The streets of Carthay Circle honor 19th century Californians; Jonathan Trumbull Warner (1807-1895) was one of the first white settlers in Los Angeles. Born in Connecticut, Warner came to California in 1831 and shuttled between L.A. and San Diego for years. As California was then controlled by Mexico, Warner became a Mexican citizen in order to own some 48,000 acres in San Diego County, even changing his name to Juan José Warner in the process. (The name change may have actually been part of his conversion to Catholicism in order to marry a Mexican woman. He was generally known as “J.J. Warner”.) Warner led a long, colorful, sometimes violent life: he was a fur trapper, rancher, trading post owner, newspaper publisher, attorney, and finally a historian. (Speaking of which, contemporary historians depict Warner as having been abjectly cruel to his ranch’s indigenous workers, which factored into a deadly raid on his ranch in 1851 by Cupeño and Cahuilla tribesmen.) Warner was good friends with Governor Pío Pico, whose own mother reportedly raised Warner’s future wife Anita Gale (c. 1821-1859). His old San Diego land carries the name Warner Springs to this day.
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