Roundup: August 9, 2017

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA.
Social Hour: 5:00 PM
Dinner: 6:00 PM

Our Speaker: Paul Spitzzeri
Subject: Get Square with the Rebs: The Civil War Diary of Charles M. Jenkins

This presentation covers the remarkable discovery among the holdings of the Historical Society of Southern California in late 2015 of the diary of Charles M. Jenkins, the only Los Angeles resident to fight for the Union Army during the Civil War. Jenkins was part of a group of California volunteers assigned to a Massachusetts cavalry unit that served in Virginia. In 1863, he was captured by the Confederates and sent to several prison camps,including the notorious Andersonville, from which he remarkably survived. His remaining, post parole, service will be detailed, as well as his long and tortuous route home. Oh, to be a soldier in the field at the end of the “War Between the States”!

Paul Spitzzeri is a past Sheriff of our Corral and is museum director at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry, where he has worked since 1988. A graduate of California State University, Fullerton,where he obtained a B. A. and M. A. in history, Paul has published extensively on local and state history, including an award-winning 2008 biography of the Workman and Temple families.

Factoid: Where was Andersonville?

Roundup: July 12, 2017

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA.
Social Hour: 5:00 PM
Dinner: 6:00 PM

Our Speaker: Hadley W. Jensen, Los Angeles Westerners Fellow at the Autry Museum of the American West
Subject: Shaped by the Camera: Navajo Weavers and the Photography of Making in the American Southwest, 1880-1945

Anthropologists’ photographic records since the late 19^th century both reflected and shaped visualizations of Native life in the Southwest. Drawing upon the extensive archival collections at the Autry Museum, our speaker will focus upon weaving as a common visual trope, extending into tourism promotion, ethnography, and anthropological surveys, especially through the lenses of the lesser known George H. Pepper (1866-1923) and Gladys A. Reichard (1893-1955).

Hadley Jensen is a Ph.D candidate at Bard College in the field of Material Culture, specializing in Native North American Art. She is the current recipient of the Los Angeles Westerners/Autry Fellowship in support of her doctoral dissertation project and is looking forward to making use of the Autry’s unparalleled photography archives and holdings of Native American woven materials.

Factoid: What was Vroman’s Bookstore’s original primary stock of trade?

Fandago 2017

The Westerners, Los Angles Corral, cordially invites you to attend the…

Fandango 2017

You are invited, amigos, to el Molino Viejo!

 

Saturday, June 24, 2017
4:00 – 8:00 PM

The Old Mill
1120 Old Mill Road
San Marino, CA  91108

$50 Per Person

Come to enjoy good music, barbeque dinner, auction & friends!

Pay using PayPal on the Members Only page.

Roundup: May 10, 2017

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA.
Social Hour: 5:00 PM
Dinner: 6:00 PM

Our Speaker: Alan Pollack, M.D.
Subject: The Saint Francis Dam Disaster – History and Personal

Angelinos with a sense of history have mostly heard the story before. Just before midnight on March 12, 1928, the dam collapsed. Water for Los Angeles-the seamier, and structurally questionable, side. The rise and fall of William Mulholland, whose reputation washed away with the flood waters. Dr. Pollack and his collaborator, Dianne Erskine-Hellrigel, will enrich this epic drama with personal accounts left by victims and survivors. Will they tell us something we haven’t heard before? I leave that up to you-the audience. Here is an opportunity for discussion.

Alan Pollack is a fellow member of our Corral, a long-term internal medicine practitioner with Kaiser Permanente, and President of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society (SCVHS). He has published extensively about Santa Clarita Valley local history, as well as carried the banner for same on local and regional media.

His co-worker, Dianne Erskine-Hellrigel, is a champion of environmental protection and preservation and is working with Dr. Pollack to  introduce and pass the St. Francis Dam Disaster National Memorial and Monument legislation in Congress.

Roundup: April 12, 2017

Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA.
Social Hour: 5:00 PM
Dinner: 6:00 PM

Our Speaker: Gary Keyes
Subject: To the Right of Right: Enemy in the Foothills Next Door

Fieldmarshal von Hindenburg, Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP, and the German- American Bund. How do they all intersect in suburban Los Angeles, in the Crescenta Valley above Glendale and the I-210? The youth camp in Hindenburg Park, as well the complex at the Murphy Ranch on the other side of L. A., were focal points of pro-German activity in the period prior to the outbreak of the Second World War  in Europe until the United States’ entry into the war on both fronts in 1941. What do historians make of this nexus of geography and racism?

Gary Keyes has had a long career in the teaching of history in the Glendale/Foothill area, initially 45 years at Crescenta Valley High School  in La Crescenta and then in social science at Glendale Community College. A long-time local history buff and foothill community resident, he is intrigued by the more arcane aspects of the region’s history.

Gary will be assisted by Mike Lawler, one of his former students, a past president of the Historical Society of Crescenta Valley, and his co-author of Murder & Mayhem in the Crescenta Valley and Wicked Crescenta Valley.

Factoid: Hindenburg Park was in the news again as recently as 2016. Why?