Open Letter To All The Snobs Who Say SoCal Has No History

(Dear readers: permit me, if you will, to veer slightly off topic tonight. I've been wanting to get this off my chest for quite some time now.)

Dear Snobs:

Look, I GET it. Your East Coast hometowns look and feel like they've been around forever. You're proud of your roots. Unless you have a connection to someone or something absolutely despicable (i.e. slaveowning ancestors), you have every right to be proud.

You do not, however, have the right to loudly, nastily, and inaccurately claim that "Southern California doesn't have any history."

Our history may not look like yours, but that doesn't make it any less real. 

Some of you seem to think the history of North America didn't begin until the first English settlers landed. Wrong - there were already people living here. Southern California, which still has a large Native American population, knows this and doesn't pretend the world began when the Spanish invaded.

North Carolina famously has the lost colony of Roanoke. It's an intriguing story. But we famously have ghost towns (and they're still standing!).

The South has retained many of its historic plantations. Similarly, we have the missions established by Spanish Catholic priests. (I've seen historic homes in Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia. Funny how I don't recall EVER seeing slave quarters on properties that definitely had them. Meanwhile, Californians don't kid ourselves about the fact that Native Americans in the mission system had miserable lives.)

You say Coney Island. I say Knott's Berry Farm (turning 100 next year!), Balboa Fun Zone, and the Santa Monica Pier. (Hey, remember the beautiful antique carousel from "The Sting"? The Looff Hippodrome has been on the Santa Monica Pier for over a century.)

New Yorkers are proud of Central Park. Bostonians are proud of Boston Common. Both are very nice urban parks. But Griffith Park - which has a very unusual history of its own - is nice too. And it has a beautiful Art Deco observatory.

Virginia has Jamestown and Williamsburg. I've been to both and they definitely have educational value. But so does Los Angeles' historic plaza. Ditto for Old Town State Historic Park in San Diego.

Virginia also gives us the heavily sanitized story of Pocahontas. The San Gabriel Valley gives us the true story of Toypurina, a powerful Kizh shaman who helped orchestrate a plot to overthrow the padres at Mission San Gabriel and take back the land occupied by the Spanish. (The plot failed, but the Spanish didn't dare to execute Toypurina when she was convicted.)

Are you from a town with a history of piracy? Cool. I'm not. BUT Southern California did have lots of rum runners and bootleggers during Prohibition (some of them with close ties to Los Angeles City Hall...you can't make this stuff up), along with all the other misbehaving characters you'll find in a classic noir film. There are tunnels under downtown Los Angeles to this day, although many have been blocked off over the years.

San Diego was founded in 1769. That makes San Diego older than Louisville (1778), Nashville (1779), and Montpelier (1781).

Los Angeles was founded September 4, 1781. Which makes Los Angeles older than Asheville (1785), Columbia (1786), Cincinnati (1788), Buffalo (1789), and Washington, D.C. (1790).  Not to mention older than Chicago (1803), Montgomery (1819), Indianapolis (1821), Kansas City (1838), and Atlanta (1843). Just saying...

New Yorkers have every right to appreciate Grand Central Terminal. It is a beautiful building. But so is Los Angeles Union Station, built in a style that perfectly combines both Mission Revival and Art Deco. (And Union Station has outdoor green space - an extreme rarity for a train station in a major city.)

Oh, your hometown has beautiful Victorian houses? Great! So does mine. It's true that many of SoCal's Victorians have vanished over the years, but there are still surviving specimens in Los Angeles (Carroll Avenue and Heritage Square in particular), Santa Monica, San Pedro, Santa Ana, San Diego, Orange, Anaheim (yes, really), and even sleepy old Riverside. (There are more, but it's late and I'm tired.)

You say your hometown has unique architecture - things you won't see anywhere else? That's very cool. But guess where else that holds true? Yup - here! Charles and Henry Greene elevated the humble Craftsman house to an art form, especially in Pasadena (two words: Gamble House). Frank Lloyd Wright designed houses completely unlike his earlier work, doing things with concrete blocks that no one else had ever done before. We have the Bradbury Building. And Los Angeles in particular has many of the earliest, and best, examples of fantasy architecture in the world. My personal favorites are the Snow White cottages in Los Feliz and the Coca-Cola building (full disclosure: my dad worked there).

Chicago has the Field Museum. New York has the American Museum of Natural History. Both are world-famous, and for good reason. But have you been to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which boasts four of the ten complete (or near-complete) Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons known to exist? (My favorite exhibit? "Becoming Los Angeles", beginning with the area's Native American roots and continuing until the present day. I have seriously considered becoming a museum member just so I can visit that exhibit whenever I want.)

East Coast cities (and Chicago) have excellent art museums. Someday I'd like to see them all. But Southern California has LACMA (don't underestimate LACMA, seriously), the Getty, the Broad, and the Huntington Library and Gardens (which has quite a lot of priceless art - Gainsborough, Fragonard, etc. in addition to the rare books and antiques). If you're a snob on a layover in LA, forget the tourist stuff and just spend the day at the Huntington. You'll thank me later.

The East Coast and the South have beautiful cemeteries (especially New Orleans). But Hollywood Forever, Angelus Rosedale, and the many iterations of Forest Lawn are beautiful too. I'm not thrilled about Evergreen Cemetery's shameful history of neglect, but there are neglected cemeteries in every part of the United States.

Does your hometown have a famous ghost story? We've got those too. San Diego's Whaley House is one of only two that the State of California acknowledges as "haunted". There are way too many other ghost stories for me to list, but suffice it to say that there are plenty of books on the subject. (This one is the best. You'll thank me later.)

Did something very, very bad happen in your hometown? Salem, Massachusetts has learned to live with its legacy as the site of North America's most infamous witch trials (coincidentally, my 10th great grandmother, Rebecca Nurse, was hanged in Salem). Los Angeles acknowledges, but is definitely not proud of, the 1871 Chinese Massacre. That's right - the deadliest race riot in 19th century America happened in Los Angeles. In fact, it was the first time most people around the world ever even heard of Los Angeles. (Los Angeles is also known for the Manson family murders and the creepy Hotel Cecil, which inspired "American Horror Story: Hotel". We're not proud of this stuff, but we don't pretend it never happened. You know what they say about learning from the past.)

When most people think of LGBT+ rights, the 1969 Stonewall riots immediately come to mind. While Stonewall was a major turning point, it wasn't the first such incident in the United States. Los Angeles experienced its own Stonewall on December 31, 1966/January 1, 1967, when the Black Cat bar was raided by police. The Stonewall Inn moved, burned down, and is now located in half of the original site; the Black Cat building is still intact (although these days it's a gastropub). Oh, and the Black Cat building just so happens to be a charming Art Deco specimen.

Any Art Deco in your hometown? We have tons of it - Los Angeles and Long Beach especially. Los Angeles exploded during Art Deco's heyday; Long Beach collapsed and burned in a 1933 earthquake and rebuilt itself as an Art Deco city. (And yes, the Queen Mary, in all her faded Art Deco glory, is dry-docked in Long Beach...and yes, I belong to the Art Deco Society.) We also have lots of surviving Googie architecture. (You call it "tacky", I call it "fun".)

Does your hometown have a beautiful old movie palace, preferably still screening films? We have lots of those. Some have been converted to retail spaces or houses of worship, some are closed, and some only screen films occasionally. But we love our surviving movie palaces. Los Angeles has its own Historic Theatre Foundation (I'm a member), and one downtown stretch of Broadway has the highest concentration of historic movie theaters in the world. (One of my bucket list items is to see a movie in every surviving SoCal movie palace that still does screenings. I'm working on it.)

Does your hometown have lots of maritime history? So does San Diego. (Full disclosure again: Dad did some work for the Maritime Museum.) Military history? San Diego, Coronado, Long Beach, Orange County, and Wilmington too. Long Beach even has the oldest tattoo parlor in the United States, due at least in part to the Navy's long tenure in the city.

Do you belong to a historic preservation society? The Los Angeles Conservancy is the largest such group in the United States (you guessed it...I'm a member). If the greater Los Angeles area didn't have any history worth preserving, there wouldn't BE a Conservancy in the first place.

Finally, if Southern California doesn't have any history...how, exactly, are you reading this on a niche local history blog?

"Our" history may not look like "your" history. But that doesn't mean we have no history at all. Shut the %&@# up!

Goodnight from Frenchtown,

C.C.

Exactly How Big was LA's French Community?

One estimate puts LA's historic French community at a mere 2 percent. Another estimate puts the figure at a whopping 20 percent - one out of every five Angelenos.

That's a pretty big discrepancy.

So which figure is closer to the truth?

I will, at some point, dig through census records and count all the French, Quebecois, French-speaking Swiss, and French-speaking Belgians (and their descendants). But for now, I'll share a rough approximation.

I recently read John W. Robinson's Los Angeles in Civil War Days. Robinson states "Foreigners make up a small but significant part of the population. Largest is the French community numbering more than 400, many engaged in wine-making." On the preceding page, Robinson states that the 1860 census counted 4,399 Angelenos.

"More than 400" out of 4,399 people. Robinson doesn't specify whether his "more than 400" figure included people of mixed French descent (i.e. Marcelina Leonis, who was half Chumash) or the American-born descendants of French Angeleno families.

Until I have time to go over the 1860 census myself (thank goodness for Ancestry.com), I feel comfortable saying French Angelenos accounted for about 10 percent of LA's 1860 population.

One out of every ten people.

That's an awful lot of people to just disappear from LA's narrative.

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.

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.

The Artist: Henri Penelon

Certain modern-day Angelenos say they're into their art (usually meaning they're auditioning for an art film so weird even I won't watch it) and grumble that no one appreciates them. They have nothing on Henri Penelon, the city's first artist.

Henri Joseph Penelon* was born in Lyon, France, around 1827. The exact date of his arrival in Los Angeles is unclear - he was not listed in the 1850 census, but Harris Newmark claimed Penelon was in the Pueblo by 1853, and tax records indicate he owned a property on Calle Principal (now Main Street) by 1856. (Surviving photographs indicate his studio was on the second floor of the Downey Block, also home to the Lafayette Hotel, on Main between First and Second.) Penelon had a business partner by the name of Adrien Davoust, who co-owned the Main Street property.

Penelon was one of the founding members of the French Benevolent Society, founded in 1860. Before the French Hospital was built in 1869, Society members helped care for the French community's ill and injured. Nowadays we'd say he did volunteer work in the community.

In 1861, heavy rains and flooding spelled disaster for the pueblo of Los Angeles. La Placita, the Plaza Church, was so badly damaged by a leaky roof that its front wall collapsed into the street. Penelon was contracted to paint the rebuilt church inside and out. And paint he did.

Henri Penelon most famously painted a mural of the Madonna and Child over the church's door, flanked by angels (probably the city's first public work of art). He lettered the church's marble tablets. He may have painted the church's ornately framed Stations of the Cross (which are consistent with his other work). He added an inscription to one of the walls: Los Fieles de Esta Parroquia á la Reina de los Angeles, 1861. (I have no idea what that means. Penelon could speak Spanish quite well, but I'm another story.)

In Harris Newmark's words, "he added some ornamental touches."(Ouch.) Supposedly, some of the Pueblo's more artistically inclined residents hated the mural and found the new church distasteful. (Ouch, again.)

To make matters worse, there was a persistent suggestion that Penelon, who made most of his living from photography, painted over photographs instead of starting with a blank canvas. While Penelon had little (if any) formal training, no one has ever produced any evidence of this ridiculous rumor being true. (And we think today's Twitter-feuding celebrities are childish jackasses...)

Surviving photographs indicate that the mural was painted over sometime between 1932 and 1937, and plastered over in 1950. A tile mosaic was installed in the same spot in 1981. The lettering on the marble tablets was visible at least as late as 1932; it isn't clear if it still dates to 1861 (the lettering would now be 155 years old; your guess is as good as mine). The Stations of the Cross are, to my knowledge, still on long-term loan to a church in Mexico. (Ouch...again and again.)

Painting murals is hard work, and Penelon was assisted at La Placita by a new arrival from France - Bernard Etcheverry, then 21 years old. We'll meet him again in a future entry.

Penelon was married to Emilia Herriot, twenty-five years younger than he was (sources disagree on whether Emilia was born in France or San Francisco, but she was certainly of French parentage). Their daughter Hortense was born in 1871, with son Honore following around 1874. 

It has been said that Penelon hand-tinted photographs (a common practice until color film made tinting obsolete). Supposedly, at least one other photographer contracted with Penelon to tint his pictures. The Museum of Natural History's archive of Penelon's known photographs shows no evidence of tinting. It is certainly possible, however, that he did tinting for other photographers without necessarily tinting his own pictures (or, alternately, that his surviving pictures just didn't happen to have been tinted). Without physical evidence, we may never be completely sure.

Still, Penelon was a working artist with a family to support. It is hard to imagine that he would turn down paying work, especially if it meant not having to take so many out-of-town photography jobs. (In a situation all too familiar to today's aspiring stars, Henri Penelon took pictures to pay the bills, but his true love was painting, and as photography replaced traditional portraiture, he worked as a photographer so he could also afford to keep working as a painter. The backs of his photographs bore the stamp "H. Penelon, Artistic Gallery, Los Angeles" - which could reference either trade - along with an artist's palette.)

In an interesting twist of fate, Penelon once turned down a young Swedish photographer who applied for a job, deeming him too young and inexperienced. The photographer, Valentin Wolfenstein, set out to prove Penelon wrong - and the two later took turns working for each other.

Henri Penelon was a portrait painter. In fact, the only known painting of his that is not a portrait is an idyllic scene called The Swan and the Rabbit (interestingly, it is signed "H. Penelon 1871"; his portraits weren't signed). His other subjects were all people - nearly all from well-to-do Californio families (Penelon was fluent in Spanish and friendly with Californios, which probably helped him secure patrons).

One portrait in particular may very well be suffering from a case of mistaken identity. Long assumed to be Concepcion Arguello of Monterey, it was later assumed that she must be Concepcion Arguello of San Diego, a relative of Pio Pico. To make things even more confusing, the portrait was later identified as Feliciana Yndart by an acquaintance. A picture of Sra. Yndart in the Natural History Museum's collection is said to strongly resemble the painting, and another surviving Penelon portrait is of Jose Miguel Yndart, Feliciana's husband.

Penelon's best-known portrait, however, is likely the equestrian portrait of José Andres Sepulveda (who owned most of modern-day Orange County), astride his winning racehorse Black Swan. That portrait now belongs to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana (if making a trip, call ahead to confirm that it is on display). As of this writing, it is the only one of Penelon's surviving works that I have seen in person.

Penelon is also credited with introducing the carte de visite to Los Angeles. Cartes de visite were tiny prints or photographs used as calling cards. In Penelon's case, at least two surviving examples were hand-painted.

Henri Penelon traveled to Prescott, Arizona on a photography assignment in 1874. He died suddenly during the trip (none of my references list a cause of death) and is buried in Prescott.

The 1880 census lists Emilia and Hortense living with relatives, with Emilia keeping their house. Curiously, I could find no reference to Honore. The 1888 city directory lists Honore as a student living in Boyle Heights (which was, at the time, LA's first suburb).

In the 1950s, Penelon's granddaughter walked into the Museum of Natural History (which was also the county Museum of Art; LACMA wasn't a separate entity yet) looking to donate two of his paintings. Less than a century after his death, none of the Museum staff knew who Henri Penelon was (OUCH!). Today, thirteen of Penelon's surviving paintings belong to the appointment-only Seaver Center for Western History Research at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. I sincerely hope I will be able to see them myself one day.

If you have deep pockets (or at least deeper pockets than I do), please consider sponsoring Penelon's equestrian portrait of Don Vicente Lugo. I, unfortunately, don't have that kind of money.

Want to see one of Penelon's earliest photographs? Just look at the background image for this blog. Not only is it the earliest known photograph of Los Angeles, it is credited to Penelon.

Even though his surviving works are now prized by those in the know, LA's first artist remains forgotten.

*Penelon's first name is often incorrectly written as "Honore", "Horacio", and/or "Henry"; historians searching old records for the man should make a note of this. (As someone whose first AND last names have been brutally butchered too many times to count, I am acutely aware of spelling errors when researching my own people.)

One Clever Bastard: John C. Frémont in Early L.A.

At the dawn of the nineteenth century in Virginia, seventeen-year-old Anne Beverley Whiting, whose stepfather had squandered her family's fortune, was married off to Major John Pryor, a wealthy man in his early sixties.

In 1810, the Major hired a French Canadian immigrant, Charles Fremon, to tutor his young wife. By July of 1811, he discovered they were having an affair, confronted the couple, and filed for divorce.

In 2016, this isn't too surprising (for jaded Angelenos, anyway). But in 1811, it was extremely shameful. In spite of the scandal, the Virginia House of Delegates refused to grant the Major's divorce petition, meaning that Anne and Charles could not marry. Undaunted, they moved to Savannah, Georgia and lived together as a married couple. Their first child, John Charles Fremon, was born January 21, 1813.

Charles Fremon's real name was, in fact, Louis-René Frémont. He had escaped from a British prison and changed his name to evade British naval agents. John began using his father's true surname in 1838 at the age of 25.

Much has been written about Frémont's career as a military officer; for brevity's sake, this entry will only concern his actions in Southern California. I will, therefore, skip to the Mexican-American War, a few weeks after the famous Battle of San Pasqual. (Contrary to misconception, Frémont was not in that particular battle.)

Late in 1846, Frémont was ordered to lead 300 men from the California Battalion to capture Santa Barbara. Frémont's unit crossed the Santa Ynez mountains at San Marcos Pass on the night of December 24, 1846 - with great difficulty. It was raining heavily, and the mountains became so muddy and slippery that many horses, mules, and cannon were lost. Still, the men regrouped in the morning, bloodlessly taking the Presidio and the rest of the city.

In January 1847, Frémont and his men were entering the northern San Fernando Valley when an (unknown) Frenchman from Los Angeles rode up, carrying a message ordering Frémont to bring in his men as reinforcements for General Kearny, who had taken Los Angeles. Frémont ignored the message, electing to negotiate with the Californios himself.

A few months previously, Frémont had saved insurgent José de Jesús Pico, cousin of Pio Pico, from execution with the caveat that he accompany Frémont to Los Angeles. Once the troops had set up camp on Mission San Fernando's grounds, Frémont dispatched Pico to the defeated Californios' camp in the Verdugo Hills. (I told you he was clever!)

By this point in the war, just 120 Californio rebels remained, and they were running out of weapons and ammunition. The U.S. forces numbered 1,000, and were quite well-armed. The writing was on the wall. Commandante Flores (who was also a cousin of José de Jesús Pico) was none too happy with Pico for fighting alongside Americans, but agreed that the Californios could negotiate with Frémont as long as he treated them with honor (something Frémont's superior, Commodore Stockton, had refused to do).

A delegation of the remaining Californios met Frémont the following morning. They were prepared to end the war, provided they were treated respectfully and their leaders were included. If that did not happen, they were prepared to adopt guerrilla tactics and even destroy their own properties.

Having been privately promised the future governorship of California by Stockton, Frémont knew making friends with the Californios he would eventually govern would make his job much easier. He declared a détente and invited the Californios to bring their wounded to Mission San Fernando, where they could be attended to by his own surgeon. Negotiations commenced that afternoon, with three Battalion officers, prominent Californio José Antonio Carrillo, and former California Assembly secretary Agustín Olvera hammering out the terms of the agreement.

Andres Pico, brother of exiled Mexican governor Pio Pico, was the leader of the California Lancers and acting governor of Alta California. On January 13, he and Frémont sat down at the kitchen table in an aging adobe house in Campo de Cahuenga and signed the Treaty of Cahuenga. (That kitchen table can now be seen at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.)

The treaty, written in both English and Spanish, called for Californios to give up their weapons, refrain from taking up arms for the duration of the war, and obey the laws of the United States. The trade-off was that Californios were to be allowed the same rights and privileges as U.S. citizens, were to be allowed to return to their homes and ranchos, were not required to swear allegiance to the United States until a formal peace treaty was signed, and were permitted to leave the country if they so desired. (Remember, this was a time when people of color were not considered people in the eyes of U.S. law, and Catholics were eyed with great suspicion by the WASPy majority. Giving equal rights to Californios, some of whom were mixed race, was a major compromise for the time.)

In spite of his intelligence and remarkable abilities, Frémont had poor impulse control and a problem with authority. He finally contacted his superiors after the treaty was signed - his first contact with them since arriving in Southern California. Not only had this smart-assed upstart ignored instructions, he'd signed what they considered an extremely liberal treaty with the Californios - and all without consulting them!

They decided it was best to endorse it anyway.

Other Americans believed the Californios would take up arms against them again. But they didn't. Andres Pico, writing to his brother Pio, deemed the struggle over.

Stockton quickly named Frémont governor of occupied California. Frémont established a headquarters in the old Bell adobe mansion (formerly at the southwest corner of Aliso and Los Angeles Streets) and quickly set about winning the respect of the Californios, going so far as to adopt ranchero-style dress and invite local leaders to meet him at his quarters. This tactic didn't always work (some, like Jose Antonio Carrillo, refused to meet with him), but Frémont understood that when in Los Angeles, one does as Angelenos do. Americans strongly disapproved of Frémont's fraternizing with Californios, but in the end, locals often credited Frémont with saving their lives by peacefully ending the war. Many liked him, or at least respected him. If nothing else, at least he wasn't Commodore Stockton.

The American rumor mill was not kind to Frémont, and perhaps the nastiest rumors concern his (unproven) philandering in Los Angeles. Henry Hamilton, editor of the Los Angeles Star, even claimed to have proof of Frémont's alleged "harem", but never produced any of it. Those vicious allegations would resurface in 1856, when Frémont was nominated for the Presidency by the Republican Party. (Since Frémont respected women enough to demand that the members of the California Battalion swear not to violate their chastity, it seems unlikely that he would have had, as Hamilton put it, a "harem". Hamilton, by the way, was a Democrat and is known to have disliked Frémont's politics.)

Kearny had orders from President Polk and secretary of war William Marcy to serve as military governor. Frémont refused to give up the governorship, and Kearny had him court-martialed. His dishonorable discharge was commuted by President Polk owing to the extent of his services (having a prominent senator for a father-in-law probably helped).

Frémont resigned his commission, purchasing Rancho Las Mariposas in the Sierra Nevada foothills in 1847. When gold was discovered in the area, he hired Mexican laborers to mine for gold on his land for a percentage of the findings. This made him quite wealthy and allowed him to purchase properties in San Francisco.

When California became a state in 1850, Frémont was elected to the United States Senate. His re-election bid was defeated largely because he was opposed to slavery and did not want it to spread to the free Western states. (Frémont's opposition to slavery is especially notable since he and his siblings were raised with the assistance of a household slave known only as Black Hannah. In fact, Frémont's mother financed leaving her husband by selling some slaves she owned.)

Frémont went on to continue his military and political career in other parts of the United States...but that's a bit beyond the scope of this entry. There are several books on John Frémont and his wife Jessie. For those interested in the history of conflict and violence in early Los Angeles, I highly recommend John Mack Faragher's recent book Eternity Street.

Campo de Cahuenga, where the Treaty of Caheunga was signed, is in modern-day Studio City. The original adobe was demolished in 1900; the current building is a replica opened in 1950.

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 Incredible Sainsevain Brothers

(Image courtesy of the California State Archives. View more here.)

There were four Sainsevain brothers in all, but two of them - Pierre and Jean-Louis - had a strong impact upon Los Angeles and other areas of California.

Their mother, Marie Vignes Sainsevain, was the sister of Jean-Louis Vignes. In 1838, thirteen years after her brother was compelled to leave France, she sent twenty-year-old Pierre, a carpenter, to California to see if his uncle was even still alive. Eight months after the ship left France, Pierre landed in Santa Barbara and continued on to Los Angeles.

Jean-Louis Vignes was doing quite well, in fact - so much so that much of the extended Vignes/Sainsevain family relocated to Los Angeles.

Within a year of arriving at the El Aliso vineyard, Pierre was traveling to Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco by ship, seeking new buyers for Uncle Jean-Louis' popular wine and brandy. He succeeded in making the very first wholesale wine transactions in the history of California. The following year, he was running Uncle Jean-Louis' sawmill near San Bernardino.

Bigger things were in store for Pierre: in 1843, Governor Manuel Micheltorena granted him Rancho Cañada del Rincon en el Rio San Lorenzo - nearly 6,000 acres in what is now Santa Cruz County. California was still part of Mexico, and normally land grants were only given to Mexican citizens. Pierre did become a naturalized Mexican citizen in 1844 (he is sometimes referred to as "Pedro Sainsevain"), and Governor Pio Pico confirmed the grant in 1846.

In 1843, Pierre built a sawmill near the rancho with another French carpenter, Charles Roussillon, as a business partner. In 1844, he opened a flour mill. In 1845, he married Paula Suñol, daughter of Antonio Maria Suñol (owner of Rancho Los Coches in modern-day Santa Clara County). In 1846, Pierre and Roussillon built a schooner, the Antonita, on the beach at Santa Cruz (and sailed her to Hawaii to have a copper bottom installed). Pierre and Paula's son Jose Miguel was also born that year.

Every schoolkid in California knows that gold was discovered near Coloma in 1848. Pierre went to the mines with his father-in-law and Roussillon. Although the mining town of Don Pedro Bar was named for Pierre (he was nicknamed "Don Pedro" as a mark of respect by Spanish-speaking friends), the party soon tired of mining, and moved to Stockton to sell supplies to Gold Rush miners.

The town of Don Pedro Bar no longer exists, but the Don Pedro Dam and Don Pedro Reservoir still bear Pierre's name.

In 1849, Pierre and Roussillon went to San Jose, the original state capital of California, and built a large two-story adobe on Market Square. They intended to run a hotel, but instead, the building became California's first State House. Ever the achiever, Pierre also served as a delegate to the California Constitutional Convention that year.

In 1855, Jean-Louis, an engineer, joined his brother and uncle in Los Angeles, and the family expanded production at El Aliso. The brothers had their own storefront selling Sainsevain Brothers wine in San Francisco by 1857, with a wine cellar producing Champagne (well, California's first sparkling wine, anyway). Pierre even hired Monsieur Debanne, a former Champagne maker for Veuve Clicquot, to make Sainsevain Brothers Champagne. The following year, El Aliso was leading the state in wine production, turning out 125,000 gallons of wine and brandy.

Jean-Louis also had a personal accomplishment in 1855. He went to France to visit his two sons, who he had not seen for nearly seven years (remember, international travel was significantly harder, longer, and more expensive then than it is now). During this trip, he met and married the widow of a sea captain (I can only assume Jean-Louis' first wife had died at some point). Jean-Louis left his younger son, Paul, and his stepson, Charles Lepaon, in France to complete their schooling (many of LA's earlier French families sent their sons to school in France, so this was hardly unusual), but returned to Los Angeles with his older son, Michel, his new wife, and his stepdaughter, Honorine.

Meanwhile, on the business front, Champagne/sparkling wine production is always risky. It's often more cost-intensive than still wine, San Francisco does not get as cold in the winter as the Champagne region does (Champagne's cold winters create a dual fermentation process, which means more bubbles), and in those days it was MUCH more common for Champagne bottles to break or explode.

To make matters worse, the Sainsevains used Mission grapes (which weren't quite acidic enough to get the desired result), the Champagne was only aged for one year (five or six years is customary), and during the first year of production, one out of every five bottles exploded. While it's true that Champagne bottles have always had some risk of exploding, this level of loss is extremely high, and Sainsevain Brothers' employees had to wear protective gear in the wine cellars to avoid being badly injured by flying shards of glass. The Champagne experiment, while seemingly successful at first, ended up costing the brothers $50,000 (about $1.4 million today) and had to be shut down by 1862.

It wasn't all bad news while the experiment lasted - the brothers sold 300 cases a month, shipping some of them to New York and Philadelphia. They sent Champagne to President James Buchanan, who praised its taste and thanked them generously for it in a letter. When the French government opened its Los Angeles consulate in 1860, Sainsevain Brothers Champagne was served.

In 1859, Pierre sold his rancho. Uncle Jean-Louis sold his nephews the El Aliso vineyard for $42,000 - about $1.06 million in 2016 dollars - by far the highest price ever paid for a single property in California at the time. In 1861, with California wines being sold on the East Coast for the first time, another Sainsevain Brothers shop opened - this one on Broadway in New York.

Unfortunately, there were more financial problems: Jean-Louis Vignes' adult children sued their own cousins, accusing Pierre and Jean-Louis of underpaying for their father's vineyard. This may sound hard to believe, considering the brothers paid more for it than anyone else had ever paid for land in California at a time when Los Angeles was still a dusty pueblo, but it did indeed happen, and the brothers lost in court. Pierre and Jean-Louis dissolved their winemaking business and sold El Aliso in 1869. The brothers were so financially devastated by the Champagne failure and the lawsuit that the county sheriff auctioned off their possessions and remaining wine stock to cover their debts. (Trademark documents in the California State Archives suggest that the San Francisco wine store and the rights to the name Sainsevain Brothers were likely sold to another team of vintners, Mercado and Marsh.)

Jean-Louis was a Mason, and according to one source, was the first Grand Master of the city's first Masonic lodge, located in the original pueblo. A different source conflicts with this; the facts may well be lost to history. We do know, however, that he was a major player in Los Angeles' eternal struggle: water.

In 1863, Jean-Louis was awarded a contract to improve the city's primitive water system (and I do mean primitive; zanjas, or open ditches, were still in use). However, it proved so difficult and costly that he quit. Two years later, when another contractor gave up after only eight months, Jean-Louis was offered the contract again.

This time, Jean-Louis called for help: Damien Marchessault, former mayor and Water Overseer, partnered with him. In an area called "The Cornfield", now Los Angeles State Historic Park, Jean-Louis built a dam and water wheel to feed one of the city's first backup supplies of water, the Sainsevain Reservoir (long since replaced by Radio Hill Gardens). He and Marchessault also began replacing the city's first pipes - hollowed-out logs - with iron pipes. Unfortunately, in 1868, severe flooding undid all of their hard work. This final failure would be a factor in Marchessault's tragic death. An improved water system would eventually succeed under Prudent Beaudry, Solomon Lazard (both French), and John S. Griffen (more on that later).

It may be difficult for modern-day Californians to imagine a time when the state didn't have one out of every eight U.S. residents crammed into its boundaries, but in the 1860s, California had a seemingly endless supply of wide open spaces presenting new opportunities. One of them was Rancho Cucamonga.

Pierre bought the Rancho Cucamonga vineyard in 1860, and Jean-Louis began managing it in 1867. The brothers introduced "new and better" varieties of grapes, according to Harris Newmark. However, their vines were destroyed by grasshoppers in 1870 and 1871, causing more financial trouble. Despite several ownership changes, Jean-Louis was kept on as the vineyard's manager. A bottle of his own sweet white wine won first place at the 1877 Southern California Horticultural Fair.

The brothers, undaunted, also built houses in San Bernardino (it isn't clear whether any of these houses still exist; they'd be well over a century old by now).

Pierre moved back to Santa Clara County and produced wine (under the Menlo Park label) successfully. His claret won "Best Wine" at the county fair in 1868. By 1870, he was making 20,000 gallons of wine per year, but he closed the operation in 1874. That year, Pierre and Jean-Louis bought land in Hawker Canyon, building a large stone house and reservoir.

Jean-Louis owned a lumberyard at the corner of Alameda and Jackson Streets, although the dates are unclear (much of Jackson Street is now gone, meaning the corner itself no longer exists). The brothers shipped lumber up and down the California coast via schooner. In 1869, Jean-Louis sold a different property to Eugene Meyer (despite the German-sounding name, Meyer was also French), who built the Aliso Tract on it.

The ever-restless Pierre went to Central America (some sources say Peru) in 1874 or 1875, returning to San Jose in 1880. He began producing wine again, and invented a steam-powered stemmer crusher (a device that de-stems and crushes grapes) in 1882. When Paula died in 1883, Pierre returned to France.

Although I can find no record of Jean-Louis marrying for a third time (hell, I can't even find a record of his first marriage), a court record from 1882 suggests he was married to a Florence Matilda Sainsevain (another source suggests she was Charles Roussillon's sister). The Los Angeles Herald described him as an "old pioneer" in his death notice (2/17/1889).

Jean-Louis died in Pasadena in 1889. Pierre died in France in 1904.

The 1883 Los Angeles City Directory lists an "M. Sainsevain" operating a feed store at the corner of Turner and Alameda Streets. However, there were already so many Sainsevains in Los Angeles by 1883 that it isn't clear who exactly this was. Pierre's son Jose Miguel was sometimes called Michael, and Jean-Louis had a son named Michel (to complicate things further, in French, "M." is an abbreviation of "Monsieur"). I had considerable difficulty fact-checking this entry because there were multiple Jean-Louis Sainsevains in the Sainsevain family, nearly all living in Southern California.

Multiple old maps list Sainsevain family property in Fontana (the city gave it the official address of 14804 E. Summit Ave.). The Sainsevain surname, albeit with a savagely butchered spelling, is sprinkled across the Inland Empire. Etiwanda, Fontana, Jurupa Valley, and Rancho Cucamonga all have places named after the brothers. There was a Sainsevain (spelled correctly) station on the Southern Pacific rail line near Rancho Cucamonga, but I have not yet been able to determine its precise location or its fate.

The Sainsevain brothers led incredible lives - and incredibly, no one remembers them. Case in point: Los Angeles used to have a Sainsevain Street*, but now it's a distant memory just like its namesakes.

*An 1868 map shows Sainsevain Street ran between Aliso and Commercial Streets, with Alameda and Vignes as cross streets. Comparing that map to modern maps, it appears that Sainsevain Street was realigned and incorporated into Commercial Street. As the original location runs very close to what are now freeway ramps, the street was most likely moved/destroyed to make room for the 101.

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).