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Community Corner

'Green Acres,' El Toro-Style

Unaccustomed to rural life, Mrs. Dwight Whiting is an ornamental and ultimately reluctant presence in the fledgling community.

In recent months, we’ve been learning about real estate impresario Dwight Whiting, whose El Toro brainchild became today’s city of Lake Forest. Last week, we met , the highly personable Judge and Mrs. Keating. Lest you think we’ve forgotten the woman who linked them—Mrs. Dwight Whiting, the former Emily Sutherland Keating—well, here she is.

Although her portrait has faded with time, it still gives us a good idea why a sophisticated world traveler and land entrepreneur like Whiting fell immediately in love. As family lore has it, moments after Dwight first saw Emily at the Hotel del Coronado’s February 1888 opening, he walked over to the state-of-the-art elevator she had just boarded and presented her with a bunch of violets hastily purchased from a nearby vendor. Within the week, they were engaged.

SAN DIEGO SOCIETY

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As we learned last week, Emily’s older brother George James Keating was the impetus behind the move she and her parents made from Nova Scotia to California. George had made his fortune—more than $2 million—through the manufacture of agricultural implements.  About two years into his second marriage, George decided to move to San Diego for health reasons. But health did not preclude an active social life. George and his wife, Fannie, quickly became part of San Diego’s social scene, entertaining lavishly in their beautiful mansion, The Dells.

Very likely, Dwight Whiting knew something about the San Diego Keatings when he attended the Hotel del Coronado's first-day ceremonies. Like George Keating, Whiting was ambitious, high-energy and had chosen California for health reasons, although his were related to asthma whereas George had a history of heart trouble.

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So, it is not difficult to understand why Emily would have been attracted to the somewhat older (by about 10 years) Whiting. In addition to his burly, bearded good looks, Dwight—like her brother George—also had the aura of success about him.

COUNTRY WIFE VS. CITY SOCIALITE

In El Toro, according to historian Clara Mason Fox, Dwight and his wife, along with their newborn daughter, Nathalie, lived for a time at the hotel not far from the train depot. But this was only until their new home had been built. Not long after, according to El Toro historian Joe Osterman, “” was completed for Dwight’s in-laws, Judge and Mrs. Keating.

All would seem fine, and in many ways it probably was. Dwight’s in-laws were delighted with life in El Toro; he was busy coming up with ideas to develop the little hamlet and, in July 1891, Emily gave birth to a son, Dwight Anson Whiting. Four years later, in June 1895, they had a second son, George.

But it seems that Emily, unlike her parents, did not take to rural life, and the health of her daughter was a concern. Accounts vary as to how old Nathalie was when she passed away, but by 1900, Emily came to regard the town's relative isolation and loss of her oldest child as, in current vernacular, “deal-breakers.”

Fortunately by this time, Dwight Whiting had agreed to run his “ranche” from a distance. After he and Emily moved to a Victorian-style mansion in Los Angeles, she began immersing herself in theater-going and other activities that were unavailable in fledgling El Toro.

Although petite—family lore indicates she was no taller than 5-foot-2—and innately feminine, Emily become known as the first Los Angeles resident to drive an electric car. She and Dwight were known to travel up and down the California coastline for both business and pleasure. In 1906, it was reported that “Mrs. Dwight Whiting of Los Angeles has let the contract for a handsome two-story cottage on First Street” in Bayside, an area under development by Phillip A. Stanton that would later become Seal Beach.

TROUBLE AHEAD

On March 19, 1907, Emily wrote to another Saddleback Valley land baron, Louis Moulton, who had been assisting the Whitings in handling various El Toro business matters.

She and Dwight had been in the area, she wrote, and had called upon him but “were disappointed that you were not at home.” With the note, Emily added, she was enclosing a check for $190 to cover a mortgage payment on St. George’s Mission. “Both my husband and I want very much to have the pleasure of your company at dinner some night when you are in town and [we] can put you up for the night,” she said, requesting that he telephone first because “we do not want to miss you . . . on Saturday and Sunday next we shall be in Santa Barbara!” Closing, she once again mentioned “Dwight and I are hoping soon to see you.”

Whether Moulton did manage to visit the Whitings at their Los Angeles address is not known. But online records indicate that less than two months later, on April 26, 1907, Dwight passed away at age 53.

Correspondence from the widowed Emily to Louis Moulton that August indicates a woman overwhelmed by financial details. By September, her oldest son, Dwight Anson, who had just turned 16, penned a brief note to Moulton stating, “Mother asked me to write to you and ask you to please return some letters of hers which you promised to do, but I suppose you have forgotten about it. She is coming down on Tuesday [and] about one o’clock she will be ready to take the drive with you to see the country road, etc.”  (This last reference was to a road through the Whiting estate that had been petitioned for public right-of-way.)

In a letter penned the following day, Emily states her concern for the eucalyptus planted and nurtured by her late husband, adding, “I do not think you a good judge of what is best for welfare for you do not value it (commercially). I do—almost beyond the ranch itself.”

The outcome of these matters is—at this point in time, for this columnist—shrouded in mystery.

LIFE AFTER DWIGHT

What became of Emily after the initial shock of becoming a widow and shouldering so many concerns? We know she saw both of her sons through college and marriage and eventually became a grandmother. We also know Emily delved into matrimony again, not once but twice.

Of Emily’s second husband, the most I have found is that his name was Eyre Barrow Finch, born the same year as Emily (1863), and that he was buried at El Toro's cemetery in 1910, making her a widow once more.

Her third marriage, to Gregory Perkins Jr., showed definite signs of distress: By 1915, Emily petitioned for divorce on grounds of extreme mental cruelty.

Emily passed away Nov. 8, 1933, at age 70, around the time her sons were rehabilitating the Serrano adobe (the centerpiece of today’s Heritage Hill Historical Park) into a vacation home and hunting lodge.

Editor's note: After additional research, the date of Dwight Whiting's death has been corrected, as has the number of years separating Emily and Dwight.

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