Los Angeles County, CA, Biographies

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HON. LEONARD JOHN ROSE.
 
        The story of the life of Leonard John Rose in some respects sounds like 
a romance. Although he is an intensely practical man, and whatever he does or 
says has always a directness and a strong flavor of common sense that are 
characteristic of the man, nevertheless he is more or less an idealist, as will 
appear in the following brief sketch.  Mr. Rose was born in Bavaria, Germany, in 
1827. His parents immigrated to the United States when he was twelve years of 
age. Stopping
for a short time in New Orleans, they proceeded to Illinois and settled in 
Waterloo, in the southern part of the State, the father engaging in mercantile 
pursuits. Mr. Rose was educated at Shurtliff College, in Alton. After leaving 
school he located at Quincy, engaging for a number of years in the dry-goods 
business. From there he went to Van Buren County, Iowa, where he continued in 
the same line of business. Mr. Rose has always been passionately fond of fruits, 
flowers and animals, and having been quite successful in business, he purchased 
and carried on a fancy farm, where he endeavored to gratify his tastes. But the 
severity of the winters destroyed all his summer accumulations of plants. He 
became discouraged with trying to carry out his ideas, and, selling out, he went 
to Missouri, after losing one child and nearly losing a second with pneumonia 
from the severity of the Iowa winters. Having resolved to seek a milder climate, 
he purchased some 200 head of finely bred cattle and fifty fine horses, and 
fitted up a train for California. Nineteen young men joined him, and they 
started, in the spring of 1858, overland, for California, via what was known as 
the Thirty-fifth Parallel route. His was the first party of emigrants that ever 
attempted to come by that route. Lieutenants Whipple and Beale had explored the 
route with a view of ascertaining the feasibility of building a railroad that 
way, but had only made such a road as would enable them to get through. Mr. 
Rose's party secured a guide who had previously been over the same route with 
Whipple, to conduct the party from Albuquerque. They got along without serious 
trouble till they reached the mountain range bounding the valley of the Colorado 
River. From the summit of  this range they saw the river, which seemed near at 
hand, but the mountain was so steep that they had to let their wagons down with 
ropes; and after reaching the valley or plain, they began to suffer for want of 
water. The journey to the river consumed a whole day, and the sufferings of the 
party became so intense that some of them became insane from thirst. On finally 
reaching the river, the men unyoked their cattle and let them go loose, and 
themselves rushed for the water, lying down in the river and drinking their 
fill, then becoming stupefied, lay partly in the water and rested and slept. The 
heat was so great that the suffering of the party was indescribable. The Mojave 
Indians came in upon them in a threatening manner, but Mr. Rose reconciled them 
for the time by giving them tobacco and trinkets. They killed his cattle 
whenever they found them, and roasted the meat without molestation. The 
following day the emigrants began constructing a raft with which to cross the 
river. The second day the Indians came into camp, and not being able to satisfy 
their demands, though giving them what articles they could, the Indians retired; 
and the third day they failed to make their appearance, and the emigrants' guide 
warned the party that the absence of the Indians was an evil omen, whereupon 
they formed their wagons in a semicircle, with the river as their base in the 
rear, and prepared to defend themselves against the treacherous savages. They 
saw large numbers of Indians crossing the river from the other side, and the 
following day, about 1 o'clock, over 200 of them attacked the camp. The fight 
waxed hot until night, amid intense excitement and desperation of the emigrants. 
They killed about seventeen Indians. Nine of the whites were killed and 
seventeen wounded, Mr. Rose being one of the latter. A council was held at 
nightfall, and the emigrants resolved to start back. Gathering together what 
they could carry in one wagon, they abandoned the camp soon after dark, and 
started on their perilous and almost hopeless journey for Albuquerque. There 
were two women. in the party�the wife of Mr. Rose and the wife of his foreman, 
Alfred Brown, who was killed in the fight. His widow with her three children 
were taken back. Later she came to California and became the wife of a prominent 
man, a judge in Sacramento. After making one day's journey on their return trip, 
they met a party of emigrants, numbering about forty men, of whom they had had 
no previous knowledge, and the meeting of whom saved Mr. Rose's party from the 
inevitable fate of perishing en route, as everybody had given out from 
exhaustion and from lack of supplies. Mr. Rose and wife had two children, the 
elder being a little over two years of age. The whole party, or those who 
survived after their bloody encounter with the savages, together with those whom 
they had met, returned to New Mexico, the men walking, half bare-footed, their 
feet being lacerated with cactus thorns. At night they slept under their wagons 
on the sand, as soundly as on feather beds, in their joy for having escaped 
being massacred. After stopping in Albuquerque and endeavoring in vain to find 
other business, Mr. Rose finally purchased hotel, "The Fonda," in the old city 
of Santa F�, and kept it for two years, during which time he made about $14,000. 
He and his family having sufficiently recruited to continue their journey to the 
land of flowers and of perpetual summer, they came by the route known as the 
"Butterfield Stage Route," to California, reaching Los Angeles in November, 
1860. Leaving his family here, Mr. Rose went up into the northern counties of 
the State, prospecting for a desirable location; but finding no place he liked 
as well as Los Angeles County, he returned and settled here. He bought the 
property now known and famous as "Sunny Slope," two miles north of the old 
Mission San Gabriel, with a view of realizing his long-cherished ideal of 
cultivating fruits and flowers and rearing fine stock. He expected at first only 
to buy 160 acres of land, but he found after engaging in the work, that to carry 
out his ideas he must enlarge his acreage, and he ultimately bought 2,000 acres. 
He began in a very small way by planting a few acres of grapevines and orange 
trees. At first he had but one small wine tub, being one of the pioneer wine and 
brandy manufacturers of this part of California. Under his judicious management, 
and undergoing the severest struggles and privations, being heavily in debt for 
several years, his business finally grew to large proportions and eventually 
became very profitable, enabling him to triumph over all obstacles and to become 
independent. From the annual production of a few hundred gallons of wine, he 
pushed ahead with indomitable perseverance, despite all discouragements, till he 
reached 750,000 gallons of wine of different varieties yearly, and 125,000 
gallons of brandy. His goods attained a great reputation for their superior 
quality, standing as high as any American brands in the great markets of 
America. In January, 1887, Mr. Rose sold his "Sunny Slope" property for over 
$1,000,000, to an English syndicate, who now control it, and who are now 
introducing its wines and brandies into English markets. About twenty years ago 
Mr. Rose began to breed fine trotting horses on an extensive scale, and he has 
raised some of the fastest and most valuable animals on the American turf, among 
them "Stamboul," the celebrated stallion, which made the fastest record, within 
a second or two, in 1888, trotting in 1:14�. He is now (February, 1889) on Mr. 
Rose's great horse ranch, "Rose-Meade," in the San Gabriel Valley, about ten 
miles east of Los Angeles, on the line of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Mr. 
Rose has on his ranch 120 head of fine horses. "Stamboul" has a four-year-old 
filly with a record of 2:30, a two-year-old with a record of 2:29, and a 
yearling with a record of 2:41�. His breeding ranch comprises 920 acres. On it 
are 200 acres from which were cut, in 1888, seven crops of two tons each, of 
alfalfa, to the acre, or fourteen tons per acre in a single year. Mr. Rose has 
built himself an elegant home, costing in the neighborhood of $100,000, in the 
city of Los Angeles, where he now resides with his family. It is built on the 
commanding eminence at the corner of Grand avenue and Fourth street, and is one 
of the most elaborate and beautiful in Southern California. Mrs. Rose, who has 
contributed her full share to her husband's success, was the daughter of the 
late Ezra M. Jones, who was one of the early pioneers of Iowa, and who 
afterward, for many years, was a resident of Los Angeles County. Mrs. Rose was 
born in Indiana, but was reared in Iowa. They were married in the '50's. She has 
been a remarkable woman in her endurance and her fidelity as a true help-mate. 
They have nine children; the two eldest are daughters: Mrs. J. V. Watchel and 
Mrs. E. Sanderson; the eldest son, Harry, is the joint owner and manager of the 
St. Elmo Hotel in this city; Leon J. Rose, Jr., is interested in a hotel and a 
real-estate business in Ventura County, and married a Miss Fargo, of San 
Francisco; Guy is in Paris, studying art, having previously received the gold 
medal of the San Francisco Art School; added to his fine inherited natural 
talent, he is a very hard worker and is enthusiastically in love with his art; 
Daisy, Maud, Mabel and Roy are at home with their parents, forming a bright and 
happy household. In summing up briefly Mr. Rose's characteristics as a man and 
as a good and useful citizen of Los Angeles County, the imperial resources of 
which are as yet but partially developed, the task of the biographer is an 
agreeable one. If every citizen had done as much as he has done in several 
lines, toward demonstrating the possibilities of one section, this Arcadian 
Valley of the Angels would stand forth to-day, what it must become in the 
future, as one of the richest valleys in climatic and natural resources in the 
United States, if not in the world. Formerly the tendency of settlers in 
Southern California, as a rule, with few exceptions, was toward the moist or low 
lands, where corn and other crops would grow without irrigation. Mr. Rose 
inaugurated a new departure by going to the uplands and mountains, where water, 
as it came from the mountain ranges and before it disappeared beneath the 
surface, could be utilized as wanted only, without liability to excess from 
winter overflow and its attendant evils, to which the low, wet lands were 
subject. The result has been a splendid vindication of the soundness of his 
judgment. By intelligent and persistent labor he converted a chaparral waste or 
moor into one of the finest and most productive estates in America. He had the 
discernment to see then, what is now apparent to all, that while the moist or 
bottom lands are better for alfalfa and many other crops, the foothill lands are 
vastly superior for vineyards and for citrus fruits, as well as (in the opinion 
of many) for the raising of fine blooded stock, in all of which lines he has had 
such eminent success. The universal voice of the small vineyard owners of Los 
Angeles County is, that they have been indebted to Mr. Rose, more than to any or 
all other wine-makers, for keeping up the prices of wine grapes to living rates. 
Small farmers elsewhere who raise crops that are not immediately perishable, and 
who correspond to our small vineyard farmers, are not obliged to sell their 
crops when ripe or see them perish, as grape-growers are. Many of the latter, 
who have not the necessary capital to own pipes and wine cellars, etc., are 
absolutely dependent on selling their grapes, and that within a very limited 
time, to the wine-makers, with the alternative of their year's labor being a 
dead loss if they do not. There has been a tendency among the grape-buyers to 
take advantage of this state of affairs by compelling growers to sell for less 
than the cost of production. Mr. Rose has never been willingly a party to this 
short-sighted, selfish policy. He is too just and too enlightened a man for 
that. He believes in the motto, which is the highest wisdom in the long run: 
"Live and let live." Mr. Rose has been a frequent writer on economic questions 
of current local interest, and it is generally conceded that he has the happy 
faculty of saying, in the most direct and effective phraseology, exactly the 
right thing at the right time. During the current year (1889) Mr. Rose had one 
of the most successful sales of fine horses, by auction and otherwise, ever had 
by one party in the United States, or in the world. His sales inside of two 
months, including an auction in New York of $118,000, and $50,000 for " Stamboul 
" at private sale, amounted to nearly $190,000 for fifty-four head, the majority 
being colts one and two years old. Mr. Rose was elected and served as State 
Senator from Los Angeles County, for the term commencing 1887, and he has also 
been a useful and active member of the State Viticultural Society and State 
Board of Agriculture for several years. Personally he, has done much to benefit 
Southern California by introducing many varieties of foreign grapes, as well as 
fine horses and cattle. His life has been an active one, as well as a useful one 
to himself and to his neighbors also. The community in which he lives rejoices 
in his success, which has been honestly and fairly earned. Mr. Rose's character, 
as illustrated by his life's work, furnishes to his friends who have known him 
well a good exemplification of the truth that a man who is both an idealist and 
a realist is a higher type of manhood than one who is only an idealist, or only 
a realist, or a utilitarian, or a man of practical affairs solely.
 
An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California �  Chicago, The Lewis 
Publishing Company, 1889   Page 621
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler