In our last post, we described how William Porter Rhoades arranged for a crew of 75 Chinese laborers to clear the land and plant the groves. He also engaged a team of carpenters to build his family home. All of that was completed sometime in 1875 and the photo above shows the family home. In the photo, at least two Chinese servants are on the cottage porch along with the Rhoades family. Likely one of the servants is the same man whose portrait we featured in the first post of this series.
William Lauren Rhoades (son to William Porter) has appeared on these pages many times. We have posted about Christmas at the Villa and the lively gift exchange between the Rhoades family and the Chinese workers. Last December, we posted a story about the time William Lauren got a donkey for Christmas and named it Jennie, after his mother. These stories were drawn from a short book William Lauren wrote in 1939 titled The History of the Famous Sierra Madre Villa Hotel.
Our current series of posts is about workers, and my aim in these posts has been to explore what it was like to be a Chinese man working at the Villa in the 1870’s and 80’s. My topic, as it turned out, was difficult to research. The broad brushes of history are easy to find — Chinese immigration to California, their work in the mines and on the railroads as well as the landmark events of Chinese persecution. Harder to find is historical insight about individual hotel and ranch workers. As far as I could tell, the guys working at the Villa did not keep journals or otherwise record their experience. Maybe that’s typical of most historical research — you can access the broad brushes but the day-to-day individual experiences are lost.
Though far short of any full story of the Chinese workers’ experience, Rhoades’ History provides a glimpse into the workers’ lives at the Villa and their relationship with the Rhoades family. As a boy growing up at the Villa, then young master Rhoades saw the Chinese workers every day and, from his writing, he was enthralled with them. He wanted to eat with chopsticks and he treasured workers’ autographs written in Chinese characters. In fact, in his History Rhoades completely ignores the other Villa workers and writes in detail about the Chinese men and their ways.
Rhoades’ History is available at the Sierra Madre Public Library and Pasadena Museum of History. But, it is not available on-line. So, rather summarize and link to the work, I am going to quote several full paragraphs. (The work was unpublished and I don’t see any copyright preventing a lengthy quote.) I think Mr. Rhoads, as an early president of the Sierra Madre Historical Society, would have been happy to see his work shared on the Internet.
As a caveat to what follows, bear in mind that Rhoades’ History describes the Chinese workers with words that have derogatory connotations and are not used today. Mr. Rhoades is very much a product of his day and standing. With that, following are excerpts (with minimal editing) from William Lauren Rhoades’ History of the Famous Sierra Madre Villa Hotel. The excerpts describe, from Mr. Rhoades’ perspective, the Chinese workers at the Villa:
The furnishing of the staff of servants for the house was up to my mother. We got a Chinaman by the name of Sue Chung. He was with us for years, and I have his name along with several others of our old servants in my autograph album and I would not give up their autographs for all the movie-stars in Hollywood. Written in Chinese and a greeting with each one. One boy, Sam, Mother got for a house boy. He was only 13 years old. His duties were to do the housework, make the beds, sweep and answer answer the door bell, which was a joke in those early days. While had one of those old kind of door bells that you screw around to make it ring, it is still on the door, the greetings one gave in those old days were a cheerful, “Hello, anyone home?”
Now the routine of life was shaping itself. Father stocked the place with cows, horsed pigs, chickens, and we raised all our own vegetables. And here is a side light on the Chinaman of that day. Father liked their work, as they were industrious, honest, would give an honest day’s work, never argued about the work, did as they were told, and if you were kind to them, they would do anything for you and developed a sincere affection as was proven by many of our servants who would return to China every three or four years, stay six months then come home and bring all of the family costly gifts. Silk things for Mother and I recall for Father a smoking jacket of rare silk and fine hand embroidery, which he wore with a skull cap with a tassel to match for years. To us children they would give Chinese slippers, caps and nuts. Mother also received kimonos, pictures and baskets.
Before leaving this part I must tell what I started to. Father had built at some cost a nice six room cottage, all plastered with a sitting room and bed rooms and kitchen for the Chinamen. One day, after the home was completed and the regular gang of farm hands had been sifted out of the army we had to grub the place, about fifteen in all were going to stay for the farm work, the foreman by the name, Ah Eat, he was a smart man who understood English well and knew how to handle the men and how to care for the trees and what he said was law. This day he asked Father for some lumber, he wanted to fix up the house. My father was busy and told him to take what he wanted from a lumber yard where all kinds could be found. Imagine Father’s surprise a few days later when he went up to see that he had used so much lumber for, to find in each beroom bunks built up to the ceiling, four tiers high. All around the room furniture was removed and wooden benches installed. Ah Eat explained China boy he no like sitty in chair or sleepy on bed, bench he much more like.
If you visited the house at quitting time as the men came home you would find a long wooden bench in the backyard occupied by the Chinamen, each with his individual foot tub, a small wooden tub large enough for both feet. They wore cloths wrapped around their feet and high knee boots, but each man washed his feet at night, then he changed his clothes and when he entered the dining room he was scrupulously clean. Each on had his own nail to hang his tub and towels on at the back of the house. It was the ambition of my life to learn to eat rice with a pair of chop sticks and while they gave me many lessons I never mastered the art.
Sundays and evenings you would find them all around the table playing fantan** and keeping count on a frame with brass rods the size of a pencil running inside the frame and on each rod was a number of round disks, these were slid up and down the rods as they lay flat on the table to keep tab on.
All the ranches employed the Chinaman, while some had Mexicans and Father tried them for a short time. Mother was studying Spanish so Father would have to line the men up in the morning and got Mother to tell them what they were to do, but this only lasted a short time and during the trial we still held on to the Chinamen.
** Fantan is a gambling game that was brought to the western United States by workers emigrating from southern China. The counting mechanism Rhoades references is an abacus.
Leave a Reply