I02 



HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



stop the reader right here, to make correction. I have since also seen old Senor Fran- 

 cisco Garcia, who was with Gov. Micheltorena in the battle of Caheunga in 1845, and 

 Elijah Moulton who was with Col. Fremont on his wintry march down the coast, and 

 into Los Angeles, January 13, 1847. And from the new and authentic information thus 

 obtained I have prepared the above correction map of the chief historic points in 

 Los Angeles in 1847: 



The popular story that Fremont as first American governor occupied the same 

 house that Pico lived in, as the last Mexican governor, is entirely a fiction. Neither 

 Fremont nor his troops occupied any house owned by Don Pio Pico, although Mrs. 

 Fremont herself thought he did. [See her letter on page loi.] Hence, old Francesca's 

 story about " delivering the keys of Pico's house to Col. Fremont," as I have it on 

 pages 96 and 103, is a fiction. Neither Foster, Garcia or Moulton had ever heard of it. 

 They say she then lived at San Gabriel, not at Los Angeles. [She may have passed the 

 keys of some house at San Gabriel to some officer of Fremo7iVs battallion while they 

 were stationed at the Mission, and the incident been misreported and magnified ; for I 

 talked with old people there who thought it was true. And " one of Fremont's officers" 

 could easily grow into "Fremont himself."] The building on which Abel Stearns had 

 a mortgage, as mentioned by Mrs. Fremont [page loi], was the one called the " gov- 

 ernment building" occupied as barracks by Lieutenant Gillespie in 1846, and by Fre- 

 mont's battallion in January, 1847 ; but it never belonged to Pico. 



My statement on pages 93, loi, and footnote to 335, that the Mexicans had only two 

 cannon, is an error. Mr. Foster showed me Maj. Emory's ofiicial report, with a military 

 map or diagram of the two days battlefields, made at the time, giving relative positions 

 and movements of the opposing armies at different stages of the contest ; and it seems 

 that the Mexicans had two "common, short, heavy cast iron guns," as B. D. Wilson 

 says, besides the two brass ones. Foster says that after the battle of Dominguez they 

 managed in some way to get two iron cannon, but he could never find out j ust how or where. 

 They were the very old style of guns called carronades, one or more of which were almost 

 always carried on merchant ships. When Gen. Andres Pico marched from Rancho San 

 Pasqual to Providencia, after deciding on surrender to Fremont, the iron guns were too 

 heavy to haul along, so he hid them in the Arroyo Seco, somewhere near the Garvanza 

 ford at the old Monterey road crossing. These were the guns which Gen. Pico told 

 Commodore Stockton about, as mentioned by B. D. Wilson [page 335] ; and Wilson 

 evidently, when he wrote, had them in his mind as the same ones which he got from the 

 surf at San Pedro and planted at his store on Commercial street. This mistake of 

 Wilson's misled me as to the Mexicans having any others but the two brass guns. 

 Foster says these Arroyo Seco guns were brought into Los Angeles, and fired on holidays 

 year after year until Fourth-of-July, i860, when one of them burst into three pieces 

 while being fired by a man named Moore (nobody hurt). The other one he had lost 

 track of, but thinks it was burst also. 



Jose Perez died in 1S40, and Stephen Foster married his widow in August, 1848. 

 [See pages 71-72.] She is still living, September, 1895, at their home place near 

 Downey ; aged 79. 



My footnote on page 83 is wrong. Foster says it was Diego Sepulveda, a nephew of 

 Enrique, who was with Del Carmen Lugo at the battle of Chino. Enrique Sepulveda 

 died at Monterey in 1844. 



■■ LiiiKl of Slln^,lliIle,■■ Oct . l.SM. 

 ONE OF THE HISTORIC OLD CANNON, AT WEST FRONT OF THE COURT HOUSE. 



