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.

Emergency Edition: Doughboy in Danger! Tell Everyone!

Just last month, I wrote about Humberto Pedretti's Doughboy statue - the World War I memorial anchoring Pershing Square. (Or what passes for Pershing Square these days, anyway. It looks nothing like it did when the statue was installed.)

I found the time to visit Pershing Square this week. Believe me, I completely understand why everyone hates it so much. Raising the park above street level (even if it was to add some desperately needed parking) made it uninviting at best. The steps to get into the park are not pleasant to climb (I wish to add that I climbed those steps in a pencil dress and it was the most physically challenging thing I've done all week). There is far too much concrete, which makes the park both hideous and extremely hot. The underground parking garage has made it impossible for the park's few trees to grow enough to provide a decent amount of shade, which just makes the heat worse.

And, off in a corner surrounded by unattractive succulents, Pershing Square's historic monuments are all but forgotten.

Besides the Doughboy, there is a Spanish-American War monument, a plaque honoring Gen. Pershing, and - inexplicably - Beethoven. All four monuments have been in the park for decades. All of them may as well be invisible, since it is surprisingly difficult to see them from inside much of Pershing Square itself, let alone from the street (I checked).

But there is something we can all do.

I stumbled upon a Change.org petition to save Pershing Square's historic monuments - those listed above as well as several more that are currently absent. As of this writing, the petition has 262 supporters (myself included). That means at least 238 more are needed.

And I know we can make that happen.

Send this petition to Angelenos and other Southern Californians. Send it to people in the armed forces and their families. Send it to preservationists. Send it to historians. Send it to musicians, your friend with season passes to the LA Philharmonic, and your piano teacher from childhood (Beethoven matters too). Send it to people in France whose families can still remember World War II (I know some French women live to be well over 100, but I'm going to be realistic about the possibility of many living people remembering World War I). Send it to anyone who would at least consider signing it. If you know anyone who can make this petition go viral, please ask for their help. 

The statues all appeared to be clean, well-maintained, and in good condition (especially for being 84 to 116 years old!). It would be a terrible waste not to incorporate them into the redesigned square.

I had a few other things to do downtown. The traffic, incredibly, wasn't bad, and with AFI playing on the car stereo, I didn't really mind. Due to a combination of road work and one-way streets, at one point I had to make a detour near Aliso Street to turn around, and immediately noticed I was at the intersection of Vignes and Ducommun Streets.

"Such a promising past...Mayday!"

Although those streets bear the names of two very prominent figures, no one would ever guess the neighborhood was thriving in Vignes' and Ducommun's day. Because I have been researching Frenchtown for so long, I knew what I'd find there, but even Google Street View couldn't quite prepare me for the shock of having to actually see it in person.

"Down with the heroes before me...What did I tell you? I promised I'd give you a story."

That part of Frenchtown has been replaced by a creepy-looking strip club, aging industrial buildings, and a vacant lot taken over by weeds so tall that I, at 5'5", could probably hide in them unnoticed. The traffic island that stands on the former site of El Aliso is crumbling, weedy, and strewn with trash. The only people I saw were two LAPD officers doing paperwork in a parked patrol car.

"I saw this alone. The city was aflame. Did I turn right in or turn away?"

THIS replaced the once-thriving French quarter? I wanted to throw up.

"Summertime is long. In God's name who would stay? God left yesterday but I remain."

Before I pulled my little car onto the 101, I swore that, for as long as I'm alive, I will do everything I can to keep Frenchtown from being forgotten.

"Disappear, disappear, disappear..."

Not on my watch. 

Where Was Frenchtown? Mapping a Lost Community

In the fall of 2014, I bought an old, well-worn copy of The French in Southern California History and the Southland Today, published in 1932. The book lists no author, but credits Fernand Loyer and Charles Beaudreau (assisted by Catherine Beaudreau) as editors, publishers, and holders of the book's copyright. (A French-language version was also published, but 1. I have never been able to find a copy, and 2. my French is rather limited. So, I only have the English edition.)

I have a tendency to think spatially. So, as I read, I wanted to keep track of who did what and where. I decided to create a Google map documenting the French community - where they lived, where they worked, where important events took place, where they socialized, and even where they are buried.

I have been adding to this map for eighteen months and am nowhere near ready to reveal it to the public (I have SO much more research to do). The focus is on Los Angeles proper, but California's Frenchmen didn't always stay put in LA (farming, ranching, and making wine - three of the more common professions in the community - all require land, which tends to mean moving out of the city). So, while the bulk of the pins are in Los Angeles proper, the map extends from Santa Barbara in the northwest to Ramona in the southeast.

As of this writing, I have 345 different sites mapped. No, that's not a typo.

I began with the one thing I knew I could find: the French Hospital, which still exists under a different name. (Don't worry, the hospital will get its own entry. It's had quite a history.)

Mapping sites in Old Los Angeles is quite a bit harder than it seems. Houses have been re-numbered, streets have been renamed, and some streets have ceased to exist. (Note to self: go to Central Library and see if the maps librarian can help me find Date Street, New High Street, and Requena/Market Street. And, for that matter, help me figure out why Bauchet Street is so strange.) To make matters worse, the aforementioned book rarely gives a specific address, often describing something as close to an intersection or a landmark. I realize that the oldest parts of the city have seen considerable redevelopment, and that in the earliest days, house numbering may not even have been required. But it can still be a bit of a headache.

In some cases, I have had to look at the existing street grid, compare it to old photos, determine the most likely path of a former street or most likely location of something that is not there anymore (in the case of the Long Wharf and Venice Pier, this meant studying the shoreline as well), and make an educated guess. I dislike having to guess at all, but in a city whose 235 years of history have been eradicated by natural disaster, fire, politics, development and redevelopment, etc. over and over again, this is the best I can do.

Thankfully, not too far into the book, its authors give a rough boundary for Frenchtown: Main Street, 1st Street, Aliso Street, and the Los Angeles river. Not surprisingly, this abuts Jean-Louis Vignes' El Aliso vineyard, and is still pretty close to Bauchet Street. (At the time of the book's publication, much of Aliso and Commercial Streets were, incredibly, still French-owned.)

About fifty markers fall within this area (so far; there will probably be more). More are scattered throughout downtown Los Angeles, with the highest concentration around the original plaza.

I hasten to add that the book is not my only source for locations. Old city directories, newspaper ads and articles, a few other books, old maps, and census records (thank you, Ancestry.com) have proven very helpful.

When I was mapping the "original Frenchtown" area, I had to put an extra point at the intersection of 1st and Central, due to the street's unusual obtuse angle. Then I realized I had seen - and for that matter walked - the same angle the previous weekend. I had gone to see the Hello Kitty exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum, which now stands at that corner.

Most of the sites associated with the French community in Los Angeles proper, at least in the 19th century, fall within the modern-day neighborhoods of Little Tokyo, Chinatown, the Historic Core, the Plaza, and the Civic Center.

In previous entries, I have noted what now stands where something or someone French used to be, and I will do so whenever possible. I believe it is important to do this in order to provide context for modern-day readers - especially if they are not very familiar with long-ago Los Angeles (and in 2016, hardly anyone is).

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.)