Thursday, August 17, 2011
Page 7
PERSPECTIVES (Column)
Forgotten DA Lewis Granger: Baptist Minister, Educator, Inn Keeper, Lawyer
By ROGER M. GRACE
147th in a Series
LEWIS GRANGER, the second district attorney of Los Angeles County, is a man whose service in that post in 1851-52 has been overlooked by historians.
How did that happen?
Despite newspaper accounts contemporaneous with his stint in office identifying him as district attorney, Granger is generally thought to have been the county attorney.
The confusion stems from the notion at the time—one seemingly plain and simple—that a district attorney was the attorney for a district and a county attorney was the attorney for a county.
That was, in fact, true when Los Angeles County’s first election took place on April 1, 1850.
William C. Ferrell was elected district attorney for California’s First District which, as noted in previous columns, was comprised of the counties of San Diego and Los Angeles. In the District Court for that district, the district attorney conducted prosecutions and represented the two counties in civil litigation.
Benjamin Hayes gained election as county attorney for this county in the April 1 election, and appeared in the County Court which, among other things, heard civil actions with an amount in controversy of no more than $200.
Then came legislation in 1851 abolishing the office of county attorney; responsibilities of that office were shifted to the district attorney. Legislation was also enacted providing for a DA in each county. As of October, 1851, the First District had one judge but two district attorneys, one of them in San Diego County and one in L.A. County.
On Sept. 3, 1851, I.S.K. Ogier was elected the first district attorney of this county (as opposed to DA for this county) for a term beginning Oct. 6. Once sworn in, he quickly renounced office, apparently over a butting-of-heads with the district judge. The Court of Sessions, which had both legislative and judicial powers, in October of 1851 appointed Granger as district attorney.
It was counterintuitive that the attorney serving this county, and this county alone, was not the “county attorney,” and there was, understandably, confusion.
The Los Angeles Star’s issue of Sept. 6, 1851 (a copy of which may or may not somewhere be extant) reports, according to the Sept. 25 edition of the Daily Alta California, that Ogier defeated Lewis Granger for the post of “County Attorney” by a vote of 285-192. That was, of course, the outcome of the race for DA.
“An Illustrated history of Los Angeles County, California,” published in 1889, lists Granger as county attorney from “1852-’53” notwithstanding that the post did not exist in those years.
I’ve previously quoted this from reminiscences by Hayes, published in 1929:
“In September, 1851, I resigned the office of County Attorney, and Lewis Granger, Esq., was appointed.”
So it is that the second district attorney of Los Angeles County is on no list I’ve come across of past DAs, and is frequently said to have been county attorney. In “Lawyers of Los Angeles,” published by the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. in 1959, it’s recited: “When Hayes resigned as county attorney in September of 1851, Granger was appointed in his place.” Likewise, the Los Angeles Bar Bulletin in 1949 says: “When Hayes resigned as county attorney in 1851, he was succeeded by Lewis Granger….”
Who was Granger? He was a man with a background quite unlike that of any other DA in Los Angeles County history. He had been a teacher, a preacher and an inn-keeper.
Born in Ohio on May 17, 1819, Granger graduated from Pennsylvania’s Jefferson College in 1838, and was wed May 3, 1843, to Isabella Wilson, an 18-year-old Pennsylvanian. According to “Spelman Genealogy” by Francis Cooley Williams Barbour, published in 1910, the Grangers had six children and 21 grandchildren.
“Launcelot Granger of Newbury, Mass. and Suffield, Conn.: a Genealogical History” by James Granger, published in 1893, provides this information on Lewis Granger:
“Returning home [after college] he entered upon the study of the law with the Hon. William Stansbury, with whom he remained two years. He commenced the practice of his profession at Stoddard County, Mo., but illness soon forced him to seek again his old home. He accepted a position as instructor in Greek and Latin at Paris, Ky., where he remained two years, and then founded an Academy at Hay[e]sville, O, where he resided two years more. During this time he read theology, and for some years had charge of a Baptist church.”
“A History of the Pioneer and Modern Times of Ashland County [Ohio],” published in 1863, recites that 20 years earlier, in the town of Hayesville, “a high school went into operation, having for its principal the Rev. Lewis Granger, a man of much learning.”
Construction of school buildings was soon commenced and, according to the book:
“[U]pon the 4th day of July, 1845, the corner-stone of the edifice was laid in the presence of a large concourse of people. The ceremonies were conducted by Rev. Mr. Granger, who pronounced an oration upon the occasion.”
“Granger removed to Hannibal, Mo., and for a time made that place his home,” according to James Granger’s book. It continues:
“It was while a resident of this last-named place that the excitement regarding California began, and the Plains began to be dotted with emigrants, taking the overland route to the newly-discovered gold fields. Mr. Granger determined to join the seekers after new lands and worlds, and, in the spring of 1849, betook himself of the rendezvous at Council Bluffs, Ia. With him went his young wife and their two children. The party consisted of one hundred persons, with twenty wagons, each drawn by six oxen, and plentifully supplied with cows, horses, hogs, and camp outfits. They started west across the trackless plains in the month of April.”
Granger’s brother Henry was also in the party.
In Salt Lake City, the Grangers joined a wagon train comprised largely of Mormons.
The 1998 book “Journals of Forty-niners: Salt Lake to Los Angeles” contains diary notations made by Charles C. Rich, a leader of the Mormon Church. His entry for Sunday, Oct. 14, 1849, reads:
“We lay buy [sic]. Mr. Granger a Baptist minister preached.”
There are references to Granger in “Overland Journey from Utah to California,” a 2008 book by Edward Leo Lyman. The book notes:
“On Sunday, 30 September 1849, at the Hobble Creek gathering grounds [five miles south of Provo, Utah], after a preaching session by Lewis Granger against the use of profanity, an announcement designated a meeting to make ‘such regulations as would be necessary for safely pursuing the Southern Route to California.’ Already scribe of those proceedings, [William B.] Lorton was appointed, with Granger, later a Los Angeles attorney and politician, and with Thomas M. Marshall, to draft a constitution and by-laws to present at a subsequent gathering. As John P. Reid concluded in his book on law on the emigrant trails [“Law and the Elephant,” 1997], this was a very common procedure.”
You might recall mention here earlier of Thomas W. Sutherland, the forgotten First District DA, playing a similar role on a west-bound wagon train.
Lyman writes:
“After due completion of the document, probably in part drafted previously by Granger, and after ‘careful discussion,’ the company accepted the Constitution.”
That document provided for an elected council, charged with “deciding all matters of importance on the route.” The book goes on to relate:
“While still in the preparation stage, the new council convened as a court to try a company member who had ‘wronged pecuniarily’ two young Germans who were traveling in the same wagon. Granger presented the case, and the issue was ‘adjusted’ in a manner satisfactory to those wronged.”
Granger told of the trek to Los Angeles in a letter of April 8, 1850 to his father. (The original is at the Huntington Library, and it’s published in the 1959 book, “Letters of Lewis Granger,” of which 250 copies were printed.) The letter begins:
“Our party arrived safely in this valley on the first of January, the large train lead by Capt. [Jefferson] Hunt, a Mormon guide, having separated into seven Divisions of a dozen waggons each, for the convenience of travelling.”
(In years ahead, Hunt was instrumental in founding a Mormon colony in Los Angeles County; became an assemblyman representing L.A. County; introduced the legislation creating San Bernardino County, where the colony was situated; and was elected as the first assemblyman for that county.)
Granger notes in his letter that an “oasis” at which the wagon train stopped “is called the Vegas.” It’s now known as Las Vegas, Nev.
The train continued on to Archillette Springs. (Now known as “Resting Springs,” it’s in the portion of the Mojave Desert resting in California’s Inyo County.) By this point in the journey, the travelers were confronting severe adversity. Granger recounts:
“Provisions had become scarce—every man in the train had been upon allowance—women and children had a sufficiency reserved for them of flour. But the men, all of us, lived almost entirely for three weeks before upon the poor broken down cattle—no fat on the meat, nor marrow in the bones. What had been marrow was a thin jelly destitute of fatness. Our sick, however, of whom there were several, fared as well as the women and children, which was poor enough.”
Relief came. The letter says:
“[H]ere we had the good fortune to meet with 600 lbs of flour left by Mr. Dallas of Iowa, who had gone five days before we arrived. Two young men remained in a tent, liable at any time to be attacked by Indians…, and delivered the flour to us. It was a most unexpected relief….
“Every one in camp was sensibly affected with the indisputable evidences of Divine interposition….[M]any with us had been, and now were, weak and emaciated by diarrhea, resulting from want of wholesome food; and unless we had here obtained flour, as this article was now almost consumed, some must soon have perished.”
(Nowadays, flour is frowned upon nutritionists as a carbohydrate which turns into sugar and induces sluggishness; in Granger’s time, it was evidently seen as essential to nourishment. But back then, the flour was unrefined and contained nutrients that are stripped away in the refining process.)
The concluding portion of the letter is designated “Private.” Granger advises his father:
“If the foregoing possess anything interesting to the public, you are at liberty to do with it as with my other letters.”
By that, he apparently confers his consent to it being turned over to local newspapers.
“I am in a public house—have made a handsome commencement,” he says, referring to his role as—according to the spelling in the 1950 census—an “In Keeper.”
The letter notes:
“This city contains 3000 inhabitants, and is rapidly growing. The income from the garden and this House will place me in one year in comfortable circumstances—if they continue as well as they have begun….I have been in business six weeks and have cleared one thousand dollars. In a year I calculate to be able to build and retire from public business —if not greatly mistaken.”
He was greatly mistaken, and was to have financial difficulties in years ahead.
Granger does not disclose to his father in that letter that just one week before, he was a candidate for election as district attorney for the First District, and was clobbered.
In balloting in San Diego County, William C. Ferrell defeated Miles K. Crenshaw by a vote of 147-4, and Granger received no votes there. In Los Angeles County, Ferrell attracted 280 votes, Granger drew 87, and Crenshaw got 7.
(It’s doubtful that Crenshaw was an attorney, but that was not then a requirement for the office.)
Granger explains his return to law practice in a June 15, 1854 letter to his brother-in-law:
“During the prevalence of the gold mania no minister in California could live by his calling; none but missionaries supported from abroad could obtain support in this country….Borne down with disappointments, I had to take the only resource left me, of entering the profession which I first studied and preparing myself to meet at the Bar some of the most talented lawyers of the States, who had been hurried here by the excitement that then prevailed. This required constant and unremitting study. In addition to this the greater and richer part of this population in Southern California spoke a foreign language; and in order to transact their business I had to learn their language. Here also was no ordinary work on hand; but which application arduous and continued enabled me to accomplish. From the very first my success at the Bar was gratifying. The very first case I had brought me a $500 fee, and I carried my case in the Court. It was a clear case of justifiable homicide in which a shooting gambler was slain by an industrious peaceable citizen. My client overwhelmed me with gratitude. The citizens showered their best wishes on me. And I assure you that I have ever acted conscienciously in the practice of my profession, by which I have in connection with my partner, Judge [Jonathan R.] Scott, a sound and able lawyer, been able to procure the patronage of all the wealthy and influential citizens with but few exceptions in Southern California.”
He observes that “[t]here is an intimate connection between the sciences of Theology and Law,” explaining:
“Both relate to the duties and obligations of mankind the one to the other. Both consist in determining what is right and just in all the relations of life. In the early ages of the world the theologians were the law givers, and it is only in modern times that the two have become disjoined.”
Some lawyers, Granger bemoans, “never analyze, compare, or generalize, but precedent becomes to them reason, and law a tissue of technicalities. Such are the veritable pettifoggers, who throng our courts, and bring the profession into contempt.”
Copyright 2011, Metropolitan News Company