Southern California
They walked from San Pedro into the small Pueblo de Los Angeles, and decided to set up a tinsmithing and hardware store. An existing merchant sold them his entire stock on credit. After a few years, Childs was able to buy out his partner, and eventually left the trade with $40,000 in his pocket. Not long afterward, he obtained the contract to build an extension of the Zanja Madre, a canal system to bring water to the fields south of the pueblo. He was paid in land in that area – all now within present day Downtown Los Angeles - from Sixth to Ninth, and Main to Figueroa Street.
This property was the foundation of his fortune. He built a substantial house at 10th and Main, then a half-mile from town center, and on his property took up planting. In his day, Ozro Childs was Los Angeles’s most prominent plantsman, with a Plant nursery.
Read more about this topic: Ozro W. Childs
Famous quotes containing the words southern and/or california:
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaf and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin’ in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ in the poplar trees.”
—Billie Holiday [Eleanor Fagan] (1915–1959)
“Resorts advertised for waitresses, specifying that they “must appear in short clothes or no engagement.” Below a Gospel Guide column headed, “Where our Local Divines Will Hang Out Tomorrow,” was an account of spirited gun play at the Bon Ton. In Jeff Winney’s California Concert Hall, patrons “bucked the tiger” under the watchful eye of Kitty Crawhurst, popular “lady” gambler.”
—Administration in the State of Colo, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)