Hermann Heinsch, a native of Prussia, arrived in Los Angeles in 1857 and soon after engaged in the harness and saddlery business. On March 8th, 1863, he was married to Mary Haap. Having become proficient at German schools in both music and languages, Heinsch lent his time and efforts to the organization and drill of Germans here, and contributed much to the success of both the Teutonia and the Turnverein. In 1869, the Heinsch Building was erected at the corner of Commercial and Los Angeles streets; and as late as 1876 this was a shopping district, a Mrs. T. J. Baker having a dressmaking establishment there. After a prosperous career, Heinsch died on January 13th, 1883; his wife followed him on April 14th, 1906. R. C. Heinsch, a son, survives them.
Major Walter Harris Harvey, a native of Georgia once a cadet at West Point, but dismissed for his pranks (who about the middle of the fifties married Eleanor, eldest full sister of John G. Downey, and became the father of J. Downey Harvey, now living in San Francisco), settled in California shortly after the Mexican War. During the first week in May, 1857, or some four years before he died, Major Harvey arrived from Washington with an appointment as Register of the Land Office, in place of H. P. Dorsey. At the same time, Don Agustin Olvera was appointed Receiver, in lieu of General Andrés Pico. These and other rotations in office were due, of course, to national administration changes, President Buchanan having recently been inaugurated.
One of the interesting legal inquiries of the fifties was conducted in 1857 when, in the District Court here, António María Lugo, crowned with the white of seventy-six winters, testified, at a hearing to establish certain claims to land, as to what he knew of old _ranchos_ hereabouts, recalling many details of the pueblo and incidents as far back as 1785. He had seen the San Rafael Ranch, for example, in 1790, and he had also roamed, as a young man, over the still older Dominguez and Nietos hills.
Charles Henry Forbes, who was born at the Mission San José, came to Los Angeles County in 1857 and, though but twenty-two years old, was engaged by Don Abel Stearns to superintend his various _ranchos_, becoming Stearns's business manager in 1866, with a small office on the ground-floor of the Arcadia Block. In 1864, Forbes married Doña Luisa Olvera, daughter of Judge Agustin Olvera, and a graduate of the Sisters' school. On the death of Don Abel, in 1871, Forbes settled up Stearns's large estate, retaining his professional association with Doña Arcadia, after her marriage to Colonel Baker, and even until he died in May, 1894.