1885 (1884)(1886)(1887)(1880-1890)(1890-1900)Table of Contents
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983, 1885 See Text
Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1885, See Text
Les Storrs Santa Monica Portrait of a City Yesterday and Today, Santa Monica Bank: Santa Monica, CA, 1974, 67 pp., 1904, 1901, 1885, 1877 See Text
Betty Lou Young Our First Century: The Los Angeles Athletic Club 1880-1980, LAAC Press: Los Angeles, California 1979, 176pp., 1885 See Text
Documents
Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp.
Chapter XXVI Our Literati
"[p, 337] Literary savants are a trifle sniffy about the contributions of our poblardores to the cause of literature. They say we have never produced the proper saga of the land and the soil. That most of our California fiction might have happened anywhere; that it is California only because the title reads so. It lacks the flavor of a home crop. If this be true, it is because the authors all came from somewhere else and are writing for people who live somewhere else.
"The outstanding name in Southern California literature is Helen Hunt Jackson [1830-1885], author of Ramona. She was a Colorado school-teacher who came here on a government commission to investigate the wrongs done the California Indians.
"A great many versions have been given of the birth of that novel. The one I believe was told to me by the woman who told Mrs. Jackson the story upon which she based the [p. 338] book. She was a Mrs. Jordan who lived in the town of San Jacinto-the scene of the novel. Mrs. Jackson had been gathering data relating to the burning of the Indian town of Temecula and was a house guest of Mrs. Jordan's. One morning as they were washing the breakfast dishes, Mrs. Jordan told her about the murder of an Indian named Juan Diego.
"Juan Diego was a little crazy and was married to a woman named Ramona Lubo. He was a Soboba Indian; she a Cahuilla. One day by mistake he took from the town hitching-post a horse belonging to a man named Sam Temple. Sam trailed his horse to Juan Diego's little hut on the edge of the reservation and when the Indian came running out to explain, shot him dead in his tracks. Nothing was done to Temple; killing an Indian was only an incident.
"From that little tragedy, Mrs. Jackson built Ramona. With a novelist's license she changed the simple Indian woman into the adopted daughter of a Spanish family. To get the proper atmospheric background she made a trip to the Camulos Ranch which she described exactly and in detail-even to the thorn bushes upon which Ramona tore the altar cloth. The elopement of Allesandro and Ramona she based on an incident that had been a skeleton in the closet of another Spanish family. In the real story, the Indian lover was brought back and whipped. Many of the data about California customs wre given to Helen Hunt Jackson by Don Antonio Coronel and his wife, who lived in an ancestral adobe house on East Adams Street.
"The author had no idea that Ramona was to be any great shakes. Quite the contrary, she expressed to her friends the fear that he had spoiled it as a story by putting in too much Indian propaganda.
"The Californians were not pleased with the book. The del Valles of the Camulos Ranch were furious because they [p. 339] thought her portrait of "Senora Moreno" was a reflection on their mother. Also they were scornful of her decision-for some unaccountable reason-to give her hero the Italian name Allesandro. The Spanish version of Alexander is Alejandro.
"[p. 339] Nevertheless, Ramona is still a best-seller after more than half- a century. Her tragic, bitter-sweet love story has been filmed three times in the movies and she has become a legend in the land. There are as many houses where Ramona is supposed to have been married as there are houses where George Washington slept. For the entire period of his life George Washington must have got up about once an hour and moved to a new house and a new bed. Inference would make of Ramona a female Brigham Young who married nearly everybody at one time or another.
"The real Ramona lived to be a very old woman and never quite understood what her fame was all about. It was enough for her that white people were willing to pay her twenty-five cents a shot for photographing her. She had a son named Condido Hopkins who is still living and periodically demands that he be paid some kind of royalty by the movies because his mother gave Helen Hunt Jackson inspiration for a novel. By an odd coincidence Mrs. Jackson selected the name from two women. At the burned-down Indian town of Temecula was a trader name Wolff who had a daughter named Ramone Wolff. The Indian woman's name was also Ramona Wolff-Ramona Lubo-lubo being the Spanish for wolf.
"Sam Temple lived on at San Jacinto for several years after the killing of Juan Diego but as the book became popular, he became uncomfortable under the accusing eyes of the tourists and moved away. He died a few years ago. Ramona is also dead. So far as I know none of the persons from whom Mrs. Jackson took the characters of Ramona [p. 340] are now living. The last one was Mrs. Jordan, who was "Aunt Rye" in the book.
"[p. 340] Take it all in all, Ramona is still the best transcription of life on the ranches of early California."
[Ramona's Home, Camulos Ranch, showing Century Plant in Bloom, California Post Card, A-33852 Published by Western Publishing & Novelty Co., Los Angeles, Cal., Theo. Sohmer, Los Angeles, Unused, Undated, JT, Postcards Adrift]
[The Ramona Pageant 1993 Postcard Ramona Pageant Association, 27400 Ramona Bowl Road, Hemet, CA 92344 KR 1993]
Ingersoll's Century History Santa Monica Bay Cities (Being Book Number Two of Ingersoll's Century Series of California Local History Annals), 1908, 1908a, 1885
[p. 167] Chapter III. From Town to City. 1880-1890.
The summer of 1885 was an unusually gay one at the beach. Hotels and cottages were all full and more than 200 tents were occupied on North Beach. Sunday excursions brought crowds and the annual encampment of the G.A.R. in August, added to the enrollment. The Catholic church, which had been [p. 168] begun in 1884, was completed in 1885. The population of the town had so increased that three teachers were employed and additional school room was necessary. During 1885 a free reading room was established by the ladies of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in August. This effort, which was begun by a few brave, hard-working women, gradually developed into a library and became the foundation of the present public library.
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[p. 244] Chapter VI South Santa Monica and Ocean Park
August 17th, 1885, Mr. and Mrs. Mooney started to drive to Los Angeles. While on the way, Mr. Mooney's pistol fell from his pocket and inflicted a mortal wound in his back. Later Mrs. Mooney married Col. A.B. Hotchkiss [ -1905], [p. 245] a well-known and brilliant attorney, who was for many years a Southern Pacific representative. He was also the editor of a magazine, Public Resources, which did some effective work in advertising the country. He died April 3rd, 1905. Col. and Mrs. Hotchkiss owned and, at times, occupied the Mooney Mansion until its destruction [1875-1904]. Many romantic tales have been set afloat upon the hill overlooking the ocean for so many years. Its burning was also mysterious-so mysterious that the insurance companies refused to pay up without a lawsuit.
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[p.267] In May, 1885, the first class graduated from the grammar grade department, under the county laws governing grammar grades. The Santa Monica schools were counted as of the grammar grade until 1891.
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[p. 269] School Trustees of Santa Monica
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[p. 292] Chapter VIII Churches and Societies: Catholic Church; Episcopal Church-Saint Augustine-By-The-Sea; Women's Christian Temperance Union; Grand Army of the Republic
. . . [p. 292] May 4th, 1884 when the Catholic church was opened for use, although it was not completed until the following year [1885]. On August 18th, 1885, the bell of the church was blessed and the church was dedicated.
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[p. 295] Chapter VIII Episcopal Church-Saint Augustine-By-The-Sea
. . . [p. 295] November, 1885 , . . services were regularly held and a Sunday school organized. At that time the Rev. Henry Scott Jefferys, of Los Angeles, was appointed by Bishop Kip as a missionary in charge of the work and at once proceeded to secure land and money for the erection of an Episcopal church. Senator Jones and Mrs. Baker donated two lots on Fourth street and an active building committee, consisting of Rev. Jefferys, Messrs. Baxter and Tomkinson, set to work to get the needed subscriptions. At the end of the first year of Mr. Jeffery's labors sixteen adults and twenty-two children were connected with the mission [1886].
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[p. 299] Chapter VIII Women's Christian Temperance Union
In the summer of 1885 a few earnest women, among whom was Mrs. Jane Austin, Miss Niles, Miss E.A. Dow, Mrs. I.D. Richmond, and others organized a W.C.T,U. in Santa Monica. These women felt that there was much need of their labors here as at that time there were a dozen saloons in the place. They took over the reading room which had been previously started in the hope of interesting the boys and the young people, and at once set about an earnest effort to support the reading room and library and to improve the moral tone of their beautiful town. They rented the lower room in the two-story frame building now owned by them on Third street. By means of soliciting subscriptions, giving suppers and dinners, socials and teas, and in many other ways which demanded the strength and time of the faithful workers, they managed to keep the reading room open and to add many books to those already collected. The early efforts that were made to keep the library and reading room up have been told in the history of the Santa Monica Public Library, of which this library was the foundation.
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[p. 303] Chapter VIII. Grand Army of the Republic
Fort Fisher Post G.A.R., No. 137, Department of California and Nevada, was organized in 1885. J.J. Mohen, H.M. Russell, J.W. Keith, G.T. Holford, J.L. Allen, R.P. Elliot, C.B. Fuller, Guy C. Manville, F.A. Westover, George Young, W.R. Waldron and Henry Gardner were the charter members of this post.
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[p. 328] Chapter XI Venice of America and Its Founder
In 1885 he [Abbot Kinney] was appointed chairman of the newly created board of forestry. Since that time Mr. Kinney has devoted much research and practical experimenting to the subject of forestry, particularly in its relation to the welfare of Southern California.
James W. Lunsford The Ocean and the Sunset, The Hills and the Clouds: Looking at Santa Monica, illustrated by Alice N. Lunsford, 1983, 1885
Ocean Park
"39. Haig House, 237 Beach Street, circa 1885. This small house, currently being restored and renovated, is undoubtedly one of the oldest residential structures in the city, although its exact age has not yet been established."
Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1885
"With Francis G. Ryan as a partner, Kinney purchased another tract of acreage south of Santa Monica. Although it was mostly sand dunes and swamp, the two men proposed to develop a resort there.
"They persuaded the Santa Fe railroad to extend a spur line onto the property and they built a pier, golf course, horse-racing track, boardwalk and other resort amenities on the northernmost edge of their holdings. The site was named Ocean Park in 1885 and the Kinney-Ryan team merchandized lots there for $100 apiece. The small resort slowly began to prosper.
Les Storrs Santa Monica Portrait of a City Yesterday and Today, Santa Monica Bank: Santa Monica, CA, 1974, 67 pp., 1904, 1901, 1885, 1877
"Roman Catholics had their first Mass in Santa Monica in 1877, . . . August 18, 1885 . . . the first St. Monica's dedicated . . . in downtown Santa Monica. Father Patrick Hawe* was pastor . . .
" . . . the Sisters of the Holy Names established the Academy of Holy Names . . . dedicated February 22, 1901 . . . at the corner of Third Street nd Arizona Avenue. St. Clement's, Ocean Park, was dedicated May 8, 1904, with Father Michael Hennesy* in charge."
Betty Lou Young Our First Century: The Los Angeles Athletic Club 1880-1980, LAAC Press: Los Angeles, California 1979, 176pp., 1885
"Tennis was already well-established. According to LAAC member Boyle Workman, the first court in the city (Los Angeles) was built on the grounds of the Childs mansion, and the first Southern California Lawn Tennis Association tournament was held in Santa Monica on the Casino courts in 1885. . . ."