An American by the name of George Walters lived on Upper Main Street, among the denizens of which locality he was an influential person. Born at New Orleans as early as 1809, Walters had trapped and traded in the Rocky Mountains, then teamed for awhile between Santa Fé and neighboring points. Near the end of 1844, he left New Mexico in company with James Waters, Jim Beckwith and other travelers, finally reaching Los Angeles. Walters, who settled in San Bernardino, was at the Chino Ranch, with B. D. Wilson and Louis Robidoux, when so many Americans were made prisoners.
Julian Chavez, after whom Chavez Street is named, was here in 1853. If he was not native-born, he came here at a very early day. He owned a stretch of many acres, about a mile northeast of Los Angeles. He was a good, honest citizen, and is worthy of recollection.
Ramón Alexander, a Frenchman often confused with David Alexander, came to Los Angeles before 1850, while it was still a mere Mexican village. Pioneers remember him especially as the builder of the long-famous Round House, on Main Street, and as one who also for some time kept a saloon near Requena Street. Alexander's wife was a Señorita Valdez. He died in 1870.
Antoine Laborie was another Frenchman here before the beginning of the fifties. He continued to live in Los Angeles till at least the late seventies. A fellow-countryman, B. Dubordieu, had a bakery in Sonora Town.
Philip Rheim, the good-natured German to whom I have referred, had a little store and saloon, before I came, called _Los dos Amigos_, as the proprietor of which he was known as Don Felipe. Nor was this title amiss; for Felipe married a native woman and, German though he had been, he gradually became, like so many others who had mated in the same way, more and more Californian in manners and customs.
A month after I arrived here, John Behn, who had a grocery business at the northeast corner of First and Los Angeles streets, retired. He had come to Los Angeles from Baden in 1848, and, after forming one or two partnerships, had sold out to Lorenzo Leck, a German Dane, who reached here in November, 1849, and whose son, Henry von der Leck, married a daughter of Tom Mott and is living at San Juan Capistrano. Leck opened his own store in 1854, and despite the trials to which he was to be subjected, he was able, in 1868, to pay John Schumacher three thousand dollars for a lot on Main Street. Leck had a liking for the spectacular; and in the November previous to my arrival was active, as I have been told, with Goller and Nordholt, in organizing the first political procession seen in Los Angeles. The election of Pierce was the incentive, and there were gorgeous transparencies provided for the event. It was on this occasion that a popular local character, George the Baker, burned himself badly while trying to fire off the diminutive cannon borrowed from the Spanish _padre_ for the event.
