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 75

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 75

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

There was a recurrence during the second week in December of the Spanish influenza and for the period from the seventeenth to and including the twenty-seventh 915 cases were reported, the daily range during the period being from sixty-seven to 109. At the close of this period the belief was that there were 1,600 cases in the city as many as were ailing at the height of the first visitation. This estimated number probably did not repre- sent the total as the isolation was not so complete, the belief being that only one in six was properly isolated so that the epidemic would have to run out its course. At one time during the previous outbreak seventy-six cases were isolated at the county hospital, seventy-four at the Christian Church emergency hospital, thirty at the Day Nursery hospital and twenty-six at the Parlor Lecture Club hospital, whereas on the twenty-eighth there were only eighty-one isolated at the Red Cross hospital, and one-third of these probably from the city. At the county hospital there were fifty-five mixed city and county patients. Physicians were remiss in reporting cases and the figures are therefore not absolutely correct. After December 1, marking the beginning of the flare up, the deaths to the twenty-seventh were forty- eight, and for the two months of the former epidemic, 125. With the return of the epidemic, the wearing of masks was again insisted upon, and the ordinance was amended to make no minimum punishment for infraction, whereas before it was twenty dollars. The result was that before infractors pleading guilty had their cases continued and paid no fine; under the amended ordinance the fine imposed was five dollars or imprisonment at the rate of a dollar a day. The board of health recommended a cessation of all business save drug stores and restaurants after seven o'clock in the evening and with no public gatherings or assemblies. To this latter restriction the trustees did not give formal recognition in an ordinance, though by resolu-

507

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

tion endorsing the recommendation. The result was in effect to enforce only the wearing of the masks. To save patients who were in dangerous state appeal was made for volunteers to give up their blood for transfusion and the appeal was generously responded to. The restrictions during the first epidemic continued for two months. With the closing of the year there was serious disagreement between the city trustees and the board of health as to the restrictions to be enforced to wipe out the second epidemic, notably in the recommendation to close the city absolutely to business and enforce quarantine. The health board was so incensed over the apparent lack of cooperation that the members tendered their resignations as a body. The county also passed ordinance with restrictions affecting the county at large outside of the incorporated towns, especially in the matter of the quarantine of all infected households.

The city building record for the year 1918 shows a total investment of $1,498,850, a decrease of $284.803 on the year before, traceable to the war conditions and the non-construction restrictions. The decrease was largely in new construction work. When non essential construction work was halted in September the total for the year was $1,436,455, an increase of $76,362 over 1917 at the same time. For the year the alteration and repair work total was $323,368, an increase of $70,365 over the year before.

Bank clearings for 1918 total $127,739,180.12 as against $108,314,637.96 for the year before, the lowest monthly in 1918 in June and the total $7,601,- 976.03 and the top notch in November with $14,423,195.21. It was a splendid year of business, despite the setback of the late rain and the influenza. They did not affect the Liberty loans nor all the other war work contributions.

A product of Fresno City is Frank Chance, known to his intimates as "Husky," and in his day regarded as one of the greatest of baseball players, whether as an exponent of the game as first-baseman, or as the manager of the Chicago Nationals who won the pennant for them three times, or whether as manager of the New York Yanks. It was the boast that in his day on the diamond Fresno never had a more potent advertising agency. The baseball fans raved over him as "Peerless Frank."

Fresno received national recognition at the hands of Maj .- Gen. Charles T. Mencher, as director of the air service, in selecting it in the first batch as one of the thirty-two cities in the United States where municipal flying fields would be established by the post office department and where the air service cross-country routes required intermediate aerial mail stations.

On June 12, 1919, was held an election in the city to vote a bond issue of $2,000,000 to provide enlarged school facilities. Of this sum $880,000 was alloted for the improvement of the elementary schools and $1,120,000 for the improvement of the high schools, including in this sum $750,000 for a new high school, $50,000 for a site, $95,000 for equipment, $200,000 for inter- mediate schools, and $25,000 for the old high schools, making of the latter four junior high schools. A citizens' committee endorsing the bond issue advanced the interesting campaign argument that the city had doubled population since 1910; the increase in the number of school children had kept pace with the population, but the school facilities had fallen short of the requirements demanded by the great enrolment increase. The in- crease in pupils since 1908 was set forth in the following figures : 1908, 4,977 ; 1909, 6,256; 1910, 5,216; 1911, 5,538; 1912, 5,926; 1913, 7,203; 1914, 8,312; 1915, 8,540; 1916, 8,764 ; 1917, 8,299; 1918, 10,439. The result of the election was to carry the bonds, and, as on the occasion some years before at the special election to vote bonds to acquire sites for the city playgrounds, a parade with banners was held the day before and thousands of school children were marshaled to influence public opinion. The vote was: For High School Bonds, for, 2,022; against, 252. For Elementary Schools, for, 2,082; against, 202. The new high school will be on a thirty-acre site on the Sweet Tract.

508

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

As a part of its 1919 fall program of service improvement and develop- ment, the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company announced the ex- penditure of between $50,000 and $60,000 in an extension of its cables in northern and eastern Fresno. The company made the more interesting announcement that, as the result of its house-to-house canvass, the city proper was shown to have a population of 55,000. If all the territory im- mediately adjacent to the corporate limits were added in this canvass, the population would be approximately 60,000.

Report was made June 2, 1919, of the sale, by A. B. Clark and O. L. Everts, to Charles R. Puckhaber, of the 231/2x150 lot and brick building on J Street, between Mariposa and Fresno, for $57,000. As representing the highest paid price of $2,000 a front foot for a city business property, the deal was significant. The sold property was the site of the Olney & Johnson shoe store, the buyer owning the adjacent property of like size.

A city election is to be held about September 9, to vote a special tax levy to carry the city over the fiscal year 1919-20. The money needed is for the following: Street Lighting Fund, $75,000; Budget Increases, $39,000; Liquor License Revenue Loss, $75,000; Salary Increases, $36,000; Total, $225,000. There are five tax rates in the City of Fresno. The tax rate for the coming fiscal year will be an increase of $1.50 to $2.08, including the special levy. This will be the rate in the original territory of the city; the other rates cover later territorial additions which are not taxable for general bond issues voted before they became a part of the city. The charter limits the rate to $1 on the $100 for general administrative purposes. Manifestly that rate could not raise the above special demands of the times.

The movement was started at a Commercial Club gathering, June 6, 1919, on the suggestion of Charles L. McLane of the Fresno Normal, that the new Fresno high school be erected as a memorial in honor of the Fresno boys who went to war. One detail suggested was to have inscribed on the walls of the auditorium of the building the name of every Fresno soldier, sailor or marine, in the service of his country during the war in Europe.

The newly organized Jewish congregation of the Temple Israel in this city celebrated, at its then meeting-place in the auditorium of the Wood- men of the World, on June 3, 1919, the festival of Schoubuth. It was the first observance in Fresno. The service was conducted by Rabbi Julius Leibert, formerly of South Bend, Ind. At this service was presented the sacred scroll known as Torah, by S. Hartman, a pioneer of Merced, who had owned the scroll for thirty years, having received it from his father who had sent it from Jerusalem. This Torah had been in the Hartman family for sixty years. These sacred scrolls are the work of the rabbinical schools in Palestine.

The announcement was made, June 4, 1919, that the wrecking of the buildings at the corner of J and Fresno Streets would begin in September, to clear the site for a 12-story, reenforced terra-cotta, steel-frame building to be the tallest between San Francisco and Los Angeles, 153 feet from the sidewalk to the cornice. It will be erected for Andrew Mattei, the wine- maker, will cost approximately $400,000, and will be completed for oc- cupancy, September 15, 1920. Ice-cold water in every room will be a feature. The building ground-area will be 150x50, the latter on J Street, with en- trance. It will contain 225 offices, have its own electric and water-plant, and the vestibule and stair hall will be elaborately finished in Italian marble. The grape bunches to be used in ornamentation are an emblem of the owner in his business as a winemaker. The structure will also have a 10-foot base- ment covering the ground area. It will be a splendid edifice and the third sky-scraper in Fresno.

A notable sale reported early in July, 1919, was that of the pioneer southwest corner at I and Mariposa, 125x50, for approximately $1,200 a front foot. The corner was popularly known as "Degen's Corner," from the

509

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

fact that William Degen conducted a saloon there for some eighteen years after the erection of this, one of the first two-story brick buildings in the city. Sale was by the Jerry Ryan Estate to O. J. Woodward, Thomas E. Risley, and A. V. Lisenby. The five-year leases will prevent building for several years to come.

It was found necessary to hold a second special city election, in August, 1919, to vote $200,000 bonds for the sewering project of North Fresno (an- nexed territory to the city). All proceedings in connection with the sale of bonds to a Sacramento bank were found to be invalid. The initiating resolution of intention was found to be defective, in that it did not declare when it should become effective. The project was contemplated under a state improvement act of 1915 and nothing being contained in the city charter on the subject, it became a legal question whether, for such an improvement, a special assessment district can be formed, within the city, of territory less than the city itself in area. In any event, and even after another special election to ratify and legalize the issue of the bonds, the legal question will have to be litigated in an agreed case.

Following organization of the teachers in the Fresno High School as a local union of the American Federation of Teachers, those of the elementarv and grammar grades of the city schools voted on the night of April 23, 1919, to form a second local of the federation which is affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The high school local also affiliated with the Fresno labor council and the other was expected to do likewise. Eighty-four signed the articles of federation and eighty the application for a charter. The articles read that: "Members shall co-operate in securing and maintaining efficiency along all lines in the school department, co-operate in all the movements looking toward better working conditions, and co-operate loyally in securing and maintaining all the rights and benefits to which teachers are entitled." In passing, it might be mentioned that the Ministerial Union of clergymen was upon a time. and probably is vet, affiliated after a fashion with the labor council and entitled to have representatives at its sessions.

Notable city sale was that reported April 28, 1919, by Frank H. Short of "The Palms," four lots 150 feet on Calaveras and 100 on J, to John Bide- garay for $32,000. It was the original location of the Burnett Sanitarium. There was talk of the purchaser erecting a $200,000, seventy-apartment, six- story house with roof garden, open court entrance on Calaveras and another on J. Equally notable sale was the one of a few weeks before of the Gen. M. W. Muller four lots at Tuolumne and Van Ness for $42,000. The original Muller cottage was in 1885 one of the most attractive Fresno City homes and two blocks from the courthouse was considered as being in the suburbs.

The $200,000 bond issue for the sewering of the newly annexed North Fresno territory was carried at the election March 25, 1919, by a vote of 485 to three. The negatives, it was said, represented the father, wife and son in one household. Had the bonds not carried it was understood that the state board of health would have intervened and compelled construction of sewer as a sanitary necessity. Sale of bonds and award of contract for a portion of the sewer were followed by rescinding of all proceedings on account of various legal defects. The proceedings had to be begun anew and another election to vote the bonds was to have been held during the latter part of the month of August 1919.

The project to erect the first synagogue in the county so far advanced that a meeting of the Jewish population was had on the night of April 3, 1919, to choose a site and take steps to raise $30,000 to buy two lots and erect the building. The committee in charge of the project was Harry Coffee, L. I. Diamond, L. M. Mendelsohn, J. H. Mittenthal, and Saul Samuels. Jewish worship has been had at long intervals and on the great holidays by visiting or invited rabbis and the members of the faith had come to the belief that the time was at hand for a synagogue not only as a place for worship but

510

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

also as a center of Jewish activities. The nearest synagogues are at Stock- ton and Sacramento. The plan involves the calling of a rabbi from the Cin- cinnati rabbinical college to be permanently located.

Recording of amended articles of incorporation by the Sperry Flour Company showing an increase of the capital stock from $4,200,000 to $6,000,- 000 in 60,000 shares in accordance with a vote of the directorate on March 31, 1919, contemplated, it was said, an extension of the flour mill holdings and purchase of warehouses, storage plants and steamers for ocean and river transportation, and also the expenditure of $400,000 in construction of new mill, grain elevator and warehouse in Fresno City. The latter will be erected on a triangular property acquired from the Southern Pacific on its right of way on San Diego Street with the larger frontage on the extension of Van Ness Avenue through Woodward's Addition. The grain elevator is already constructed, receiving the grain direct from the cars, but it is trucked to the mill uptown. The pioneer mill erected thirty or more years ago and located at Fresno and N Streets will be disposed of when the new plant is in exist- ence. However great the increase in the orchard and vineyard plantings, it is figured that Fresno will always be the main distributing point for the valley and that there will always be such an acreage in grain as to warrant location here of one large flouring mill. This is cited as another strong piece of evidence of the confidence that capitalists have in this city as the commercial center of the valley and of Central California.

At a meeting and banquet of 150 men of St. Paul's M. E. Church South held on the evening of April 28, 1919, it was voted to construct a greater church at a cost of $75,000 to $100,000 and a building fund was started with subscriptions then and there obtained amounting to $6,500. The canvass was conducted by Bishop H. M. Du Bose, whose diocese covers the territory beginning at the eastern boundary of Montana and includes the states of Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona and New Mexico. St. Paul's was the first church building erected in Fresno, and it is the oldest congre- gation. Whether its highly valuable property with the adjoining parsonage at Fresno and L Streets, opposite the courthouse square of four blocks, shall be sold for $75,000 and this used as a fund to locate and build elsewhere or whether the present brick building shall be razed and the larger house of worship be erected on the oldest church site in the city, has yet to be de- termined. The sense was in favor of a sale and to add $25,000 to the realized sale price to construct elsewhere the finest church building in Fresno, de- sirable sites being purchasable not far away at prices ranging from $18,000 to $25,000, though there is a division of opinion as between a site in a thickly settled residence district and the down-town location. The plan according to the bishop is to construct here a large central church with at least two secondary churches to form a link in a chain extending from Seattle to New Mexico in the diocese. The other churches that were located in close prox- imity to the courthouse square have been the Episcopal, still at Fresno and N and the second oldest, the Roman Catholic that was at Fresno and M and the Cumberland Presbyterian that was at Tulare and N Streets.

That Fresno City is a labor center is evidenced by the figures of the State Public Employment Bureau. For the fiscal year that ended March 1. 1919, the Fresno bureau filled 9,315 positions and ranked fourth in the state. San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento made greater returns. Since the opening of the bureau August 23, 1917, and to the 1st of March, 1919, 22,100 men and women were placed in positions in Fresno and surrounding country. The bureau sounded the death knell of the old-time "intelligence offices," so-called.

Announcement was made at a meeting on the night of April 22, 1919, of the consummation of plans in a merger of all the creameries in the valley from Bakersfield on the south to Merced on the north as the largest co- operative undertaking in California in the San Joaquin Valley Milk Producers'

511

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

Association with headquarters in Fresno. The county contributed as merg- ing units the Danish Creamery of Fresno, the Riverdale Co-operative Cream- ery of Riverdale and the Caruthers Cheese Factory of Caruthers. The stated combined output of the merged creameries is $15,000,000 annually and the capital in the transaction approximately $1,000,000 in equipment and build- ings. It is proposed to erect at Tulare City a plant for the manufacture of all by-products of milk.

The city board of education announced about the middle of the month of May, 1919, an approximate estimate of $1,500,000 to be voted on as a bond issue June 10 to be expended in the construction of a new high school build- ing and in the remodeling and building of the elementary and other schools. The high school would alone cost $750,000. In this connection it was stated that on the basis of the growth of the high school in six years from 700 to 1703 pupils the bond issue would not alone be helpful to the present but to the future. The city schools were expanding rapidly and if the increase was maintained in the high the number of pupils in another half dozen years would be 3,750.

Supplementing the five years' antecedent gift to the city by her sister, the late Mrs. Julia A. Fink-Smith, Mrs. Augusta P. Fink-White, wife of Tru- man C. White, the pioneer, presented to the City Playgrounds Commission, through her attorney, at a meeting held June 5, 1919, a deed for City Block 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 war- ranted.

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS

Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith, U. S. A. (obit at San Diego, Cal., March 1, 1918), was a retired veteran of the Civil War, participated in Indian campaigns and saw service in the Spanish War in the Philippines. Fresno Camp No. 6 of the Spanish War Veterans is named for him, as many of the members served under him. In the service, he was known under the nickname of "Hell Roaring Jake."

Mrs. Mary E. Lawson, who died December 22, 1917, came with husband, B. F. Lawson, to Fresno from Ohio in 1884, locating at the Lomasco vine- yard. She was for a decade matron at the county almshouse. .

James E. Williams, who died at San Luis Obispo November 7, 1917, was with his father, Samuel H., one of the first undertakers in this city, located on H Street near where the Collins Hotel stands now. He was also engineer of one of the first trains that ran out of this city.

Pulaski C. Eastin who died near Merced November 2, 1917, was prominent as a rancher and stockman in Madera, Cal., where he had lived since his seventh year, born at Knight's Ferry, Cal., July, 1854, and the son of J. T. Eastin, who came as a pioneer to this section in 1850 from Ken- tucky. The latter outlived him.

C. C. Merriam was sixty-eight years of age at time of death, December 14, 1917. He was a member of the bar and in the days before the charter acted as the city attorney of Fresno.

William F. Coffman, who died at the home of a daughter at Madera in the year 1898, was a state pioneer of 1849, and the man that built the first wagon road into the Yosemite Valley.

Mrs. Hannah Hammond (obit Fresno, March 3, 1918) was a pioneer of Kings, coming across the plains in 1863 and later to this county.

George F. Clark (obit March 13, 1918) was one of the oldest veterinari- ans in the valley, twenty-three years a city resident and at death lacked a few months of being eighty-nine years of age. He served in the Confederate army.

The death, March 5, 1918, at Dinuba of Robert F. Dunn recalls the haberdashery firm of Chisholm & Jones, once located at Mariposa and J, with which he was connected. He was one of the pioneers of the Dinuba region in the transformation of it from grain fields to orange orchards and vineyards. For eight years and up to 1916 he was the Dinuba manager of the Griffin-Skelley Packing Company.

E. L. Austin who died in Oakland January 31, 1918, was a Fresno resi- dent from 1891 to 1911 when he moved on account of his health. He was a grocer on Tulare Street and in 1895 was elected a city trustee for one term, when a Republican was a rarity.

Ben Williams, who passed away May 29, 1918, was an old resident and a local character in his day. He was one of the drivers of the early day one- horse car line on Tulare Street with town terminus at Mariposa and J. Every man, woman, child knew him. The pioneer street car lines were wonderful institutions-jokes in comparison with the present day electric line and its branches. There were three pioneer lines: one from down town out Black- stone Avenue to the car barns at White Avenue and Effie Street ; one from Mariposa, up Mariposa along K to Tulare and out to the Pollasky depot, and the third starting from the Hughes Hotel along I to Ventura Avenue to the fair grounds. The lines ran "bob tailed" little cars, discarded from the

513

HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

San Francisco line to Woodward's Gardens, the great Sunday public resort.

Mrs. Sallie Cole Sample, who died December 27, 1917, at the age of sixty-three, was a resident of the county since childhood and lived for years at Academy. She was the wife of David C. Sample, well known cattleman, and the mother of eleven children, ten of whom survived her, as did her mother, Mrs. W. T. Cole of Clovis. All the children were at the bedside when she died. She was a native born of Solano County. Eight sisters also survived her. Pall-bearers at the funeral were: M. K. Harris. E. E. Man- heim, George Cosgrave, Dr. J. C. Cooper. Dr. Geo. H. Bland and E. D. Edwards.

The oldest pioneer resident of Fresno City and the one credited with the longest continuous residence is Russell H. Fleming. His name will be found frequently mentioned in this history. He was a resident of the county as a stage driver long before Fresno City was thought of, and after its found- ing was its first postmaster. In his day he was an important personage. Henry W. Clinch died at the age of sixty-eight in Fresno, November 13, 1917. Thirty years a resident, he was until about twenty years ago con- nected with the Expositor newspaper in the mechanical department and when it suspended founded the Franklin Printing Company.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

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 75

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