Source: Wikimedia

Today marks the 136th anniversary of the hanging of Tiburcio Vasquez, notorious California outlaw and folk legend.

According to Los Angeles A-Z, my bible for everything L.A., he was the “last of the Mexican bandit leaders who roamed Southern California from the 1850s to the 1870s. Along with Joaquin Murrieta and Juan Flores, Vasquez was the most famous bandido, and the most durable.”

Born Jose Jesus Lopez at Monterrey in 1835, he began his criminal career as a teenager by knifing a lawman at a fandango. From that point on, he changed his name and lived as a fugitive in California’s hillsides, leading a gang of desperados and generally menacing the countryside while ironically spreading quite the reputation as a passionate and irresistible ladies’ man. In 1857, he was sent to San Quentin for horse thievery but escaped for a brief period in 1859 until his re-apprehension.

Completing his sentence in August 1863, Vasquez graduated to yet more heinous criminal pursuits. No dummy when it came to PR, he cultivated an image as a sort of charming Mexican Robbin Hood, raging against California’s New American Order. He would later relate:

“A spirit of hatred and revenge took possession of me. I had numerous fights in defense of what I believed to be my rights and those of my countrymen. I believed we were unjustly deprived of the social rights that belonged to us.”

In 1873, already wanted for a spree of Northern California killings and robberies, Vasquez turned his attention to Southern California, where he supposedly buried loot amid a rocky hideaway some 40 miles from Los Angeles that now bears his name.

The following year the state legislature placed an $8,000 bounty on his head and Angelenos organized a posse of Californio rancheros, Yankee vigilantes and rangers determined to put an end to his thuggish ways. He was finally captured at a farmhouse near the present-day West Hollywood intersection of Santa Monica and Kings Rd. (Rumor had it that henchman Abdon Leiva set his boss up as payback after catching Vasquez in bed with Mrs. Leiva.)

During his incarceration at Los Angeles, Vasquez became a celebrated jailbird, holding court with society women, tourists and journalists, who fawned over him for autographs, photos and interviews.

In due course, the romantic villain was transferred to San Jose, where he was tried and ultimately executed. Given the traditional chance to say a few last words from the gallows, Vasquez merely responded, “Pronto!”

His body now rests in the cemetery of Mission Santa Clara.

Battle:LA, Sony Pictures

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but friends report that Battle:LA features a character named USMC Corporal Lee Imlay. (They also take great joy in telling me he’s a motor-mouth who gets blown to smithereens by aliens.)

Apparently, there’s also a newly released video game based on the movie in which players can take on the role of Corp. Imlay.

Forgive the crowing, but to my knowledge this is the first time my family moniker has ever appeared on the big screen or in other popular entertainment. Until recently, Imlay has been rare as far as surnames go. As late as about a generation back, only a scant 400 households bearing the name could be found in the U.S.

Ironically, the Imlays trace their American heritage to early Colonial days. A family of wealthy shipping merchants, they settled along the Eastern seaboard, mainly in New Jersey. When the American Revolution broke out, they did what they could to help finance the Continental Congress’ war against the Crown. In fact, John Imlay’s mansion is a historical site in Allentown, NJ. (Then there was Gilbert Imlay, a somewhat obscure American author and family black sheep.)

I’d love to know what inspired Battle:LA’s writer Christopher Bertolini to include the name in his script. Did he know an Imlay? Grow up in New Jersey? Visit this blog? Or just randomly pull the name from a phonebook?

Unfortunately, the movie isn’t doing all that well review-wise. Roger Ebert derided it as “noisy, violent, ugly and stupid,” and so far most other film critics seem to agree.

Bishop Ward blesses the animals at Olvera Street, 1988. (LAPL Digital Archives)

Sadly, this morning’s Los Angeles Times carried the obituary of John J. Ward, an archdiocesan auxiliary bishop and veteran of Vatican II.

Bishop Ward confirmed me. During my several years at St. John’s Seminary, I had the privilege of meeting and interacting with him on numerous occasions. “Modern Catholics” often took issue with his conservative ways, but few could argue he cared for the flock. He was one of the friendliest, most genuine and best-humored prelates ever to preside at the altar.

In short, John J. Ward loved being a priest, and it showed.

Take a walk through the tombstones in Section 5 of Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery, and you’ll find this witty epitaph for a once highly popular lady:

Cora May Phillips
1872 – 1912
Gone But Not Forgotten

Yes, how could the City of Angels ever forget Cora May Phillips, one of its most notorious madams?

In the late 1800s, Los Angeles turned a blind eye toward vice laws, leaving enterprising women like Phillips free to operate brazenly glitzy brothels in front of God and everyone.

The sheer elegance of her Golden Lion Parlor on Alameda Street was said to be second only to Pearl Morton’s downtown bordello, which featured not one but two Steinway pianos, lavishly decadent furnishings, richly appointed mirrors and paintings, and of course, plenty of plush red carpet and drapes. After all, both ladies knew that when it came to attracting a steady clientele of civic leaders, court officers and wealthy businessmen, nothing but the best would do.

Mixing Business and Pleasure

Competitive as they were for the attentions of L.A.’s elite, however, Phillips and Morton apparently enjoyed a friendly rivalry. According to local history writer Cecilia Rasmussen, the two liked to let their hair down together at present-day Exposition Park, where they publicly flaunted themselves and their courtesans while wagering on races of those newfangled contraptions known as automobiles.

When the motorsporting ended, “the girls would climb into their carriages and race one another back Downtown, whooping and yelling and good-naturedly calling one another names.”

Even in early Los Angeles, it seems, girls just wanted to have fun.

But the laughs didn’t last. In 1909 citizen pressure finally prevailed on the city to close down Phillips, Morton and their lesser-known counterparts.

Morton went on to gain fresh notoriety in San Francisco, while Phillips, who died just three years later, literally remained planted here in Los Angeles.

Just south of L.A.’s Elysian Park, along an unpretentious turn of Stadium Way, you’ll find a little street named for a once very big man about town.

Don’t blink, though, or you might miss it. After all, Coronel Street is a poorly paved, “substandard” dead end, merely 11 houses long. Not the sort of honor you’d expect for its legendary namesake.

A Man for All Seasons

Lawyer, politician and all-around man of letters, Antonio F. Coronel was born in Mexico City, Oct. 21, 1817. At age 17 his family migrated to California along with other Mexican colonists.

In 1838 he was made Assistant Secretary of Tribunals of the City of Los Angeles, as well as a Judge of the First Instance (Justice of the Peace). In 1844, Mexican Gov. Manuel Micheltorena appointed him Captain and Inspector of the southern missions. When Yankee forces marched on California during the Mexican-American War, he served as a captain of artillery against the invaders.

Once the U.S. took California, however, Coronel became a leading citizen in the New Order. Consider his resume:

• L.A. City and County Assessor, 1850-56.
• L.A. Superintendent of Schools, 1850-55.
• L.A. City Mayor, 1853-54.
• L.A. City Councilman, 1854-55.
• L.A. City Council President, 1857-59, 1861-65, 1866-67.
• L.A. County Supervisor, 1860.
• California State Treasurer, 1866-70.
• California State Assemblyman, 1870-71.

And Cultured as Well…

On the cultural front, Coronel was a member of the State Horticultural Society, president of the Spanish Benevolent Society, and a founding member of the Historical Society of Southern California. He briefly worked the California Gold Rush, and was a friend of Ramona author Helen Hunt Jackson, a fellow advocate of Indian rights.

In 1873, he married the significantly younger Mariana Williamson and together they romanced Los Angeles’ elite with social events featuring Early California music, food and costume.

In addition to politics and society, Coronel was also a master of the changing economic climate.

Although he lost his own family’s land claims north of Rancho Verdugo, he wielded much influence in the land disputes that flooded American courts after California joined the Union. Keen to the Yankee notion of land as a commodity, he brokered numerous real estate deals for rancheros eager to cash out in the face of the 1860s cattle industry collapse.

For his part, Coronel kept a modest adobe near the intersection of Alameda and 7th. He also owned an adobe block at one end of Calle de los Negros near the town plaza, which became a flashpoint for the Chinese Massacre of 1871.

Maligned in Folklore?

Of course, as executor of the estate of Don Antonio Feliz, he was also the powerful de facto ruler of Rancho Los Feliz (now Griffith Park) for several years. The suspicious nature of the 1863 will that Coronel drafted for Feliz, along with his questionable activities as the land’s trustee during probate, helped inspire the Legend of the Feliz Curse — a tale that many historians insist unfairly maligns Coronel’s reputation.

In fact, local historian Abraham Hoffman has called Coronel one of the region’s most fascinating movers and shakers, writing:

“There is hardly a book on California or Los Angeles dealing with the Hispanic period that fails to include photographs or pictures of Don Antonio and members of his family… Antonio Coronel represents a transitional figure in Los Angeles, someone who was able to thrive even as he moved from one life style to a dramatically different one… someone whose life spanned most of the 19th Century but [is] known to us only in bits and pieces.”

Coronel died midnight, April 17, 1894, and was buried from the Plaza Church at Old Calvary Cemetery. After briefly highlighting his bigger accomplishments, his Los Angeles Times obituary concluded:

“For many years, Mr. Coronel, as a politician, was most influential, but of late years he has lived out of the political arena and given himself to his books, curios, and friends. His death will be deeply regretted by a wide circle of friends who have held him for many years in such high esteem.”

An understated tribute? No question…

But no more so than the obscure little street named for him.

In light of the historic events shaping the national political scene both yesterday and today, I thought it appropriate to choose a video that illustrates how far we’ve come over the last century and a half. A remarkable figure in Angeleno history, Biddy Mason helped break barriers for African Americans as well as women in a day and age fraught with prejudice and obstacles. I only wish this short two-minute teaser delved deeper into her amazing story.

They say turnabout is fair play…

Having argued for years that their company has legally appropriated characters in the public domain for its cartoons (i.e., Bambi and Peter Pan), Disney officials may soon be in the uncomfortable position of fending off challenges to their own copyright on none other than The Mouse himself.

According to an extensive article in today’s L.A. Times Business Section, legal technicalities surrounding the earliest “Steamboat Willie” renditions of Mickey (pictured above) may have inadvertently left the trademark rodent in the public domain.

But first, a legal disclaimer of my own: Before anyone accuses this blog of copyright infringement, please note that low-res images reproduced for the purpose of non-commercial commentary on a work are commonly considered fair use under U.S. law. Moreover, for now at least, Steamboat Mickey remains the property of Disney and may not be reproduced from this site for any other purpose. (There. You are warned.)

Even so, if legal experts are correct, Dateline>City of Angels and other would-be copyright violators may have nothing to worry about.

“That ‘Steamboat Willie’ is in the public domain is easy. That’s a foregone conclusion,” says copyright scholar Peter Jaszi in the Times piece, which adds:

The issue has been chewed over by law students as class projects and debated by professors. It produced one little-noticed law review article: a 23-page essay in a 2003 University of Virginia legal journal that argued “there are no grounds in copyright law for protecting” the Mickey of those early films.

The essay apparently sent Disney suits into a tizzy, and their blustery reaction makes for comical reading in the full article.

Birthplace of the Controversy?

Meanwhile, while the lawyers and scholars duke it out, your humble blogger went in search of a “neighborhood angle” to the story — and found it in L.A.’s nearby Franklin Hills district.

Call it the House the Mouse Built. In fact, the home pictured at left could very well be the birthplace of the newly contentious cartoon character.

About 1925, as Uncle Walt was preparing to open his first studio along Hyperion Ave., he purchased two lots at the corner of Lyric and St. George, within walking distance of his new enterprise. The following year, he completed the construction of two $8,000 houses, one for him and wife Lillian, and the second for brother Roy. Although Mickey made his celebrated debut in 1928, film historians say the Disney brothers had been at work on the character as early as 1925, with Walt possibly tinkering on preliminary sketches in his garage studio.

Back then, he called his would-be star Mortimer, but when he shared his creation with Lillian, she suggested the name Mickey instead. Disney made the change and released two animated shorts starring the mouse in 1928, neither of which was picked up by distributors. Undeterred, Walt took another stab that year with “Steamboat Willie,” the first animated cartoon to synchronize sound and action, performing the voices of Mickey and Minnie himself. This time the magic clicked, propelling Mickey and his creator to fame and fortune.

Four years later, Walt and Lillian moved out of their Lyric Ave. home, presumably for a fancier private domain.

Famous as the film capital of the world and home to L.A.’s mythic “Boulevard of Dreams,” Hollywood has come a long way since its founding in 1886. Carved from lands that once belonged to Ranchos La Brea and Los Feliz, the area was known to the region’s Californios as “La Nopalera” because of the huge cactus patches that grew there.

So here’s this week’s question: Why the change in monikers? How did modern Hollywood get its name? Click the continuation link for the answer…

The Answer…

Hollywood was named by its husband and wife founders, Harvey and Daeida Wilcox. They arrived from Kansas in 1883 with dreams of leveraging Los Angeles’ explosive land boom. After losing an infant son, they consoled themselves with carriage trips through the rural areas that still enveloped L.A. at the time. On one such drive they came across a 120-acre orchard near present-day Ivar and Hollywood Blvd., snatched it and some surrounding acreage up for a song, and began mapping out their new planned community.

The Woman, The Legend

Daeida is generally credited for naming not only the town, but its streets, and is said to have put a great deal of thought into choosing appellations that exuded charm. One legend says she named the community for the “Holy Wood” of a cross erected by Fr. Junipero Serra on a nearby Cahuenga hilltop in 1769. Others believe she was inspired by the wild Toyon “holly” growing in the area, or possibly the traditional, non-native Christmas holly that she tried to transplant to Southern California.

However, the most commonly accepted story is that she “borrowed” the name from a woman she met while visiting the Midwest. Sharing a train ride together, Daeida listened intently as her travel companion spoke glowingly of her own estate back in Chicago, which she called Hollywood. Completely enthralled, Daeida couldn’t resist adopting the whimsical moniker for her and the hubby’s real estate venture.

An Odd Twist of Fate

Ironically, the Wilcoxes founded Hollywood as a temperance town, offering free land to any congregation that would establish a church there. By the time it was annexed by Los Angeles in 1910, the community boasted a population of roughly 4,000.

Harvey would not live to see that growth, however. He died in 1891, after which Daeida went on to marry Philo J. Beveridge, remaining a prime mover in Hollywood’s cultural development until her death in 1914. Within a decade of her passing, the film industry was horning in on the district and radically transforming the landscape, much to the chagrin of residents.

Both Harvey and Daeida are buried at Hollywood Forever Memorial Park and, thankfully, appear to be resting peacefully… There have been no reports of any spinning sounds coming from their graves, despite what their “dry community” has become today.

Other Sources

• Los Angeles A-Z
• Ken Schessler’s This Is Hollywood
• Wikipedia

This just in… There’s oil in these here hills. Black gold. Texas tea. Possibly billions of gallons of it, says a CNN Situation Room report observed by Metblog L.A.’s Dave Markland.

Geez, you think?

Astounding as the news may be to Wolf and the rest of the outside world, it won’t come as a surprise to native Angelenos schooled in the region’s geology. As any old sabertooth or mastodon who ever waded into the La Brea Tar Pits could tell you, that bubbling crude has been shaping the area’s natural history since the Paleogene Era.

In more recent times, Native Americans collected the primordial goo’s byproducts to waterproof their baskets and canoes, while the town’s early pobladores used the brea (tar) to create asphalt roofing for their adobes and even as an alternative fuel for lamps and cooking.

In fact, legend has it that these uses indirectly led to the famous 1892 oil discovery that made one particular Angeleno, Edward L. Doheny, a very wealthy man.

One Astute Businessman

Doheny had come to California as a prospector, but experienced little luck in mining. One day he observed a man wheeling a cart of the tarry substance downtown. Stopping to ask where the man had been, he learned of nearby asphalt deposits in present-day Echo Park. Figuring where there’s tar, there’s crude, he prevailed on Charles Canfield to help him lease several acres of land in the area and immediately set about digging and drilling. After several mishaps, the pair struck black gold a mere 150 feet below what is now the intersection of Colton Street and Glendale Blvd.

Soon there were “hundreds of greasy derricks and puffing engines” dotting the area and encroaching as far as the southern edge of Echo Park Lake. As Norman Klein observes in his book, The History of Forgetting:

“At one time (c. 1905) there were over a thousand working wells in the area from downtown to Vermont Avenue, and even special tours for a nickel. Oil companies had to pay for stains left on clothing during laundry days. Legend has it that Echo Park Lake at its northern edge went on fire at least once (1907).”

Oil’s Well That Ends Well

Of course, those rigs have long since vanished from the lake shore and vicinity. (So much for the notion that oil drilling forever mars an area’s scenery.) But later strikes from Compton to Signal Hill would further secure Southern California a proud place among the world’s great oil fields. In their almanac, Los Angeles A-Z, historians Dale and Leonard Pitt cite production figures of 1,000 wells pumping an estimated 375 million barrels between the 1950s-1980s alone. And, as CNN reports, experts believe we’re far from tapped out.

Even casual lookers can still spot the evidence of our area’s hidden wealth oozing up naturally through sidewalk cracks along Miracle Mile as well as the sands of local beaches. And yes, there are numerous cleverly disguised derricks still pumping, pumping, pumping throughout the city. But like cell phone towers masquerading as palm trees, the oil rigs are never fully hidden from discerning eyes — whether they’re located along Pico Blvd., off the Golden State Freeway, or on a tiny artificial island in the Long Beach channel.

I know it’s another long shot, but in addition to hunting for ghost stories, I’m also trying to track down descendants of several prominent early Los Angeles families, notably anyone with ancestral links to:

Juan Bautista Sanchez, aka John B. Sanchez (1858-1920). In 1887 he married Rosa Escadon from Mission San Buenaventura parish. The couple resided in Los Angeles.

Their children: Angel Erasmo Sanchez, Rose Sanchez Brooks, Consuelo Sanchez and Mrs. R. Raphael, aka Frances Sanchez Raphael.

Mary Hossman (d. 1930), a Los Angeles native and wife of Everisto Hossman, and/or her children: Henry Hossman and Julius Hossman of San Francisco, Alfonso Hossman and Everett Hossman of Los Angeles, Mrs. Carl Carey of San Francisco, and Mrs. Irene Culp and Mrs. Grace Schaffer of Los Angeles.

Cyrus Lyon, a well-known Los Angeles Ranger of the 1800s.

Raymunda Feliz de Romero, aka Raymunda Domingo (d. 1908), and/or her children, Louisa Domingo de Sepulveda, Juan Domingo and Antonio Domingo.

Catalina Verdugo, sister-in-law to Raymunda Romero, and former owner of the southern partition of Rancho San Rafael.

The above people are all vital to my research on Los Angeles history and folklore. I’d obviously like to interview descendants regarding any family memories passed down through the generations about your ancestors. By the same token, I’ll be more than happy to share what I’ve learned.

As I said, this post is a long shot, but you never know when a family genealogist might Google up these names and land on this blog. If you do, please e-mail me through the Comment link below. Leave your name and e-mail address. (I won’t post your comments or personal info — it will be used only to contact you directly.)

Again, this is a serious inquiry, so please be ready to verify your “family pedigree” as you would with any other genealogical site. Thanks!