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.)
In 1861, Adolph Junge arrived and established a drug-store in the
Temple Block, his only competitor being Theodore Wollweber; and there
he continued for nearly twenty years, one of his prescription books,
now in the County Museum, evidencing his activity. For a while, F. J.
Gieze, the well-known druggist for so many years on North Main Street,
and an arrival of '74, clerked for Junge. At the beginning of the
sixties, Dr. A. B. Hayward practiced medicine here, his office being
next to Workman Brothers' saddlery, on Main Street. Wollweber's name
recalls a practical joke of the late sixties, when some waggish friend
raised the cry that there was a bear across the river, and induced my
Teutonic neighbor to go in hot pursuit. After bracing himself for the
supreme effort, Wollweber shot the beast dead; only to learn that the
bear, a blind and feeble animal, was a favorite pet, and that it would
take just twenty-five dollars to placate the irate owner!
The absence in general of shade trees was so noticeable that when John
Temple, on January 31st, planted a row facing Temple Building there
was the usual town gossip. Charley Ducommon followed Temple's example.
Previously, there had been several wide-spreading trees in front of
the Bella Union hotel, and it came to pass within the next five years
that many pepper-trees adorned the streets.
In 1861, the Post Office was removed from North Spring Street to a
frame building on Main Street, opposite Commercial. About the same
time when, owing to floods, no mail arrived for three or four weeks
and someone facetiously hung out a sign announcing the office "To
Let!" the Washington postal authorities began issuing stamped
envelopes, of the values of twelve and twenty-four cents, for those
business men of Los Angeles and the Pacific Coast who were likely to
use the recently-developed Pony Express.
Matthew Keller, or Don Mateo, as he was called, who died in 1881, was
a quaint personality of real ability, who had a shop on the northwest
corner of Los Angeles and Commercial streets, and owned the adjoining
store in which P. Beaudry had been in business. His operations were
original and his advertising unique, as will be seen from his
announcement in the _Star_ in February:
M. KELLER, TO HIS CUSTOMERS
You are hereby notified that the time has at last arrived
when you must pay up, without further delay, or I shall be
obliged to invoke the aid of the law and the lawyers.
Your most ob't servant,
M. KELLER.
Which warning was followed, in the next issue, by this:
M. KELLER, TO HIS CUSTOMERS
The Right of Secession Admitted!
You are hereby notified that the time has arrived when you
must pay up, without further delay, or I shall be obliged
to invoke the aid of the law and the lawyers.
After such settlement, slow-payers are requested to secede.
M. KELLER.
(to be augmented next week)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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