Louis Mesmer
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The Mesmer family of California was a wealthy family of early Los Angeles settlers who contributed to the development of the city between the rancho era and the explosive growth of the post-WWII era.


Louis Mesmer

Louis Aloise Moessmer Mesmer (February 20, 1829 – August 18, 1900) was, in his day, “considered in the front rank of the leaders of the city.” Originally from
Alsace Alsace (, ; ; Low Alemannic German/ gsw-FR, Elsàss ; german: Elsass ; la, Alsatia) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2020, it had ...
, a region of eastern France with strong German cultural influence, Mesmer was trained as a bread baker. He initially worked in Ohio and then along the
Fraser River The Fraser River is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountains and flowing for , into the Strait of Georgia just south of the City of Vancouver. The river's annual d ...
in British Columbia, where he tried his hand at mining and then baked for the
Hudson Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...
. Mesmer immigrated to California in 1859, when the population of Los Angeles was fewer than 3,500 people. He had $20,000 in savings and used it to buy a bakery on Main Street, which he ran for two years. In those days he was apparently the only local producer of
matzah Matzah or matzo ( he, מַצָּה, translit=maṣṣā'','' pl. matzot or Ashk. matzos) is an unleavened flatbread that is part of Jewish cuisine and forms an integral element of the Passover festival, during which ''chametz'' (leaven and f ...
, “which he sold to nearly all the Jewish families of Southern California.” He sold the bakery and bought the United States Hotel in 1862, greatly expanding the building over time and operating a wholesale wine and liquor storefront on the ground floor. The United States Hotel was "the third hotel built in the city" but was rebuilt from scratch in 1886. In the early 20th century it described by a historian as being "redolent of the romance of old Los Angeles." In 1887, the ''Los Angeles Times'' described it as "one of the best-known landmarks in Los Angeles…and practically the only hotel…Everybody knew Louis Mesmer…for that matter everyone knows him even now." (The hotel, which was managed by Mesmer’s son Tony, was sold by the family shortly after Mesmer’s death in 1900.) After construction was halted due to funding issues, Louis Mesmer also oversaw the completion of St. Vibiana's Cathedral at the behest of Bishop Tadeo Amat and Bishop Mora. His son Joseph’s wedding there in 1879 to Rose Elizabeth Bushard was the “first marriage solemnized in the cathedral.” The family home, which he purchased from “Mr. Hayes” in 1871, was on Fort Street between 1st and 2nd. The property later became the address 125 S. Broadway in the early 20th century downtown theater district. According to his ''Los Angeles Herald'' obituary, “In 1880 he had put down the first regular cement squares sidewalk, for which he was arrested for an infringement of the Schlinger patent. As there were no federal courts south of San Francisco, he was arrested, taken by the
United States marshal The United States Marshals Service (USMS) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States. The USMS is a bureau within the U.S. Department of Justice, operating under the direction of the Attorney General, but serves as the enforcem ...
to San Francisco, and there the case was compromised. He broke the value of the patent, which inured to the public's benefit, but at a cost of over $800.” In 1887, Mesmer, Moye Wicks and others were partners in the ultimately failed effort to build a harbor and settlement at
Port Ballona Port Ballona is an archaic place name for an area near the center of Santa Monica Bay in coastal Los Angeles County, where Playa Del Rey and Del Rey Lagoon are located today. Port Ballona was a planned harbor and town site from circa 1859 to 190 ...
, at what is now considered
Playa Del Rey Playa del Rey (Spanish for "Beach of the King") is a seaside community in the Santa Monica Bay and the Westside region of Los Angeles, California. It has a ZIP code of 90293 and area codes of 310 and 424. As of 2018, the community had a populat ...
and the greater
Ballona Wetlands Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve (pronunciation: "Bah-yo-nuh" or "Buy-yo-nah" ) is a protected area that once served as the natural estuary for neighboring Ballona Creek. The site is located in Los Angeles County, California, just south of ...
complex. According to another source (a landmark-status application for a building in Playa Del Rey), “Louis Mesmer had been an acquaintance of the Machado family…On February 23, 1890, Louis Mesmer inherited a significant percentage of the La Ballona Rancho from the estate of Andres Bristwalter, a Mesmer business partner and an acquaintance of the Machados. Louis Mesmer had purchased or obtained the balance of the Rancho La Ballona holdings through business dealings with Daniel Freeman and others.” In 1893,
Daniel Freeman Daniel Freeman (April 26, 1826 – December 30, 1908) was an American homesteader and Civil War veteran. He was recognized as the first person to file a claim under the Homestead Act of 1862. Freeman was also the plaintiff in a landmark separ ...
and Louis Mesmer jointly requested a survey of the boundary between Rancho La Ballona and
Rancho Sausal Redondo Rancho Sausal Redondo (Round Willow-grove Ranch) was a Mexican land grant in present day Los Angeles County, California given in 1837 to Antonio Ygnacio Ávila by Juan Alvarado Governor of Alta California. ''Rancho Sausal Redondo'' covered ...
. Mesmer’s first wife, and mother of his children, was Catherine Forst (October 28, 1833 – October 2, 1891). His second wife, Jennie E. Swan, was many years his junior and their marriage by elopement triggered several weeks of breathless “scandal sheet” coverage in the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
''. He was survived by his sons Joseph, Tony, and Alphonse, and his daughters Christina and Lucile; also a stepdaughter, Mrs. Ziba Patterson. His estate was valued at $350,000 and was left in large part to Joseph Mesmer, with stipulations that the other heirs would only receive bequests if they did not contest the terms of the will. At the time of his death, Louis Mesmer owned “the Kraemer rancho” near Fullerton in Orange County, acres of the former Rancho La Ballona, acres at Port Ballona, “several lots in the Business Center tract,” the house on Broadway, a lot on Hill Street, and the U. S. Hotel.MESMER ESTATE IS LARGE.: WILL FILED FOR PROBATE--HOW ALL THE PROPERTY IS TO BE DIVIDED. (1900, Aug 30). ''Los Angeles Times''


Joseph Mesmer

Joseph Mesmer (November 3, 1855 – November 28, 1947) was an active, even profligate, civic
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of Los Angeles in his working lifetime. According to ''Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past'' (2004), “Mesmer is a little-studied but important figure in the history of land use and planning in Los Angeles.” Mesmer’s obituary noted that he was a “great supporter of the Owens River project, the great aqueduct that brought water to a thirsty valley.” Described as a “one-man planning commission,” he was on the Los Angeles City Parks Commission (including one term as park commissioner), Los Angeles City Planning Commission, the Freeholders’ Charter Commission to frame a new
city charter A city charter or town charter (generically, municipal charter) is a legal document (''charter'') establishing a municipality such as a city or town. The concept developed in Europe during the Middle Ages. Traditionally the granting of a charter ...
, promoted the development of the
Los Angeles Civic Center The Civic Center neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, is the administrative core of the City of Los Angeles, County of Los Angeles, and a complex of city, county, state, and federal government offices, buildings, and courthouses. It is locate ...
, and lobbied for decades for the creation of a
Los Angeles Union Station Los Angeles Union Station is the main railway station in Los Angeles, California, and the largest railroad passenger terminal in the Western United States. It opened in May 1939 as the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal, replacing La Grande S ...
. He was president of the North Los Angeles Development Company for 28 years. As a 1921 biography put it “Mr. Mesmer for years has been a foremost advocate of development work in Southern California, particularly in Los Angeles city and county. Probably no citizen has been more liberal of his time and study in behalf of various plans and movements to beautify and improve the city.” He seems to have organized fundraising to buy the second federal courthouse and post office building (later replaced by the
Spring Street Courthouse The Spring Street Courthouse, formerly the United States Court House in Downtown Los Angeles, is a Moderne style building that originally served as both a post office and a courthouse. The building was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood and L ...
), the Temple Block that became the
Los Angeles City Hall Los Angeles City Hall, completed in 1928, is the center of the government of the city of Los Angeles, California, and houses the mayor's office and the meeting chambers and offices of the Los Angeles City Council. It is located in the Civic Cente ...
site, and the
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce is Southern California's largest not-for-profit business federation, representing the interests of more than 235,000 businesses in L.A. County, more than 1,400 member companies and more than 722,430 employ ...
building. He also was involved in expanding and extending several streets downtown and advocated for the “demolition and grading of Bunker Hill.” Mesmer’s 12-year-old son Clarence drowned at “Ballona Harbor” in 1895 while visiting his grandfather Louis Mesmer. In 1902, the Beach Land Company bought the
Port Ballona Port Ballona is an archaic place name for an area near the center of Santa Monica Bay in coastal Los Angeles County, where Playa Del Rey and Del Rey Lagoon are located today. Port Ballona was a planned harbor and town site from circa 1859 to 190 ...
lands from Joseph Mesmer and began developing
Playa Del Rey Playa del Rey (Spanish for "Beach of the King") is a seaside community in the Santa Monica Bay and the Westside region of Los Angeles, California. It has a ZIP code of 90293 and area codes of 310 and 424. As of 2018, the community had a populat ...
. His main commercial interests were the Queen Boot and Shoe Store (which he operated from 1878 to 1906) and the St. Louis Fire and Brick Clay Company. Like his father before him, Mesmer was heavily involved in causes and charities of the
Los Angeles Archdiocese The Archdiocese of Los Angeles ( la, Archidiœcesis Angelorum in California, es, Arquidiócesis de Los Ángeles) is an ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church ( particularly the Roman Catholic or Latin Church) located in th ...
."Joseph Mesmer, Pioneer Leader, Succumbs at 92: Businessman Helped Build Los Angeles From Pueblo to Metropolis in Years of Service." ''Los Angeles Times,'' Nov 29, 1947, pp. 2''.'' In old age, he devoted himself to honoring the “pioneer” legacy of his father’s generation. He and his wife Rose Bushard Mesmer were married for 66 years; they died within a year of one another. The couple were parents to six children.


Tina Mesmer Griffith

Mary Agnes Christina Mesmer Griffith (1864 – 1948), called Tina, was the oldest daughter of Louis and Catherine Mesmer. In 1887 she married
Griffith J. Griffith Griffith Jenkins Griffith (January 4, 1850 – July 6, 1919) was a Welsh-born American industrialist and philanthropist. After amassing a significant fortune from a mining syndicate in the 1880s, Griffith donated to the City of Los Angeles wh ...
, future namesake of
Griffith Park Griffith Park is a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The park includes popular attractions such as the Los Angeles Zoo, the Autry Museum of the Ameri ...
. While her parents and husband were wealthy, “Katarina Mesmer” was also heiress to a valuable piece of property at San Pedro and Washington that had been left to her by family friend Andres Briswalter. (Briswalter was an Alsatian like the Mesmers.) When Louis Mesmer died, the newspaper report about Mesmer’s Will stated, “Mrs. Mary Christina Griffith (wife of G. J. Griffith), another daughter, is left only $500. The testator explains that the reason of the bequest being so small was that, prior to his death, he had secured for his daughter a handsome bequest which would have come to him from the estate of the late Andre Briswalter.” After 16 years of marriage, on Friday, September 4, 1903, at the
Hotel Arcadia The Hotel Arcadia was a hotel in Santa Monica, California that stood on the oceanfront between 1886 and 1909. The hotel was located on Ocean Avenue between Railroad and Front (later Pico Boulevard). Built during what one historian called the Gr ...
in Santa Monica, apparently motivated by a combination of chronic alcohol abuse, paranoia, religious bias, and sheer greed, Griffith shot Tina in the face. She miraculously survived but lost an eye and was permanently disfigured; he was sent to
San Quentin Prison San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County. Opened in July 1852, San Quentin is the ...
for less than two years. The couple divorced. Their only child was Van Griffith. After the end of her abusive marriage, Tina Mesmer lived out her days in virtual seclusion at the home of her younger sister Lucy Mesmer Whipple.


Mesmer placename

The Mesmer-owned Ballona lands were primarily used for cattle ranching. When the
Southern California Railway Southern California Railway was formed on November 7, 1889. it was formed by consolidation of California Southern Railroad Company, the California Central Railway Company, and the Redondo Beach Railway Company. A second consolidation and reformi ...
line was created in 1887, one of the stops, Mesmer Station, was named Mesmer after the family. Local historian the Militant Angeleno argues that neighboring stop,
Alsace Alsace (, ; ; Low Alemannic German/ gsw-FR, Elsàss ; german: Elsass ; la, Alsatia) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2020, it had ...
(now the name of a tiny wedge of unincorporated Los Angeles County) was derived from Louis Mesmer’s homeland of Alsace in Europe. A street named Mesmer Avenue runs from the site of the old railway stop up to
Ballona Creek Ballona Creek (pronunciation: “Bah-yo-nuh” or “Buy-yo-nah” ) is an channelized stream in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States, that was once a “year-round river lined with sycamores and willows.” Ballona Creek ...
near Inglewood Boulevard, which is one of the older roadways and bridge crossing in the era (dating to at least the late rancho era). The intersection of Mesmer Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard is now a bus layover stop for five area transit routes.


See also

* Sepulveda family of California * Bixby family of California


References

{{reflist


External links


Biographie de Louis MESMER: Ou la passionnante histoire d’un apprenti boulanger Surbourgeois à la conquête de l’ouest américain
(in French) Families from California California pioneers History of Los Angeles History of Los Angeles County, California American families of French ancestry People from Los Angeles County, California People from Los Angeles 19th century in Los Angeles