That Time Someone Donated Human-Skin Boots to the Smithsonian

 

Deeply ensconced within the bowels of the Smithsonian Institution lie many a strange and bewildering thing; none less so than a pair of boots made from the skin of a human being.   

The boots were made by H. & A. Mahrenholz (Henry and August), prominent New York leather tanners and shoemakers, who sent three pairs of boots, made from three types of skin, to the Smithsonian for display at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876; alligator, anaconda and human.[i]  

Left: Mahrenholz human skin boots, The Tennessean (Nashville), January 9, 1994, page 2J; Right: Mahrenholz anaconda skin boots, Smithsonian Institution, Catalog Number 260769.

The Mahrenholz brothers tanned and used all sorts of exotic leathers; horses, donkeys, kangaroos, alligators, anacondas, boa constrictors, and catfish.  He also hoped to refine his human skin-tanning technique, to keep white skin white, instead of the “light, brown color that the tanning had created.”  If he could succeed in keeping the natural skin color, he hoped to preserve and stuff a family of three, “a man, woman and a baby,” for display at Bellevue Hospital.  Despite his interest in perfecting the white-skin tanning process, he was an equal opportunity tanner, who also had plans to “tan and stuff a colored brother and a sister.”

Boots from Human Skin.

Converting the Cuticle of an Unknown Man into Leather – How the Tanning is Done – Ghastly Contribution to the Centennial.

[From The New York Mercury.]

Human skin has at last been utilized, and a pair of boots is the result.  H. & A. Mahrenholz, bootmakers, of this city, have long been interested in experimenting upon the skins of sundry animals and fishes, with a view of ascertaining their adaptability for leather.  In addition to tanning the hides of horses, donkeys, kangaroos, alligators, anacondas, boa constrictors, and catfishes, Mr. H. Mahrenholz, who is more especially interested in the work, has produced good leather from the skin of a human being. 

Of this he has made a pair of handsome boots, which were sent to the Smithsonian Institute, at Washington, for transmission to the Centennial.  Of a pair of boots from an alligator skin also sent, Prof. Spencer V. Baird, of that institution, writes that he has they will be accorded a place in the exhibition, but that he has not decided on displaying the human boots.  He fears the indignation that may be excited assumed profanation of the human body. 

The skin was taken from the breast; stomach and back of a man in a dissecting room, who had died suddenly from an accident, and whom decay had not begun to act upon.  It was placed in a solution of hemlock bark and white oak bark, usually used in tanning, and in three weeks from the first steeping, appeared as the upper leathers and legs of the boots in question.  The soles were made from cowskin.  The boots were not blacked, but forwarded in the light, brown color that the tanning had created.  The leather is somewhat coarser than calf-skin, and more porus.  The pores of cattle are far more minute than those of horses and human beings, and bovine animals, like dogs, perspire but slightly. Their heat departs largely from the open mouth.

A Man Good for Four Boots.

After allowing for the necessary waste, the skin of an average-sized man will make two pair of boots, including the soles, but the latter would not be sufficiently hard for economical use.  Here is a new idea for individuals selling their bodies for dissection before death.  The Mercury chronicles to-day, in its amusement items, the fact of a variety performer having bequeathed his corpse to a doctor for dissection in consideration of $100.  If he had made a reservation of the skin and ordered its manufacture into boots, he might have realized another $100.  Numbers of the curious would give $50 a pair for them.

Human Beings to be Stuffed.

Mr. Mahrenholz is continuing his experiments upon human skin, but with a higher view than that of preparing it for boots.  He desires that, after tanning, it shall preserve its original whiteness, and is now endeavoring, by a process different from that ordinarily availed of, to attain his end.  In case of success, he purposes to tan the cuticles of a man, a woman and a baby, and stuff them for exhibition in the Bellevue Hospital Medical Museum.  He proposes also to tan and stuff a colored brother and a sister.

Human Skin in Decoction.

The fragments of human skin now under the tanning process were recently exhibited to a Mercury reporter.  The aspect of the skin and its surroundings were not fascinating.  It was in a dilapidated pail in a cellar under the sidewalk, and lying around were coal and wood, bits of rope and iron, old boxes, scraps of leather, moldy alligator skins, and dirt incalculable.  The decoction in the pail was a yellowish solution of dog manure and water.  It is not generally known that dog manure is highly valued for dressing the finer qualities of leather, especially when of a very limy order.  It is purchased from dog-fanciers and dog hospital-keepers at $1.50 a bushel, when as above, and at seventy-five cents a bushel when lime does not enter largely into its composition. The human skin was half the breast and armpit of a man suddenly killed, and who had not been identified.  It had lost none of its color, and the identity was not to be mistaken.  The grease did not leave the skin quickly.  It was at the bottom of a pail, with a stone upon it, and above was a piece of anaconda skin.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat, St. Louis, Missouri, April 20, 1876, page 2.

 

Despite the initial reluctance to display the boots, they were apparently put on display, as described in a souvenir guidebook, and in a separate account of a visit to the Exposition.

Among the curiosities at this point is a pair of boots made by a Broadway shoemaker, and which claims to be manufactured from the skins of men.  Here are alligator boots also, and boots from the boa, exhibiting the peculiar marks of that reptile. Then there are dressed rattlesnake skins, sturgeon skins, and ladies’ satchel, slippers, and cigar case made from alligator hide; a coil and rope manufactured from cow-hide, a doll’s head made of raw hide, and looking quite equal to those made of china or papier-mache.

Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial Exposition 1876, Leslie, page 99.

A Trip to the Centennial Exhibition.

The shoe and leather building is especially attractive, of course, to those interested in leather and rubber goods.  This building is tastefully decorated with national and State flags, and among other curiosities includes boots made from human skin.

Fitchburg Sentinal (Fitchburg, Massachusetts), October 24, 1876, page 4.

The Shoe & Leather Building, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial Exposition 1876.

 

The macabre boots made international news; not all of it necessarily reliable.  Facts were altered on occasion for dramatic or humorous effect.

Boots of human skins are now on exhibition in New York.  The maker claims that he can build two pairs out of the skin of one man, and that the leather is a little coarser than calf skin, but quite as durable.  This gives a capital chance to a man for speculation.  He can sell his hide before his death, with the agreement that it shall not be used until he has been gathered into that mysterious bourne.

National Republican (Washington DC), May 5, 1876, page 2.

A pair of boots made from human skin are now being exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington.j  The boots are the production of an ingenious New York tanner, who has converted the skin of a dead laborourer into fairly solid leather.  During the first French Revolution it is said that a tannery was established at Meudon, near Paris, for utilizing the skins of victims of the guillotine.

The Graphic (London, England), May 6, 1876, page 7.

Be careful how you jump out of your skin these times.  Some Yankee might jerk it up and have it made into boots before you know it.  The experiment has already been tried, and the report is an ordinary sized human skin will make two pair of boots – good as calf.

Belmont Chronicle (Saint Clairsville, Ohio), May 11, 1876, page 3.

A pair of boots made from human skin is on exhibition at the Centennial.  It is said to make good leather, and when tanned becomes six times its original thickness.  The medical colleges sell them to the tanners at five dollars apiece. Tough!

The Jeffersonian (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania), August 17, 1876, page 3.

A Mr. Mahrenholz, an American, has devised a plan for utilizing the remains of his deceased wife’s sister by converting her skin into leather.  He has lately tanned a hide of a deceased wife’s sister also deceased, and her skin was an immense boon to the disconsolate widower and children.  A pair of boots manufactured from the skin of this ill-fated lady have been deposited in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, where they excited much interest and attention.

The Hull Packet; and East Riding Times (Hull, East Yorkshire, England), June 30, 1876, page 3. 

Anyone reading this last article about his unconventional plans to dispose of his deceased sister and sister-in-law might reasonably assume that Henry Mahrenholz were some sort of pagan witch doctor or something, but nothing could not be further from the truth; Mahrenholz was then an observant and devout Catholic. 

A dispute with the church a decade later, however, would turn him away from the Catholic Church, and famously prompt him to make what was then an unconventional choice for disposing of deceased family members – cremation. 

The body of Carrie A. Mahrenholz, daughter of Henry J. Mahrenholz, a shoe manufacturer of 1,153 Broadway, New York, will be cremated at Fresh Pond this afternoon.  The funeral was held at 2 o’clock, at the residence of Mr. Mahrenholz, under the auspices of the pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church . . . .

The circumstances which brought about the cremation of the young lady are likely to create considerable comment in Catholic Church circles.  Miss Mahrenholz died last Sunday evening, and the father applied to one of the priests of St. Ann’s Church for a burial permit that his daughter’s body might be interred in Calvary Cemetery.  This was refused for the reason that the young lady was unattended by a priest at the time of her death.  Mr. Mahrenholz is greatly incensed at the action of the church people.  He said today:

“I have owned a plot in Calvary Cemetery since 1769 and have eight members of my family buried there.  I intend to have all their bodies removed and have them cremated.”

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 28, 1889, page 6.

This incident, he said, “illustrated a narrow, bigoted spirit” on the part of the religious sect that he had always trained with, and henceforth he wanted a more humanitarian creed and meant to cultivate one.  Never more should he have anything to do with Roman Catholicism or its institutions.  “My daughter,” said he, “was as spotless as the Virgin Mary, and I should be an inhuman father if I did not feel indignant and incensed at this outrage.  Is there anything Christian in debarring a pure child from the orthodoc form of burial?  Are we not living in an enlightened age?”

New York Times, May 29, 1889, page 1.

For its part, the Catholic Church had a different story.  Vicar General Preston said that she “never was a Catholic, in the true sense of the word.” Although she had attended the Academy of Mount St. Vincent with the Sisters of Charity, [ii] she was “instructed for confession, but never received holy communion,” and that during a return visit after leaving school, she told the Sisters that she had joined a Protestant church.  

“Miss Mahrenholz,” continued Monsignor Preston, “did not die suddenly.  She was sick for some time and died of consumption.  She was very sick for three weeks, and had not made her Easter duty or attended mass in any church for years.  The Sisters of Charity whom she used to know, hearing of her illness and sympathizing with her as a former pupil, visited her and used their influence to bring her to the practice of the Catholic religion before her death.  This she positively refused, and she also declared that she would not see a priest.

The Brooklyn Citizen, June 1, 1889, page 6 (from the New York Sun).

That may have been the official reason, but his past forays into the “dark art” of using human skin couldn’t have helped his cause.

Mahrenholz’s rift with the church was still open when his grandson, Henry Mahrenholz, Jr., died in 1891.

Another Cremation.

The Mahrenholz Family’s Breach with the Church Not Yet Healed.

The return of a burial certificate to the Board of Health to-day shows that the body of Henry J. Mahrenholz, jr., was incinerated yesterday in the Fresh Pond (L. I.) Crematory. . . .

The deceased was a grandson of the Henry J. Mahrenholz who in 1880 created a sensation in religious circles by denouncing the Pope and renouncing the Catholic faith. . . .

Since then all the members of the Mahrenholz family have renounced the Catholic faith.

The New York Evening World, August 6, 1891, page 3.

Another tragedy and yet another cremation followed two years later, with the death of his son August.  No cause of death is given, but August had been severely injured at the age of 14 in 1885 with what were then believed to be mortal wounds, suffered when playing with an “infernal machine” he found lying in the street.

Young Mr. Mahrenholz’s Body to be Burned, as Was His Sister’s.

The ashes [of his daughter] he preserves, with a rose from Bismarck’s garden and a sprig of laurel from Washington’s tomb.  The body of his son will also be cremated to-day at the Fresh Pond furnace.

The young man died Sunday at his villa in Williamsbridge.

The New York World, December 20, 1893, page 10.

Henry Mahrenholz likely picked up the rose from Bismarck’s garden on his trip to Germany, along with his brother August, as part of a delegation of the Independent New York Shooting Corps that met with Bismarck in Berlin in 1890.[iii]

A man of strong opinions, Mahrenholz dodged jury duty in 1895, in the trial of a streetcar conductor appropriately named Lawless, who was charged with causing the death of a Bridget Malone.

When Lawless was in the witness chair he said that he rang the bell for the car to stop.  It did not stop at once, and he rang three times, signaling to the motorman to stop instantly.

Juror No. 3, H. J. Mahrenholz, of 1,153 Broadway, remarked to the witness:

“You conductors ring too quick, anyhow.  The motorman can’t understand you.” . . .

Lawyer H. W. Mayer, who appeared for the cable road, asked for the removal of the juror from the box.  Mr. Mahrenholz was requested to step aside, and he did so.

New York Times, August 15, 1895, page 6.

Coincidentally (or not), 1895 was a watershed year in streetcar deaths in New York City and environs.  Earlier that summer, for example, the professional baseball team across the river in Brooklyn had for the first time been called the “Trolley Dodgers,” in consequence of the dangers involved in avoiding trolleys which had recently been electrified, which introduced new dangers from the increased speeds and from the electrified trolley.  That team has since moved and is better known today as the Los Angeles Dodgers.  See my earlier post, “The Grim Reality of the ‘Trolley Dodgers,’” https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-grim-reality-of-trolley-dodgers.html.

Mahrenholz made and sold fancy shoes with fancy names like the “Tuxedo” and the “Piccadily.”

He marketed them to buyers with money and expensive tastes, like students in New Haven, Connecticut and .

The Yale Pot-Pourri, New Haven, Yale University, Volume 30, 1895, page xliii.

His show window was “one of the novelties of Broadway.”

Fall River Daily Evening News (Fall River, Massachusetts), February 6, 1897, page 21.

Henry Mahrenholz knew the alligator hunting business well.  He personally owned one of the alligators on display in the Central Park zoo, more than half of the nearly 10,000 alligator hides sent annually to New York City.[iv]  And the Smithsonian Institution thought highly enough of his alligator boots that they sent a pair to London for display at the International Fisheries Exhibition in London in 1883.[v]  He described the alligator hunting business in terms that cut against the grain of the widespread myth that white people hunted alligators using black children as bait.

The skins are usually contracted for by the New York firms with parties in Jacksonville, Fla., and in New Orleans.  To these places the skins are sent by the outlying small dealers who buy them from the hunters.  The hunters are negroes or half breeds.

The Sun (New York), July 1, 1877, page 5.

Many of the skins that passed through New York City were sent to Boston to “make up into cheap, machine-sewed shoes,” while New York firms purchased them “almost exclusively for custom work,” with purchasers measuring their own feet and receiving the boots by express.  The boots were said to be popular with hunters in Europe, especially Switzerland.[vi] 

Who else wore alligator skin shoes or boots?  A good question; which is why a reporter posed it to Mr. Mahrenholz.  Turns out, a lot of people did, but not in the summer.

“Who wears leather from the alligator?” the reporter inquired of Mr. Henry Mahrenholz.

“Who wears that leather now? No one can.  There’s a pair of shoes I just kicked off.  It’s too hot to wear alligator now.  I’ll show you why;” and the proprietor picked up a scaly piece of leather and deftly sliced off a slab horizontally. “You see the hide is built up in horizontal layers that make it impervious to water.  You know that ordinary leather is porous because of the sweat pores in all animals from which it is made.  But the alligator does not sweat.  His hide is made yet more thoroughly waterproof by an extraordinarily severe process of tanning.”

“Then,” the reporter suggested, “hunters and fishermen, of course, prefer alligator hide in their boots?”

“Certainly; and none more than those who hunt in Florida and shoot eht reptiles,” Mr. Mahrenholz replied. . . . .

“If none but hunters and fishermen wear them now, who wears them at other seasons?” . . .

“Some wear them for show and others for use.  Dandies used to affect them, because they were a novelty, and were high-priced, something that not every body could imitate.  But there’s a better use for alligator’s hide than to clothe a fop’s foot with it,” he continued . . . “They are in high favor with gouty people.  You know gouty feet must e kept free from the slightest moisture.  If not – twinge!

“Many persons can not wear rubber overshoes.  They are not required with these boots.  But the strangest thing about the stuff is that the older it is the softer it becomes.  You wouldn’t think that true, would you?” and he glanced up at a picture of a long, scaly alligator in the act of swallowing a pickaninny.  “Yes, they’re good for tender feet, too,” he mused.  “Ladies have taken a great fancy of late for fine boots of alligator hide.”  And Mr. Mahrenholz showed how one horny fore claw went over the top of a lady’s foot and the hind claw enclosed the heel.”

The Sun (New York), June 10, 1877, page 3.

The picture on his wall of the alligator “in the act of swallowing a pickaninny” (an archaic expression for a young, black child) is related to an old myth that alligators preferred to eat people with darker skin, and is a forerunner of another archaic expression referring to black children, “alligator bait.” 

Read more about the history of that myth and the idiom “alligator bait” at the Early Sports ‘n’ Pop-Culture History Blog’s earlier post, “Live Human ‘Alligator Bait’ – Fact or Fiction at https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2020/04/live-human-alligator-bait-fact-or.html.

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[i] “, Additions to the Collection,” Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for the year 1876, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1877, page 96 (“Mahrenholz, H. & A., New York.  Three pairs of boots made of alligator, anaconda, and human skin, respectively.”).

[ii] “The Convent of Central Park and a Famous Revolutionary War Site,” BoweryBoysHistory.com. https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2015/08/the-convent-of-central-park-and-a-famous-revolutionary-war-site.html

[iii] Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1890, page 5.

[iv] The Sun (New York), July 1, 1877, page 5.

[v] Descriptive Catalogues of the Collectinos Sent from the United States to the Internatinoal Fisheries Exhibition, London, 1883, Washington DC, Government Printing Office, 1884.

[vi] The Sun (New York), July 1, 1877, page 5.

Hares, Hounds and Horses - a History of the Valley Hunt Club, originators of the Tournament of Roses

The Tournament of Roses Parade and Rose Bowl football game are two of the longest running, best known annual events on the American pop-culture calendar.  But it did not start primarily as a parade or a football game.

There was a football game at the first Tournament of Roses in 1890; it was the final event of the day.  But it was a minor tussle between two local teams that were both less than three months old, and one of the teams was a high school team, so it wasn’t quite the spectacle that it is today.  The Tournament hosted its first East-West game of collegiate teams in 1902, which resulted in a lopsided victory for Michigan over Stanford.  They would not host another until 1916, and the tradition has continued without interruption since, and has been known as the “Rose Bowl” since 1923 with a new bowl-shaped stadium in the Arroyo Seco canyon in 1923.

For more on the first “Rose Bowl” game, see my earlier post, A History of the First “Rose Bowl” – 1890, 1902, 1916 or 1923.

The first Tournament of Roses did not have a parade as such, although participants decorated their carriages and they awarded prizes for the best decorated vehicles.  A parade held during a similar sports tournament day a few months after the first Tournament of Rose proved popular, so they brought it back for the second annual Tournament of Roses in 1891, establishing the familiar annual tradition.

A history of the Tournament of Roses would not be complete without a history of the group that organized the first several Tournaments, the Valley Hunt Club of Pasadena.  The club was a “social outdoor” which was “organized to encourage outdoor sports.”  To that end, the early Tournaments of Roses all offered public participation in athletic events, including track and field, cycling and equestrian events.

But the particular interest of the Valley Hunt Club, or “Valley Hunt” as it was commonly known, were group hunts with packs “scent hounds” (typically foxhounds) working in concert with “sight hounds” (dogs that hunted by sight, typically greyhounds, stag hounds and kangaroo hounds), with the scent hounds flushing out the game and the much faster sight hounds chasing it down. 

The Valley Hunt Club was organized to encourage outdoor sports, especially cross-country riding after the hounds for fox, wildcat, coyote and rabbits, and has had notable success in this direction, there being much more horseback riding now than previous to the club’s organization.  The club meets once a month during the season, and after the sport the members adjourn to some cañon or attractive spot for luncheon.  Members of the club own some of the finest hunting dogs in the country, among which the pack of stag and greyhounds belonging to J. de Barth Shorb, the Bandini foxhounds, the Campbell-Johnston fox-terriers are worthy especial mention.  The club also owns a pack of nine foxhounds, presented by Dr. F. F. Rowland, formerly of the Rosetree Hunt of Pennsylvania.  Among the game killed last year were wild cat, fox, coyote and hare, the two last making especially good sport.  C. F. Holder is president of the club.

Los Angeles Times, October 25, 1889, page 7. 

The “sport” for the human participants lay principally in the thrill of the chase on horseback, and being close to the kill, which more often than not was inflicted by the hounds, not by gunshot; exercise, excitement, a nice picnic lunch, and if they could eradicate a few dangerous predators and pesky varmints along the way, so much the better.  Coincidentally, one of the places they frequently pursued game was in the Arroyo Seco, the home of the Rose Bowl stadium since 1923.

An account of one of their hunts by the famous naturalist and nature writer, C. F. Holder, a member of the Valley Hunt Club and a moving force behind establishing the Tournament of Roses, gives us a taste of the hunt.

AFTER WILDCATS.

A Day with the Pasadena Hunt Club.

Pasadena, July 20. – Occasionally at early dawn the melodious notes of a horn coming through the orange groves awaken the sleepers in the crown of the San Gabriel valley.  You will hear it in town, along the unfrequented avenues, with the occasional bay of a hound.  Hard sleepers rouse themselves here and there, and perhaps at 6 o’clock, when the dew is still glistening on the alfalfa, a gay company will be seen winding their way down into the deep arroyo. . . .

The Pasadena Hunt Club is taking an outing, and under the inspiriting leadership of Don Arturo Bandini, the famous hunter, is about to indulge in a wildcat hunt, a novelty to Easterners and a never-ending delight to the patrons of field sports in Southern California.  The hunt is made up twenty or thirty mounts (ladies and gentlemen) and a pack of from twelve to fifteen hounds, while several greyhounds follow behind to pick up any, stray coyote that may be started.

The moment the gay cavalcade descends into the arroyo the music of the dogs is heard, baying in melodious repetition, now long, again short, rising on the morning air – a chorus so inspiriting that it causes the pulse to quicken, and even the horses feel its influence and long to be away.

The Bandini hounds are famous for their prowess.  Hundreds of wildcats, coons and coyotes have fallen before them, and they waste no time.

“After Wildcats,” C. F. Holder, San Francisco Chronicle, August 19, 1888, page 8.

This article is one of a series of articles that appeared in popular magazines and newspapers across the country, bringing attention, visitors and new residents to Pasadena as the town swelled from what had been several dozen families of the “Indiana Colony” (or more properly, the Orange Grove Association) in 1873 to a growing city of national prominence hosting an the famous Tournament of Roses in the 1890s.  Many of the articles were written by people directly involved in the Pasadena hunting scene and the Valley Hunt Club, including C. F. Holder, Helen Elliott Bandini and F. F. Rowland.

The Valley Hunt Club was founded on November 3, 1888, barely one year before the first Tournament of Roses.  But the history of the Valley Hunt Club did not start there; it has deeper roots in local hunting traditions and earlier hunting clubs.  The article above about the wildcat hunt in the Arroyo Seco, for example, mentions the Pasadena Hunt Club, a predecessor organization founded about a year before the Valley Hunt.  The San Pascual Hunting and Coursing Club had been organized a decade earlier. 

The Valley Hunt Club also had connections to a hunt club near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with a name strongly suggesting more than a passing connection to the name of the Tournament of Roses.  An original member of the Valley Hunt Club, Dr. F. F. Rowland, had been a longtime member of the Rose Tree Hunt in Media, Pennsylvania before coming to Pasadena, and he donated a “pack of fine foxhounds” from “the same strain as the Rose-Tree hounds”[i] to his ne club.

The history of the Valley Hunt Club and its predecessors bridges the history of Old California and New California.  Early members like Arturo Bandini, J. De Barth Shorb, C. F. Holder and F. F. Rowland , connect the Tournament of Roses to early Spanish families, early American settlers of California, the “Indiana Colony” that founded Pasadena, and later newcomers.

San Pascual Hunt Club

One of the earliest reports of an organized hunt by someone from the San Gabriel Valley involved Colonel Benjamin Davis “Don Benito” Wilson, although it took place near his business interests near the wharves in Wilmington,[ii] not his home in the San Gabriel Valley.

A couple of “old boys,” Col. B. D. Wilson and F. M. Buster, had some rare sport yesterday running rabbits with greyhounds.

Los Angeles Herald, June 19, 1875, page 3.

B. D. Wilson was a fur-trapper from Tennessee who became stranded in California on his way to China.  He stayed in California, eventually acquiring large swathes of the Rancho Jurupa in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties and much of the Rancho San Pascual in San Gabriel County; with the Rancho San Pascual largely encompassing what are now the towns of Pasadena, South Pasadena, Altadena and San Marino.  Wilson married Ramona Yorba, daughter of Bernardo Yorba, who owned the Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, covering much of northern Orange County.  He is also General Patton’s grandfather, through a daughter with his second wife, Ruth.

Wilson died in 1878, but the local pack-hound hunting tradition was carried on by an Old Californian, Arturo Bandini, along with some newcomers, many of them members of the original “Indiana Colony” that established the city of Pasadena.  Years later, Bandini would organize the sporting events at the first Tournament of Roses, and carried off the laurels of the equestrian events himself. 

Bandini and others organized a “hunting and coursing” club for their group hunts, which were more organized, much larger, and perhaps a bit more chaotic than B. D. Wilson’s hunt in Wilmington a few years earlier.  The sport of “coursing,” a style of rabbit hunting, was less about taking the kill-shot, and more about being close enough to witness the dogs as they administer the “death bite.”

“Nearing the Finish,” St. Nicholas Magazine, Volume 17, Number 1, November 1889, page 6.

 The San Pascual Meet.

Last Saturday was a field day at Pasadena, being the occasion of the first meet of the San Pascual Hunting and Coursing Club.  By 4 o’clock in the afternoon a crowd of some fifty or more ladies and gentlemen on horseback and in vehicles had gathered at the edge of the patch of brush lying near the base of the mountains, to the northeast of the colony. 

The hunters were, the Messrs. Winston, Edwards, Wallace and Townsend, with their fine fox hounds, and Bandini, Watts and Baker, with their grayhounds.  The rest of the crowd having no dogs to claim their attention, added much to the gust of the chase by their enthusiastic encouragement of the hounds, and the recklessness of their riding. 

. . .

Mr. Bandini’s four grayhounds, as well trained as a regiment of expert soldiers, played into each others hands in a way that astonished the spectators, seldom failing to catch, after once sighting, a hare, and carrying off the honors of the day . . . .

Much admiration was expressed by the lookers-on at the fine tactics displayed by Mr. Bandini’s kangaroo hound, “El Chico,” who devoted his energy to keeping the hare from the brush, leaving the work of catching to the rest of the pack.  After a long chase, in which all the equestrians joined, the hare was finally caught by the grayhound “Roe,” several fox and grayhounds helping to give the death bite; all in sight of the occupants of carriages and wagons, thus giving every one a full view of the sport. . . .

With such enthusiastic successful hunters as Winston, Edwards, Bandini and Wallace, backed by their fine hounds, much may be expected in the future from the Hunting and Coursing Club of San Pascual. . . .

In spite of the danger however, the ladies as well as the gentlemen rode bravely into the thick of the fray as eager as any to be in at the death.  May the sport of Saturday afternoon be often repeated and the San Pascual Hunting and Coursing Club soon be an established feature of Los Angeles County.

Los Angeles Express, September 11, 1878, page 3.

“In at the Death,” The Californian, Volume 1, Number 2, January 1892, page 7.

Group sport hunting with packs of hounds appears to have remained a regular pastime in Pasadena over the next decade, although I could not find any more references to the “San Pascual Hunting and Coursing Club” (by that name) after the report of its initial meeting.

Pasadena was not the only place in California where hunting rabbits with packs of greyhounds, “coursing,” was a popular sport.  California was the “Home of Coursing.”

“A Jackrabbit Drive in Southern California,” Harper’s Weekly, Volume 32, October 27, 1888, page 813.

CALIFORNIA, THE HOME OF COURSING.

“There is but one State in the Union,” says the Turf, Field and Farm, “where any attention is paid to coursing, and that is California.  The clubs there are numerous, and each controls about one hundred dogs.  The principal coursing grounds are at Merced, Sacramento and Modesto.  The plains are immense, and there is nothing to interfere with the run.  The hares are large, muscular and very fleet, and the dog which catches one of them not loaded with fat may be set down as of good quality.

The Pacific Bee (Sacramento, California), April 22, 1882, page 1.

“Coursing” for sport was not the only use for greyhounds and other “sight hounds” (dogs that hunt by sight and not smell) in Southern California.  They also served more practical goals, like protecting livestock from predators.  Bandini’s hounds were even called into service to protect a sheep ranch far from Pasadena, at the “Laguna Ranch,” in or near what are now the towns of Lake Elsinore and Wildomar in Riverside County.

“Death of the Coyote.”[iii]

 

 Mr. Arturo Bandini informs us that it will be impossible for him to allow his hounds to enter in the chase arranged at Pasadena next Friday afternoon owing to the fact that they have been hunting coyotes in the Laguna Ranch for some time past and are badly cut up.  He would not think of taking them out before the last of next week or the first of the week following.  The hounds have done good execution in the laguna, killing some eight or nine coyotes.  The kangaroo hound caught one fellow who had been depredating in the flock for months past, killing, all told, some two or three hundred dollars’ worth of sheep.  He had eluded every attempt to capture or shoot him and only succumbed to the dog after a desperate struggle.

Los Angeles Evening Express, January 5, 1881, page 3.

But even if the hunt had an underlying purpose of protecting livestock or people, it was still considered a form of “amusement.”

The Wild Cat Treed.[iv]

 

One of the popular amusements of the sportsmen of Pasadena is hunting wildcats.  Mr. Arturo Bandini has a pack of hounds, and once or twice a week a hunt is arranged, in which a number of friends engage with him, and they usually bring down their game.  Last Saturday night a party were out nearly all night on the hunt, and for once they failed of bagging their game, on account of the dryness of the atmosphere.

Los Angeles Times, October 1, 1882, page 3.

“Cornering the Wildcat in the Arroyo.”[v]

 

Arturo Bandini

Mr. Arturo Bandini has a pack of foxhounds whose music is as sweet as any in the land, and that has a remarkable record of wildcats, foxes, coons and coyotes.  Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1889, page 7.

 

“Pioneer Spanish Families In California,” The Century Illustrated, Volume 41, Number 3, January 1891, page 377.

 

Arturo Bandini was a local bon vivant and character.  He played the flute,[vi] owned a silver-mounted revolver,[vii] a “topaz watch seal, heavily set in gold in an antique pattern” once owned by Commodore Robert F. Stockton and engraved with his initials,[viii] and a sword, replete with a rhinoceros horn handle mounted in gold plate and guard ornamented with the heads of stag and boar, said to have been “looted from some of the palaces of Paris during the time of the Commune, a Frenchman leaving it to Mr. Bandini at his death.”[ix]

Bandini also had direct connections to Old and New California.  His father was Don Juan Bandini, who sold portions of the Rancho Jurupa to “Don Benito” Wilson, and whose family was involved in raising the first Mexican flag in Mexico and one of the first American flags in California.  

Arturo’s father, Don Juan Bandini, first came to California with his own father, Captain Jose Bandini, who had been “an officer of the Spanish navy and commander of the Spanish man of war La Reina at the battle of Trafalgar.”[x]  “Old Captain Jose Bandini was the first to raise the Mexican flag in Mexico, which he did on the ship Reina, at San Blas, in 1821.”[xi]

Captain Bandini’s son, Don Juan Bandini, and his wife played a role in another historic flag-raising event, decades later; but this time it would be an American flag.  At the time, Don Juan Bandini was a major landowner in San Diego, and also owned property further south in Mexico (his home still stands in Old Town San Diego, where it is now known as the Cosmopolitan Hotel and Restaurant).  The incident may explain why the Bandini family came into possession of Commodore Stockton’s engraved topaz watch seal.

Like many colonists, especially those of Spanish birth, he had long felt irritated at Mexico’s treatment of California, he, therefore, when war came saw with satisfaction the success of the Americans, to which, indeed, he contributed generously.  When in 1846 Commodore Stockton arrived in San Diego he found himself almost in a state of siege, suffering for supplies and being also in need of horses and oxen for land operations.

It was then Don Juan came to the rescue, and taking a strong force down to his rancho of Guadalupe, he furnished our soldiers with five hundred head of cattle, two hundred horses, and eight carretas drawn by oxen.  Upon the return Mrs. Bandini and family accompanied the party.  During the journey the officer in command discovered that he had neglected to bring a flag to grace his entry into San Diego, and Mrs. Bandini made from the clothes of her little ones – their hasty departure not giving time to gather other luggage – the first American flag made on this Coast.  That night Dona Refugio was serenaded by the full bands of the Congress and Savannah, and the next day the commander and his officers called to thank her for her gift, which is now preserved in Washington among the relics of the Mexican War.

“Our Spanish American Families,” Helen Elliott Bandini, The Overland Monthly, Series 2, Volume 26, Number 151, July 1895, Page 22.

Don Arturo Bandini, The Capital (Los Angeles), Volume 15, Number 1, January 4, 1902, page 2.

 

Arturo Bandini’s sister Arcadia married and survived two husbands, both of whom were among the wealthiest men in Los Angeles, Don Abel Stearns and Colonel R. S. Baker.  Stearns built his fortune with a warehouse at the port in San Pedro, a stage line between San Pedro and the Pueblo de Los Angeles, and flour mill in the Pueblo that would later become the city of Los Angeles. 

Arcadia Bandini Stearns married R. S. Baker in 1875, four years after Stearns’ death in 1871.[xii]  Colonel R. S. Baker parlayed an initial investment in 500 sheep at the Tejon Ranch into 30,000 sheep.  Using the proceeds from his wool, he purchased the Rancho Santa Monica and moved his sheep there, which immediately made him one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles County.  He then sold 2/3ds of his rancho to John P. Jones, a U. S. Senator and silver millionaire from Nevada, which they were already developing into the “embryo town”[xiii] of Santa Monica at the time of his marriage, in conjunction with their other project, the Santa Monica Railroad.

How Sheep Made a Man Rich.

In a list of names of rich men of Los Angeles we note that of R. S. Baker, who is rated at $500,000.  Mr. Baker came to Kern county fourteen years ago with a small flock of sheep, and located on the Tejon Ranch which he took in charge.  Upon the settlement of his partnership with General Beale three years ago he found himself the possessor of 30,000 sheep which he had improved to a high grade.  Their product in wool alone made him a rich man, and with the proceeds he purchased a large Mexican land grant in Los Angeles county, paying $65,000.  He distributed his flocks upon it and ranked immediately among the wealthiest men of Southern California.  Last fall he sold two-thirds of his land to Senator Jones for $250,000 and now takes the lead in management and ownership of the new harbor of Santa Monica, twelve miles from Los Angeles, and the railroad leading from that place to Los Angeles city.  Many who have enjoyed the courteous hospitality of the Tejon will remember the story told by Mr. Baker of his misfortunes in business at the North, his purchase of 500 sheep with money loaned him by a friend, his herding them himself, and his patient waiting for the great results he has now obtained.

The Daily Alta California (San Francisco), April 9, 1875, page 1.

R. S. Baker also helped pioneer oil production in southern California, as a partner in the Pico Canyon oil fields near Newhall, California.[xiv]  He was also Vice-President of the Los Angeles County Bank.[xv]

Decades later, following the death of his sister Arcadia, Arturo Bandini led the Baker/Bandini relatives in a fight over his sister’s inheritance with relatives of the Stearns family.  Arcadia Bandini Stearns Baker had died without a will and without children, so her relatives expected the estate to go to them.  But the Stearns relatives, many of them still in Boston, invoked a technicality in California law under which the estate of a widow who dies without a will would revert back to her deceased husband’s family, not her own.[xvi]  In the end, however, California courts ruled that her second marriage nullified her status as widow, negating operation of the rule.  The Stearns clan settled for about $750,000 in exchange for not filing an appeal.  Thirty-five members of the extended Baker/Bandini family shared what remained of the $7 million estate, with brother Arturo and another sister taking the largest share at a million each, and a nephew in San Francisco received $750,000.[xvii]

 

The name “Arturo Bandini” is perhaps best known today as the name of a character in John Fante’s semi-autobiographical novel of depression-era Los Angeles, Ask the Dust, which Chinatown screenwriter Robert Towne called, “the best novel ever written about Los Angeles.”[xviii]  It is not known whether the real Arturo Bandini inspired Fante to use the name, or whether it was just one of those interesting coincidences.  But Arturo Bandini’s name was in the news on occasion during the period in which Fante wrote, so it is not impossible.

One of the reasons Bandini’s name was in the news in the 1930s related to another dispute over another estate connected to yet another early Californian, “Santiago Arguello, a wealthy Spanish don, who owned the land on which Agua Caliente, famous Mexican resort, now stands.”[xix]  The case was complex and Byzantine, hinging in part on a belated birth certificate filed in 1931 for Arturo’s son, Elliott Bandini, to establish his status as an heir to the Arguello estate in Agua Caliente.  No birth certificate had been filed because Elliott was born at home, on the “last of the Bandini acreage . . . located at the intersection of San Pasqual street and South Michigan Avenue” in Pasadena, which is now located smack-dab in the middle of Cal Tech.  I was not able to determine what happened with the litigation.

In addition to his sister’s connections to New California, Arturo Bandini had his own connections to the founders of Pasadena, hinted at by his son’s first name, Elliott.  Arturo Bandini married a woman named Helen “Nellie” J. Elliott, in 1883.[xx]  Helen’s father was Dr. Thomas B. Elliott, the President of the original “Indiana Colony” that had planned to colonize the San Gabriel Valley.  He was also a member of the colony’s successor, the “San Gabriel Orange Grove Association,” which founded the city now called Pasadena in 1873.  Elliott is also credited with giving Pasadena its name. 

Thomas B. Elliott was born in Brockport, New York, and was a graduate of Hamilton College and the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  He started his career as a physician at the Indiana Insane Hospital, but later turned to business, becoming “one of the most prominent and successful grain merchants” in Indianapolis.  He was actively involved in public education, serving for twelve years on the city’s Educational Board and serving as its President, and was chiefly responsible for ensuring for free public school education for the city’s African-Americans.

Owing to ill-health in his family, in 1874 he removed to California, being one of the originators of then “Indiana Colony,” since merged into the Orange Grove Association.  We are largely indebted to his measures and means for this beautiful location, of which we are no so justly proud, and also for its euphonious name.  Being acquainted with a gentleman connected with an Indian mission, he asked for an Indian name meaning “opening” or “key of the valley;” among others sent the name Pasadena was adopted.

Los Angeles Evening Express, August 18, 1881, page 3.

The Indiana Colony

Brief discussions of the history of Pasadena generally credit the city’s founding to the “Indiana Colony,” a group of investors from Indiana who pooled their resources to purchase a large plot of land, with the intent of emigrating to California to develop the land.  But this thumbnail sketch glosses over, or completely misses the fact that the original “Indiana Colony” corporate entity went bust in the financial panic of 1873.  It was quickly replaced, however, by a second entity, the “San Gabriel Orange Groove Association,” which involved many of the same people, with some new investors and a new name. 

The thumbnail sketch also misses the fact that the “Indiana Colony” that intended to colonize California’s San Gabriel Valley was not unique; there were several “Indiana Colonies” that each, separately, organized to move out West to seek their fortunes.  Most of them were not as successful as the ones who survived the initial collapse to join the Orange Grove Association.

The town of Colony, Kansas (current population about 400) was settled by one such “Indiana Colony.”  In January of 1872, the “Indiana colony sent its picket guard out . . . for the West.”[xxi]  Within just a few weeks, reports came back that “the Indiana Colony has had a Post Office located at Colony, Anderson county, Kansas.  The lands will not be divided until the first of April.”[xxii]  Those in the vanguard were joined a couple months later by “a party of nineteen persons, a portion of the Indiana Colony, [who] left the city today, via the Vandalia and North Missouri Roads, for King City, Kansas.”[xxiii]

The “Vallonia Colony,” organized in Jackson County, Indiana in February 1873, also had high hopes.

The object of this Association shall be to emigrate and form a settlement in one of the Western or South Western States or Territories, hereafter to be determined by agents elected and instructed by the Colony at a regular meeting.  A majority vote, either in person or by proxy,[xxiv] of all the members of the Colony being necessary to a choice.

The Brownstone Banner (Jackson County, Indiana), February 26, 1873, page 1.

But they did not fare so well.  Although at least one report suggests that some of the colony headed to Kansas as early as March,[xxv] the corporation appears to have dissolved by July.  The last mention of it in the local newspaper is an attempt to collect a bad debt owed by the colony.[xxvi]

The “Indiana Colony” whose efforts resulted in the founding of Pasadena, California (current population about 150,000) fared much better, despite the collapse the “Colony’s” corporate entity during the financial panic.

Families Coming to Southern California.

Indianapolis, August 3. – A colony of one hundred and fifty families have organized with a view of settling in Southern California.  Their plans are to purchase not less than 10,000 acres of land, good for farming, lay out a town in the midst of it, and then allot each member a farm and a block 300 feet square in the town.

San Francisco Examiner, August 4, 1873.

At the time, land was plentiful, but ambitious people with capital to develop the land were relatively scarce, so several towns vied for their business.

The Anaheim Southern Californian wants the Indiana colony, recently mentioned in The Union, to consider the attractions of the Santa Ana Valley. . . .  The San Bernardino Valley also offers very great inducements; and the San Jacinto Valley in this county, has just as good farming land as either Santa Ana or San Bernardino.

The San Diego Union, July 29, 1873, page 3.

An Indiana colony is preparing to come to California.  Fifty men, all heads of families, are already enrolled in the expedition.  San Diego and Santa Barbara both want them.

Daily Evening Herald (Stockton, California), August 1, 1873.

In early August 1873, the Colony’s advance team prepared for departure.

D. M. Berry, General Kimball, John H. Baker and A. G. Ruxton, avant couriers of the Indiana Colony, will start in a few days for San Diego, California.

Indianapolis News, August 5, 1873, page 4.

The financial panic of 1873 struck in September, killing off the “Indiana Colony” as a corporate entity, but not killing off the dreams of all of its subscribers.

On the 18^th inst., articles of incorporation of the San Gabriel Orange Grove Association – organized for the purchase of a large tract of land in the county of Los Angeles, and the subdivision of the same among the shareholders, and providing generally for the cultivation of grapes and semi-tropical fruits – were filed in the office of the Secretary of State.  Capital, $25,000, in  shares of $250 each.  Directors Benj. S. Eaton, W. T. Clapp, Calvin Fletcher, A. O. Briston. Thos. F. Craft, D. M. Berry and W. Clancy.

Los Angeles Herald, November 23, 1873, page 2.

An article published a few weeks later detailed the transition from the “Indiana Colony” to the “San Gabriel Valley Orange Grove Association,” and how they wound up in the San Gabriel Valley instead of San Diego, Santa Barbara or another suitor.  Their prospects may have been saved by the fact that they sent an advance party out before the financial panic took hold in September.

Indianapolis, Ind., Nov. 20.  Before the panic a company of Indianians, mostly of this city, about one hundred and fifty in number, determining to seek homes in the milder climate, in the neighborhood of San Diego, Southern California, sent Mr. D. M. Berry, of this city, as agent to examine the country and choose a good location for the colony. Mr. Berry, assisted by Gen. Kimball, the recently appointed Surveyor-General of Utah, finding objections of drouth and other evils to San Diego county, Santa Barbara, and other places examined by them, chose 2,800 acres on the end of the San Pasqual rancho, four miles from the city of Los Angeles, for which ten dollars per acre was asked.  But the money panic upset the calculations of most of the members making it impossible for them to fulfill their intentions and agreements. 

The land has just been secured, however, by some fifteen only of the original intended colonists, of whom Dr. Thomas B. Elliott is President, and by gentlemen of Cincinnati, Boston, and other cities, some of whom are now on the ground, making preparations for improving the same. . . .

News to-day from Los Angeles says the owners of the Indiana purchase have formed themselves into an association called the “San Gabriel Orange Grove Association,” naming it after the river and valley in which the land is located. – [Cor. Cincinnati Gazette].

Los Angeles Herald, December 7, 1873, page 2.

Pasadena Hunt Club

The “Pasadena Hunt Club” was organized in December 1887, along nearly the same lines as the “Valley Hunt Club” a year later.  Its stated objectives were to “encourage out-of-door sport, with an occasional dinner.”  An account of its first meeting also referred back to the “old hunting club,” perhaps a reference to the San Pascual Hunting and Coursing Club of a decade earlier.

First Meet of the Pasadena Hunt Club.

Mr. Bandini and Mr. Winston were masters of the hunt, and took charge . . . Both gentlemen belonged to the old hunting club which hunted wildcats over what is now the city of Pasadena.  . . . The new organization is a gentlemen’s club, and each member is to contribute a small sum monthly to keep the dogs in good condition, while meets are to be had whenever desired, and an occasional hunt dinner at the Carlton or Raymond.  The object is to encourage legitimate out-of-door sport.  Wildcat hunting, fox hunting, coyote running with fox-hounds, and coursing with gray-hounds will be the principal sport.  Objection is often made that such sport is cruel, and in this connection it should be said that the wildcats are a positive menace to the settler, and one killed on this hunt had a remarkable record as a chicken stealer.

Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1887, page 13.

The string of articles about hunting in and around Pasadena which focused national attention on Pasadena began during the year between founding of the Pasadena Hunt Club in December 1887 and the later founding of the Valley Hunt Club on November 3, 1888. 

I heard the melodious bay of the dogs rising from the deep cañon, and it was followed by a sharp yelp that told of a hot scent.  Then a Winchester below me began to play, and a few moments later I brought my own rifle into action.  Off darted the game, fairly skirting the precipitous wall of rock on the opposite side of the cañon, finally falling beneath a bay-tree, where it was found later.

While making the descent to secure our game, we came suddenly to a huge rock that projected from the mountain, extending toward a like mass on the opposite side of the chasm.  On reaching it, the old hunter uttered a cry of precaution, and pointed across the cañon.  There, in its sanctuary stood, in strong relief against the rock, the great cat of the Sierras, the mountain lion, its head raised in a listening attitude.  The whole position was so noble and impressive, that it was some seconds before the rifles cracked and the fierce yell of the wounded animal broke the stillness.

“In the Heart of the Sierra Madre,” C. F. Holder, The American Magazine, Volume 7, Number 4, February 1888, page 394.

One month later, a poetic description of a hunt during a prolonged camping trip, written by Arturo Bandini’s wife Helen Elliott Bandini, appeared in another magazine.  The dogs killed a mountain lion and a raccoon, and a hunter brought down a treed fox; all before 9 AM when it became too hot to continue the hunt.  Her account gives a sense of the romance, thrill and danger of the hunt.

After the Hounds in Southern California

Whir! Whir!! Whir!!!

You awake with a start, wondering what is the matter and where you are.  In a moment you pull yourself together, and know alas! That the noise is the gentle call of the alarm clock.  The time – four in the morning.  Place – a tent in the wildwoods of California.

Drip, drip, sounds the fog. – Where else in the world does fog have sound?  It is dark, and the cold is penetrating.  No couch was ever so inviting as your bed of boughs; but it is your turn to follow the hounds. . . .

The hounds are yawning and stretching at their chains, the younger ones frisking a little, but none giving voice save old Ranger, who, though the very bone and sinew of the pack, the veteran hero of an hundred hunts, still labors under the delusion that he is only a nonentity, and will be left behind if he does not remind us of his presence by a constant reproachful howl.

. . .  Shortly his horn rings out three jubilant blasts.  We gallop off, and as we round a bend in the road hear again the music of the pack.  “Treed! Treed!” shouts the master.  We urge our horses up the rocky cañon to the foot of a trai leading to a small mesa where we know the game is at bay.  A moment to tighten cinches, then up, up, up, we go like Jack’s bean stalk, and nearly as perpendicularly.  Our horses are sure-footed, and we feel tolerably certain that we can ride where they can carry; nevertheless it is a relief to horse and rider when the top is gained.

Round a sycamore the hounds are grouped, their cries growing more energetic as we join them.  High up in a crotch of the tree we see the game – a large gray wildcat, stretched gracefully at full length.  He is gazing down at his clamorous foes with fierce eyes, feeling all the anger and majesty of the lash of lion or tiger as he wriggles his absurd stub tail.  Perhaps he imagines it full length.

The small boy, armed with a sharp-pointed stick, is already in the tree, climbing steadily toward the enraged animal.  We shiver and wish he would not run such risks, but the youngster knows no fear of animals wild or tame, and one and all they own his sway. . . .

It is nearly nine o’clock now, almost too hot and dry for the dogs to trail.  We bethink ourselves of the breakfast that awaits us at camp, of the hammocks under the oaks and the unfinished novel, and gladly acquiesce in the mandate, “No more hunting today.”  The dogs are gathered in, then comes a two-mile ride, and with peal of horn and clatter of hoofs we gallop with a grand flourish into camp.

The trophies of the morning’s hunt are duly admired by the stay-at-homes, Trailer [(a puppy)] coming in for more praise, which quite restores his fallen spirits.  We are famished, but no breakfast for us until the Lady Superior has ladled out for each hound a dish of new mush, giving to Trailer a double portion which delights his puppy heart.

“After the Hounds in Southern California,” Helen Elliott Bandini, Overland Monthly, Volume 11 (Second Series), Number 63, March 1888, page 305-307.

           

Another piece by C. F. Holder published six months later reads like it was made-to-order by the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce.

A JACK-RABBIT DRIVE.

Anyone who has seen the sun roll over the snow peaks of the Sierra Madre from its seeming night in Arizona, and with one burning glance convert the San Gabriel Valley into a blaze of light, can well imagine why in the olden days the mission bells were rung at sunrise, and the voices of the devotees rose in praise.  There is a charm to the country not easily described.  It is the land of out-of-door life, where all the conditions of existence are particularly happy.  The San Gabriel Valley, in Los Angeles County, the best known of southern California, compares favorably with the European Riviera that extends along the Mediterranean, backed by the Maritime Alps.  In San Gabriel we have the Pacific, glistening faintly in  deep blues, from twenty to thirty miles away, while to the north and east rise the Sierra Madre, a ridge of precipitous rock from four to ten thousand feet in height, its base rising from groves of orange, olive, and eucalyptus, its isolate peaks gleaming with the snows of winter. So strange a contrast can be seen nowhere else in America.  The winter of the North and a semi-tropical summer are face to face. . . .

Coursing or riding after greyhounds in chase of jack-rabbit is a pastime popular in the San Gabriel Valley, and fast finding favor all over the United States wherever the conditions permit.  It possesses all the variety of fox-hunting, allows as hard riding if one wishes, and is by far the most exciting field sport on all the list from badger-baiting to taking the gamy wild-cat.  There are riders from every Eastern State from old Virginia to Maine.  No scarlet coats, but top-boots and riding outfits that would have astonished the old Spanish riders who gathered beneath the live-oaks in the valley years ago at the winding of the horn. . . .

“A Jack Rabbit Drive,” C. F. Holder, Harper’s Weekly, 1890, Volume 34, Number 1766, October 25, 1890 page 830.

The drawings accompanying this article were “from sketches made by Mr. Holder of his dog in the field, and those belonging to the fine pack of J. de Barth Shorb.”[xxvii]

J. De Barth Shorb

Mr. J. de Barth Shorb, Jr., has the finest greyhounds and staghounds in the country; the former from Australian stock and remarkable runners.  Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1889, page 7.

J. De Barth Shorb has family connections to Old California through his marriage to the daughter of Don Benito Wilson and his first wife Maria who was a member of the Yorba family.  Shorb is also personally responsible for introducing widespread irrigation in the San Gabriel Valley, built what was at one point the largest winery in the world in nearby Alhambra, and named the town of San Marino, Pasadena’s even tonier neighbor.

J. de Barth Shorb was born in Maryland to an old Alsatian-German family; his grandfather left Alsace when it was ceded to France, bringing several colonies of Alsatians with him, settling in Pennsylvania.  Shorb’s father moved from Pennsylvania to Emmitsburg, Maryland, but retained large real estate interests in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.[xxviii]    Shorb’s father, Dr. James A. Shorb, was among the first class of students at St. Mary’s College,[xxix] near the family homestead.

If J. De Barth Shorb was responsible for naming the town of San Marino, his father was indirectly responsible, having named their homestead after the Republic of San Marino.  Years later, Dr. Shorb explained the name “San Marino” to a reporter.

There is a classic beauty in its name, of which the late Dr. Jas. A. Shorb felt very proud.  The Doctor was a great admirer of the military genius of Napoleon Bonaparte . . . .  When Bonaparte first invaded Italy, he gave orders to the troops under his command to respect the Republic of San Marino, to pay honor to its citizens, and in no event to invade its territorial limits. . . .  The people who inhabited it were quiet wine making and pastoral people, and felt like living under a government of their own, founded on laws of their own making, and not subject to the laws of Emperors or Kings. . . .

When strolling in the garden of Malmaison one day, shortly after the battle of Lodi, with Josephine by his side, the Emperor was in a religious mood of mond.  He heard the church bell of Feuel toll the Angelus, and prostrating himself on the ground, improvised a soliloquy addressing the empress:

“There is a God!  Jean Jacques Rousseau once said – ‘Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ died like a God.’  In that brief expression and the lesson it teaches, and all the inspiration of nature, we have a living faith that there is a God – the First Great Cause that shapes and governs all things. . . .  When in Italy I was profoundly impressed when I met the prefect of one of the rural churches near the Republic of San Marino.  The love of God, the sufferings of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, the teaching of the Apostles, and the fixed and unchangeable faith of St. Peter is the Rock upon which I build; taught me more forcible than ever, by the rural peasantry of San Marino.  We will die, my dear Josephine, in the bosom of the church in which we were born.”

Catoctin Clarion (Mechanicstown, Maryland), July 4, 1874, page 2.

J. De Barth Shorb’s father, Dr. James A. Shorb, also played a role in establishing several places in California.  Coincidentally, they were all located in place named for a different “Marino” – Chief Marin of the Licatiut tribe in California, also known as Huicmuse or Marino.

Like many Americans in 1849, Dr. James A. Shorb went to California during the Gold Rush, as a member of and treasurer of the Baltimore and Frederick Mining and Trading Company,[xxx] which would set up shop primarily in the region that would later be known as Marin County. 

During the early days of statehood, California was divided into counties in accordance with an act passed in February 1850.  Dr. James A. Shorb became the first Judge of Marin County, and in that capacity, together with a panel of two associate judges and a clerk in September of the same year, was responsible for subdividing Marin County into the townships “South Salieto, San Rafael, Boulinas and Navat.”[xxxi]

J. De Barth Shorb emulated his father’s adventurous spirit, moving out to California during the Civil War.  Emmitsburg, Maryland was not the best place to be during the Civil War.  Lying between Antietam and Gettysburg, it was the scene of limited action during the war, and saw a few skirmishes and a lot of traffic and activity in town before, during and after the Battle of Gettysburg.[xxxii]

Shorb came to California in 1864 as the “assistant superintendant of the Philadelphia and California Oil Company, of which the late Thomas A. Scott of Pennsylvania Railroad fame was president.”[xxxiii]  He later put his experience in drilling and moving oil to a different use, collecting and distributing water to gold miners in the placer mines in the San Feliciano Canyon near Piru, California.[xxxiv]  It was during this time that he married the daughter of Don Benito Wilson, who owned large tracts of land purchased from Juan Bandini, and who would later sell much of the land that would become Pasadena to the San Gabriel Valley Orange Grove Association.[xxxv]

De Barth Shorb later put his water collection and distribution skills to use on his vast agricultural holdings and real estate development projects.

During the spring and summer of 1874, the Wilson and Shorb were busy laying irrigation pipe to bring more water from more remote agricultural lands, while at the same time the Orange Grove Association was busy laying water distribution piping to improve its lands.

Extensive Pipe-Laying.

Messrs. Shorb and Wilson are now laying iron pipe to carry water to the plains below the Mission.  They have laid about a mile and a half, and will irrigate a large tract of land which has heretofore been lying idle and unproductive.  The land which this irrigation will bring into cultivation, will be planted with orange trees and vines, and will form another splendid addition to our fruit belt. . . .

The Orange Grove Association have now laid all their eleven-inch pipe, and will commence Monday to put down the seven-inch. . . .  They have now divided among the shareholders three thousand acres of their tract, and each farm will be amply supplied with water from the distributing pipes of the Association. . . .  The shares in this Association have greatly appreciated in value.  We heard of one sale this week, in which the party realized a profit on his share of $500.  That’s a pretty good return for an investment of $200 in November last.

Los Angeles Evening Express, May 2, 1874, page 2.

Later that summer, J. De Barth Shorb started development of the new town of Alhambra, just down the hill from Pasadena.

Los Angeles Express, July 20, 1875, page 4.

 

It is reported that Messrs. Wilson & Shorb are progressing finely in laying out the site for their new town of Alhambra, in the Lake Vineyard property.  They have completed a distributing reservoir of the capacity of 1,200,000 gallons.

Los Angeles Herald, August 18, 1874, page 3.

A decade later, J. De Barth Shorb also laid out and developed the city of Ramona, as President of the San Gabriel Valley Company.

 

Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1886, page 7.

Shorb also owned one of California’s largest grave vineyards and what was believed at the time to be the largest winery in the world.

The San Gabriel Winery is located on a hill in the western portion of the Alhambra.  It is controlled by the San Gabriel Wine Company, and is the largest winery in the world.  The buildings are constructed of brick.  The carrying capacity of the cellar, two stories in height and 226 by 146 feet, is 1,500,000 gallons. . . . The buildings are so arranged on the hill-slope that the grapes are not handled from the time they are emptied from the boxes until the wine is ready for shipment, as the needful labor is performed by the force of gravitation.

R. W. C. Farnsworth, A Southern California Paradise (in the Suburbs of Los Angeles), Pasadena, California, R. W. C. Farnsworth, 1883, page 29.

De Barth Shorb’s winery died in 1892, due to blight in local vineyards.  He died in 1896, following five months of home confinement due to heart disease.[xxxvi]

He died young, but at least he lived long enough to see the fruits of his labors begin to flourish in the growing communities of Pasadena and Alhambra, and witness the first several Tournaments of Roses.

The Valley Hunt Club

On November 3, 1888, within days of the publication of C. F. Holder’s description of a jack-rabbit drive in Harper’s Weekly in late-October 1888, C. F. Holder and other hunting enthusiasts organized their new club, The Valley Hunt Club.

The Los Angeles Herald Sunday Magazine, October 8,1911, page 5.

The photograph above is said to be of the Valley Hunt Club at one of their first meetings in 1888.  The day may have been similar to another hunt a few months later, with a picnic lunch and photographs.

Saturday morning at about 8 o’clock the horn of Don Arturo Bandini was heard in the vicinity of Monk Hill, and a few moments later the Valley Hunt wound its way down the slope and spread out over the plain.  It was a regular meet of the hunt, and about thirty riders were in the field, and as many more in carriages. . . .

The plan of the day was to sweep up toward the Arroyo Seco, to the west; then follow the mountains down to Los Flores Cañon, where luncheon had been taken in carriages. . . .

At 1 o’clock the hunt discussed a luncheon at Los Flores Cañon, where photographs were taken by Mr. Buell and Prof. Pickering. . . .

Mrs. Fremont received the trophies of the day from Miss Elliott, and responded by decorating the winning dog, the fine blue greyhound of Mr. J. de Barth Shorb, Jr.

The Los Angeles Times, February 11, 1889, page 6.

One of the Valley Hunt Club’s first big outings was a two-day affair in what is not North Orange County, forty miles to the south.  They stayed in the Palmyra Hotel in Orange, and hunted coyote and jackrabbit on the hunting grounds of an Austrian “nobleman” of some sort, Count Jaroslav “Jaro” von Schmidt, who owned a 300 acre ranch in what is now Tustin, California.  Attendees may have seen Von Schmidt’s large-scale painting of Samson and Delilah (the only known major work of the Czech painter K. Pavlik, which sold at auction at Christies in 2006 for $31,200), and the ladies may have purchased some of the Count’s stuffed hummingbirds for their hats.[xxxvii]

Count Jaro Von Schmidt, Los Angeles Times, November 25, 1900, page 25.

A Valley Hunt.

The Palmyra Hotel at Orange is to be the scene of great festivities during the coming week.  The Valley Hunt Club will meet on the 9^th, and will scour the country in search of the tuneful coyote and long-eared John rabbit. . . . [A]s the arrangements are in the hands of Count Von Schmidt and the Hon J. de Barth Shorb, a good time may well be anticipated.

Los Angeles Herald, December 31, 1888, page 1.

K. Pavlik, Samson and Delilah. Christies.com.

C. F. Holder

C. F. Holder and several other members of the Valley Hunt gave the club’s pack of foxhounds their first outing of the season yesterday, and the pups their first lesson.

          

C. F. Holder.  Museum curator for the Museum of Natural History in New York City, well known writer and academic in a variety of fields.  Helped bring attention to Pasadena through his writings.

Charles Frederick Holder was a curator at the Museum of Natural History in New York City before coming to California, and wrote textbooks and dozens of newspaper and magazine articles about nature.[xxxviii]  In 1887, the Los Angeles Times described Charles Frederick Holder as, a “nationally-known writer on common sense natural history, whose contributions to leading magazines and scores of the best news papers in the country – including The Times – are so widely enjoyed.”[xxxix] 

He was also an avid rider who enjoyed hunting with the hounds in and around Pasadena.  He was the Vice President of the Valley Hunt Club when it was founded in 1888, and President when they staged the first Tournament of Roses in 1890.

With the new club underway, C. F. Holder continued his public relations campaign promoting the region, aided by illustrations from the famed artist of the American West, Frederick Remington.   

Frederick Remington, Antelope Killing a “Rattler.”

   

It is not generally appreciated that we have in southern California, Arizona, and the adjacent country an antelope that in its speed, beauty, and other qualities that appeal to the sportsman is equal to many of the other forms. . . .

The view of this antelope region, or a portion of it, from the summit of San Antonio is one of the most singular in the country.  We are eleven thousand feet above the Pacific, that, miles away, gleams and shimmers in the sunlight.  To the west we look down upon a series of valleys, bedecked in green, orange, lemon, and lime, with a floral carpet of infinite hues.

Harper’s Weekly, February 2, 1889, Volume 33, Number 1676, February 2, 1889, page 87.

The Valley Hunt did not always make a kill.  In one of their very first hunts, for example, the Los Angeles Herald reported that, “The Valley Hunt Club had a long hunt and a merry time last Wednesday. . . .  All were happy and enjoyed themselves hugely although they did not capture any game.”[xl]  But the kill was not really the point; the thrill was in the chase.

                   

But even when they did make a kill, at least in the case of a rabbit, C. F. Holder assures us that it was not cruel.

“The Dog Inserts Its Long Nose Beneath the Hare, and Tosses Him into the Air.”

No charge of cruelty can be brought against coursing where the animal is faithfully followed.  In shooting rabbits and hares they will often escape badly wounded, but death by the hounds is instantaneous.

The death of the hare is not considered an important feature, the pleasure being derived from watching the movements of the dogs, their magnificent bursts of speed, the turns and stops, their strategy in a hundred ways, and especially from the enjoyment of riding over the finest winter country in the world.

“Coursing with the Greyhounds in Southern California,” C. F. Holder, St. Nicholas Magazine, Volume 17, Number 1, November 1889, page 8.

And as people watched the dogs, the dogs watched for rabbits.

“The hound could jump upon the horse, and so look around for a jack-rabbit.”

C. F. Holder described the beauty and excitement of the hunt; Frederick Remington captured the drama.  It wasn’t always jackrabbits; sometimes the Valley Hunt Club went after coyotes – the “wily coyote.”

Frederick Remington, “Running a Coyote with Hounds in Southern California.”

 

A Day with the Staghounds.

To ride through golden-yellow eschscholtzias and violets, to beat down the rich green grass beneath your horse’s feet, and see the hounds deep in growing grain, while the snow-banks of winter gleam and scintillate in your face, is the privilege of the cross-country rider in the San Gabriel Valley.  The lowland is clothed in summer greens, and a wealth of flowers covers the plain and mesa; yet the Sierra Madre peaks – San Antonio, San Jacinto, and the rest – are mounds of gleaming snow, tempering the air and presenting a wondrous contrast. . . .

The horse of the master of the hounds has taken the bit in his teeth and rushed at it, tripped, and gone to earth, landing on the other side of the fence, it is true, but so tangled and bound by the treacherous wire that it lies, feet in the air, utterly powerless to move.  The master of the hounds lands upon his feet, while the coyote has deftly slipped under the lower wire, followed by two dogs, and is scaling the Puente Hills! Wily coyote!

“A Day with the Staghounds,” C. F. Holder, Harper’s Weekly, Volume 34, Number 1766, October 25, 1890, page 832.

Hellen Elliott Bandini and C. F. Holder were not the only members of the Valley Hunt Club to write glowing reports of the club’s activities in magazines with national reach.

The frontispiece of the Californian for the holiday, or January, number shows an incident in cross-country riding in California in midwinter, where the horses beat down flowers instead of frozen snow-crust.  Two horses are shown going over a hedge and ditch, with the greyhounds between them.  The sketch is by Mr. Harmer, the illustrator of Capt. King’s novels, and is an actual incident in the experience of the Valley Hunt club.  Dr. F. F. Rowland, master of hounds of this fashionable club, and a well-known member of the Philadelphia Rose Tree Hunt, gives a spirited and handsomely illustrated article on cross country riding in California. 

The Saint Paul Globe (Saint Paul, Minnesota), December 28, 1891, page 6.

Dr. F. F. Rowland contrasted the dreary winter hunting conditions on the East Coast with those on the West Coast.

To the admirer of the beautiful in nature and the lover of a good saddle-horse there is no more ideal spot to enjoy both than in Southern California during that season very inappropriately called winter; for, as a matter of fact, winter may be said to be unknown here except what is seen and experienced on the distant snow-crowned peaks of the Sierra Madre Mountains. . . .

To the one who for the first time is experiencing the brilliancy and beauty of a midwinter day’s outing in Southern California comparisons arer truly odious.  It requires a positive mental effort to make one believe that probably at the identical hour Eastern hunting clubs are taking “worm” and four-railed fences, galloping over hill and field with avidity if the dogs are in full-cry, wading creeks filled with floating ice, or plunging through snow-drifts, or facing a cutting norther.

“Cross-Country Riding,” Francis Fenelon Rowland, California Magazine, Volume 1, Number 2, January 1892,

F. F. Rowland

Francis Fenelon Rowland (right) with Mayor Martin Weight (left). Los Angeles Herald, January 2, 1902, page 4.

“Dr. F. F. Rowland has presented to the Valley Hunt Club a pack of thoroughbred hounds.”  Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1889, page 6.

“They came from the famous Rose Tree Hunt in Media, Pa.” Los Angeles Times, January 1, 1890, page 7.

           

Dr. Francis Fenelon Rowland (sometimes “Frank;” usually F. F.) was born in Media, Pennsylvania in 1847.  He studied medicine at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia (the same school where Thomas B. Elliott had studied) and interned at Guy’s hostpital in London, England.  He was a relative newcomer to Pasadena, having arrived in Pasadena in 1887 as a physician for the Pacific Electric, Salt Lake and Santa Fe Railways.  His brother, Dr. Ward B. Rowland, moved to Pasadena at about the same time, where he became an assistant state veterinarian in California, and sometimes served as “master of the hounds” for the Valley Hunt Club.

Before moving to Pasadena, Dr. F. F. Rowland was for many years an active participant in the “Rose Tree Hunt,” a hunt club in Media, Pennsylvania.

Rose Tree Hunt

The Rose Tree Hunt is the oldest organization of its kind in the United States.[xli]  It was formally organized as a hunt club after English models in the year 1850 . . . .

For nearly half a century the Rose Tree has flourished with a vigorous growth; its roots of fox hunting go back far into the history of the county.  And thus firmly implanted in the manners and economy of the people it is in no danger of decay.  It stands first and foremost as a thorough-going and thoroughly American fox-hunting club.

“The Rose Tree Hunt Club,” Alfred Stoddart, Outing Magazine, Volume 19, Number 1, October, 1891, page 44.

In addition to the recreational fox hunts for members, the club hosted semi-annual horse racing events, which drew large crowds and money to the town. 

The first races held by the club were in 1877 and semi-yearly since, in May and October, the race track by the Rose Tree is thronged with the wealth, fashion and beauty of Philadelphia and adjoining counties to witness the gentlemanly struggles for the prizes donated by the club.

The Times (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), August 23, 1885, page 2.

In 1885, the club moved the races to the Elwyn Agricultural Society fairgrounds, demonstrating the races’ profit potential.

The Rose Tree Hunt and Its Future Brilliant Prospects.

Media, October 8. – The charming October day, the large crowd of fashionables present and the perfect good order preserved throughout the meet has made the fall races this year of the Rose Tree Hunt at Elwyn fair grounds memorable, and it is safe to say that hereafter the “Annuals,” at least, will always be held at the new grounds, so much better suited are they for an occasion of this kind.  The races of Thursday, which drew a crowd of 5,000 people, among them the most ultra fashionable of the race and sport attending-people of the city, have set the heads of the club and Agricultural Society people wagging and a semi-union of the two looking to an improvement of the races is suggested.

The Times (Philadelphia), October 9, 1887, page 15.

The “Tournament of Roses”

Nearly two decades later, Rowland’s experience and familiarity with the events staged by the Rose Tree Hunt in Media were remembered as having contributed to the successful organizing of the original Tournament of Roses in Pasadena.

At that time Dr. F. F. Rowland had but recently arrived in Philadelphia, where he had been an active member of the celebrated “Rose Tree Hunt.” And was thoroughly familiar with the plan there used in a similar entertainment.  . . .

Long Beach Tribune (Long Beach, California), January 2, 1907, page 6.

And the Rose Tree Hunt races were specifically mentioned as a model for the event during the run-up to the first Tournament of Roses.

Tournaments of a similar character are frequently held in some of the Eastern States.  The Rose Tree Hunt races are famous in Pennsylvania, as are also the fall races of the First Troop, Philadelphia City Cavalry.  These occasions, however, only include horse-racing, and are devoid of many of the interesting features the Valley Hunt Club proposes to introduce here on New Year’s Day.

Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1889, page 7.

The tournament which the club gives is simply following out this idea, and to afford the people, old and young, some holiday amusement, and establish something permanent in this line.  The custom is one which finds place among all the hunt clubs of the East, and from the interest taken is evidently going to be a success here.

Los Angeles Times, January 1, 1890, page 7.

A largely forgotten aspect of the original Tournament of Roses which directly bears on the original meaning of the name is that competitors were expected to wear colored roses, of different colors, to distinguish themselves from one another. 

The colors of the riders and contestants of all races will be roses of different hues and kinds . . . .

It will be called the “tournament of the Roses,” because the contestants in the various events will be designated by the color of the rose they wear. 

Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1889, page 7, col. 1 and 3. 

On the day of the first Tournament of Roses, for example, Mamie Gertrude Pierce, a favorite in the “little girls’ pony race, was to ride “the famous Bob, and her rose is the Marechal Niel” (Marechal Niel is a yellow rose).[xlii]

 

Childe Hassam, Maréchal Niel Roses, 1919, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.58.

On the day of the 1892 Tournament of Roses, the Los Angeles Times listed the “entries, owner and ‘colors or roses’” for the scheduled horse races.  The roses, listed for the most part by popular name of the rose instead of color, included, “La France,” “Sunset,” “black and orange,” “Castilian,” “Paul Neyron,” “Nankin,” “Eliza Savage,” “La Marc,” “Ragged Robin,” “Her Majesty,” “Gold of Ophir,” “Boudon d’Or,” and “La France.”[xliii]

And finally, at the 1893 Tournament of Roses, C. F. Holder’s greyhound, “Mouse” reportedly wore “a huge collar of red geraniums (the ‘colors’ of the club to which she belongs),” on the day she won a challenge race against a horse named Daisy.[xliv]

The practice of designating competitors by type of rose may not have been fully embraced even at the time, and seems to have passed by the wayside fairly quickly.  These few references to the practice are the only ones Early Sports ‘n’ Pop-Culture History Blog was able to find. 

There is no direct evidence that Rowland or others chose the rose them and name, “Tournament of Roses,” as a specific nod to the “Rose Tree Hunt.”  Moreover, reminiscences written just over a decade later credit Holder and Rowland equally with establishing the tournament, and C. F. Holder alone with naming the tournament.

It is to Charles Frederic Holder and Dr. Francis Fenelon Rowland that Pasadena owes her Tournament of Roses . . . . 

Many eastern hunt clubs were in the habit of giving annual race meets, devoting at least one day to a tourney comprising various sports, and it was suggested that this would be an admirable custom for the Valley Hunt to establish, particularly as it might be enjoyed in mid-winter. . . .

An all-day fete was planned and named by Mr. Holder, “The Tournament of Roses.”

The Capital (Los Angeles), Volume 15, Number 1, page 12.

But F. F. Rowland’s connections to an eastern club called the “Rose Tree Hunt” clubs, and his influence in planning the original “Tournament of Roses,” suggests the possibility that it could have influenced the name, even if the name was decided upon by someone else.

 

J. W. Wood, Pasadena, California, Historical and Personal, Published by the Author, 1917, page 437.

                                      

---

[i] San Francisco Chronicle, January 26, 1890, page 8.

[ii] Wilson was a partner, with his son-in-law J. DeBarth Shorb, in a furniture factory in Wilmington, conveniently located near the wharves in what is today called Los Angeles Harbor, and with railroad connections to the interior.  Shorb liquidated the company shortly after Wilson’s death in 1878. See, Los Angeles Herald, June 13, 1878, page 3.

[iii] Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1889, page 7.

[iv] “Hunting the Wild Cat in Southern California,” Helen Elliott Bandini, Overland Monthly, 1892, page 283.

[v] Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1889, page 7.

[vi] Los Angeles Times, August 27, 1882, page 4 (“The readings of Mrs. Carr and Miss Nellie Elliott, the banjo solo of Geo. P. Clark, flute solo of Arturo BAndini and instrumental solo by Miss Freeman were also highly appreciated.”).

[vii] Los Angeles Herald, February 10, 1876, page 3 (“Mr. Arturo Bandini came near furnishing us yesterday with a brilliant accident.  His beautiful silver-mounted revolver got on a tear and insisted on shooting somebody.  The result was a charming bullet hole through his coat-sleeve, before the frisky firelock could be subdued.”).

[viii] Los Angeles Evening Express, July 26, 1876, page 3.

[ix] The Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1887, page 13.

[x] “Our Spanish American Families,” Helen Elliott Bandini, The Overland Monthly, Series 2, Volume 26, Number 151, July 1895, Page 22.

[xi] “Pioneer Spanish Families in California,” The Century Illustrated, Volume 51, Number 3, January 1891, page 379.

[xii] Los Angeles Herald, April 30, 1875, page 2 (“In this city, April 29^th, R. S. Baker to Mrs. Arcadia B. de Steaqrns, all of this city.  The couple left on the overland train for San Francisco.”).

[xiii] Los Angeles Evening Express, April 15, 1875, page 3 (“Mr. C. W. Moor, a gentleman who runs three banks in Idaho, went out to Santa Monica with Col. R. S. Baker yesterday.  He was delighted with that beautiful section, and was very anxious to purchase some property there.”).

[xiv] Los Angeles Evening Express, March 29, 1876, page 3 (Colonel R. S. Baker returned today from a visit to the Pico oil wells, which he owns and is now developing.  He has three wells there, and they have already been sunk to a depth of about one hundred and fifty feet.  One of these wells is now yielding at the rate of twelve barrels of very superior oil a day.”).

[xv] Los Angeles Herald, April 9, 1876, page 4 (“Los Angeles County Bank, President J. S. Slauson, Vice-President R. S. Baker.”).

[xvi] The Boston Globe, September 27, 1913, page 2.

[xvii] Arizona Republic, June 4, 1915, page 1.

[xviii] The Guardian (London), June 10, 2000, Saturday Review, page 10.

[xix] Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1931, part 2, page 3.

[xx] Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1883, page 4 (“Marriage licenses were issued yesterday to . . . Arturo Bandini and Nellie J. Elliott.”).

[xxi] The Indianapolis News, January 13, 1872, page 3.

[xxii] The Indianapolis News, February 10, 1872, page 3.

[xxiii] The Indianapolis News, April 3, 1872, page 3.

[xxiv] It is not clear whether Samuel Hunsucker, who sat on the financial committee, ever exercised his proxy – his Hunsucker proxy.

[xxv] The Brownstone Banner (Jackson County, Indiana), March 26, 1873, page 1 (“A portion of Vallonia Colony have already started for Kansas.  Success to them.”).

[xxvi] The Brownstone Banner (Jackson County, Indiana), July 30, 1873, page 5 (“Our claim of $4 against the Vallonia Colony still remains unpaid, with a very fair prospect that it will remain so indefinitely.”).

[xxvii] Los Angeles Times, November 2, 1888, page 3.

[xxviii] “Shorb-White Marriage at San Gabriel,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, 1894, page 3.

[xxix] J. Thomas Scharf, History of Western Maryland, 1898, page 591 (“The first students were John John Lilly, of Conewago, James Clements, of Littlestown, Rev. John Hickey, of Frederick, and Dr. James A. Shorb.”).

[xxx] The Washington Union (Washington DC), April 26, 1849, page 2.

[xxxi] J. P. Munro-Fraser, History of Marin County, California, San Francisco, Alley, Bowen, 1880, pages 197-199.

[xxxii] “Emmistburg: The Pivotal Crossroad of the Civil War,” John Allen Miller, Emmitsburg Area Historical Society. http://emmitsburg.net/archive_list/articles/history/civil_war/short_history_of_civil_way.htm

[xxxiii] San Francisco Chronicle, April 17, 1896, page 1.

[xxxiv] San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, 1894, page 3; according to a report on water rights in Southern California in the San Francisco Chronicle of August 15, 1886, page 2, J. De Barth Shorb still owned water rights from Piru Creek, together with a partner named William McKee, decades later.

[xxxv] San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, 1894, page 3; The Sacramento Bee, June 14, 1867, page 3 (“Marriages . . . In Los Angeles, June 4^th, J. De Barth Shorb to M. J. Wilson.”).

[xxxvi] Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1896, page 7.

[xxxvii] “Remember the Main Attractions of Old Tustin,” Benjamin Epstein, Los Angeles Times, September 1, 1994 (“Residents of the Hews House built in 1881 (350 South B St.) included Count Jaro von Schmidt, who hired boys to kill hummingbirds that he then stuffed for ladies’ hats.).

[xxxviii] “Past on Parade: The Man Behind the Valley Hunt Club,” Pasadena Daily News online, December 12, 2010. https://www.dailynews.com/2010/12/12/past-on-parade-the-man-behind-valley-hunt-club/

[xxxix] Los Angeles Times, August 29, 1887, page 5.

[xl] Los Angeles Herald, December 28, 1888, page 2.

[xli] The Rose Tree moved to York County, Pennsylvania in 1960, and still exists today, as the Rose Tree-Blue Mountain Hunt. https://www.rosetree-bluemountain.com/about_us

[xlii] Los Angeles Times, January 1, 1890, page 7.

[xliii] Los Angeles Times, January 1, 1892, page 7.

[xliv] “A Tournament of Roses,” Charles Frederick Holder, St. Nicholas, Volume 20, Number , March 1893, page 279.