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business interests and raised their four children.
At some point, Fannie and Joel obtained control of all of
Connolly’s property. In 1887, Fannie’s sister sued her for debts owed
to her late first husband. Then in 1893, her sister’s attorney sued her
for payment of services and expenses resulting from the 1887 lawsuit.
How either case was settled is unknown. The Fithians were heavily
invested in Europe, but in 1892, when they decided to diversify as far
away from New York and the taint of scandal as possible, they came to
Santa Barbara.
Santa Barbara
The Fithian family had reportedly visited Santa Barbara at the
start of the land boom in 1885 or 1886, but returned to Europe for
the next several years. Upon their return, the escalating prices of land
in Santa Barbara had plummeted, and the opportunity to buy at
bargain prices enticed Major Fithian to make substantial investments.
He first purchased a 500-acre ranch at the end of Santa Monica Creek
in Carpinteria from Charles Hall, whose various attempts at making
the ranch profitable had proved futile. When Hall’s horse breeding
business went up in smoke in a barn fire, he sold it to Fithian, who
put his eighteen-year-old son, Joel Remington, in charge. Joel and his
father then embarked on a horticultural tour of Europe, searching for
specimens to send back to the ranch.
The family wasn’t in town long when Fithian’s other son, Richard
Barrett Fithian, laid eyes on the comely Anne Stow of La Patera Ranch in
Goleta. On June 6, 1893 at high noon, Anne Stow, dressed in the latest
Parisian spring style, walked down the flower-bedecked aisle of Trinity
Church on the corner of Anapamu and Anacapa. Attending to her were
white-gowned bridesmaids wearing large hats trimmed with pink roses,
carrying pink parasols and bouquets.
At the urging of his sons, who wanted to establish a country club in
Montecito, in 1894 Major Fithian purchased three oceanfront parcels of
land on Channel Drive from the Montecito Land Company and had a
clubhouse and tennis courts constructed. Eventually, the Santa Barbara
Country Club added a nine-hole golf course, a pier, bathhouse, reception
rooms, and cottages to the complex.
Major Fithian also purchased many town lots, intending to establish
Moguls & Mansions
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