Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913: Containing the Reminiscences of Harris NewmarkNewmark, Harris
History
Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913: Containing the Reminiscences of Harris Newmark
Newmark, Harris
California, Southern; Los Angeles (Calif.)
With the decline in the fresh fruit trade, however, the making and
exportation of wine increased, and several who had not ventured into
vineyarding before, now did so, acquiring their own land or an
interest in the establishments of others. By 1857, Jean Louis Vignes
boasted of possessing some white wine twenty years old--possibly of
the same vintage about which Dr. Griffin often talked, in his
reminiscences of the days when he had been an army surgeon; and Louis
Wilhart occasionally sold wine which was little inferior to that of
Jean Louis. Dr. Hoover was one of the first to make wine for the
general market, having, for a while, a pretty and well-situated place
called the Clayton Vineyard; and old Joseph Huber, who had come to
California from Kentucky for his health, began in 1855 to make wine
with considerable success. He owned the Foster Vineyard, where he died
in July, 1866. B. D. Wilson was also soon shipping wine to San
Francisco. L. J. Rose, who first entered the field in January, 1861,
at Sunny Slope, not far from San Gabriel Mission, was another
producer, and had a vineyard famous for brandy and wine. He made a
departure in going to the foothills, and introduced many varieties of
foreign grapes. By the same year, or somewhat previously, Matthew
Keller, Stearns & Bell, Dr. Thomas J. White, Dr. Parrott, Kiln Messer,
Henry Dalton, H. D. Barrows, Juan Bernard and Ricardo Vejar had
wineries, and John Schumacher had a vineyard opposite the site of the
City Gardens in the late seventies. L. H. Titus, in time, had a
vineyard, known as the Dewdrop, near that of Rose. Still another wine
producer was António María Lugo, who set out his vines on San Pedro
Street, near the present Second, and often dwelt in the long adobe
house where both Steve Foster, Lugo's son-in-law, and Mrs. Wallace
Woodworth lived, and where I have been many times pleasantly
entertained.
Dr. Leonce Hoover, who died on October 8th, 1862, was a native of
Switzerland and formerly a surgeon in the army of Napoleon, when his
name--later changed at the time of naturalization--had been Huber. Dr.
Hoover in 1849 came to Los Angeles with his wife, his son, Vincent A.
Hoover, then a young man, and two daughters, the whole family
traveling by ox-team and prairie schooner. They soon discovered rich
_placer_ gold-beds, but were driven away by hostile Indians. A
daughter, Mary A., became the wife of Samuel Briggs, a New Hampshire
Yankee, who was for years Wells Fargo's agent here. For a while the
Hoovers lived on the Wolfskill Ranch, after which they had a vineyard
in the neighborhood of what is now the property of the Cudahy Packing
Company. Vincent Hoover was a man of prominence in his time; he died
in 1883. Mrs. Briggs, whose daughter married the well-known physician,
Dr. Granville MacGowan, sold her home, on Broadway between Third and
Fourth streets, to Homer Laughlin when he erected the Laughlin
Building. Hoover Street is named for this family.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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