CONTENTS Frontispiece-Portrait of James Miller Guinn..... Officers of the Historical Society of Southern California.... Historical Society of Southern California............ Some Recent Observations in Mexico.......Leslie F. Gay Jr., A. M..... 65 A California Calendar of Pioneer Princes Rockwell D. Hunt, Ph. D..... 75 Drake on the Pacific Coast....James Main Dixon, Litt. D., F.R.S.E..... 86 Anti-Japanese Legislation in Celifornia and the Naturalization of the GEORGE F. Bovard, LL. D. M. C. BETTINGER GEORGE F. BOVARD, LL. D. M. C. BETTINGER J. M. GUINN VALENTINE M. PORTER ROCKWELL D. HUNT PERCIVAL J. COONEY MRS. M. BURTON WILLIAMSON One of the founders of the Historical Society of Southern California. Has served as Treasurer, President, Secretary and Curator. Mem ber of the Board of Directors 1883 to date (1914). President of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, 1913. HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. BY S. H. HALL. (Read at the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Society's Organization, November, 1913.) The Historical Society of Southern California owes its origin to a characteristic California trait. A citizen of a distant state, finding that his loyalty had lost nothing in transplanting to California soil, was soon seeking with patriotic fervor to preserve for posterity the story of his adopted state's past and the vital currents of her present life. Within a few months after Noah Levering had come to Los Angeles from an Atlantic state in 1875, he had seen the need for a historical society, and had determined to see this desirable end accomplished. In 1883 his perseverance was rewarded by the organization of the Historical Society of Southern California. In Vol. III, page 177, of this Society's publications, Mr. Levering tells how he began soliciting for this work during the County Fair of 1883, and how, after repeated discouragements, an organization was perfected on November 1st of that year. "I was soon convinced," says he, "that it was much easier to secure volunteers to quell a rebellion than to preserve the history of the same." One wealthy man wanted "Nothing to do with anything there is no money in." Of the twelve men who signed Mr. Levering's paper, three attended the first meeting at the Normal School and adjourned to meet at the City Court Room November 1st, when an organization was perfected. The birth of the Society at this time was opportune, for it was a pioneer in Southern California, and it had no competitor in the state then. It had been preceded by the Historical Society of the State of California. organized April 29, 1852, but this society left no important record. Another association, known as the California Historical Society, published, in 1874, Palou's Noticias de la Nueva California, in four volumes, and at another time it published Reglamento para el Gobierno de la Provincia de California. This precocious youth seemed doomed to as early a death as its predecessor, leaving to the Southland the formation of a stable society. More than two years after the beginning of the Historical Society of Southern California a second California Historical Society was organized in San Francisco, March 6, 1886. After publishing 93 |