabasas. They moved back in 1877 (given that Miguel Leonis controlled much of Calabasas in the 1870s, who can blame them?). Louis owned the farm until he sold it in 1884, retiring to his home on Olive Street opposite what is now Pershing Square (the exact address isn't clear, but he would most likely have lived next to Remi Nadeau).

The 1883 city directory lists the L. Sentous and Co. butcher shop at the corner of Aliso Street and Los Angeles Street. However, the business prospered well enough that Louis set up the first meatpacking house in Los Angeles. The Sentous meatpacking plant (close to modern-day Culver City) was large enough that it was a stop on the Pacific Electric Railway's fabled Balloon Route, and the plant was the subject of at least one postcard image (more info here). Sentous Station was demolished long ago, but its location is still used as the La Cienega/Jefferson stop on the Expo Line.

Louis Sentous Sr. died in 1911.

Jean Guillaume Sentous, born in 1836, was a dairy farmer and wool rancher. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1854, 1856, or 1860 (sources disagree) after a stint in mining up in Calaveras County.

In 1867, Jean married Maria Theodora Casanova, born in Costa Rica to Spanish parents, at the Plaza Church. They had eight children - Narcisse (born 1868), Louis Jr. (born 1869), Francois (born 1871), Camille (born 1873), Heloise (born 1873*), Louisa (born 1876), Emely (sometimes written as Emila; born 1878), and Adele (born 1880).

There were two more Sentous brothers - Alphonse, born in 1850, and Pierre-Marie, whose birth year seems to be lost to history. Alphonse likely arrived later (there is no record of him in California until 1873), and Pierre remained in France. Little else seems to be known about either of them.

Like many other early residents who were able to buy land before the real estate boom of the 1880s, the Sentous brothers had considerable holdings, including a building block. The Sentous Block at 617 N. Main Street, built by Louis in 1886, housed both apartments and shops. In fact, former governor Pio Pico spent his last few years in an apartment in the Sentous Block (needless to say, he'd had some money troubles).

Jean Sentous established a dairy farm in 1856, on land bordered by Main, Washington, Grand, and 21st Streets. The land exchanged hands a few times and eventually became Chutes Park, one of LA's first amusement parks, in 1900 (sadly, in typical fashion, LAist neglected to mention the French guy who owned the land before that hotelier did).

There was a Sentous Tract, divided by Jean in 1861 and bordered by Pico, Georgia, Eleventh, and Sentous Street. The Sentous Street School was built at 1205 W. Pico in 1912, and later renamed Sentous Junior High School (the campus doubled as a night school).

Although Jean preferred family life to public life, he served as President of the French Benevolent Society for many years.

Jean died in 1903 at age 67 in his home at 834 West 16th Street (the 800 block of West 16th Street no longer exists). His funeral was held at St. Vincent's and he was buried at Calvary Cemetery. The funeral procession was the largest Los Angeles had ever seen (at least as of 2007, when this fact was cited in historian Helene Demeestre's Pioneers and Entrepreneurs).

Jean's son Louis Sentous Jr., who was just as popular as his gregarious father and uncle, was educated in Los Angeles public schools and St. Vincent's College before spending five years in France, attending the Seminary of Polignan and the Government College in St. Gaudens. Upon returning, he re-enrolled in St. Vincent's (which we know today as Loyola Marymount University) and graduated. Louis Jr. married Louise Amestoy, also from a notable French family (I will cover the Amestoys at a later date) in 1895.

Louis Jr. was President of the Franco American Baking Company for some time, developed real estate with his brother Camille, and served as LA's French consul for many years. (Demeestre mistakenly - but understandably - lists Louis Jr. as Louis' son. Birth records and Jean's newspaper obituary make it clear that Louis Jr. was in fact Jean's son.) Louis Sentous Jr. held several offices in the French Benevolent Society and was the Society's President for thirteen years, during which time the Society's membership more than doubled. In 1912, the French government made him a decorated officer of the French Academy for his years of service.

The Sentous family wasn't immune to trouble. In 1907, Louis Jr. and Camille were threatened by a deranged laborer, Quentin Prima, who demanded their assistance in courting their wealthy widowed aunt. Fortunately, Prima was promptly arrested.

Of Jean's other children, we know that Frank became an engineer, Narcisse bounced back home after a divorce, Adele and Louisa got married but Heloise did not (in the grand tradition of French women living very long lives, Adele died at age 90 in 1971), and poor Emely died when she was only 15.

The Sentous Block - incredibly - managed to survive until 1957. When it was finally slated for demolition (to build - what else? - another parking lot), Christine Sterling, the "Mother of Olvera Street", was so heartbroken that she put on mourning attire and hung a huge black wreath on the building's center door (as you can see in the picture below).

(Image courtesy of USC's digital library.)

Mrs. Sterling lamented "I had always hoped that the Sentous Building would be included in the city, county and state's plans to restore the Plaza area. But it looks like another part of our past is going to be carried away in a truck." (Emphasis mine. If Mrs. Sterling could see modern-day LA, she would probably be inconsolable.)

Sentous Junior High School closed in 1932, after only 20 years of teaching children (and adults). As the city expanded westward in the 1930s, more and more families moved out of downtown. The school was not demolished until 1969.

The rest of the Sentous Tract was cleared out and demolished around the same time to build (drumroll please...) a parking facility for the Convention Center. The Staples Center and LA Live came later. (On a personal note, I was harassed at LA Live by a racist scumbag who took issue with my beret and my ethnicity. I felt threatened enough that I didn't stick around to say hi to second opening band The Dollyrots, even though I love them - I bolted for the parking garage and beat it straight back to my apartment across town. That was in 2010 and I still remember it like it was yesterday. I'm never, EVER going to a Screeching Weasel show again.)

As for Sentous Street, it was renamed LA Live Way.

A few of LA's streets still bear the family's name. City of Industry boasts both a Sentous Avenue and a Sentous Street, and West Covina has its own Sentous Avenue. (Given later freeway construction and the proximity of the two Sentous Avenues, they may at one time have been portions of one continuous street.)

*Camille and Heloise were, according to existing records, born just six weeks apart. It isn't clear if this is the result of a clerical error or unlikely medical circumstances, or if either child could have been adopted.

**Multiple sources say Louis was born in 1848, but others, including his grave marker, indicate a birth year of 1840. Since young children don't normally go to a faraway country alone at age five, 1840 seems far more likely. Emigrating alone as a younger teenager would not have been that unusual for the 19th century (case in point: one of my great-grandfathers emigrated alone at age 14, lived in boarding houses until he got married, and - if his birth family was even still alive - never saw any of them again).

Wake Up, Sheeple! Part 1: Germain Pellissier and the Wiltern

I love music more than life itself, and have been to many, MANY shows. Consequently, I know Southern California venues pretty well.

I was completely shocked - in the best possible way - to discover that two of them had French connections.

Germain Pellissier was born September 24, 1849 in Saint-Paul, France, and left at age 16 after his father died. Pellissier arrived in San Francisco in 1867 and soon moved to Los Angeles. Like so many other transplants, he was young - just 18 when he arrived.

Land was still plentiful and inexpensive at the time, allowing young Pellissier to set himself up in the sheep business, importing French and Australian breeds to improve wool production - and, in time, make real estate investments. He became a naturalized citizen in 1879.

Sources disagree over whether Pellissier owned 140, 156, 200, or 400 acres west of the original pueblo, but we do know that his considerable land holdings included the modern-day intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue, purchased in 1882. Wilshire and Western didn't even exist in those days, but Pellissier knew that Los Angeles proper, then several miles away and comprising much of modern-day downtown, would eventually need to expand. In the meantime, he used this land as a grazing pasture for some of his sheep (he also grazed sheep in Kern County and Ventura County).

In 1887, when the Southern California land boom hit, Pellissier was proven right, and parceled out some of his land. Developers called it "Pellissier Square." By the 1920s, Wilshire and Western was considered the busiest intersection in Los Angeles (the city traffic commission deemed it the busiest in the world). Today, the intersection is part of Koreatown.

Pellissier's descendants continued to own the land long after his death, and grandson Henry de Roulet commissioned the Pellissier Building - one of the city's most beautiful Art Deco buildings - which opened its doors in 1931. The Wiltern Theater, which is part of the Pellissier Building, was a movie theater for many years, and is now one of Southern California's most beloved live music venues.

On a personal note, when I went to my first Wiltern show, I could barely focus on the band (and THAT is saying something!) because the venue is SO beautiful. I have been to Versailles, the Louvre, Buckingham Palace, and St. Peter's Basilica, and to me, the Wiltern has them all beat.

According to Pellissier's death notice, there was an earlier Pellissier building, commissioned by Germain himself, standing at the corner of Seventh and Olive. Originally, it was a house, and Pellissier rented out the ground floor to a saloon. In 1887, he built a hotel on the site. Like so much of LA's history, it is long gone. I have been unable to find a reference to which corner it occupied. The intersection currently boasts jewelry stores, a 7-11, and (shocker) more parking.

Like so many other French transplants, Pellissier did have a few relatives join him in Los Angeles. His nephews Francois - "Frank" to his Yankee friends - and Anton got into the dairy business, with Frank eventually relocating to Whittier, where land was still plentiful. Frank's house on Workman Mill Road stood roughly where Rio Hondo College's athletic fields are today, and the Pellissiers owned much of modern-day Whittier and the Puente Hills before urban expansion put an end to the Pellissier Dairy in 1971. Today, Pellissier Place in City of Industry and Pellissier Road in Whittier still bear their name, as does a Rio Hondo College scholarship awarded in the name of Frank's wife, Marie Valla Pellissier.

Between sheep ranching and real estate, Germain Pellissier became one of California's richest men. He and his wife Marie (née Darfeuille) were known to be active in the French Benevolent Society. They had four children - Marie Louise (born in 1877), Léon (born in 1888), Louise (born and died in 1890), and Adelaide (born in 1892).

Léon Pellissier died in 1901 at age 12. His headstone at Calvary Cemetery, shared with Germain, is entirely in French and states "Il s'est envolé vers le ciel ayant a peine touché la terre." (In English, this means "He flew to heaven barely having touched the ground.")

Pellissier lived at 191 Olive Street, near the northeast corner of Olive and 2nd. In his later years, he lived at 697 Cahuenga Street.

Germain Pellissier died January 15, 1908 at his home on Cahuenga Street at the age of 58. He was survived by his wife and daughters Marie-Louise and Adelaide, and is buried in Calvary Cemetery with Léon. Louise, interred at the original Calvary Cemetery in 1890, was reburied with her father and brother.

The house on Olive Street is long gone. A multi-level parking garage takes up the entire block. I somehow doubt any of the people parking there and walking to the Walt Disney Concert Hall just across Grand Avenue have ANY clue about the shrewd sheep rancher who lived there.

Next time: another LA music venue with ties to a notable French family.

Murders Most Foul: Michel Lachenais

While Frenchtown's residents were mostly decent people, a few bad grapes did get into the wine vat. Michel Lachenais was one of them.

Armand Michel Josef Lachenais, by all accounts a large and intimidating man, was born circa 1827 in France's Basque region, and most likely arrived in Los Angeles in the 1850s. He received a town lot in 1857 and was married to Maria de la Encarnacion Reyes, daughter of a respected Californio family. The couple adopted a daughter, Serafina.

In the fall of 1861, a Frenchman living in Los Angeles died (I can find no reference to the deceased's name anywhere). Other French-born residents organized a wake in a private home (Harris Newmark gives September 30 as the date; a newspaper account says it was October 3...your guess is as good as mine).

The non-sectarian French Benevolent Society had been established in 1860 to see to the medical needs of the French community (construction on the French Hospital would begin in 1869). During the wake, after the mourners had been drinking for several hours, Lachenais accused the Society of neglecting the deceased.

Henri Deleval, a normally peaceful man who worked at the Aliso flour mill, defended the Society. Lachenais cursed out Deleval, prompting Deleval to punch him in the face. This angered Lachenais, who drew his pistol and tried to shoot the unarmed Deleval. The gun misfired. Lachenais pulled the trigger again, causing another misfire. Lachenais stepped into the light, reloaded his gun, and deliberately shot Deleval twice in the stomach.

Henri Deleval died later that night. An angry mob of Frenchmen went to Lachenais' ranch, but he had already fled Los Angeles, leaving his wife and daughter behind.

This incident was extremely embarrassing to the city's French community, who prided themselves on being law-abiding at a time when Los Angeles, with a population around 7000, averaged about twenty homicides per year. One French citizen offered a $100 reward (about $2,900 today) "for the apprehension, and delivery in the County Jail" of Lachenais.

After five years of hiding in Mexico, Lachenais surrendered to the Deputy Sheriff. He pleaded self-defense at the trial, and was acquitted. This was likely due in part to his claiming to be afraid of vigilante justice.

The community was furious. The very next day, barber and former councilman Felix Signoret (don't let the job titles fool you; Signoret was a massive man with hands the size of hams) led a vigilante group that overpowered the sheriff and hanged four other murderers who were slated to be defended by the same lawyers who had secured Lachenais' acquittal. Signoret, who had participated in lynchings before, let it be known that the vigilantes would consider hanging lawyers who secured acquittals for murderers.*

Meanwhile, Lachenais just couldn't seem to keep his nose clean. By the fall of 1866, he faced another murder trial. One of his vineyard workers, a Native American man named Pablo Moreno, was bludgeoned to death with the butt of Lachenais' revolver. When the body was exhumed, it did indeed have a badly fractured skull.

There had been no actual witnesses to the assault; Moreno gave a deathbed statement to another Native American before Lachenais could bury him in secret. Lachenais' other employees all stated that he was guilty. However, they could not testify against him in court; at the time, the law prohibited Native Americans from testifying against white men. Maria Reyes de Lachenais testified that Moreno had gotten drunk, fallen, and hit his head on a rock. (Which doesn't explain why Moreno, a former Mission Indian and therefore a Catholic in the eyes of the Church, was secretly buried without last rites in an unmarked, unconsecrated grave.)

The jury didn't buy it. This time, Lachenais was convicted, albeit on the reduced charge of manslaughter (sadly, Native American laborers were of little or no concern to the authorities at the time). He was sentenced to three years at San Quentin.

Lachenais appealed his conviction, and his case was heard by the California Supreme Court (remember, this was the 1860s - less than 400,000 people lived in California at the time). Justice C.J. Sanderson ruled that, since the case was largely circumstantial and since the indictment had been based on testimony from Native Americans (which was inadmissible in court), a new trial was necessary. However, the new trial never took place, and Lachenais was free.

Lachenais went back to farming (near what is now Exposition Park), but kept getting himself into trouble. In July 1870, he was back in court, charged with malicious mischief for illegally diverting water from a zanja. This time, he was found guilty and ordered to either pay a $43 fine or spend 21.5 days in jail. His appeal was denied (it isn't clear whether he paid the fine or went to jail).

A newspaper account states that, just a few months later, Lachenais argued with a man known only as D'Arque and shot him in the face, blinding him. Lachenais was arrested, but there is no evidence he was ever tried for the shooting.

In October of 1869 or 1870 (sources disagree on the year), Maria Reyes de Lachenais died suddenly at the age of 48. It was widely rumored that Michel killed her, although he was never arrested or charged in her death. (Sadly, it's not unusual for abuse victims to cover for their abusers out of fear. I suspect Maria's testimony in the Moreno murder case was concocted to avoid her husband's notorious wrath.)

Finally, Lachenais shot and killed his next-door neighbor, Jacob Bell. It was no secret that he had threatened Bell over water taken from the zanja running between their farms and that the men had disputed the ownership of a piece of land. Lachenais could not resist going to the saloon, drunkenly boasting about murdering Bell, and stating where he had left Bell's body (history does not record whether he was criminally insane, incredibly stupid, or both). This time, he was swiftly arrested for murder.

The people of Los Angeles were fed up with Lachenais' violent behavior. He was due to be arraigned on December 17, 1870. The jailers summoned a priest from La Placita and allowed seventeen-year-old Serafina to say goodbye to her father. But the vigilante committee was determined to act. After a meeting which calmly reviewed Lachenais' life, Felix Signoret once again led the vigilantes, this time numbering about 50, to the jail and broke down the doors.

Lachenais was dragged to the city's hanging grounds - a corral gate at the corner of Temple and New High Streets (which no longer exists). He was made to stand on a large wooden box, with the rope around his neck. Incredibly, this time he did not resist. He did, however, ask to make provisions for Serafina's education** and shouted "I am hung by a set of Germans and Jews because I am a Frenchman!" (I have yet to find any proof of German or Jewish people in the mob - which was mostly Frenchmen.) History records La Placita's priest praying at the site. (Father Lestrade had retired by this point, so the priest was most likely Lestrade's Italian-born successor, Blas Raho.)

One of the youngest members of the lynch mob, incidentally, was 15-year-old Joseph Mesmer, son of French entrepreneur Louis Mesmer. Before he turned 30, Joseph would open one of LA's first bookstores.

Lachenais stated "Well, it's all through, and I'm going into the spirit land to fight the Germans." (The Franco-Prussian war was raging at the time.) He turned to the priest and said "Goodbye, Padre" before proclaiming self-defense in the murder of Jacob Bell. But the mob was having none of it; the hanging took place quickly. Lachenais was allegedly still talking when someone kicked the box out from underneath him.

There is a surviving photograph of the lynching (don't say I didn't warn you). William Godfrey, a photographer with a studio on Main Street, took the picture (and made extra money selling prints of it).

County Judge Ygnacio Sepulveda, wanting to rid Los Angeles County of lynching once and for all, asked the Grand Jury to seek out and charge the mob's leaders. The Grand Jury replied that if the court system had not previously failed to convict Lachenais, the lynching would not have happened.

New High Street no longer exists; per an old map in CSULB's collection, it disappeared underneath Little Tokyo sometime in the past 90 years. However, the former corral site is known to be the current home of the U.S. District Courthouse.

The Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum will be giving a talk on the lynching in October. I hope I will be able to attend.

*Friendly warning: do not mess with French people. I mean it. We have done battle with ravenous wolves (I'm not kidding), we helped the Colonies defeat the British in the Revolutionary War (you're welcome), we overthrew and executed our own ruling class (which includes very distant cousins of mine), we overthrew and executed some of the leaders of the Revolution, we successfully took over much of Europe before (eventually) getting rid of that Italian upstart Napoleon, we make awesome spies/saboteurs, and we fight like hell every time we go to war (barring extenuating circumstances like a severe shortage of soldiers - and we usually win). France's last execution via guillotine took place in 1977 - the year of Star Wars' theatrical release. It's true that we speak a fancy-sounding language, know how to make anything prettier, and are probably shorter than you, but we can still kick your dérriere. So please don't give us a reason to do it.

**Sources disagree as to the exact nature and order of Lachenais' last words. In compiling this account, I relied on recurrence of words, the age of the account given (accounts written soon after an incident are the most accurate), and logic.

The French and the Old Plaza Church

Los Angeles proper has never had its own mission (200+ years ago, the San Gabriel and San Fernando missions were about a day's journey from the pueblo, which almost makes modern LA traffic seem less atrocious). Most people don't know that.

In many cities, the oldest building is likely to be a house of worship. There is some debate over what LA's oldest building is, but La Placita, or the Old Plaza Church, is certainly one of the oldest.

Before the church's dedication in December 1822, the pueblo's residents had to rely on visiting priests from the San Gabriel and San Fernando missions to have their spiritual needs met (non-Catholics began to arrive in the 1840s).

La Placita's first resident priest, believe it or not, was a Frenchman. Jean-Augustin Alexis Bachelot was born and educated in France, becoming a priest in 1820 at the age of 24. In 1827, he led the first Catholic mission to Hawaii (besides Catholicism, Bachelot introduced bougainvillea* and mesquite plants to the islands). Bachelot and his fellow priests were well-received by locals (the fact that Bachelot learned the Hawaiian language well enough to translate a prayer book and write a Hawaiian-language catechism probably helped), but they faced persecution by the Protestant regent, Queen Ka'ahumanu, who deported them from Hawaii in December 1831.

Bachelot and fellow priest Patrick Short landed near San Pedro in January 1832, traveling to Mission San Gabriel. Not only did Bachelot become La Placita's first resident priest, he served as the mission's assistant minister, temporarily led the mission when its head priest was reassigned in 1834 (turning down the substantial salary he was offered), and taught in one of LA's first schools during a teacher shortage. Besides French and Hawaiian, Bachelot spoke Spanish well (the Autry Museum of the American West has, in its collection, a photostat of a letter Fr. Bachelot wrote in 1836 - in Spanish). He was, by all accounts, well-liked by Angelenos.

Bachelot ministered in Los Angeles until 1837, when he had the opportunity to return to Hawaii. Sadly, things did not go well in Hawaii (see above), his health suffered, and he passed away later that year while at sea. Bachelot was buried off the coast of Pohnpei, Micronesia. Because of the way their priests had been treated in Hawaii, the French government intervened, and King Kamehameha III finally granted religious freedom to Catholics in Hawaii.

In Los Angeles, Bachelot was succeeded by another French priest - Reverend Anaclet Lestrade. Like Bachelot before him, he doubled as a teacher - in 1852, he taught twenty students due to lack of a proper school system (public, private, or parochial - LAUSD didn't exist until 1853). Lestrade is credited with helping to establish the first boys' boarding school in Southern California. For a time, he also held claim to the Rancho Rosa Castilla in El Sereno.

As for the building itself...the original church was destroyed due to severe flooding in 1859-1860 (the LA River burst its banks a few times - which is quite a thing to contemplate if, like me, you have only ever seen it as a tiny trickle in a vast concrete ditch). La Placita was rebuilt under the leadership of LA's popular French-Canadian mayor, Damien Marchesseault (more on him later...stock up on tissues, it's a sad story).

Henri Penelon, LA's first commercial artist and photographer, painted a mural of the Madonna and Child with two angels over the door in 1861, assisted by a new arrival, 21-year-old Bernard Etcheverry (both hailed from France, and don't worry, you'll read more about them later). Sadly, the mural - probably the first outdoor mural in Los Angeles - is long gone. In yet another example of Los Angeles erasing its own history, the mural was plastered over in 1950 (there is now a mosaic on that part of the facade, installed in 1981). The church's marble tablets bore Penelon's lettering at least as late as 1932, and the Stations of the Cross are consistent with his other work.

Although a bit beyond the topic, but worth noting, are La Placita's bells. They were cast by George Holbrook, apprentice to Paul Revere - whose father was a French Huguenot.

Let's not forget the surrounding neighborhood. In Fr. Bachelot's day, French transplant Pierre Domegue and his wife (a Chumash woman named Maria Dolores Chihuya) baked French-style sourdough bread in a low adobe that stood next to the church's courtyard. Domegue also partnered with another French baker, Andre Mano, in a bakery just around the corner (Angelenos weren't afraid of carbs yet).

La Placita is still an active parish church. Do take the time to visit, but please be respectful of those who are there for spiritual reasons.**

*Edited to add (7/1/17): A friend who reads this blog lived on Kauai for 25 years. She told me that Fr. Bachelot brought bougainvillea plants to Hawaii because they're thorny, and the Catholic Church was trying to get Native Hawaiians to wear shoes (and, for that matter, other Western garments). She describes Bachelot as "a bad, bad man" and tells me he's widely disliked in Hawaii. In the interest of presenting history in a fair and truthful manner (Native Hawaiians' stories matter too), I felt I should add the dark side of Bachelot's story. (And honestly, it sounds exactly like something the Church would have done back then.)

**Edited to add (11/9/17): I was finally able to visit La Placita when there wasn't a wedding, baptism, or other ceremony taking place. I will not, however, be adding any pictures of the interior...because I didn't take any. In spite of it being a Wednesday afternoon, there were still about 15 parishioners praying inside the church, and I refuse to disrupt someone else's religious practice. The church's interior, while on the humble side, is still beautiful and well worth seeing. Just keep any noise to an absolute minimum - this is a VERY small church with relatively high ceilings for its modest size and even the slightest noise will carry through the space. (And my sincere apologies to anyone who may have been distracted by my boot heels clicking on the tile floor. I tiptoed as much as I could.)

Jean-Louis Vignes: Father of French Migration to California

Jean-Louis Vignes (pronounced "vines") was born in Béguey, France (in Bordeaux's wine country) in 1780. In 1827, at the age of 47, he traveled to Marseilles and boarded the Jeannette, leaving his wife and five children behind.

French king Charles X (the monarchy was briefly restored), an ultra-royalist who believed government positions should be held by nobles, did not take kindly to people like Vignes, who had managed the census in Cadillac and was often a witness to marriages and contracts. To make matters worse, Vignes was having financial problems. A letter written by Father Alexis Bachelot, Vignes' priest in Los Angeles (more on him in the future) seems to support this reason for departure: "Vignes was driven to leave his country after troubles caused by his loyalty, misunderstood considerateness, and too much facility to be of help." (In layman's terms, no good deed goes unpunished.)

The Jeannette was bound for the Society Islands via the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), but made a stop at the port of San Pedro (Joseph Mascarel, a young cadet on the same ship at the same time, will make a major appearance in a later entry). Vignes did some trading while in port, but continued on to Hawaii.

In Hawaii, Vignes managed a rum distillery (he had been a cooper in France), grew sugar cane, and raised livestock. When the distillery closed, he left for California, arriving in Los Angeles via Monterey in 1831. He was 52 years old.

Realizing grapevines could thrive in Southern California's mild climate, Vignes used the money he had earned in Hawaii to buy 104 acres on the west bank of the Los Angeles River.

Vignes' new property included an ancient and very famous local landmark: a giant sycamore tree more than sixty feet high and 200 feet in diameter. The tree can be seen in the background image for this blog (which just so happens to be the earliest known photograph of Los Angeles).

Vignes quickly established one of California's first commercial vineyards (since Louis Bauchet also established his vineyard in 1831, no one knows who was first), calling it El Aliso ("sycamore" in Spanish). He built his wine cellar in the shade of the massive tree, aged his wine in oak casks he'd made himself, and was dubbed "Don Luis del Aliso" by his Spanish-speaking neighbors. An article in The Upland News (October 9, 1968) calls him "Southern California's first truly expert winemaster".

Vignes was entertaining fellow Angelenos before long, throwing parties and hosting meals at his home on the vineyard's grounds. He also became godfather to Francisco "Pancho" Ramirez, the son of a neighbor. Vignes taught the boy to speak French (formal schooling did not yet exist in the area). At the tender age of sixteen, Pancho was hired as editor for the Spanish-language pages of the town's first newspaper, the Los Angeles Star.

Vignes didn't just plant 35 acres of grapes along the river - he planted the city's first orange grove (and also grew lemons, pomegranates, peaches, apples, pears, apricots, figs, and walnuts). Further, he held two Spanish land grants - one in San Bernardino and one on Santa Catalina Island. In 1839, his family sent a nephew, twenty-year-old Pierre Sainsevain, to California to check on Uncle Jean-Louis. With 40,000 vines in production and a reputation for making the finest wine in Southern California, it's safe to say he was doing well enough.

In fact, Vignes wrote to his family in France and urged them to join him in California. Three of his five children (and their families), one brother, four nephews, and several family friends settled in LA. Pierre worked on his uncle's vineyard, later joined by his brother Jean-Louis Sainsevain (the Sainsevain brothers merit their own entry; more on them down the road). By the 1850s, Vignes' estate and the surrounding neighborhood - filled with French settlers - were known as "French Town".

Since he now had some extra help, Vignes decided to distribute his wine outside of Los Angeles. Within a year of his arrival, Pierre traveled to Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco, successfully making the first wholesale wine transaction in the state. (Sorry, NorCal. A 21-year-old French kid living in Los Angeles did it first.) Vignes also owned a sawmill near San Bernardino, and soon put Pierre, who had worked as a carpenter, in charge.

In 1842, Vignes entrusted a French sea captain with a barrel of wine, asking that it be delivered to Louis Philippe of France ("King of the French" under the July Monarchy). Unfortunately, Vignes' hopes of showing what a Bordeaux native could do with California grapes were dashed when the barrel was destroyed in a fire on the way to France. (I should note that Vignes also imported French vines to improve his wine's quality: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Sauvignon Blanc.)

In addition to being California's first commercial vineyard, El Aliso was California's largest vineyard by 1849, with 150,000 bottles produced each year.

Vignes was liked and trusted by his Californio neighbors, and he is credited with helping to foster cooperation between Californios and Yankees when the Mexican-American War ended. In fact, when Don José Maria Abila's widow and daughters fled their home on Olvera Street (they didn't trust Americans), they sought refuge at Vignes' home. The diary of one Lt. Emory indicates that Vignes even supplied the Yankee troops with some of his own wine.

In 1855, at the age of 75, Vignes sold El Aliso to Pierre and Jean-Louis Sainsevain for $40,000 (about $1.06 million in 2016 dollars) - the largest amount of money ever paid for real estate in California at the time. (Try buying 104 acres of Los Angeles real estate for a million dollars now!) Ironically, Vignes' children later sued their own cousins, accusing them of underpaying for the vineyard. (Only in LA...)

In 1856, Vignes made a donation to the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul to fund St. Vincent's Hospital - the first hospital in the city - which opened in 1858. Vignes also donated funds to establish LA's first public school.

Vignes passed away in 1862. He was 82 years old.

There is an undated gravestone reading "Jean Louis Vignes" at Evergreen Cemetery. However, Evergreen opened in 1877. His body could have been moved (the city's first cemetery is long gone), or the stone could have belonged to a relative (cemetery records give a burial date from 1892, but this could be a typo).

El Aliso changed hands again after Vignes' death. For a time, it was the Philadelphia Lager brewery, owned by German immigrants. The site is gone, long ago subdivided, and for many years was believed to be where Union Station now stands (it wasn’t).

The giant sycamore itself died in 1891, unable to survive in a growing city. It was felled for firewood in 1895. According to landscape architect John Crandell, the tree would have stood on what is now a raised island separating the 101 freeway from an on-ramp. (Beret-tip to Gizmodo.)

Vignes' vineyard, orchards, and groves are long gone. Most Californians have no idea he was our state's first commercial vintner. But he does live on...via Aliso Street and Vignes Street, both near Union Station.

Vignes Street intersects with Bauchet Street in the shadow of the Men's Central Jail and the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. Although Vignes Street was originally much shorter (it was extended in 1897 and again in 1936), LA's first two Frenchmen may very well have been next-door neighbors.

Memorial Day Special Edition: The Doughboy

This is, obviously, a pretty new blog covering a complex subject: the history of Southern California's forgotten French community.

I originally intended to write about people/places/things more or less in order, and had planned to make Jean Louis Vignes the focus of today's entry.

Vignes is far and away one of Frenchtown's most important figures. But he can wait a little longer.

There are three reasons for this:

1. Today is Memorial Day.

2. Pershing Square is getting a major renovation in the near future (from a Paris-based firm, no less).

3. Pershing Square is home to a very important, and widely ignored, war memorial.

As my dear readers will discover in future entries, LA's French community has a history of strong support for both France and the United States in times of war (by the way, can we please retire that stereotype already?). This was especially apparent during World War I.

The 1918 Los Angeles City Directory (i.e. phone book) lists French organizations of support: the French Ambulance Service is listed at the same address as the Alliance Francaise (still active today in a different location), and the French Society for Relief of Wounded Soldiers was just three blocks away. Since phone books tend to be compiled in advance, these organizations were likely founded in or before 1917, when the US entered World War I.

France's busiest supporter in Los Angeles at the time was very likely Lucien Napoleon Brunswig (who will get his own entry later). Born in Montmedy, France, Brunswig moved to Los Angeles in 1903 and founded a very successful pharmaceutical company.  He then went on to become the busiest pharmacist in the city's 234 years of history.

Besides running LA's largest wholesale medicinal supplier, Brunswig served as president of the Alliance Francaise, founded the Cercle Catholique Francaise (which aided new immigrants from France), and was active in the California State Society. During the war, his efforts included the American Committee for Devastated France and the Maisons-Claires (which supported 64 war orphans in Trinity-sur-Mer, France).

Brunswig took his efforts a step further by returning to war-torn France in 1917, spending eight months in the country and writing about the experience, in spite of being 63 years old. (Another French Angeleno, Georges Le Mesnager, juggled four jobs - vineyard owner, court translator, notary, and editor of the Francophone newspaper Le Progrés - and stepped away to fight for France in World War I. He was 64 at the time - too old to be an officer - so he re-enlisted as a private. Le Mesnager later acted as a French army liaison to Gen. Pershing himself.)

In 1923, the Soldier Monument Committee of the Association of the Army of the United States was founded, with the goal of raising funds to erect a memorial to Los Angeles residents who had died in World War I. Lucien Brunswig served as vice chair of the Committee.

The statue, known as "The Doughboy", was commissioned from sculptor Humberto Pedretti and dedicated July 4, 1924, in Pershing Square (renamed in 1918; originally Los Angeles Park).

In 1927, the French Veterans of the World War added to the statue, giving it a bronze relief of a French helmet and an olive branch. Photos of the Doughboy (and the relief) can be seen here.

For his considerable efforts, Brunswig was awarded the Legion d'Honneur - France's highest order for both civil and military merits. Sadly, Brunswig did not live to see the Allied victory in World War II; he passed away in 1943.

I am not now, nor will I ever be, in the military. But I am a firm believer in showing appreciation for those who put themselves in harm's way to keep the rest of us safe.

Pershing Square has been widely disliked for quite some time now - not enough shade, not inviting, etc. I have seen Agence Ter's concept artwork for redeveloping the park, and I think it's going to be stunning.

But I am worried about the fate of the Doughboy.

In 1924, the Doughboy was installed at the park's northwest corner, meant to be its gateway work of art. Currently, it stands in the Palm Court.

Few modern-day Angelenos have any idea the statue is even there. I suspect the number who have taken the time to appreciate it is even lower. My dad, who attended USC and worked downtown for well over a decade, didn't know the Doughboy existed until I told him about it. My grandfather, a French-American war veteran (specifically, a tank commander in France under Patton) and a vocal believer in supporting other veterans, probably only saw it on a onetime visit to Pershing Square (which, to a family living in then-suburban Santa Monica, was a pretty scary neighborhood at the time).

Throw in the fact that horrible people like to vandalize war memorials, throw in the fact that irreplaceable works of art are too often destroyed on purpose, and add the fact that too many Angelenos know nothing about the city's frequently-erased history and don't care enough to learn about it.

I am very worried that the Doughboy won't survive the redevelopment of Pershing Square. And if any work of art should be in a park renamed for Gen. John J. Pershing, it's the Doughboy - a 92-year-old monument to the Angelenos who lost their lives in a terrible war. (Agence Ter's plans include a "sculptural promenade", but I have yet to see anything specific about the Doughboy.)

I will be unable to pay the Doughboy a visit today, as I must go to work and won't have time to go downtown. But if you can make it, leave a red poppy at the statue's base for me.

Incidentally, Remi Nadeau - one of the most important Angelenos you've never heard of (he will get a VERY long entry later) - lived across the street from Pershing Square. The Biltmore Hotel was built on the site of his former home. And to make things even more interesting...the land was part of the Bellevue Terrace tract, developed by French-Canadian mayor/entrpreneur Prudent Beaudry in the 1860s.

P.S. The former Alliance Francaise/French Ambulance Service building was replaced by the United Artists Theater, built in 1927. The site is currently Ace Hotel's Los Angeles location.

LA's First Frenchman: Louis Bauchet

Quick history lesson:

After French emperor Napoleon had his dérriere handed to him at Waterloo in 1815, a lot of French soldiers found themselves out of work.

Meanwhile, Mexico was in the midst of a revolution.

Contact between Mexico and France wasn't terribly new; in 1808, France invaded Mexico. That same year, Spanish kings Carlos IV and Ferdinand VII both abdicated (due to the Napoleonic Wars); Napoleon gave his brother Joseph the Spanish crown.

This did not go over well with everyone in Spanish America.

Mexico City's city council declared sovereignty in the absence of the true king. Things got messy. Long story short, Mexico sought independence from Spain.

Slight problem: Mexico needed more soldiers to successfully take on Spain.

When Napoleon was defeated and exiled, a solution presented itself: Mexico hired unemployed French soldiers.

One former Napoleonic Guard who fought in the revolution was Louis Auguste Bauchet (sometimes spelled "Bouchette"), born July 17, 1785 in Marne, France. Mexico - rich in land but poor in cash from the war - paid its French mercenaries in land grants.

In 1827, Bauchet made his way north to a little town of just under 700 - El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de la Reina de los Angeles. Bauchet established a vineyard in 1831 (making him one of two contenders for California's first true vintner - the other is Jean Louis Vignes), and also made barrels.

Bauchet lived another 20 years, passing on October 24, 1847, in Los Angeles at the age of 62. Ancestry.com records disagree on when and where he was married (it could have been Spain, Mexico, or Los Angeles; the year could have been 1831, 1832, or 1836), but his living relatives seem to agree that his wife's name was Maria Basilia Alanis (or Alaniz). The likeliest scenario seems to be Los Angeles in 1831 or 1832 - he had a vineyard to run; why leave town for a wedding? The 1850 census indicates Maria was born in California, suggesting she was a local. As for the year, Louis and Maria's son Luis Guadalupe Bauchet was born December 13, 1832. Two siblings followed - sister Maria de Jesus Bauchet (1835-1864), and brother Luis Rafael "Ralph" Santos Bauchet (1836-1920), who became a farmer.

The 1890 city directory lists Louis G. Bauchet, painter, living at 22 Date Street, and the 1891 census gives the address of 730 Date Street. (Both locations are proving hard to pin down, since Date Street seems to have vanished. I found an old sketch of Lovers' Lane - Date Street's original name - but can't find a modern street matching its approximate location and shape.) I can find no record of his death; after 1891, no further records exist (nor have I been able to find any Bauchet gravesites...yet).

The Bauchet family's name and long-forgotten vineyard live on via Bauchet Street, which is in fact three odd stretches of road (one of them is not connected to the other two) in a grim part of downtown that most Angelenos rarely think of and never visit.

Specifically, Bauchet Street is home to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, the LA Central Men's Jail, the Central Arraignment Court, the LA County Public Defender's office, LA County Pretrial Services, the LA County Sheriff's Department, and some bail bonds offices.

Very little is known about Bauchet, but we do know he was a career soldier and a businessman. I wonder what he'd think of his former vineyard housing jail facilities.

France and the Founding of Los Angeles

The French have loved California ever since they found out it existed.

Theodore de Croix, Captain General of northwestern Mexico under King Carlos III (and a native of Lille, France), recommended founding a pueblo on the banks of the Porciúncula River (now called the Los Angeles River) in 1781. That's right: Los Angeles exists because a guy from Lille told the king of Spain it would be a good place to build a town. (I can't find any evidence that de Croix ever visited Los Angeles himself, but if I do, I'll update this.)

The first French person to visit California (he was, in all likelihood, the first visitor who was not Spanish, Mexican, or Native American) was known only as La Pérouse and visited via the frigate La Boussole in 1786. He recalled the visit in his book Voyage Autour du Monde, published in 1798 in Paris, and referred to California as "defenseless" (not anymore!).

Other French visitors followed.  Most notably, a young apprentice on a ship from Marseilles became enchanted with Southern California when the ship was in the port of San Pedro. His name was Joseph Mascarel. Jean Louis Vignes, a passenger on the same ship, did a little trading in port...but, like Mascarel, fell in love with California.

Remember the names of Mascarel and Vignes...you'll be reading more about them later.

Next entry: LA's first French resident.

Welcome to Frenchtown (1827 - 1989)*

Look at a map of Los Angeles that includes the names of its many neighborhoods. Take the time to scrutinize it thoroughly.

Something is missing. In fact, it has been missing from the urban landscape of my hometown for about seventy years.

Modern Los Angeles is a very big, very diverse city - so much so that it is impossible for this native to imagine LA without its historically ethnic neighborhoods.

Chinatown. Little Tokyo. Little Ethiopia. Little Armenia. Thai Town. Little Bangladesh. Koreatown. Historic Filipinotown. Little Persia (or, if you prefer, Tehrangeles). Not to mention the many African American, Mexican, and Central American enclaves throughout the city and the San Gabriel Valley's huge pan-Asian community.

Take another look at that map. Los Angeles' first ethnic enclave - at one time accounting for an astonishing one in five Angelenos - is missing.

Few Angelenos are even the slightest bit aware that this community ever existed, let alone aware of its many impressive accomplishments.

We grew crops. We raised livestock. We made wine (way back when Napa and Sonoma Counties were mere farmland) - some of which was good enough, even way back then, to send to Europe.

We opened stores and sold hardware, jewelry, picture frames, art, mirrors, clothing, shoes, books, cutlery, perfume, groceries, animal feed, lumber, sewing machines, coffee, toiletries, and bricks. We manufactured everything from soap to coffins.

We developed tracts of land (some of which now account for the few surviving older neighborhoods in the city) and established streetcars. We served as priests, and donated generously to churches.

We established the city's oldest surviving public hospital, practiced medicine, taught medicine at what is now USC, dispensed drugs at pharmacies we founded, and tended to the city's deceased.

We founded newspapers in our own language, which was for many years the second most commonly spoken tongue in Los Angeles (after Spanish).

We served our communities on the city council, as Mayors, as Water Overseers (by far the most important position in a parched and growing city), as soldiers in times of war, and on volunteer police and fire patrols. We spent year after year after year trying to bring safe, reliable water to homes and businesses (and eventually succeeded).

We harvested salt, made art, sold tar from the La Brea Tar Pits (for roofing purposes), and baked bread, pies, pastries, and matzo for civilians and the local army camp. We provided ice to saloons from Los Angeles to San Francisco. We ran some of those saloons, and brewed some of the city's beer.

We owned and operated hotels and restaurants, ranging from humble inns to the very finest establishments in Southern California, donated funds to help transform Olvera Street into a tourist attraction, and donated funds for UCLA's original campus. We helped turn a foul swamp into Los Angeles Park, now Pershing Square (not the ugly modern version everyone hates; blame the 1950s for that), founded the city's meatpacking industry, worked as blacksmiths, invested in real estate, and built Santa Monica's first restaurant, grocery store, and wharf.

We founded one of the city's first private schools in addition to the Music Teachers Association and the city's longest-running glee club. We founded a freight company that grew large enough to serve much of the Southwest. We co-founded the Farmers & Merchants Bank. We rented property to our Chinese neighbors, who could not legally own land or buildings at the time.

And in spite of our long list of contributions to the city, virtually no one bothers to remember that we've been a part of Los Angeles (and the rest of Southern California) since 1827.

We are French Angelenos. These are our stories.

*1827 - year LA got its first French resident (Louis Bauchet). 1989 - year the French Benevolent Association sold the French Hospital (now the Pacific Alliance Medical Center).