Joseph Edward “Judge” Pleasants

Judge Pleasants in 1926.

Preface: This article began as my address to the Orange County Historical Society on July 27, 2024. I researched and aggregated many documented facts and stories about Pleasants’ life and then boiled the result down to a chronological, digestible little biography for (I think) the first time. When addressing a general audience, the goal is often to educate rather than to break new ground as one would in writing a book or an in-depth article. As such, nothing herein would surprise anyone who’s spent even a modest amount of time researching Pleasants.

Seconds after concluding my lecture, a guy approached me and said (without irony), “You need to put all that online, so I can use it to write a book about Pleasants! There was a LOT of information in your program that I’d never heard before.” 

As Jim Sleeper once said, “There are lot more people writing local history than researching it.” 

Anyway, I place this article online not to enable any one individual, but rather to introduce readers to an important early American pioneer. 

– CLJ

In Celebration of Judge Pleasants

Chris Jepsen

In preparing my comments today, I’ve drawn from many sources, including but not limited to Adelina and Judge Pleasants themselves, Terry Stephenson, Bill McPherson, Don Meadows, Jim Sleeper, Phil Brigandi, Eric Plunkett, and Rob Brown. It’s appropriate that all these generations of Orange County historians are involved, as each of us stand on the shoulders of the previous generation. And although Judge Pleasants wasn’t a historian himself, he is in some ways the forebearer of us all, by sharing his memories with and sparking the imagination of our first real Orange County historian, Terry Stepheson. 

Notably, the Judge’s colorful tales also inspired his second wife, Adelina Brown Pleasants, to become an Orange County historian also.

Judge Pleasants, circa 1900.

A couple generations later, historian Jim Sleeper wrote, “If the story of the Santa Ana Mountains has a ‘father figure’” it is Judge Pleasants. “For no American’s acquaintance with these hills began earlier or lasted longer...” 

For some of those years, he made his home in Upper Santiago Canyon – now known as Modjeska Canyon – exactly where the Modjeska House now stands.

Joseph Edward Pleasants – known as “J. E. Pleasants” in print, as “Judge Pleasants” to most, and as “Ed” to friends – was one of those most memorable Orange County pioneers of the early American era (1850s-1880s). His life reads like an Old West dime novel, of which I will share a few colorful chapters today. 

Reading newspapers on the beach at Laguna.

Helena Modjeska described him as having "sharp, clear-cut regular features, blond hair and a beard,...a perfect American type." He was a relatively short man, but strong.

Pleasants was among the earliest members of the Orange County Historical Society. When the Society was founded in 1919, it was a foregone conclusion that Pleasants would be a central figure of the group and the most valued source of first-hand information. 

In 1986, when the County purchased Modjeska’s Arden, renovation work uncovered old doors, windows and foundations obscured by the walls and floors of the current dining room, entryway and parlor. Modjeska had simply added on to the older Pleasants cabin rather than demolishing it. It's two historic buildings in one.  

Modjeska home during renovation, 1980s. Note newspaper insulation used by Pleasants.

Ed Pleasants was born on a farm in St. Charles County, Missouri on March 30, 1839, to James M. and Lydia Mason Pleasants. Ed’s mother died when he was only nine. The following year, 1849, he became a “Forty-niner,” traveling across the country to the California gold fields with his father and his sixteen-year-old brother William, with two hand-built covered wagons and five yoke of oxen. The wagon train they were in included 120 people, of which Ed, at age ten, was the youngest. 

James Madison Pleasants (1809-1899)

The trek took five and a half months and followed the Oregon Trail through South Pass in Wyoming, then west along the Humboldt River, through the treacherous Lassen Cutoff, into the Sacramento Valley, and finally settling at Bidwell’s Bar – an early gold mining camp on the Feather River in Butte County.

During their journey, they saw beautiful unspoiled vistas and herds of bison, crossed ninety miles of desert, and met friendly natives. But twenty members of the party died of cholera and mountain fever along the way. Ed contracted but survived the latter. The wagon train lost almost half its wagons, many cattle, and countless provisions along the way.

Bidwell's Bar, circa 1854.

After settling down in Butte County, like most ‘49ers they found little gold. After eighteen months they moved to a rustic un-named valley in Solano County. As the first known residents, they named it Pleasants Valley. There, they homesteaded, built two log cabins, and pulled themselves out of poverty through farming and the raising of cattle to supply the hungry miners of Gold Country.  

It was untamed land and during their first winter they killed twenty-four grizzly bears and sold the meat. Young Ed himself homesteaded a quarter-section and purchased surrounding parcels from others, developing what became known as the Pleasants Cattle Range.

William James Pleasants in later years.

Once settled in Pleasants Valley, William was sent back to Missouri to collect the rest of the Pleasants kids – who had been staying with an uncle – and bring them to join their father and brothers in California. On the return overland trek, William was wounded during an Indian attack, but eventually recovered. 

A close neighbor and friend to the Pleasants family in Solono County was John R. Wolfskill, the brother of fur trapper, cattleman, and pioneer citrus rancher William Wolfskill, who was known throughout the West. 

John Wolfskill

William Wolfskill met and was impressed by the teenaged Ed and invited him to Los Angeles to work on his ranch for room and board and to attend his private in-home school. Opportunities for a good formal education were limited in California and Ed agreed. His instructor was Henry D. Barrows, who later became Los Angeles School Superintendent and a founder and president of the Historical Society of Southern California.

Pleasants left from San Francisco on the steamer Sea Bird, arrived in San Pedro, and took a stagecoach into the pueblo of Los Angeles.

William Wolfskill, circa 1831.

For six years, Pleasants lived in Los Angeles and received schooling in more than academic subjects. He rode the range with vaqueros herding cattle, he worked in placer mines on the Colorado River, he worked in Wolfskill’s orchards and delivered produce to surrounding ranchos. 

Being in Wolfskill’s sphere also meant getting to know Southern California’s social and financial leaders, including members of the Sepulveda, Lugo, Workman, Dominguez, Yorba, Carpenter, Stearns and Downey families. One of his fellow classmates, Senorita Maria del Refugio Carpenter – a.k.a. Mary Refugio Carpenter – particularly drew his attention.

Mary Refugio Carpenter Pleasants in 1868.

While still in Los Angeles in 1857, at the age of eighteen, Pleasants witnessed the hanging of the notorious bandit, Juan Flores. He and his gang – Las Manillas – had terrorized California for two years, stealing horses and cattle, committing armed robbery and murder, and raiding towns and homesteads. The search for the Flores Gang became an all-out manhunt after a deadly raid on San Juan Capistrano and the murder of Los Angeles Sheriff James Barton and two deputies in what’s now Irvine. 

Although the public hanging was certainly Flores’ last act, it would not be the last time Pleasants’ life intersected Flores’ legacy.

Valentine's Day, 1857: Juan Flores hung at Ft. Moore Hill, Los Angeles.

That fall, Ed helped haul grape vine cuttings from the Wolfskill Ranch to a spot on the Rancho San Juan Cajon de Santa Ana where a group of Germans planned to start a vineyard colony they called Anaheim. 

Pleasants first saw Santiago Canyon during a November 1859 hunting trip with five of Wolfskill’s other men, including his teacher, Mr. Barrows. Pleasants later recalled, “…Our expectations, aroused by the stories we had heard about the big game of this region, were high. We had provided ourselves with Mississippi rifles…  rented from the Home Guard Armory, kept at the Los Angeles County Jail. They were a muzzle-loading gun, with steel ramrods. Some of them were accurate.”

J. E. Pleasants, age 19.

They set up camp in Fremont Canyon, north of today’s Irvine Lake. They soon shot two deer but then became aware of a grizzly bear nearby. 

This would be the first recorded bear hunt in the area. Once the 800-pound animal was shot, skinned and quartered, Barrows noted that they’d taken as much meat as they could eat and made a persuasive argument against the unnecessary slaughter of any additional game. 

Henry D. Barrows

During this trip, Pleasants saw many sights that would one day become familiar to him. He later recalled, “At that time the big oak grove that we now call Irvine Park was even more beautiful than it is today. … There was a great deal of underbrush and hundreds of wild grapevines had climbed into the oaks. Some of those vines at the base were a foot across and they meandered scores of feet into the trees and draped down from the trees to the ground. Most of them died of the grape disease that swept the cultivated vineyards of the [Santa Ana] valley in the ‘80s.” This visit was a preview of what would soon become Pleasants’ stamping grounds.

In 1861, Wolfskill acquired the 47,000-acre Rancho Las Lomas de Santiago from Teodosio Yorba and made Pleasants his ranch foreman. In modern terms, the rancho spanned from Red Hill in North Tustin, along the line of Santiago Creek to the mouth of Modjeska Canyon, to today’s Firwood Park in Irvine. Pleasants built a small wooden ranch house in what’s now Irvine Park and became the first gringo settler in the Santiago.

Diseno map for Rancho Lomas de Santiago, 1846.

Early in his tenure, Pleasants’ “other duties as assigned” included reburying two of Juan Flores’ gang members who General Andreas Pico had captured and hanged from a sycamore in Precitas Canyon, southeast of today’s Irvine Lake, several years earlier. Animals had dug up the shallow grave and scattered the bones, and Pleasants and two of his ranch hands went out to the tree and reburied the bandits. 

He later passed on his knowledge of the tree’s location, which is how we know that the tree still stands today – not far from the 241 Toll Road, on OC Parks land between Irvine Lake and Irvine’s Orchard Hills development.

Judge Pleasants at hanging tree, Precitas Canyon, 1920. Photo likely by Terry Stephenson.

Also, soon after arriving on the ranch, Pleasants experienced a threat foreign to modern Orange Countians. From upper Peters Canyon, to Precitas Canyon to Limestone Canyon, a pack of seven big timberwolves had been pestering cattle. Pleasants and a vaquero rushed to the aid of a seven-year-old boy who was being chased down and attacked by the wolves. They narrowly saved the boy with seconds to spare, but the boy’s dog, who had defended the lad, had already been torn to shreds. 

As ranch foreman, Pleasants also found himself once again tangling with bears. 

“Frequently they attacked and killed some of our stock,” Pleasants told the Santa Ana Register in 1919. “A bear is clever. He couldn’t chase a steer down, but here’s how he could catch him: The bear would roll on the ground, roll himself up in a ball and cut up capers. The cattle were a curious lot, and they’d circle around the bear, getting closer and closer, until all of a sudden the bear would dash at one. As the steer turned to run, the bear would grab his tail and bring his paw down on the steer’s back.”

Generally, a troublesome bear was dispatched with guns or poisoned meat. But sometimes the vaqueros captured a bear, so they could pit it against a bull (or bulls) in a life-and-death battle for the entertainment of locals.

Pleasants described how bears were captured: “An old horse or cow was driven out upon the flat, killed and left there as bait. …Bears were rather plentiful in the neighborhood. They would come down at night and feast on the carcass. The vaqueros and caballeros sat their horses just back of [the] ridge. When daylight came, somebody would slip to the top of the ridge, sight the bear, and in an instant the horses would be tearing down the hill. Every rider would have his reata shaken out and ready to throw. It was always a mad race to see who would get his rope on the bear first.

“In no time at all, … the bear would be stretched out, two or three ropes tight upon him… Once in a while we would get hold of a real fighter. As to that, any of them would fight if given a chance. I have seen a big grizzly bite a rope in two. That would release him from tension on one side, and he would turn on the horse and man on the other side. I have seen some wild scrambling to get out of his way. When an angry bear weighing perhaps 1200 to 1500 pounds with his mouth open and ready to strike with one of his paws that look as big as hams, rushes at you, it is time to scramble.”

California vaqueros lassoing a bear, 1850s.

Some of the worst threats to the ranch, however, came from humans, not animals. 

In late 1861, a band of Mormon horse thieves were stealing horses from ranchos throughout Southern California and Pleasants joined a posse deputized to hunt them down are recover lost stock. It was suspected that the thieves had a rendezvous point where they collected the horses before taking them to Salt Lake City for sale. 

Tracking the thieves for many days, the posse finally found their secret camp on the north side of the San Bernardino Mountains. The camp and horses – bearing brands of many ranchos -- were guarded by only one man, who they arrested. They lay in wait for the rest of the gang, who finally showed up -- with more stolen horses -- three days later. A shootout ensued but no one was injured. The posse arrested two more men who were soon sent to prison. A third escaped into the dense brush.

In July 1862, Pleasants again met up with several horse thieves. But this time he was the one caught off-guard. He rode into Fremont Canyon and stumbled across three rustlers in the act of stealing some of Wolfskill’s horses. One of the thieves got off the first shot, wounding Pleasants in the right hand. But Ed managed to pull his revolver with his left hand and returned fire. The horses the two men rode bucked and plunged in the chaos and both men fired their revolvers until they were empty. Pleasants took another shot to the arm. His horse was also wounded. Pleasants wounded his assailant who still managed to escape with his compatriots. It was later learned that the rustlers were Mexican convicts who had escaped from San Quentin.

Pleasants used Wolfskill's U5 brand on the Lomas. When Wolfskill sold the ranch, the brand transferred to Pleasants.

During the drought years of 1863 and 1864, there was little to eat for the 3000 head of cattle and 300 horses Pleasants oversaw. He finally discovered an area with green grass along the Mojave River. Pleasants drove the stock there and for a year he and two vaqueros lived in the desert.

Pleasants continued as foreman until Wolfskill sold the ranch to James Irvine and his partners in 1866. 

"Cattle Drive" by James Walker

Upon leaving the ranch, he wanted to establish himself financially to the extent that he could marry his sweetheart, Senorita Refugio. To this end, he went on two cattle drives – bringing cattle from Baja California to the Los Angeles area. The first drive, in 1867 took him and a handful of other cowboys to San Telmo, Mexico and back. 

The second trip, the following year, mostly included the same cowboys but traveled much farther south, all the way to Loreto. On this long trip, Pleasants was always taking note of the flora, the topography, and the numerous old missions along the route. He later described a typical evening on the trail: “After the day’s journey we made camp and the guard of the first watch took charge of the stock. Supper over, the rest of us made ourselves comfortable around the camp fire, and usually someone sang to a guitar accompaniment or we listened to a story,…” 

Often, those who owned the ranches they crossed would come visit them at the campfire for the evening. 

J. E. Pleasants, circa 1868.

In 1868, after a lengthy courtship and his conversion to Catholicism, Pleasants married Mary Refugio Carpenter, who would go by Doña Refugio in the old Spanish tradition. She’d been born near Whittier in 1845, the daughter of pioneers Lemuel and Maria Dominguez Carpenter. Lemuel was a frontiersman and the owner of Rancho Santa Gertrudes – today’s Downey and Santa Fe Springs. Maria was from the Dominguez family for whom the Dominquez hills are named. Refugio's brother, Francisco “Pancho” Carpenter, had accompanied Ed on his Mexican cattle drives.

Author Emma Adams, who knew the Pleasants, wrote that great pains had been taken with Mary Refugio’s education and “she has reached womanhood possessed of intelligence, broad views, and a kindly heart.”

Mr. and Mrs. Pleasants first settled in Aliso Canyon, near today’s Lake Forest. But around 1874 they moved to the spot where the Modjeska home now stands, in upper Santiago Canyon. Up to that point, this portion of the canyon was notable primarily for the spot – just a stone’s-throw away from their cabin site – where Juan Flores and some of his gang escaped a pursing posse by riding horseback straight down the sheer cliff at what’s now called Flores Peak. The area was still wild, rugged, and extremely remote. 

The Pleasants' home in upper Santiago Canyon (Arden). Photo circa 1886. The house began as a one-room shack (later Modjeska's dining room) but was expanded to this apperance before being sold to Modjeska and expanded more dramatically.

The Pleasants' later cabin at Williams Canyon would be nearly identical to what they'd built at Arden.

They called their little home here Pleasant Refuge – a play on their names and an apt description. They raised cattle, horses and Angora goats, and they kept bees. The hospitality here, Terry Stephenson later wrote, “extended to all visitors.” More than one visitor suggested to Ed that he turn his home into a resort for the public and charge his many guests, but he would reply, “I can’t do that. I like to make people happy. Everybody is welcome.”

The indoor/outdoor lifestyle the Pleasants enjoyed in upper Santiago Canyon (Modjeska) can also be seen in this later image from their home in Williams Canyon.

When famed Polish actress Helena Modjeska and her husband, Count Bozenta first visited the canyon in 1876, a genuine and lasting friendship sprang up between the Pleasants and the European celebrities.

Modjeska soon made Santiago her regular summer home when she was not touring. She bought a half-interest in the property from Pleasants.

Helena Modjeska at her Arden home, 1906.

After Doña Refugio died of tuberculosis in 1888 at the age of 42, Ed sold his remaining interest in the ranch to Modjeska and the upper part of this upper portion of Santiago canyon became known as Modjeska Canyon. The actress would rename the home site Arden, after the forest in Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

Graphic showing how Pleasants' cabin was expanded upon by architect Stanford White to become Modjeska's home at Arden.

Meanwhile, Pleasants moved to the mouth of Limestone Canyon, where he would live for several years. By this point, he had abandoned the cattle business and focused his work on beekeeping.

Beginning in 1890, he was active in organizing the Orange County Fair. He often officiated at the Fair’s horse races, which earned him the honorary title of "Judge," which would stick with him for the rest of his life.

Adelina Pleasants

In 1890, Ed also married Mary Adelina “Addie” Brown, a teacher at the Silverado school who’d boarded with the Pleasants for some time. 

After living briefly in Silverado Canyon, Ed and Addie moved to the mouth of nearby Williams Canyon in 1892. (Today’s Giracci Vineyards.) There, he built a new cabin, nearly identical to the cabin he’d built in Modjeska Canyon.

1912 plat map, with Pleasants' Williams Canyon property marked in blue.

Addie had been born in Petaluma in the 1850s and came to Los Angeles County at an early age. She would later write most, if not all, of the articles that appeared under her husband’s by-line over the years. She also wrote extensively under her own name, specializing in Orange County and Southern California history and natural history. 

In 1931 she wrote the principal historical sections for a three-volume History of Orange County. Most of her later writings appeared in local newspapers, including the Santa Ana Register. She and Ed became early members of the Orange County Historical Society. 

Orange County Historical Society on the steps of the Modjeska Home, May 1921. Pleasants seated front and center.

By the early years of the 20th Century, Judge Pleasants was also recognized as an important link to the early history of Southern California and his recollections often appeared in print – Sometimes under his own name and sometimes in articles written by others. Notably, he was a critical source for the first true Orange County historian, Terry E. Stephenson.

Pleasants (left) with fellow apiarists, among the beehives.

In a county where bee-keeping was important to the economy, Judge Pleasants was the leading authority. Over time, he served as president of the Los Angeles County, Southern California, and California State Bee Keepers Associations. He also supervised the California bee exhibit at the 1884 World's Industrial and Cotton Exposition in New Orleans. In 1902 he was appointed the first Orange County Bee Inspector, a position he held until the State took over those duties in 1927.

At the Orange County History Conference the Orange County Historical Society co-sponsored in 1988, Jim Sleeper surprised us with a recollection of his own about the Judge. Born in 1927, it hardly seemed possible that he could have met the Judge, but such was the case.

Judge Pleasants at Mission San Juan Capistrano, 1928.

“Back in the 1930s,” Jim said, “my grandfather, who was the County Assessor, used to take me for a drive every Sunday afternoon, and he usually headed for the backcountry. … On this particular Sunday we drove up to Williams Canyon to see Mr. Pleasants. As I recall, I spent most of my time chasing the Judge’s peacocks around his yard, while grandfather chatted with this legendary hero of shoot-outs with Mexican bandits, bull and bear fights, ropings, cattle drives, and grizzly bear hunts, all here in Orange County. Mr. Pleasants seemed rather short for a hero – about five feet tall, I’d say, and bald as a billiard ball on top. However, he made up for that with what was undoubtedly the best crop of snow-white whiskers I have ever seen in my life. The only thing else I remember about him were these squinting little eyes peeking out behind steel-rimmed glasses set in this haystack of a face. Judge Pleasants, at 95, died the next year in 1934.”

The Pleasants at home in Williams Canyon, 1926.

In 1933, the Orange County Historical Society succeeded in having Sugarloaf Peak -- at the head of Ladd Canyon -- renamed Pleasants Peak in the Judge's honor. They also plaqued an ancient oak in Irvine Park in his honor, commemorating Pleasants’ first visit to that grove in 1859. 

Judge Pleasants died on June 13, 1934, having spent seventy years in the Santiago and having long been one of Orange County’s most respected citizens. He was buried at Holy Sepulcher Cemetery, within sight of the trees of Irvine Park -- his first Orange County home.

Adelina Pleasants

Following his death, Addie moved to Orange, where she died in 1943. She is buried next to Ed.

Because Judge Pleasants was eventually the only man who remembered a good deal of our local history, and because he lived so much of it himself, he became and remains an iconic figure in the annals of Orange County. As one of the first and most respected members of the Orange County Historical Society, over a century ago, he helped set the focus the Society maintains even today: preserving and sharing the region’s history with others. 

The word “pioneer” is thrown around pretty loosely, but Judge Pleasants was the real deal. And his life is a great example of a truth that’s often forgotten: The Old West did not stop in Arizona or even in the deserts of California. It came all the way to the Pacific, and Orange County was once a part of it.

The Judge on horseback, January 2, 1927.