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.)
It is natural that I should look back with pleasure and satisfaction
to my association with a gentleman so typically Californian,
warm-hearted, genial and social in the extreme; and one who dispensed
so large and generous a hospitality. He came with his father--who
eventually died here and was buried at the old San Gabriel
Mission--and at one time possessed the Jurupa _rancho_, where he
lived. Don Juan was a lawyer by profession, and had written the best
part of a history of early California, the manuscript of which went to
the State University. The passing glimpse of Bandini, in sunlight and
in shadow, recorded by Dana in his classic _Two Years before the
Mast_, adds to the fame already enjoyed by this native Californian.
Himself of a good-sized family, Don Juan married twice. His first
wife, courted in 1823, was Dolores, daughter of Captain José
Estudillo, a _comandante_ at Monterey; and of that union were born
Doña Arcadia, first the wife of Abel Stearns and later of Colonel R.
S. Baker; Doña Ysidora, who married Lieutenant Cave J. Coutts, a
cousin of General Grant; Doña Josefa, later the wife of Pedro C.
Carrillo (father of J. J. Carrillo, formerly Marshal here and now
Justice of the Peace at Santa Monica), and the sons, José María
Bandini and Juanito Bandini. Don Juan's second wife was Refúgio, a
daughter of Santiago Arguello and a granddaughter of the governor who
made the first grants of land to _rancheros_ of Los Angeles. She it
was who nursed the wounded Kearny and who became a friend of
Lieutenant William T. Sherman, once a guest at her home; and she was
also the mother of Doña Dolores, later the wife of Charles R. Johnson,
and of Doña Margarita whom Dr. James B. Winston married after his
rollicking bachelor days. By Bandini's second marriage there were
three sons: Juan de la Cruz Bandini, Alfredo Bandini and Arturo
Bandini.
The financial depression of 1859 affected the temperament of citizens
so much that little or no attention was paid to holidays, with the one
exception, perhaps, of the Bella Union's poorly-patronized Christmas
dinner; and during 1860 many small concerns closed their doors
altogether.
I have spoken of the fact that brick was not much used when I first
came to Los Angeles, and have shown how it soon after became more
popular as a building material. This was emphasized during 1859, when
thirty-one brick buildings, such as they were, were put up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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