Summary of a Talk on the Williams Sisters of Rancho Santa Ana del Chino

Last night's presentation, sponsored by the Chino Hills Historical Society and attended by about 70 people, on the sisters Merced and Francisca Williams of Rancho Santa Ana del Chino looked to put a little different perspective on a story that may be familiar to those interested in this region in the late 1850s and early 1860s.

The violent ends of their husbands, John Rains (who was murdered in November 1862), and Robert S. Carlisle (who was killed in a Los Angeles gunbattle in July 1865) have been given a fair amount of coverage over the years.  This is generally because history is usually the story of men, while the lives of women typically get very little coverage in comparison.

As noted in the talk, Merced was only 17 and Francisca 15 when their father, Isaac Williams, owner of the Chino ranch since the early 1840s, died on 16 September 1856.  Their mother, Maria de Jesús Lugo died fourteen years earlier.  Isaac Williams' death left the two teen sisters as sole legal heirs to the 37,000-acre ranch and there was no likelihood that they could run their ranch on their own.

Three days after Isaac's passing, Merced married John Rains, who'd been employed by Isaac for a couple of years.  A native of Alabama who'd lived in Texas and engaged in cattle and sheep driving in northern Mexico and the American Southwest for a few years in the early 1850s (interspersed with a short stay in Los Angeles in 1851-52), Rains was ambitious and his marriage brought him access to wealth not otherwise possible for him.

Merced Williams Rains (1839-1907).

Several months later, in May 1857, another Chino ranch employee, Robert Carlisle, wedded Francisca, and he was also eager to take a controlling interest in the ranch.  Carlisle was from Kentucky, though nothing is known about him until he showed up in northern California during the Gold Rush period and then migrated south and found work with Isaac Williams.

These brothers-in-law, both from the South and equally driven to utilize their wives' substantial inheritance and equally quick to lose their tempers in conflict, quickly decided, once the Williams estate was settled in early 1858, to make a deal.  Rains sold Merced's interest in the ranch to her sister (well, Carlisle) for $25,000 and used the proceeds to buy Rancho Cucamonga.

Over the next four years, he plowed considerable sums to add vineyards to the existing ones there, built a fine brick house (which still stands and can be visited as a county historic site), took interests in a pair of San Diego County ranches, bought the Bella Union Hotel in Los Angeles (which he'd co-owned in 1851), and so on.  Carlisle also expanded his development at Chino, though it is uncertain if his spending was anywhere near as pronounced as that of Rains.

The timing could not have been worse for ranchers generally in greater Los Angeles.  The Gold Rush ended by the mid-Fifities.  A national depression broke out in 1857.  Floods ravaged the region in the winter of 1861-62.   That was followed the next couple of years by the decimation by drought of the local cattle economy.  So, as Rains, especially, spent exorbitantly, debts were amassed.

Merced Williams Rains living with her second husband, Jose Clemente Carrillo, and children by Rains and Carrillo, in the 1870 census at Cucamonga (Chino Township.)  Note, though, that her hsuband claimed the assets of $100,000 in real property and $10,000 in personal property, when most of that was hers by inheritance.  Rancho Cucamonga, though, was soon lost to foreclosure so those assets largely vanished.

By late 1862, Rains and Carlisle were sued by local authorities for taxes owed.  Rains borrowed heavily and mortgaged Cucamonga in the process.  In November, he rode from his home towards Los Angeles to transact more business and vanished.  Carlisle took a lead in searching for his brother-in-law, but it was eleven days before Rains' mangled body was found near the road in what was called Mud Springs (now San Dimas.)

Over the next couple of years, several suspects were accused of involvement in the murder.  One, Ramon Carrillo, was a close friend of Merced Rains, and was twice questioned and released.  He was then ambushed and shot to death after leaving the Rains house. Another, Manuel Cerradel, allegedly confessed and then recanted, but was convicted on an unrelated matter and sentenced to San Quentin.  On ship ready to be transported, Cerradel was seized by masked men and lynched from the craft and his body dumped in the water.  Edward Newman, out in early 1864 to inspect his new property, the ranch that became Pomona, was ambushed and killed with a rumor that he was thought to be someone else involved in the Rains murder.  Santiago Sanchez, executed for another crime, claimed he was being hung because he was accused in the Rains matter, but pointedly said the killer was an American and that he did not know Carlisle.

Carlisle confronted Merced with several friends and associated and badgered her into giving him her power of attorney, which she yielded.  After accusations of mismanagement and fraud, a court revoked Carlisle's power of attorney and handed it over to Los Angeles County Under-Sheriff Andrew Jackson King, who'd also been in charge of investigating Rains' murder, which went unsolved.

Enraged by the turn of events, Carlisle saw King at the Bella Union Hotel in Los Angeles during a wedding celebration and attacked him with a knife, inflicting a serious wound.  King was laid up, but this two brothers, Frank and [Samuel] Houston, showed up the next morning.  Experienced at revenge, including a decade before in El Monte when the three King brothers avenged their father's slaying by killing the murderer, Frank and Houston spotted Carlisle at the hotel bar and confronted him, guns drawn.

By contrast to her sister, Francisca Williams Carlisle, married in 1868 to Dr. Frederick MacDougall (who had his own decent-sized fortune) had her assets from Rancho Santa del Chino not only listed for her at $50,000 and $20,000, but divided portions to her four (three on this sheet) children at $15,000 and $3,000 each.  She sold Chino to Arizona mining magnate Richard Gird in 1881.

In the aftermath of the battle, Frank King was killed by Carlisle and Houston, after firing all his rounds at a remarkably durable Carlisle, pummeled his adversary with the gun until the handle broke.  Carlisle used his last remaining strength after taking several bullets to shoot and severely wound Houston, who, however, survived.  Placed on a pool table, Carlisle lived several hours before dying in writhing agony.

All exciting stuff, but nearly forgotten was what happened to the sisters and widows.   Merced, whose life was documented in a fine book by Esther Boulton Black, lost Cucamonga to foreclosure and sold one of the San Diego County ranches to pay legal fees, leaving her with very little of her once-substantial fortune.  She married Jose Clemente Carrillo, who may have been related to Ramon Carrillo, rumored beau of Merced before his murder.  Carrillo, however, left her or died after several years.  She lived 45 years after her husband's death, dying in 1907 at the home of her daughter, Fanny, who was married to former California governor Henry T. Gage.

Francisca, however, was able to retain ownership of Chino.  She hired an able manager, Joseph Bridger, and moved with her children to Los Angeles.  In 1868, she married Dr. Frederick MacDougall, who was mayor of Los Angeles when he died in office a decade later.  Francisca soon sold Chino to Arizona mining magnate Richard Gird and expanded her wealth.  In her mid-forties she married Edward Jesurun, who was nearly twenty years younger, to a good deal of gossip and a failed attempt to derail the marriage by one of her sons.  The marriage lasted, however, and Francisca continued to live with ample means until she died in 1926, a half-century after Carlisle's grisly end.

Francisca MacDougall shocked "society circles" and her family by, at age 46, marrying 27-year old Edward Jesurun in an elopement at San Francisco in 1887.  The couple remained together, however, until she died in 1926, a wealthy woman.

The situation for the two sisters was similar after their father's death and completely different after the husbands were killed.  Their story is a remarkable one that has, too often, been underappreciated while more focus has been placed on the actions of Rains and Carlisle.  The fact that women could inherit and own real property in California (and other former Spanish and Mexican domains), when most American women could not, is also little-known.  But, the lives and activities of women generally at the time has been underrepresented, so it was good to give more attention to Merced and Francisca and their remarkable and often tumultuous lives.