The following two stories come from John Adams and were first published in the Downey Eagle on Dec. 5, 1997:

The land that John Downey, former governor of Downey, subdivided to create Downey as we know it today had a history before the former governor got it.

It had belonged to Lemuel Carpenter, something of a mountain man whose roots lay in Kentucky.

Carpenter came here in 1832, after stopovers in St. Louis and New Mexico. He settled and founded a soap factory on the west bank of the San Gabriel River not far from Los Nietos (which later became known as Downey). His place was called Jaboneria.

Carpenter later bought the Santa Gertrudes Rancho and lived on it until 1859. He didn’t know it but his rancho was to become the site of one of the historic battles of California.

He had charm and his nature suited him to the easy life of the Spanish residents who accepted him.

Sadly, the transition of California from its Spanish landholders to an American holding, complete with political fights over land boundaries, proved too much for him. He was not acute in the world of business. He eventually lost everything and Downey purchased the land at a sheriff’s sale.

Carpenter was so emotionally shattered after the loss of his estate that he committed suicide.

How had he acquired his lands? During his successful years as a soapmaker, Carpenter married a girl of Indian heritage named Espiritu. She died in childbirth and Carpenter, apparently seeking friends, moved his soap factory to the Santa Gertrudes side of the river to be nearer to Los Nietos. There were fiestas, horse racing and dancing there.

He met Maria de Los Angeles Dominguez, a niece of the widow who owned Rancho Santa Gertrudes. They soon married.

The union with Maria produced five children, and Carpenter found he had crossed a cultural barrier. He accepted the way of life of Spanish early California. He bought the rancho in 1843 from his aunt by marriage. He raced horses and was known for playing cards.

He had barely established himself as an Anglo Don when a band of soldiers and sailors from the United States marched across his rancho. It was Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny’s Army of the West, part of the force that claimed and won California for the United States.

One of the few fights of the brief war for California was fought on the northwest corner of Carpenter’s ranch. It was known as the Battle of San Gabriel.

A bronze plaque and two cannons mark the spot today at Bluff Road and Washington Boulevard.

Following Carpenter’s death, John Downey, who had ended up with most of the vast landholdings, showed concern for the welfare of Carpenter’s widow and children. He gave them 100 acres with a house on the east bank of the San Gabriel.

She lived there for years, making a meager living by growing walnuts.

The diary of Carpenter’s daughter, Mary Refugio Carpenter, is one of the finest historical chronicles of the times.

Her entry of Jan. 2, 1861, read, “After dinner I sewed most of the afternoon. I have been thinking so much of my father tonite. It made me weep.”

Mary Carpenter

No history of Downey is complete without Mary Refugio Carpenter Pleasants, the daughter of Lemuel Carpenter who killed himself after losing his huge Rancho Santa Gertrudes estate which included Downey.

Mary was born July 4, 1845, and the tragic death of her father in 1859 left a lifelong shadow over her life.

Lemuel Carpenter had borrowed $5,000 from John Downey and James P. McFarland, a druggist, in 1852. At the exorbitant interest rates of the times, his debt was $104,000 by 1859.

Four days before his land was to be sold at sheriff’s auction, Carpenter put a bullet through his head.

Two months after her father’s passage, Mary began a diary. She had spent Christmas 1860 at the home of her aunt and uncle, William and Maria Wolfskill, who lived on Alameda Street in Los Angeles.

In her first diary entry she mentions visiting the grave of her father that day. She was only 14 but kept a total of six diaries which ran through 1865.

Mary and other members of her family attended a private school maintained by her uncle for his own and his friends’ children. This, and later schools, allowed her to earn a certificate to teach in the primary schools of Los Angeles County in 1866.

Among them she met in the social whirl of the Wolfskill home was Joseph Edward Pleasants, a friend of Wolfskill from Solano County above San Francisco. Mary and Pleasants were married in 1868 at the Plaza Church in Los Angeles by Father Francisco Moro.

Her earlier diaries depict the love and loss she felt at her father’s death Jan. 3, 1860. “The day was very clear but towards the evening the clouds began to gather,” she wrote. “Last night I saw my father in my dreams. I was not happy.”

On Tuesday, July 4, her birthday, she wrote a stirring entry.

“How little do we think how kind our heavenly father is. We do not think that he could take our lives any moment he wished. Oh how ungrateful we are. Today I am 15. Will I be in the world next year, the 4th, only my heavenly father knows. Thy will be done. I was more sad than happy all day. After dinner they danced. I danced two times, then laid down on the sofa. Went to sleep. Woke up and found myself all alone.”

Bobbi Bruce is a docent with the Downey Historical Society.