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 37

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 37

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The point whether James could take water from the San Joaquin and the Kings was involved in all. James' lands did not abut directly on the river but were on the slough and watered by the overflow. He contended that this entitled him to take water from the river above him. The contention was resisted. The decision by the supreme court after long litigation was for James. The decision only precipitated another battle with the San Joaquin and Kings Company which has a contract to take prior water from the river. The point then was whether James had to wait until it could have its 760 cubic feet of water before he could be served with any for his lands. In this suit the superior court gave judgment for him three days before his death.

James was prominent locally also through his connection with the Fresno Loan and Savings Bank, capitalized at $300,000 and organized in 1886 and with him as president two years later. In the panic of 1893 it closed its doors and there was a scandal that it should have received a large deposit of public funds only a few hours before the closing of the doors. Its affairs were liquidated and settled by the late Emil F. Bernhard after long years. The bank erected the Land Company building at Mariposa and J, which passing through several hands at price record deals is the present property

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of the Einstein interests. James, it was, that erected the so-called Masonic hall building at Tulare and I.

Born in Pike County, Mo., December 29, 1829, his education was that of the primitive log cabin school, and in 1850 with relatives he came over- land with a party captained by Jeff Alman, the caravan of "prairie schoon- ers" toiling wearily toward the west by the famous South Pass and the Green and Raft Rivers. At the last named stream, James and party decided that the locomotion was too slow. They removed the wheels from their wagon, sawed out the spokes and fashioned pack saddles from the wood. They packed their outfit on the backs of eight fractious mules. It was a task that demanded patience and determination but the effort was success- ful. On the first day with the pack they passed 1,400 emigrant trains.

They reached Hangtown, now called Placerville, in August, 1850, and turned out their pack animals to graze on the Hicks ranch on the Cosumnes River. The James brothers went to Greenwood Valley on the middle fork of the American River where each cleaned up $3,500 prospecting with sluice and rocker. Returning to Hangtown in April, 1852, they went back to Mis- souri via the Nicaragua route, traveling home from New York by rail.

Next year, James returned to California alone bringing with him ninety- one young cows which being fattened sold at a profit. He engaged in mining at Placerville and in the business of buying gold dust. In June, 1857, he made another change and left for Los Angeles and on this trip laid the foundation of his cattle raising career with the purchase of 960 head of cattle. In the fall of 1857 he drove his cattle to the famous "25" Ranch near Kingston in this county, then called Whitmore Valley, and next year accom- panied by old time vaqueros engaged in several rodeos. After gathering his cattle at these round-ups, he drove the animals to the head of Fresno Slough and tarrying there five years bought the ranch near the San Joaquin River on Fresno and Fish Sloughs.

In 1860 he returned to Missouri and married Miss Jennie L. Rector whom he brought out to California. One child, Maud Strother James, was born to them. The daughter married Walker C. Graves, a San Francisco attorney. After the death of the first wife, who was twelve years his junior, he married her sister, Elizabeth, in 1903. In San Francisco which was his residence and home he dabbled in politics and in 1882 was elected a super- visor, four years later a school director and reelected to a second term. Later he was the Democratic candidate for mayor but was defeated by the late Adolph Sutro who carried the day with his promise that if elected he would give San Franciscans a single and five cents street car fare rate to the ocean beach for popular recreation.

Henry Miller

A penniless butcher boy, at twenty working in the Washington Market in New York, in 1849 following the horde of gold seekers to California and in 1850 still a butcher boy in the village of San Francisco, Henry Miller was at death at the age of nearly ninety a notable man of California, a cattle king of the West and founder of the famous firm of Miller & Lux, land and cattle barons. He died in San Francisco at the home of an only daughter, Mrs. J. Leroy Nickel. He had been confined to bed for nearly two years and was unconscious for two days before death.

He owned an empire described as "twice the size of Belgium." He never himself knew how much land he possessed. At the death of Charles Lux, the partner, their estate was valued at twenty millions, mostly in live stock and land. They were wholesale cattle butchers of San Francisco and with Dun- phy & Hildreth enjoyed a monopoly of the business. Lux attended to the city butchering and selling; Miller to the ranches, the breeding of stock, the buying and driving of stock to market, was a man of unlimited powers of endurance and reputed one of the best buyers in the state. Estimate was

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

made after Miller's death by experts that he had approximately 22,717 square miles or 14,539,200 acres under his control in California, Nevada, Oregon and Arizona. It was an ancient saying that Miller & Lux could drive cattle from Arizona to Oregon through Central California and nightly camp on their own land, at any stage of the journey not being out of sight of a firm ranch. It owned much land in Fresno in the vicinity of the triangle formed by the junction of Fresno, Merced and Madera counties, the great ranch being the Sanjon of Santa Rita in Merced and Fresno, and it was in continuous litiga- tion over its asserted rights over the bulk of water for irrigation from the San Joaquin by reason of appropriation and riparian rights.

Miller held more land on the Pacific Coast than probably any other one individual. At times 150,000 cattle and 100,000 sheep grazed on western pas- tures, bearing the "M" brand. The firm operated a chain of slaughter houses, banks, stores, and hotels in addition to the ranches and ranges. Managers, clerks and foremen were in employ by the score, vaqueros by the hundreds; traction engines bought by the dozen, barb wire fencing by the mile and seed by the carload, for the reckoning was not in acres but in miles. The tale was that Miller never sold but always bought. He had a juvenile dream of wealth, bought land when the Spanish and American government sold cheap, hoarded his property and realized his fantastic dream. In Visalia once he made on one day entry upon six townships of land.

It was in 1851 that he launched into business on his own account. He had met Lux and six years later they formed the partnership that made his- tory on western ranges. Their active days were when the great sweeps of California valleys stretched unenclosed from the Sierra Nevada foothills to the Coast Range and when the vast land grants were devoted to cattle raising. They watched the land settlers come, saw their ranches marked off by barb wire fences and farms and orchards grow where the cattle had roamed at will. He married Miss Sarah W. Sheldon in 1860. After Lux's death in 1877, the business was incorporated, Miller retaining large interests. In his later years he remained in the seclusion of daughter's home. He was the last of the great land barons of California. Dismemberment of the vast do- mains will come, for conservation policies, population increases, high taxes and clamoring demands of settlers are making impossible the holding of the cattle empires of old. Lux and Miller were both German born, hard workers, and shrewd, and Miller all bone and muscle with no surplus flesh. Until the last he talked with a strong accent. He was prompt and decisive, made examination of cattle, followed up with offer and seldom varied from it.

It was not unusual for him to ride seventy to eighty miles a day. If cattle bogged on account of high water, none worked harder in the rescue than he. None knew better than he the value of an efficient, trustworthy man. Such were always rewarded. Many afterward financially independent owed their advancement to him. He allowed nothing to go to waste; his most frequent differences with ranch foremen were on this score. On trips from ranch to ranch extending over thirty days he would borrow from one to pay up another, keeping no memoranda and no accounts, carrying the trans- actions in mind, giving accurate account to bookkeeper upon return to the city and the monthly statements to foremen were always correct. The practice for years was to give on every ranch a night's shelter and supper and breakfast to every applying tramp for the washing of dishes or other service on the theory that this was a cheaper method than to court their enmity or invasion of hay stack with loss by fire by reason of carelessness or malice. The practice was discontinued in later years. So great were the cattle herds that neighborhood raids were frequent and secret service men were under retainer to trace down the thieves and prosecute them. Miller was about five feet eight inches in height, weighed about 150 pounds and was a bunch of nervous activity in prime.

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Sensation followed the seizure, in June, 1918, by the internal revenue department, of the Miller properties for non-payment of $6,000,000 federal income taxes due. In Kern County the estate has from 140,000 to 150,000 acres tributary to the Kern River and Lake Buena Vista, at Conner's Station, Millux, Buttonwillow and the lake, the bulk estate holdings being in Kern, Fresno, Madera, Merced and Santa Clara counties. In 1913 he placed the holdings in trust for the daughter and when the government sized up the estate there was found standing in his name only apparently from $35,000 to $40,000. It sued for the income taxes and after its claim the state has another of four millions. Heirs claimed that to meet these taxes it would be necessary to sell off much of the acreage and in the war conditions of the market these sales would not net enough to meet the claims.

The plan of seizure and sale was welcomed in some quarters as encourag- ing agricultural development and the fact that the subsidiary corporations in the irrigation counties had tied up water rights in a jangle of legal de- cisions as to rights and rates had enabled them to monopolize first rights. Heirs applied for leave to appeal from the ruling enabling the collector of internal revenue to take control of the $40,000,000 estimated properties, un- der a warrant of in distraint for non payment of $6,961,240.47 with sale an- nouncement June 29, also for an injunction to restrain him until the appeal is passed upon. With the close of the month of June, 1918, Miller & Lux, as a Nevada corporation filed as covering holdings in eighteen California counties deed of trust to the Mercantile Trust Company of San Francisco for $10,000,- 000, securing first mortgage and refunding gold bonds for $5,000,000 as a transaction of July 1, 1910, and added indebtedness under a resolution of April 30, 1918. The Miller & Lux lands in this county are of 268,092.42 acres in entire sections, many parcels and include the townsite of Firebaugh. The increased indebtedness, it was believed, was to meet the income tax demand. According to a report filed June 20, 1919, by R. F. Mogan as state inheritance appraiser, the Miller Estate owed the state $1,859,961.52 tax, being approxi- mately $4,000,000 less than the unofficial estimates of tax due. According to the report, Miller owned 119,781.25 shares of the total issue of 120,000 of the Miller & Lux corporation and this stock, exclusive of all indebtedness, was at his death valued at $31,039,143.15.

Frederick C. Roeding

Frederick C. Roeding, the father of George C. Roeding, who is such a prominent personage of Fresno, was one of the earliest large landholders in this section of the San Joaquin Valley and the donor of Roeding Park to the city of Fresno. He died in San Francisco from a stroke of paralysis in July, 1910, at the age of eighty-six. He was a pioneer of California of 1849. His early education he received in Germany along business and mer- cantile lines. In 1846 he emigrated for South America, sailing around Cape Horn, landing at Valparaiso. For three years he engaged in mercantile busi- ness in Chili and Peru, and in 1849 left South America to seek his fortune in California.

As all others he went direct to the mines but after a hard and cold winter returned to San Francisco where he opened a general merchandise store as a member of the firm of Larco & Company. He was heavily inter- ested in this firm until 1878, when he retired from business. In that city he was one of the first Vigilance Committee of 1849 in the suppression of "The Hounds." In 1868 he was one of the incorporators of the German Sav- ings and Loan Bank, later elected vice president and cashier which position he held for twenty years. In that year his health failed and he retired from banking.

It was in 1869 that he organized a company of well to do German busi- ness men which purchased 80,000 acres of land on the plains covering the afterward chosen site of Fresno. He was chosen one of the trustees of the

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syndicate to look after its sale and management and thus became interested in the county and its future. In 1872 this land was divided and Roeding acquired eleven sections. He made the first sale to F. T. Eisen who bought 640 acres paying ten dollars an acre, and was one of the first to enter upon the cultivation of the raisin and wine grape and was one of the pioneer authorities on the subject. A second sale was made to Charles J. Hobler, also of a section and at the same price. Hobler was the first after 1872 to introduce the French merino sheep in the county in the improvement of the breed.

In 1879 Roeding interested Jeff Donahoo to sow 320 acres of grain as an experiment, Donahoo to pay twenty-five cents an acre for the use of the land. This was the rich sediment land bordering on Fancher Creek east of the city. The German syndicate was the agency and means that attracted settlers to the county with the possibilities of the soil under irrigation. It was one of the first that brought the land under cultivation on a large scale and led up to the extensive grain growing enterprises. It played an im- portant part in the agricultural development of the county, especially in the neighborhood where Fresno City was afterward located, and was an agency that was instrumental in the location of the county seat where it was placed by the railroad when the latter came.

Mr. Roeding was a large land holder but before his death had disposed practically of all his holdings in the county. For several years prior to 1900 he lived in Fresno, occupying the house that his son did east of Fresno. It was destroyed by fire December 22, 1917 at loss of $20,000. At his death his holdings consisted of only five lots in the city. These were in the 1200 block on J Street, three of these occupied by the Fancher Creek Nursery of which the son is the manager, and two long occupied by the Borello Brothers as a soda water factory, afterward sold to Mrs. C. B. Shaver and on which the Sierra Hotel is located. In addition to the above there were several fine ranches west of the city. The nursery covers about fifty acres of ground, a specialty being made of fig, fruit, olive and ornamental trees. Its ship- ments go to every habitable part of the globe almost.

The park on Belmont Avenue which bears the name of the deceased was a gift to the city. The offer of it was first made during the Spinney ad- ministration of city affairs in 1898. The original offer comprised a donation of twice as much land than incorporated in the park. The city trustees refused at the time to accept the gift and Mr. Roeding withdrew his offer. Under the L. O. Stephens' administration, the first under a charter, the city decided that it would like to have the land for a park and that the rejec- tion of the offer was a mistake. Roeding was piqued that his offer had been rejected and when the request came he decided to give the city only seventy acres but on further consideration after an inspection of the park decided that he had not given enough and enlarged the gift to 117 acres, the present acreage. Roeding Park is today a beautiful landscape garden that once was a sandy grain field, the stubble of which was fed to sheep.

Angus M. Clark

Prominent figure in his day was Angus M. Clark, a Millertonite that helped make county and city history. He died December 2, 1907. He was a Mason, a Knight Templar and Shriner and a charter member of Fresno's first Masonic lodge and its first master. He came to California at the age of nineteen during the gold excitement in 1850 and after following mining for seventeen years in various parts of the state came to Fresno in 1867 and worked in the copper mine at Buchanan, early enterprise of great promise.

He abandoned mining work when in 1873 he was elected county clerk and recorder, assuming the duties of the office in March at Millerton. In the fall the county seat was removed to Fresno and to Mr. Clark as the custodian of the public archives fell the task of removing the records to

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the new town on the plains, and he assisted at the laying of the corner stone of the second county courthouse. He held the office for eleven years and in 1885 its business had so increased that the work of the office was separated and he resigned. He was elected to the state legislature this same year. Other political activities included two terms as district school trustee and two or three terms as city recorder before there was a police judge under a charter.

All through the earlier years, Mr. Clark continued his mining interests and was associated with W. H. Mckenzie in the abstract and land title business and owned at one time.a controlling interest in the Fresno Loan and Savings Bank, for a time a prosperous financial institution. Ill health and reverses in fortune shadowed his latter days.

William R. Hampton

With the aged husband William R. Hampton, in one part of the house struggling feebly against certain approach of death, the wife, Catherine, died June 13, 1908, in another part of the house of the surviving daughter of a family of seven with whom the aged parents spent the declining days of a long and adventurous life of pioneer experiences. He died July 13, 1908, she at the age of seventy-six, he at the age of eighty-three.

The name of Hampton recalls the days when early activities centered largely on the river in the vicinity of Millerton. The name had been for- gotten by all save the early residents because of the Hampton's long retire- ment. She had come to California from New York with her family in 1855 to Stockton, where he had also settled on coming from Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1849. There they married September 4, 1862, he being in the general merchandising business. The Hamptons came to Fresno in 1867 and he entered the employ of J. R. Jones who was a general trader on the San Joaquin River about three miles below Millerton at a point where a ferry was located with the little settlement popularly known as Jonesville.

Hampton later acquired ownership of a tract of land on the Fresno side of the river and embarked in the merchandising business, locating his build- ings at the present townsite of Pollasky which as the terminus of a branch railroad from Fresno to serve the mountain region opened great expecta- tions which have never been realized. The place is shown on early maps as Hamptonville and the old store building and hotel and family residence stand at the upper end of the park enclosure at Pollasky where the first large re-enforced concrete river bridge in the county was erected replacing the ancient Jenny Lind bridge a little distance above and carried away in one of the spring freshets. With the extension of the railroad Hampton sold his interests to it and with his wife moved to Fresno in the late 80's to end their days.

Simon W. Henry

The death at Stockton March 24, 1918, of Simon W. Henry at the age of eighty-two recalls one who was a resident of the county for nearly sixty years, a pioneer of the county of 1859 and of the city since 1874 and one who participated in their stirring times. Coming to the new county seat when the old one was virtually moved to the plains on wheels, it is of in- terest that he it was that erected the once well known hotel on the site of the postoffice.

He owned practically the half block through fronting on Tulare and between I and K with a 250-foot frontage on J, now occupied by the Patter- son building, conducting a blacksmith shop and livery stable that at first fronted on the alley in rear of the postoffice and locating his home on the property. That cottage stands to this day on the quarter block corner not included in the city owned Emerson school block.

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Henry held a fortune in that Tulare Street property but let it slip through his hands. He was offered $90,000 for that half block by a syndi- cate and a $2,000 deposit was made to bind the bargain. He made offer to Jeff M. Shannon to exchange options, the last named owning the quarter block at Fresno and J as far on the latter as the Strand theater with the cot- tage home surrounded by an orange grove. The exchange was declined. Henry raised his price to $92,500. It was accepted. Then lie raised to $95,000. This was declined, the pending deal fell through, and Henry lost the opportunity of his life and as the result of financial entanglements the property passed into other hands.

The Henry Hotel was a popular house of entertainment. It passed un- der the control of various managements, known in turn as the Henry, Mor- row, Southern Pacific. Cowan and Mariposa and the building is still in ex- istence but serving other purposes on the second site since its original.

Robert Perrin

On Sunday, May 5, 1918, at Williams, Ariz., and at the age of eighty-one years died Robert Perrin, who was a factor in the upbuilding of Fresno in the development of the irrigation system in the county. After the Civil War, in which he had commanded an Alabama battery of artillery that he had re- cruited and equipped, he returned to farming but in 1869 came to California and Fresno and purchased land. He was at first largely interested in sheep, associated for a time with Thomas E. Hughes and it was he, by the way, that introduced M. Theo. Kearney to Fresno.

He and others conceived the plan of the upper San Joaquin River canal to take water from the stream near Friant (Pollasky) to be delivered on the plains above the river at Herndon. Later they became the controlling owners of the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company. It was involved in vital litiga- tion involving the right to take water from the Kings River and this litiga- tion was ended with the purchase by the canal company of the Laguna de Tache Grant lying along the lower Kings. This move made the later develop- ment of the canal system a comparatively easy matter and much additional land was brought under water.

Largely through the work and influence of Perrin and associates was it that in the 80's and the early 90's was created the idea now hailed as national conservation and later the forest reserves to protect the natural supply of the irrigation districts. The feature of the canal company manage- ment under the Perrin regime was to sell a cubic foot of water per second for a quarter section of land in perpetuity, using the money to build and extend canals and laterals, while reserving the right to charge and collect sixty-two and one-half cents per acre for delivery of the water to the user.

Disposing of his canal interests, Perrin went to Arizona in 1894 to enter the sheep and cattle business. His first visit to Arizona was in 1877 to look for ranges, going by steamer to Guaymas, traveling overland on horse- back with small party across a country infested at the time with hostile Indians and predatory Mexican bandits and taking up two large grants in the then territory of Arizona. These were stocked with sheep and cattle. For fifteen years before his death he had retired from active life, having practically divided his property between a brother, Dr. E. B. Perrin of Williams, Ariz., and sisters, Mrs. S. A. Thornton and Mrs. F. B. Minor of Fresno. The extensive Fresno Perrin Colony lands are named for him.

S. C. Lillis

A decree and order of distribution placed on record here from the San Francisco superior court January 19, 1918, is of historical note as showing the landed possession of S. C. Lillis, who died in Oakland almost a vear before lacking a few days, and was one of the last living of the early land barons of California.

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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 37

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