In March 1919 Verne moved to an apartment a couple of blocks east of Westlake Park (now MacArthur Park) just west of downtown Los Angeles. The picture is actually from a few years before he lived in L.A. but it’s all I could find. It serves as a fortuitous illustration for this post on Verne’s interest in telegraphy, since it has all those wires in the foreground.
I have noted before that both Verne and Dorothy were strongly in favor of Prohibition. Verne saw the contrast between Arizona, which instituted statewide prohibition at the beginning of 1915, coincidentally at the moment when the Garrisons moved to San Simon, and New Mexico, which was only a few miles away and still wet. As expected the N.M. towns were full of saloons and all that went with that.
Verne claimed to not be particularly impressed with Los Angeles, but one thing he did like was getting in the water. He went frequently to the Bimini Baths in the summer of 1918, a large private bathhouse on a natural hot spring just northwest of downtown L.A. The Baths were a feature of L.A. life from 1900 to 1951, at least if you were white. He could take a streetcar to the baths – you can see the line in the upper right of the photo.
Notes and Transcriptions of Letters
This is all my notes and transcriptions of the letters as it stands at the moment. I have read all the letters through 1918, except for a few in 1917, and a few from 1919, and the summary was based on that. I have taken notes on all the letters through Sept., 1915 and a fair number from 1917 and 1918. I will fill in the gaps as I get a chance.
This is a very long post, but I wanted to make it available to anyone who is impatient. It will help to read the summary posted earlier before you read this. I am marking recently added letters with an *, so if you just want to see recently added stuff, do a Find command in your browser for *.
Verne and Dorothy were among the generation of Americans that moved in droves from the country to the city. Both began their lives in fairly big cites (Fort Worth and Dallas), but neither town was very old – both traced their beginnings to around 1850, but neither really got going until after the Civil War. Verne and Dorothy were born into a world where horses and trains were central, but saw in their youth the rise of the automobile. Both of them were comfortable in both worlds. In the newly transcribed letter in this post, you see how much Verne liked the old world, which he inhabited in an AZ that was still a frontier. In other letters, you see how much he liked the new world of photography, telegraphy, telephones, cars and the rapid expansion of science.
Verne’s paternal grandfather was Lovick Pierce Garrison. He was a seemingly interesting character. When he was 55 yrs old he graduated with an M.D. from Emory Medical College in Atlanta. Aside from his age, the remarkable thing is that it was 1865, the year the Civil War ended. He subsequently moved to east Texas, like so many southerners after the Civil War, and lived in Garrison, Texas. He later moved to Dallas. He died in 1881. His third wife Sarah Moore G., with whom he had no children, lived on until 1916, when Dorothy noticed her obituary and wrote to Verne in AZ to tell him.
This is an updated summary of Verne G.’s and Dorothy Logan’s relationship from V.’s letters to D. from 1913-1919. Recently added material is marked with *s.
*Sat. Jan. 26, 1918 L.A.
V. is going to school – on Mon, Wed and Fri all day and at night as well and on Tues and Thurs for 7 hrs. [He doesn't say what school.] He says he hasn’t seen anything interesting in Calif because all he does is eat, sleep and go to school. [But wait until you see what comes next!]
This is all my notes and transcriptions of the letters as it stands at the moment. I have read all the letters through March, 1917, quite a few from later in 1917 and a few from 1918 and 1919, and the summary was based on that. I have taken notes on all the letters through July, 1915 and a fair number from 1917. I will fill in the gaps as I get a chance.
This is a very long post (20,000 characters), but I wanted to make it available to anyone who is impatient. It will help to read the summary posted earlier before you read this.
I have had the impression from both my father and Howard that my great grandfather W.O. Garrison was kind of a quiet man, overshadowed by the strong personality of his wife. He may have been, but this letter gives a different perpective.