History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 123

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362

USA > California > Fresno County > History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I > Part 123

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H. P. MERRITT, M. D.

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counties, besides his holdings in Yolo County. He was the organizer of the 76 Land and Water Co., which built the 76 Canal, purchased and devel- oped thousands of acres of land in Fresno and Tulare Counties, making the desert blossom like the rose. He was largely instrumental in starting the Bank of Yolo, of which he was president up to the time of his death, and was one of the charter members of the Yolo County Savings Bank also. As a public-spirited citizen he gave many rights of way for irrigating canals and railroads, and aided in everything that had a tendency to develop the country : he was also liberal in giving to churches and took great interest in educational matters.

Mr. Merritt was married in 1868 to Jeanette E. Hebron, a woman of many accomplishments and the mother of his four children: Lanson, who died in 1898, after having made a name and place for himself in both Cali- fornia and Navada as a stock-raiser and business man; George N., vice presi- dent of the Bank of Yolo and a prominent capitalist; Florence. Mrs. C. C. Gardner, of Alameda; and Jeanette, who married Roy P. Mathews of Navelencia.

After the death of her husband, Mrs. Merritt took up the burden of business and the management of the affairs left by him. How well she has managed these affairs is shown by her adding to the holdings and greatly increasing the value of them. Besides the items enumerated above, Mrs. Merritt owns with her son, Merritt Terrace, a thirty-acre subdivision of San Francisco, and other realty holdings in various parts of the state. She is liberal and progressive and has carried out faithfully the ambitions and ideals of her husband and herself with remarkable success.

MRS. JULIA ANN JACOBS .- The distinction of being a native daugh- ter. as well as being a daughter of a fortv-niner, and of an honored pioneer family of California, belongs to Mrs. Julia Fink Jacobs, who was born in Fresno County, in 1863, the daughter of Peter and Eliza (Deakin) Fink, natives of Wisconsin and England, respectively. In 1849, Peter Fink, in- spired by the reports of the discovery of gold, migrated to California. How- ever, like many another miner. Mr. Fink decided that farming offered a safer and more dependable means of livelihood, so he took up agriculture and followed it successfully the remainder of his days. Peter Fink's demise occurred in 1904. Mr. and Mrs. Fink were the parents of six children, as follows: Mrs. J. F. Hill ; Mrs. Julia A. Jacobs; Mrs. T. W. Street ; Mrs. Rose Deason : Mrs. Mary Hackett : and Peter E. Fink.

In 1886. Julia Fink was united in marriage with Alfred T. Marsh, at one time a deputy sheriff in Arizona, where they lived for twelve years. This union was blessed with seven children; four of whom are living: Mrs. E. C. Pulliam ; Maggie ; Alice ; and Ralph, who is now in the United States Navy. The second marriage of Mrs. Julia Marsh was solemnized in 1902. when she was united with Harry Jacobs, born in Kentucky. They settled down to farming on part of the Fink estate. In 1918 she moved to Fresno where she now resides.

For a more extended account of the pioneer Fink family, see the sketch of Eliza Fink on another page of this history.

CHRIS L. HANSEN .- A pioneer whose early life was a struggle for existence, but who has prospered since he came to Fresno County, is Chris L. Hansen, who has a record of thirty-five years of faithful and honorable ser- vice for the Valley Lumber Company in their Fresno yards. He was born on April 21. 1859, in Schleswig-Holstein, under the Danish flag, five years before Germany took it from Denmark, and grew up to attend the local school. Inasmuch as the territory there came under German rule in 1864, he had to study German in the schools much against his wishes. But he studied Danish also, and for the most part, and was brought up in the Danish Lutheran Church.

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His father was Ehm Hansen, a farmer operating on a small scale, who owned a few acres and kept two or three cows, making most of his living working out on larger farms. He was in the Danish army in the War of 1848 with Germany, and proved himself thoroughly patriotic. He lived to be forty- eight, and died when Chris was only twelve or thirteen years old. He was married in Schleswig to Elsie Hansen, who died there in February, 1917, almost ninety years old. The good couple had four children: Christian L., the oldest : Methe, who married Christian Iversen, and now resides in Scherre- beck, Schleswig: Niels P. Hansen, a vineyardist and rancher near Oleander; and H. A. Hansen, agent at Selma for the Valley Lumber Company.

In 1876, before he was seventeen, Chris Hansen went to Denmark in order to get away from German militarism, and there he worked at farm labor. At twenty-one, he enlisted in the Danish army, served two one-half years, and was honorably discharged. Then he returned to Schleswig and bade good-bye to his mother and home, and bravely made off for the United States. He sailed from Hamburg, and landed at Castle Garden in New York City on November 1, 1882. His taking up residence in Denmark was due to the fact that when Germany annexed Schleswig-Holstein it was provided that any boy born before 1870 might remain a subject of Denmark by removing to Denmark before he was seventeen.

An old army friend knew something about Paterson, and that drew Mr. Hansen to New Jersey, but he left the city after thirty days' work on a dairy farm, where he had received seven dollars for his labor and had to pay an employment agency one dollar to get the job. He then went to Perth Amboy, where he secured work at one dollar a day, digging clay for a brick and tile factory, and where he had to pay sixteen dollars a month for board ; and he stayed there until August, 1883, when he concluded to try California.

He arrived at Fresno, therefore, in the latter part of August, 1883, and from the first thought that he had reached next-door to heaven, with the result that, with the exception of the time when he went back to Denmark for a visit and traveled to Paris and other parts of Europe, he has never been absent from the county since. He had only a good head, generally favor- able health, and two willing hands, but he set to work with a resolution to earn and to win. He first worked on the San Joaquin canal, and then on Canal 76; and then he entered the service of F. K. Prescott, in the vineyard of his little ranch on Elm Avenue. Not having work for him all the time, Mr. Pres- cott took him to Fresno and employed him in the Prescott & Pierce Lumber and Wood Yard. This gentleman soon found out that Mr. Hansen was a good penman and quick at figures, and gave him a clerkship ; and when the foreman of the yard was taken sick, he gave him his place, and he held the foremanship from the summer of 1884 to 1918-a wonderful record of fidelity. In 1888, the company was incorporated as the Valley Lumber Company with yards at various places ; and Mr. Hansen's foremanship extended to the Fresno yard.

Working for wages, he saved his money, and in 1887-88 he made a few wise investments and got a good start. He was married in 1894 to Miss Ingel- borg Madsen, a native of Denmark, where she was born at Heibol, Jutland, and who had come to California a young lady. Nine children resulted from this union : Elsie, who died when she was two and a half years old; Emma ; Anton and Henry, on the home farm; Eleanor, Meta, Christopher, Herbert and Anna.

As has been said, Mr. Hansen saved his wages and speculated in a small way. He bought and sold city lots in Fresno; improved city property and sold it, and also built three houses in that city. He purchased 300 acres here three years ago, and this choice land now lies one one-half miles southwest of Helm station. He owns 240 acres of West Side land. He bought three quarter-sections on the West Side several years ago, and later sold half of it for as much as he paid for the entire 480 acres, so that he has his 240 acres as profit. The three quarter-sections he bought cost him seven dollars an

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acre. In 1918, Mr. Hansen resigned his position with the Valley Lumber Company and since then, he has put all of his time and energies on the im- provement of his holdings, which he had rented out in 1916 and 1917.

Mr. Hansen is trying out an important experiment in prune-growing. He set out 1,600 French prune trees in 1918 and in 1919 set out several acres more of the same variety on his West Side ranch. They were all doing well up to this time, July 26, 1919.

A Republican in national politics, Mr. Hansen gives his support to meas- ures for local improvement, regardless of party lines. He finds the greatest opportunity for religious work in the Salvation Army.

Together with his three sturdy sons, Mr. Hansen devotes most of his time to the work on his West Side ranch. His wife and the rest of the children reside at his little fruit ranch on Willow Avenue in Fresno, when every week- end is happily spent in religious observance and family reunion.

ANDREW MATTEI .- A. Mattei was born on a small farm in Canton Ticino, Switzerland, on August 9, 1855, a son of Francisco and Ursula (Pelanda) Mattei, farmers in their native canton. Before his marriage Fran- cisco Mattei was a teacher, and his son Andrew received a good common- school education. As a youth he was strong and rugged, used to hard work and simple living. He came to the United States when he was eighteen years of age, arriving in April, 1874, and going direct to Eureka, Nev., went to work in the timber where he continued that kind of work for twenty-six months, meantime becoming used to the ways of this part of the country and learning English. In July, 1876, he went to San Francisco and from there to Modesto, Stanislaus County, where he found work in a dairy owned by George Owens, for the following six months. His next move took him to San Jose, where he continued working at the dairy business, and then he went to San Francisco for eight months. He returned to San Jose and for three years was again employed in a dairy. On January 1. 1882, he arrived in Los Angeles and was engaged in the manufacture of cream of tartar for six months, then leased some land where he began the dairy business for himself, delivering his product to customers in the city. After renting four years Mr. Mattei bought the ranch and cattle, and so continued until 1890, when he located in Fresno County, but he continued to own the Los Angeles ranch, which he had leased for dairy purposes, until 1894.

In 1887 he had made a visit to Fresno County and purchased the nucleus of his present holdings, foreseeing the great possibilities of what was then desert country. When he became owner of the 320 acres it was part of a large grain field, but he started in to develop the property as he intended to make it a permanent home place. In 1890, after settling here, he set out eighty acres in vines and has continued to increase his acreage until today he is the largest individual vineyardist and wine-manufacturer in the United States. By 1910 he had 1,200 acres set to vines, of many varieties of wine grapes as well as raisin. He made his first wine in 1892, starting on a small scale, and by 1902 he made 300,000 gallons of wine and 1.000 gallons of proof brandy, all of which he sold in carload lots. He enlarged his scope of opera- tions by erecting more buildings and now can store over 3.000.000 gallons of wine; in his bonded warehouse he can store 350,000 gallons of brandy. His business is done only on a wholesale plan. Mr. Mattei bought grapes where- · ever he could find them, employing many men in his various branches of business. He created a local market for his wine and gave but little attention to outside business, but about 1913 he began to ship to eastern and other markets. In 1915, at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, he was awarded twenty-two prizes for his products, including the Medal of Honor, gold medals and other premiums. The yearly production of wine by the wineries owned by Mr. Mattei averages from 800,000 to 1,000,000 gal- lons. His plant resembles a small city, for the buildings cover a large area

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of land, located near Fresno, where Mr. Mattei settled when he first came to the county.

In 1886, in Los Angeles, Andrew Mattei was married to Miss Eleanor J. Joughin, born in Rockford, Ill., who came to California with her parents in 1860, locating in Los Angeles in 1866, where she was reared and educated. Her father, Andrew Joughin, was born in the Isle of Man, on February 23, 1824. He was a blacksmith in his native place and also after coming to the United States, in 1854, when he settled in Rockford, Ill. In 1859 he came via Panama to Sacramento, Cal .; in 1866 he established his home in Los Angeles where he made investments that caused him to be rated among the wealthy men of that city. He died there on February 7, 1889, when about sixty-five years of age. Mr. and Mrs. Mattei have three children: Andrew, Jr., Anne Joughin, and Eleanor Theadolinda, who, with their parents enjoy the esteem and good will of their many friends.

Mr. Mattei recalls Los Angeles as a small city, when the vicinity of Fourth and Broadway was considered in the country ; he also has recollec- tions of Fresno County when there were but two vineyards in the entire section between his place and Malaga. He has done much to develop the wine and grape-growing industry; and he has helped organize the school districts in his locality giving land for the school in his district. While he has given his attention to the building up of his own business and fortune he has ever had in mind the welfare of the county and has supported every movement for the bettering of conditions. Mr. Mattei has never aspired to public office but has served as a trustee of his district for years. He is a member of the Merchants Association, the Traffic Association, the Sequoia and Commercial Clubs. He is honored for his integrity and unswerving principles of justice.

FRANKLIN PIERCE and ALVIRA BOLLMAN .- The story of two highly interesting families-one that of a California pioneer, used to the burden and heat of the day, and identified with Del Rey when it was called Clifton and had neither railroad facilities nor even the beginnings of horti- culture, and the other a "Pennsylvania Dutch" family of great virility of mind and body, that has produced some of the most progressive leaders of our country-is interwoven in the lives of Franklin Pierce Bollman and his good wife Alvira, who have one of the finest improved ranches in Fresno County, a handsome tract of forty acres one-half of a mile north and one mile west of Del Rey.

Mr. Bollman was born in Davis County, Iowa, on January 2, 1853, the son of Samuel Bollman, a native of Pennsylvania, who went to Ohio and from Ohio to Iowa, as early as 1844; so that Franklin was brought up in the Hawkeye State. While in Pennsylvania, Samuel Bollman was married to Susanna Good, by whom he had eleven children. Franklin was the youngest of these, and passed his boyhood on his father's farm. He was so much a fixture there, in fact, that he was never off his father's property, for any con- siderable time or distance, until he was married, at the age of twenty-two. His mother died in 1872, when she was sixty-three, and the father died ten years later, when he was seventy-eight.

Samuel Bollman was indeed a remarkable man. He was born on New Year's Day, 1804. in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania-the very day on which Napoleon Bonaparte gave to the world his notion of a civil code-and there he attended the log-cabin school and grew up. When he removed from that section, he went to Virginia, where he served an apprenticeship for three years to a miller. His fiancee, Susanna Good, was a daughter of the Old Dominion, and cheerfully accompanied her husband to Ohio the following year, 1831, after their marriage, and faithfully bore her share of fourteen years of pioneering in Ohio. Toward the middle of the forties, Mr. and Mrs. Bollman moved to Davis County, Iowa, and there, too, they went through many hardships. For a long time, for example, he had to get along without

alvira Bollman

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a team; and it was not until the Mormons came through and afforded him his first chance to buy a couple of horses that he was able to secure the means of properly breaking his land. Five years later he had brought 160 acres to a very fair state of cultivation ; and from that time he prospered, so that some return and reward were allotted the intrepid couple. After a while he came to own 385 acres of good farming land, and also town property at Bloomfield, the county seat. When Mrs. Bollman died, seven children had grown to maturity. These were William N., John A., George W., David M., Samuel N., Margaret, who became the wife of Kirk Pearson, and Franklin Pierce.

F. P. Bollman's marriage to his first wife took place in 1875, and the bride was Miss Mary Jane Bivins, who later died in Montana. One of their children, named Bertha, became the wife of Charles Cox, of Missouri, and has three children; and the other child, also a daughter, Annie, is the wife of Oliver Dixon, and dwells in Des Moines, Iowa. For years the Bollmans continued to farm in Iowa, and then, believing that California offered still greater agricultural inducements, Mr. Bollman prepared to come to the Coast. He arrived in California in 1912, and soon after was married to Mrs. Alvira McCloskey, whose maiden name was Alvira Griffeath, and who was born and had grown up in the same county in Iowa, a daughter of David and Delilah (Bivins) Griffeath, natives respectively of Pennsylvania and Iowa. Mr. Griffeath was born in Perry County, Pa., on July 10, 1828. When he was ten years of age his mother took him to Van Buren County, Iowa, near Birmingham, and in 1866 he came to Davis County, then wild land. He had received a common-school education, supplemented with instruction in the great school of life, and at the time of his first marriage, on June 20, 1850, he was able to provide an excellent home for his bride, whose maiden name was Nancy Wilfrong, and who became the mother of his first child, William W. She died on February 20, 1852; and Mr. Griffeath married again, on the 4th of October, four years later, this time choosing as has been stated, Miss Delilah Bivins, of Jefferson County, Iowa. Seven children were born of that union ; and Nancy Alvira, one of the subjects of this interesting review, was the eldest. The others were David Fremont, Marion C., Madison M., Susan D., and Washington Jefferson and Clinton Clay.

While at Bloomfield, Ill., and when she was twenty-four years of age. Miss Griffeath was married to Benjamin W. McCloskey, in 1881, and came with him to California the same year. About 1875 he had become a pioneer of Fresno County by homesteading here the land his wife now owns, and still more near by; and he had gone back to Davis County for his wife. When she came to Clifton, afterwards Del Rey, wheat farming only was prac- ticed ; and for years they farmed all their land to wheat. Mr. McCloskey died in 1913, aged sixty-three; and now 'Mrs. Bollman owns, as the result of his success in developing the land to more intensive purposes, twenty-five acres planted to Thompson Seedless grapes, nine acres of muscats, and five acres of apricots, while the balance of the forty acres is given up to alfalfa, build- ings, dry yards and other features of a well-platted ranch.

Five children were born to Mr. and Mrs. McCloskey. Gale Forest mar- ried first, Ethel Elder, by whom he had four children, Leora (McCloskey) Comar, DeWitt, Howard and Ernest. He now resides in Butte County, Cal. Ina is the wife of E. W. Johnson and resides at Sumner, Wash. One son, George W., has been born to them. Sophia married G. E. Clayton, and lives at Chico. They have one son, Kenneth. Ralph B. resides in Watsonville, Cal., and is the father of a son, Charles R. Laura is the wife of C. A. Huntington, and lives on Cherry Avenue, on a ranch eight miles south of Fresno. She has three children, Fred, Alice and Byron. Mrs. Bollman is a member of the Methodist Church ; the California Associated Raisin Company ; the California Peach Growers, Inc., and the Apricot and Prune Growers Association. She is proud of the part she has taken in bringing about the present prosperity of Fresno County.

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CHESTER H. ROWELL .- Prominent among the newer generation of Californians whose character, intellect and ideals have given them power and influence, and who have made marked use of privilege and opportunity, must be mentioned Chester Harvey Rowell, whose national reputation as editor of the Fresno Republican and as a public man has placed him in the front rank, not only of California's commonwealth builders, but also of scholarly American publicists, and whose personality and achievements have long since made him easily the best-known citizen of Fresno. He was born in Bloomington, Ill., on November 1, 1867, the eldest son of Jonathan Harvey and Maria Sanford (Woods) Rowell, and received his earlier education at the common and high schools of his native city, and at the Illinois State Normal School.

In the fall of 1885 Mr. Rowell matriculated at the University of Michi- gan, and three years later he was graduated with the degree of Ph. B. after which he took an additional year there for post graduate study. He there laid foundations of learning and of training which enabled him in later life, when called upon to assume unusual responsibility and leadership and be equal to the task.

The three years immediately following Mr. Rowell spent in Washington, D. C., where for two years he was clerk to the committee on elections of the House of Representatives, of which his father was chairman, and then for a year he gave himself up to private literary work, making use of material to be found only at the national library. While in Washington he compiled a digest of the contested election cases of the Fifty-first Congress, which was published by Congress. He also then got together most of his volume on the contested election cases in all the congresses, which was afterward also published by Congress. At the nation's capitol he met the nation's leaders in all departments of activity, and he thus naturally became familiar with most phases of public and strenuous life.

Less for the sake of rest than to continue in his characteristically ener- getic fashion the hard work he had driven through, Mr. Rowell next visited Europe, where he spent a couple of years in travel and study. He was en- rolled as a post-graduate student in the German universities of Halle and Berlin. and later he studied in Rome and in Paris. During the long vaca- tions, he traveled a-foot across Germany, Switzerland and Italy, seeing both land and people at first-hand and mastering the dialectical peculiarities of everyday foreign speech in French, German and Italian, and he also made an interesting and instructive foot-tour in Bohemia.

On his return from Europe, Mr. Rowell began his experience as a teacher in Baxter College, Kans., and Racine College, Wis. He taught for two years in the high school at Fresno, and soon after was added to the modern language force in the University of Illinois, where he had charge of the course in scientific German. At other times and places, he taught mathematics, French and Latin.

In 1898 Mr. Rowell returned to Fresno, in which expanding city he had already established valuable social and professional connections, and assumed the editorial management of the Fresno Republican, in which he has been continuously engaged ever since. After the death of his uncle, Dr. Chester Rowell, in 1912, he became the principal owner of the paper, and president of the publishing company. Mr. Rowell has done much to direct local thought and to guide Fresno County to its deserved destiny ; but he has also found time to accomplish a good deal for both California and the nation. He spent the winter of 1900-01 in Washington, and further studied national politics. In 1901 he accepted the Republican nomination for mayor of Fresno, but was defeated.

Mr. Rowell served as one of the trustees of the Fresno Free Public Library, and was instrumental in securing from Andrew Carnegie the gift of $30.000 for the construction of a library building. He has also served as

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a member of the Fresno Board of Education. During the summer of 1911 he delivered a series of lectures on journalism before the University of California and at various times, in different sections of the United States he has lectured upon political, civic and educational subjects. He has also con- tributed numerous articles to the leading magazines and reviews of the country.

Among Mr. Rowell's civic and other work may be noted his organization with others of the Lincoln-Roosevelt Republican League, of which he was president, which was the first organization of the reform movement in Cali- fornia, out of which the Progressive party afterwards grew. It was their organization which nominated Hiram W. Johnson as a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor in 1912. Mr. Rowell was chairman of the committee in charge of the Johnson campaign.

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History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 123

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858- Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company Number of Pages: 1362

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362