Among the distinguished citizens of Los Angeles whose residences added to the social prestige of the neighborhood was Don Ygnácio Del Valle, father of R. F. Del Valle. Until 1861, he resided on the east side of the square, in a house between Calle de los Negros and Olvera Street, receiving there his intimate friends as well as those who wished to pay him their respects when he was Alcalde, Councilman and member of the State Legislature. In 1861, Del Valle moved to his ranch, Camulos. Ygnácio Coronel was another eminent burgher residing on the east side of the Plaza, while Cristóbal Aguilar's home faced the South.
Not far from Del Valle's—that is, back of the later site of the Pico House, between the future Sanchez Street and Calle de los Negros—lived Don Pio Pico, then and long after a striking figure, not merely on account of his fame as the last of the Mexican governors, but as well because of his physique and personality. I may add that as long as he lived, or at least until the tide of his fortune turned and he was forced to sell his most treasured personal effects, he invariably adorned himself with massive jewelry of much value; and as a further conceit, he frequently wore on his bosom Mexican decorations that had been bestowed upon him for past official services. Don Pio really preferred country life at the Ranchito, as his place was called; but official duties and, later, illness and the need of medical care, kept him in town for months at a time. He had three sisters, two of whom married in succession José António Carrillo, another resident at the Plaza and the then owner of the site of the future Pico House; while the third was the wife of Don Juan Forster, in whose comfortable home Don Pio found a retreat when distressing poverty overtook him in old age. Sanchez Street recalls still another don of the neighborhood, Vicente Sanchez, grandfather of Tomás A. Sanchez, who was domiciled in a two-story and rather elaborate dwelling near Carrillo, on the south side of the Plaza. Sanchez Hall stood there until the late seventies.
The Beau Brummel of Los Angeles in the early fifties was Don Vicente Lugo, whose wardrobe was made up exclusively of the fanciest patterns of Mexican type; his home, one of the few two-story houses in the pueblo, was close to Ygnácio Del Valle's. Lugo, a brother of Don José María, was one of the heavy taxpayers of his time; as late as 1860, he had herds of twenty-five hundred head of cattle, or half a thousand more than Pio and Andrés Pico together owned. María Ballestero, Lugo's mother-in-law, lived near him.
Don Agustin Olvera dwelt almost opposite Don Vicente Lugo's, on the north side of the Plaza, at the corner of the street perpetuating his name. Don Agustin arrived from Mexico, where he had been Juez de Paz, in 1834, or about the same time that Don Ygnácio Coronel came, and served as Captain in the campaign of Flores against Frémont, even negotiating peace with the Americans; then he joined Dr. Hope's volunteer police, and was finally chosen, at the first election in Los Angeles, Judge of the First Instance, becoming the presiding officer of the Court of Sessions. Five or six years later, he was School Commissioner. He had married Doña Concepción, one of not less than twenty-two children of Don Santiago Arguello, son of a governor of both Californias, and his residence was at the northeast end of the Plaza, in an adobe which is still standing. There, while fraternizing with the newly-arrived Americans, he used to tell how, in 1850, when the movement for the admission of California as a State was under way, he acted as secretary to a meeting called in this city to protest against the proposal, fearing lest the closer association with Northern California would lead to an undue burden of taxes upon the South. Olvera Street is often written by mistake, Olivera.
Francisco O'Campo was another man of means whose home was on the east side of the Plaza. Although he was also a member of the new Ayuntamiento, inaugurated in 1849, and although he had occupied other offices, he was very improvident, like so many natives of the time, and died, in consequence, a poor man. In his later years, he used to sit on the curbstone near the Plaza, a character quite forlorn, utterly dejected in appearance, and despondently recalling the by-gone days of his prosperity.
Don Cristóbal Aguilar, several times in his career an Alcalde, several times a City Councilman beginning with the first organization of Los Angeles, and even twice or thrice Mayor, was another resident near the Plaza. His adobe on upper Main Street was fairly spacious; and partly, perhaps, for that reason, was used by the Sisters of Charity when they instituted the first hospital in Los Angeles.
A short distance from the Plaza, on Olvera Street, had long stood the home of Don José María Ábila, who was killed in battle in the early thirties. It was there that Commodore Stockton made his headquarters, and the story of how this was brought about is one of the entertaining incidents of this warlike period. The widow Ábila, who had scant love for the Americans, had fled with her daughters to the home of Don Luis[7] Vignes, but not before she placed a native boy on guard, cautioning him against opening either doors or windows. When the young custodian, however, heard the flourishes of Stockton's brass band, he could not resist the temptation to learn what the excitement meant; so he first poked his head out of a window, and finally made off to the Plaza. Some of Stockton's staff, passing by, and seeing the tasteful furniture within, were encouraged to investigate, with the result that they selected the widow Ábila's house for Stockton's abode. Another Ábila—Francisco—had an adobe at the present southeast corner of San Fernando and Alpine streets.
Francisca Gallardo, daughter of one of the Sepúlvedas, lived in the vicinity of the Plaza.
The only church in Los Angeles at this time was that of Nuestra Señora la Reyna de los Angeles, known as Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels, at the Plaza; and since but few changes were made for years in its exterior, I looked upon the edifice as the original adobe built here in the eighties of the preceding century. When I came to inquire into the matter, however, I was astonished to learn that the Church dated back no farther than the year 1822, although the first attempt at laying a corner-stone was made in 1815, probably somewhat to the east of the old Plaza and a year or two after rising waters frustrated the attempt to build a chapel near the river and the present Aliso Street. Those temporary foundations seem to have marked the spot where later the so-called Woman's Gun—once buried by Mexicans, and afterward dug up by women and used at the Battle of Dominguez Ranch—was long exposed to view, propped up on wooden blocks. The venerable building I then saw, in which all communicants for want of pews knelt on the floor or stood while worshiping, is still admired by those to whom age and sacred tradition, and the sacrifices of the early Spanish Fathers, make appeal. In the first years of my residence here, the bells of this honored old pile, ringing at six in the morning and at eight in the evening, served as a curfew to regulate the daily activities of the town.
Had Edgar Allan Poe lived in early Los Angeles, he might well have added to his poem one more stanza about these old church bells, whose sweet chimes, penetrating the peace and quiet of the sleepy village, not alone summoned the devout to early mass or announced the time of vespers, but as well called many a merchant to his day's labor and dismissed him to his home or the evening's rendezvous. That was a time of sentiment and romance, and the memory of it lingers pleasantly in contrast with the rush and bustle of to-day, when cold and chronometrical exactitude, instead of a careless but, in its time, sufficient measure of the hours, arranged the order of our comings and our goings.
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