William G. Dryden

William G. Dryden (11 February 1807 – 10 September 1869) was a 19th-century lawyer who was a judge and effectively the longest-serving city clerk in the history of Los Angeles, California.

Personal Dryden was born near Richmond, Kentucky, on February 11, 1807, the son of David H. Dryden. By 1827, he was a trader in New Mexico, and also a militia captain; he was hired by Chihuahua, Mexico, Governor José Calve to build a road in that state. In 1840, after surviving a shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico, Dryden met Mirabeau Lamar, the president of the independent Republic of Texas and was assigned to recruit agents for a scheme by Lamar and others to annex most of New Mexico. Dryden nominated, allegedly without their consent, American John Rowland and English native William Workman, residents of Taos, as agents of the Texas Republic and its annexation plan, but Rowland and Workman left for Los Angeles in September 1841.

Dryden was arrested by Mexican authorities "because of incriminating documents," and he was jailed in Chihuahua for thirteen months until his release in November 1842. He filed a bill of damages for the imprisonment, but failed to perfect his claim. Afterward, he was an editor of the bilingual Republic of the Rio Grande. He then lived on the Rio Grande near Matamoros and was an interpreter for Colonel David E. Twiggs, commander of the American forces occupying that city during the Mexican–American War.

He was married twice, first to Dolores Nieto in 1851, and second to Ana Josefa (Anita) Dominguez of San Pedro in 1868, when she was about 37 and he was about 69. He had no children from either marriage. He died on September 10, 1869, and was buried with Catholic rites. he ran for mayor in 1855, but he lost to Thomas Foster by a vote of 192 for Foster and 179 for Dryden.

Dryden was a police judge or a justice of the peace for Los Angeles County in those early years, although the dates are uncertain. In 1856, Dryden was elected Los Angeles County Judge, handling some criminal, as well as major civil and probate cases. He served as county judge until his death in 1869. According to one researcher, Clare Wallace of the Los Angeles Public Library, his judicial service "paralleled the years of violence and lawlessness when Los Angeles earned its reputation of being the toughest frontier town in the West."

Dryden was appointed to the Board of Education in 1859, 1862–66 and 1868.

Private business

Dryden built the first waterworks in Los Angeles, which distributed water from springs on his property, through a flume and into a brick reservoir in the Los Angeles Plaza. Frequent damage by floods impelled him to sell the system to a company that included fellow pioneers Prudent Beaudry and Solomon Lazard.