The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and Criminal Justice, 1858

If 1857 included plenty of high drama with the massacre of Sheriff James R. Barton and members of his posse hunting bandits near San Juan Capistrano, it would have been thought that the next year, 1858, would be much quieter.  To a significant degree that was true, if the Barton incident and its aftermath is viewed as the peak of lawlessness and disquiet in greater Los Angeles during the tumultuous decade.

But 1858 proved to have a shocking start.  In the prior fall's elections, Los Angeles marshal William C. Getman, a Mexican-American veteran and longtime city lawman, secured election as county sheriff.  Just days into the new year, however, Getman was called to the scene of a disturbance involving a man named Reed, who showed signs of violent mental illness.

Like Barton a brave, but reckless, individual, Getman stationed a few men around the scene where Reed holed himself up in a building, but brazenly approached the crazed man telling Reed to drop his gun and that he wouldn't shoot the sheriff.  Reed promptly fired, mortally wounding Getman, who died moments later.  William W. Jenkins, who was discussed in the blog for his role as a deputy constable in the homicide of Antonio Ruiz in July 1856, was one of Getman's sidekicks, and, stationed atop the building, fired through a space in a covered porch and killed Reed, ending the incident.

When the supervisors convened a special meeting on 7 January to honor Getman, it was supposed to nominate a successor to fill out the sheriff's term, but postponed this action until the 11th.  When that meeting was held, supervisor and prominent merchant Francis Mellus nominated Joseph H. Smith, an experienced lawman, while supervisor Francisco Ocampo put forward James S. Thompson, who had involvement in the manhunt for the Barton killers as a candidate.

Whatever the reason, the vote was 4-1 for Thompson, after which Mellus, who obviously voted for Smith, resigned, presumably because of his displeasure over the outcome, though nothing was stated in the minutes as to why Mellus quit.  His replacement was Ralph Emerson.

During February, there was some minor business, such as the creation of a new township of Los Nietos for areas on either side of the San Gabriel River (then the Rio Hondo) in modern Downey, Whittier, Pico Rivera and nearby areas and a requirement of new bondsmen for recently elected San Gabriel constable Roy Bean, who later became the famed "Law West of the Pecos" in Texas.

On the 4th, the supervisors reaffirmed the conditions of the maintenance of the county and city jail, located in the courtyard behind the Rocha Adobe, then used as the courthouse and city and county offices, situated on the west side of Spring Street just north of 1st Street.  It ordered Sheriff Thompson to be responsible "for the safe keeping and support of prisoners confined in the County Jail" by allotting 50 cents per person per day in food and other essentials, while providing Thompson $3 per day compensation.

Going to further levels of detail than previously recorded in the minutes, the board ordered that bedding, clothing and other articles that were requisitioned by the sherff was to be certified by a board committee and then approved by the entire body.  Moreover, each quarter a disbursement of $50 was to be provided for lights, fuel and water and the supervisors were sure to add that "the prisoners [were] to be furnished with plain wholesome food, and their persons as well as the Jail, to be kept clean."

Then, the body resolved that a tax levy of 30 cents per $100 of assessed property be implemented to pay for jail expenses, repealing previous orders of August and November of the previous year.  The vote, however, was 3-2, with members Stephen C. Foster, Emerson and Tomás Sánchez voting yes and Ocampo and Julián Chavez voting no. Incidentally, this was the only time that the supervisors had a Latino majority.

This 18 September 1858 article in the Los Angeles Star discusses statistics about the local economy provided by the deputy assessor, although the information was hard to gather, evidently.  Still, in the post-Gold Rush years, the economy was in stagnation, a condition that would considerably worsen in the first half of the 1860s,  For the administration of criminal justice, which consumed most of the county's meager budget, the hard times made matters much worse.

Financial issues were clearly continuing to be a problem, as noted here before with the Gold Rush petering out by mid-decade, a national depression breaking out in 1857, and the local economy in a serious downturn.  Revenues were never high because of low tax rates, but as property values dropped in the worsening economy, the problem became more acute.

Consequently, in a special meeting of 5 February, the board resolved that

a Court House and Jail Yard, are imperatively required as a Public necessity, and as the only means of effecting the same, that a loan should be effected, and that our delegation in the Legislature should be requested to use their best efforts to have a Law passed therefore.

As will be seen below, the legislature did pass an act allowing the county to put the matter of a loan before the voters in the fall election.

Matters were quiet for some time after this.  In the February and May meetings of the board, lists of jurors who served in the district court, where the most serious felony criminal cases were heard, were provided, showing that, of 120 voters who were called to service (though only some became trial jurors), 14 of them had Spanish-language surnames.  In August, a new listing for the district and sessions (which heard most criminal cases) courts, revealed that 7 of 44 jurors had Spanish-language surnames.  So, out of 164 persons, 21 were Latino, a rate of 13% generally matching that of previous years.

As mentioned in previous posts here, the disproportionate majority of Americans and Europeans on jury pools has led some historians to suggest that justice was not possible for Spanish-surnamed defendants in court.  This, however, is questionable as those surviving cases with dispositions do not show a dramatic difference in conviction rates for Latino defendants compared to their Anglo counterparts.

Incidentally, to give an idea of how large the administrative townships could be in the county, take in this description of the redefinition of the Los Angeles Township, certified by the supervisors on 6 August:

From Arroyo Seco south from the mountains to the city boundary to the northern boundary of San Antonio to San Gabriel River, down to southern boundary of San Antonio, along said line to Rancho de Los Cuerbos to dividing line of San Pedro rancho and Palos Verdes, from the Sentinela [Centinela] and Sausal Redondo to the ocean, north to the line between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties, along this to the eastward connection to the north line of Rancho San Francisco and along this to its eastern terminues and south along the eastern boundary of Los Angeles County and southerly along to point of beginning.

This is basically from where the Arroyo Seco comes out of the San Gabriels at Pasadena and La Cañada/Flintridge all the way south to modern Downey area along the old San Gabriel River channel, now the Rio Hondo (the current San Gabriel was created in the winter floods of 1867-68 ).

Then the boundary moved westward to about where South-Central Los Angeles is and to the ocean generally where Redondo Beach is situated.  From there the line followed the coast up to what is now the Ventura County line--Ventura having been carved out of Santa Barbara County fifteen years later, in 1873.

Then the line went east along the boundary of Los Angeles and modern Ventura County and basically took in part of the San Fernando Valley (there was a San Fernando township) and through Tujunga, Sunland, north Glendale, La Crescenta and La Cañada before meeting back at the Arroyo Seco.

Initial county election returns published in the 4 September edition of El Clamor Público match those reproduced in the 11 September minutes of the Board of Supervisors. including the races for county judge and sheriff and the vote on a $25,000 tax levy for a new court house, which was narrowly defeated.  Thanks to Paul Bryan Gray for providing the microfilm of this paper.

Speaking of Los Angeles Township, the election of early September was recorded in the minutes of the board from 11 September.  The vote for a loan for the county courthouse was defeated and the minutes showed the tally as 237-176.   Returns printed in El Clamor Público on the same date were different, with the vote recorded as 236-194.  Interestingly, the measure passed handily in the city of Los Angeles, 115-68 and won in San Fernando and San Pedro, but all 72 voters in El Monte, all but 3 of the 26 in Santa Ana, and all 19 each in San Pedro and Tejon voted against it.  What isn't clear is why there were only some 430 votes, when the races for county judge (won handily by incumbent Benjamin Hayes) and sheriff (with appointee James Thompson easily defeating Joseph H. Smith and 1857 appointee Elijah Bettis) each had between 1400-1500 voters.  

Four days later, given the defeat of the loan measure, the clerk was ordered by the supervisors to send a letter to Mayor Damien Marchessault and the Los Angeles Common [City] Council to present the board's views "upon the present dilapidated condition of the Court House Building" and to seek out their views on the matter and "to place the same and the archives of the County beyond the Contingencies of the weather."  Clearly voters did not see the urgency for better court facilities, even if it meant, as was clear in the last statement, that there were some significant exposure to the elements in the Rocha Adobe!

On 21 September, the minutes recorded that there was a response from Marchessault and the council, though these weren't detailed (neither was the matter reflected in the council minutes, covered in an earlier post on this blog).  However, it is obvious that their concern was manifested similarly to that of the supervisors, because the board's building committee was authorized to expend up to $300 on repairs and instructed to find a new office for the clerk.

Election returns were amended for reporting in the 11 September edition of El Clamor.

The remainder of the year consisted of mundane matters when it came to criminal justice related questions, such as the disqualification (the reason was not stated) of José Antonio Yorba the elected justice of the peace at San Juan Capistrano and the appointment of his replacement, Michael Krazewski and the same for Los Nietos constable F. Bachelor, replaced by O.P. Passons, the runner-up in the justice of the peace contest in that township.

There was also a matter of requesting from San Bernardino County for the reimbursement of prisoner maintenance costs at the county jail for persons wanted for crimes committed in that other locale and for canceling scrip (IOUs) issued to jailor Francis Carpenter for fees that were disallowed in a district court case that went against him.

The next post takes us to the last year of the tumultuous decade of the 1850s.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and Criminal Justice, 1857

The year 1857 began with the horrific ambush of Sheriff James R. Barton and four members of the posse he led against a gang of thieves, known as the Flores-Daniel Gang, who had been committing robberies and a murder at San Juan Capistrano.  This incident has been discussed in detail here in this blog.

The first meeting of the year was on the 28th, soon after the murders, and the board's primary business was to order that the vacancies of the office of sheriff and for the two constables, Charles Baker and William Little, killed in the incident be filled.  The board then set the date of 7 February for their next meeting and to make those appointments.

Four of the five members, Manuel Dominguez being absent, were present and the chair was Tomás Sánchez, whose service under Andrés Pico, in the manhunt to capture the killers was very important.

A new supervisor was El Monte resident Richard C. Fryer, who was among that town's settlers in 1852.  An ordained Baptist minister, the first in the Los Angeles region, Fryer later moved to the town of Spadra, founded by former El Monte settler William W. Rubottom, in what is now Pomona and served in the state assembly.

Another neophyte to the board was San Gabriel-area farmer William M. Stockton, who was among the first to travel across Death Valley in 1849 on his way to the newly discovered gold fields of California.  In 1852, Stockton, who did well in the mines, moved to Los Angeles and acquired part of the Huerta de Cuati, a grant of land made to native Indian Victoria Reid.  Stockton acquired what was known as the "Pear Orchard," a remnant of the Mission San Gabriel's former fruit orchards and where he had a vineyard, and moved into an adobe home in what is now San Marino.  When times were bad in the drought-ridden mid-1860s, Stockton lost the property to two men, including his fellow Death Valley traveler William M. Manly, whose published reminiscences were widely read.  He remained in the area, however, and died in 1894.  Stockton was among those present when Miguel Soto, said to have been in the Flores-Daniel gang, and a few other Latinos were killed by San Gabriel-area citizens just as this meeting took place--his role is not certain, however.

Then there was Jonathan R. Scott, who has been mentioned in this blog before several times.  A native of New York, who lived in Missouri for a period, Scott abandoned a wife and children in his home state when he moved west.  Upon arriving in Los Angeles in 1850, he opened a law practice and was a justice of the peace.  He was the 6'4" giant who could reach up and crush termite-ridden ceiling joists in the Rocha Adobe courthouse not long before his election to the board, though he didn't complete his term.  Scott died in 1864 in Los Angeles, having owned considerable property downtown and a vineyard in what is today Burbank.

The four supervisors each voted for a candidate: Charles E. Hale, a lawman mentioned here before; El Monte resident Frank Gentry, John Reed, whose father-in-law, John Rowland, owned half of the massive Rancho La Puente in the eastern San Gabriel Valley, and Elijah Bettis, also mentioned in the last post.  After a second route stalemate, it was decided to wait until the next meeting, presumably with Dominguez, who was owner of the Rancho San Pedro and a delegate to the 1849 constitutional convention, could cast the deciding vote.  Meantime, William H. Peterson was appointed to serve out Little's term as constable, but Baker's position was not filled.

On the 14th, again with Dominguez assumed to be present, Baker's constable slot was filled by B.B. Barker and the vote was to appoint Bettis as sheriff.

The 2 March meeting contained more material related to the Flores-Daniel gang, in which District Attorney Cameron E. Thom suggested that the board appoint someone to petition the state legislature for approval of funds as provided for in a statute "to suppress armed banditti," in both Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties which was passed on 4 February in response to the Barton massacre.

Benjamin D. Wilson, a former city clerk and mayor in Los Angeles and later supervisor and state senator, who moved to the same Huerta de Cuati mentioned above and established his "Lake Vineyard" estate, where San Marino's Lacy Park is situated, was appointed to this task of obtaining a warrant from the state and, if the funds were not available from the treasury, to sell the warrant for cash.  The monies were to go into a special fund called the "Fund to Provide for the Arrest and Suppression of Bands of Armed Banditti in the County of Los Angeles."

This editorial from the Los Angeles Star, 25 April 1857, discusses the "disorganized state" in Los Angeles County that kept the region from assuming the "position and prospects" it deserved.  See below for the rest of the piece.

At the same meeting, Thom suggested that the board also approach the legislature about approving a special tax of 1/8 of 1% of the county's assessed property value for payment of the debt attached to the court house.

When three weeks later, on the 23rd, a special meeting was called to deal with unfinished business that did "serious injury" to the county, discussion was had about the county's finances going back to the previous summer and the meetings continued for two days, but there was no record of what transpired.  It was revealed at that meeting that Scott resigned and his replacement, former Los Angeles mayor, state senator, and constitutional convention delegate, Stephen C. Foster (who famously resigned the mayoralty to participate in the early 1855 lynching of convicted murderer, David Brown, and then was promptly returned to the office in the resulting special election), was elected chair.

In meetings in April and May, lists of jurors who served at the recent terms of the Court of Sessions and District Court were provided.  The last post noted that this was a new feature of the minutes and the ethnic breakdown of these juries have been the focus of speculation about whether justice in these courts was possible when the juries were so skewed towards European and American membership.

For these two months, the proportions were obvious.  Of 120 men listed, 17, of only 14%, had Spanish-language surnames.  In November, a smaller list of Sessions jurors, showed 3 of 21, also 14%, were Latino  Yet, surviving case files with dispositions noted for trials do not appear to suggest any bias solely because of jury composition given the relatively close rate of convictions for defendants who were Latino compared to those who were Anglo.

At the 8 May meeting of the board, there was a list of payments made out to those who provided a variety of materials and services in the hunt for the Flores-Daniel Gang.  These included medical care by doctors, the rent of rooms to posses, the hiring of horses, sundry supplies, food, ammunition and the building of gallows and provision of coffins for the men who were summarily executed (lynched).

Of the total of 51 items, about a third were from persons with Spanish-language surname, a notable point given that some historians argue that Flores and Daniel were vaguely identified "social bandits," who emjoyed substantial support and succor from fellow Latinos.  Whether this was true or not, it appears there were some Latinos who were willing, or perhaps were forced in some circumstances as there is no way to tell, to provide aid to those hunting the bandits.  In early November, another 12 persons were reimbursed for ammunition, horses and supplies.

An important financial matter was addressed at the meeting of 5 August, which was a levy of 35 cents on every 100 dollars of assessed property for expenses for the maintenance of the jail, always a major expense for the county, as well as payments on the Rocha Adobe, which comprised the court house and city and county offices, with the jail in its rear courtyard.

At the same meeting, the board voted, correspondingly, to increase the allowance, taken from the Jail Fund, for prisoner maintenance to 75 cents for each "white" person, including Latinos, and 50 cents per Indian.  Jailor Francis Carpenter had his salary increased to $1600 per year, though it was also resolved that

the jailor is to furnish at his own proper cost the necessary lights, water, wood, and to keep the jail in good order, and also to furnish the prisoners with good, wholesome food.  He is also to have the jail swept and whitewashed when necessary for which purpose the County is to furnish the necessary brooms and whitewash

In the September county election, there was only one candidate for county judge, incumbent William G. Dryden, but whether it was because of his popularity, or the difficulty and lack of desirability for the job cannot be determined.  The race for sheriff was between John Reed, who was one of four candidates for appointment earlier in the year after Barton's death, and Los Angeles marshal William C. Getman, who was reelected to that post (it was possible then to hold both!).  The campaign for district attorney was decisive, when Ezra Drown bested Samuel R. Campbell, 1262 to 107.  The new Los Angeles justices of the peace were Russell Sackett and Narciso Botello, the latter a long-time member of the Californio elite, but one of the few to hold elected office in those days.  Constables elected were Frank H. Alexander and Robert A. Hester, both of whom were to serve for extended periods in those positions.

The second portion of the Star editorial of 25 April 1857.

In San Gabriel, Roy Bean, mentioned in the last post and who later went on to be a notorious Texas judge, barely secured election by one vote over Felipe Valenzuela as a constable.  Another interesting character in town, disgraced former Los Angeles marshal, Alviron S. Beard, ran for justice of the peace but garnered only 3 votes!  

Then there was William W. Jenkins, the young deputy constable mentioned in the last post and previously in the blog.  After his killing of Antonio Ruiz in July 1856, which led to a standoff between Spanish-speakers and Anglos in Los Angeles and near violence, and, after his acquittal, Jenkins unsuccessfully sought a constable's position (but his loss saved his life, probably, because he would have been with Sheriff Barton when that massacre took place.)  In any case, Jenkins moved to the San Pedro township, by the harbor, and won election there as a constable.

At El Monte, a young man, Andrew Jackson King, whose family was embroiled in at least two Southern-style feuds in the 1850s and 1860s, was elected a constable.  He later went on to be a newspaper publisher, city attorney, judge , assembly member, and ran a prviate law practice for many years, dying in his 90th year.

At the 30 September meeting, there was an interesting reference to a District Court civil case in which jailor Carpenter was sued by the people and a judgment of $2500 was found against him--the matter needs further research, but it would appear it had something to do with his claims for fees and services.

Perhaps not coincidentally, at the 5 November meeting with the new board seated, his compensation was slashed to $3 per day (a good $500 or more reduction annually) and the prisoner maintenance costs were reduced to 50 cents a head with no distinction between whites and Indians.  It is possible that the worsening post-Gold Rush economy (a national depression also broke out in 1857) was the cause of the reductions, however.

In the last post, it was noted that payments for the purchase of the Rocha Adobe for the court house and city and county offices were being made to Luis Jordan, who held a note on the property before it was sold by the Rochas to Jonathan Temple, who then conveyed the adobe and lot for $3160 to the city and county.  At the 5 November meeting, the board authorized payment of over $2200 to Jordan's minor daughter, who had an appointed guardian, vineyardist Mathew Keller, for her interest in the structure.

Finally, another disgraced city marshal's situation came before the board at this meeting.  Alfred Shelby, who skipped bail and headed to Mexico as he was being readied for trial in a homicide he committed, had a surety who posted a bond for Shelby's good conduct in office.  The same situation applied to two Latinos for another individual and the board resolved to these three parties could satisfy and cancel in county scrip (an IOU) their forfeited amounts of bond within ten days.  Otherwise, District Attorney Drown was empowered to pursue legal action in court to recover those funds.

It was quite a busy year in 1857 and the situation would be calmer the following year as the next post will discuss.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and Criminal Justice, 1856

The year 1856 marked the fourth full year of the existence of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.  One of the newer elements of the minutes that started around this time was lists of jurors called for the several courts.

For example, the meeting of 9 February provided names of jurors who served in the lates term of both the Court of Sessions (renamed the County Court in 1864) and the District Court.  As noted here before, the Sessions court heard most criminal matters, excepting the most serious, such as murder, rape and, sometimes, arson, which were heard at the higher-level District Court.

At this meeting there were two dozen men attending each court and a breakdown of general ethnic categories, stated for this blog as "Spanish-language surnamed" and "American and European", showed that 9 of the 24 at the Court of Sessions and 4 of the 24 at the District Court had Spanish-language surnames.

The 4 June meeting provides lists of 55 jurors for the Sessions court and a dozen for the District Court.  In this case, while 10 of the Sessions jurors had Spanish-language surnames, 9 of the 12 at District Court did.  On 6 August, all dozen list jurors for the Sessions court were American or European.

With the unusual proportion of Spanish-language jurors at the District Court, as reported in early June, the total representation of 127 listed jurors for the year showed 32 had Spanish-language surnames, or about 1/4 of the total.

While Spanish-speakers were a solid majority of the population of the county then, it should be remembered that jurors were taken from the rolls of taxpayers in the county.  However, state law also provided that jurors were to be selected at random from those rolls according to specific instructions, though whether statute was complied with is another matter.

It has been stated by some historians, notably Richard Griswold del Castillo in his 1979 work Los Angeles Barrio that the low proportion of Spanish-surnamed jurors meant that defendants of the same classification could not get justice in Los Angeles' courts.  Del Castillo's analysis of jury composition largely squares with what this blogger has found.  The problem is that jury composition is only part of the equation--the better portion is to look at those cases that contain dispositions and then see what the conviction and acquittal rates show.

In hundreds of cases analyzed by this blogger, it was found that conviction rate differences between Spanish-language surnamed and American and European defendants actually narrowed over time, even as jury composition became even more skewed towards Americans and Europeans.  This runs counter to del Castillo's assertions, though it has to be said that there were many cases without disposition, some missing, and, besides, the dynamics of what drove any individual jury set to decide a case cannot be easily squared with statistics, either way.

As noted in the last several entries, financial matters also are a crucial part of what is found in these minutes, especially because criminal justice administration took up the lion's share of the county's expenditures and because, all too often, revenues were just not enough to keep pace.

Much of the expense had to do with maintenace of the jail, but sometimes revenue shortfalls came into place.  So, at the 11 February meeting, Francis J. Carpenter, the jailor had over $1600 in bills, but for the lion's share of that, he was expended 60 cents to the dollar "equivalent to cash," which sounds like scrip (or, basically, an IOU).  Yet, the next day, the board agreed to raise Carpenter's daily rate of compensation to $5.33.

On 3 June, he issued a claim to the board for another $1444.16.  Two days later, the board voted to issue more scrip to Carpenter for his bills.  In November, after another round of submitted bills by the jailor, the board voted to give him just 40 cents to the dollar in scrip.

Another financial matter had to do with the Rocha Adobe, which was purchased by the county from merchant Jonathan Temple in 1853 and which housed the courts and city and county offices.  In the courtyard behind the adobe which faced Spring Street, the two-story city and county jail was located.  In 1855, there had been an issue with a clear title and it appears that unresolved matters continued into 1856, because at the 12 February meeting, Luis Jordan presented a claim based on an assignment of an interest in the lot given to him by Antonio F. Rocha before the sale.  After discussion, the board agreed to give Rocha a receipt for $500 for a joint warrant on the property to settle Jordan's claim.

For unknown reasons, there are gaps in the record from 12 February to 5 May and then again to 2 June.  An interesting problem that confronted the supervisors in early June was a sudden spate of vacancies in the most of the justice of the peace offices in most of the county's townships, either because of resignations or failure of qualifications discovered quite a bit late after the September 1855 county election.

This map from about the 1890s, shows downtown Los Angeles from Temple Street, top (north) to above First Street, bottom (south) and from Main, right (east) , to Broadway, left (west.)  The court house and jail in the Rocha Adobe, bought from Jonathan Temple, from 1854 on were located at the corner of Spring Street and what was called Jail or Court and then later Franklin Street at the lower center, where the Phillips Block No. 1, built by Pomona-area rancher Louis Phillips, is shown.  Note that the 1889 Court House was moved just slightly northwest of the Rocha Adobe site and due west of where the courthouse was located in Temple's Market House, on which site the Bullard Block was built about 1890, between Market and Court streets at the right center.  The Bullard Block and Temple Block, to its north, sites are now where city hall is located and Main and Spring have been straightened.

In any case, the board quickly appointed replacements for the remaining couple of months before the upcoming election.  One for the sparsely populated northern reaches of the county in the Tejon Township, where Fort Tejon had recently been founded, was Samuel A. Bishop.  Bishop, a native of Virginia, was a Gold Rush '49er who became involved in Indian wars and the transfer of natives to a new reservation in the Tejon Sinks.  He acquired to Rancho Castac [Castaic] and also briefly had a ranch in the upper Owens Valley during the early 1860s, for which a new town, Bishop, was named in his honor.  He lived in San Jose until his death in 1893.

At El Monte, Elijah Bettis, who came from Missouri to the "American town" settled a few years earlier, became the justice of the peace.  He left the office later to become deputy sheriff to James Barton, who lost his reelection campaign to the board of supervisors, but won election returning him as sheriff.  When Barton gathered a small posse just a few weeks into his term to hunt bandits at San Juan Capistrano, he left Bettis in Los Angeles and then was massacred with his compatriots.   Bettis became sheriff and served until the term was up and was later water overseer for Los Angeles.

Russell Sackett, the appointee for Los Angeles township, outside the town limits, was from New York and was an attorney there before he came to California in the Gold Rush and wound up in Los Angeles.  He practiced law, was superintendent of public instruction, postmaster and a one-term member of the state assembly, in addition to being a JP.  He died in Los Angeles in 1875.

San Pedro township's appointed justice was Thomas Workman, whose family arrived in 1854 from Missouri to join Thomas' uncle, William, co-owner of Rancho La Puente in the eastern San Gabriel Valley.  Although only 24 years old Workman demonstrated administrative ability and was a valued employee, as chief clerk, of Phineas Banning and his growing mercantile empire at the harbor area.  Workman, who lost a run for county clerk in the early 1860s, died in the April 1863 explosion of the steamer Ada Hancock, owned by Banning.

At San Juan Capistrano, Irish-born Thomas J. Scully, accounted as the first teacher in what later became Orange County and who married into the prominent Yorba family, was appointed JP, while he was engaged in his teaching duties.  He later lived in Corona in what became Riverside County and died there in 1895.

Yet another justice of the peace vacancy opened up in late October, when Los Angeles township JP Alexander Gibson died and Thomas F. Swim was appointed in his stead.

In the 3 June minutes, there was mention made in the minutes to 21-year old William W. Jenkins as a deputy constable--meaning that, unlike constables, who were elected, Jenkins was appointed by the local justice of the peace.  Jenkins, whose mother and step-father Elizabeth and George Dalton (the latter's brother was Henry Dalton, owner of several San Gabriel Valley ranches), came to town earlier in the decade and joined, at age 18, the Los Angeles Rangers, when the organization was formed in 1853.

A little over a month later, Jenkins was given a writ of attachment for a $50 debt in a civil matter before justice of the peace Gibson to serve on Antonio Ruiz.  When Jenkins tried to seize a guitar to satisfy the write, a struggle broke out with Ruiz and his common-law wife, and Jenkins shot and killed Ruiz who grabbed the deputy constable from behind during the altercation.

In the aftermath, a group of Latinos and French residents of Los Angeles gathered on a hill above the jail where Jenkins was confirned, after initially being freed on his own recognizance without bail, and tensions rose to a point where a riot was feared.

Eventually, after Marshal William Getman was grazed by a bullet in a foray to determine the position of those on the hill, the situation calmed.  Jenkins was acquitted on a manslaughter charge as was alleged ringleader of the hilltop gathering, Fernando Carriaga, tried for intent to incite a riot.

Notably, the board suspended meetings for a time, almost certainly because of the state of emergency that gripped community leaders during the Jenkins-Ruiz incident.  Moreover, Sheriff David W. Alexander resigned, though whether it was because of the incident is not known--Alexander did relocate to a ranch at the base of the San Joaquin Valley where he remained for some years.  Charles Hale, a Los Angeles constable, was appointed to fill Alexander's position and Charles K. Baker became constable in Hale's place.  When Sheriff Barton decisively defeated Hale in the early November county election by a vote of 821 to 346, and was killed two months later, Baker and newly elected constable William H. Little were among the posse members gunned down along with him.  Notably, William W. Jenkins ran for constable in that election, but finished last among the six candidates.  If he had won, he surely would have been killed in the Barton massacre.

Another interesting result of the election took place in the mission town of San Gabriel.  Dr. William B. Osburn, whose name has been mentioned here several times, had moved there from Los Angeles and was elected a justice of the peace.  In the aftermath of the Barton killing, Osburn was accused of brutalizing the corpse of Miguel Soto, said to have been in the gang that murdered the sheriff, which was a double accusation, given that Osburn was a judge and a doctor.  One of the losing candidates for constable was Roy Bean, the younger brother of a militia general and saloon keeper, Joshua Bean, whose late 1852 murder led to the lynching of an innocent man.  Roy Bean later became the famed judge in Texas known as "the law west of the Pecos."

It appears that there was either no meeting of the board after 11 November or the minutes have vanished, but this takes us to 1857 and the Barton massacre.