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 36

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 36

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Hughes had his three boys with him and they lived in a bachelors' hall. The second marriage followed in December, 1866, with Miss Annie E.

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Yoakum of Alameda County. The daughter was born August 19, 1872, of this union. Hughes found his way into Stanislaus County and in 1867 was elected, and served for one term as county clerk and ex-officio recorder. Term of office having been expired, he bought sheep and land and accounted himself worth $100,000. He rented land in Merced for the sheep and for farming, put out some 7,000 acres to grain, principally in Merced. One dry year succeeded another and in 1873 he was so heavily in debt that he looked for an opening elsewhere and went to Lower California to examine a grant of 300,000 acres as to its possibilities for colonization. Creditors concluded that he had left the country for good and on return in five weeks he found everything in the hands of the sheriff and no compromise for further time obtainable. The assignees in bankruptcy so ill managed affairs that assets were sold for $46.000 and as claimed they paid the creditors noth- ing on the assertion that all was consumed in litigation expenses.

Mr. and Mrs. Hughes and daughter moved to San Francisco in the spring of 1874, arriving there with a capital of $130, the savings of himself and boys from wages as herders .of their sheep for the creditors. At so low an ebb were the fortunes of Mr. Hughes at this time that he was given free desk room with T. L. Babin at Pine and Kearney Streets, he to ad- vertise all real estate Hughes might secure for sale and divide the com- missions. This gave a scant living, but the three boys were brought together in time and in June, 1878, 7,000 sheep were taken on shares from Dr. E. B. Perrin, the latter to furnish the range in Fresno and the Hughes' to have one-half the wool and increase. The boys attended to the sheep; the father turned his attention to real estate.

The Southern Pacific made him agent for the renting of its grant lands for farming and grazing, and he had also the agency for the renting of at least 100,000 acres of non-residents at a compensation of ten per cent. of rentals received. The Central California Colony was a verity at this time and he was seized with the farm land colonization plan. Edmund Jansen owned 6,080 acres adjoining Fresno townsite between Central Colony and town, but it was rough and waterless land and no one would buy. A colony proposition was suggested, Jansen to procure water rights and supply ditches. An agreement was made. Jansen died and the widow agreed to sell the land for $40,000, Hughes to pay $5,000 in six and twelve months and as much annually at eight per cent. from date of purchase.

Hughes had no money. He must have water rights and ditches which would cost about seven dollars an acre, and so he agreed to give M. J. Church five land sections for the water and ditches for the other four and a half sections. Arrangements were made for the advertisement of the project on credit, the railroad was induced to run an excursion to Fresno, and Hughes and Judge North, who was the selling agent of Washington Colony, which had then been thrown on the market, went to Sonoma, Napa and Solano Counties, presented tickets to prominent men, and North lec- tured on the advantages of Fresno soil with water applied. The excursion brought about 300 men to Fresno. There was little to show them on that dry and barren plain other than the beginnings in Central and Washington colonies and that what was there could be reproduced on adjoining land.

Hughes sold $30,000 worth of land to excursionists in twenty and forty- acre tracts, receiving some cash payments at fifty dollars an acre, and after a few days disposed of 640 acres to G. G. Briggs at forty dollars, which notes being discounted $1,000 paid the colonizer cash. Paying out on the land, there was still left money to make a fourth payment on other lands and as fast as he sold and realized he bought more. It was the talk that he would buy anything that he could have on credit. He advertised that he would sell to any one that would improve, giving him credit for one to three years, and the result was that in thirty days he sold from $85,000 to $90,000 worth of land on the promise of improvement and enhancement of value. He was

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prospering. Thus in 1881 he was one of the organizers of the Fresno County Bank that afterward became the First National. In the fall he in- corporated the Fresno Fruit Packing Company, taking one-third of the paid up capital stock of $25,000. This was done to find a market for the grown fruit and to encourage the planting of fruit trees. It was a financial failure, though it did induce the buying of land and the growing of fruit. He and others organized the gas-making plant which was sold after two years.

A profitable joint venture with J. R. White, pioneer miner from Mariposa for whom Whitesbridge was named, was the purchase of 230 acres from the railroad at $25 an acre covering in part the town site. A portion of this con- stituted at the southern end of town beyond Ventura Avenue very first terri- torial expansion of the town. A small portion was sold in town lots for sufficient in comparative brief time to pay for the entire tract. For the re- mainder in lots $1,000 an acre was realized and the speculation netted over $100,000.

In 1884 the idea of a Masonic Temple was conceived. The corporation was organized with $25,000 capital, Hughes took half the stock and carried it for two years. Building fell into the hands of the Fresno Savings and Loan Bank on foreclosure. It was at the corner of I and Tulare, opposite the Hughes Hotel and original Hughes residence site. Dr. Lewis Leach and Hughes took up the idea of race track and fair grounds in 1883, Hughes furnishing almost half the capital. Dr. Leach was the president and man- ager of the association for about twenty years and until his death. The track was one of the best in the state, and eventually became the property of the county by purchase as a public park and playground.

It was in 1885 that Hughes organized the company to build a hotel to cost $100,000, others taking one-half the stock and he the other. Bids were advertised. Rivalry had sprung up as to the location at I and Tulare, and others boomed the erection of the Grand Vendome Hotel. This so fright- ened the Hughes subscribers that on the day for the opening of the bids all of his associates had withdrawn from the enterprise. They had organized and elected directors but had bought no property. Hughes took the enter- prise on his own shoulders, opened the bids and awarded contract to a Sacramento firm for $87,000 after completion of the foundation by private contract at a cost of $25,000. Hughes had no ready cash and depended on property sales and collection of debts due.

The enterprise was ridiculed as "Hughes' Folly" and "Hughes' Ele- phant" and his bankruptcy was prophesied. The second story was up and a loan of $45,000 was made on property. Construction progressed slowly. Seeing the opportunity, he bought a corner lot for $15,000 and before he needed the money in three months sold the property for $25,000. Not satis- fied to hold money waiting until payments should be due be bought, by making a $10,000 payment, 5,000 acres in Madera for fifteen dollars an acre. Followed then the enterprise of erecting the three-story brick Hughes Block, then and for years the finest in the city. He borrowed $35,000 on the property and while it was under construction bought 3,400 acres more in Madera for $95,000 by paying $5,000 cash with promise of $10,000 in four months. By this time the hotel was completed and rented for five years for $1,000 a month and a commencement was made on the sale of the Madera lands.

The terms were the usual-one, two and three years without cash pay- ment-at prices from fifty dollars to $100 an acre. He bonded 9,000 acres belonging to others for two years at thirty dollars and forty dollars. He sold the first 5,000 acres bought for $274,000, making within a few dollars a clear $200,000. The second purchase of 3,400 acres was disposed of on time to buyers who opened a large territory to small holders. The 3,400 acres bought for $95,000 realized $200,000 and he had still 160 acres in Hughes' Addition to Madera, valued then at $25,000. He had agreed with all the bonded to give them one-half of all he sold for over thirty and forty

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dollars. He sold in 1886, 5,640 acres of this land, clearing him for his part $75,000 and was satisfied that he would clear another $50,000 on the remainder, realizing for the owners the same amount over and above the prices they would have sold at the time that they bonded. The contracts not completed were assigned to others.

In the spring of 1887 there was a move to build a street railroad up Mariposa Street. Hughes wanted it in front of his hotel, then still under construction. He organized the stockholders in the fair association, they incorporated, Hughes took one-third of the stock and the street car line was run to the fair grounds from the railroad depot, up Tulare, turning the corner at the hotel, and along I to Ventura and on that avenue to the grounds. The foothill country attracted his attention and in 1886 survey was made for a railway to the mountains in the expectation that capital and land owners along the right of way would assist in the building. The project failed. It was revived in the summer of 1888, two surveys were made, the route mapped and such progress made that money was paid in to incorporate and secure rights of way.

From Detroit, Mich., came in the spring of 1889 an agent to look into the timber belt in the eastern Sierras. He made report to his principals, who sent out more agents; and Hughes and associates organized again to build a road to Kings River Canyon, but it was another failure. February 1, 1891, "the bold and beardless boy," Marcus A. Pollasky, loomed up on the horizon for the third time and launched on a meteoric career to induce the giving to him of subsidy for a railroad to the mountains. J. D. Gray, F. G. Berry and Thomas E. Hughes agreed to raise $100,000 for him and secure rights of way, provided he would build 100 miles of road, equip and maintain it. February 23, 1891, the San Joaquin Valley Railroad was incorpo- rated with the above-named as directors, Pollasky, president, and Hughes, vice-president. The subsidy was raised and work was promised to be com- menced in thirty days. Hughes threw the first shovel of dirt. It was the sixth time, as Hughes said in a speech, that he had put his name to sub- scriptions to aid a mountain road. The celebration of the throwing of the first shovel was on the 4th of July.

The "Father of Fresno" was in a prophetic mood on that day. The mountain road, he said, meant "millions of dollars to be invested in fac- tories of various kinds and is but a small part of what will follow. Three years from today 1,000 towboats will be used to transport your products to tide water. Three years from today you will have two other railroads running through your city competing for your patronage. Ten years from today your imports will be, instead of $10,000,000, increased to $50,000,000 and the end not yet estimated."

About twenty-five miles of the road were built to the San Joaquin River to a newborn town named Pollasky, and afterwards renamed Friant. This Pollasky was after all only a secret agent working in the interests of the Southern Pacific, which absorbed the road as a feeder to shut out any competition. There was a hue and cry that was not hushed for years and the experience was a block to every projected competing railroad enterprise, even the coddled San Francisco and Valley Railroad on which the people had pinned their faith as a pledged independent competing road, being ab- sorbed by purchase by the Santa Fe Railroad as regards the line from Bakersfield to San Francisco. The valley had again to acknowledge that it was again bitten after its liberal subscriptions, bonuses and grants of rights of way.

In the year 1893 no man in the central part of the state was better known than Thomas E. Hughes. He was at the head of almost every enter- prise in Fresno and Madera Counties. He had made a great deal of money. Came then the panic period of 1893 with collapse of the boom. The land

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did not realize the value that he set on it and as mortgage on mortgage was foreclosed and deficiency judgments were piled up as liens against his properties he was forced into insolvency. The petition was filed January 8, 1894; liabilities placed at $176,520.24; assets nil. The San Francisco Theo- logical Seminary of San Francisco was a secured creditor for $90,000, the hotel the security property. The insolvency came not as a surprise. Mrs. Hughes had filed insolvency petition on her separate property two months before. And this was the end, where once he had owned almost everything in sight.

At the age of sixty-nine and accompanied by wife, in 1899 he cast his lot in Mexico in the state of Oaxaca in the mining district of Taviche, and for nine years acquired mining properties, sold mines to advantage and bonded to English capital for sufficient to place him, as was believed, once more in the list of the rich. It was delusive. So was his later grant coloniza- tion project. He made his home in Los Angeles after his return from Mexico first, in 1908. The colonization scheme was in connection with a tract of 130,- 000 acres near Manzanillo.

The Hughes home vineyard was only saved by a lucky stroke of for- tune. That property was made a gift to the daughter and was saved from the wreck. It has since been subdivided and sold as residence lots. "The Father of Fresno" told this story of the windfall; "In 1891 I was in need of money and I induced my wife to place a mortgage of $10,000 on eighty acres of her land which adjoined the City of Fresno (on Ventura Avenue), deeding her the Hughes Hotel and furniture. Raisins and dried fruit be- came so low that people who owed me money could not pay even their in- terest. Suit was brought to foreclose the mortgage of $10,000 and it was advertised to be sold in twenty-five days, and I had no idea how I could raise the money to save the eighty acres. My wife drew $15,000 in the old Louisiana lottery, paying off the mortgage and saving her land."

The oldest son of Thomas E. Hughes, named Thomas M., died in this city at the age of thirty years and eleven months, February 23, 1885. His first wife was Huldah, daughter of Jesse Morrow. The second marriage was in June, 1884, to Miss Annie Johnson, and shortly after their return from the bridal tour he took to the bed from which he never arose a well man. Mrs. Annie E. Hughes died at Los Angeles, May 20, 1911, having been a resident of California for sixty-three years.

Louis Einstein

A man of retiring disposition, shrinking from a public life, never more contented than when in the privacy of the home circle, one who was the personification of old-fashioned conservatism and yet in his very passiveness filled a part in the upbuilding of Fresno City, was Louis Einstein. He died in November, 1914, honored and mourned. This pioneer merchant and banker of years of experience locally, of judgment and tact, was very generally appealed to as a counsellor whether in matters of private or public concern. He was respected because of his business integrity.

Born in Germany, he came to America at the age of eighteen, engaged in the dry goods business at Memphis, Tenn., and in 1866 at the invitation of a relative came to the budding little city of San Francisco as bookkeeper for Wormser Bros., subsequently going to Portland, Ore., and establishing a wholesale liquor house. Three years later, he returned to California and attracted to the San Joaquin Valley in January, 1871, here he established his permanent home, here he grew up with the country and here he died and lies buried.

He became associated in business with Elias Jacob at Visalia under the firm name of Jacob & Einstein. It had a branch store at Centerville in this county as far back as 1870 in charge of H. D. Silverman, whose home residence later in Fresno early pioneers will recall as having been on the

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bluff now occupied by the Forsyth building at the prominent business cor- ner at Tulare and J. Mr. Einstein entered the Visalia firm in August, 1871, and the announcement in the public print at the time was that it had com- pleted "a fine one-story house at Kingston, twenty-four by fifty feet," also "a warehouse which they have filled with grain, flour and provisions" and that building, not designating which, was regarded "as an ornament to Kingston." It was the store which while in charge of Mr. Einstein was one of the several places that was looted in the memorable robber raid by the bandit gang of Vasquez, when the hamlet on the Kings River was shot up by the desperadoes and the pursuing villagers, and that Mr. Einstein was left a gagged and pinioned victim by the robbers.

The Visalia firm did a large business and in June, 1874, buying the pioneer store of Otto Froelich at the new railroad town of Fresno, articles of association were entered into between Jacob, Einstein and Silverman as Jacob & Company at Fresno, as E. Jacob & Company at Centerville, as Jacob, Einstein & Company at Kingston with Launcelot Gilroy as an associate and as Jacob & Einstein at Visalia. Mr. Einstein moved then to the new county seat and in February, 1875, he and Silverman bought out Jacob & Company of Fresno and E. Jacob & Company of Centerville. The new Fresno firm became Silverman & Einstein and continued as such until the death of the first named in August, 1877, Louis Gundelfinger purchased the estate's interest later. Mr. Einstein on a visit to Germany had induced him to come to California and a $200,000 capitalized stock corporation resulted in December, 1888.

Firm name was changed to Louis Einstein & Company and years later the various interests were reincorporated. From the pioneer location at Mariposa and H in a store erected in 1875 as the third brick structure in the city, enlarged and improved with expansion of the business, it moved uptown to Tulare and K (Van Ness) on completion of the Rowell-Chandler modernized building. In the original location also were because of prox- imity to the railroad station across the half square the telegraph, express and post office, the latter the second in the little town with Charles W. De Long as the second postmaster appointed in November 1873 to succeed Russell J. Fleming, still in the land of the living as is De Long. The latter received the munificent annual remuneration of twelve dollars.

Mr. Einstein was founder and president of the Bank of Central Cali- fornia organized February 26, 1887, for years located at Mariposa and the alley between H and I. It is now known as the reincorporated Bank and Trust Company of Central California with the estate represented by his sons in controlling interest. At his death, he was accounted one of the richest men in the county. It was a question which was the richer, he or John W. Patterson of the Fresno National Bank whose wealth came largely by inheritances.

Mr. Einstein early devoted his personal attention to banking. He had other interests as in a smaller bank in Coalinga, besides large real estate holdings in the choicest residence and business districts and in outlying locations toward which the city's growth was trending, all of them en- hancing in value as the city grew. Before the day of banks, Einstein & Sil- verman, Kutner, Goldstein & Company, other mercantile firms and the large grain, sheep and cattle buyers were the money brokers and providers and during the dry farming era financed the ranchers and carried them over bad periods until the lucky year came when with one fortunate season the accumulated debt was wiped out. A close observer of human nature and character, many a tale is told of Mr. Einstein's helpful financial aid given at times on no more tangible security than his faith in the integrity of the applicant.

He was never allured by political life, though never holding back his influence in whatever was helpful to the moral and civic uplift of the com-

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munity. He gave his aid in organizing the free library movement, was a patron of the liberal arts and of music and took an active interest in the formation of the Unitarian Church of the city. The Einstein and Gundel- finger families are related by marriage.

The residences of Einstein and of the Gundelfingers on "Nob Hill" were most pretentious in their day. They were specially designed by an architect from San Francisco to meet the climatic conditions of the hot summers in being provided with latticed high basements, lofty attics and window open- ings in plenty for air and free ventilation. The Einstein residence was re- moved in the fall of 1917 to clear the site for the Liberty theater and the Louis Gundelfinger residence in the same block for the Liberty Market. The other two Gundelfinger residences between Kern and Inyo are no longer used as such because encroached upon by the business district.

Otto Froelich

Mention of Louis Einstein recalls the name of Otto Froelich, pioneer of the county and also of the city, when the latter boasted two houses only and he was its first merchant and banker. He died in San Francisco in March, 1898, at the age of seventy years. He was a Dane who had come to Millerton when it was yet a thriving mining camp and the county seat early in the sixties. He was for a time a clerk in George Grierson's store and succeeding to the business removed it to Fresno on completion of the rail- road in 1872. He was the first to start the hegira to the plains to lay the foundations of the future Fresno City.

As before stated, that business was transferred to Silverman & Einstein and with Dr. Lewis Leach, William Faymonville and Charles H. Barth he established the first Fresno County bank of which the First National is today the successor. The banking firm was known under the name of Barth & Froelich and was in a small brick building on the north side of Mariposa between I and the alley. In 1880 he was appointed post master which posi- tion he afterwards resigned to devote liis entire time to the business of wine making which he and Dr. Leach had established. He was also a land owner.

Later he moved to San Francisco and save for a year or two as cashier of a bank at Pasadena was in the employ of August Weihe, a moneyed man of the city who while never a resident of Fresno had large investments here. Mr. Froelich was a man of scrupulous integrity, bright and accurate in busi- ness affairs, impulsive yet kindly in nature, public spirited and honorable in every relation of life. His name is prominent in the early records of the county and of the city. He left an only child, Miss Maren, an artist of repute in San Francisco.

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CHAPTER XLIV

IN JEFFERSON G. JAMES PASSED AWAY ONE OF THE LAST OF THE PICTURESQUE CATTLE KINGS OF EARLY DAYS OF CALIFORNIA. LAND BARON HENRY MILLER NEVER DID KNOW HOW MUCH HE POSSESSED IN TERRAIN OR LIVESTOCK. FREDERICK ROEDING WAS AN AGENCY TO MAKE KNOWN THE AGRICULTURAL POSSI- BILITIES OF THE DESERT LAND AROUND FRESNO CITY. S. C. LILLIS AS ONE OF THE LAST OF THE LAND HOLDING BARONS. THE ROMANCE OF OTHER DAYS CROWDED OUT BY THE GRINDING MATERIALISM OF THE PRESENT ERA AND TIMES.

The life histories of so many pioneers are intertwined with the begin- nings of state, county or city and are as full of adventure as the wildest tale of fiction. Characteristic is that of Jefferson G. James, pioneer of state and of county and one of the last of the cattle kings. He died March 28, 1910, at his home near San Francisco. He left widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Rector James, and a daughter, by a first marriage.

James was eighty-one years of age at time of death. His estate was a large one, estimated to be worth between $1.500,000 and $2,000,000. In it were included about 100,000 acres of the James ranch in this county. This great tract on the West Side watered by Fresno Slough has passed by sale to Los Angeles capitalists and colonizers and has several times changed corporate name.

Mr. James spent life's closing years in San Francisco conducting a great wholesale cattle business. He was prominent for the legal battles that he waged in the courts of the state for eleven years. These were begun in 1889 and involved not only Miller & Lux, the greatest cattle and irrigation land holding firm in the state, but also the California Pastoral and Agricul- tural Company, a British corporation, and the San Joaquin and Kings River Canal and Irrigation Company, another Miller & Lux enterprise. In all, Henry Miller instituted six suits against James, while the latter had one against him. These were waged with bitter determination by the cattle kings yet never became personal in nature.

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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 36

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