76 HISTORY OP PASADENA. 



signed instead of reporting at Washington as ordered ; went south and 

 joined the confederacy ; and was in joint command with Gen. Beauregard of 

 the confederate army at the battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg I^anding, where he 

 was killed April 6, 1862. Mrs. Johnston occupied the land above men- 

 tioned, built a house on it, and named it " Fair Oaks," after the old planta- 

 tion home of her childhood in Virginia. April 27, 1863, her oldest son, 

 Albert Sidney, was killed in the historic steamboat explosion at San Pedro, 

 his body not being recovered until the 29th. This sad event affected her 

 mind and plans so disastrously that in a few weeks she left the place and 

 never returned to it. Dr. Griffin's wife and Judge B. S. Eaton's first wife 

 were sisters; and Mrs. Johnston's son Hancock married Judge Eaton's 

 daughter Mary ; and out of this interblending familyhood came the fact of 

 Judge Eaton's settling on this " Fair Oaks " place in 1866, where he still 

 resided (and owned it) when the Orange Grove colony settlement was made 

 in 1873-74. 



On April 3, 1863, a United States patent for the land comprised in 

 Rancho San Pasqual, was issued to Manuel Garfias, with Abraham Lin- 

 coln's signature attached. [Book i p. 14 of Patents.] 



On March 27, 1865, B. D. Wilson and John S. Griffin conveyed to 

 Phineas Banning, John G. Downey, Matthew Keller, George Hansen, and 

 R. W. Heath, trustees of the Los Angeles Pioneer Oil Co., " all their right, 

 title and interest to any and all brea, petroleum, rock oil or other oleaginous 

 substances in the Rancho San Pasqual." But it was stipulated that they 

 must "commence boring or sinking wells for the extraction of oil within 

 six months ;" and the Oil Company was to pay Wilson and Griffin " a roy- 



S. naval officer and the postmaster, and a few others known to be loyal unionists, besides a squad of lo- 

 cal militia in citizens' dress, with sidearms only, in command of Capt. D. M. Greene, now of Pasadena. 

 These formed liis escort to the fort, where they arrived after midnight. Gen. Sumner went in alone, 

 and had Johnston called up out of bed. The two Generals had been classmates at West Point, were in- 

 timately acquainted, shook hands cordially, then Sumner delivered the sealed documents from Wash- 

 ington directing Johnston immediately upon the receipt of these orders to turn over his command to 

 Gen. Sumner. Johnston opened and read the papers, and then with a forced smile said, " General, the 

 command is yours." Sumner spent the rest of the night in preparing orders, putting his own staff in 

 command, etc., so that when daylight arose California was saved to the union instead of being (as it 

 would have been in three days more) held in control by open adherents of the pro-slavery rebellion— for 

 this element was strong, boastful and bullying in California at that time. R. H. Williams of Pasadena 

 lived in San Francisco then, and was a member of Co. D Washington I,ight Infantry— a local militia or- 

 ganization, and also vouches for these events. Mr. Williams afterward served in the California Battal- 

 ion of 2d Mass. cavalry. He is adjutant of John F. Godfrey Post G. A. R., in 1S95. 



Capt. Greene has a copy of the Mesilla, Arizona, Times[a. secessionist paper] of Augi'st 3, 1861, from 

 which I quote this : " The followiug named gentlemen under command of Capt. Alonzo Ridley, arrived 

 in our city on the 31st ult.. from Los Angeles, Cal. : Gen. A. S. Johnston, a native of Kentucky, late in 

 command of the Department of California," etc. Then follows a list of seven lieutenants with him who 

 had resigned from the U S. army ; and twenty-six volunteer recruits— all on their way to join the con- 

 federate army. The same paper names nine companies of confederate soldiers then holding Arizona ; 

 and publishes the proclamation of John I. Baylor as acting governor on behalf of the Confederate States 

 of America Capt. Greene's force of union troops afterward captured Mesilla. and used the same print- 

 ing office to issue a union paper. 



Judge Walter Van Dyke of the superior court, Los Angeles, was a Douglas democrat in i860 ; then 

 in 1861 he was elected to the state senate on the " Union Ticket" by the close majority of fourteen, and 

 bore an important part in saving California from secession. He knew Gea. Johnston ; says he was a 

 man with a fine sense of personal honor ; and he thinks thit Johnston, like Gen. Lee, was struggling 

 with his conscience as to whether his present duty was to thegeueral government, or first to his native 

 state (Kentuckyi according to the state rights doctrine which then prevailed in the South— hence he did 

 not take any decisive stand either for or against the secession movement. But meanwhile some army 

 officers under him, and certain politicians, presuming on his southern sympathies, were plotting and 

 planning to give California over to the Confederacy,— thus implicating him without any direct participa- 

 tion or purpose on his part, yet making his prompt and quiet removal a prime necessity for the Union 

 cause. I make this explanation as due to the feelings of Gen. Johnston's family and relatives who 

 still reside amongst us. 



