The California Hundred

Source: San Francisco Call, 1 May 1898, chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

Though far removed from the grand battles and events of the Civil War in the East, California was not devoid of its own heroes in the great conflict. The California Hundred, officially Company A of the 2^nd Massachusetts Cavalry, part of the California Battalion consisting of four additional companies, brought glory to the State of California, earned a reputation for hard fighting and bravery, and gained the respect of the famous Confederate cavalry raider John Singleton Mosby, to whom the Californians proved to be formidable adversaries. Though geographically distant, California was by no means a stable Union stronghold. It was only after a heated debate that California had become a free state, and Southern-sympathizing Democrats had recently gained clout in the state. Confederate forces were liable to strike out from Texas, and the southern half of the New Mexico Territory, which included Arizona, was effectively a Confederate territory. Trouble with the Mormons were liable to flare up, Indian disturbances were a constant threat, and communications with San Francisco, and thus the Army and Naval forces in the state, were not to be taken for granted. Amidst these varying threats California offered some 17,000 volunteers, a respectable number for a young and distant state, which were organized into state militias and assumed the duties of regular army regiments which were to be transported to the fighting in the East.

With most Californians hailing from states now directly involved in the war, it was not surprising that many would seek a more active role in the war than skirmishing with Indians or chasing down rebels escaping California to the South. So it was that a number of easterners arranged with the Governor of Massachusetts to raise a force of Californians who would fight as Massachusetts soldiers, filling a part of the state’s quota of army troops. In October of 1862 the first of five companies which would constitute the California Battalion of the 2^nd Mass. Cavalry was formed, with one hundred skilled horsemen selected out of five hundred volunteers in three weeks; the California Hundred. Abraham Loane, veteran of the California Hundred, described the company’s celebrated departure from San Francisco to the tune of “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” in which the residents, for lack of flowers, joyously pelted their departing heroes with such a volley of oranges that Loane doubted the company “ever got under a heavier charge of bullets than that rain of fruit,” in an 1898 edition of the San Francisco Call:

“When our one hundred volunteers for the war formed at the corner of Bush and Kearny streets on the day of departure they were a brave looking lot of men and San Francisco was justly proud of them. The line of march was down Kearny street to Market, from Market to Second street, then to Folsom street, thence to the ferry, and every inch of the way was packed with the people who had come to wish us “Godspeed.” We had no fine, broad avenues to march on and the fluttering flags formed the only decorations, but enthusiasm was at a fever pitch. Oh, the cheering and waving of handkerchiefs. I can hear and see them still.”

Arriving in Massachusetts in January of 1863 under Captain J. Sewell Reed, and joined three months later by Companies E, L, F, and M, forming the California battalion, the Hundred first saw combat at South Anna Bridge in Virginia, where they charged across a stream and fortifications to Captain Reed’s cry of “Boys, remember California!” and captured 123 Confederates. Subsequently shadowing J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry at Gettysburg, thereafter the Hundred, and the Battalion as a whole, was engaged in a series of running battles with Mosby’s Raiders, the daring cavalry force which raised hell among Union troops in Virginia with such effect that the region was becoming known as “Mosby’s Confederacy.” Mosby and his men had a decided advantage, knowing the land, having a friendly civilian populace to support them, and being much more experienced in guerilla warfare. However, the Californians were excellent horsemen and made up in courage anything they lacked in experience. In some battles Mosby’s men came out on top, as when Captain Reed was killed in a surprise attack at Dranesville; in others, it was the Californians who were victorious, including an encounter at Coyle’s Tavern where Mosby himself was struck by two bullets and taken out of the war for several months to heal. Mosby later wrote of these adversaries that he “considered the Californians the most formidable” of all his opponents. The Californians were engaged in this chase of Mosby’s Raiders, as well as White’s Partisan Rangers and the 7^th Virginia Cavalry, for a year from the summer of 1863 to the summer of 1864.

The Californians subsequently found themselves attached to a cavalry force equal to Mosby’s Raiders in fame and skill in General Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah, as a part of which they took part in Sheridan’s glorious victory at Winchester, where the grandfather and namesake of a future famous Californian, Confederate Colonel George S. Patton, was killed. Fighting almost continuously in this last, hard stretch of the war in Virginia, including a difficult raid on Richmond’s communications, the Californians were present at Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9^th, 1865, and took part in the grand review of the army in Washington D.C. before being mustered out and returning to California as heroes to a state, with important roles yet to play in the development of California and national influence yet to wield through the massive political influence of Civil War veterans, notably through the Grand Army of the Republic.

An 1898 article by Winfield J. Davis in the Record-Union fittingly concludes:

“In the three years of service the ‘Hundred’ and ‘Battalion’ participated in some fifty engagements. Their valor belongs to California, though the standard under which they fought was that of Massachusetts. They took with them the Bear Flag, but were not permitted to carry it, yet they were identified and known among the commands with which they served as ‘the Californians’ – and a brave lot they were.”

Sources:

• The Record-Union, 3 July 1898, chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
• San Francisco Call, 2 may, 1898, chroniclingamerica.loc.gov
• http://www.militarymuseum.org/2ndMassCav.html

Lincoln Shrine, Redlands

“I should esteem myself very highly honored and especially favored if I might be able to introduce this immortal personage.” ~ Robert Watchorn

Through the 1920s and ‘30s many American cities saw the construction of structures, monuments, and shrines which epitomized the flourishing patriotism and civic pride of the era. Many took the form of memorials to the victorious dead of the First World War with some, such as the Los Angeles Coliseum, becoming landmarks in their own right. One such monument, the Lincoln Memorial Shrine, is located in Redlands on the grounds of the A. K. Smiley Library, itself a worthy architectural feat. Housing the largest collection of Lincoln artifacts and memorabilia west of the Mississippi and a considerable library of books and manuscripts to boot, it is also a respectable example of monumental architecture, paling in grandeur in comparison to the massive shrines of the east, but no less worthy a memorial to one of the greatest of Americans for that. Bearing expertly designed exhibits within, and shaded grounds without marked by fountains and benches from which to contemplate, as was the intent of the shrine’s founder, the Great Emancipators words, carved into the shrine’s walls in the Roman-style lettering popular in the day, it is a fitting tribute by California to the president who had expressed a desire to visit the far western state, but had his opportunity to do so cut short.

The originator of the shrine’s concept and funder of its initial construction was Robert Watchorn, an English-born immigrant to the United States who had started working in the coal mines of his home town of Alfreton, Derbyshire, at the age of eleven in the 1860s. Deprived by circumstance of a formal education, he attended night school while working days in the coal mines, and continued throughout his life to develop his mind and fortune with the resolve and vigor characteristic of the self-made men of his era. Arriving at Ellis Island at the age of twenty-two with a mere ten dollars to his name, he found himself again at work in the coal mines, this time in Pennsylvania, where he earned a meager salary and, living off an even more meager third of that salary, saved another third in a bank and sent the rest home to his family in England. Poor though he was, he eventually had his parents and eight siblings brought from England and initially served as their sole means of support. As he continued to work in the mines in order to support himself and his family, save for the future, and attend evening classes in a continued attempt to better himself, he additionally found time to become involved in the growing movement to improve the pitiable lot of coal miners in the United States. Working his way up from a local organization member to a national leader, not above risking his own life to save miners trapped following an explosion, his reputation earned him a position as a factory inspector in Pennsylvania. Watchorn became a casualty of the spoils system when a new governor was elected, and took the best job his patron, former Governor Emory Pattison, could secure for him, that of an immigration inspector, with pay of $5 per day. Though he had risen from the coal mines, he was not a wealthy man. In this new position he once again distinguished himself, working by his philosophy to “do one thing at a time, and so well that any other man will find it extremely difficult to do better.” In 1905 he was appointed immigration commissioner at Ellis Island by President Theodore Roosevelt, in which capacity he earned his fame for his fairness towards European immigrants, being honored by the King of Italy and the Pope for his works.

Source: Lincoln Shrine pamphlet

In 1909 Watchorn left the public sector, his services not having been retained by President Taft, and he subsequently took a position as a director and treasurer of the Union Oil Company, which brought him to California. From this position he was able to move into the field on his own, establishing the Watchorn Gas and Oil Company, and finally striking it rich through oil speculation in Oklahoma. Watchorn had long since developed a deep admiration for the nation which had provided him with such opportunities, which he expressed in an interview given to Success Magazine in 1905: “I am glad I migrated to the land of opportunity. When I returned to England for the Queen’ s Jubilee, and the procession was passing through the streets of London, someone unfurled from a window a big American flag. Nothing else in all the glittering pageant thrilled me as did that sight of ‘Old Glory’ waving in the sunlight above those British heads. My small son, as stalwart a little American as ever lived, jumped to his feet when he saw it and called out, in a shrill treble that was heard for yards around, ‘There it is, father; there it is!’” Quite a different attitude from that in vogue with certain elements of the population of Southern California these days, when the national anthem is booed by immigrants in Los Angeles during a U.S.-Mexico soccer match.

Together with his son Emory, Robert developed a strong interest in and respect for Abraham Lincoln, and amassed a respectable collection of books and artifacts related to him, which would later become the core of the Shrine’s collection. Emory, who was quick to volunteer when the United States entered World War I, went into aviation and joined a unit of American volunteers in the Italian Royal Air Force, under the command of future Mayor of New York Fiorello La Guardia (who had worked under Robert at Ellis Island), fighting on the Austrian Front. The harsh conditions of winter in the vicinity of the Alps led to Emory falling seriously ill from pneumonia. Though he recovered, returned to California at the war’s end, and worked for his father’s company in Oklahoma, he fell ill again and contracted blood poisoning, dying in 1921. Though deeply aggrieved at the loss of their only surviving son (a previous son had died before reaching the age of three), Robert and his wife, Alma Jessica Simpson, chose to memorialize their son through philanthropy. Numerous churches throughout the Los Angeles area bear elements funded by Watchorn in Emory’s name, while Robert’s generosity reached back across the Atlantic to fund numerous civic improvements in his old home of Alfreton. However, one of his most enduring monuments to his son’s memory was his decision to fund a shrine to the man both he and his son had admired, Abraham Lincoln.

Source: Wikimedia

Watchorn chose as the location for this shrine the city of Redlands, which he had moved to in the 1920s and found to be a beautiful city with a cultured citizenry, a fitting location for such a monument inhabited by people he felt sure would be able custodians of it. Unlike numerous older Southern California towns or cities, Redlands has managed to retain a respectable portion of this old respectability in the area immediately surrounding the Lincoln Shrine, particularly in the form of a substantial remainder of old Victorian homes stretching to the south and west, a few still surrounded by the old orange groves which so characterized the region. The city of Redlands provided the land for the proposed shrine, while Watchorn provided $60,000 for its construction. For this purpose he enlisted the services of one of Los Angeles’ more venerable architects, Elmer Grey of Pasadena. A native of Lincoln’s home state, Grey was born in Chicago in 1872 and was educated and began his career in Wisconsin, where he helped design the spectacular Milwaukee Central Library. However, poor health as a result of stress led him to seek out the milder climate and atmosphere of Southern California, Catalina Island in particular. Working at a ranch and later an orchard in hopes of restoring his strength through strenuous work in fine Calvinist-inspired Eighteenth Century American fashion, he eventually came into contact with a fellow Midwestern architect, Myron Hunt, who lured Grey out of convalescence to form a partnership in 1904. The firm of Hunt and Grey gained renown through the design of mansions for wealthy clients in the area, notably the massive home of railroad magnate Henry Huntington, now the architectural centerpiece of the Huntington Library, the Valley Hunt Clubhouse, exclusive headquarters of the social club which founded the Tournament of Roses, and an expansion to Riverside’s famous Mission Inn. The partnership ended in 1913, but both men continued to have stellar careers, designing many of the most notable structures in Pasadena and the Los Angeles area at large. For Grey this included the Beverley Hills Hotel and several grand churches for the Church of Christ, Scientist. The Lincoln Shrine, designed in 1932, came at the end of Grey’s architectural career, and a fitting end it was, though he would live until 1963.

The central octagon, made of Indiana limestone, featuring quotations by Lincoln carved into the exterior, is the original element of the shrine. Though they were planned, the two wings were not completed as the Great Depression depleted Watchorn’s funds. Instead, two patio extensions were created, featuring the fountain still present, suitable for contemplation of the life and accomplishments of Lincoln. Watchorn died in 1944, his plans for the shrine still incomplete, which they would remain until 1998, when funds were raised for an expansion of the two wings, featuring the same limestone construction and style. The shrine remains a shining example of the style and spirit of its age, and found a welcome reception among the people of that age when, in 1940, local Boy Scouts began a tradition which continues to this day of an annual pilgrimage to the shrine, an event in which I took part years ago, modeled after similar Lincoln pilgrimages in the Midwest.

Website: http://www.lincolnshrine.org/

Sources:

• http://www.lincolnshrine.org/the-watchorns/
• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~quarantine/watchorn1.htm

Andrés Pico Adobe

Located a short distance from Mission San Fernando, yet obnoxiously frustrating to reach by car from the mission owing to the abominable intersection that has developed around it, is the former home of Andres Pico, the commander of the Californio forces in the Battle of San Pasqual. The son of a Spanish soldier who rose through the ranks at Mission San Luis Rey, Andres profited handsomely from the short but corrupt Mexican governance, whereby he acquired a lease on a portion of the lands seized from Mission San Fernando through his brother, Pio Pico, in 1845. The earliest elements of the adobe predate this, belonging to the mission era, and along with the mission structures became a part of the ranch headquarters. The next year the rancho was sold outright by Pio Pico to Eulogio de Celis in a desperate attempt to raise funds to oppose the Bear Flag Revolt, with de Celis recognizing Andres Pico’s lease. De Celis expanded the structure, and in 1854 sold it to Andres along with half of the ranch.

As the Pico brothers integrated into the new hierarchy of American California, the old mission grounds served as Andres Pico’s country estate, the headquarters of his ranching empire when he was outside of Los Angeles, much the same function as his brother Pio Pico’s adobe in Whittier served. Andres, who served as a state senator, in which capacity he proposed an attempt to divide the state into a northern and southern half, and a brigadier general in the California militia during the 1860s, later sold the property to his brother Pio, though he and his adopted son Romulo continued to retain the adobe, the latter restoring, expanding, and using it as a country and guest house until the 1890s, when it became a part of the Lankershim Ranch. Thereafter it decayed, the process being aided by the rumors of hidden gold which surrounded many of the old mission ruins, until the 1930s when archaeologist Mark Harrington, curator of the Southwestern Museum, purchased and began the preservation and restoration of the adobe along with the remaining mission structures. Subsequently purchased by the City of Los Anageles, the building itself is now the headquarters of the San Fernando Valley Historical Society, while the surrounding park is a city park.

I find the structure to be a particularly nice example of the adobe style home which became popular in 20th Century California with the Mission Revival style, though I find the simplicity of old adobes such as this to have a greater elegance than more contemporary “adobes,” which tend to add too many jumbled features to the structure. Together with the shaded courtyard, it comprises perhaps one of the most stereotypical examples of an old Spanish adobe I have yet seen.

San Pasqual Battlefield

Despite its strong associations with the military, California is the site of relatively few significant battles or skirmishes. However, what is considered possibly the most important battle to have been fought on what is now American soil during the Mexican American War occurred in the San Pasqual Valley, north of San Diego and just east of Escondido, minutes away from the “San Diego Zoo Safari Park,” as the old Wild Animal Park is now known. In this battle, on December 6th, 1846, coming at the end of one of the many feats of heroic endurance performed by American soldiers and volunteers as they marched across the vast, desolate reaches of what was then Northern Mexico, two generals and a legendary American frontier hero nearly met their ends.

About four months earlier, General Stephen Watts Kearny had been dispatched from Fort Leavenworth leading the 1,700-man Army of the West with the goal of subjugating Mexican New Mexico and California. After taking New Mexico without resistance, Kearny reduced his army to 300 men of the First Dragoons and supporting Engineers, expecting little resistance elsewhere. Shortky after, he further reduced his force upon encountering the legendary frontiersman, Kit Carson, who had been sent east with word that California had been subdued through the Bear Flag Revolt. With his 140 men and Carson in tow, Kearny continued a long and arduous trek across the remaining thousand miles of desert, often finding barely enough water to sustain his small army, and ultimately arriving in California with a battered army, weakened horses and mules, and the unwelcome news that, in Carson’s absence, the local Spaniards and Mexicans, or Californios, had risen up against the American forces, seized Los Angeles, and largely confined the Americans in Southern California to San Diego.

When the Bear Flag Revolt broke out in Northern California under John C Fremont, the response by the Californio populace had been underwhelming. Most would have been born Spaniards, with just enough time having passed for one generation of native Californians to have reached maturity entirely under Mexican rule. This rule, however, had been less than inspiring, with government officials from Mexico generally not known for their integrity or ability. Even as the Bear Flag Revolt broke out, the civil governor of California in Los Angeles, Pio Pico, had been on the verge of open conflict with the military governor of California in the north, General Jose Castro. Many Californios felt little affinity for Mexico, and even after annexation by the U.S. continued to identify themselves as Californios rather than Mexicanos, and looked back to an increasingly romanticized Spanish era. Some saw the stability and wealth of the United States as a not entirely horrible alternative, and the merits of the American Constitution had been discussed in California as it had elsewhere. In San Diego, the leading Californios, led by Juan Bandini, welcomed Commodore Robert Stockton of the U.S. Navy, who subsequently took Los Angeles without opposition. This was an unstable situation, however, and as is often the case, one factor can shift the balance. This proved to be Lieutenant Gillespie of the U.S. Marines, who instituted a harsh military rule of Los Angeles, giving its people enough taste of a life worse than that enjoyed under Mexican rule to prompt a revolt. Gillespie was thrown out of Los Angeles, and bands of Californio militia were raised of volunteer farmers and ranch hands, men not trained in military discipline, but expert horsemen who practiced martial skills such as the use of the lance with great skill.

It was into this situation that Kearny’s battered and weakened army, finally arrived, joyously encountering their own flag for the first time in months when Lieutenant Gillespie arrived with a contingent of volunteers and sailors dispatched by Stockton to meet Kearny. Gillespie informed the general of a nearby part of Californios, who were led by General Andres Pico, brother of Governor Pio Pico in Los Angeles. Kearny, weakened but confident after the sparse resistance encountered by Mexicans in New Mexico and Apaches across the desert, determined to take the enemy by surprise and attack. However, a scouting party sent on the night of the 5th was detected by a dog, and a U.S. Army blanket left in the commotion alerted the enemy to Kearny’s presence. Nevertheless, Kearny determined to press on with the plan of attack.

The dragoons rode down from the hills amidst the gloom and mist of early morning, their clanking sabers alerting the Californios to the impending attack. The battered condition of the horses and mules meant that the strongest few were in the front when General Kearny gave the order to “trot.” Mishearing this, Captain Johnson gave the order to charge, and despite Kearny’s attempt to halt them the first rank of horsemen rushed towards the Californios at full gallop. The dragoons fired such carbines as could be discharged after the rainy night; thereafter they were useful only as clubs in the battle. The Californios fired their own volley, striking Captain Johnson dead with a bullet through the forehead. Kit Carson’s horse stumbled, throwing Carson amidst the charging dragoons and breaking his rifle in two. Narrowly managing to avoid being trampled to death by scrambling out of the way, Carson subsequently followed his frontiersman’s instincts and, grabbing a carbine and ammunition from a fallen soldier, found cover and spent the rest of the battle sniping at the enemy.

The Californios quickly fled in the face of the charge out of the mist by the dragoons, terrifying at first glance in their battered and wearied state.  However, the fresh horses of the Californios soon allowed them to clear away from their pursuers, while the dragoons and volunteers spread into ever smaller groups according to the fitness of their mounts. Seeing an opportunity and the poor condition of his adversaries, Pico ordered his lancers to turn and attack the Americans, quickly surrounding the initial small cluster. Captain Moore, in the lead of the dragoons, found himself cut off and made a rush for Pico himself, firing a pistol at close range, only to have it misfire. Drawing his saber, he exchanged blows with his adversary, a skilled fencer, before being struck in the side by two lancers who came to their general’s rescue. Knocked from his horse, he was shot and killed by a third lancer as he lay on the ground. Moore’s brother-in-law, Lieutenant Hammond, rushed to his aid, only to be fatally struck by a lance himself.

The Americans, only a quarter of whose force would actually enter the combat, continued to arrive in small waves as the clusters of mule-rising dragoons caught up to the battle. General Kearny was among these late-comers, shouting commands in an attempt to rally his forces and parrying the lances of his opponents with his saber with great skill. As he was so engaged with one of the lancers he was struck by another from behind, then another, and thrown from his mule. Surrounded by the enemy, his death seemed certain until Lieutenant Emory charged to his rescue, beating back the attackers with his saber. Two generals and a frontier legend had thus escaped near death in the Battle of San Pasqual.

Across the battlefield, still dark and misty, the battle broke into small skirmishes, with horsemen hunting for enemies and engaging in small clusters. The Americans were at a decided disadvantage, being mounted on wearied animals and armed with only short-range sabers or carbines-turned-clubs. The Californios, skilled horsemen on fresh mounts and experienced in the use of the lance and reatas, or lassos, in the use of which they were famed throughout Mexico, found it easy to keep a distance from their adversary and either pull him from his horse with the reata or, relying on his horse’s dexterity, parry an attack and quickly dash to the side, lancing the opponent in the side or back. In this circumstance Captain Gillespie, whose harsh rule of Los Angeles had perhaps personally encouraged many of the lancers to take up arms in the first place, and had led the San Diego troop along the hills and captured General Pico’s aide as the latter attempted to flank the Americans, was spotted and quickly surrounded by four lancers. Fending them off as best he could with his saber, he was speared and knocked to the ground where he suffered a second lance to the mouth and a third which punctured his lung. However, in the confusion of four mounted warriors scrambling after their target, he managed to elude his attackers and escape into the darkness.

Lieutenant Gillespie Fires the American Howitzer
Source: Postcard

Eventually the American cannon were brought forward and the Americans began rallying around the spot where General Kearny had been wounded. One howitzer was captured when the mule pulling it stubbornly refused to move, allowing two Californios to drag it away with their reatas, but the other was placed and fired by Gillespie, its canister shot capable of crippling the Californio force in one blow should it find a large group clustered together. This factor, along with the continued arrival of ever more Americans from the hills, led Pico to withdraw his forces to nearby hills, leaving Kearny and his men to tend to their wounded and send messengers to beg reinforcements from Stockton in San Diego. The Americans suffered 17 dead and 17 wounded, though two of the latter would subsequently die as well, while the Californio casualties are not accurately known.

The next day Americans set out for San Diego along a cart path through the hills, not wishing to give the hovering Californios an open valley in which to maneuver their horses. They came upon a ranch house, where they learned the Californios had tended their own wounded the previous night, and had just departed with commandeered livestock when the Californios approached in two columns. The Americans rushed for a hill, but were beaten to it by the Californios. Exhausted and bloodied as they were, the Americans nevertheless drove the Californios from the hill and with great exertion brought their wounded and two remaining cannon up the hill, losing the livestock in the process. Amidst another cold and damp night, besieged by the Californios, the Americans were forced to butcher two of their mules for food, giving the hill the name it still carries, Mule Hill. The next day the Californios announced they had prisoners to exchange, and the Americans received one of the men they had sent to seek help from Stockton in exchange for the Californio that Gillespie had captured in the battle. Learning that Stockton could spare no men, Kearny decided to send another messenger to press the urgency of the issue; the entire force of dragoons could realistically be wiped out without help.

The task of slipping through the enemy pickets fell to Kit Carson, who along with an Indian guide and naval lieutenant, undertook the vital mission. The men found it necessary to take their boots off as they crept through the brush, every noise carrying in the cold night air. Upon making it through the enemy lines, however, all three found that their boots had been lost amidst the crawling, and the rest of the trip across rocky and cactus-infested lands to San Diego would have to be made barefooted. All three eventually made it by separate paths, but it was Carson who earned the fame, his gallant barefooted trek through the night to save the American army being added to his growing legend as word of it spread back East. Convinced of the urgency of the situation, Stockton, who had already been cobbling together a rescue force despite his refusal of Kearny’s request, immediately dispatched a force of sailors and marines.

Back at Mule Hill, a Californio attempt at driving off the American mules by stampeding their own around the hill had backfired when the Americans scattered them with a cannon shot and brought down two with rifle fire close enough to be recovered, providing the Americans with a temporary boost of food. That night of December 10th, Sergeant Cox, who had been married the day before the Dragoons departed from Fort Leavenworth, died from his wounds, and Kearny resolved to fight his way free the next morning, reinforcements or no. However, as the Americans prepared for a desperate fight, the sounds of an approaching force was heard, and the besieged Americans were elated when they heard the word “Americans” in reply to their challenge. The rescuers were shocked by the horrid appearance of their countrymen, but they had successfully rescued them. The Californians fired a lone shot in defiance before departing from their reinforced adversaries.

Reinforcements Arrive from San Diego
Source: Postcard

From here, the Americans headed south to San Diego and the Californios traveled north towards Los Angeles. Along the way a group of eleven Californios broke off from the main column and had a misguided adventure in the vicinity of my home town, Temecula. Traveling to the Rancho Pauma, they felt the need to steal a herd of horses from the Pauma Indians, in retaliation for which the Pauma captured the eleven Californios and tortured them to death. When word of this reached Los Angeles, a band of Californio militia from San bernadino was dispatched to seek revenge, which they did by killing some forty Pauma warriors who they drew out of hiding with a feigned retreat, an event known as the Temecula Massacre. Meanwhile, shortly after reaching San Diego, such dragoons as were fit joined a force of some 400 sailors and marines in an advance upon Los Angeles. The Californios, who gathered their scattered militias into a force somewhat equal in numbers, were soundly defeated in two battles in which their artillery was literally outgunned by the American sailors acting under the direct supervision of Stockton himself, while the Californio lancers were neutralized by American rifles.

Just over a month after the Battle of San Pasqual, the self-proclaimed victor of that battle, Andres Pico (Pico claimed victory by having inflicted more damage, Stockton by his West Point standard of having held the field), signed the capitulation of the Californio insurrection, and Los Angeles and with it all of California was in American hands pending the outcome of the war.

• Peter Price, The Battle at San Pasqual and the Struggle for California, (San Diego: Pembroke Publishers, 1990)
• Hampton Sides, Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West, (New York: Anchor Books, 2006)

Mission San Diego de Alcala

Having grown up in California as a Roman Catholic, the old Spanish missions have always been a part of life. My family attended mass at Mission San Luis Rey, where I received my first communion, until they moved the masses from the old church to a new one, complete with massive tv screens above the altar providing live coverage of the mass. My grandfather was for many years a docent at Mission San Juan Capistrano, and brought me to that mission when I was younger and told numerous stories of the old mission and Father Serra which I still remember, and he always had an interesting collection of books on the mission at his home. More recently, still being a Californian and a Roman Catholic, I have taken up the long and expensive quest of visiting all twenty-one of the Spanish missions, a task I am not quite a third of the way through yet, though I hope to slightly pass that mark by the end of this summer.

The first of these missions, San Diego de Alcala, was founded in 1769, while Daniel Boone was making the first English forays into Kentucky, Captain Cook was exploring Tahiti, and Bougainville was making himself France’s answer to Cook by completing his exploratory circumnavigation of the globe. Sharing the founding year of Dartmouth College, Mission San Diego marked the beginning of active Spanish presence in Alta California, now the State of California. Ending in 1846 with the Bear Flag Revolt, the combined span of Spanish and Mexican rule over California passed in the length of one long lifetime, though it has been accorded a preeminent spot in the history and heritage of California. The Spanish era was heavily romanticized by the largely Anglo-American population of the late Nineteenth through the late Twentieth Century: the ruins of the missions provided one of the most inspired outlets for American Romanticism of late 1800s, the early 1900s brought the Mission Revival architectural style so prevalent throughout California, reaching spectacular heights in such examples as Hearst Castle and Riverside’s Mission Inn, and the mid to late 1900s brought an influx of American Catholics with the general postwar population boom, leading the restoration of many of the missions and a return to their status as religious centers of their communities. For their architecture, history, and often the scenery of their locations, the Spanish missions remain sparkling gems of California’s heritage, often the pride of their communities and well worth visiting.

The Mission in 1848, with the original bell tower
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The San Diego harbor was first explored over two centuries before the founding of the mission by the intrepid Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a former conquistador who perished on one of California’s Channel Islands in the course of his 1542-3 expedition. The area got its name in the course of a second Spanish expedition, which in 1602 made landfall and said mass in honor of Saint Didacus (Diego) de Alcala, after whom the bay was named. A Fifteenth Century Franciscan, Saint Diego had earned a reputation for holiness while serving at an infirmary in Rome, where many were said to have been miraculously cured by him. A century after his death, he was placed in a bed with a son of King Philip II of Spain, who had fallen into paralysis and blindness after a fall; the prince fell into a calm sleep and awoke hours later, saying that Didacus had appeared to him with assurances of his survival. The prince did survive, and the fanatically pious Philip II pressed successfully for Didacus’ canonization as a saint.

Content to leave these lands unsettled for over a century and a half, the Spanish government was finally motivated to establish a presence in the region by the expansion of Russian settlements down the Pacific Coast from the north. Among the four expeditions sent out to accomplish this goal was an adventurous Franciscan, small of stature but bearing an indomitable zeal which inspired Spaniards and Indians alike, Father Junipero Serra, who on July 16, 1769, raised a cross and said mass, marking the establishment of Mission San Diego de Alcala. Already having earned a reputation as an outstanding academic in Spain, at the age of fifty-six he now embarked upon a continuous whirlwind of activity which would include the founding of nine missions, the baptism of over 5,000 Indians, continuous travels along the California coast and as far as Mexico City by foot and mule in spite of a leg injury, all while finding enough time in the middle to raise a modest collection of money to donate to George Washington during the American Revolution. During his last years he once again visited his first mission at San Diego before dying at the age of seventy in 1784.

The priest who actually built the mission, relocating it from Father Serra’s original site near the military presidio to a nearby area better suited for a settlement than defense was Father Luis Jayme. A native of the Spanish island of Majorca like Serra, at the age of thirty-five he would become California’s first martyr. In 1775 the Mission San Diego suffered the only Indian attack directed at a mission, in the process of which food and supplies were stolen, church vestments and other valuable religious items were looted, and the mission was set fire. Three Spaniards were murdered, including Father Jayme, who approached the rampaging Indians, arms outstretched, saying “Love God, my children.” He was seized, stripped, and clubbed to death, the wounds and disfigurements so bad that his body, discovered the next morning, was unrecognizable with the exception of his hands. A monument to the martyr stands to the side of the mission’s front, a modest but dignified reminder of the risks and hardships such men were willing to endure, most of them having left comfortable positions at Spanish universities to do so.

Memorial to Father Jayme

Following the attack, the mission was rebuilt under the supervision of Father Serra, with an adobe church erected in 1776, expanded and reinforced until 1785. Built as a temporary church, it was damaged by the adobe buildings’ greatest natural enemy, the earthquake, and construction began on a third mission church. It now featured buttresses to fortify the church against further earthquakes, walls around the square compound that made up the entire mission, and a campanario, or bell tower, on the wall next to the church, which would later fall to ruin but in its later restoration would provide San Diego with what would become one of its most recognizable symbols. One of the interesting architectural elements of many of the missions is that the churches themselves are often the simplest of structures: adobe brick rectangles. At times they are not even the most outstanding features of their respective mission compounds and yet, with some whitewashed plaster coating on the outside, a mix of ornate European and slightly less ornate Indian art inside, and a supporting cast of neighboring buildings, these simple structures became sources of spiritual and architectural inspiration whose effects have been felt for over two hundred years and far beyond California. This inspiration provided California with numerous churches built in the mission revival style, an example of which can even be seen in Honolulu in the monastery expansion of Saint Patrick’s Church, about which I’ve written.

With the independence of Mexico from Spain in 1821 came a wave of anti-clerical measures and administrators who took it upon themselves to secularize the missions, ostensibly to restore mission lands and property to the Indians. However, the property was confiscated by officials and the land sold to prospective ranchers who put pressure on the government to open the land to them. Most of the Franciscans, unable to bear seeing their lives’ work torn asunder, chose to return to Spain, and most of the Indians fled to their old villages, entering a downward social and economic spiral that would afflict many of them for decades. Mission San Diego’s lands were gradually sold off by the governor, and the mission itself was granted in 1846 to a Mexican official as a favor, the same year Californios and Anglo settlers launched the the Bear Flag Revolt. Mission San Diego was occupied by U.S. troops in the conflict that followed, becoming a U.S. Army barracks from 1847 to 1858. Housing such units as the First Dragoons and the legendary Mormon Battalion, and dispatching troops for dealing with Indian revolts and an expected war with the Mormon colony in Utah, the mission for a time served as a crucial post along the nation’s new border, and it caused local residents no little discomfort when the army departed. While stationed there the army reportedly razed some unstable structures and cleared away material, but the buildings that remained, including the church, were found to have been well maintained by the army.

As was the case with many of the missions, it was President Abraham Lincoln who undid the actions of the Mexican government, restoring mission lands to the Catholic Church in one of his numerous acts of respect and support for Catholics at a time when it was politically unhealthy to do so. Like many of the missions, San Diego still possesses the 1862 document bearing Lincoln’s signature. However, following the departure of the army and before the Church could take possession of the mission it was looted, and together with its existing damage, was unfit for use as a church. Most of the damage to the church came in the period following the army’s departure, and it was not until the early 1900s that a priest, Fr. Ubach, otherwise notable for his efforts to improve education for Indians, began a serious effort to restore the mission with the notable help of a noted San Diego politician, businessman, and Catholic, Albert Mayrhofer, who took up the restoration cause following Fr. Ubach’s death. In 1931 the mission was restored, both as a church closely following historical dimensions, and as a parish. In this capacity it still serves, having additionally been elevated to a basilica in 1976, the two hundredth anniversary of its first construction. Quite close to the Interstate 15 and the San Diego Chargers’ Qualcomm Stadium, it nevertheless manages to provide a quiet and at times even secluded atmosphere, provided a wedding isn’t rolling through

Queen Emma Summer Palace

Quietly situated alongside the Pali Highway, well into the Nu’uanu Valley above Honolulu, the unimposing yet stately Hānaiakamālama, better known as the Queen Emma Summer Palace, provides an example of one of the most venerable of old architectural styles in the United States, Greek Revival, in a rather unique geographical and historical setting. As they did over a century and a half ago, the cool winds blowing down the valley, which the house is positioned to take full advantage of, combine with the lush greenery to provide a tranquil respite from the hot and, at one time at least, dusty city of Honolulu. The history of the house, Victorian in more sense than one in having once housed a godson of Queen Victoria and containing several gifts sent by both Victoria and Albert to the tragic family of Queen Emma of Hawaii, is intertwined with the royal history of the islands providing a quiet look back into the monarchy and the country estates of the noble and wealthy.

As was the case with most such grand houses which arrived in the islands in the wake of the arrival of American missionaries, this one was first assembled in New England, Boston to be precise, and subsequently disassembled, packed in a ship, and brought around Cape Horn to the islands in 1848. And, as was often the case, this was done at the behest of a businessman, in this case one John G. Lewis, who my meager research suggests was the proprietor of Young & Co., ships’ chandlers, before moving into real estate. In 1850 the house was bought at auction by John Young II, son of a British sailor of the same name who became a military adviser to King Kamehameha I, having charge of the king’s canon at the 1795 Battle of Nu’uanu when Kamehameha’s forces drove those of Oahu up the valley and across the land Young’s son and granddaughter would come to own. It was after this $6,000 sale that the home acquired its Hawaiian name, meaning “foster child of the moon,” and as John Young II failed to produce a child with any of his three Hawaiian wives, he willed the property to his niece, Emma Rooke, who, as wife of King Kamehameha IV, would become Queen of Hawaii in 1855.

As one of the royal residences, it brought a happy respite from the dirt, heat, and politics of Honolulu for some seven years. In 1862 the crown prince, named Albert after his godfather, whose birth had occasioned much joy among the Hawaiian populace following thirty-six years of childless marriages and early deaths in the Kamehameha Dynasty, died at the age of four. Though his death was a result of illness, the king blamed himself for having earlier held the prince’s head under a running faucet to punish him for throwing a tantrum, and subsequently died within a year after descending into depression and alcoholism, a plague which had and would continue to curse the Kamehamehas.

The property continued to be used by Queen Emma, who unsuccessfully contested the royal succession two childless kings later, her loss to Kalakaua precipitating violent protests which only foreign marines were able to quell. Upon her death in 1885, the property was sold to the crown, and in the early 1900s was made a park by the Territorial legislature following the monarchy’s overthrow. Now run by the Daughters of Hawaii, an organization founded by missionary daughters in 1903 to preserve Hawaiian culture and history, the house is well-maintained and contains an impressive array of family belongings of Emma and her family, gifts from Victoria and Albert among others, and the dignified furnishings of the era. Chief among the latter is the “royal” or “cathedral” cabinet, a three-tiered cabinet fashioned in Germany at the request of Prince Albert of England as a wedding gift for Kamehmeha IV and Emma, and which is very noticeable in scenes of  the 1999 film Molokai about Saint Damian, which filmed scenes at the Queen Emma Summer Palace after being unable to secure permission to film at Iolani Palace. The surrounding grounds, now a fraction of their former size, are equally well-maintained and provide a relaxing retreat even from the nearby Pali Highway. It is well worth a visit, not only for its historical significance and architectural respectability, but for a break in the action of either a busy day in Honolulu life or a hectic vacation.

The Royal Cabinet.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

A Military History of Punchbowl Crater

"View of Honolulu from Punchbowl" by Ejler Andreas Jorgensen, 1875
Source: Wikimedia Commons

“Here we found several huts, that were occupied by the families of the men appointed to guard this important post, into which we entered to obtain leave to examine the fortification. The people were very friendly; they not only granted us permission, but hospitably proffered us some excellent melons, which were very refreshing after our laborious ascent. There were only three men in the fort, one of whom, that appeared to have the command, politely waited upon us in our walk round. The guns were mounted on a platform at the very edge of the precipice that overlooked the harbor and town. They were thirty-two pound caliber. It must have been a work of inconceivable labor for the natives to get them upon this great eminence. The carriages and all their fixtures were very much decayed, and totally unfit for use. The situation is very commanding, and notwithstanding the distance, the battery would be formidable to an enemy in the harbor.”¹

~Lieutenant Hiram Paulding, USN, 1826

Well known at least since the days of the old Hawaii 5-0 TV series as a cemetery, the austere resting place of thousands of a nation’s finest citizens, Punchbowl Crater, site of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, has a history intertwined with the military which dates back to the arrival of cannon in the Hawaiian Islands, as might be expected of a crater strategically overlooking a port city. Once called Puowaina, “Hill of Sacrifice,” it is said to have been the sight of the human sacrifices and executions for violators of Kapu, the stringent “taboos” which formed a central element of the Hawaiian religion until it was abolished by the wife of King Kamehameha I following the king’s death. Writing in 1916, Vaughan MacCaughey, professor of botany at what was then known as the College of Hawaii, noted that “Near the highest point on the seaward rim is a flat, altar-like ledge. Below this ledge is a crack or orifice, once a volcanic vent. This gave a good draft of air and added to the suitability of the place for a sacrificial altar.”² It was under that same king, an eager adopter of the trappings and practices of Western Civilization, that cannon were first placed upon the crater, thereafter irregularly called Puowaina, Punchbowl Battery, or Fort Kekuano’a; however, the instigator of this act may have been the Governor of Oahu, Boki, rather than Kamehameha himself.

In the two centuries that have followed, the various fortifications at Punchbowl have effectively escaped engagement in the active defense for which they had been established, being rather always on guard. However, some action was seen in the early years, involving the political rivalry between Boki and Ka’ahumanu, the aforementioned wife of Kamehameha I and ali’i nui, roughly equivalent to a regent, for her husband’s sons and successors, Kamehameha II and II. So bitter was the rivalry that there was open talk in Honolulu that Boki would topple Ka’ahumanu from power by military force until a peace between the two was brokered by the formidable missionary leader, Hiram Bingham. These events unfolded against the backdrop of one of the blackest episodes in the Kingdom of Hawaii’s history, the decade-long persecution of Roman Catholics under the authority of Ka’ahumanu and her successor as ali’i nui, both zealous converts to Calvinism, anti-Catholicism and all; Boki, on the other hand, was a Catholic and defender of the fledgling Catholic mission in Honolulu.  In 1829 Boki embarked upon a fateful voyage in the profitable sandalwood trade, hoping to cement his position with the expected wealth to be gained, but never returned. His wife, Kuini Liliha, was left in charge of Oahu by her husband, and retained control after it became known that he had been lost at sea (though it has also been suggested that he was shipwrecked in the Samoan Archipelago and was received into the local nobility), sustaining as well her husband’s rivalry with the imperious Ka’ahumanu. In 1831 she prepared to take action against her rival, and, in the words of Laura Judd, wife of missionary and later royal advisor Gerrit P. Judd, “She filled the fort on Punch Bowl Hill with armed men from her husband’s lands, and put the force at her disposal in martial array.” Word of this kindling rebellion reached Lahaina, then the kingdom’s capital, and the matter was brought to a swift and anti-climactic close thusly: “Governor Hoapili, Madam Boki’s father, embarked for Honolulu. As the little craft was descried in the offing, many hearts beat with painful suspense, to know the errand. The good old man landed without soldiers or guns; calm, dignified, undaunted, he proceeded directly to the dwelling of his daughter. His errand was brief. He came to invite her to go home with him to Lahaina. That was all! She went with him, and the storm blew over.”³

Punchbowl Battery's commanding view of Honolulu and its Harbor
Source: http://hawaii.gov/hawaiiaviation

So ended Punchbowl Battery’s flirt with military action. During the 1843 Paulet Affair, in which a British naval captain temporarily annexed the Hawaiian Islands to the British Empire, and the 1849 Sacking of Honolulu by French naval captain Louis Tromelin in retaliation for perceived continual poor treatment of Catholics, the two events in which such a fortification might prove useful against a naval enemy, the Hawaiian monarchy chose the route of enduring the humiliation and seeking redress from the captains’ home nations; both were the actions of individual captains acting without orders. Rather, Punchbowl Battery took on a ceremonial role; from its commanding position, artillery bursts audible and visible from almost all points in Honolulu saluted ships in Western fashion and heralded the births, marriages, and deaths of kings and princes. One such occasion of celebration turned tragic is recorded again by Laura Judd, her husband now the Minister of Foreign Affairs to King Kamehameha III, whose birthday was being celebrated by a salute from the battery:

“During the salute from the fort on Punchbowl, a native was killed, and two more badly injured by the premature discharge of one of the guns. We were standing with the king in the palace yard and saw the explosion. The king was much affected, and turning to Dr. Judd, said, “Make haste.” A horse was quickly mounted and the hill ascended in front, at its steepest angle – a feat seldom performed. One poor native was dead, literally blown to pieces, and another died the next day.”⁴

~Laura Judd, 1845

The surviving cannon from Punchbowl Battery, outside the Army Museum of the Pacific in Waikiki.
Source: Me!

The military status of Punchbowl Battery at this time, 1846 to be precise, wasrecorded as 33 soldiers (out of a total of 682) and 11 cannon of varying caliber. In 1853, however, the cannon were sold off, along with those of Fort Honolulu, at $10 a piece, to fund a reorganization of the military, many of them being used as ship’s anchors or embedded in the ground as hitching posts; one survives on display in front of the U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii in Waikiki, having been preserved by the Bishop Museum. Whether preserved from the old battery or more recently placed, Punchbowl Battery under King Kalakaua consisted of six four-pounders which continued the ceremonial duties, though the “fort” was no longer manned; an observer noted that upon this “novel promontory…a few rusty old cannon slumber in the ruins of what may have been once considered a fort.”⁵ It was Kalakaua who first began developing the crater’s interior towards the purpose it would ultimately serve, marching to and from the crater with contingents of his guard to plant trees and otherwise prepare the crater, the slopes of which had already become the site of residential expansion, to host a park. The crater, long since effectively disarmed, featured briefly in the royalist Uprising of 1895, when royalist forces under Samuel Nowlein, a former officer in the Hawaiian military and ardent supporter of the deposed Queen Liliuokalani, attempted to gain the obvious tactical advantage of holding Punchbowl; the attempt never materialized, however, Nowlein’s men being blasted into submission by artillery in a skirmish with government troops under Captain C. W. Zeiler in the valleys to the east, not far from the fine institution of higher learning which I currently attend.

The concept of transforming the crater into a cemetery developed soon after the overthrow of the monarchy, though the proposed beneficiaries of this final resting place were to be the civilian residents of Honolulu. However, the martial auspices under which Hawaii was annexed to the United States, shortly after the Spanish American War, brought the attention of the U.S. Army to both Punchbowl and Diamond Head craters and their obvious tactical value on an island which, possessing an expanding naval base at Pearl Harbor, was itself a strategic location between the West Coast and the nation’s newly won territories of Guam and the Philippines. The following article, from a 1904 edition of the Hawaiian Gazette, provides a glimpse into the military thought of the age, when the fear was that “under the articles of war the fortifying of the city would invite bombardment by an enemy.”

The Hawaiian Gazette, 26 Feb 1904
Source: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

This plan did not materialize either, and as alluded to in the article the sides of Punchbowl had already become a popular locale for residential development, while the crater itself had long served as a popular recreational hike even when in service as a fort. In 1912, plans were set in motion to convert the crater’s interior into a rifle range for the Territorial National Guard, with the initial drudgery of clearing the underbrush carried out by convicts in 1915 and subsequent development by the guard’s engineers. The guard’s commander, Colonel Samuel Johnson, stated that “The firing stations will be on the ocean side of the crater, and the targets will be on the north end, where a 50-foot natural crater now lies which will serve to catch the bullets. If any of the men should be such bad marksmen that their bullets should fly over the ridge, Mount Tantalus will stop them. That is not probable, however, as our men are better riflemen than that.”⁶ Thus the crater effectively remained until World War II, when it was again fortified along with much of Hawaii in preparation for a potential Japanese invasion, and subsequently defortified, along with much of Hawaii, as strategic developments during the war rendered coastal artillery and similar defenses effectively obsolete. It was almost immediately turned over to the United States by the Territorial Government to serve its current purpose as a memorial and cemetery for the many thousands of deceased military personnel from the Pacific Theater for whom a final resting place was urgently needed, in which capacity it is well deserving of its own post.

Punchbowl Crater, 1900
Source: Wikimedia Commons

1. Peter R. Mills, Hawaii’s Russian Adventure: A New Look at Old History, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 161
2. Vaughan MacCaughey, “The Punchbowl: Honolulu’s Metropolitan Volcano,” The Scientific Monthly 2 (1916), 607
3. Laura Fish Judd, Honolulu: Sketches of Life: Social, Political, and Religious, in the Hawaiian Islands from 1828-1861, (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Co., 1880), 54
4. Ibid., 155
5. Charles W. Hemenway, Memoirs of my Day: In and Out of Mormondom, (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Co., 1887), 104
6. “Commence Work of Rifle Range Monday Morning,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 15 September 1915, chroniclingamerica.loc.gov