The Mystery of Felt Lake

Oct. 3, 1907
Stanford University

Chester Silent was among the most promising young men of Delta Tau Delta at Stanford. The son of Judge Charles Silent and prominent in Los Angeles social circles, Silent, 22, had excelled in his studies and upon graduating with a law degree in the Class of 1907 had begun graduate work at Stanford and was expected to head to Harvard.

His fraternity brothers described him as being fairly quiet and reserved—at least among strangers. He didn’t drink or smoke and had little to do with women. His only health problem seemed to be his eyesight, which was so weak that his father wondered whether to let him return to Stanford. But after a summer of tramping around the family ranch in Glendora, Silent found that his vision was well enough that his father allowed him to go back.

A studious young man, Silent usually locked himself in his room to pore over his books and was always eager to help his fraternity brothers with their classes. At the same time, he could be boisterous and was the leader of the Deltas’ roughhousing.

“He would often come charging from his room after a long siege of study, with a series of whoops which were signals for a general uproar,” The Times said. “When studying he always locked himself in his room, but when at leisure he was the jolliest and gayest of companions. One of his favorite stunts was to mount a chair and deliver a series of odd spiels which never failed to convulse his hearers in laughter.”

On the weekends, Silent usually put on some old clothes, walked three miles from the Delta house to Felt Lake and hunted ducks, usually returning after dark.

And then on Sept. 20, 1907, he vanished. His fraternity brothers organized search parties and authorities as far as Los Angeles tried to track phantom sightings of the missing student.

There was nothing until fraternity brothers Walter H. Hill and Ross W. Harbaugh borrowed a boat to explore Felt Lake. Discovering that the boat leaked, the noticed another one floating near shore some distance away, and in examining it, found Silent’s body.

“The back of the skull and the left side of the face were blown off,” The Times said. Doctors examining the body decided that the fatal shotgun blast came from the left side below the face. No firearm was found.

Friends insisted that Silent had not been depressed when they last saw him and insisted he had no reason to commit suicide. His father said that Silent had just written a letter describing his progress at Stanford and his plans for the upcoming week. His father theorized that Silent might have lost his balance in stepping into the boat and accidentally discharged the shotgun.

In November, the sheriff drained the lake and found Silent’s double-barreled shotgun. Examination showed that the right chamber had misfired and the left chamber had discharged. The sheriff theorized that Silent had pulled the right trigger and when the shell misfired, examined the weapon, discharging the left barrel.

Silent was buried in Rosedale Cemetery.

Bonus fact: When Charles Silent subdivided his land near USC, he named it Chester Place.

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Boy Genius

Nov. 8, 1907
Los Angeles

Mars F. Baumgardt is an interesting young man with an even more interesting project: a radio-controlled boat. Although many students’ projects are on display at the 30th Street School, including those of Mars’ brother Howard, it is the boat controlled by wireless telegraphy that interests The Times.

“As nearly as a layman in the rudiments of electricity can understand the proposition, the scheme is about as follows, in brief: The current sent to the boat by wireless is conveyed into a lower compartment, and is the means of setting a clock. This clock in turn moves two levels, sending the boat in a given direction,” The Times says.

Mars, 16, and Howard, 13, are the sons of B.R. Baumgardt, a noted scientist who was involved in establishing the Mt. Wilson Observatory. The entire basement of the Baumgardt home at 626 W. 30th St. has been turned over to the boys for a laboratory, The Times says, “their mother believing in allowing genius to have free swing.”


And what of Mars F. Baumgardt? A Proquest search turns up hundreds of later entries on the boy genius. In a few years, he was director of the W. A. Clark Jr. Observatory on West Adams and by the 1920s was a regular on radio station KHJ, discussing astronomy.

He was an optometrist by trade and an astronomer by avocation, as well as serving on the park commission in the 1930s. He died Nov. 25, 1950, at the age of 60. His brother Howard, below, a dentist, died in 1966 at the age of 71.



Bonus fact: His son, Mars F. Baumgardt Jr., was one of the backers of “Eraserhead.”

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The Bridge

March 15, 2007
South Pasadena

Here’s the Gold Line, its passengers mercifully unaware that they are zipping along to Pasadena in the “Gorge of Eternal Peril” beneath “The Bridge of Death.”

Here’s a close-up of a patch made to fix one of the 1907 cracks in the bridge. And yes, the darn thing is still standing. Hm. Maybe I should call it “The Bridge of Hope” instead.

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The Celebrity Inteview

March 14, 1907
Los Angeles

Harry C. Carr, future author of “Los Angeles: City of Dreams,” visits Fely Dereyne, who is starring in the San Carlo Opera Company’s touring production of “Carmen.”

Accompanied by Times artist Harold R. Coffman, who sketched the singer, Carr conducted a backstage interview with Dereyne with the help of two opera company members who served as translators. As an interview, it is disjointed, poorly organized and frustratingly incomplete; the early work of a green but talented writer who is somewhat smitten with his subject. And yet it is fresh and immediate.

“Dereyne dutifully remarked that she didn’t study Carmen” as a character, Carr says.

“Just natural,” she said in French. “I am just like that myself.”

“Gee,” said the artist, uneasily, “have you really got a temper like that?”

“Sometimes,” she said, with dancing eyes.

“Well, then, I hope you like this picture.”

“Oh,” she said airily. “Sometimes I am ver—how do you call it? Ver’ nice.”

“Like the little girl that had the little curl?”

Dereyne looked troubled. “I don’ know zee ladee; who is she, please?”

“This was a great moment in Dereyne’s career,” Carr wrote. “She was about to learn the tragedy of the little girl who had a little curl. It took two newspapermen, an opera manager and a second tenor to do it.”

Dereyne, an incredibly obscure figure today, was described in The Times as “one of the best Carmens who has ever been seen upon the local stage, for with her vigor and vivacity she never loses sight of the vocal demands of the role. At all times she sings. Her stage work and byplay are constantly assertive.”

She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in November 1907 as Musetta in a performance of “La Boheme” with Geraldine Farrar and Enrico Caruso. Her last Met performance was in 1908 as Nedda in “Pagliacci.” After that she seems to have vanished from the stage.

And there you have it; a moment backstage in a theater (Philharmonic Auditorium) that is gone with people who are, except for Carr, entirely forgotten. That’s what I love about research.

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Farewell, Faithful Companion

Feb. 12, 1907
Whittier

Don had rushed up San Juan Hill with the Rough Riders, fearless in the face of enemy fire. But he could not survive a speeding driver on the otherwise placid streets of Whittier.

A present from Teddy Roosevelt to Hamilton Fish, Don was the mascot of Company B of the Rough Riders. Don was given to Col. William Wallace. When Wallace died in Whittier, Don was given to Wallace’s physician, Dr. Hadley.

“Since that time the big dog had had the freedom of the Quaker town and had never walked through the streets without receiving much attention from small boys and girls to those of larger growth,” The Times says.

Death came from “a big touring car containing four persons, going around a corner at so high a speed that the old dog, which was walking quietly along, could not get out of its way.”

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Los Angeles Has No History

Feb. 24, 1907
Los Angeles

Google Earth, 2007

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A Tumultuous Season

March 10, 1907
Los Angeles

Someone who opened the Los Angeles Times on this Sunday might be forgiven for wondering what had become of the world, for Page 1 was full of news about the demise of two religious leaders.

The first was the death of John Alexander Dowie, the founder of Zion, Ill., who considered himself the reincarnation of the biblical prophet Elijah. The second was the decline of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science.

The Times published some of Eddy’s letters to her son, saying: “These Eddy letters, now carefully guarded in a safe deposit vault at Washington, are confidently expected to invalidate every transaction made by Mrs. Eddy in the last 15 years.”

They are too long to post, but here’s a sample:

“My Dear Son: The enemy to Christian Science is led by the wickedest powers of hypnotism and is trying to do me all the harm possible by acting on the minds of people to make them lie about me and my family.”

Dowie’s history is far more complex and even the highlights of his career defy an easy summary. He arrived in San Francisco in 1888 and moved to Chicago two years later. By 1899 he was mobbed by thugs while staging nightly crusades in Chicago after establishing a divine healing mission and opening a bank and newspaper.

In 1900, he bought the property for what is now Zion and began calling himself “Elijah the Restorer.”

Five years later, he was paralyzed in Zion upon returning from a trip to begin a colony in Mexico. In 1906, he appointed a general overseer, Wilbur Glenb Voliva, who took over the movement and repudiated him.

Dowie’s last words were: “The millennium has come. I will return in a thousand years.”

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Random Shots From Our 12-Bore

March 9, 1907
Los Angeles

The Insanity Begins

Led by I. Newerf and J.B. Dudley, the automobile owners of Los Angeles are fighting a new city ordinance that bans parking within 40 of downtown intersections. Newerf, the West Coast representative of Goodyear Tire Co., and Dudley, a car salesman, received citations for violating the law and have pleaded not guilty.

In April 1909, Dudley pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter after hitting street inspector Woodman J. Thomas on Broadway near 5^th Street. He was sentenced to five years’ probation in March 1910.

Disgraced Woman

Hazel La Doux, a.k.a. Hazel Rogers, hid her face with a veil as she was tried on charges of forgery.

“Her downfall is said to be due to a man named William Rogers, an alleged Ascot tout who deserted her,” The Times says. “It is charged that Miss La Doux forged the name of Mrs. John Brink on a check for $120 and cashed it.”

La Doux told police that she and Rogers used a scheme in which she took a job with a reputable employer and passed clients’ information to lover. La Doux said she worked at a department store in Oakland and a dentist’s office in Los Angeles, turning over names to Rogers, who forged the checks.

“She had been an honest woman, she said, until Rogers’ oily tongue and smooth ways captivated her and she became his mistress and then a thief,” The Times says.

He Paid $40

Restaurant owner Frank Flood stood over his wife, Annie, as she lay on the floor of their quarters at a Spring Street rooming house and said it would be worth the $25 fine just so he could beat her up.

In testifying against him, “She recited a story of shocking cruelty, saying that she had been mistreated, scorned and finally beaten by the man who promised to love, cherish and protect her,” The Times says.

Flood did not dispute any of the charges, refused to cross-examine her (a husband’s right in those days) and pleaded guilty to battery. “He admitted that he struck her and confessed to having assaulted her with his fist as she lay on the floor,” The Times says.

He paid $40 ($837.08 USD 2005).

Flood skipped town in September 1907. “He made the acquaintance of a fast sot and spent plenty of money, too much, in fact, for a man of his means. Late suppers at swell cafes cost Flood much cash. Then he became possessed of a desire to take long journeys in touring cars. He paid his bills with other people’s money, the new restaurant manager says, by levying on the cash drawer of the restaurant, which is owned by a company,” The Times says.

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It Was a Kinder, Simpler Time...

March 8, 1907
Los Angeles

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Forget Bird Flu, This Is Serious

March 7, 1907
Los Angeles

A dreadful disease called acute glanders has been discovered in a horse and veterinarian R.J. Ramage ordered that the animal be destroyed immediately.

In addition to rapidly causing death, acute glanders can be spread from horses to humans and there is no known cure, at least in 1907. Apparently several men in Los Angeles County died of acute glanders in 1893.

Since glanders is often found in horses’ nasal passages, local veterinarians want to ban wooden water troughs from city streets, saying that they are a breeding ground for the disease.

In 1911, Pasadena authorities ordered that 14 horses owned by the Pasadena Ice Co. be shot to death because they had the disease. The county veterinarian also quarantined a stable occupied by a dozen horses and “a number of Chinese” after detecting acute glanders.

“The disease is so infectious that it can be contracted by a horse sneezing in one’s eye,” said county Veterinarian W.B. Rowland.

In 1909, Ramage, of 831 S. Los Angeles St., went on a violent rampage at the Alpine Tavern on Mt. Lowe and it took 11 men to get him under control.

“At the tavern, the man created notice by talking continually to himself and created a disturbance by falling on his knees in the ashes of the fireplace; bowing his head down almost to the embers and offering violent words of prayer,” The Times says.

“Two physicians, formerly of the Southern California Hospital for the Insane at Patton, happened to be present and, taking ropes which were brought, demonstrated that they knew how to handle a crazy man.”

After being taken to Pasadena, Ramage was put in a car for the ride to the county hospital. “All the way to Los Angeles, the unfortunate man screamed and struggled, endeavoring to throw himself from the swiftly moving machine,” The Times says.

Eventually, Ramage recovered and told hospital attendants that he had suffering from mania for years. “He had only a dim recollection of the trouble he went through there.”

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An Independent Woman

March 5, 1907
Los Angeles

What shall we do with Emma? She’s gone off to New Mexico and married a Chinaman. Her horrified mother hopes to get the marriage annulled, but Emma is an independent-minded young lady.

Emma’s mother, Mary Culver of Monrovia, says she will do everything she can to undo her daughter’s marriage to Frank Chew, which The Times describes as “a sort of missionary revivalist,” noting that “Miss Emma had longings to help the heathen herself.”

Chew asked Culver for permission to marry Emma, but “it was bluntly refused,” The Times says. “Emma had a mind of her own and her answer was ‘yes,’ regardless of her mother’s wishes.”

Even worse, Chew could be an illegal immigrant and if he’s deported, Emma says she will be willing to go to China with him. She made this vow, even though she was warned that Chew would sell her into white slavery as soon as he got her to China.

Emma isn’t the only one in trouble. Members of the Chinese Baptist Mission are equally furious, saying that Chew borrowed jewelry from members of the congregation under the pretense of defending himself against deportation when in fact he used the money for his elopement.

In August 1907, Emma sent a letter from Hong Kong to her family, saying that their fears were baseless and that she and her husband had opened a day school where they taught English.

The next year, Emma mailed a photograph of her students and tried to recruit more women to come to China.

“With her husband, Frank Chew, she has established an English school which is attended by the sons of well-to-do, educated Chinese gentlemen. The Chews have prospered beyond their wildest dreams,” The Times says.

“Every family in Hong Kong seems anxious to have its children learn English and the pupils themselves study the language eagerly.”

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A Page From the Past

March 3, 1907
Los Angeles

Stroll into the Los Angeles Public Library on Central Avenue with me for a moment, over to the children’s section. The librarian says there are about 15,000 to 16,000 books, only half of what is needed, because about third of them are checked out every month.

The most popular titles are “Little Women,” “Little Men” and “Old-Fashioned Girl,” The Times says. Although the library has 25 copies of each book, it’s rare to find them on the shelves.

Among boys, Civil War stories are the most popular, “the Henty books, Barbour’s athletic tales, ‘Tom Sawyer’ and Dunn’s Young Kentuckian series of which there are a dozen copies each in stock,” The Times says.

“The children delight to search through the card catalogue and select their books,” The Times says. “It is interesting to watch the youngsters as they stand, pad and pencil in hand, and with a grownup air of importance, write down the names of the books they want.”

The story describes several young library patrons, but this is the one that stays with me:

“One of the constant patrons of the juvenile department is a tall, pale-faced lad who walks on crutches. A cruel accident so injured him that he is unable to attend school, but he has found an excellent substitute in the serious study of electricity at the library.

“He greedily devours everything he can lay his hands on about electricity. Day after day this delicate, white-faced boy pores over the books. He talks intelligently about induction coils, ohms, volts and motors.

“ ‘I intend to be an electric engineer,’ he declares as he limps away on his crutches. And the chances are that he will be.”

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Page 1 News

March 2, 1907
Los Angeles

City Fathers Confront an Intractable Problem

March 1, 1907
Los Angeles

Downtown businessmen are at a complete loss over what to do with the garbage from their operations and want the city to either take it or designate a dump they can use.

“They declare that the Board of Health has refused to let further deposits of garbage or refuse be made at the old dumping ground to the southeast of the city and state that if the city does not come forward with a proposition to locate a new dump, or to cremate the stuff, they will be helpless to get rid of the accumulations of each day’s business,” The Times says.

City officials say they don’t know what to do because the local sanitation system is strictly for residential use. The Times says that local ordinances define garbage as “animal and vegetable refuse from the kitchens.” As a result, officials feel no need to deal with commercial waste, although they concede it is a problem.

“We can scarcely take care of the garbage we are now forced to collect, one Board of Public Works commissioner says. “We don’t want to take care of any more of it, even if it is hauled to the crematory without cost to the city.”

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But the Line Is Straight

Feb. 28, 1907
Los Angeles

An old and massive California live oak used to mark the division between three Spanish land grants lies in pieces on the ground because an Edison foreman refused to run a transmission line around it.

“The tree was a full hundred feet in its spread,” The Times says,” and stood on the end of a little plateau, all alone in its greatness. The massive trunk could not be circled by three men stretching their arms and touching their fingertips—hardly by four men. Above, it split into four great branches that spread out and out and then again downward, containing with an evergreen shield a refuge where two full companies of soldiers might have bivouacked in comfort.”

The live oak marks the junction of the San Rafael, Los Feliz and Providencia land grants, The Times says, adding: “The tree itself stands within the Providencia but it was a starting point from which direction was taken.”

“The foreman is said to be in grave danger of losing his position and is very repentant,” the paper says. “He bawled like a spanked bad boy before the board (note: the property was owned by the Water Board, which had given Edison permission to run the line). However the great old tree is lying among a smother of chips and there is no way to replace the work of nature’s 300 years.”

Bonus fact: The San Rafael, Providencia and San Rafael land grants touched at a point in Burbank that is circled by the on-ramp for the southbound Golden State Freeway at the westbound lanes of Burbank Boulevard.

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A Secretary's Dedication

Feb. 27, 1907
Los Angeles

A thick cloud of smoke from a raging fire in the basement swept through the Germain building on South Spring Street at lunch hour, engulfing businessmen and office workers. In a fraction of a second, the building’s occupants were transformed from powerful executives conducting elaborate stock deals into blind and struggling humans groping on their knees through the hallways to save their lives.

There were many daring rescues and examples of selfless sacrifice. One man was saved as he was about to commit suicide rather than die in the fire. Firefighters battled the blaze until they were at the point of collapse, left to revive themselves and then returned. The only fatality was Emma Stewart, a secretary who died because she turned back from her flight to telephone her employer about the fire.

Her last words were: “Mr. Germain, there is a fire in the basement. Come quickly.”

Reporter E.O. Sawyer dragged her to safety after finding her next to the telephone, the receiver hanging loose from its hook. Doctors spent an hour trying to revive her but she never regained consciousness.

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In Indiana, There Is No Beer

Feb. 14-26, 1907
Los Angeles

The Rev. Ervin S. Chapman, a Presbyterian minister who heads the Anti-Saloon League of California, has won a victory through an address that persuaded an Indiana judge to rule that saloons are unconstitutional.

Chapman concluded his series of points by saying:

Our national Supreme Court, in decisions which it has rendered, has designated the liquor traffic as mala in se [wrong in itself] by characterizing it as

Harmful to material prosperity.
Injurious to life.
Destructive of manhood.
Disastrous to peace and happiness.
Fatal to morals and.
Productive of crime and misery.

That court having thus characterized the liquor traffic will surely declare that traffic mala in se and hence unlawful and incapable of being granted legislative standing or protection by any branch of civil government either national or local.

Whenever the public mind has become sufficiently enlightened and the public conscience sufficiently quickened to justify and make effective such a decision our national Supreme Court, which has always led public sentiment respecting this question, will place its brand of outlawry upon that traffic which McKinley characterized “as the most degrading and ruinous of all human pursuits.”

Los Angeles saloonkeepers shrugged their shoulders and said they believed the ruling would have no effect on them.

The Times quoted one bartender: “ ‘Stop saloons unt drinking!’ one barkeeper screamed in astonishment. ‘Go vay. You might as well try to stop kissing.’ ”

Chapman died in 1921, two years after the passage of the Volstead Act.

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Architectural Ramblings

Feb. 24, 1907
Eagle Rock

Architect Samuel Tilden Norton has designed a bank building for Townsend Avenue and Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock, The Times says.

Just to make research interesting, The Times misspelled his name as S. Tilton Norton. According to his 1959 obituary, his mother was the first Jewish child born in Los Angeles. After studying architecture in Los Angeles and New York, he designed the Wilshire Fox Building and Sinai Temple.

He was a board member of Temple B’nai Brith during its move from Hope and 9^th Street to Wilshire and Hobart and was an honorary consultant on plans for the temple, which was designed by A.W. Edelman.

Norton was lifelong friends with Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin, who presided over the funeral. Norton was a member of many professional, religious and social organizations, including Hillcrest Country Club, Nathan Strauss Israel Society, Jewish Federation, the Friends of the Hebrew University and the Zionist Organization of America.

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Soccer Returns

Feb. 23, 1907
Los Angeles

The Scotch Thistles beat the English Victorias 3-2 in Southern California’s first soccer game since the Caledonians and the Pasadena team met at Agricultural Park in 1890, The Times says.

Despite the poor condition of the field, the players displayed excellent skill and teamwork. The Times said the teams were only formed three month before and notes that more teams were expected next year.

“As a good, healthful sport, requiring both athletic training and skill, ‘soccer’ seems to have a place to fill here as elsewhere. Apparently, however, it is even less qualified than rugby to take the place of American football,” The Times says.

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Speaking of the Weather

Feb. 22, 1907
Los Angeles

Here’s how The Times weather stories read a century ago:

“For all the daylight hours yesterday, the rain drizzled down, much of the time like a heavy Scotch mist, but toward nightfall the storm deepened and the rain began to fall in earnest. For two hours in the early part of the night there was a constant downpour that soon set the gutters running full and brought about the usual results to the streets near the hill district.

“The wash from the highways intersecting the hills poured down onto the streets of the business section and deposits of sand and gravel caused much inconvenience to electric cars. At several of the intersections on Broadway and Hill streets, men were stationed with shovels to keep the tracks passable for cars.

“The rain disarranged schedules for several of the car lines and much trouble was experienced on both the Belt line and the Brooklyn Avenue line to get the cars around the numerous curves overwashed with gravel.”

“No special damage was done by the storm in Garvanza, although the streets were cut up in some cases. At Highland Park, a swift current flowed down Pasadena Avenue, cutting that street badly in several places.

“Right in the midst of yesterday’s rain, a water pipe on Broadway in front of the Ville de Paris broke and when workmen made excavations to mend the pipe, the water got beyond control and shot up into the air on a level with the fourth story of the building. Hundreds of pedestrians stopped in the rain to watch the great fountain play and it added much to the waters rushing down the street.”

Normally, I don’t like to merely copy what ran in The Times, but sometimes it’s impossible to rewrite the stories and preserve the original flavor.

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