As a community service, the Around Town column will occasionally supplement the Valley Sun 10-20-30 Years Ago feature with news from 19th century. For example, last week, we brought you news from 137 years ago. (“Neighborhood news from 1885,” June 13.)
Perhaps in response to the largesse of the Around Town column, LCHS Class of 2013 valedictorian Matt Jones, in one of the world’s greatest and most awesome commencement speeches ever, told the audience, “Let’s just appreciate the now.”
In that spirit, the Around Town column will move forward. We will move forward by five years, half a decade, one twentieth of a century from 1885.
Here is the news from La Cañada 128 years ago in 1890: On Aug. 13, 1890, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s sale number 12,228 was announced. “By order of the superior court of the County of Los Angeles, one Catharine Banbury obtained a judgment of foreclosure against Delos Arnold for the sum of $11,610.58.” The court ordered the sheriff to sell a big chunk of what turned out to be modern-day La Cañada in order to satisfy the judgment.
The real estate was described as, “All that portion of lot fourteen (14) of the Rancho La Canyada now owned by the said party of the first part, and bounded on the north by the public highway known as Michigan avenue, on the east by the lands of William Banning, on the south by line of said rancho and on the west by the land of Mary C. Ball, formerly Mary C. Williams, and containing forty-five and two-fifths acres of land....”
Look at your title report, fellow La Cañadans. Just about everything south of Foothill is part of the “lot fourteen” of the Rancho La Cañada. Encinas. Descanso Drive. Alta Canyada. Was your house part of the Delos Arnold foreclosure sale?
Who was Delos Arnold? Your sleuths at the Around Town column decided to track him down.
A man named Delos Arnold regularly registered to vote in 1888, 1890 and 1892 in Los Angeles County, but the census report for 1880 show that Delos Arnold was born around 1830 or 1831 in New York. By 1880, he and his wife Hannah were living in Marshall County, Iowa with a brood of children.
His occupation in Iowa was listed on the census as “senetor.”
Around Town turned to the seminal source, a reference called History of Marshall County (Iowa) of 1878. It has an entry for a man named Delos Arnold, who was born in Chenango Co., New York on July 21, 1830. He received a law degree from Albany State University in 1853 and arrived in Iowa a few months later. On “the day following his arrival in Marshall Co., he was appointed Prosecuting Attorney. He being the only attorney in the county at that time; he held that office four years.”
By 1860, Delos Arnold was forced to give up his practice due to his health, but his health problems did not stop his political career. “He was elected to the State Legislature in 1856, and again in 1869; was elected to the State Senate in 1874....”
Delos Arnold “was appointed by President Lincoln the first Assessor of Internal Revenue of the Sixth District, embracing about one-third of the area of the State, and held the office four years and was removed by Andrew Johnson; for political reasons....”
The legislative history concludes, “ Mr. Arnold had nothing when he came here, and few citizens of this State have been more successful. Married Miss Hannah R. Mercer Nov. 28, 1855, at Marietta she was of the Order of Friends, and was from Columbiana Co., Ohio. They have three children —Theresa, Delos, Jr., and Ralph; they have lost three children in infancy.”
Given all that, the mystery remains: Is Senator Delos Arnold a founding father of La Cañada? How did he acquire 45 2/5 acres of Lot 14 of Rancho La Cañada? How did he come to owe $11,610.58 to Catharine Banbury? Did he lose his land? Did he keep it? And where are his descendants?
To be continued....
Chicago TribunePerhaps in response to the largesse of the Around Town column, LCHS Class of 2013 valedictorian Matt Jones, in one of the world’s greatest and most awesome commencement speeches ever, told the audience, “Let’s just appreciate the now.”
In that spirit, the Around Town column will move forward. We will move forward by five years, half a decade, one twentieth of a century from 1885.
Here is the news from La Cañada 128 years ago in 1890: On Aug. 13, 1890, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s sale number 12,228 was announced. “By order of the superior court of the County of Los Angeles, one Catharine Banbury obtained a judgment of foreclosure against Delos Arnold for the sum of $11,610.58.” The court ordered the sheriff to sell a big chunk of what turned out to be modern-day La Cañada in order to satisfy the judgment.
The real estate was described as, “All that portion of lot fourteen (14) of the Rancho La Canyada now owned by the said party of the first part, and bounded on the north by the public highway known as Michigan avenue, on the east by the lands of William Banning, on the south by line of said rancho and on the west by the land of Mary C. Ball, formerly Mary C. Williams, and containing forty-five and two-fifths acres of land....”
Look at your title report, fellow La Cañadans. Just about everything south of Foothill is part of the “lot fourteen” of the Rancho La Cañada. Encinas. Descanso Drive. Alta Canyada. Was your house part of the Delos Arnold foreclosure sale?
Who was Delos Arnold? Your sleuths at the Around Town column decided to track him down.
A man named Delos Arnold regularly registered to vote in 1888, 1890 and 1892 in Los Angeles County, but the census report for 1880 show that Delos Arnold was born around 1830 or 1831 in New York. By 1880, he and his wife Hannah were living in Marshall County, Iowa with a brood of children.
His occupation in Iowa was listed on the census as “senetor.”
Around Town turned to the seminal source, a reference called History of Marshall County (Iowa) of 1878. It has an entry for a man named Delos Arnold, who was born in Chenango Co., New York on July 21, 1830. He received a law degree from Albany State University in 1853 and arrived in Iowa a few months later. On “the day following his arrival in Marshall Co., he was appointed Prosecuting Attorney. He being the only attorney in the county at that time; he held that office four years.”
By 1860, Delos Arnold was forced to give up his practice due to his health, but his health problems did not stop his political career. “He was elected to the State Legislature in 1856, and again in 1869; was elected to the State Senate in 1874....”
Delos Arnold “was appointed by President Lincoln the first Assessor of Internal Revenue of the Sixth District, embracing about one-third of the area of the State, and held the office four years and was removed by Andrew Johnson; for political reasons....”
The legislative history concludes, “ Mr. Arnold had nothing when he came here, and few citizens of this State have been more successful. Married Miss Hannah R. Mercer Nov. 28, 1855, at Marietta she was of the Order of Friends, and was from Columbiana Co., Ohio. They have three children —Theresa, Delos, Jr., and Ralph; they have lost three children in infancy.”
Given all that, the mystery remains: Is Senator Delos Arnold a founding father of La Cañada? How did he acquire 45 2/5 acres of Lot 14 of Rancho La Cañada? How did he come to owe $11,610.58 to Catharine Banbury? Did he lose his land? Did he keep it? And where are his descendants?
To be continued....
Valley Sun
____________________________________________________________________________
Around Town: The state Supreme Court and La Cañada
June 27, 2013
To understand how Catherine Banbury sought to enforce an $11,610.58 judgment against La Cañada real estate owned by Delos Arnold, a former Iowa state senator (“The mystery of Delos Arnold,” Around Town, June 20), we headed to the Los Angeles County Law Library in downtown Los Angeles.
Our goal was to ask the reference librarian for the original appellate briefs in the 1891 California Supreme Court case of Banbury v. Arnold.
We needed the original briefs because the California Supreme Court opinion, available online, did not include a legal description of the property.
Did the case concern La Cañada? There was no way to know without the legal description of the land.
The reference librarian was helpful and prompt. Within minutes, she returned from the stacks with a large bound volume.
“Here it is,” she said cheerfully.
The dusty pages from 1891 contained the transcript of the trial between Catherine Banbury and Delos Arnold. The book also had appellate briefs. There were two briefs for Arnold and one brief for Banbury.
The briefs were amazingly short. Arnold's opening brief was six pages long. Banbury's response was 10 pages.
But neither brief described the location of the property.
I turned to the transcript. Unlike the lengthy transcripts of today, this 122-year-old document consisted of a copy of the complaint and a two-page summary by the trial judge.
Bingo! The transcript included the following description of the real property:
“All that portion of lot fourteen (14) of the Rancho La Canyada now owned by the said party of the first part, and bounded on the north by the public highway known as Michigan avenue, on the east by the lands of William Banning, on the south by line of said rancho and on the west by the land of Mary C. Ball, formerly Mary C. Williams, and containing forty-five and two-fifths acres of land...”
The property was in La Cañada. Perhaps Banbury v. Arnold was La Cañada’s first California Supreme Court case.
The facts were as follows. Banbury and Arnold signed a land sale contract. Banbury was the seller. Arnold was to pay $5,000 by May 6, 1888 and another $5,000 in 1889. In exchange, Banbury would transfer the property to Arnold.
Arnold wanted out. He paid $1,800, not a penny more.
His argument to the California Supreme Court was that Banbury lacked capacity to enter into a contract.
In 1890, in some states, a married woman could not enter into a contract without the consent of her husband.
In California, there was a different rule. A married woman could sell her separate property, but unlike a man or a single woman, she needed to sign an additional document before a notary for the contract to be valid. The document was called a certificate of acknowledgment. Without the certificate, the contract was voidable at any time.
Arnold argued that since he could not enforce the contract against Catherine Banbury, she could not enforce it against him.
He pointed out that the complaint in the record did not include a notarized certificate of acknowledgment.
The California Supreme Court agreed with Arnold on the law, but not the facts. The justices ruled that the certificate was not a part of the conveyance and did not need to be attached to the complaint. Since it did not appear from the record that the contract was unacknowledged, the sales contract was valid. Otherwise, why would the trial judge rule in favor of Banbury? There must have been an acknowledgment in the record, reasoned the California Supreme Court’s jurists.
Arnold, a wife and mother of seven children, won her case. Two years later, she would be dead and Arnold would still be a respected member of Pasadena society.
But who was Catherine Arnold? And what happened to her family?
To be continued.
Valley Sun June 27, 2013 Part 2
___________________________________________________________________________
Around Town: Relative searches for more Banburys
By 1887, Catherine Banbury somehow had come into possession of 45 acres of prime La Cañada land. The parcel included most of the land south of Foothill down to Descanso Drive, described as: “All that portion of lot fourteen (14) of the Rancho La Canyada now owned by the said party of the first part, and bounded on the north by the public highway known as Michigan Avenue, on the east by the lands of William Banning, on the south by line of said rancho and on the west by the land of Mary C. Ball, formerly Mary C. Williams, and containing forty-five and two-fifths acres of land...”
On May 6, 1887, Mrs. Banbury tried to sell the land to Delos Arnold, a well-connected civic figure in Pasadena. Unfortunately, Arnold backed out.
At the time, Catherine Banbury was 38 years old. She was pregnant with her seventh (and last) child. He would be named Elgin Jabez Banbury, after his uncle Jabez Banbury, an abolitionist.
When Delos Arnold decided against the purchase, Catherine Banbury sued him for specific performance.
She didn't know it, but her days were numbered. By 1891, when the California Supreme Court ruled in her favor, Mrs. Arnold had only two more years to live.
After Catherine Banbury died in 1893, leaving seven children, her husband, Thomas Banbury, remarried.
Banbury's great-nephew, several times removed, Allin Kingsbury, is an amateur genealogist. Kingsbury says that he hasn't found any direct descendants of Catherine Banbury, but he is still looking.
Kingsbury wrote in the Silicon Valley Past Finder, “I have been updating a database of the Banbury family consisting of all descendants of my ancestor, Thomas Banbury. One of the descendants, Elgin Jabez Banbury, was most interesting because of the particular challenges in finding information about him. The Banbury family has descendants numbering in the thousands in the United States.”
These thousands of Banburys do not trace their lineage to Catherine and Thomas.
The obituary of Thomas Banbury lays it out. He died on March 18, 1902. Our mothership, the Los Angeles Times, reported, “Thomas Banbury, one of Pasadena's pioneers, died yesterday morning at 9:30 O'Clock at his ranch near Etiwanda, where he has been most of the time since two years ago. Mr. Banbury's health had been failing for a long time and on Sunday he was seized with pneumonia. The funeral will be held Thursday morning at 10:30 O'Clock, at his home place, No. 676 Lincoln Avenue, the Masons being in charge.
“Mr. Banbury was born in England in 1849. He removed to Canada and came to Pasadena in 1876, when the city was but two years old. He had been a railroad contractor, and he immediately became identified with the upbuilding of Pasadena. It was he who built the water ditch from Devil's Gate to the city, and several reservoirs. He graded Raymond Hill for the first hotel, nearly twenty years ago. He owned a great deal of property in Pasadena, La Cañada, Lamanda Park, and in San Bernardino county.”
“Mr. Banbury's first wife is dead, but his second wife lives at the Etiwanda ranch. The children are Samuel, who owns a ranch at Etiwanda; Miss Flora, who lives here; Tom, who is now in Seattle; Marthin, George, Raymond and Elgin, living at the ranch. Four brothers, Jabez, Gus, Wesley and Loren, and a sister, Mrs. H. G. Hollingsworth, reside in this neighborhood.”
So far, Allin Kingsbury, the family genealogist, has been unable to locate direct descendants of Catherine and Thomas Banbury.
But their legacy lives on. If your house is near Descanso Drive (or Cornishon), take a look at your grant deed. You may be a successor in interest to a small portion of the property once held by Catherine Banbury, an interesting La Cañada property owner who took her case all the way to the California Supreme Court.
On May 6, 1887, Mrs. Banbury tried to sell the land to Delos Arnold, a well-connected civic figure in Pasadena. Unfortunately, Arnold backed out.
At the time, Catherine Banbury was 38 years old. She was pregnant with her seventh (and last) child. He would be named Elgin Jabez Banbury, after his uncle Jabez Banbury, an abolitionist.
When Delos Arnold decided against the purchase, Catherine Banbury sued him for specific performance.
She didn't know it, but her days were numbered. By 1891, when the California Supreme Court ruled in her favor, Mrs. Arnold had only two more years to live.
After Catherine Banbury died in 1893, leaving seven children, her husband, Thomas Banbury, remarried.
Banbury's great-nephew, several times removed, Allin Kingsbury, is an amateur genealogist. Kingsbury says that he hasn't found any direct descendants of Catherine Banbury, but he is still looking.
Kingsbury wrote in the Silicon Valley Past Finder, “I have been updating a database of the Banbury family consisting of all descendants of my ancestor, Thomas Banbury. One of the descendants, Elgin Jabez Banbury, was most interesting because of the particular challenges in finding information about him. The Banbury family has descendants numbering in the thousands in the United States.”
These thousands of Banburys do not trace their lineage to Catherine and Thomas.
The obituary of Thomas Banbury lays it out. He died on March 18, 1902. Our mothership, the Los Angeles Times, reported, “Thomas Banbury, one of Pasadena's pioneers, died yesterday morning at 9:30 O'Clock at his ranch near Etiwanda, where he has been most of the time since two years ago. Mr. Banbury's health had been failing for a long time and on Sunday he was seized with pneumonia. The funeral will be held Thursday morning at 10:30 O'Clock, at his home place, No. 676 Lincoln Avenue, the Masons being in charge.
“Mr. Banbury was born in England in 1849. He removed to Canada and came to Pasadena in 1876, when the city was but two years old. He had been a railroad contractor, and he immediately became identified with the upbuilding of Pasadena. It was he who built the water ditch from Devil's Gate to the city, and several reservoirs. He graded Raymond Hill for the first hotel, nearly twenty years ago. He owned a great deal of property in Pasadena, La Cañada, Lamanda Park, and in San Bernardino county.”
“Mr. Banbury's first wife is dead, but his second wife lives at the Etiwanda ranch. The children are Samuel, who owns a ranch at Etiwanda; Miss Flora, who lives here; Tom, who is now in Seattle; Marthin, George, Raymond and Elgin, living at the ranch. Four brothers, Jabez, Gus, Wesley and Loren, and a sister, Mrs. H. G. Hollingsworth, reside in this neighborhood.”
So far, Allin Kingsbury, the family genealogist, has been unable to locate direct descendants of Catherine and Thomas Banbury.
But their legacy lives on. If your house is near Descanso Drive (or Cornishon), take a look at your grant deed. You may be a successor in interest to a small portion of the property once held by Catherine Banbury, an interesting La Cañada property owner who took her case all the way to the California Supreme Court.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment