David Hewes is perhaps best remembered today as the man who donated the Golden Spike at the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. A native of Massachusetts, Hewes came to California during the Gold Rush and moved to Tustin in 1881. Although his stay in Tustin lasted less than ten years, he left an imprint on the town that is still felt today.
David Hewes was born May 16, 1822, in Lynnfield, Massachusetts. He was the youngest surviving son of the ten children born to Joel and Ruthe (Tapley) Hewes. The first of the Hewes line to come to America was Joshua Hewes. He was born in Royston, England around 1611 and came to the colonies in 1633, settling in Roxbury, Massachusetts soon after his arrival. It is believed that David Hewes is an indirect descendant of Joseph Hewes, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but that fact has yet to be verified.
David’s father, Joel Hewes, served as a colonel in the local militia unit that was called up but saw little or no action in the War of 1812. Joel was a farmer, working a 44-acre homestead outside of Lynnfield. All ten of the Hewes children were born in the farmhouse on the homestead. Joel and Ruthe were both devout Methodists; she taught Sunday school and there were daily bible readings with the children at home. In adulthood, however, most of the Hewes children became members of different Protestant denominations.
Joel Hewes died of consumption (tuberculosis) on December 18, 1827, less than two weeks shy of his 40th birthday, leaving Ruthe with eight children still at home, ranging in age from 3 to 18. She remained a widow for two years before marrying Oliver Swain of Lynnfield on April 19, 1829.
David was just five years old when his father died and seven when his mother remarried. For the next several years he attended the local school and did chores on his stepfather’s farm.
At the age of 14 he was bound out to work for his brother-in-law, Benjamin Cox, the husband of his older sister, Mary Ann. He was to receive $30 a year for clothing, food, and lodging and was allowed to attend school six months a year. In return he would work on the Cox farm until he was 17 1/2 years old and then gain his freedom.
Hewes fulfilled his contract and after gaining his freedom attended the Reading Academy for two years while still working for his brother-in-law to pay the tuition. In 1844, on advice from his brother Charles, he enrolled at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. While at Phillips he also worked various jobs to pay his tuition and for spending money. Following graduation in 1847 he was admitted to Yale but left after one year, traveling to California instead of finishing his education. Although he never graduated from Yale, Hewes considered himself a member of the class of 1852 and years later would attend class reunions.
According to his memoir, Hewes did not intend to travel to California but merely to invest in prefabricated housing to sell to the 49ers there, believing that building materials were in short supply near the goldfields. His cousin, George Warren Hewes, left with a shipment of the housing units in the summer of 1849 but while en-route his wife and youngest child died. David Hewes, fearing that his grief-stricken cousin would not be able to properly handle their business affairs, set out for California himself, leaving New York aboard the steamship Crescent City on December 11, 1849.
Hewes landed in San Francisco but soon moved to Sacramento where, in February 1850, he opened a mercantile store that he operated for two years. He also set up his prefabricated buildings and rented them out and in 1851 he had a six-story building erected that was used as a hotel. He was also a leader in the founding and building of a Congregational church.
Unfortunately, his store, hotel, and the church were all destroyed in a great fire that consumed much of Sacramento on November 2, 1852. When the fire was followed in December by a flood that inundated the city, Hewes decided to move back to San Francisco.
Arriving in San Francisco with little more than the bag he was carrying, Hewes was hired to level a town lot for the construction of a house. He purchased a shovel and a wheelbarrow and hired a Chinese laborer. The job cleared a profit of $600, and he was on his way to the career that would make him his fortune. He became a successful contractor, grading and leveling much of downtown San Francisco and filling in parts of the bay. When he purchased two steam shovels in 1858 to improve his operations, he became known as “Steam Paddy Hewes.”
By 1869 he was wealthy enough to retire from active involvement in his contracting firm and concentrate on other business pursuits. In 1873 he sold the enterprise to railroad magnate Henry Villard. In his early years in San Francisco, he was a member of the Congregational church but then joined the Presbyterians, where in addition to teaching Sunday school he was president of the board of trustees. He was also a prominent member of the Vigilance Committee that was organized in the early Gold Rush days to combat the rampant lawlessness in the Bay Area.
It was also in 1869 that Hewes conceived the idea of sending a Golden Spike to the ceremonies marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Earlier he had been invited by the Big Four, Stanford, Crocker, Huntington, and Hopkins, to join in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad, but at that time Hewes did not want to take the financial risk.
At the ceremony at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869, the spike, coated with 17.4 karat gold, was dropped into a pre-drilled hole in a ceremonial last tie and then gently tapped into place by Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific. It was also Hewes’ idea to have a telegraph wire attached to the spike so that when it was struck the message would be instantly sent to the Bay Area and the celebrations could begin.
In August 1870 Hewes traveled to Vienna to seek treatment from specialists for a growth on his face. As early as 1856 he had been diagnosed with epithelioma (skin cancer). He arrived in Europe with a letter of introduction from US Secretary of State William Henry Seward and he remained on the continent for two years, undergoing painful treatments and visiting twenty countries and provinces before returning to California in 1872.
Hewes had remained a bachelor until the age of 53 when he married a widow, Matilda French Gray, on June 30, 1875, in Saratoga Springs, New York. The service was conducted by Hewes’ nephew, Rev. Granville S. Abbott. Matilda Caroline French was born July 26, 1833, in Warrenton, Virginia to James French and Sarah Butler Henry. Her mother was a descendent of Patrick Henry and her father a wealthy planter who freed his slaves before his premature death at age 49.
Matilda’s first marriage was short-lived and tragic. She had married Franklin C. Gray, a wealthy California entrepreneur seventeen years her senior, on March 23, 1853. Four months later Franklin committed suicide by stepping in front of a moving train. Matilda was pregnant at the time and in December gave birth to a daughter she named Franklina in honor of her late husband. Fortunately, Franklin had made out a will shortly before his suicide leaving all of his sizable fortune to his young bride. This allowed Matilda to live and raise her daughter in relative comfort. She chose to live in Brooklyn, raising Franklina with the help of her mother and her younger sister Rosa. While visiting California in 1865 Matilda met David Hewes; a friendship ensued that culminated in their marriage ten years later.
Following their wedding the couple embarked on a two-year honeymoon trip, accompanied by 21-year-old Franklina and Matilda’s sister Rosa. They first landed in England and eventually would visit 22 countries in Europe. The group continued on to Greece, Egypt, and Palestine. In the Holy Land they were joined by Rev. Abbott. All along their route David and Matilda collected works of art, sculptures and paintings, that would eventually end up at the Stanford Museum.
They returned in the fall of 1877 and settled in Oakland. Matilda and daughter Franklina became involved in the Ebell Society, a women’s group devoted to the study of art and literature. In September 1880 when President Hayes visited the Bay Area his wife Lucy was entertained by the Ebell Club at the Hewes home. (Hayes was the first sitting president to visit the West Coast.) While living in Oakland Hewes was elected to the City Council and headed its judiciary committee.
Matilda’s health, always fragile due to a chronic respiratory problem, began to fail in the cold, damp Bay Area weather so in June 1881 the couple moved to Tustin, hoping the drier climate would prolong her life. Hewes had an elegant home built on the northwest corner of B and Main Streets and Franklina and her husband moved into a cottage next door.
They originally attended a small Presbyterian church in Santa Ana but then Matilda purchased and donated a lot just down the street from their home in Tustin. David solicited funds from wealthy friends in San Francisco and Oakland, as well as from local citizens. The Tustin Presbyterian Church was dedicated in 1884 with David and Matilda as two of the 26 charter members. David also served as a member of the first board of trustees. When the Sunday school was organized Hewes added a library, where he donated the initial set of books. In the ensuing years, every book added to the library was first read by Matilda to ensure it was suitable for young children.
The year after his arrival in Tustin, Hewes purchased an 820-acre ranch 2 1/2 miles northeast of town, in El Modena. He originally planted grapes for raisins, but the vines were all destroyed by the Phylloxera blight, and he switched to citrus, planting 300 acres to lemons and 250 acres to Oranges. In addition to managing his El Modena ranch, while living in Tustin Hewes also helped organize and was the first president of the Santa Ana Valley Immigration Association. Also, when the Santa Ana, Orange and Tustin Street Railway Company incorporated in 1886, he was chosen its president.
While David was busy with his business affairs Matilda, along with daughter Franklina, was involved in the social life of the small community. They hosted dinners and Matilda took an interest in church affairs, teaching Sunday school when her health permitted. Matilda ran the household with a staff that included a gardener, a stableman, and a Chinese cook. In 1884 Mr. Hewes hired Mary Griset, a 23-year-old newly arrived immigrant from Italy who spoke fluent French, to act as Matilda’s nurse and companion.
Despite her frailty, Matilda liked to travel. She had her own horse and buggy for local trips and took the train for shopping jaunts to Los Angeles or summer stays in Long Beach. In 1885 she and David took a trip of several months that included stops in Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria, British Columbia. They were accompanied by Matilda’s nurse Mary, who acted as their interpreter when they attend events were French was spoken.
Sadly, Matilda’s condition worsened, and she was bedridden for the last few months of 1886. She died in her sleep on January 3, 1887, at her home in Tustin at the age of 53.
The death of his wife appears to have caused a rift between Hewes and his stepdaughter.
He wanted to bury Matilda in a local cemetery in a large tomb to honor her memory, while Franklina claimed that it was her mother’s dying wish to be buried beside her first husband in Brooklyn. Although as the husband it was his right to bury his wife where he chose, Hewes compromised. He put Matilda in a temporary crypt in Los Angeles where she remained for two years while he and Franklina negotiated her final disposition. In another point of contention, Franklina refused to relinquish a beautiful oil painting of her mother belonging to Hewes.
Finally, in February 1889, without informing Franklina, Hewes took his wife’s body back to New York and, with a religious ceremony, buried her beside her first husband. He then arranged to have flowers placed on her grave each year on the anniversary of her death, and before leaving he spent $5,000 to have a beautiful marker placed over the grave of Matilda and her first husband, Franklin Gray. Perhaps Hewes was anxious to end the impasse because he was about to remarry and wanted the issue resolved before moving on with his life.
A year after Matilda’s death he moved back to Oakland and renewed his acquaintance with Miss Anna Lathrop. Anna Maria Lathrop was born September 3, 1832, in Albany, New York to Dyer Lathrop and Jane Ann Shields. Like the Hewes family, the Lathrop roots went deep into Colonial America. Anna moved to California in 1861 and lived with her sister Jane and her husband, Leland Stanford, then Governor of California. In 1879 she returned to Albany to care for her ailing mother but following her death in 1882 she returned to San Francisco.
David Hewes and Anna Lathrop were married June 11, 1889, at the San Francisco mansion of her brother-in-law, Leland Stanford. This wedding ceremony, like Hewes’ first, was officiated by his nephew, Rev. Dr. Granville S. Abbott. The couple traveled to New York by train then sailed for Europe, where they spent a year and half traveling about the continent, even venturing down the Nile in Egypt.
The couple returned from their honeymoon trip to a home in San Francisco but sadly their marriage was short-lived. Anna fell ill in the fall of 1891 and her health deteriorated for almost a year before she passed away on August 2, 1892, at the age of 59. In her will she left most of her estate, which was sizable for a woman of that era, to her two brothers and a niece she had helped raise. All the artworks given to her as a wedding present by Hewes was donated to the Stanford University Museum, with his consent. Her request was to be buried beside her mother in Albany and Hewes complied, accompanying her body back east two weeks after her death. As with Matilda, he arranged for flowers to be placed on her grave each year on the anniversary of her death.
Hewes remained back east for the remainder of the summer and fall of 1892, reconnecting with family and visiting historical sites. He attended the funeral of the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier before returning to California at the end of the year. Hewes lived in San Francisco until 1897 when he relocated to Los Angeles. In Los Angeles he erected a building known as the Hewes Market, eventually owning almost the entire block on which it was situated.
In his autobiography Hewes implies that he moved directly from Los Angeles back to Orange County shortly after the turn of the century, but the 1900 US Federal Census, enumerated on June 7, shows him living in Oakland. Either way, newspaper accounts of his activities clearly show he was living at his ranch in El Modena by the fall of 1900. He had originally planned to subdivide his property but eventually decided to leave the ranch intact.
Hewes would live the rest of his life on the ranch he named Anapauma, from the ancient Greek meaning “place of rest.” There was probably not much rest there since it was an 820-acre working ranch, planted mostly with oranges and lemons but also with groves of walnuts and olives along with fields of hay to provide forage for the ranch animals.
In addition to his large house, the ranch consisted of stables, a blacksmith shop, ranch office, and a bunkhouse for the 15 or so men who worked the ranch. They received $30 a month plus room and board for what was usually a 12-hour workday and were fed by a Chinese cook. Hewes also built his own packing house on the property at the intersection of La Veta Avenue and the Tustin branch of the Southern Pacific railroad (now LaVeta and Esplanade). His packing house was a member of the Orange County Fruit Exchange, and his citrus was marketed through the Southern California Fruit Growers Exchange.
Always civic minded, Hewes set aside a portion of his acreage for a park. In 1905 he hired a noted landscape architect from Pasadena to design the park and oversee its development.
By 1907 the park contained what was considered to be the largest bed of pansies in the world as well as a large field of poppies. When Hewes Park officially opened to the public it was well received and visited by residents from around Orange County and Southern California. In addition to the beautiful landscapes, it contained scenic walking trails and paths for automobiles. It was said that on a clear day a visitor could see Catalina Island from the summit of the park. Hewes had intended to leave the park to the county but died before his will was re-written. Like many scenic sites in the county, the park disappeared when the area was developed as a residential area.
Hewes remained an entrepreneur until his final days. When the great San Fransisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 destroyed his properties, he didn’t hesitate to rebuild. In fact, in 1909 at the age of 87 he had a state-of-the-art fifteen story office building erected at the corner of Market and Sixth Street. He was 91 in 1913 when he built eighteen store buildings on the block he owned in Los Angeles.
Although he had left Tustin years earlier, Hewes retained a connection with the small community. He still owned the house on B Street where he and Matilda had lived; he depended on local realtors to find renters. One of the early renters of the house, shortly after Matilda’s death and David’s move back to the Bay Area, was Count Jaro von Schmidt of Austria, who came to Tustin for the climate and the hunting. Besides hunting, the Count’s other hobby was taxidermy and he set aside a large room in the Hewes House to display his collection of stuffed birds, many shot around the base of Red Hill or on the nearby Irvine ranch. (In 1913 Hewes was asking $20 per month for the 10-room mansion.)
In 1910 Hewes offered the house to the Ebell Society of Santa Ana, provided they use it as a clubhouse in honor of his late wife and her daughter. The society declined the offer, feeling the house was not located in a spot convenient enough for most of its members. In 1919 Benjamin Beswick, the superintendent of Tustin Schools, purchased the house and owned it until 1945. Shortly after buying the house, he partitioned the upstairs into bedrooms and used it as a boarding house for the single female teachers at the school district.
Also in 1913, Hewes purchased two lots on the corner of First and D streets in Tustin. The owner of the lots had plans to open another pool hall at the location and Hewes, at the urging of people in the neighborhood, purchased the lots and put a stop to the proposed pool room. Also, at the time of his death, Hewes had plans to build a new Presbyterian church in Tustin on the site of the existing church he had helped found many years earlier.
As the years rolled on Hewes lost one loved one after another until he was the sole survivor of a family that had once numbered eight siblings. The hardest blow was loss of his favorite sister, Ruthe, who died in January 1909 at the age of 93.
The end came for David Hewes on the evening of July 23, 1915, at his ranch house in El Modena. He was 93 and had been in good health until shortly before his demise and was unconscious for the last forty-eight hours of his life. His funeral was held at the Orange Presbyterian Church with Rev. W.S. McDougall of the Tustin Presbyterian Church assisting with the service. Coralinn Rice of Tustin was a soloist and George Preble, also of Tustin, was a pallbearer. After the service his remains were sent to Oakland where he was entombed at Mountain View Cemetery.
Four months prior to his death Hewes had incorporated the David Hewes Realty Company and transferred all his property to the company. He had not updated the will he had signed in 1902 and his realty company complicated the disposition of his estate. With no children, most of his sizable estate was left to various nieces and nephews. He also left money to a hospital in San Francisco and to Mills College in Oakland. To his stepdaughter, Franklina Gray Bartlett, he left just $2,000 to be paid in $25 monthly installments, an indication that their frosty relations had not completely thawed.
Franklina had married William Springer Bartlett on March 22, 1878, in Oakland. Bartlett was born in South Bend, Indiana on May 19, 1843, making him ten years Franklina’s senior. The couple followed Franklina’s mother down to Tustin, living in a cottage next to the Hewes house until they built their own Victorian mansion on Tustin Avenue. Bartlett originally grew grain and hay and planted forty acres of grapes, but eventually he focused his energies on his many business endeavors.
In 1882 he helped organize the Commercial Bank of Santa Ana and acted as its secretary and later its manager. He also helped organize and was the director of the Bank of Tustin. Bartlett was also connected with the founding of the Orange County Abstract Company, the Santa Ana Improvement Company, the Santa Ana Gas & Electric Company, and the Santa Ana Street Railway Company. Added to this impressive list, he also acted as the local agent for the San Francisco-based Bank of California.
Franklina was active in the Tustin and Santa Ana social scene. She was a leading force in the founding of the Ebell Society of the Santa Ana Valley and served as its first president, from 1894-1897. There was a lively local social scene and the Bartletts often attended evenings of entertainment at the home of James and Coralinn Rice in Tustin. These evenings of music, along with literary and dramatic readings, were often attended by local notables, among them Count Bozenta and his wife Helena Modjeska, the renowned Shakespearean actress. Nationally known figures were also known to attend, including architect Stanford White as well as the famed Polish pianist, Paderewski. Early Tustin families in this social circle included the Prebles, Stevens, Snows, and the Walls, to name a few.
Franklina Bartlett was also a successful author, contributing many short stories to the Overland Monthly, a popular literary magazine of the time that also published such noted writers as Mark Twain, Jack London, and Bret Harte.
The Bartletts had three children: Lanier, Mathilde, and Gordon. In 1898 the family re-located to Los Angeles and lived for many years on West Adams Street. In Los Angeles William worked as president of the Union Bank, which later became the German American Trust and Savings Bank. William was serving as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the German bank at the time of his death. He passed away from heart disease on October 10, 1914, at the age of 71 and was buried in the family plot at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. He left all but $3,000 of his estate, valued at $120,000 (about $3.4 million in 2022 dollars) to his widow. He left nothing to charity, stating in his will that he trusted his wife to do the right thing with her inheritance.
Franklina survived her husband by twenty years. She continued to live at their large Los Angeles residence that had named “Fenton Knoll.” As she had been in Tustin, in Los Angeles Franklina was instrumental in the founding of local chapter of the Ebell Club. She served as the club president for several years and for many years sat on the board of directors.
Franklina Gray Bartlett passed away at her home on December 27, 1934 at the age of 81. After a funeral at the West Adams Presbyterian Church her body was taken to Oakland and buried beside her husband.
The three children of Franklina Gray and W.S. Bartlett were:
Lanier Bartlett was born November 23, 1879, in Oakland and named after the southern poet, Sidney Lanier, purportedly a Gray relative. He was just an infant when his parents moved the family to Tustin in 1881. He attended Tustin Grammar School during the reign of principal Zeke Zielian and in the late 1890s attended Mt. Tamalpais Military Academy in San Rafael, California where one of his classmates was Will Wall, son of Confederate veteran and pioneer Tustin citrus grower, Dr. William B. Wall.
Lanier must have inherited his mother’s literary talents. In the early 1900s he wrote for the Los Angeles Times and then went on to be a successful Hollywood screenwriter. By 1921 he had already written the scripts for ten silent movies and his career would eventually see him pen over fifty movie screenplays. He also wrote novels and was a magazine travel writer and historian.
Lanier was married three times and had four children. He passed away on June 24, 1961, at the age of 81 and was buried in the family plot at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.
Mathilde Franklina Bartlett was born November 1, 1886, in Tustin and attended Tustin schools until the family moved to Los Angeles in 1898. On September 7, 1915, she married a cousin, James Henry French, at Fenton Knoll. James was the son of Rev. Junius B. French and Annie Lawrence Dial and was born in Tustin on May 5, 1888, while his father was pastor of Tustin Presbyterian Church. James grew up in Fort Worth, Texas where his father took over a church after leaving Tustin in 1890. Rev. French baptized Mathilde and twenty-nine years later he officiated at her marriage to his son.
The wedding was described in the papers as a small, subdued affair since the family was still mourning the death of Mathilde’s father, W.S. Bartlett. Nevertheless, over 100 guests still attended, including Coralinn Rice, the family friend from Tustin, who sang a solo at the ceremony. Franklina also invited the entire board of the Ebell Club.
James French served as a Captain in the US Army during World War One while Mathilde and her mother contributed to the war effort by volunteering at the YMCA. (At the time of his death W.S. Bartlett was president of the Los Angeles YMCA.) Mathilde and James had two children: Franklina Gray French and James Henry French, Jr. Sadly, James Jr. was killed in an automobile accident while serving in the army in 1944 at the age of 20.
James, who over the years worked as an insurance agent and real estate broker, passed away at the family home in Santa Monica on September 27, 1956, at the age of 68. Mathilde died at home on December 16, 1963, at the age of 77 and was buried beside her husband at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.
The youngest child of Franklina and William lived a short life with a tragic ending. John Gordon Bartlett was born April 13, 1894, in Tustin. John, known to family and friends as Jack, was just four years old when the family moved to Los Angeles.
In the summer of 1911 Jack was back in Orange County, staying with his sister at the family cottage in Newport Beach. On the evening of August 21 Jack and a friend went out on the bay in a sailboat. Jack, who could not swim, was standing in the back of the boat when he fell off into the water; he panicked and resisted efforts by his friend to rescue him, finally disappearing under the water after the third attempt. Two days later his body was found floating in the bay between Newport and Balboa Island.
The funeral for the 17-year-old was held at the family home in Los Angeles, with Rev. Junius French assisting with the service. Six of Jack’s friends served as pallbearers and family friend Coralinn Rice sang two solos. The body was cremated and interred at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. The inscription on the headstone read, “I shall be satisfied when I awake.”
Although his time spent living in Tustin was relatively short, the presence of David Hewes is still felt there today; in his beautiful home, in the church he helped found, and in a school and a street that bear his name.
Created 1/6/2023: Researched by Tim Zierer
