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Benjamin Ignatius Hayes


Benjamin Hayes, or Benjamin Ignatius Hayes, (1815–77) was an American pioneer who was the first judge of the district court that served Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino counties in California. His seminal rulings are still cited in that state's courts.

Hayes was born on February 14, 1815, in Baltimore, Maryland, and was graduated from St. Mary's University in that city. Shortly after graduation, he relocated to Missouri, but in 1849 he "set out from Independence, Missouri, for California, riding one mule and leading another packed with supplies for the trip." He joined a train of pioneers and reached a Mormon settlement near San Bernardino, California, in January 1850. He stopped again at Mission San Gabriel and reached the "pueblo of Los Angeles" on February 3, looked around, went back to San Gabriel, sold his mules and returned to stay in the pueblo.

Two of his sisters moved to Los Angeles as well. They were Helena, "the mother of Fred Eaton, one of the city's mayors; and Louisa, the first public school teacher. . . ."

A Roman Catholic, Hayes was married twice—first, on November 16, 1848, in St. Louis, Missouri, to Emily Martha Chauncey of Harford County, Maryland, who died in 1857, and second, on August 2, 1866, in San Diego, California, to Adelaida Serrano. He had two children, John Chauncey and Mary Adelaida.

Hayes was joined by his wife Emily late in 1851, traveling "by packet to New Orleans, thence by steamer to Panama, which she crossed side saddle on a mule, then by steamer to San Diego." After she died in 1857, the Lafayette Hotel was built on the property, where he reared his son and where Benjamin Hayes died on August 4, 1877.


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