Southern California Vanguards
The Workman and Temple Family from 1830 to 1930

Part 1: From the Pastoral Pueblo to the Emerging City, 1830-1876

Few families have had as extensive an involvement in the public life of southern California as the Workman and Temple families. These activities were particularly noteworthy during the century between 1830 and 1930, as the families were at the vanguard of such varied pursuits as ranching, agriculture, real estate and construction, politics, oil and water development, banking, and social activism. The story of the families serves, therefore, as an appropriate case study for the story of southern California.

The first member of the families to settle in southern California was Jonathan Temple (1796-1866). A native of Reading, Massachusetts, Temple lived in Hawaii and San Diego before opening the first American-style store in Los Angeles in 1828, which he operated for almost thirty years. In 1843, he purchased the Rancho los Cerritos, a 27,000-acre property in today’s Long Beach area, where his 1844 adobe survives as part of the Rancho los Cerritos historic site. During the 1840s, Temple was active in ship-bound trade throughout the coasts of California and Mexico and is said to have owned extensive lands between Acapulco and Mazatlán. In 1856, he became the lessor of the Mexican national mint, a concession held by him and his daughter until 1893 and reputedly worth $1 million.

Temple was also one of Los Angeles’ first developers, constructing such landmarks as the original Temple Block and the Market House, which later served as city and county administrative headquarters, contained the county courthouse, and featured the first true theater in southern California. He also served as the first alcalde (or mayor) of Los Angeles after capture of the pueblo by the United States during the Mexican War and served on the first American-period common (city) council. During his tenure on the council in 1849, he arranged and paid for the Ord survey, the first detailed survey of Los Angeles. When a new street was opened in Los Angeles in the mid-1850s, near the Temple Block, the city named it Temple Street in his honor. He lived his last years in San Francisco where he died on 30 May 1866, two months after selling the Los Cerritos rancho.

The next member of the family to come to Los Angeles was Jonathan’s half-brother, Pliny Fisk Temple (1822-1880), who arrived by ship from Massachusetts in the summer of 1841. Pliny was twenty-six years his brother’s junior and, because Jonathan had left the East Coast before Pliny’s birth, the two had never met. Pliny’s visit became a permanent move and he took a position as a clerk in his brother’s store, where he worked until 1849. During this period, Pliny met Antonia Margarita Workman (1830-1892), fifteen-year old daughter of William Workman (1799-1876) and Nicolasa Urioste (1802-1892). Their marriage in September 1845 (during which Temple was also baptized as Francisco, giving him the distinctive name of F. P. F.) linked the two families together and, symbolically in the changing demographics of early Los Angeles, was the first nuptial in southern California history where both parties had Anglo last names.

William Workman was the fifth of eight children born to Thomas Workman (1763-1843) and Lucy Cook (1764-1830) and grew up in the village of Clifton in northern England. His older brother, David (1797-1855) left England for the United States about 1817, settled eventually in Franklin, Missouri and opened a saddlery, the apprenticed trade of the brothers. In 1822, David returned to England and convinced William to join him in America. William remained with David until the spring of 1825, when he joined a caravan to New Mexico. In July, he checked in at the customs house in Santa Fe and later settled in San Francisco del Rancho, a community south of Taos.

It was in the Taos area that Workman began his involvement in fur trapping, distilling, and the operation of a store, with partner John Rowland. Workman was baptized a Catholic in 1828, became a naturalized Mexican citizen, and married Nicolasa Urioste, a Taos native. The two had a daughter, Antonia Margarita, and a son, Joseph Manuel (1832-1901).

Workman seems to have made a good living in Taos, but politics soon made life difficult. In 1840 the Republic of Texas named Workman and Rowland agents, perhaps without their prior knowledge, to represent Texas’ interests in annexing New Mexico. Although they did not apparently accept this role, Workman and Rowland’s identification with the Texans was tantamount to treason. As tensions increased and the Texans began to march for Santa Fe, Rowland and Workman formed a party of some forty whites that left New Mexico in September 1841. Taking in about 25 New Mexicans shortly after leaving, the party traveled the Old Spanish Trail, arriving in Los Angeles on 5 November 1841. The Rowland and Workman expedition left its legacy as the first emigrant party to enter southern California from an eastern-based land route. It, with a similar party which arrived in northern California from Missouri at the same time, signaled a new age of white influx into Mexican California and heralded serious changes for the region.

John Rowland petitioned for and received, though in his name only, a rancho east of Los Angeles, on former Mission San Gabriel land, called La Puente. Limited initially to four square leagues, about 18,000 acres, the rancho was regranted in 1845 by Governor Pio Pico to both Rowland and Workman and expanded to eleven square leagues (48,790 acres.) After living in a temporary dwelling and planting a crop of corn and beans, Workman erected an adobe by the winter of 1842 and began raising cattle, the lifeblood of the California economy.

Within a few years, Workman had become embroiled in California politics. He was the captain of a group of white volunteers serving Pio Pico in his successful effort to unseat unpopular governor Manuel Micheltorena. Perhaps as a result of his assistance, Workman received several grants of land from Pico, including the islands Alcatraz and San Clemente, the missions San Gabriel and San Rafael, and the above-mentioned regranting of Rancho la Puente. In the American takeover and subsequent land claims process, however, only the latter remained in Workman’s hands.

Workman’s role in the American invasion was significant. He arranged an amnesty with Commodore Robert F. Stockton near San Juan Capistrano in early January 1847 for Mexican citizens fighting the Americans. After the war-ending battle of Los Angeles a few days later, Workman and two others brought the flag of truce. He also was instrumental in securing the release of local American residents, including John Rowland, who were taken captive by the Californios.

Nine days before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo took effect in 1848, James Marshall made his discovery of gold that brought riches and irremediable change to California. (Gold was first discovered in large quantity, however, near Los Angeles in 1842, from which F. P. F. Temple sold gold dust to the east.) Southern cattle ranchers, such as John Temple, F. P. F. Temple, and William Workman made tremendous fortunes selling beef cattle to miners and other residents of the north. Workman’s brother, David, who continued to operate his saddlery in Missouri, also engaged in trade in the west and in Mexico and sought to make his own fortune in California by opening a store in Sacramento in 1852. Although a fire destroyed the business (and most of the city), a subsequent visit to his brother at La Puente led David to return to Missouri and ready his family for resettlement in southern California. Unfortunately, the reunion of the Workman brothers was short-lived, because David was killed in Stanislaus County during the summer of 1855 driving sheep to the mining regions for William. David’s widow, Nancy (1807-1888), and their sons, Thomas (1832-1863), Elijah (1835-1906), and William Henry (1839-1918), moved into Los Angeles, becoming active and influential citizens. Thomas was the clerk for Phineas Banning at Wilmington and ran for county clerk in 1861. He was killed, however, in a steamship explosion at Wilmington in April 1863. Elijah also worked for Phineas Banning before opening his own saddlery in 1857. After being a press operator for the Southern Californian and Los Angeles Star newspapers, William Henry joined Elijah in the saddlery business by 1860.

By this time, the Gold Rush began to pan out and the influence of competition from midwestern cattle ranchers as well as the vicissitudes of the weather took its toll on the cattle industry in southern California. A calamitous flood followed by a devastating drought from 1862-64 ended the preeminence of cattle as the backbone of the region’s economy. Many ranchers focused primarily or completely on cattle, and suffered severe reverses that forced the sale or mortgage foreclosure of their properties. Others, such as William Workman and F. P. F. Temple, had supplemented their cattle income by farming and were able to weather the flood and drought. At the same time, both were able to finally obtain United States titles for their properties— Workman in 1867 and Temple in 1872, after filing their claims in 1852. By the early 1870s, both men had also improved their ranches. Temple added a second story to his adobe and constructed a two-story French Second Empire style brick home adjacent to it. He also had a mill, Italian gardens, and other improvements. Workman renovated his home twice, once in the 1850s and again in the late 1860s. He also established a cemetery, built a chapel, constructed a mill and wineries, added other buildings and increased his agricultural holdings, while still maintaining cattle.

The post-drought years coincided with the conclusion of the Civil War and, beginning in the late 1860s, immigrants from the devastated South joined other new arrivals to the region. Los Angeles entered its first boom period, spawning real estate subdivisions, small industries, water and oil development, railroads, and others. Members of the Workman and Temple families played crucial roles in the boom. Among them were Elijah and William H. Workman, whose saddlery and harness business benefited from the growth of the region’s population and trade. F. P. F. Temple was at the forefront of the development movement, stemming in 1867 with the purchase of his late brother’s valuable Los Angeles property. In the following eight years, Temple was owner or part-owner in a wide array of companies, including an oil concern in Newhall; a water company for mines in Inyo County; a saw mill near Idyllwild; townsites at today’s Compton, Inglewood and Culver City, and San Marino and Alhambra; railroads from Santa Monica to Inyo County; and many more. He was also a major participant in the drive to bring the Southern Pacific Railroad line to Los Angeles from San Francisco and built several new substantial brick buildings to the Temple Block and surrounding area, demolishing the adobe structures of his brother’s day.

It was in banking, though, that Temple and William Workman most deeply participated in the boom, as financiers of regional development projects. In 1868 the two men formed a partnership with merchant Isaias Hellman and opened the second bank in Los Angeles called, “Hellman, Temple, and Company.” Hellman, as cashier, represented the newly emerging business class of the city, while Temple and Workman exemplified the long-standing moneyed ranching class of the region. The bank, however, was dissolved by Hellman in 1871, due to differences in loaning policy. Undaunted, Temple convinced Workman, who was a silent partner, to continue as the banking house of Temple and Workman, which opened in a three-story addition to the Temple Block in November 1871.

The rush to development during the boom caught up with the Temple and Workman bank. In late August 1875, a panic erupted in San Francisco following the collapse of the Comstock Lode silver mines speculation in Nevada and the subsequent closure of the Bank of California. When the news traveled the telegraph wires to Los Angeles, patrons of the Temple and Workman bank rushed to withdraw their money, forcing the bank to suspend business. Temple and Workman were unable to find immediate assistance and remained closed for three months. Negotiations with E. J. “Lucky” Baldwin, who was looking for southern California real estate, culminated in early December with a loan of $210,000, secured by a mortgage on the combined property of Temple, Workman, and friend Juan Matias Sanchez. While the reopening of the bank on 6 December 1875 was heralded as a return to prosperity for Los Angeles, the steady stream of depositors closing their accounts continued. Despite the infusion of an additional $130,000 from Baldwin, the bank closed permanently on 13 January 1876. An inventory revealed mismanagement by the head cashier, a long list of debtors who could not pay, and a clear sense that these conditions coupled with the bank’s propensity to participate in boom-era speculations brought it to ruin.

After three years in assignment, during which only a fraction of the bank’s creditors received compensation, a court ruling in 1879 led to the sheriff’s sale of the mortgaged property to an agent of Baldwin. The ruin was too much for William Workman, who at age 76, took his life on 17 May 1876 after the court sent a receiver to take possession of his home. Temple, who was elected Los Angeles County Treasurer a few days after the initial bank suspension, served out his term until 1878. He suffered a series of strokes, however, which left him partially paralyzed. A virtual recluse, the once-popular and widely respected Temple died of apoplexy at La Merced in April 1880.

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