Andrew Glassell

Andrew Glassell (September 30, 1827 – January 28, 1901) was a Los Angeles real estate attorney and investor. He may be best known as one of the founders of the city of Orange, California.

Andrew Glassell was born in Orange County, Virginia, the son of Andrew Glassell (1793–1873) and Susanna Thorton (1804–1836). In 1834 his family moved to Greensboro, Alabama, where his father engaged in cotton planting. Andrew was educated in the University of Alabama, from which he graduated in 1848. After graduating he studied law. He came to San Francisco in 1853 and established a law practice. His appointment as the United States attorney at Sacramento, California soon followed. During the Civil War his sympathies were with the South, and he refused to take the loyalty oath to the United States required of lawyers. He left his public office and quit the practice of law and operated a lumber mill near Santa Cruz.

After the war Glassell came to Los Angeles in 1865. He formed a partnership with Alfred Chapman and Colonel George H. Smith, the firm becoming known as Glassell, Chapman & Smith. Their law practice was confined chiefly to real estate transactions and they made their fortunes by being retailed in the large partition suits. When Glassell first came to California, he had worked with the federal land commission that reviewed all the old Mexican Rancho grants and so he was very well versed in title land law. Chapman was the businessman of the firm. They would take their compensation in land, and nearly every final decree in partition would find that Glassell and Chapman had quite an area of land in severalty. Glassell was involved in the legal suit known as The Great Partition of 1871 brought against the Rancho San Rafael property in the eastern San Fernando Valley and Verdugo Mountains. The section he and Chapman were awarded later became the community of Glassell Park, Los Angeles. In 1875 Andrew Glassell purchased Rancho Tujunga, the adjacent northern rancho in the Valley, from Agustin Olvera.

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