Fixing TC's Broken History

By Rees Clark '60

Though I can't place the source, I think that the material presented below has been around for decades. I may even have read parts of it in high school - weeks and weeks ago. And a lot of it is just plain wrong!

Now I'm not a historian, but I did go to school. There are impossible combinations of dates, routes and geography. There's no real understanding of the cultures that made up early California. Bad history bugs me, as it's source material for false history, which is the fodder of animosity, racism and conflict. I'd rather see my home town avoid all those.

Rather than a historical narrative, the writer's style evokes a combination of real estate pamphlets and Ramona. (Published in 1884, Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson tells the story of the daughter of the local California ranchero and her doomed love for Alessandro the Indian boy. Depending on your age, right now your mind is conjuring up images of Gene Tierney or Catherine Zeta-Jones, those typical "Spanish girls" who were present in abundance in "early California.")

Looking around the 'net, I've found little else to replace this piece, which to be fair is about 90 percent useful and ten percent drivel. But the drivel is not just inaccurate, it's harmful. It suggests that that's all that's known, and it covers up some issues that concern Temple City today as its role in California society changes.

So I have a modest suggestion, which I'll tell you about after you read the brief "History of Temple City" that the world now thinks is about YOU.

History of Temple City Anon. (Quelle surprise!) (History of TC? Well, sorta... What can you add or correct?) The town of Temple was founded on May 30, 1923 when approximately 285 acres of land were purchased by land developer Walter P. Temple. A one-year celebration for the Town of Temple took place in September 1924 with a rodeo and became officially designated as Temple City in 1928. Behind the story of the proud family bearing the name of Temple lies the romance of missions and ranchos, the gallantry of the pioneering dons and beautiful senoritas and indeed the history of the San Gabriel Valley down to the derivation of many of the street names in Temple City. Temple was the son of Pliny Fisk Temple who was born in Reading, Middlesex County, Massachusetts on February 12, 1822. He was a descendant of Abraham Temple who had landed in Salem from England in 1636. Pliny's eldest brother, Jonathan, or Don Juan as he became known in Alta, California, sailed around the Horn, visited the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands and finally landed in San Diego in 1826. A year later he had established himself as the first merchant of the Pueblo de Los Angeles in an adobe building at the intersection of what is now Spring and Main Streets. He later built the first important buildings there, including a market, a theater and the courthouse. The writer meant Alta California (Upper California) - the historic name for everything north of the Gulf of California. Spelling and punctuation count in history. (There is an Alta, California. It's a hamlet off Interstate 80 about 30 miles east of Auburn. Perhaps Don Juan was headed to Squaw Valley for a little skiing.) At home in Reading, Pliny attended the public school until he reached the age of 17. He then took a two-year mercantile course in Boston. Letters from Jonathan no doubt prompted him to ask his mother for permission to visit his brother in California. As the voyage took six months each way, his mother granted him two years' leave. Pliny embarked on the American brig Tasso - a vessel of 314 tons burden with Captain Sam J. Hastings as master on January 18, 1841. The Tasso arrived in Monterey on June 26 of the same year with a cargo valued at $15,000 and a customs duty of $16,000 to be paid, which demonstrates how high the percentage of profit was in those days. Traveling over land on horseback, Pliny arrived at the Pueblo de Los Angeles. It was 30 years later before he returned to Reading, long after his mother had died. In 1841 the Workman-Rowland party arrived in Los Angeles from Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was then part of old Mexico. The party was the first immigrant caravan to travel the trade route to Southern California. Trade caravans, which ran from Santa Fe to Los Angeles and back in the early '30s, were the only land connection Los Angeles had with the East. The Workman-Rowland expedition brought rugs, blankets and other native goods from Santa Fe. Workman and Rowland did not make the trip for commercial reasons; however, they intended to settle in the San Gabriel Valley with their families. Plausible so far, and then... William Workman was an Englishman by birth. In 1823 he had met John Rowland at Taos, New Mexico and took him as a partner. Rowland had traveled over land from Maryland in search of adventure. His British parents had come to America before the Revolution. He emigrated first to New Mexico and ran a fur trading post and flour mill at Taos. Both Workman and Rowland married Spanish girls. During the revolution in Texas, they were forced to flee with their families in fear of their lives. Ah, yes, those alluring Spanish girls - irresistible, they. I saw one once, in a movie, played by Hedi Lamarr I think. In fact, there were probably few if any Spanish-born residents of early California. Some but by no means all of the Franciscan missionaries, some but by no means all of the soldiers and a tiny minority of the agricultural population were Spanish. Most of the non-Native population consisted of Mexican farmers who had been conscripted or bribed to move to the wilds of Alta California, far from civilized life. They had heard of a fair land in the west and came to see it. The weather was good all the way, and they traveled from 15 to 20 miles a day. They followed the old Chihuahua Trail through Silver City, Yuma and Palm Springs, west of the Salton Sea to Indio and through the Cajon Pass. The journey covered 1,200 miles. Wellll... (1) One assumes the travel guide was being paid by the mile. This circuitous route as described makes no sense to anyone who owns a map. (2) Cajon Pass? It lies perpendicular to the route of travel and provides no access to the Imperial Valley areas listed. He meant San Gorgonio Pass, of course; he just didn't look it up. (3) Salton Sea? Maybe in their dreams. The Salton Sea was formed during a flood in 1904. The Salton Depression had been an arid wasteland for hundreds of years, though there was a small, temporary lake formed by heavy rains in 1840. The name Salton Sea most likely originated as a real estate promotion in the twentieth century and would have been unknown to Workman et al. (4) Indio was founded in 1876. Prescient of them to have visited it in 1840, wasn't it? The party, which arrived in California, consisted of persons, including riders at the head, scouts and roustabouts with pack animals, herds of cattle and covered wagons. After leading his friends to beautiful San Gabriel Valley, Rowland and his friend Benito Wilson petitioned the Spanish government at Monterey for some of the San Gabriel Mission lands. Rowland and Workman were granted the La Puente site of 48,000 acres where they built a rancho home and settled down. They paid a sum of gold and promised to care for the Indians already living on the land in accordance with an agreement to the San Gabriel Missions priests and the governor. In fact, the Spanish empire abandoned California at the end of the Mexican War of Independence (1810-22). By the 1840s the Mexican provincial government was split between military affairs in Monterey and civic affairs both there and in Los Angeles. Whereas the Spanish government would never have given away church land, the mission lands had been expropriated by the Mexican government as punishment for 300 years of collusion between the church and the land-owning class of Spanish colonial Mexico. Most land titles in Temple City contain the phrase "Ex-mission San Gabriel..." as the original recorded owner. No agreement with the mission priests would have been expected or required by the Mexican government. In any event, the proof is in the pudding. I defy any reader to defer his next meal on a Temple City street while awaiting the arrival of a Gabrieleño Indian, well cared for or otherwise. Romantic nonsense! William Workman became acquainted with Pliny Fisk Temple who married Workman's daughter. Pliny had been baptized in the Catholic faith at San Gabriel Mission a short time before taking the Christian name of Francisco P. F. Temple. In 1850, "Templito" or "Little Temple" as Pliny had been nicknamed by the natives because of his five foot four inch height was granted the Las Merced Rancho 12 miles east of Los Angeles where he made his home. Here he planted a vineyard of 30,000 vines, set 30 acres of fruit trees and laid out a beautiful garden. This was the site of the original San Gabriel Mission founded by the Franciscan Fathers next to the rich bottom lands of the San Gabriel River called "Rio de los Temblores" or river of the earthquakes. During the years at La Merced, 11 children were born to Pliny and his wife; the 10th child was Walter P. Temple. On April 27, 1880, Francisco Pliny Fisk Temple died. He was buried in the family burial ground at La Puente, which was laid out by Workman before his death in 1876. Other pioneers, including Don Pio Pico, last Mexican governor of California, and members of the immediate Temple family also are buried there. On November 28, 1903, Walter Temple married Laurenz Rosalez, a member of an early Spanish California family it has been said was related to half the residents of San Gabriel. Some years later, Walter Temple participated in the purchase of 400 acres of land four miles east of San Gabriel which had been part of Lucky Baldwin's vast Rancho Santa Anita. He envisioned a community where people of medium income could afford to live and own their homes. This is the only reference to a Laurenz Rosalez I can find on the Internet. Either it's spelled wrong (the name does not have the characteristics of a female Spanish name; it is perhaps a Spanish-style compound surname reflecting a German (American?) father and Hispanic mother), or no corroborating document has been digitized. The only Rosalez results for California are contemporary. This is the only online reference I found linking the name "Laurenz" to "early California." Here's another term paper for someone. See the references for leads on early California families, who were few in number and fewer in name. The maximum population of non-Natives under the Spanish empire was estimated at less than 4,000 in 1820. In any event, "old" California families had only been around since 1771, the year of the establishment of Mission San Gabriel Arcangel, or 1781, the founding of El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciúncula (now a suburb of modern Temple City). However, (Hollywood again) it has made a better story for the folks back in New England to marry Spanish heiresses than local Mexican girls, whichever really happened. He laid out the park facing Las Tunas Drive and named other streets after those close and dear to the family such as Workman, Kauffman, Temple, Agnes, etc. Bond issues instigated by Temple were responsible for street paving and electrification. Temple also petitioned the Pacific Electric Railway Company to extend its Los Angeles to Alhambra line to a depot in the park. Present residents and merchants attribute the steady growth of Temple City to his foresight in bringing about the connection. It seems worth mentioning that the PE's Red Cars remained in service until about 1956, long enough for early alumni of TCHS to have ridden them to exotic locales like Alhambra and Lincoln Heights. My last trip was with my friend Erik; we rode it to Alhambra - where the cool folks shopped in 1956. He bought a jacket. The article's understatement is huge; Temple's solicitation of the Red Cars enabled the development of Temple City, which would otherwise been farmland between El Monte and Pasadena, at least until WWII. In 1926 the town officially was designated Temple City but remained a city in name only until after the post-war population explosion. The voters approved incorporation of the community on May 25, 1960. The contemporary "City of Temple City" includes areas that are also associated with El Monte, Rosemead, San Gabriel, San Marino, Pasadena and Arcadia, and whose residents attend schools in those communities. The school district and the city are not conterminous. OR, this happened in 1928 as he reported at the top of the article. Friends, I'm not a picky person. These are the obvious ones from the first pass. Grade: D.

So what do I suggest?

Remember the bionic man? Well, your alumni association has the technology; we can fix it.

Our Internet host has a client called The History Project (THP). The gist of it is that historical societies can have their own family of web sites, each in support of a particular theme or author and all generally connected by a reference directory.

I propose simply that interested persons write and rewrite the history of Temple City. Notice that I didn't capitalize The History. I think that all the stories of the town should be told. We'll happily re-publish selected items here that are of alumni interest. (Wanna write the unauthorized biography of that teacher you remember?)

THP charges a fee for support of a web site; it's $95. What I propose is that the alumni find sponsors for the project. A local business could sponsor a "historian" to write about the business or any other topic. I think each sponsor's donation should be around $300. The sponsor's name and link would appear in the sponsor directory and a banner ad would accompany the article and appear elsewhere in the history site. Here's what I'd do with the rest of the money. First, I recommend a writer's stipend, say $100, payable mostly upon delivery; the writer will need Internet access and some walking-around change. The rest could go to TCHS Alumni Dollars for Scholars™. This is a perfect activity for high school history, civics and English students.

What does the association get out of it? We get a commission on the web sites. This operation is not costless.

Who should run it? My first recommendation would be a history teacher at TCHS or perhaps a graduate student looking for the most meaningful Ed.D. thesis they could ever do.

The timing could not be better. The TC school district is about to embark on a year of celebrating its first fifty years. IHMO, collecting the definitive history of the community would do more to mark the event than all the chicken dinners one could count.

Experience suggests you'll have some improvements or a better idea. So I've turned the comments on.

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