Los Angeles County, CA, Biographies

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives 
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


JOSEPH MULLALLY 
 
was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, December 18, 1826. His father was a native of 
Virginia, and his mother of Pennsylvania. In 1850 he left overland for 
California, arriving at Hangtown (Placerville), August 5 of that year. He worked 
a while in the mines at Spanish Bar, on the middle fork of the American River. 
In March, 1851, he came to San Francisco, where he worked at his trade of 
brick-making till March, 1854, when he came to Los Angeles. With the exception 
of Captain Jesse D. Hunter, who made a few bricks here in early times, Mr. 
Mullally is the pioneer brick-maker of Los Angeles. He made the bricks for the 
first two-story school-houses, known as Number One, built in 1854, on the lot 
now occupied by the Bryson-Bonebrake Block, where so many of our boys and girls, 
now grown-up men and women, and fathers and mothers, were educated in the old 
pioneer days; and school-house Number Two, on Bath street, built in 1856, which 
has also been demolished after many years of usefulness. He made the bricks for 
Henry Dalton's two-story residence, built in 1854, on the east side of Main 
street, corner of Second, which has only recently been cut through. This house, 
which Mr. Glassell occupied as a residence for many years, was torn down a few 
months ago. Other edifices erected with Mr. Mullally's brick were the old 
court-house (1858), and Arcadia Block, on Los Angeles street  (1859), into which 
latter went 1,100,000 bricks, and cost about $80,000. It would not be easy to 
give the list of the buildings of more recent years for which Mr. Mullally 
furnished the brick. He probably made four-fifths of all the bricks that were 
used here prior to 1864. The highest number he has made in any one year was in 
1888, when he made over 9,000,000. Mr. Mullally served nine or ten years as a 
city councilman, between 1857 and 1883.
 
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California �  Chicago, The Lewis 
Publishing Company, 1889   Page 572
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler