Drown was a lawyer who came here a few months before I did, having just passed through one of those trying ordeals which might easily prove sufficient to destroy the courage and ambition of any man. He hailed from Iowa, where he had served as Brigadier-General of Militia, and was bound up the Coast from the Isthmus on the steamer _Independence_ when it took fire, off Lower California, and burned to the water's edge. General Drown, being a good swimmer and a plucky fellow, set his wife adrift on a hencoop and then put off for shore with his two children on his back. Having deposited them safely on the beach, he swam back to get his wife; but a brutal fellow-passenger pushed the fainting woman off when her agonized husband was within a few feet of her; she sank beneath the waves, and he saw his companion go to her doom at the moment she was about to be rescued. Though broken in spirit, Drown on landing at San Pedro came to Los Angeles with his two boys, and put his best foot forward. He established himself as a lawyer and in 1858 became District Attorney, succeeding Cameron E. Thom; and it was during his term that Pancho Daniel was lynched. In 1855, too, Drown instituted the first Los Angeles lodge of Odd Fellows. Drown was an able lawyer, eloquent and humorous, and fairly popular; but his generosity affected his material prosperity, and he died, at San Juan Capistrano, on August 17th, 1863, none too blessed with this world's goods.
Dimmick, who at one time occupied an office in the old Temple Block on Main Street, had rather an eventful career. Born in Connecticut, he learned the printer's trade; then he studied law and was soon admitted to practice in New York; and in 1846 he sailed with Colonel J. D. Stevenson, in command of Company K, landing, six months later, at the picturesquely-named Yerba Buena, on whose slopes the bustling town of San Francisco was so soon to be founded. When peace with Mexico was established, Dimmick moved to San José; after which with Foster he went to the convention whose mission was to frame a State constitution, and was later chosen Judge of the Supreme Court. In 1852, after having revisited the East and been defrauded of practically all he possessed by those to whom he had entrusted his California affairs, Dimmick came to Los Angeles and served as Justice of the Peace, Notary Public and County Judge. He was also elected District Attorney, and at another time was appointed by the Court to defend the outlaw, Pancho Daniel. Dimmick's practice was really largely criminal, which frequently made him a defender of horse-thieves, gamblers and desperadoes; and in such cases one could always anticipate his stereotyped plea: