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EZRA DROWN
District Attorney

1857-1859; 1861-1863

District Attorney Ezra Drown

Ezra Drown

An Iowa attorney has a rough passage to Los Angeles. But he goes on to become District Attorney twice.

General Ezra Drown, a brigadier-general of the militia in Iowa, came to Los Angeles in 1853. He, his wife and two small  boys were aboard the steamship Independence as it traveled up the Mexican coast from the Isthmus of Panama. When the ship caught fire, burning to the waterline, Drown put his wife on a floating hencoop and swam to shore with the boys clinging to his back. When he returned to rescue his wife, she had been pushed into the sea by another passenger. In Los Angeles, as Harris Newmark recalled, Drown, though "broken in spirit... put his best foot forward." He worked as an attorney, then won election to the City Council. He was elected District Attorney in 1857. After another term as City Council president, Drown returned to the District Attorney's Office again in 1861.

Reprinted from FOR THE PEOPLE -- Inside the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office 1850-2000 by Michael Parrish. ISBN 1-883318-15-7