Gregg Family’s Early Years in California: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Fun Facts”

Covered Wagon Train to Running Citrus Nursery: Gregg Family’s Interesting History

John Henry Gregg: 1836-1891 (husband of 1^st Cousin 3x Removed)

Susannah Vaught Hargrave Gregg: 1842-1923 (1^st Cousin 3x Removed)

Robert Hargrave: 1816-1881 (Husband of 2^nd great-grandaunt Sisera Bland Smith)

 

First cousins three times removed might seem like too distant a family relationship to spend time researching, but sometimes these extended family members have the most interesting stories that bring our nation’s history to vivid, dramatic life. In this case, cousin Susannah Vaught Hargrave was born in Indiana, married John H. Gregg in Texas, and ended up moving to Orange County in the 1870s, a period before it even became Orange County! Since we now live in Orange County, I was intrigued, and began looking at newspaper articles about the family on Newspapers.com. To my delight, I ran across an absolute gem: a photo-studded feature story from the November 18, 1954 issue of the Whittier News titled “Descendants of Pioneer Gregg Family Tell of Wagon Train Trip from Texas.” This article provided a treasure trove of fun facts about the Greggs and their early years in California.

To fit the “Fun Facts” theme, I will recount the information in a bullet-point format.

• ·     The principal source of information for the article was John and Susannah Gregg’s youngest daughter, Blanche Gregg Vaux. Since she was born in 1881, years after many of the events took place, she may have some details wrong. In fact, she omits mention of her two oldest brothers altogether. Samuel and James, who died at 23 and 30 years old respectively, were 16 and 14 years her senior, so perhaps she little contact with them. However, her version of the family’s history follows the paper record quite closely and is worth recording. Therefore, I will recount her following stories as “facts”.

• ·     Robert Hargrave, Susannah’s father and Blanche’s grandfather, moved to California before his daughter and her husband John H. Gregg did. He traveled to Southern California by wagon train, arriving in 1867. He bought a ranch in the Whittier area. The article states that, “He saw irrigation water going to waste, and according to W. H. King (another area ranching pioneer) he dammed it into a reservoir, dug a channel, put in a water wheel, and built a grist mill on his ranch above Telegraph Rd. between Norwalk Blvd and Dice Rd. After turning the water wheel, the water drained into the lake for which Little Lake School is named.” (Note: a Rancho Santa Fe/Whittier area elementary school district is still named Little Lake, but the referenced school no longer exists, and I find no sign of the lake.)

Robert Eldred Hargrave

• ·    According to Blanche, this mill was one of the first two in the area, and her grandfather planted one of the first area apple orchards, pressing and selling apple cider as part of his ranching operations. She incorrectly claims he died in the 1890s. He died the same year she was born: 1881.
• ·    Blanche also fails to mention that her grandfather, a widower, had remarried and fathered a son before moving to California. His first marriage had produced only daughters. His second wife, Sarah, died at some point prior to 1877, when Robert married for a third time to a younger woman named Priscilla Hayes. Robert’s son, Robert C. Hargrave, didn’t follow his father into ranching; instead becoming a music teacher in San Diego!

Robert C Hargrave, music teacher

• ·     Blanche states her parents left Texas with a wagon train of 30 Texas families two years after her grandfather’s 1867 arrival. She was off by about two years. Her parents were living at Fort Concho, Texas in 1870 when the  federal census was taken. Since their fourth son, Lloyd, was born in California in 1872, they probably arrived sometime in 1871. Blanche also states that the Greggs traveled with their toddler son Gus. In reality, they also had the two older sons with them, Samuel, who was nearly 6, and James, age 4.

Wagon train in Texas

• ·    The wagon train supposedly started with 1200 cattle, but much of the livestock was stolen as the group passed through Indian lands in New Mexico and Arizona. They traveled through El Paso, Tucson and Yuma, Arizona before crossing into California, skirting south of the Salton Sea near the Mexican border. This trail, which must have been brutal as it passed through vast expanses of Sonoran desert, had been constructed a southerly extension of the U. S Government’s Pacific Wagon Road, made possible by the Gadsden Purchase of southern Arizona. The map below shows the importance of water to the wagon trains—the trail goes from one spring to another.

• ·     John Gregg lost most of his cattle during the long trek, and stopped in Gila Bend, Arizona to feed and water them for several months while the wagon train with his wife and children continued on to San Diego County, California. Susannah must have been both brave and tough to survive those last months on her own with three children under six to care for, as well as the wagon team.

Colorado River ford at Ft. Yuma--Susannah had to guide her team across by herself as John had stayed in Gila with their cattle.

• ·    The Greggs spent their first year in California in the San Diego area before moving to the Whittier area, then called Los Nietos, where son Lloyd was born May 9, 1872.
• ·    The Gregg family lived in “a little white house on the south side of what [was then known as Kings Lane and] became Washington Blvd. on the place later known as the Cole Ranch.” The area was known for walnut orchards, and the Greggs raised walnuts as well. This house was “longtime home of the Gregg family”. This property was very near Susannah Gregg’s father’s ranch, which was variously described as near the intersection of Norwalk, Dice and Telegraph Rds., so just a couple miles south of Washington Blvd.

Whittier area around 1900

• ·     John Henry Gregg also acquired land in what is now Orange County. “For a period [he] took his family from the little white house to a home in Orange, California, and he opened the citrus nursery which supplied many large orange trees still growing in the Orange-Fullerton area. The nursery prospered for a few years.” This is so amazing! The Greggs helped supply the orange growing industry that gave Orange County its name! The first commercial orange grove in the area was planted in 1875, so John H Gregg’s nursery must have been established shortly thereafter. By the 1880’s oranges were a two million dollar a year crop in the county, so a lot of nursery stock was planted in just 5-10 years, and Gregg took advantage of that.
• ·    According to Blanche, “a panic hit the country, ranchers lost their places to the subdivider, a Mr. Chapman, and John Henry Gregg came back to Kings Lane.” Chapman is of course banker and citrus magnate Charles C. Chapman, the man for whom Chapman University in Orange is named. I don’t quite understand what Blanche is accusing Chapman of doing. The Greggs continued to own their Orange County property until at least 1900 as we shall see in a future blog post about James Gregg, but perhaps the nursery business failed due to Chapman’s competition.
• ·    Blanche notes that she and her brother Wallace were born in Orange, so that establishes the years they lived there as spanning at least 1876-1881. Robert Hargrave’s 1881 death may have also led to the family’s decision to move back to the Whittier area as they seem to have taken over running his ranch as well. I have to assume that the 1882 decision to emancipate the three oldest sons (see my previous post) may have had something to do with the family’s need to manage all these far-flung properties. Did Samuel, James and Gus take over the Orange property for a few years?
• ·    John Henry then bought “sixty acres just east of John King’s ranch at the northeast corner of what is Sorensen and Washington Blvd., and grew walnuts.” This is now an area of small homes surrounded adjacent to strip malls and commercial properties.

Walnut harvest in Whittier area in late 1800s

• ·     Around 1887 John Henry bought a large house from the then-mayor of Los Angeles Henry Hazard, located between Hope and Grand Ave. near 29^th. This area is now a commercial district adjacent to the 110 Freeway, not far from USC.
• ·    After a couple years in that house, John Henry traded it to J. H. Lankershim for 110 acres in a newly subdivided area then called Lankershim, but is now North Hollywood. He planned to ranch the land, and moved the family back into the “little white house” on Kings Lane/Washington Blvd.
• ·    According to Blanche, following John Henry Gregg’s death in 1891, Susannah and the younger children moved to Los Angeles. However, census records find them living at 8 Painter Avenue in Whittier in 1900. They didn’t move to Los Angeles until about 1904, and were living at 1830 4^th Avenue. Susannah and Blanche were still there at the time of the 1910 census. Following Blanche’s marriage, Susannah moved in with her son Lloyd and his family, who were living at and running the Lankershim ranch John Henry had acquired years earlier.  

The facts set out in this feature article provide an amazing window into the wheeling and dealing life of John Henry Gregg. He may have started with nothing but a few head of cattle he brought from Texas, but he ended up with several pieces of prime real estate scattered around Los Angeles and Orange Counties. This land helped to set up some of his children for secure, comfortable lives. I loved discovering the Gregg family’s connections to the region we call home.

Sources:

https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/workspace/handleMediaPlayer?qvq=&trs=&mi=&lunaMediaId=RUMSEY~8~1~204723~3002261

http://coastdaylight.com/ljames1/orange_history.html