Citizen Casad

If you've followed my blog for any significant length of time, you know I enjoy collecting old Covina postcards and learning about the people who wrote/received them. Well, this may not be a postcard, but in terms of discovering someone, I really hit the jackpot here!

To see the Hollywood received postmark on the verso, click here.

The first thing I noticed about this old envelope was its fine-grade Irwindale postmark. (Irwindale in this case being the original Irwindale, i.e. turn-of-the-last-century West Covina, not the modern-day incorporated city to our northwest.) Then I pondered the fancy cursive that closely resembled my grandmother's, and deciphered the addressee's last name as "Casad." Ahh, that's a street in Covina/WC! Could this maybe be the person it's named after? Then, only minutes later, a quick newspaper search introduced me to Mr R. C. Casad, who has turned out to be one of the more remarkable historical Covina personages I've ever had the pleasure to meet.

In our Civics class at South Hills, I remember Mr. Douglas telling us that the framers of the Constitution intended that Congress be comprised of regular citizens elected by the community who would then come to the nation's capital for a two-year term and represent their constituents. Sounded great on paper, but of course, the system we ended up with was career politicians representing their party and themselves over and above anything else. Not so great...

Covina's Roland C. Casad, however, was a throwback to the Founders' ideal, and much more—a common man who sought not only to stand for his district, but who sincerely desired to improve the lives of all the people and bring prosperity to the entire country. To that end, he tirelessly ran for national elected office 11 times from 1932-1948, including 4 times for president.

The Badilla Foreclosure

The story of the Badilla coffee venture in the 1870s is the genesis chapter of Covina history. The families of Julian and Antonio Badilla were the first to settle the north region of Rancho La Puente, and had they not lost their land to foreclosure in 1879, Covina as we know it today would not have been born. J. E. Hollenbeck's lawsuit changed the course of our history, but the passage of time has obscured the events and people involved. Long assumed lost, I recently found the official court records for Hollenbeck vs. Badilla et al., and what they reveal will significantly broaden our understanding of Covina's past.

The court case that set the stage for Covina's birth.
Source: Los Angeles area court records, 1850-1911, Call number: mssLAACR, Item number: 05091, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Because this article is rather lengthy, I'm going to begin with some tl;dr bullets of my principal findings:

• Contrary to legend, the Badillas did grow coffee here, and wheat in abundance. Their only failure was financial.

• The old story also said Antonio Badillo was a debtor landowner whose mortgage was foreclosed, and that entire characterization was false.

• The Badillas did not use any of their own money to buy the land in Rancho La Puente. Instead, the Badillas and Rowlands arranged a seller-financed mortgage for the $45,000 purchase price.

     —The down payment of $15,000 was borrowed from the Commercial Bank of Los Angeles.

     —The $30,000 balance was financed with two one-year-term $15,000 promissory notes.

• Plaintiff Hollenbeck was not the original mortgage holder. Rather, he purchased the Badillas' delinquent mortgage from the Rowlands, then foreclosed.

• Hollenbeck did not buy the former Badilla land at the Sheriff's auction, he was granted title to it as payment-in-full for the court's decree.

• Two future California politicians were involved with this case. The judge was a member of the influential Sepúlveda family, and the Badillas' defense attorney went on to become a United States Senator.

The Badillo Legend

In my 2021 article about Hollenbeck and the Badillas, I presented proof that several elements of the familiar Badillo story were untrue. Now, after years of further research and studying these newly-discovered court records in particular, I'm more certain than ever that the narrative once considered historical fact long ago crossed over into the realm of fiction.

The most complete telling of the Badillo legend is found in Donald Pflueger's Covina (1964), and can be summarized as follows:

Julian and Antonio Badillo were wealthy Costa Rican plantation owners who met Hollenbeck when he lived in Central America. Hollenbeck convinced the Badillos to leave Costa Rica and grow coffee in southern California. About 1875, the brothers bought 5,500 acres of Rowland land in Rancho La Puente for $4 an acre. However, being unfamiliar with the area's semi-arid climate, the Badillos failed twice to grow coffee. Julian got discouraged and left, but Antonio stayed and borrowed large sums of money from the Los Angeles bank of which Hollenbeck was principal stockholder. Antonio tried growing other crops, but he failed at that as well and defaulted on his loan. The bank foreclosed on Antonio in 1879 and Hollenbeck purchased all the former Badillo land for $16,692. Then in 1880, Hollenbeck deeded 100 acres back to Antonio as a gift.¹

For more than a half-century before and after Pflueger's book, this was considered settled history.

Real Facts Emerge

In 2011, however, descendants of Julian Badilla discovered their genealogical connection to his 1870s coffee experiment in Rancho La Puente, and new historical facts came to light.