The Cowboy-Fiddler: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Nickname”

 

Intriguing Shirt-tail Relative with an Occupational Nickname

Robert Hargrave: 1859-1923 (Maternal Grand-Aunt’s Stepson)

 

I was researching a Smith family descendant by the name of Serelda Hargrave Potts, and ran across a news item that mentioned her daughter, Julia Potts Coe and Julia’s cousin Nellie. The item went on to note that Julia and Nellie “are nieces of Nymphia Carillo Hargrave and Robert Hargrave, violinist, and granddaughters of Robert Hargrave, inventor, who came to California from Texas in a covered wagon train.” My research on poor Serelda was abandoned for a delightful trip down a Hargrave rabbit hole. A violinist married to a woman named Nymphia? I had to know more.

Robert Hargrave, the violinist, was Serelda’s half-sibling, born in 1859, ten years after Serelda was born. Alas, Robert is what my grandmother used to call a “shirt-tail relation”, meaning he’s rather distantly connected to the family, and not even necessarily by blood. That’s the case with Robert. Serelda’s mother was the Smith descendant, not her father, Robert Sr. So Robert Sr.’s son Robert by his second wife was not a blood relation to my husband’s family.

Photo of Robert Hargrave with his violin

Still, Robert sounded fascinating. As I poked around on Ancestry, trying to pin down exactly how he fit in the Smith family line, I ran across another gem of a newspaper item:

 

The “Cowboy Fiddler”? Now that is a wild nickname! I found Robert on census forms from 1880, 1900 and 1910. Each time he states he is a music teacher, presumably a violin instructor. But apparently by 1920, teaching music was no longer paying the bills, so he had branched out into tending cattle herds on ranches outside San Diego. He was sixty years old, no longer a young man by that point, so he must have been a little desperate.

But despite his circumstances, he had obviously continued to perform. The “Cowboy Fiddler”—I imagine him playing jaunty tunes by a campfire or in a bunkhouse to the applause of his coworkers.

It appears Robert “Cowboy Fiddler” Hargrave died on March 31, 1923, just three years after this news item was published. He was sixty-five years old. He and wife Nellie had several children. Sadly, I did not find a record of a wife named Nymphia, unless, of course, Nellie was a nickname for Nymphia. That’s a rabbit hole I will not pursue!

Sources:

Cowboy Fiddler news item. The Daily Times Advocate. Escondido, California. January 14, 1920 issue. https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-times-advocate-the-cowboy-fiddler/163112544/

“Mrs. Durand is Guest During Celebration”. San Bernardino County Sun. San Bernardino, California. November 23, 1938 issue. https://www.newspapers.com/image/49170018/?article=52604465-1eb2-4097-9a7a-51a6ee02419a&xid

 

Interesting Side-Bar: James Gregg’s Daughter Marries Her Step-Brother

 

Gladys Louise Gregg: 1890-1968

Maternal Third Cousin 1x Removed

While researching James Gregg, I checked on the fate of his daughter Gladys following his 1899 death, and discovered a fascinating tidbit about her life: she married her stepbrother!

Gladys married her first husband, John Sylvester Armstrong, on July 9, 1910, eleven years after her father was murdered. John Armstrong was a citrus farm employee, working for orange orchards owned by the Union Oil Company. The couple lived in Fullerton, and had three daughters, Mary, Lola and Shirley. Tragically, John died December 17, 1918 at only age 32. I can find no newspaper articles about his death. He could have been a victim of the Spanish flu epidemic. He had just registered for the World War I draft and died in Orange County, so he didn’t die in combat.

Following his death, Gladys and her children were forced to move in with her mother. After James Gregg’s death, his wife, Louise Strong Gregg, remarried. Her new husband, Walter Vernon, had several adult children from a previous marriage. One son, Charles L. Vernon, was living with Walter and Louise when Gladys and her children moved in.

1920 Census showing Gladys living with her mother, stepfather and stepbrother/future husband

While the adage says that familiarity breeds contempt, in this case, it bred romance. Despite being step-siblings, Charles and Gladys decided to marry on May 9, 1922. He worked as a janitor and raised John Armstrong’s three daughters. It must have made holiday plans very easy—only one set of parents to visit!

Charles died in 1950, and Gladys died in 1968.

The Ghost of Black Star Canyon: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Ghost Story”

Local Ghost Story Turns Out to Have a Family Connection

James Gregg: 1867-1899 (Maternal Second Cousin Twice Removed)

 

Living in south Orange County, we are familiar with Black Star Canyon, which lies fourteen miles northeast into the Santa Ana Mountains from our home in Lake Forest. And we were also familiar with the stories that claimed the canyon was haunted—it’s a popular spot for Ghost Walks and Ghost Tours, especially around Halloween. However, I was stunned to discover that one of the main ghosts reputed to haunt Black Star Canyon was ancestor James Gregg!

Black Star Canyon Road, photo by Justin Johnsen, WikiCommons

So who was James Gregg and why do people believe he haunts the canyon?

James Marion Gregg was born at Fort Concho in Texas to parents John Henry Gregg and Susannah Vaught Hargrave in 1867. His father was working for the U. S. Cavalry at the time. The family eventually moved west by covered wagon to California, settling in Los Angeles County. James had four brothers and one sister; he was the second oldest child.

John Gregg acquired several tracts of land across a wide swathe of territory, including walnut groves in the Whittier area and orange groves near Santa Ana. Among his properties was ranchland near Orange, in what would become Orange County. James Gregg and two brothers, Samuel and Augustus, were basically emancipated by their father in their teens so they could manage the Santa Ana/Orange area properties while he oversaw the Whittier area land. The brothers also attended college at USC in the late 1880s.

James Gregg married Gladys “Louise” Strong during the late 1880s; I have found no record thus far of the marriage, but it was prior to their daughter’s Gladys’ birth in June of 1890. Among James’ responsibilities was running the Gregg family ranch, raising cattle and horses. In February of 1899, he had arranged to pasture some of his stock—seven cattle and four horses--at a property called Hidden Ranch in Black Star Canyon. The ranch was owned by three partners, George Howard, who lived on the ranch, and brothers Thomas “Luther” and Henry Hungerford, who lived farther north in Norwalk.

Hidden Ranch

James had sold a horse to George Howard; the sale price had only been partly paid. James arrived at Hidden Ranch on June 9, 1899 with his brother-in-law Decateur Harris and a teenage employee, Clinton Hunt, to collect his stock and pay for the pasturage. The Hungerfords were at the ranch that day, and James suggested his pasturage bill be offset by the amount still owed from the horse sale. The Hungerfords, who had not been part of the horse sale deal, objected strongly. There was a lot of arguing before the men all went to bed, the Hungerfords and Howard in the ranch house, and the Gregg group camping outside.

The argument resumed in the morning and involved “the use of oaths”. According to witness George Howard’s account in the Anaheim Gazette, when Howard came out of the house after breakfast, he saw James Gregg was holding a shotgun, and when Luther Hungerford threatened to get his own gun, James vowed “You get a gun and I’ll kill you.”

Both Hungerfords got their weapons and a gun battle ensued. Howard said it ended when Henry Hungerford emptied both barrels of a shotgun at Gregg. The reporter wrote,

“Gregg had been down on one hand and one knee while Henry was shooting at him. Evidently he was badly wounded…As Hungerford disappeared into the house, Gregg called to Harris saying ‘Dick, come here, I’m shot’.”

According to Howard, as Harris tended to Gregg he said that Gregg “made a fool of himself; it is all his own fault.” Given Howard’s relationship with the Hungerford brothers, I take that quote with a giant grain of salt.

The Hungerfords saddled their horses and rode to Santa Ana to turn themselves in to the sheriff—they could tell James’ wounds were lethal. Meanwhile, Harris loaded James Gregg into his wagon and started back through the canyon to find a doctor, who met the wagon near the picnic grounds at the bottom of the canyon. The sheriff and district attorney soon arrived to take James’ deathbed testimony.

Meanwhile, someone had ridden ahead to notify James’ wife, and she rode up with her father and her little daughter. The scene was tragic.

“Mrs. Gregg recognized her husband’s wagon from afar. She saw it slowly descending the hill and believed her husband was dead. She leaped from her father’s wagon and ran weeping to her husband’s side.”

I can only imagine Louise Gregg’s fear and the terror of little nine-year-old Gladys as they desperately drove to find James.

The doctor found James riddled with bird and buckshot—32 buckshot and 51 pellets of birdshot. James had a fatal liver wound, and died at 4 p.m. at the home of a neighboring farmer. James was 32 years old.

The Hungerfords were brought to trial that fall, and were found guilty of murder by a jury. 

However, the judge set aside the verdict and demanded that the district attorney bring more evidence. As the D.A. had already presented statements from the dying man and the testimony of several witnesses, this was a ridiculous demand. The District Attorney had no further evidence to supply, so the judge freed the Hungerfords. There were hints in press coverage that gossip suggested the judge had accepted a bribe, but no one produced any evidence of judicial wrongdoing. At least one newspaper columnist defended the judge’s decision, so it must not have been as cut-and-dried as one might have expected. The gunfight’s witnesses agreed that both James and Luther Hungerford fired nearly simultaneously, so there probably was an argument for self-defense. However, the gunfight was still two against one, and the brothers continued firing after Gregg had sunk to his knees, wounded.

There was a considerable public outcry about the judge’s decision, which led to his losing re-election a year later.

Supposedly this injustice is why the ghost of James Gregg haunts Black Star Canyon. His spirit can’t rest until his killers are punished. People claim to have heard him moaning in the canyon’s gloom.

If James Gregg’s ghost really existed, it could take comfort in the fact that his death is still remembered nearly 125 years later. His spirit truly lives on in popular imagination. In addition, he has plenty of ghostly companions—he is just one of several ghosts reputed to haunt the canyon.

James should rest a little easier this week, as I’m sure dozens of people learned about his short and tragic life this past weekend. Tour guides were out in force leading spooky Halloween walks through Black Star Canyon. I’m sure James’ story provided a few chills and thrills. In addition, James could take pride in being the only ghost I’ve discovered in the Aird family tree.

Sources:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_Star_Canyon_Road.JPG Photo by Justin Johnsen.

Newspaper articles from Newspapers.com.

The Fate of John H. Gregg’s Children: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Extended Family”: Part 1

 

California Dreaming: The Lives of Three Second-Cousins-Twice-Removed

Samuel Gregg: 1865-1888
Wallace Gregg: 1876-1944
Blanche Clementine Gregg: 1881-1975

The Gregg family built on their parents’ legacy of farmland and real estate in Southern California. I enjoyed learning about them, so will briefly describe their lives and pursuits. Sometimes extended family have fascinating personal histories, as these brief summaries of three Gregg siblings show.

The Extended Gregg Family circa 1915

Samuel Gregg:

Samuel was the oldest of the three sons that were emancipated as minors by their father in 1882. Samuel was 17 at the time, and probably helped to care for his younger brothers. He appears in an L.A. city directory in 1886 as a student at the University of Southern California. 

On June 11, 1888, he is listed in the L.A. Herald, along with brothers James and Gus, as a USC student. This is the last record I can find for Samuel. He apparently died November 5, 1888, and is buried in the family plot at Rose Hills Memorial Park. Strangely, there is no mention of his death in the newspapers. He was only 23. 

Wallace Gregg:

According to his obituary, Wallace became involved in real estate as a youth, helping the surveyors lay out the city of Whittier. He went on to run a walnut orchard (his grandfather’s property?), becoming manager of the Los Nietos Walnut Growers Association, and also director of the Whittier Citrus Association—appropriate as he was born in the city of Orange during his father’s years running a citrus nursery. 

His main business was the Wallace Gregg agency, which sold both real estate and insurance. The local newspaper, The Whittier News, was filled with his company’s advertisements for farmland, homes and building lots. One of the May 10, 1913 ads stated:

 “Houses, $1000 to $20,000. Any price you want, any location you may be looking for. We are selling them every day. Why? Because we have the goods to deliver. We make a specialty of houses—good homes in the city of Whittier, that’s why.”

Sale ads from single issue of Whittier News, May 10, 1913

He invested in a large Whittier furniture company, was president of the Rotarians, and founded and was president of the Whittier Building & Loan Association. He had quite the monopoly on real estate in the Whittier area: he sold it, insured it, and provided the funding and mortgages for the transactions. He was a very successful businessman.

Wallace married Mabel Smith of Los Angeles in March of 1904. They had three children, Wallace Jr. in 1908, Margaret in 1914, and Mabel in 1917. Wallace died at age 68 on September 17, 1944.

Blanche Gregg Vaux:

Blanche moved to Los Angeles with her mother around 1904, following her father’s death, where she met a German immigrant by the name of Richard Laux. They married September 9, 1911. According to the write-up of their wedding, Richard was a college graduate who moved to California two years earlier, and worked for a large New York firm in the “importing business.” The couple had an elaborate wedding at the L.A. Masonic Temple, with 300 guests and green and white decorations designed by the members of the Eastern Star, the Masons’ women’s group. 

Following the wedding, the couple moved to New York, where their three children, Alice, Katherine and Richard Jr., were born. Sadly, Richard died at age 40 on June 29, 1920. The couple were on an extended visit to Blanche’s brother Gus’s home when Richard suffered a heart attack. The newspaper report stated that, “Mr. Laux has been afflicted with a weak heart for years, but his death came very unexpectedly.” Blanche and her children moved back to Whittier to live near her family. She worked as a bookkeeper, and died September 15, 1975.  

Sources:

“Richard Laux is Called by Death”. Whittier News 30 June 1920.  https://www.newspapers.com/paper/the-whittier-news/22542/

Newspapers.com clippings from Whittier News. 

Findagrave.com

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

Father Confers Adulthood on Three Minors: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “New to You”

1882 Legal Notice that Father Would No Longer Support Three Teen Sons

Susannah Vaught Hargrave Gregg: 1842-1923 (First Cousin 3x Removed)
John Henry Gregg: 1836-1891 (Husband of First Cousin 3x Removed)
Samuel Gregg: 1865-1888 (Second Cousin 2x Removed)
James Gregg: 1867-1899 (Second Cousin 2x Removed)
Augustus Hugh “Gus” Gregg: 1869-1952 (Second Cousin 2x Removed)

 

Nineteenth century newspapers contain the occasional surprise, from the amusing, such as articles about community controversies, to the seriously disturbing, such as casual references to racist attacks and Ku Klux Klan meetings. However, I had never seen anything like the newspaper legal notice published over the course of several days in the summer of 1882 by John Henry Gregg.  He was publicly announcing that he was no longer responsible for three of his minor sons and that he was basically making them “adults”. What in the world?

The text of the notice, published each of three days in August 1882 in the Los Angeles Times, reads as follows:

“Know all men by these presents: That I, John H. Gregg, of Los Angeles County, State of California, by reason of the provisions of section two hundred and eleven of the Civil Code of California, and in consideration of the natural love and affection which I have and bear for my children, Samuel Gregg, James M. Gregg and Augustus Gregg, do hereby relinquish to said children the right of controlling them and receiving their earnings during the remainder of their minority, and I do hereby, so far as in my power, invest them with all the rights, privileges and authority of adults.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and seal, this 24^th day of August, A. D. 1882.

John H. Gregg”

This type of notice was certainly new to me! I immediately checked the ages of the three young men in August 1882: they were John’s three eldest children, and were 17, 15 and 13 years of age! What did this notice mean? Was he actually kicking out a 13-year-old child to fend for himself? Where were the boys to go? How were they supposed to earn their keep? What would prompt such action by a father?

Who was John Henry Gregg? John was born in Texas in 1836, and married a granddaughter of Elias Guess Smith, Susannah Vaught Hargrave, in Hopkins, Texas on September 26, 1859. (That would make Susannah the first cousin of Rev. Willis Smith)

When the Civil War broke out, John enlisted in the 23^rd Regiment of the Texas Cavalry on July 10, 1862. He served in the Confederate Army as a private in the cavalry until March 5, 1865.

Following the war, John and Susannah moved their family to Fort Concho near what is now San Angelo, Texas. The fort was the base of the United States 4^th Cavalry, so possibly John continued as a cavalryman, but now for the United States rather than the Confederacy. The 1870 census listed him as a “stock driver” which, according to Wikipedia, was one of the tasks of the 4^th Cavalry, serving as protective escorts to stock herds as they crossed Indian lands on their way to market.

By 1880, the family had relocated. According to information one of John’s grandsons provided in a newspaper article years later, the family left Texas in a covered wagon, moving to California where they bought a walnut orchard. From there, they began expanding their land holdings and moved into ranching and farming in the Los Angeles basin. By the 1880 census, they lived in Santa Ana Township in what is now Orange County. The non-population schedule of the 1880 census shows that John owned 46 acres of land near Santa Ana worth $2000, and that he had five acres of orchard or meadow, and a few hundred dollars’ worth of stock.

So what happened in 1882 that prompted John to publish this bizarre legal notice? I at first assumed that John Gregg and his wife Susannah Hargrave Gregg were impoverished, desperate to feed their six children, and decided to send the three oldest sons out into the world in the hopes they could support themselves. However, my research indicates that John actually owned a considerable amount of land in what is now Whittier, North Hollywood, and Orange County. He was a rancher, raising cattle and also orchards of nuts and fruit. The family does not appear to have been destitute.

Additional property owned by John Gregg in 1880s near Whittier

I next tried to research Section 211 of the California Civil Code. I believe he was referencing what is now called the California Family Code, but it has been amended extensively since 1882 and I cannot find any online references that show the code as it would have read in 1882. All I can tell is that the section had something to do with child custody. This makes sense, as John Gregg was essentially giving up his parental rights to these three children.

But how could something so extreme have been legal, even in the more rough and tumble era of the 1880s? And what happened to the poor young men?

To my surprise, I found a Los Angeles Herald newspaper article dated June 11, 1888, listing all the students at the seminary of the University of Southern California—USC. Among the students were Samuel, James and Augustus Gregg, with their hometown listed as Fulton Wells. So how did the young men go from being tossed out by their father to college students? And where was Fulton Wells?

Google told me that Fulton Wells is now a neighborhood in Rancho Santa Fe, near Torrance, about 16 miles from the USC campus. I wonder how the young men travelled to school, or did they were live on campus during 1888? 

I have been unable to find records indicating where the boys were living between 1882 and 1886. I also found no indication that John Gregg’s sons were estranged from him, as both James and Augustus managed and eventually owned properties their father had acquired. Was the Fulton Wells property also owned by their father?

I have one hypothesis for John’s strange newspaper notice that is a kinder, more humane possibility than abandoning his sons. John owned land in at least three quite separate locations—miles apart and hours away in an era of horse and wagon travel. Perhaps he “emancipated” his three eldest sons in order to place them in charge of one or more of his properties. By granting them the rights of adults, they could handle any ranch-related business that arose without having to consult him. I am hoping this was the real explanation for the strangest newspaper legal notice that I have ever run across.

I will be adding additional blogs on the fates of John and Susannah’s children.

Sources:

Los Angeles Herald. June 11, 1888. Accessed through Newspapers.com.

Los Angeles Times. 15 Sep 1882 Legal Notice. Accessed through Newspapers.com.

Los Angeles Times. 18 Dec 1890. Accessed through Newspapers.com.

Los Angeles Times. 2 Feb 1891. Accessed through Newspapers.com.

1880 Federal Census. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1276/images/31560_204073-00022?pId=1728567

1870 Federal Census. https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/7579590:7163?ssrc=pt&tid=81812584&pid=262382596284