USA > California > Alameda County > History of Alameda County, California. Volume II > Part 41
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EDGAR M. SANBORN
Edgar M. Sanborn, who conducts a successful florist business at 410 Thirteenth street, Oakland, is distinguished in two ways, first, in having the oldest business in his line in Oakland, and, second, for the very splendid work which he accom- plished in the development and improvement of the city's park system, in which the people take a great pride. Mr. Sanborn is a native of Oakland, where he was born on the 1st day of December, 1883, and is a son of Henry M. and Sarah (Gladding) Sanborn, the latter a daughter of Allen I. Gladding, who was one of the pioneer real estate men and large land owners of Oakland. Henry M. San- born came from Crown Point, New York, to Oakland in 1868, at which time he was eighteen years of age. His sister had become the wife of James Hutchison, who had established a nursery here in 1852, and Mr. Sanborn went to work for Mr. Hutchison, whose business partner he later became and, on the death of Mr. Huchison, he became sole owner of the business, of which he remained the head until his death, in 1916. His wife died in 1918. They were the parents of two children, Edgar M., and Mrs. James T. Lea.
Edgar M. Sanborn attended the public schools, graduating from high school in 1901, after which he took a course in horticulture at the University of Califor- nia, from which he was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Science in 1906. He then entered business with his father and on the latter's death be- came the owner of the business, which he has conducted to the present time. His slogan is "Sanborn's Flowers for Every Occasion," and his business has enjoyed a steady and substantial growth, so that he is now regarded as the leading florist of this locality.
Mr. Sanborn was united in marriage to Miss Helen Chandler, who was born and reared in Oakland, where her parents were early settlers. They have two children, Nelda, who, is a graduate of the Polytechnic high school and now a stu- dent in the University of California, and Doris, now in high school. Politically
EDGAR M. SANBORN
25V2
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Mr. Sanborn is a stanch supporter of the republican party and has long been ac- tively interested in local public affairs. He served for six years as a member of the city park board and during three years of that period was president of the board. A practical floraculturist and a man of highly developed artistic sense, he was particularly well qualified for this position, and during his official tenure was instrumental in effecting many valuable improvements in the parks. The park acreage was more than doubled, the city purchasing one hundred and seventy- seven acres of redwoods, though not without considerab'e opposition, but the sub- sequent appreciation in value of this land and its well deserved popularity as a park has altered the sentiment of those who opposed its purchase. Comfort stations were established, a band stand erected, a bowling club house built and Lake Merritt dredged, a municipal zoological garden established and a boulevard constructed around the lake. Important improvements were made also in Leona Heights park and in Elizabeth Sanborn park at Fruitvale. For his successful ef- forts in this direction, Mr. Sanborn is entitled to and receives the grateful appre- ciation of the people of Oakland. He is a member of Oakland Lodge, No. 171, B. P. O. E .; Athens Parlor, No. 195, N. S. G. W., and the Rotary Club, of which he has been a member for fifteen years. A business man of clear-headed judg- ment, a citizen of progressive ideas, and a loyal neighbor and constant friend, he well deserves the high place which he holds in the confidence and respect of his fellowmen and is extremely popular among his associates.
MILLARD JOSEPHUS LAYMANCE
The life story of Millard Josephus Laymance can only be written in the terms of superlatives. Any one of the projects that he has carried forward to successful completion would entitle him to prominence, but there are many achievements to his credit which have made for the upbuilding not only of his own fortunes but of the city of Oakland and the entire Bay district. Where other men have seen failure he has visioned success, and where other men have faltered before obstacles and seemingly insurmountable difficulties he has found a way to carry out his pur- poses and turn his plans into conclusive results.
Mr. Laymance was born at Tunnel Hill, Whitfield county, Georgia, November 10, 1856, a son of E. M. and Adeline D. Laymance. The family was founded in America by his great-great-grandfather, who left his native France to become a resident of the United States and settled in South Carolina. E. M. Laymance was a native of that state and in his boyhood accompanied his parents on their removal to Georgia. He married Adeline D. Austin, whose great-grandfather came from England and settled in Virginia, removing later to East Tennessee.
In private schools of Tunnel Hill, Georgia, Millard J. Laymance pursued his education to his fourteenth year, when he started out in the business world as a clerk in a general merchandise store, in which he was employed for five years. He was nineteen years of age when he came to California, taking up his abode in Sonoma county, where he followed farming and fruit raising until October, 1877, when he removed to Humboldt county, Nevada, and there engaged in raising stock for seven
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years, meeting with varied success. He was married July 11, 1883, to Miss May L. Lemon, a daughter of William T. Lemon, a pioneer resident of San Leandro, Alameda county, who had come to California from Kentucky in 1849, crossing the plains with ox team and covered wagon. He took up his abode at San Lorenzo and on his farm of six hundred acres there reared a large family. Mr. and Mrs. Laymance became the parents of four daughters: Aida May, the wife of Rexford H. Conant ; Blanche Leila, the wife of Leslie F. Rice; Grace Mildred, wife of Harold W. Jewett ; and Hazel Dorothy, wife of Henry A. Hilborn, Jr.
It was the year following their marriage that Mr. and Mrs. Laymance estab- lished their home in San Joaquin county, California, where for three years he devoted his attention to grain raising on a farm comprising between two and three thousand acres, but poor crops and other disastrous causes lost for him all that he had made in Nevada. Although this was seemingly an untoward fate, it proved to be his real opportunity, for in August, 1887, he became a resident of Oakland, where he at once engaged in the real estate business under the firm style of M. J. Laymance & Company. A few years later the business was incorporated under the name of the Laymance Real Estate Company, at which time he was joined by his two brothers, J. Walter and William J., although after a few years J. Walter sold his interest to Millard J. Laymance, William remaining an active factor in the company until his demise in 1925. For forty-one years the firm has operated in Oakland and no enterprise has featured more largely in the improvement and development of the city through the reclamation of wild lands and their conversion into beautiful resi- dential sections or fine business districts. Mr. Laymance has carried on his opera- tions extensively and his work as president of the Laymance Real Estate Company places him among the foremost factors in the promotion of realty interests in the Bay district. Other enterprises of equal extent and importance, however, have claimed his attention and profited by his direction. Through the forty-year period be- tween 1887 and 1927 he organized several successful corporations, including a num- ber of oil companies, and became one of the prosperous oil operators of the state. In 1899 he incorporated the California Standard Oil Company with a capital of a half million dollars, and this was followed by the Giant Oil Company with an equal capitalization and the Pittsburgth Oil Company with a capital of two hundred thousand dollars. He also became one of the promoters and incorporators of the Associated Oil Company, a forty-million dollar corporation that took over his first companies. In 1906, following the earthquake and fire in San Francisco, he withdrew from the oil business and concentrated his attention upon real estate and other commercial projects, one of which was the building of the Oakland Orpheum, which he leased to the Orpheum Company, thereby securing the Orpheum theater for the city. In 1909, however, he reentered the oil business, purchasing three hun- dred and twenty acres of land at Maricopa and one hundred and twenty acres at McKittrick, after which he formed two campanies, one known as The M. J. & M. M. Consolidated, a two-million-dollar corporation, and the other the Ethel D Com- pany, capitalized for a million dollars. Mr. Laymance was the president and mana- ger of each company for five years and each corporation has always paid good dividends. In 1910 he extended the scope of his activities by organizing a syndicate in which his associates were J. F. Carlson, F. M. Smith, C. Berry and Walter Frick. Section 2 at Taft was purchased and on that ground the first well of this district was
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drilled. It is now owned by the North American Consolidated and has produced over ten million barrels of oil. Throughout the years Mr. Laymance has continued his operations in real estate and has contributed in notable measure to the growth and development of the city and then maintenance of its realty values.
His activities, however, have seemed to have no limit and have reached colossal proportions. There is no resident of Oakland who has contributed in larger measure to the political history of California and yet he has never sought nor held office. The year that witnessed his arrival in Oakland also saw the beginning of his friend- ship with Frank J. Moffitt, owner of the Morning Times, a democratic paper, and other leaders of the party. He was solicited to become a member of the county democratic committee, which he did, and at its annual meeting was proffered the committee chairmanship. This he declined, but his objections were overruled and the loyal support of the committee was pledged to him at a time when it seemed impossible to elect a democrat, as the republican majority in Alameda county ex- ceeded five thousand. Mr. Laymance at once began the reorganization of the com- mittee by adding to its membership men from each voting precinct in the city and county. The organization work was continued with the same thoroughness that has ever characterized his business management. He soon had a committee of one hun- dred members, each at the head of his party in the precinct, and soon he had com- pleted the strongest and most perfect organization of any county in the state. He remained at the head of the democratic party in Alameda county for a quarter of a century, so arranging his political and civic work that he could devote his evenings thereto without interference in his business affairs. Naturally he was made a mem- ber of the state committee as well as chairman of the county committee. At the time when he undertook the work the republican party had a fine club composed of its richest members, handsomely uniformed. Mr. Laymance soon brought about the organization not only of a democratic club as splendidly equipped but of at least a dozen democratic clubs, with uniforms and torches, and these were invited to par- ticipate in all important political events in the state. Moreover, the efforts of the organization which he had developed brought about the election not only of local nominees but of the heads of the democratic ticket in California. In all of his not- able political activity he never made any enemies, many of his best and dearest friends in Oakland and the state being republicans. He usually served on the finance committee of the state democratic committee and managed to meet the heavy expenses incurred in the political work of his party. The Alameda county delegation under his leadership always voted as a unit in the state conventions and became a big factor in party ranks. When James Budd was nominated for gov- ernor the democratic organization was so highly developed that his election followed and the legislature became democratic, while the party also carried the county elec- tions. It was the thorough business management of Mr. Laymance in the state convention held in Fresno in 1892 that brought about the support of California for Grover Cleveland for the presidency. Mr. Laymance was made an alternate delegate to the national convention held in Chicago. A. B. Butler of Fresno county was elected chairman of the delegation, with Mr. Laymance as secretary, and turned over to him all the details in reference to the delegation, and the hospitality of the California delegation and its activity constituted an important chapter in the history of that memorable convention. Following his return home Mr. Laymance was
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tendered a banquet by the delegation, on which occasion he was presented with a fine split-second gold watch engraved on the inside of the case with the words: "M. J. Laymance, with the good wishes of the California Delegation Democratic Convention, Chicago, 1892." Because of his mammoth business and civic activities Mr. Laymance would never accept political office but continued to take an active part in politics until 1914, when he refused to longer serve on either the county or state committees. His labors, however, had often swung his county and the state into democratic successes and thus he aided in shaping the history of the common- wealth.
His civic activities, however, have perhaps eclipsed all other work of his life. With keen discernment and notably broad vision he foresaw something of what the future had in store for Oakland and for many years he never ceased to labor untiringly for the city's development and upbuilding. With his arrival in Oakland he studied the possibilities of the city and the East Bay and recognized the fact that San Francisco was on the wrong side of the Bay and that Oakland would some day be a great city because of its invaluable asset-its water front, which was then in possession of the Central & Southern Pacific Railroad Company, but he also knew that Oakland could not go ahead unless it obtained possession of this water front. With this end in view he became a director of the Board of Trade. A suit was filed to regain the water front. To Mr. Laymance, who was then on the harbor committee, William Laird Hill, then one of the city attorneys, said that if the city's complaint was amended the water front could finally be recovered, as the railroad only had a lease and that the lease had expired. The complaint was amended and after the question was taken through all the courts to the United States supreme court, Oakland after several years' litigation recovered her water front. When the board of supervisors and the Board of Trade were merged into the Chamber of Commerce he was made a director and chairman of the harbor committee, remain- ing as such for the Board of Trade and the Chamber of Commerce for more than a quarter of a century. He set to work through the congressmen to obtain an op- propriation for deepening the estuary. This met intense opposition from the South- ern Pacific Railway, which was making large profit from the handling of all freight from the Bay district. Oakland had on various occasions promised to improve her water front, and when Mr. Laymance saw the United States engineer in regard to approving an appropriation for Oakland he received this answer: "Mr. Laymance, I will not approve a cent for Oakland until Oakland does something. The estuary is twenty-five feet deep at low tide and you cannot dock a vessel that draws over sixteen feet. You say you are going to do something every year, but you don't do anything." The ultimate result after hearing this reply was that Oakland carried a bond election setting aside two and one-half million dollars for the improvement of the water front, and immediately Oakland started to grow, having then something to offer manufacturers and every kind of industry that would develop business and the city. Mr. Laymance had asked for a ten-million-dollar bond issue, which several years later was voted, and, as he foresaw, the development of her water front has been Oakland's one great asset.
With his return from the democratic national convention in Denver in 1906, Mr. Laymance was enthusiastic over the project of erecting a great auditorium similar to that in Denver but dropped the matter temporarily because of the project
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that had already been instituted to build a fine hotel, a company of business men and bankers having incorporated and purchased the block on Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Harrison and Alice streets. The arrangements were that the real estate men and the general public would secure subscriptions for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in stock in the company and the banks were to take seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in bonds, but two of the banks got into financial difficulties and there was a plan on foot to let the project fall through. Mr. Laymance saw that this would be disastrous for Oakland's future and obtaining the cooperation of C. H. King, who had subscribed fifty thousand dollars, F. M. Smith, who had subscribed one hundred thousand dollars, and William Dargie of the Tribune, he succeeded in bringing about a meeting of the board of directors, where it was agreed that the bankers would take five hundred thousand dollars of the bonds if Mr. Lay- mance raised two hundred and fifty thousand dollars more by increasing the capital stock. There is no such word as fail in his vocabulary, and today the Oakland Hotel is a monument of his determined purpose and civic spirit. It was then that he again took up the plan of securing an auditorium for Oakland, his labors result- ing in the passage of a bond issue of four hundred thousand dollars, and the audi- torium was ultimately erected at a cost of approximately one million dollars.
When that project was carried to successful completion Mr. Laymance was made a member of a committee to get the business and professional men to form a Commercial Club, with the result that the Oakland Commercial Club was organ- ized with two hundred of the most prominent residents of the city as members, Mr. Laymance being elected vice president. Again he was made chairman of its harbor committee and again he put forth effort that led to the unqualified endorse- ment of the harbor plan of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas H. Rees, thus removing the last obstacle to securing government aid for the development of the western water front. In this connection the city has undertaken projects the value of which cannot be over-estimated. Its larger scheme of harbor improvement is known as the Key Route Basin, where the city is improving a frontage of fifty-one hundred lineal feet and reclaiming two hundred and ninety-four acres of tide land available for warehouse and manufacturing sites. Today great commercial and industrial enterprises are found on Oakland's water front and ocean vessels of the largest size can reach its piers. After thirty years of intense and resultant activity in civic organizations, knowing that the foundations were properly laid and that noth- ing could stop Oakland's progress and, moreover, as the World war swept the United States into its vortex, Mr. Laymance felt that his private business affairs needed his undivided attention and withdrew from immediate active association with civic interests.
He is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity as a member of Oakland Lodge No. 188, F. & A. M .; Oakland Chapter No. 36, R. A. M .; Athens Chapter No. 277, O. E. S .; the Masonic Club of San Francisco, the Athenian Nile Club and the Athens Athletic Club, being a charter member of the last named. It is impossible to over-estimate the value of his work to Oakland and the Bay district. Ever looking beyond the exigencies of the moment to the opportunities and possibilities of the future, he has labored untiringly, losing sight of no detail yet giving due prominence to the major phase of every situation. He has exerted marked influence not alone because of his splendid business ability but because men have always believed in
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him, recognized in him a man of unquestioned integrity and one who has never in the slightest degree sacrificed the public weal to personal ends. He has found joy in opportunity and contentment in success, and he enjoys the respect, admiration and honor of all who know aught of his history, which for many years has been largely familiar to the general public from coast to coast.
DUNCAN S. NEILSON
The Berkeley Steel Construction Company has a well earned reputation as à maker and builder of steel tanks, and in that line has successfully handled many im- portant contracts. It is regarded as one of the most substantial and prosperous in- dustries of Alameda county and reflects great credit on the founders and owners of the business, T. S. and D. S. Neilson. Duncan S. Neilson, vice president and plant superintendent of the Berkeley Steel Construction Company, was born in Greenock, Scotland, April 16, 1886, and is a son of Andrew Scott and Jessie (Sin- clair) Neilson, both deceased, the father dying in 1926, at the age of sixty-five years. He was for many years a locomotive engineer in Scotland and a number of times piloted passenger trains carrying King Edward and other members of the nobility. The mother passed away when Duncan S. was twelve years of age.
Having attended the public and high schools in his native country, Duncan S. Neilson then served an apprenticeship in the shipyards and engineering works, three years in the yards and two years in boiler shops, the entire period of five years being with the Russell Scott Company, whose plant was located on the river Clyde. On the completion of his apprenticeship he faced the problem confronting so many Scottish youths, whether to go to Australia, United States, South Africa or Canada. He decided on Canada and in 1906 went to Vancouver, British Colum- bia, where he arrived in July. He was furtunate in obtaining employment with the Vancouver Engineering Works, with which he remained several years. After two years he was made a foreman, holding that position until 1914, when he took his wife and two children on a trip to Scotland. He returned to Vancouver just as Canada was entering the World war, and on offering his services to the govern- ment was sent to Prince Rupert to superintendent the construction of a big dry dock for the British government, a job which commanded his attention until the end of 1915. He then returned to Vancouver to build submarines for the Russian government, completing five, which were shipped, knocked down, to Kola, Russia. A peculiar coincidence was the fact that at that time the British government sent Mr. Neilson's father to Archangel, Russia, to set up and start some locomotives of English make. On the completion of his submarine building, Mr. Neilson went to work for Wallace & Company, at Vancouver, as superintendent, and had the dis- tinction of building the first steel merchant vessel at Vancouver, it being named the "War Dog". He was next employed in Coughlan's shipyards at Vancouver, where he built eight steel vessels for the Canadian government, each of eighty- eight thousand tons burden, and on their completion he returned to Prince Rupert and built another steel vessel of the same size. While there, Mr. Neilson was afflicted with a severe attack of rheumatism, owing to the cold and dampness of the
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climate, and was very ill for about three months. He was advised to seek a warmer climate and in 1920 came to Berkeley, California, to which city his brother, T. S. Neilson, had come the previous year. For awhile he and his brother worked in the Moore shipyards of the California Steel Products Company of San Francisco. but at the end of two years decided to start in business for themselves. To this end, they leased the plant of the old Berkeley Iron Works, on Second street, and in February, 1923, began active operations, under the firm name of the Berkeley Steel Construction Company, their specialty being steel tanks and smokestacks. Meeting with encouraging success, they bought a block of land on Second street, extending through to First street, and from Camilia to Gillman streets, and there erected a modern and up-to-date plant, the main building being fifty by two hundred and fifty feet. This is the first electrically welded steel structure west of Pittsburgh built to carry heavy cranes, and has in every respect fulfilled its purpose. They have since also bought a half block of land on the opposite side of Camilia street, and are now well equipped for handling any sized contract in their line. A spur track of the Southern Pacific Railroad affords excellent shipping facilities, though they also ship largely over the Santa Fe, much of their work going to southern California and the Mexican border, one of their most important recent jobs being at Plaster City, eight miles north of the border line. They also send much of their output to Canada and the gold coast of South Africa and do a large business with the oil companies of California. They are painstaking in their work and when necessary give their personal supervision to the completion of the outside jobs, for they take a justifiable pride in the high quality of their work. They are now doing work for the California Verde Oil Company and are successfully competing with the steel construction companies of Los Angeles. The volume of their business has steadily increased through the years, amounting to over three hundred and seventy thousand dollars in 1927, and this is now one of the most important indus- tries of Berkeley.
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