Early California businessman married most beautiful woman in the state
The Pasadena Star-News migration
The Pasadena Museum of History acquired a small collection of photographs of early Californians. This picture was not identified but it didn’t take much research to decide it was of Don Abel Stearns, one of the earliest American businessmen to settle in California when it was governed by Mexico.Stearns was born in Massachusetts in 1799, […]
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Pasadena Star News
The Pasadena Museum of History acquired a small collection of photographs of early Californians. This picture was not identified but it didn’t take much research to decide it was of Don Abel Stearns, one of the earliest American businessmen to settle in California when it was governed by Mexico.

Stearns was born in Massachusetts in 1799, came to Mexico in 1826 and became a Mexican citizen in 1828.

He became fluent in Spanish and converted to the Roman Catholic religion, although one bio says his background was Jewish. He came to Monterey, California, in 1829 and settled in Los Angeles in 1833.

He became friends with Juan Bandini and joined with him and others in a mini revolution against the Mexican Governor.

Stearns set up a shipping business out of San Pedro, his warehouse being called “La Casa de San Pedro” where he shipped hides and tallow, wines, and imported manufactured products. He became rich at this and began to buy large ranchos.

In 1842, he shipped the first gold from the Placerita Canyon area to the Philadelphia Mint.

His home was in downtown Los Angeles.

Although friends with American Consul Larkin in Monterey, Stearns seems to have taken a neutral position in the war with Mexico.

When Stearns was 43 and she, 16, he married Arcadia Bandini, said to be the most beautiful woman in California. Stearns was no prize; he was nicknamed “Caro de Caballo,” horse face. His face had also been scarred by a knife attack. Their home in Los Angeles, El Palacio, became a social and political center.

Harris Newmark wrote, ‘Don Abel Stearns owned the first carriage in town; it was a strong, but rather light and graceful vehicle, with a closed top, which he had imported from Boston in 1853, to please Doña Arcadia, it was said.”

A great drought in the 1860’s wiped out the cattle on Stearn’s ranchos. He tried to mortgage the land, sold 177,00 acres, and recovered some money but died in San Francisco in 1871.

Arcadia Bandini Stearns then married Colonel Robert Baker who had owned a rancho in the Santa Monica area. When Arcadia died in 1912, she was one of the richest women in the country.

— Sid Gally is a Pasadena Museum of History volunteer.