Nameless Multitudes

Searching for Labor at Rancho del Fuerte 

Words by Erin Fletcher Singley

Harriet Williams Russell Strong

As I research the life of Whittier pioneer Harriet Russell Strong (1844-1926) in the archives of the Whittier Museum, and in the manuscripts room at the Huntington Library, labor is on my mind...

I am thrilled to be tasked with relaying the story of this remarkable woman, and grateful for a reason to spend time in these archives.  Strong’s life as a horticulturalist, engineer, and public citizen began in 1883 at age 39, when she was widowed and left with four daughters to raise. Within five years of her husband’s passing, she turned a few hundred Whittier-adjacent acres named Rancho (or sometimes Ranchito) del Fuerte, which had formerly hosted unprofitable wheat and barley crops, into an extremely productive and profitable walnut orchard, with pampas grass planted between the trees. She sold decorative pampas plumes to department stores across the country, and in cities as far-flung as London, Berlin, Paris, Florence, and Rome. Strong masterminded this large-scale operation at a time when it was uncommon for women to work outside the home, and when we couldn’t yet vote.

Among many other roles and accomplishments—Musical composer! First woman on the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce! Spoke before Congress on the idea of damming the Colorado River (thirteen years before construction on the Hoover Dam began!)—Strong was known for establishing a society for the preservation and restoration of Pío Pico’s home. Pico, famous as the last governor of Mexican California, had been Strong’s neighbor and business associate, and his home stands in Whittier today as a California State Historic Park.

Yet as I sit in the archives, there are pauses,  moments of discomfiture I have had a hard time articulating to myself. Last month, an internet rabbit hole led me to an 1898 essay by theologian and writer Horace Bushnell titled “The Age of the Homespun.” In particular, this quote put to words my vague unsettling feeling: “In our historic pictures, we are obliged to sink particulars in generals, and so to gather, under the name of a prominent few, what is really done by nameless multitudes.”

Whittier Public Library Historical Photograph Collection. Whittier Public Library.

In writing a biography of Strong, am I unintentionally gathering, under the name of a prominent one, labor done by these “nameless multitudes”? Can I hope to find and verify answers to all the labor-related questions I have about Rancho del Fuerte? Who picked the walnuts? Who cured the pampas grass? Who irrigated the land? What were their lives like? What were they paid?

I’ve had little success so far in finding definitive answers to these questions, but I would like to share some clues I’ve collected  from a folder of clippings at the Huntington Library and a published California Supreme Court ruling at the Whittier Museum.

Photo of envelope by author. From the Papers of Harriet Williams Russell Strong, 1815-1939 (bulk 1860-1896). Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical Gardens. 

Chinese American Workers

In a 1913 article in The California Outlook, Strong explains how she got her start in the pampas industry. After deciding against planting corn between her walnut trees (because “it did not appeal to me”), a stroke of luck leads to her fortune in plumes:

“About that time, a man who had several acres in pampas lost his health and was obliged to give up. His land was sixteen miles from my ranch, and it was no small undertaking to haul the immense pampas roots in wagons to my place. Fortunately for me, I bought ‘Jim,’ a Chinese hand, wise in pampas lore, with the roots, and Jim trimmed them up, planted them and watered them and nursed them, with the result that instead of waiting for two years for our first plumes, as my friends had prophesied I would, after this transplanting, I was able to sell plumes in August, after transplanting them in January.”

This leaves me with more questions than answers. I wonder, who is Jim? What is his real name? Which neighbor did he work for, prior to working for Strong? How did he feel about being “bought” by Strong? Where did he live?

I found another mention of Chinese American agricultural labor in a 1911 article in Sunset, titled “What Women Are Doing in the West.” Its author Bertha H. Smith notes,

“Mrs. Strong finds her greatest problem that of the picking of the crop. Like every other grower she believes the greatest need of California to-day is about one hundred and fifty thousand Chinamen to do this work that white men will not do. She estimates that $1,000,000 worth of horticultural product wastes on the tree and ground every year for lack of pickers at the right time. Mrs. Strong has ordered her foreman to hire every man that comes tramping through the country asking for work, and she has yet to find the first man of this class that would finish the third day’s work.”

"A Woman's Brains: They Have Made Her Rich and Famous." San Francisco Call, 1892.

Women and Children

An 1892 San Francisco Call article on Strong titled “A Woman’s Brains: They Have Made Her Rich and Famous,” includes an illustration of children near piles of pampas grass and a horse and cart, and is captioned “Mrs. Strong’s Young Helpers”. The article details Strong’s accomplishments, and assures the reader she has a feminine appearance despite her line of work (in particular, it is noted that her hands are not “horny”), but unfortunately includes no explanation of the children in the drawing – who they are, what work they do exactly, how many of them there are, how old they are.

An 1896 Chicago Sunday Times-Herald article in the same folder provides information on the new emblem of the republican party: pampas plumes grown on Strong’s farm, dyed red, white, and blue. These were attached to hollow tin poles and carried at the republican convention. It is explained that these plumes of pampas are shucked at a rate of 3,000 per day, by women and girls who have an expert touch. Since their race is not mentioned and it’s 1896, I assume these women and girls are European Americans, and I wonder about their social class, their pay, and where they lived.

Mexican American Workers

In a 1912 Los Angeles Examiner article, a year after reflecting on the poor quality of white farm labor compared with the labor of Chinese Americans, Strong returns to the same theme, this time extolling the work ethic of Mexican Americans. She states, “We find the Mexicans are best in walnut gathering. I tried some American families once. They complained the work was too hard on their backs and knees, and after two days they said there were no more nuts and demanded to be paid off. I did so. Mexicans then came and picked nuts for six weeks.”

I wonder if there is an amount of money she could have paid the (implicitly white) U.S. families that would have been worth the pain in their backs and knees. I wonder, again, about the pay, working conditions, and living conditions of the Mexican American laborers.

I had not expected to find the names of individual laborers in a folder containing mostly clippings, photographs and maps at the Whittier Museum archive, and so was pleasantly surprised to discover the 1908 California Supreme Court Case, “Harriet W. R. Strong vs. E. J. Baldwin”.

The case is centered on a disputed irrigation ditch. Baldwin objects to its use by Strong and many of her neighbors. I initially read this with a great deal of interest, as it reads as a Who’s Who of prominent local figures of the time: E. J. Baldwin, also known as Lucky Baldwin, whose home is preserved today at the Los Angeles Arboretum in Arcadia; A. Sorensen, whose family name is attached to a school, park, library, and street in the Whittier area; Bernardino Guirado, Los Nietos pioneer for whom there is a park named, and father of prominent Whittier-area Judge Edward Guirado; A. H. Dunlap, early rancher for whom there is a street named in Pico Rivera; and Julius Cohn, whose father Bernard Cohn infamously took ownership of Pío Pico’s Rancho Paso de Bartolo, leaving him penniless at the time of his death.

With Bushnell’s concept of nameless multitudes in mind, more interesting still are the names of laborers on Strong’s land. A man named Jose Soto testifies that he had known the area of Pío Pico’s Ranchito since 1870 or 1871, and that he irrigated the Strong ranch. He says he first commenced working for the Strongs in 1868 or 1869, and knew some renters from Pico. He also mentions working for a Mr. Rhodes.

According to information gathered by the Orange County California Genealogical Society in 1980, one Jose Soto was buried in Whittier’s Broadway Cemetery. He is the only Soto in the two adjacent cemeteries of the era that later became Founders Park (the other is called Mount Olive). I doubt I will be able to verify whether this is the same Jose Soto. The man buried in the park died at age 70. His birth and death years did not appear on his grave.  

Another man named Christian Castillo testifies in Strong v. Baldwin that he was raised on the Ranchito. He states that he used water from the disputed ditch after his father left, more than 23 years ago, and that he used it on Pico’s land. In the 1903 Whittier City Directory, there is one Castillo, listed as a laborer living at 137 N. Gregory. No first name, no way to verify if this is the same Mr. Castillo.

There are other witnesses who testify they’ve known the ditch in question, on whom I’ve not yet been able to find additional information: Jesus Romo, Santiago Montijo, Gabriel Aguayo, and Francisco Riesgo.

What do these mostly inconclusive clues amount to? They’re a collection of names and possibilities to keep in mind as I enter the next phase of my research at the Whittier Museum and Huntington Library archives: Strong’s handwritten correspondence. I hope to be able to honor and name some of the multitudes whose labor made Strong’s accomplishments possible.

Photo of envelope by author. From the Papers of Harriet Williams Russell Strong, 1815-1939 (bulk 1860-1896). Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical Gardens.

Erin Fletcher Singley works in the History Room of the Whittier Public Library. Her biography of Harriet Russell Strong will be published by The History Press in 2018.

Sources

Article. (February 18, 1912.) Los Angeles Examiner. Box 18, folder of clippings, Harriet Williams Russell Strong Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Bushnell, Horace (1898). The age of the homespun. New England Magazine. Volume 17.

Harriet W. R. Strong v. E. J. Baldwin. (1908). California Supreme Court. L.A. No. 891. Works & Lee, Attorneys for Appellants. G. W. Root, Clerk. Box 3, Harriet Strong Archive, Whittier Museum.

Lund, H. H. (March 22, 1913). A successful California ranch woman. The California Outlook.

New emblem of the Republican Party. (June 28, 1896). Chicago Sunday Times-Herald.

O’Toole, Garson. (November 3, 2012). “Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History”. Quote Investigator. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/03/well-behaved-women/

Orange County California Genealogical Society. (1980). Tombstone Inscriptions, Vol. IV: Whittier, California.

Polk, R.L. & Co. (1903). Whittier City Directory.

Raising pampas plumes. (September 2, 1892, morning ed.). San Francisco Examiner.

A Woman’s Brains: They Have Made Her Rich and Famous.  San Francisco Call. November 20, 1892. Box 18, folder of clippings, Harriet Williams Russell Strong Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Smith, Bertha H. (1911). “What Women Are Doing in the West”. Sunset v. 26  p415.