Lake Chapala Artists and Authors

Relatively little is known about the life of Thomas L. Rogers, the American author of Mexico? Sí, señor, based on a trip to Mexico in July 1892, and published the following year by the Mexican Central Railway. The book provides an up-beat accessible account of all the places and regions that the then-expanding railway network was opening up for travelers.

At that time the Mexican Central Railway was the principal railway of the Republic, with 1846 miles of line; it was the only standard gauge line connecting Mexico City to the U.S. First class rail fares at the time were very reasonable: return fares to Mexico City were $50 (dollars) from El Paso; $88.60 from Chicago and $135 from New York or Boston.

The book covers the sights along not only the Mexico Central Railway’s main route from Ciudad Juárez to Mexico City, but also along its two major branch lines: the first to Tampico, and the second to Guadalajara via Irapuato. The completion of this latter branch in 1888 spurred a significant growth in tourism at Lake Chapala, and was the route used by many of the early visitors to Chapala, including eccentric pioneer Septimus Crowe, English  writer Maud Pauncefote, British consul Lionel Carden, American writers Charles Embree and Mary Ashley Townsend, and anthropologist Frederick Starr. American photographer-hotelier Winfield Scott , who lived for many years near Ocotlán, was commissioned by the Mexican Central Railway to document the company’s network in Mexico.

Rogers’ writing style is informal and chatty. Mexico? Sí, señor is well illustrated with small sketches, photographs and several maps. Chapter XVI includes one of the earliest published photographs (untitled) of Ocotlán, as well as images of the Atequiza hacienda, the Río Lerma, and the famous Juanacatlán Falls. (Note, however, that the photograph titled “On the Lake Shore’ (by A. Briquet) depicts Lake Cuitzeo, not Lake Chapala.)

Excerpts from chapter XIV of Mexico? Sí, señor

Ocotlán is situated on a plain which slopes southward a few miles into the shore of the lake. With its pretty plaza, beautiful church spires, its portales, and its two bridges (one over the Sula, south of the village, and one west over the Lerma), Ocotlán is very picturesque.

The water front of the city is on the Sula, just above the bridge. Here a novel sight is seen on the levee. No great steamers are moored there, but scores of great canoes are loading and unloading, or waiting for the spirit of their captains to move. These canoes have hitherto done all the business on Lake Chapala.

The water works of Ocotlán are not extensive, but such as they are, they can be seen at the bridge across the Lerma, over which passes the highway to Guadalajara. They consist of one large wheel and a pump. The wheel is on a frame under one of the arches of the bridge. The current of the river runs the wheel, and the wheel, of course, runs the pump. But rivers in this region rise and fall, and there are times when this wheel is six feet above the water. Whenever the current cannot reach the wheel, the people of Ocotlán get their water by carts and carriers.

The steamer “Chapala” is a flat-bottom stern-wheel boat, very like those that are common on the shallow rivers of the West; the only boats adapted to shoal-water service. Everything about the steamer appears new, but one of the things not new on the “Chapala” is Juan Perez, the pilot. He is not necessarily old, but he is a veteran in service….

The steamship Chapala. From Thomas Rogers (1893), p222.

The sail along the north shore from Mescala to the town of Chapala is delightful. We seem, at times, to be shut in, but the pilot finds a way out and duly brings us to a pretty little city which nestles at the base of a sugar loaf mountain, and which is the largest town on the lake. A fine old church is one of the attractions of the town for visitors, but the hot springs which boil up not far from the plaza have given Chapala fame as a health resort. The springs, although not numerous… have made Chapala a favorite resort of the people of Guadalajara and vicinity, and when better known will attract people from a greater distance. “Charming” is the word to describe Chapala; I doubt if there is another town in Mexico more prettily situated. A short distance from shore is a large island, which is made use of as a picnic ground. The view from the hill immediately back of the town is one of great beauty.

It is an interesting sight to see the water works of Chapala in operation. No wheels, no pumps, no fountains; only dippers. The lake is the reservoir, and women are the dippers. They wade out as far as they please, fill their jars as full as they please, shoulder them and march home. No scooping with gourds as at Zacatecas, for water is plenty, and no one has to wait for another.

Chapala is sure to become more and more a favorite watering place. Already there are some fine summer “seaside” cottages there, and in the offing you can see a yacht! With a combination of delightful climate and hot springs, with mountain climbing, boating, bathing, and fishing as recreations for visitors, why shouldn’t charming Chapala become the finest health and pleasure resort in Mexico?

The next port is Xocotopec, at the extreme western end of the lake. The town lies in a pretty valley three miles back from the lake, and is the center of an extensive rural trade. Returning along the south shore we find no towns of commercial importance, but do find a succession of beautiful views which charm by their variety. We pass San Martin, San Cristobal, Tuscueca, and see, partly hidden by groves of orange and lemon trees, the flourishing city of Tizapan which reposes on the hillside two miles from the lake, along the little Rio de la Pasion.

We sail over what is supposed to be an oil well, some signs of which appear on the surface of the lake; we touch at the fisherman’s village with the pretty name, La Palma, and thence complete our eighty mile circuit of Lake Chapala by a direct return to Ocotlán, where we resume our railroad journey.

Who was Thomas L. Rogers?

Thomas L Rogers was born at Pownal, Vermont, on 2 August 1851, and died in Brookline, Massachusetts at the age of 59 on 19 June 1901. He was survived by his wife and six children.

Rogers was a prominent Baptist minister, and publisher of The Watchman (formerly The Christian Watchman), who graduated from the Newton Theological Institution, before serving in Cleveland and Scituate. He spent the winter of 1880-81 traveling in Arizona, southwestern California and Mexico. He was appointed Vice-President of the Board of the California Southern Railroad in 1881. The President of that railroad was his father-in-law Thomas Nickerson.

Rogers’ railroad links were probably a key reason why he was offered the commission to write Mexico? Sí, señor.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

What was Italian Count Giuseppe Antona doing at Lake Chapala in 1895? Shooting as many teal ducks as possible! And he wrote all about it for The Detroit Free Press.

• “Shooting Teal Duck at Lake Chapala.” (The Detroit Free Press, 3 March 1895, 11.) – pdf

Who was Giuseppe Antona?

Count Alessandro Giuseppe (sometimes Guiseppe) Valerio Antona was born in Asli, Italy, on 10 May 1865 and died in Detroit, Michigan, on 27 January 1931. According to a short piece about him in The Detroit Free Press shortly after he moved to the US in 1893, he had previously worked for the Italian government, and came from an old Piedmont family.

His grandfather was “the Count of Casale and Montebello until the Austrian domination in Italy obliterated the title with many others in Piedmont.” Following the death of his elder brother in February 1894, Giuseppe theoretically succeeded to the “earldom and estates of Barraggio, including one of the largest and most valuable vineyard tracts in all Piedmont,” in the event that his family’s title was ever restored by King Umberto I, as was widely expected to happen at the time. Unfortunately for Antona, the King was assassinated in 1900.

In April 1894 a Mexican newspaper reported that “Sra Annetta Josefa Valerio-Antona and Sr Alessandro Giuseppe Valerio-Antona, Italian writers who have lived in US for some time” were staying at the Hotel Humboldt for a couple of months, with plans to write articles for US news outlets and a book about Mexico. This report was not entirely accurate. Annetta Josefa Halliday (1866-1949) was American, not Italian, and went to Mexico as a special correspondent for the Chicago Times. Giuseppe did not marry Annetta until 26 June that year; the newlyweds received a cable of congratulations from President Porfirio Díaz and his wife.

Despite being offered a post as Secretary to the Italian Royal Legation in Cairo, Egypt, Antona chose to remain in Detroit, and do some writing alongside investing in real estate, construction, a chemical business and the wine trade. Annetta continued her established career in writing and lecturing. Less than a month after their marriage, Annetta gave a presentation on “Mexico, the Egypt of the New World” at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, Canada. Annetta also taught history and art at the Ganopel School of Musical Art. She was also reportedly working on a book about Mexico, titled The Florence of Mexico, based on her knowledge of Mexico and Mexican customs. Whether by coincidence or not, this was precisely the same title as a work by Mexican diplomat Eduardo A Gibbon published a few years earlier. She also published articles in Town Topics, Smart Set, Munsey’s, McClure’s, Scribner’s, Collier’s, Good Housekeeping, Outing and the New York Tribune.

The Antonas’ only child, Janice, was born in Michigan on 15 June 1901. Eleven years later, in 1912, Detroit society was shocked to the core when the “Count and Countess” were arrested in relation to the sudden death of their housekeeper, and were held behind bars for several days. According to press reports, their housekeeper, Miss Lizzie Fleming died at the age of 63 on 4 July after a short illness, and her body was cremated the following day. Suspicions were arisen because a few days prior to her death, Fleming made a will leaving virtually everything to Mrs. Antona. Her relatives in Ohio, who did not learn about her death until a few weeks later, claimed that Fleming had often expressed a horror of cremation and had already purchased a cemetery lot for her burial, and demanded an investigation.

What did Giuseppe Antona write about Chapala?

Antona opens his article with an exaggeratedly poetic description of Lake Chapala, setting the scene for the spring morning when he set off with three friends (one of them the son of the American consul) to shoot waterbirds at the lake. After taking the train from Guadalajara to Atequiza, the four gun-toting sportsmen’s plans to take the stage coach to Chapala were thwarted—”rendered impossible by the conductor’s illness”—so they “procured horses with some difficulty for ourselves and one extra for provisions and ammunition,” before riding south to the lake.

Antona’s article is illustrated by two unsigned sketches, which may well be the author’s own work: one of the village of Chapala, and the other of an unidentified tiny lakeshore village.

After riding through “Rancho del Mirador” and three small haciendas—San Nicolas, Labor and Buena Vista— the group approached Chapala, entering the village through a “rustic wood gate” designed to keep village livestock (and people) off the adjoining hacienda land. (Mexican Herald correspondent Owen Wallace Gillpatrick, who rode from Atequiza to the lake about three years later, claimed to have ridden through about a dozen ranches, separated by gates which were opened “at the rate of a centavo a gate, which is cheap as gates go.”)

In the 1890s the village of Chapala was tightly sandwiched between the Hacienda del Cuije (to the west and north) and the Hacienda de la Labor (to the east). As Antonio de Alba wrote decades later in Chapala, the northern limit of the village until some years into the twentieth century was approximately along the line followed by calle Degollado. It was several years after Antona’s visit before the local haciendas lost their territorial power, and Chapala had room to expand.

Antona’s visit predated the opening of the Hotel Arzapalo in 1898, so where did he stay? Arriving in Chapala, Antona and his friends “dismounted at the Inn of the ‘Nueva Purissima,’ [which] was more suited to be called a stable than anything else.” According to Antona, the rooms had no windows, a description which does not match the small inn where Eduardo Gibbon had stayed a few years earlier. Antona’s hostelry was the (no longer extant) building called “Mesón de la Purísima,” located where the Plaza Chapala Hotel (Avenida Madero #232) is today.

Giuseppe Antona (?). The Detroit Free Press, 1895.

Antona and his companions walked down to the beach, where:

The view was most fascinating: with rolling hills, steep mountains, the perfect sky, and the villas scattered here and there; one called Monte Carlo was kept by an English man named Crow[e] and nestled among the rocks like a little fortress.”

Antona’s mention of “villas” (plural), the Montecarlo, and of its then owner, Septimus Crowe, all dovetail perfectly with my own view of when and how Chapala first began its courtship with tourism. Chapala’s development certainly began some years before 1895, the date often used (even today) in some Spanish-language accounts.

The beach reminded Antona of his native land: “The smooth, sandy stretch of beach touched by the fringe of the waves, recalled the lake regions of sunny Italy.” But it was not tourism that brought Antona and his friends to Chapala, it was the local wildlife, including:

the wild teal duck, which made their homes in the tangle of matted vegetation on the shores, and render Chapala a veritable paradise.”

After bathing in the lake, they:

procured a native boat and an Indian who served both as a steersman and oarsman, and embarked just before sunset well provided with ammunition and Parker guns, our zest for sport heightened by the tract of morass visible in the distance… which our greed told us could not but abound with prey.

Our craft, made from a hollowed tree trunk, had for oars and rudder a single pole, such as might be called a slender flag-staff in the states, and used for such on national holidays, and which our Indian boatman and guide, Feliciano, maneuvered much like a laundryman attempting to fill a receptacle of soiled clothes.

Giuseppe Antona (?). The Detroit Free Press, 1895.

By moonlight, with the stars twinkling overhead, the men:

gradually and cautiously approached the feeding grounds, and leaving the smallest of wakes behind us, slid gently through the reeds and grasses and anchored behind some great logs near a mud bank.”

As hundreds and hundreds of ducks started feeding in front of them, the men opened fire:

Out of the reeds and sedge flew the terrified fowl, hundreds of wounded concealing themselves in the rushes, others half-swimming, half-wading away in their fright, the loud flapping of wings of the thousands in flight seeming like distant thunder, while dull thuds and loud splashes made known where our shots had told upon water and upon land.”

After waiting a few minutes—and as surviving ducks returned to feed—the men opened fire again… and again:

Each man emptied his barrels as quickly as possible into the black clouds, loading up again every three minutes as long as ammunition lasted.”

When the dawn light came up, the men collected “200 ducks, or 50 apiece, all blue-winged teal.” The ducks were taken to shore, and a Mexican boy hired to carry them back to the village, while the men rowed their boat back.

In addition to his article about Lake Chapala, Giuseppe Altona also published pieces about Alaska and America-Russia relations.

Sources

• Guiseppe [Giuseppe] Antona. 1895. “Shooting Teal Duck at Lake Chapala.” The Detroit Free Press, 3 March 1895, 11.
• Antonio de Alba. 1954. Chapala. Guadalajara: Banco Industrial de Jalisco.
• The Detroit Free Press: 10 Dec 1893, 23; 3 Jun 1894, 9.
• El siglo diez y nueve: 17 April 1894, 17.
• Eduardo A Gibbon. 1893. Guadalajara, (La Florencia Mexicana). El salto de Juanacatlán y El Mar Chapálico. 1992 reprint, Guadalajara: Presidencia Municipal de Guadalajara.
• The Omaha Evening Bee: 26 Mar 1895, 1.
• Muncie Evening Press: 31 Jul 1912, 2.
• Quebec Morning Chronicle: 4 July 1894, 2.
• The American: 29 Mar 1895, 1.

Bertha Kaiser was the third wife of Swiss printer and shopkeeper Juan Kaiser, who—in addition to selling accounting books and ledgers via his store “Al Libro de Caja” in Guadalajara—also published beautiful early postcards of Chapala and Guadalajara featuring the work of such distinguished photographers as José María Lupercio and Winfield Scott.

Bertha’s diary, written in German in the first quarter of the twentieth century, was unknown outside her immediate family until relatively recently. Excerpts of the diary were published in 2012 as Tagebuch Von Bertha Kaiser-Peter Fur Ihren sohn Hans Paul Kaiser.

The diary contains frequent references to the members of the small Swiss community in Guadalajara, most of whom had close friendships and ties to the much larger German community in the city.

While the diary is mostly about the family’s experiences in Guadalajara and an extended trip to the US (via train to Manzanillo and steamer to California), there are some significant Chapala links scattered through the diary.

The excerpts begin in mid-1912 when Bertha and Juan’s son, Hans-Paul, was born in Guadalajara. Following his baptism, a celebration for family and friends was held at the Hotel Cosmopolita, before the Kaisers returned to their home in Jardines Seattle.

The Hotel Cosmopolita had been owned until a few years previously by German-born Francisco Fredenhagen (1849-1932), a close friend of the Kaisers, who, in about 1900, built one of the earliest weekend ‘cottages’ in Chapala at (or very near) the property which now has the address of Avenida Hidalgo #260.

Fredenhagen was a partner in a Mexico City brewery (“La Compañia Cervecera Limitada”) when he bought the Hotel Cosmopolita in 1885 and moved to Guadalajara. One of Fredenhagen’s grandchildren later married into the Seimandi family, which included one of the early managers of Chapala’s emblematic hotel—the Hotel Arzapalo—which opened in 1898. This marriage was very much in the tradition of the time that influential families consolidated their status and wealth through intermarriage.

In the mid 1890s, Fredenhagen drew anthropologist Frederick Starr’s attention to the many little pottery objects found in and around Lake Chapala, about which Starr subsequently wrote a short monograph. Fredenhagen also informed Starr about a “dwarf race” living in the hills near Ajijic, which the anthropologist planned to investigate with the assistance of Archbishop Gillow. Gillow is a particularly interesting figure in Mexican history; his story is told in Mexican Kaleidoscope: myths, mysteries and mystique.

After Fredenhagen sold the Hotel Cosmopolita in 1909, he announced plans to move to Chapala where he and his wife owned a cottage, before retiring to Germany. Events in Europe apparently caused them to rethink that idea; Fredenhagen died in Guadalajara in 1932, and his wife died there eight years later.

Members of Kaiser family in Chapala. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

Bertha’s diary records a visit to stay with the Fredenhagens in Chapala in April 1915. Paraphrasing Bertha’s text, on February 17th the family celebrated Juan’s birthday quietly at home. Juan was not feeling well (he had a chronic illness), and they were invited to visit the Fredenhagens at Lake Chapala. They left Guadalajara on April 15th in a privately hired stagecoach (diligencia), pulled by “five lively mules” over the “sometimes very bumpy roads.” It took seven hours, but “the beautiful journey” was a “reminder of how people made long journeys in stagecoaches before the coming of the railroad.”

They spent a month with the Fredenhagen family. Bertha and Juan took a pleasant walk in the mountains every morning, before having a swim, a leisurely lunch and a siesta. They took a row boat out in the late afternoon. After dinner, they entertained themselves playing jazz.

Hans-Paul (“Juanito”) and his nanny also had a good time at Chapala. Juanito played every day on the sandy beach, bathed, and loved his time in Chapala, especially after one of his Guadalajara friends arrived with her parents.

Group at Casa Nigg, Chapala, August 1922. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

Bertha recognized that Chapala was facing a difficult time. While the lake and its shores were as beautiful as ever, the unrest in the country had led to everything being neglected: “The beautiful private villas are mostly uninhabited, the hotels are poorly maintained. In former quiet times people flocked to Chapala from everywhere.” When the trip came to an end, they returned to Guadalajara by stagecoach, “taking the most beautiful memories home with us. Mr. & Mrs. Fredenhagen were such dear hosts.”

In the summer of 1915, the Kaisers undertook an arduous journey to California to combine having a family holiday with seeking specialist medical advice.

“It was a terrible journey to Colima…. It is one of the most dangerous routes in the world, wonderfully romantic in quiet times, but in revolutionary times the line was usually out of order, the trains in terrible condition, it was a horrible ride and ridiculed any description.”

Manzanillo was even worse: “The heat was unbearable, the mosquitoes plagued the children, particularly, day & night, bad food, nothing to drink.” About 40 people from Guadalajara were waiting in the port for the steamer “Peru” to San Francisco. After several days, the steamer finally arrived and the nine day journey to San Francisco was underway.

Bertha’s diary covers their California trip in considerable detail, including Juan’s chance meeting at a German music festival in Los Angeles with a fellow postcard publisher, “Mr Ruhland, an old friend whom he hadn’t seen in 12 years.” Emil Ruhland and his partner, Max Ahlschier, founded Ruhland & Ahlschier, the first company in Mexico permitted to publish and market illustrated postcards, in 1897. After selling the company in about 1903, Ruhland had moved to the US.

The Kaisers’ return home to Guadalajara is also described in great detail in Bertha’s diary. From Manzanillo, the “extra train” which arrived to take them to Guadalajara, “didn’t have passenger wagons but only freight wagons. Awful was the ride on this old railroad train that was fueled by wood… [with] the biggest rain of sparks, which was especially bad for the eyes when going fast.” To add insult to injury, Juan’s personal suitcase, containing clothes, cash and business notes, was stolen.

The dangerous stretch between Colima and Guadalajara lasted two days and a night. All too visible in the barranca below at one point were the wrecked locomotives and passenger cars from a train accident in which hundreds of people had died.

Unfortunately, Juan never recovered from his illness and died early the following year (1916). Given the uncertain future for the business, most employees resigned. Fortunately, with the assistance of a business administrator, Emil Keller, the company remained in operation while Bertha negotiated its sale to Juan’s brother, Arnoldo.

The following year, Keller asked Bertha to marry him. Bertha, greatly conflicted but wanting the best for her 5-year-old son, said ‘Yes” and the couple were married in a small civil ceremony at Bertha’s home on 24 October 1917. The newly weds left Juanito with his nanny, and drove to Chapala for a two week honeymoon.

After a week of wondering every day how Juanito was doing, “my husband decided to go back to Guadalajara and bring the little one to me as a surprise, which of course made me very happy… Now we could stay peacefully another week and enjoy the beautiful place.”

Bertha and her husband became accustomed to spending part of every summer in Chapala. Several photos in the diary provide glimpses into the social life of Bertha and her friends. In 1922, for example, Bertha was at the farewell party for the retiring Swiss consul, Juan Nigg. Nigg invited the entire Swiss community for a steamer ride on the lake and lunch at his lakeside home. (Nigg’s successor as consul was Dr Sutter, director of the Faculty of Medicine at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, who also had a home in Chapala.)

Silver wedding of Sres Jochimsen, Chapala, November 1922. Photo by José Edmundo Sánchez. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

In that same year, Bertha and Emil attended the silver wedding celebration in Chapala of Mr and Mrs Jochimsen. The group photo showing the invitees was taken by Chapala-born photographer José Edmundo Sánchez, whose postcards of Chapala are an invaluable source of social history.

The diary also includes this photo of the Lehmann family posing on the beach at Chapala.

The Lehmann family at Chapala. c 1925. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

Not long after the period described in the diary, Bertha and her family left Guadalajara to live in Switzerland.

Acknowledgment

My sincere thanks to Hans-Martin Kaiser and Verena Kaiser-Ernst for bringing this valuable diary to my attention, and for graciously allowing me to reproduce the photos used in this post.

Help needed

Verena Kaiser-Ernst, editor of Bertha Kaiser’s diary, is interested in having the diary translated from German to Spanish for possible publication in Guadalajara. The book has approximately 20,500 words of text and about 40 photo captions. Please contact me if this is a project that appeals to you!