The Picos acquired much territory. There were two brothers--Pio, who as Mexican Governor had had wide supervision over land, and Andrés, who had fought throughout the San Pasqual campaigns until the capitulation at Cahuenga, and still later had dashed with spirit across country in pursuit of the murderers of Sheriff Barton. Pio Pico alone, in 1851, was assessed for twenty-two thousand acres as well as twenty-one thousand dollars in personal property. Besides controlling various San Fernando ranches (once under B. H. Lancaro's management), Andrés Pico possessed La Habra, a ranch of over six thousand acres, for which a patent was granted in 1872, and the ranch Los Coyotes, including over forty-eight thousand acres, patented three years later; while Pio Pico at one time owned the Santa Margarita and Las Flores _ranchos_, and had, in addition, some nine thousand acres known as Paso de Bartolo. In his old age the Governor--who, as long as I knew him, had been strangely loose in his business methods, and had borrowed from everybody--found himself under the necessity of obtaining some thirty or forty thousand dollars, even at the expense of giving to B. Cohn, W. J. Brodrick and Charles Prager, a blanket mortgage covering all of his properties. These included the Pico House, the Pico Ranch on the other side of the San Gabriel River--the homestead on which has for some time been preserved by the ladies of Whittier--and property on Main Street, north of Commercial, besides some other holdings. When his note fell due Pico was unable to meet it; and the mortgage was foreclosed. The old man was then left practically penniless, a suit at law concerning the interpretation of the loan-agreement being decided against him. Henry C. Wiley must have arrived very early, as he had been in Los Angeles some years before I came. He married a daughter of Andrés Pico and for a while had charge of his San Fernando Ranch. Wiley served, at one time, as Sheriff of the County. He died in 1898. The _rancho_ Los Nietos or, more properly speaking, perhaps, the Santa Gertrudis, than whose soil (watered, as it is, by the San Gabriel River) none more fertile can be found in the world, included indeed a wide area extending between the Santa Ana and San Gabriel rivers, and embracing the ford known as Pico Crossing. It was then in possession of the Carpenter family, Lemuel Carpenter having bought it from the heirs of Manuel Nieto, to whom it had been granted in 1784. Carpenter came from Missouri to this vicinity as early as 1833, when he was but twenty-two years old. For a while, he had a small soap-factory on the right bank of the San Gabriel River, after which he settled on the ranch; and there he remained until November 6th, 1859, when he committed suicide. Within the borders of this ranch to-day lie such places as Downey and Rivera.