John & Louise Friedrich

Los Angeles in 1880 was "a sleepy semi-Mexican pueblo". At least that's how it was described by its boosters a little more than ten years later when they published The Land of Sunshine, Southern California. "Its houses," they said, "were mostly of adobe, or sun-dried brick; its streets were unpaved and few even graded; its chief commerce was confined to wool and hides." Its population had since increased more than five-fold, from about 11,000 to more than 50,000, thanks in part to promoters like themselves who touted the climate's curative powers to a nation of consumptives and asthmatics. Among them was the pamphlet's chief author, Charles Willard, who went on to found it as a monthly publication. He'd arrived in 1885, and found the city pretty much as he described it above.

A pamphlet from 1893 promoting the virtues of Southern California to "the homeseeker, tourist and invalid."

Two years earlier, in 1883, among the first waves of immigrants seeking the clean ocean air and perpetual sunshine of Los Angeles were our great grandfather's younger siblings, John Henry Friedrich and Louisa Friedrich-Schmidt. Neither would live to see the twentieth century. Lousia would die of tuberculosis in 1890, and John Henry would follow, dying of tubercular meningitis in 1896. Louisa was only 30 when she died, and John Henry, the youngest of the Friedrich siblings, was 34.

John Henry Friedrich had been working for the last several years as a clerk in his older brother Charles's dry goods and millinery shop in Madison, a brick storefront on the stylish Pinckney Street, just across the Wisconsin State Capital. John Henry's and Charles's sister, Louisa, had been married four years to Carl Schmidt, a Beaver Dam wagon maker, recently arrived from Prussia, and had one child, Gilbert Charles. On February 7th, 1883, their father, Johann Friedrich, died, and our great grandfather, John August, took over the farm.

Carl Schmidt was probably the instigator of the journey west. It appears he had relatives already living in Los Angeles (I'm working to verify that) and work as a wagon builder and carpenter would have been more profitable there than in Beaver Dam. His and Louisa's decision to move was probably not made for health reasons. It's more likely that John Henry was the sibling in need of the cure, and so was offered the chance to accompany them. He'd been living with his brother in Madison and had never had a place of his own. After the move, he lived with his sister's family in Los Angeles, and continued to live with them after she died. Taking care of himself was apparently difficult, and chronic fatigue from tuberculosis would be a likely cause.

In 1883, the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) was offering direct bookings between Atchison, Kansas and Los Angeles. The Union Pacific had track from from Kansas City to San Francisco. The Southern Pacific connected San Francisco with Los Angeles and was running trains between New Orleans and the west coast. But I like to think that when the Northern Pacific completed the third transcontinental railroad, between Chicago and Seattle, on August 22, 1883, John Henry, Louisa & Carl were determined to follow it. Its route over the Rocky Mountains to the frontier of the Pacific Northwest is naturally appealing to me as a Northwest native. I imagine them strolling the streets of early Seattle while they waited for the next steamer south, perhaps talking real estate with Arthur Denny or discussing Seattle's need for carpenters and wagon builders with Doc Maynard. They would have dined in Henry Yesler's saloon and rubbed shoulders with the city's destitute Indians, its rough mill workers, itinerant lumberjacks, and the women who lived south of Skid Road. But they, like most of the other Midwestern transplants, probably entered California by rail via Santa Fe and across the Mojave Desert. It would have been a discouraging introduction to their new life.

John Henry first shows up in the Los Angeles City Directory in 1884, living at 122 Wall. Louisa and Carl Schmidt are living at the same address, and both John Henry and Carl are listed as "carpenters". Perhaps John grows homesick, or finds the climate less beneficial to his health than he'd hoped. Or perhaps he believes himself cured. Because, in 1885, he's back in Madison, and the city directory lists him working at his old job, as a clerk in Charles's shop. He lives at 315 N Hamilton, along with Edward Nebel, a printer for The Journal.

In December 1885, Louisa's second child, Oscar Clarence is born. And in 1886, John Henry is back in Los Angeles. He's again living with Louisa and Carl but is now a proprietor of a haberdashery and gent's furnishings shop, "Shieck & Friedrich" on Spring Street. Perhaps his brother Charles put up the capital and sent him back to LA with some inventory and a business plan. In the same household, Frederick Schmidt -- possibly a brother of Carl's -- is listed as a "dealer in hats and gents furnishing goods". Frederick is likely the "Shiek" in Shiek & Friedrich. The following year, 1887, the establishment is listed as 'Schreck' & Friedrich. Someone, apparently, was having difficulty deciding how to spell, or how to brand, the establishment.

Ad for John Henry Friedrich's and Frederick Schmidt's shop, from The Los Angeles Herald, March 18, 1886

Carl and John Henry, as well as their businesses, are missing from the 1887 edition of the Los Angeles City Directory, and neither appear again until 1891. What happened during those four years? Just as John Henry's star was rising, Louisa's, it appears, was falling. In 1888, Louisa's third child, Richard, dies in infancy. On February 4th, 1890, shortly after her fourth child, Esther, is born, Louisa dies. Esther will die just two years later.

Louisa was probably diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1887, and I'm guessing that both Carl and John Henry abandoned their businesses to devote themselves full time to her care. Perhaps not coincidentally, in that same year, Dr. Sarah I. Shuey, opened The Sierra Madre Sanatorium in the hills above Pasadena. It was an earnest attempt to treat tuberculosis in an environment then thought to be hostile to the bacterium that caused the disease. The region, and the sanatorium itself, were praised (and advertised) in The Southern California Practitioner, a sort of medical journal and home remedy guide that Carl, Louisa and John Henry would surely have purchased or borrowed. Advertisements for the sanatorium were also appearing in the newspapers and would have been hard to miss, especially by anyone desperate for a cure.

Ad from The Southern Californa Practitioner, published in Los Angeles in 1887

In her 1933 history and personal memoir, More Than Gold in California, Dr Mary Bennett Ritter had this to say about the Dr. Sarah I. Shuey and her sanatorium:

    Before my year of interneship was over, Dr. Brown told me that Dr. Sarah I. Shuey of Berkeley was planning to remove to Sierra Madre, above Pasadena, where she intended to build a private hospital and run it with the aid of her friend, May Treat, now Mrs. Alexander Morrison. Dr. Shuey wished to dispose of her practice and Dr. Brown considered me the most suitable person to succeed her. Satisfactory arrangements were made. To my regret this necessitated my leaving the hospital before my year of internship expired, but the opportunity was too good to be lost.
    Sarah Shuey and May Treat had been classmates in the University of California in the class of 1876 and formed a deep and lasting friendship. After graduation in Toland Medical College, now the Medical Department of the University of California, Dr. Shuey established herself as the first woman physician in Berkeley. She was remarkably successful and soon built up an enviable reputation and practice.
    Unfortunately the hospital venture was not a financial success. After two or three years, Dr. Shuey returned, having lost all of her invested capital and with a heavy indebtedness which burdened her remaining years. She settled in Oakland with Dr. C. Annette Buckel, and soon established another good practice. Fittingly, she died in the harness, expiring suddenly when on duty at a maternity case.

Louisa and John Henry were very likely among the first -- and the last -- of the patients that Dr. Shuey treated at the short-lived Sierra Madre Sanitorium.

The medical examiners' record of Louisa's death, by tuberculosis, February 5, 1890

A year after Louisa's death, the 1891 city directory shows John Henry and the widower, Carl living at 728 Elmore. John Henry is working as a salesman for I. L. Lowman and Carl is listed as a "boiler maker", which is probably a typesetting error. More likely he's still building wagons or doing light carpentry. In 1892, Esther dies. Sometime in the same year, Carl Schmidt marries Mary "Anna Maria" Holman, the daughter of a Bakersfield farmer, and will have two more children by her: Viola (1894) and Melinda (1899). They'll all live respectably long lives in the Los Angeles Area. In the 1893 city directory, Carl is working for Pacific Carriage Works and living with his new wife at the same address, 728 Elmore.

There is no listing for John Henry in the 1893 city directory, but recorded with the county of Los Angeles is evidence of his marriage to Emma C. Rattay on February 9th. Charles William, John's older brother, travels all the way from Madison to act as the witness. In 1894, they have a daughter, Eunice Ruth Friedrich, who, incidentally, is born the same year as our grandfather, Arthur Lester Friederich. The happy family is living at 239 Newton and John is working for Lowman & Co. In 1895, they're living at 353 S. Broadway and John is a salesman for The Mullen & Bluett Clothing Company, which had started business in 1890 and had a long and successful run in downtown Los Angeles. An intriguing coincidence is that Mullen & Bluett's first shop was established on the NW corner of Spring and First. A few years earlier, Schieck & Friedrich, were located at 17 N Spring. Could it be the same address?

Entry for Mullen, Bluett & Co from the 1891 Los Angeles City Directory

Tuberculosis is one of those diseases that can deceive a patient into thinking they've won the battle, only to resurface years later with symptoms as bad or worse than before. It's probably what happened to John Henry. After recovering from the loss of his sister, he marries, has a child, and finds work with one of the city's preeminent clothing stores. Life is good. But less than a year later, on August 22, 1896, he succumbs to tubercular meningitis.

His body is shipped to Bakersfield, perhaps to be buried beside his sister. His wife, Emma, remarries the following year, and his daughter, Eunice Ruth, just two years old and unlikely to remember her father, is given the name of her stepfather, Richard Arenz, a Los Angeles building contractor.