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.)
Julian Chavez, after whom Chavez Street is named, was here in 1853. If
he was not native-born, he came here at a very early day. He owned a
stretch of many acres, about a mile northeast of Los Angeles. He was a
good, honest citizen, and is worthy of recollection.
Ramón Alexander, a Frenchman often confused with David Alexander, came
to Los Angeles before 1850, while it was still a mere Mexican village.
Pioneers remember him especially as the builder of the long-famous
Round House, on Main Street, and as one who also for some time kept a
saloon near Requena Street. Alexander's wife was a Señorita Valdez. He
died in 1870.
Antoine Laborie was another Frenchman here before the beginning of the
fifties. He continued to live in Los Angeles till at least the late
seventies. A fellow-countryman, B. Dubordieu, had a bakery in Sonora
Town.
Philip Rheim, the good-natured German to whom I have referred, had a
little store and saloon, before I came, called _Los dos Amigos_, as
the proprietor of which he was known as Don Felipe. Nor was this title
amiss; for Felipe married a native woman and, German though he had
been, he gradually became, like so many others who had mated in the
same way, more and more Californian in manners and customs.
A month after I arrived here, John Behn, who had a grocery business at
the northeast corner of First and Los Angeles streets, retired. He had
come to Los Angeles from Baden in 1848, and, after forming one or two
partnerships, had sold out to Lorenzo Leck, a German Dane, who reached
here in November, 1849, and whose son, Henry von der Leck, married a
daughter of Tom Mott and is living at San Juan Capistrano. Leck opened
his own store in 1854, and despite the trials to which he was to be
subjected, he was able, in 1868, to pay John Schumacher three thousand
dollars for a lot on Main Street. Leck had a liking for the
spectacular; and in the November previous to my arrival was active, as
I have been told, with Goller and Nordholt, in organizing the first
political procession seen in Los Angeles. The election of Pierce was
the incentive, and there were gorgeous transparencies provided for the
event. It was on this occasion that a popular local character, George
the Baker, burned himself badly while trying to fire off the
diminutive cannon borrowed from the Spanish _padre_ for the event.
In the one-story adobe of Mascarel and Barri, on the corner of
Commercial and Main streets, now the site of the United States
National Bank, an Irishman named Samuel G. Arbuckle, who had come here
in 1850 and was associated for a short time with S. Lazard, conducted
a dry goods store. From 1852 to 1856, Arbuckle was City Treasurer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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