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Skagit River Journal

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Covers from British Columbia to Puget Sound. Counties covered: Skagit, Whatcom, Island, San Juan, Snohomish & BC. An evolving history dedicated to committing random acts of historical kindness
Noel V. Bourasaw, editor (bullet) 810 Central Ave., Sedro-Woolley, Washington, 98284
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Dr. and Mrs. Andrew S. and Martha Shorb
who may have bilked Fairhaven's Dan Harris of his fortune

(Baltimore Harbor)
This is an 1858 lithograph of Baltimore Harbor from a fine Maryland website about immigrants, specifically the Irish. A century earlier, the ships were largely bringing German immigrants like the Shorb ancestors. As the site explains: "Note the many sailing ships. If the immigrant chose Maryland as his destination, he faced a journey of several weeks or months in the era of sail. His primary shipboard food was probably oatmeal or hardened oatcakes, with perhaps a touch of honey. The port of entry into Maryland was primarily Locust Point in the Port of Baltimore."
and his cousin, James DeBarth Shorb, both of California — Part 1 of 2
Also includes history of early eastern U.S. and Los Angeles,
Hohenzollerns, Homeopathy, a winery, bilking and murder
By Noel V. Bourasaw, Skagit River Journal of History & Folklore, ©2007
      If you have already read the chapter from the 1903 Frank Teck transcript, then you know that Dr. and Mrs. Andrew S. and Martha Shorb were sued by the estate of Daniel J. Harris of Fairhaven in 1891 for allegedly bilking the old pioneer of nearly $30,000 over the last year of his life. If you have not yet read that chapter ("Last days of Dan Harris in Gay Los Angeles," by Frank C. Teck, The Evening Herald, Fairhaven, April 25, 1903), we suggest that you go back to Issue 38 and read that story first. When you do, you will learn that Public Administrator A.F. Field brought suit in a Los Angeles court for the plaintiff, Dan's nephew, Benjamin Franklin Harris, who lived in New York. After deliberation, the jury voted 10 to 2 to "disgorge" the Shorbs of what appeared to be their ill-gotten gains.
      But their apparent complicity is only one side of the story. We have worked with other researchers in Washington and helpful sources in Los Angeles and we have now uncovered a side of the Shorbs never seen before, information both positive and negative. What we derived from contemporary sources in California of the 1870-1920 period is a collection of news articles and biographies that help paint a picture of Dr. Shorb and a few details about his wife, who was identified during the trial as a very active accomplice. While reading the principal biographies, the reader is immediately impressed with an account of the doctor's sterling character, but — as with many biographies of that period, they appear to be "subscription" chapters, paid for and usually written by the subject's family, so keep that in mind. We will summarize briefly below the course of Dr. Shorb's life, trying not to duplicate what you will find in the various profiles at the bottom of this story that profile both Andrew and his cousin James DeBarth Shorb.
      As we studied the case, we began to wonder if this story of the evil Shorb couple was another of the Dan Harris legends, spun by Dan's pals into a melodrama. One revelation after another just did not add up after our initial research of the surviving record. First, there was the fact that when the defendants appealed, a higher court overruled part of the decision and appeared to have at least partially exonerated the Shorbs in 1893, reversing about $25,000 of the original judgment against them. Then there was the fact that the Shorbs seemed superficially to have been respectable members of their community, with no record of having been shysters or even having broken the law. But then . . . well, you will see below what we found when we started turning over the rocks in the path. The results were shocking.
      This story is an ambitious overview, not just about the doctor and his family, but also of the families who emigrated from France and Germany to the U.S. in the 17th and 18th century and the Hohenzollerns who ruled Germany for 800 years. In addition, in this first part, you will learn about the very early days of settlement in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio. In the second part, besides observing the character of Dr. Shorb, we will review the rise in the popularity of Homeopathy in the U.S. in the last 30 years of the 19th century, the history of early Los Angeles and the land grants and the rise of the San Gabriel Winery.

The Shorbs and the Hohenzollerns
This webpage is the result of research conducted all over the country. We especially want to thank Los Angeles sources Martha Graham — who has spent years assembling biographies of Southern California pioneers, and Brent C. Dickerson, whose vast collection of postcards and photos illuminate Old Los Angeles and provides background for where Dr. Andrew S. Shorb had his office and where Dan Harris briefly lived. In addition, we especially thank Lorraine Shorb, a family descendant who helped us wade through the labyrinth of the Shorb family tree. We hope that other descendants will right any wrong turns we made.
      If the family story is true, that they descended from the Hohenzollern rulers of what became Germany, then their story begins nearly a millennium ago in central Europe in what eventually became the German Empire in 1871. The House of Hohenzollern began as a family dynasty of electors, kings, and emperors of the future nations of Prussia, Germany, and Romania, based on the Counts of Zollern who banded together as early as 1061 A.D. They were based around the town of Hechingen in Swabia, a present district in southwestern Germany. As their numbers quickly grew, the family split into three branches, Catholic, Swabian and Protestant Franconian.
      Count Frederick III gained power and protection for the Zollerns when he became a retainer of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in the 12th century. In 1185 he married the daughter of the Count of Nuremberg, just to the east. In 1892 the father-in-law died without an heir and Count Frederick combined the kingdoms, and changed the family name to Hohenzollern. The Franconian line absorbed the throne of Brandenburg (in what later became East Germany) in 1415 and the Duchy of Prussia in 1525. Those two Franconian lines merged in 1618 and eventually created the Kingdom of Prussia at the turn of the 18th century. Over time, Prussia would range from the Baltic Sea and Lithuania to the western part of modern Germany. From the early 18th century on, the Prussian Hohenzollern emperors led the loose confederation of German Kingdoms until 1871, when King William I (or Wilhelm) of Prussia ascended to the throne of Emperor of the new German Empire.
      During his reign of 1861-1888, William and his chancellor and then prime minister, Otto von Bismarck of Prussia, unified the country. Bismarck largely called the tune as he reduced the role of the Catholic Church through his program of Kulturkamp with mixed results. The year 1888 became "the year of three emperors as William died, then his son and heir, Friedrich III, ascended, but only for 99 days, but abdicated in favor of his brother Wilhelm II. Within two years, the much-older Otto was forced to retire. As the new century approached, rising militarism called for more recruits and that caused many males within Germany to flee the country in order to avoid military service, mostly to the United States. That included Duke Friedrich George of Bavaria, who eventually wound up in Sedro-Woolley and became the namesake for Duke's Hill, north of town.
      After Germany and its allies lost World War I, social unrest spiraled until the Revolution of 1918. The new Weimar Republic forced the Hohenzollerns to abdicate as the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 effectively dismantled the German Empire, thus bringing an end to the official German monarchy although heirs still claim informal royal status.

Shorb homeland was part Germany, part France
      Back in about 1698, Johannes Casparus Schorb (or Joannes or Johanes) was born in Koblenz, an important trading center that is located where the Mosel River flows north from France to join the Rhine River. At that time, the city was at the French Department of Lorraine, but it is now in the western German district of Rheinland-Pfalz. The departments of Lorraine and Alsace were tossed back and forth between the kingdoms of Germany and France for at least two centuries. At this point we will offer a brief capsule summary of the family's homeland.
      Both Alsace and Lorraine were turned upside down during the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648 as many ancient families died in wars or fled from the many battles between at least three different armies. The area was a crossroads, just as it was during some of the heaviest fighting of World War I, three centuries later. From the mid-17th to the mid-18th century, refugees settled there, arriving from Italy's Savoy, Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Around the time of Johannes's birth, many Anabaptist refugees also arrived from Switzerland and Strasbourg in the Alsace became a center of the early Anabaptist movement. The Shorb ancestors, however, were devout Catholics. The 1679 Treaties of Nijmegen allowed France to consolidate control of the districts and the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick that ended the War of the Palatinate underscored France's control, even though the German language was still spoken in some areas and the University of Strasburg remained a German, Lutheran school.
      The late Don Osborn, of Muscatine, Iowa, wrote an article about similar families emigrating from the same area of Europe to Pennsylvania, where they eventually became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. "The [families] arrived in Philadelphia from Rotterdam, Holland, suggesting they came from one of the lands along the Rhine River, or one of its tributaries. They spoke German as their common language, and at least those who were literate could also speak French and signed their names with French spellings on the passenger lists at Philadelphia. In those times, this particular bilingual language characteristic existed along the Rhine River only in Alsace, and that portion of the Duchy of Lorraine now located within the French Department of Mosel and stretching along the border of German Saarland.
      "These peoples were descendants of the Alamanni, a Germanic tribe who conquered the lands of the upper Rhine Valley in the 5th Century, and drove out the earlier Celtic tribes and Roman settlers. Their language is the Alemannic dialect of High German, and in France is commonly called Alsatian, whether spoken in Alsace or Lorraine . . . . Of the people coming down the Mosel tributary to Koblenz, those coming from what are now Luxembourg and German Rheinland-Pfalz and Saar spoke High German. Those from the Northeastern Mosel region of the Duchy of Lorraine spoke Alsatian and French. Those of the remainder of the Duchy of Lorraine spoke French . . . . When Goethe visited the Elsass [Alsace] in 1770, he remarked that the Alsatians learnt French and Latin in school and spoke German at home, mastering none of these languages."
      In the History of Cumberland and Adams County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: Warner-Beer Co., 1886, hereafter called "the 1886 Adams County book"), we learn that "From 1735 to 1752 Germans came by thousands. In the fall of 1749 no less than twenty ships arrived at Philadelphia, bringing 12,000 passengers, let hither by the Newlanders . . . older German settlers of Pennsylvania."

Shorbs settle in Pennsylvania
      We know that Shorb became the eventual Americanized spelling for the family, but variations abound in the Pennsylvania/Maryland/Ohio family tree including: Shurp, Schorb, Shorpen, Shurb, Sherb, Sherp and Schorp, sometimes with the pronunciation of "Sharb." We know when the first members of the family arrived in the U.S. because of the manifest for the ship Priscilla under command of Captain William Muir, "from Rotterdam, and last from Cowes in England," which arrived in Philadelphia in September 1749 (or Sept. 11, 1744, in one account). The passenger names included Johannes Shurp, Friederich Shurp and Paulus Schorb. We could not have waded through this mountain of genealogical material and made sense of it without the help of descendant Lorraine Shorb, who helped us out by sharing her research from her native Maryland. She determined that the Shurp names were corrected on the manifest as Schorb.
      With Lorraine's help we also determined that the transitional patriarch, who later became known in America as Johannes C. Schorb, actually first dispatched three of his sons in 1749 to Philadelphia from the old country and he appears to have arrived later with his wife, Anna Sitters, and their fifth child, Andrew. One Shorb descendant says that Andrew arrived on the ship Halifax on Oct. 2, 1754, so that could have been when the parents arrived, too. The Shorbs whom we profile in Los Angeles all descend from Andrew. Following the old tradition, Johannes, the elder, would have sent his oldest son, Johannes C. Schorb, but that son died as a child. The Johannes Schorb who arrived on the Priscilla was actually the youngest child of seven — named for both his father and older dead brother, while Friederich was born third and Paulus was fourth. Lorraine discovered that Johannes took the "usual oaths to the government" on Sept. 11, 1749, at the courthouse at Philadelphia and that the surname of Shurp was corrected from Shurp to Schorb for both brothers. Just to complicate the tree further, Johannes was sometimes also spelled Johanes or Joannes.
      A 1915 biography of Dr. Andrew S. Shorb published after his death (hereafter 1915 Andrew Shorb Bio) claims that "the first to establish the name on the western hemisphere was Jacob M. Shorb," rather than Johannes, and that is clearly incorrect. The first Jacob in the tree was a grandson of the patriarch, the youngest child of Joannes "John" Schorb. That is just one of several errors in the biography, which we assume were made by Andrew's widow, Martha Shorb, but then again, we sympathize with anyone trying to compile this genealogy, due to the mind-boggling collection of Johans, Johns and Jacobs. We are presenting what we think is the best corroborated information but we hope that other Shorb descendants read this story and correct any of our blatant errors. The 1915 Andrew Shorb Bio also states that the ancestor named Jacob eventually owned a vast fleet of ships, but we did not find confirmation.
(Hanover, Pennsylvania)
Hanover, Pennsylvania, circa 1860s
      We know that Dr. Shorb's great-great-great-grandfather was indeed Johannes, the elder, (born in 1698). All the Schorbs initially headed for York County, Pennsylvania, and became part of the immigrant pool known as Pennsylvania Dutch. From the 1886 Adams County book, we learn:
      The ancestors of this old pioneer family left Lorraine when it was attached to France, because they loved the old German Fatherland and language better than the French. Three brothers, supposed to have been John, Jacob and Anthony, immigrated to America and settled in Pennsylvania. One kept a hardware store in Hanover, York County, buying his stock in Germany and making seven sea voyages for the purpose. One settled in York County near Hanover, and the other near Goshenhoppen, Berks County, and there they farmed and their descendents lived for many years.
      Another 1915 Andrew Shorb Bio claim is possibly a case of someone gilding the lily to connect the family to the Hohenzollerns. We have traced the Shorb line all the way back to the Lorraine district and there is no substantiation for the claim that "the great-grandfather of Dr. Shorb married a sister of Emperor William I." Dr. Andrew's great-grandfather was John Adam Shorb, whose father was Andrew Schorb, and it was that Andrew's generation who apparently dropped the "C" from the surname. John Adam was born in about 1740 in Koblenz, in the district of Lorraine (now called Rheinland Pfalz, Germany), and died June 19, 1798, in York County — which in 1800 partially split into Adams County, to the west. He married a woman named Anna Elizabeth who has no tie to the Hohenzollerns and especially was not the sister of King William (Wilhelm). We know this for certain because she was born 57 years before William.
      After all that time we spent studying the Hohenzollerns, we discovered that the entire Hohenzollern connection may be apocryphal, so bear with us until an authoritative Shorb corrects the record. According to one family tree, Johannes "John" Shorb, the youngest child of Johannes, the elder, died on July 18, 1801, in Pennsylvania. This Johannes, the younger, may have marred a woman named Ellen back in Koblenz, who may have had the maiden name of Hohenzollern, and she died by 1755, whereupon he remarried to Catherine Fricker, sometime after 1855. We conclude that this is the slender reed that some members of the family used to connect to the old ruling family. Lorraine Shorb wonders if the elusive Ellen was a Hohenzollern at all. As we discovered, one family tree does not even include her. In an online conversation, Shorb descendant Mary Kelly Mills explains the controversy:
      I suspect the story of the Shorb family and Hohenzollern Dynasty may come from "Sign of Royal Blood" a rather lame report of a conversation between an unnamed descendant of Johannes Shorb and Prince Henry of Prussia that may or may not have appeared in the Washington Post on March 23, 1902. According to the newspaper report, the Prince was supposed to have recognized the "Mark of the Hohenzollerns", a dark streak in prematurely gray hair . . . .This part of a report on Shorb family and the Hohenzollern Dynasty by Virginia King Frye is neither genealogically nor historically accurate. This much is true. Prince Henry did visit the United States in 1902 and there was a reception for ladies and the Prince at the White House. I suspect Midge Sherwood used this source in her 1982 biography of DeBarth Shorb. Both she and Frye talk of silver and plates and doorway carvings in the home of Dr. James A. Shorb and his wife Margaret McMeal, the parents of DeBarth Shorb. Unfortunately the house [Clairvaux near Emmitsburg, Maryland] burned down sometime in the sixties (actually 1971?).
(Clairvaux House)
Clairvaux House, courtesy of this excellent Emmitsburg website, a vast source of details about that part of Maryland
      Continuing down Dr. Andrew Shorb's line, his ancestors settled near Hanover, a city located just north of the Maryland border, east of Gettysburg, south of Harrisburg and west of Philadelphia. Many of the Shorbs lived in Edgegrove, which is a village today about two miles northwest of Hanover and just over the line in Adams County, so most of the family trees place them, ex post facto, in Adams. They were devout Catholics and worshipped at Conewago Chapel, which is today the oldest stone Catholic Church building in the United States. Early congregants erected the original Mass house, in the south part of Hanover, as early as 1740, and the present stone structure was completed about 1787 with various Shorbs involved. Conewago has been the spiritual lodestone for the family for about five generations.

Dr. Andrew's ancestors moved west to Ohio
      John Adam and Elizabeth Shorb continued living in Adams County, Pennsylvania, as did his elders. Their eldest son, Stephen, was born there in 1770 and Stephen's eldest son, Adam Lechner Shorb, was also born there in 1800, and John Adam Shorb died there. Stephen Shorb and his wife, Christina, moved to Ohio sometime after their fourth and last child was born in 1807. Their eldest son, Adam Lechner Shorb, was born in Pennsylvania and he married Maria Bowen in 1827 in Portage County, Ohio, just southeast of Cleveland, in the northeast corner of the state. We lost track of them after their move except for the mention in the 1915 Andrew Shorb Bio that, when he was in school, his family lived in Canton, Ohio, Stark County, about 60 miles south of Cleveland. Canton was the city where more lines of the Shorb family eventually congregated. Future-Dr. Shorb was born April 12, 1837, in Canton, the sixth of 12 children. And that's where the early trail for his line ends
      According to the Memoirs of Men and Women of Stark County, Ohio (by John Danner, published by B.F. Bowen, 1904), another John Shorb (not John Adam) moved his family from Baltimore to Steubenville in Jefferson county, and then two years later to Stark county, where he "later associated with a Mr. Wells in laying out the original plat of what is now the city of Canton." He obtained a large tract of government land and received patent for it in 1809, signed by President Thomas Jefferson. "The ax with which he 'blazed' his trail from Steubenville to Canton is still retained in the possession of the family. This discovery was confusing at first because of all the Johns in the family tree — an incredible 31 with that given name (including six with John A.), plus five more with some variation of Johan, which they converted to John after arriving in the U.S. You may recall the old joke that mechanics tell about when they do a complete rebuild of an automobile and a couple of parts always seem left over.
      This John Shorb, with no known middle initial, is by far the most profiled member of the Shorb family in Ohio. We frankly do not know for sure who his parents were and how he was related to Stephen Shorb's family. Different Shorb genealogists place him in two different lines but neither of them seems to fit. By consensus he was born in 1758 in Zweibrucken, in what is now the Palatinate district of Germany, and he may have descended from the Jacob Shorb from Koblenz who apparently emigrated to the U.S. after his brother Johannes and settled in Baltimore, Maryland, where he outfitted a fleet of ships. All we know for sure about his early life is that John Shorb moved his family from the very small town of Emmittsburg, Maryland, to Ohio in 1805. After settling his family in Canton, he owned a tavern in Tuscarawas County, a few miles south and a mill and bank in Canton, among other businesses. He died on Jul. 24, 1824, in Canton and Shorb Avenue is named for him. He may have descended from the Shorb ancestors who settled in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and are recorded in the Goshenhoppen Registers of St. Paul's Roman Catholic Mission, many of them retaining the surname of Shurp.
      Before we leave this section, we should point out that there was significant Shorb participation in the most famous western-Pennsylvania industry, iron and steel. We discovered Lyon & Shorb Co. of Pittsburgh early on, but just this week we finally discovered that it was formed as Shorb, Stewart & Co., a partnership between Hanover neighbors David Stewart and Anthony Shorb, the son of John and Catherine (Fink) Shorb of Littlestown, near Hanover. His great-grandson Basil A. Shorb III is still involved with the steel industry.

James DeBarth Shorb's branch settled in Maryland
      When we first discovered Dr. Andrew S. Shorb's identity while researching the Harris court case, we also discovered at the same time that he had a cousin Shorb who was more famous in Southern California history. James DeBarth Shorb was younger by five years and he gained fame in the San Gabriel Valley, first for being an engineer and then as a horticulturalist and organizer of the San Gabriel Winery. DeBarth, as he was usually addressed, was also a descendant of the original Johannes, who was his 2-greats-grandfather, as opposed for 3-greats for Andrew. We do not know how they interacted because, in the dozen or more biographies of both cousins, we have never seen a reference to the other one. DeBarth was certainly not implicated in the trial concerning the bilking of Dan Harris. Various records from the period after he gained fame in California spell his name as J. DeBarth Shorb, but for consistency from here out, we will call him DeBarth.
      The unusual name of DeBarth derived from the name of a priest at Conewago Chapel in Hanover, Pennsylvania, where both his father and grandfather were born and christened. The Chapel actually predates the town itself, which was laid out in 1763. Located just five miles north of the Mason Dixon line and 20 miles east of Gettysburg, Hanover was the scene of a key Civil War battle on June 30, 1863, when Union cavalry under Judson Kilpatrick fought Confederate cavalry under J.E.B. Stuart and delayed the Rebels on their way to the Battle of Gettysburg.
      DeBarth's grandfather was yet another John Shorb, this one the grandson of the original patriarch, Johannes, who Americanized both his first and last names. Two different family records show James's grandfather, John, being either 85 or 90 when he died but two biographies of DeBarth (see below) state that he lived to age 104; so those references may be referring to his maternal grandfather. John's father, Johannes C. "John" Schorb, was an extensive landowner in four Atlantic states. He may also be the Shorb ancestor who is mentioned in the 1915 Andrew Shorb Bio as owning the vast fleet of ships.
      Sometime in the early 1780s, John the elder set up his John Shorb & Co., in Presterstown, Maryland — now a ghost town, which was just across the line from Littlestown, Pennsylvania, the original family home near Hanover for many Shorbs. In 1804 his company secured the contract to carry the mail by horse and rider from Baltimore through Littlestown and Gettysburg to Chambersburg, once a week, for $137.50 per quarter. John, the younger, found his bride, Catherine D. Fink, almost next door and she brought a second connection to the Hohenzollerns. Her father, Conrad Fink, also Catholic and German by birth, was a more-likely descendant of the Hohenzollerns back home. Over here he was a businessman in Littlestown and was also associated with family businesses in Emmitsburg, Frederick County, Maryland, the future birthplace of DeBarth. Emmitsburg is 24 miles west-southwest from Hanover, and nearly due south of Gettysburg.
      John married Catherine Fink in Emmitsburg, her birthplace, in about 1785, the year the town was founded. Perhaps father and son had set up business there by that time. John's brother, James "Jacob" Shorb (Jacobus Schorb in church records), married Catherine's sister Elizabeth, also in 1785 In that case, however, that Shorb brother married that Fink sister at Edgegrove with the mass at Conewago Chapel.

Dr. James A. Shorb comes down with '49er fever
      James Aloysius Shorb, DeBarth's father, was born Feb. 23, 1798, in an unnamed town in Maryland, the seventh child of John and Catherine (Fink) Shorb. He grew up in Emmitsburg but was sent for schooling to Pigeon Hills, just over the Pennsylvania line near Hanover. In 1809, he transferred to the new Mount St. Mary's Catholic Seminary near Emmitsburg, which took in the students from Pigeon Hills. James A. Shorb was destined to be a doctor. He completed his studies at the Philadelphia Medical School and then came back to Emmitsburg and set up a practice. The Conewago Chapel and the college continued to be focal points for Catholics in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and when the college's resident doctor retired, Dr. Shorb took over his duties and continued there for more than 40 years.
      On June 26 1824, Dr. Shorb married Margaret McMeal, one of Mother Elizabeth Seton's original students at the St. Joseph's school for girls, which was nearby the college on Mount St. Mary's. Their son James DeBarth Shorb was born on April 4, 1842, the youngest child of six. Margaret's father's name appeared in the first directory published in Baltimore City and he was one of the very first officers in the merchant marine service, which antedates the U.S. Navy. In the late 1840s, Dr. Shorb began planning a family mansion for their country estate on the mountain near the college, naming the estate Clairvaux in favor of the French home of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a 12th-century French abbot who was the historic reformer of the Cistercian monastic order. Soon after news of the 1849 gold rush inspired local men to trek out to California, Dr. Shorb joined them and while he was gone, Margaret oversaw the erection of the mansion. DeBarth Shorb completed his studies at Mount St. Mary's, which became known as the "school of bishops," graduating more than five hundred priests; five archbishops and twenty-one Bishops. In addition, the school graduated the first two American cardinals, John Cardinal McCloskey (New York during 1875-1885) and James Cardinal Gibbons (Baltimore during 1886-1921).
      You can read details of DeBarth's professional career in his 1889 biography below as well as our review of his California record. We know that he missed serving in the civil war, initially practicing as an attorney in his home town. Sometime in the 1850s he became an engineer and in 1861 he was sent to California by the Philadelphia and California Oil Company as assistant superintendent. We have not yet discovered how father and son crossed the continent ten years apart in time, whether they joined a wagon train or shipped out from Baltimore, trekked across the Isthmus of Panama, and then took another ship to San Pedro. You will learn from DeBarth's biography that he soon engaged in mining and married the daughter of a man who owned several original land grants, and that DeBarth then founded the San Gabriel Winery. Another Shorb cousin of about the same age, Winfield Scott Shorb — son of John David Shorb of Maryland, also went west about the same time and he can be found in various census records in the Siskiyou Mountains of Oregon, also seeking a career in mining. Now we turn back again to future-Dr. Andrew S. Shorb
Continue on to Part 2: Dr. Andrew S. Shorb moves west to Los Angeles; short history of Homeopathy; Andrew's character; James DeBarth Shorb's fame, fortune, father-in-law Don Benito Wilson, land grants, San Gabriel Winery and George S. Patton; Andrew's dark side and shocking secrets; biographies of Andrew, wife Mattie and DeBarth.
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Story posted March 31, 2007 . . . Please report any broken links so we can update them
This article originally appeared in Issue 38 of our Subscribers-paid Journal online magazine

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