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 34

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 34

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At Gravelly Ford on the south bank of the San Joaquin they came upon the mining camp and store of Cassady & Lane, sold to them their draught live stock, taking flour at a dollar a pound in large part in trade and treated themselves to the luxury of tobacco. A bread feast was the first piece of domestic extravagance at the next meal after the long abstinence. It was a baking of water and flour dough, cooked in skillet by a St. Louis boy named Herman Masters, marked out and cut according to diagram so that each might have a section. Eight miles above Gravelly Ford and two above the later Fort Miller site, Cassady & Lane were engaged in river mining for gold at Cas- sady's Bar and all save Dr. Leach accepted employment as miners.

Leach was not favorably impressed with the aspect and conditions of the new country-and well might it be asked who could have been in those earliest days of the white man's presence? He resolved to return east with the first passing train party. The tale has long been current and was corroborated by Dr. Leach himself that he had horse saddled and all preparations made for that departure when Lane-"Major" as he is always referred to-pre- vailed on him to tarry as there was a young man in camp who needed surgi-

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

cal attention to save his life. He was one of the Woodville refugees that rode to Millerton to spread the alarm, was wounded in the arm, had been under the care of two Arkansans, who instead of tying up the arteries had resorted to compression with the result of blood poisoning in the arrow wounds.

Out of humane consideration, Dr. Leach delayed departure. It was the turning point in his career. He never did leave California. He lived and died in Fresno. The arm of the wounded man was amputated and he recovered. Having no surgical instruments as the contents of his case had been lost or stolen on the plains journey, the operation was performed with common wood saw and jack knife, set and sharpened for the occasion, and without anesthetic the sufferer was a conscious looker on of the surgeon's work.

On the second night of the Leach party's arrival Indians had made a descent on the camp at the ford and stolen the very cattle that the emigrants had traded off. Other raids followed with near by killings including that of Cassady as incidents that led up to the Indian War and the calling out of the volunteer three companies of seventy-five each that constituted the Mariposa Battalion under Maj. James D. Savage. Leach joined as a private, participating in the several preliminary brushes, but in two weeks was appointed battalion surgeon. The two assistants were dispensed with and the medical department was placed in his charge. Commissary headquarters were located on the Fresno River, fifty to sixty miles due north, and here with driven stakes, poles cut and laid on crotches, with sides and roof of willow matting and roof of green brushes the hospital department was improvised. The war operations lasted about four months and peace was restored.

Major Savage resumed business in partnership with Captain Vinsenhaler. A strong bond of friendship grew up between the doctor and the major and thus it was that in April 1852 Leach was taken into the partnership of three that continued until the sensational murder of Savage. Vinsenhaler and Leach continued their association, taking into partnership Samuel A. Bishop, later of San Jose. The Indian reservations were established after the peace. The store supplied them, the business flourished and expanded and a branch was located at Fort Miller. Vinsenhaler was the inactive member of the trio, Bishop had charge of the farm on the Fresno, and Leach without mercantile training managed the store. The custom in vogue on the frontier was followed of marking up goods 100 per cent. on the cost, taking gold dust or equivalent in value from those that could pay and seldom bothering those that had credit and paid when they could. The business was profitable. Bishop went into business with Indian Agent Beall at Fort Tejon and the Vinsenhaler-Leach partnership dissolved, Leach taking the store and the other the ranch. Not a scratch of pen was made in all these transactions. The words of men in those days were as binding as written contracts or bond. The Fort Miller store was closed in 1859 but the one on the Fresno was continued until the winter of 1860-61.

Meanwhile at the latter location he also conducted a hospital with patients coming from as far as Visalia, and as many as fifteen to twenty under treat- ment at a time. On a visit to Millerton to a patient in December, 1860, he was waterbound on account of a winter flood and detained for six weeks. He de- cided not to return to the Fresno but to close out and disposed of the stock in the store at private sale. At Millerton and as the only established surgeon and physician in the county for a time, he was in charge of the county hospital and the medical authority for years. He saw the beginning and the end of Millerton. He lived the life of the busy country doctor, treated the sick and the wounded, eased the last moments of the dying, ministered at the births of hundreds who even to this day boast of the fact. as the family physician was welcome in every home, and had friends coextensive in number with the population of the county among the whites as well as the aborigines.

His location in Fresno City as the new county seat was not until October 4, 1874, and he was the last official to leave old Millerton in Russell Flem-

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

ing's stages with the hospital patients and the women left behind until new homes could be provided in the hamlet on the plains.

The hospital in the city was established in rented quarters and four days after coming the cornerstone of the new courthouse was laid with Masonic ceremonial. For deposit in the cornerstone receptacle the only Bible that was available was Dr. Leach's. In the new county seat, Dr. Leach was as prom- inent medically as he had been at Millerton and he became a conspicuous figure in its civic and commercial life.

Was a new public enterprise contemplated, Dr. Leach was consulted and became its sponsor. He fathered the first water works with the pumping plant so long located on Fresno Street at the corner of the alley between I and J, was president of it until 1890 and sold it for $140,000. He was president of the first bank in Fresno, a private enterprise in one of the early brick houses on the north side of Mariposa midway between H and I and of which Otto Froelich was the cashier. He was an organizer of the Bank of Fresno and its president until it went out of business on account of the provisions of the new constitution of 1879 regarding stockholders' liabilities for indebtedness; an organizer and president of the Farmers' Bank ; fathered the gas company ; was identified with the first electric light company and the first street car company with the fair grounds as its terminus and was one of the pro- moters of the fair association with its races and agricultural exhibitions.

Professionally as a representative of the old medical school and in civil life, Dr. Leach was a prominent figure. It was during his long service as county health officer that the first county hospital was erected under his di- rection on the block bounded by Mariposa, Tulare, P and Q. then considered so far out of town that many years would elapse before the growth of the city would crowd it out and yet in his life and while still in charge the removal was made with the location on Ventura avenue opposite the county fair grounds where today stands one of the best equipped and modernized estab- lishments of its kind in California.

Forty-two years a bachelor, the marriage of Dr. Leach in 1872 to Mrs. Mathilda Converse, former wife of C. P. Converse, was an event as fortuitous as was his decision to remain in Fresno when he had resolved to return east. He was a boarder with Mrs. Converse. She had decided to give up catering to boarders and not knowing where to find a home table he proposed marriage and was accepted. The Leach residence in Fresno City was for years on K street (officially designated Van Ness Avenue) on the location now occupied by the Sequoia Hotel. There was a rise here in the level of the flat plain of four to five feet gradually rising from the courthouse reservation and because the early, well to do city residents erected their better homes here the locality was popularly known as "Nob Hill."

By reason of his long local associations, his confidential relations with so many of the earliest families as their medical adviser, his active and useful public career though never tempted by political aspirations. he was regarded at death with greater love, respect and veneration than any other individual in the county before. His funeral is said to have been the largest that had been accorded any one before. It is recorded that "upwards of 100 vehicles" were in the cortege. Fulton G. Berry was in charge and the pall bearers were: A. Kutner, Louis Einstein, William Helm, Alexander Goldstein, William Somers and Leopold Gundelfinger, of whom today the last three named are living. The funeral was a popular demonstration ; twenty-four aged inmates of the almshouse hospital when he was in charge attended and so did Ah Kit, the Chinese blacksmith and horseshoer of Millerton days, as one of the sincere mourners.

Dr. Leach was accounted in his life time one of the substantial men of the city but after his death his estate was found to be much involved. Friends saved out of it sufficient for a competency for the widow.

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

Frank H. Ball Made Large Bequests.

Genuine was the surprise furnished by the filing for probate of the will of Frank H. Ball, who died March 4, 1919, because of the $45,000 legacies for benevolences and semi-public institutions. The surprise was great because the benevolences were unlooked for. The Ball will provided for the largest money bequests in any testamentary document offered for probate in the county. The total of these is exceeded only by the princely endowment under the trust will of M. Theo. Kearney. The two estates are not comparable in aggregate value.

The money bequests under the will are $75,500, namely $13,500 to three relatives in the East, $10,000 to a life long friend, Frank M. Romain, $7,000 to five employes and one of these, the faithful Chinese servant who had been in his service for twenty-six years and was rewarded with $2,500, and the following public bequests:

Y. W. C. A. $10,000

Y. M. C. A.

10,000

City Playgrounds

10,000

Firemen's Baseball Relief Fund

5,000

Fresno Relief Society

5,000

Citizens' Relief Committee

5,000

Total

$15,000

The Ball estate consists of two valuable pieces of landed property. One of these is the city block at J and Kern Streets which whatever its value was deeded in his life time independent of testamentary disposition to the widow whom he had married in December, 1915. The other is the 113-acre vineyard and orchard just outside the city limits at California and East Avenues set out as one of the earliest and largest in the county. Because of its proximity to the city and in a locality that has been set aside for indus- trial enterprises, it is of greater value for commercial purposes than for grape culture. Payment of the legacies is contingent upon a sale of the vineyard property. The testator himself placed a valuation of $1,200 an acre a few years ago when the Santa Fe was in the field looking for ground for enlarged switching facilities.

Frank H. Ball was a native of Grand Rapids, Mich., and came to Cal- ifornia thirty-five years ago. He was fifty-four years of age when he died. His death was unlooked for as he was ill from heart disease only twenty-four hours. After a residence of about two years in San Francisco and having come with some means, he moved to Fresno about the time of the Centen- nial year and opened one of the first drug stores at Mariposa and J Streets, site of the city's first sky scraper. This property he disposed of in part con- sideration for acreage land southeast of the city and entered upon the career of a vineyardist and orchardist. The Ball city residence on the site of the business block was one of the notables in the city for its spaciousness and surrounding shading umbrella trees. It was removed in later years to clear the site for the Novelty Theater, the first in the city devoted exclusively to vaudeville.

Frank H. Ball was not a man that ever took part in public affairs, where- fore, all the more surprise when his will was made public. Prosperity favored him and he lived a retired life at the country home as a capitalist. He was thrice married. Threatened legal complications prompted him to place his belongings in trust with a life long friend, who managed his affairs and it was in appreciation of his services that the $10,000 bequest was made.

It was said of him that he was one of the earliest, if not the first, to build a drier and resort to artificial heat in the curing of fruit and raisin grapes in the county.

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

The popularity and success of the playgrounds department inspired the late Louis Einstein to direct that after his death his estate make gift to the public of location and an equipped playground. His wishes have been com- plied with by the family in the "Einstein Memorial Playground." Mrs. Julia A. Fink-Smith was the first woman who made a gift to the public. It was a block of city land, lacking two lots afterward bought by the city, on which the playground named for her has been located.

Supplementing the five years' antecedent gift to the city of her sister, the late Mrs. Julia A. Fink-Smith, Mrs. Augusta P. Fink-White, wife of Truman C. White, the pioneer, presented to the City Playgrounds Com- mission, through her attorney, at a meeting held June 5, 1919, a deed for City Black 363, excepting two lots not owned by her, for a site for another municipal playground for children. The block is separated from the sister's donated block (362) only by the width of a street. The condition of the gift was that the blocks be made one continuous playground, with closing of alley and street, and that they be improved for the purposes of the gift, be fenced in, and that on the east side there be placed above the gateway a sign, "Fink-Smith Annex." The special request was made that a municipal swimming pool be constructed on Block 363 as soon as the finances of the city warranted.

The Southern Pacific made practical gift of Commercial Park facing its passenger depot under a 99 year lease at the nominal dollar a year rental ; and the Santa Fe the triangular Hobart Park named for its district agent at the time of the gift. And this completes the list of public benefactions, not overlooking the Carnegie City Library Building conditionally upon acquired site and guaranteed yearly appropriation for its upkeep by the city adminis- tration in its tax levy.

CHAPTER XLII

SIX WORDS ON HIS MONUMENT TERSELY EPITOMIZE THE BUSY LIFE'S WORK OF DR .. CHESTER ROWELL IN THIS COMMUNITY. HIS INFLUENCE IN THE UPBUILDING OF IT WAS AS THE FAMILY PHYSICIAN, THE FOUNDER OF A NEWSPAPER, THE ORGANIZER AND LEADER OF A PARTY, THE PUBLIC OFFICIAL AND THE CIT- IZEN. UNIQUE LOCAL CHARACTER WAS FULTON G. BERRY. To THE LAST HE LOVED HIS JEST. HIS FUNERAL WAS A REMARK- ABLE SPECTACLE. HE FILLS A PLACE IN THE HISTORICAL LITER- ATURE OF THE COUNTY.

ERECTED 1914 To Dr. Chester Rowell GOOD PHYSICIAN-GOOD FRIEND -GOOD CITIZEN 1844-1912

So reads the inscription on the monument in the county courthouse park erected at a cost of $10,000 subscribed by admiring and appreciative friends to the memory of a man who was held in universal public esteem as no other man in the county save possibly Dr. Leach before. Dr. Rowell's coming to Fresno dated from 1874. The living today in the modern Fresno City cannot realize the influence that the lives and services of these two men had in the building up of the community.

The impress left by the later comer was possibly the greater from the sentimental view because he was the founder of a great newspaper, the father of the Republican party in the county, wielded political power in the state's

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

councils and personally rejoiced in the coming of the day when as the results of years of effort the county could no longer be safely counted upon as one of the uncompromisingly Democratic banner counties of the state. The Re- publican newspaper established in 1878 experienced every vicissitude but he was always there to come to its rescue with purse. His interest in it was that of a parental affection for it; he rejoiced in its virtues and accomplish- ments ; he sorrowed over its failures and shortcomings.

Politically he was an uncompromising partisan of the old school. He believed implicitly in partisanship politics and pinned his undeviating faith on the Republican party above any other. Not that he did not respect the honesty and faith of those opposed to him politically, but in his own mind he enter- tained not the shadow of a doubt that they were misguided. As with Dr. Leach, he was known and beloved as the self-sacrificing country physician in a rough, pioneer country, ignoring no call for his services whatever the hour in a community of great and wide distances and of few practitioners. The question of money reward was until the last, for he also died in the harness, the least consideration. It was more otten refused in charity than demanded as his due.

New Hampshire born in 1844, the years before maturity were spent in Illinois whither the family emigrated to Stout's Grove, near Bloomington. in 1849. The father died a year later, the eight pioneering farming sons were known as "Widow Rowell's Boys" and as models for others to pattern after. Five of them answered their country's call at the outbreak of the war. The youngest of them, a boy of fifteen, was taken ill and was compelled to return home. The others remained in the service as soldiers for forty months in the Department of the Tennessee, and though wounded none was ever off duty during his term of service. Chester Rowell was of an age that forbade enlist- ment, but he served in the company of an elder brother, though never carried on the muster roll.

After the war, he attended for a time Lombard College at Galesburg, then moved to Chicago for a business college course, also studying medicine. The latter was continued more systematically in San Francisco after arrival in 1866 and crossing the plains. He was associated with an elder cousin, Dr. Isaac Rowell, and graduated in 1870 from the medical department of the University of the Pacific, later Cooper's Medical College and now affiliated with Stanford University. Dr. Levi Lane, a celebrated surgeon, as was Dr. H. H. Toland, the medical college named for whom became the medical department of the state university, was the dean and for years after graduation it was Dr. Rowell's practice annually to attend in San Francisco the Lane course of lectures. A year was spent in teaching school in Oregon, but re- turning to San Francisco he took up the practice of medicine until removal to Fresno to undergo all the hardships and trials of the pioneer practitioner in an unsettled and new country, took up early an active part in the politics of the day and two years after coming launched the weekly little newspaper publication that is today one of the leading newspapers of the state.

Proof of his early high standing in the community is evidenced by the fact of election to the state senate as a Republican in 1879 at a time when the county was yet strong for Democracy and nomination by that party was in those days equivalent to an election, sitting in the last legislature under the constitution of 1849. He was the first Republican ever elected to office in the county. As senator he served until 1883, and was reelected in 1898 and in 1902. His independent course and stand against the railroad's domination in the political affairs of the state gained him its enmity and its influence de- feated him for the railroad commissionership in 1882 and again in 1886. In 1890 he aspired for the nomination for congress from the sixth district, recalled by a memorable contest with W. W. Bowers of San Diego, and Lindsay of Los Angeles as his opponents in the convention. Sixty ballots were cast without choice whereupon after an adjournment to Ventura, the

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

opposing forces combined and the hard fought nomination went to Bowers. Dr. Rowell was also a central figure in the 1900 legislative session in the dead- lock over the U. S. Senatorial nomination of Dan Burns as the avowed rail- road candidate but without votes enough to elect. Dr. Rowell as the dis- coverer of the man, as he was jocosely referred to later, voted continuously for Thomas R. Bard and the latter finally gained strength enough that al- though the session closed without choice he was nominated at the called extra session the year after, but failed of reelection in 1905.

Dr. Rowell was appointed a regent of the state university in 1891 and continued in that honorary position until his death. He was a member of the state board of health in 1884, and in 1900 a delegate to the Republican national convention of which he was one of the committee that framed the party plat- form for the Mckinley second campaign. His last national political partici- pation was in 1912 as delegate to the Taft nominating convention at Chicago. In 1909 against the urgent advice of most intimate friends and advisers vet in response also to a strong public demand in a local political agitation over the saloon closing question he was prevailed upon to stand for the office of mayor of Fresno City, was elected by a flattering vote and served three years of his term. Dr. Rowell married in 1874 the widow of his medical associate of younger days. She died in 1884. He was a pillar of the Unitarian Church of Fresno and himself as a labor of love financed the erection of its unique place of worship; and was associated as president and a director with the People's Savings Bank.

As mayor he served harassed by perplexing difficulties, anxiety over which acknowledgedly shortened his busy and active life. He felt keenly the public and private criticisms for his exercise of independent and best judg- ment of mind in not surrendering to fanatical clamor on the saloon problem yet as a progressive step affixing his signature to a reform ordinance that lim- ited the number of drinking establishments, closed them on Sundays and on holidays and after midnight daily and brought them under a closer police regulation. He took to heart the denied responsive cooperation of the public in a subscription for the erection of a municipal convention hall building on one of the acquired playground sites. The result was financial and legal com- plications over his effort to build it with public funds on personal authority and individual financial obligation.

Uncompromising political partisan that he was and committed to the second-term cause of President Taft, a heart-breaking and bitter disappoint- ment was the advocacy of Theodore Roosevelt, the defeat of Mr. Taft with the division of the Republican party helped out by the newspaper that he was the founder of, of which he had the financial control yet not of its editorial policy transferred to his nephew. Chester H. Rowell, and which newspaper has been truly described as "the child of his adoption and nurture."

Dr. Rowell was a man much beloved and lovable, modest, unassuming and approachable ; a man not to be thwarted in will nor contradicted or op- posed in purpose : in politics unbending and one who knew no middle course as between likes and dislikes. The devoted and admiring friends that erected the monument to his memory caused it to be placed for sentimental reasons in an angle of the public park at Tulare and K (Van Ness) Streets where the life-sized seated figure faces the scene of many years of activities in the great newspaper that was the idol of his heart, the corner publication house of that organ and in which he also had his offices ; while on the opposite corner looms up Fresno's second, towering, modern sky scraper-the Rowell-Chandler office building on the site of the modest, little, moss-grown and orange tree surrounded, rustic covered cottage that had been his humble home for years continuous so many that it had become a landmark of the city.

"Good Physician, Good Friend, Good Citizen" is his well-earned epitaph. His memory is enshrined in many a grateful heart. 14

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

Fulton G. Berry

Unique spectacle was presented in Fresno City Tuesday April 12, 1910, at the funeral of Fulton G. Berry. Known the state over, he was because of his genial personality one of the most potent publicity agencies that the county and city ever had. Truly was it said of him that to the last he loved his jest.

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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 34

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