Ozro W. Childs

Ozro Childs (1824–1890) was a Protestant horticulturalist, merchant, and banker in the 19th century in Los Angeles, California. He was a founding father of the University of Southern California.

Ozro W. Childs was born in Sutton, Vermont, in 1824, and received his early education there. His father was a farmer, while one of his grandfathers was a town minister. Like many young people in Vermont, he left for the West, first for Ohio, where he earned his living as a schoolteacher. While there, he learned the tinsmith’s trade.

After the discovery of gold in California, he resolved to try his luck in the gold fields. He traveled down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and boarded a ship for Nicaragua; he crossed the Central American peninsula, where he and his fellow passengers endured great hardship, because the promised ship for California did not arrive.

After some delay, he took another ship, and arrived in San Francisco in August, 1850, where he set off for the mines. However, he did not know that coastal Northern California is very foggy in the winter and summer. The weather aggravated the asthma that would eventually kill him. So, he and a man named Hicks took a ship south, arriving at the San Pedro Bay harbor.

They walked from San Pedro into the small Pueblo de Los Angeles, and decided to set up a tinsmithing and hardware store. An existing merchant sold them his entire stock on credit. After a few years, Childs was able to buy out his partner, and eventually left the trade with $40,000 in his pocket. Not long afterward, he obtained the contract to build an extension of the Zanja Madre, a canal system to bring water to the fields south of the pueblo. He was paid in land in that area – all now within present day Downtown Los Angeles - from Sixth to Ninth, and Main to Figueroa Street.

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