Southern California from the first took an active part in State affairs. Edward Hunter and Charles E. Carr were the Assemblymen from this district in 1853; and the following year they were succeeded by Francis Mellus and Dr. Wilson W. Jones. Carr was a lawyer who had come in 1852; Hunter afterward succeeded Pablo de la Guerra as Marshal. Jones was the doctor who just about the time I came, while returning from a professional call at the Lugos at about sunset, nearly rode over the bleeding and still warm body of a cattle-buyer named Porter, on Alameda Street. The latter had been out to the Dominguez rancho, to purchase stock, and had taken along with him a Mexican named Manuel Vergara who introduced himself as an experienced interpreter and guide, but who was, in reality, a cutthroat with a record of one or two assassinations. Vergara observed that Porter possessed considerable money; and on their way back to Los Angeles shot the American from behind. Jones quickly gave the alarm; and Banning, Stanley and others of the volunteer mounted police pursued the murderer for eighty-five or ninety miles when, the ammunition of all parties being exhausted, Vergara turned on the one Vigilante who had caught up with him and, with an adroit thrust of his knife, cut the latter's bridle and escaped. In the end, however, some of Major Heintzelman's cavalry at Yuma (who had been informed by a fleet Indian hired to carry the news of the fugitive's flight) overtook Vergara and shot him dead. These volunteer police or Rangers, as they were called, were a company of one hundred or more men under command of Dr. A. W. Hope, and included such well-known early settlers as Nichols, J. G. Downey, S. C. Foster, Agustin Olvera, Juan Sepúlveda, Horace Bell, M. Keller, Banning, Benjamin Hayes, F. L. Guirado, David Alexander, J. L. Brent and I. S. K. Ogier.
Under the new order of things, too, following the adoption in 1849 of a State constitution, County organization in Los Angeles was effected; and by the time I declared myself for American citizenship, several elections had been held. Benjamin Hayes was District Judge in 1853; Agustin Olvera was finishing his term as County Judge; Dr. Wilson W. Jones was County Clerk and Recorder—two offices not separated for twenty years or until 1873; Lewis Granger was County Attorney; Henry Hancock was Surveyor; Francis Mellus (who succeeded Don Manuel Garfias, once the princely owner but bad manager of the San Pasqual rancho), was Treasurer; A. F. Coronel was Assessor; James R. Barton was Sheriff and also Collector of Taxes; and J. S. Mallard, whose name was given to Mallard Street, was Coroner. Russell Sackett was a Justice of the Peace here when I arrived; and after a while Mallard had a court as Justice, near my store on Commercial Street. All in all, a group of rather strong men!
The administrative officials of both the City and the County had their headquarters in the one-story adobe building at the northwest corner of Franklin Alley (later called Jail Street[1]) and Spring Street. In addition to those mentioned, there was a Justice of the Peace, a Zanjero, and a Jailer. António Franco Coronel had but recently succeeded Nichols as Mayor; A. S. Beard was Marshal and Tax Collector; Judge William G. Dryden was Clerk; C. E. Carr was Attorney; Ygnácio Coronel was Assessor; and S. Arbuckle was Treasurer.
António Franco Coronel, after whom Coronel Street is named, had just entered upon the duties of Mayor, and was busy enough with the disposal of donation lots when I first commenced to observe Los Angeles' government. He came from Mexico to California with his father, Don Ygnácio F. Coronel; and by 1850 he was the first County Assessor. He lived at what is now Alameda and Seventh streets, and had a brother, Manuel, who was City Assessor in 1858.
Major Henry Hancock, a New Hampshire lawyer and surveyor, came to Los Angeles in 1852, and at the time of my arrival had just made the second survey of the city, defining the boundaries of the thirty-five-acre City lots. I met him frequently, and by 1859 I was well acquainted with him. He then owed Newmark, Kremer & Company some money and offered, toward liquidation of the debt, one hundred and ten acres of land lying along Washington and extending as far as the present Pico Street. It also reached from Main Street to what is now Grand Avenue. Newmark, Kremer & Company did not wish the land, and so arranged with Hancock to take firewood instead. From time to time, therefore, he brought great logs into town, to be cut up; he also bought a circular saw, which he installed, with horse-power and tread-mill, in a vacant lot on Spring Street, back of Joseph Newmark's second residence. The latter was on Main Street, between First and the northern junction of Main and Spring; and between this junction and First Street, it may be interesting to note, there was in 1853 no thoroughfare from Main to Spring. As I was living there, I acted as his agent for the sale of the wood that was left after our settlement. The fact is that Hancock was always land poor, and never out of debt; and when he was particularly hard up, he parted with his possessions at whatever price they would bring. The Major (earlier known as Captain Hancock, who enjoyed his titles through his association with the militia) retained, however, the celebrated La Brea rancho—bought at a very early date from A. J. Rocha, and lying between the city and the sea—which he long thought would furnish oil, but little dreamt would also contain some of the most important prehistoric finds; and this ranch, once managed by his wife, a daughter of Colonel Augustin Haraszthy, the San Francisco pioneer, is now owned by his son, George Allan Hancock.
George Hansen, to whose far-reaching foresight we owe the Elysian Park of to-day, was another professional man who was here before I reached Los Angeles, having come to California in 1850, by way of Cape Horn and Peru. When he arrived at Los Angeles, in 1853, as he was fond of recounting, he was too poor to possess even surveying instruments; but he found a friend in John Temple, who let him have one hundred dollars at two per cent interest per month, then a very low rate. Thereupon Hansen sent to San Francisco for the outfit that enabled him to establish himself. I met Hansen for the first time in the last few weeks of 1853, when he came to my brother's store to buy a suit of clothes, his own being in rags. He had been out, very probably, on an expedition such as subjected a surveyor, particularly in the early days, to much hard work and fatigue. Hansen, a good student and fine linguist, was prominent for many years and made more land measurements hereabouts than did any one else; he had the real management, in fact, of Hancock's second survey.
Among others who were here, I might mention the Wheeler brothers. Colonel John Ozias Wheeler, at various times an office-holder, came to California from Florida, and having endured many hardships on the trip along the Mississippi, Arkansas and Gila rivers, arrived at the Chino rancho on August 12th, 1849, afterward assisting Isaac Williams in conveying a train of supplies back to the Colorado River. The next year he was joined by his brother, Horace Z. Wheeler, who came by way of the Isthmus, and later rose to be Appraiser-General of the Imperial Customs at Yokohama; and the two young men were soon conducting a general merchandise business in Los Angeles—if I recollect aright, in a one-story adobe at the northeast corner of Main and Commercial streets. Extravagant stories have been printed as to Wheeler's mercantile operations, one narrative crediting him with sales to the extent of five thousand dollars or more a day. In those times, however, no store was large enough to contain such a stock; and two successive days of heavy sales would have been impossible. In 1851 Colonel Wheeler, who