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 78

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 78

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P. A. Kanawyer, pioneer of the county, will be recalled with his wife for their resort in the Sierras, where pack outfits could be had for mountain- eering on the three forks of the Kings River. He was postmaster of Dunlap when about eight years before his death he shot and killed J. C. Collier in the lobby of the Grand Central Hotel in this city in a dispute over the post- mastership. Acquittal followed on a showing that the killing was in self defense. Mrs. Kanawyer remarried after eight years of widowhood.

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Robert S. Johnson of the Excelsior stables and a five-year resident from Stockton was a member of the Elks and of the Grand Army of the Republic. He was captain of Troop K of the First California Regiment of Cavalry in the Civil War, resigning after two years following muster in at Stockton in February, 1863. A son, W. R. Johnson, was captain for many years of a Stockton guard company and terminated his military service as colonel of the Sixth Infantry Regiment, N. G. C.

John W. Martin was an old and respected district school teacher, sixty years of age at death. He married in March, 1882, Miss Vienna Neal, daugh- ter of Rev. J. H. Neal, the pioneer minister of the county. Widow and six children survived. His last school engagement was at Sweetflower in Ma- dera County ; in Arbor Vitae Cemetery his remains lie.

The death of Dr. Joseph D. Davidson, eminent surgeon of the county, was not unlooked for. It had been expected for several months, having suffered from heart trouble for five years. His last wish was that he be returned to Fresno from a San Francisco sanitarium to die, and he was conscious to the last. He was a graduate of the Vanderbilt Medical School of Nashville in 1881 at nineteen, coming to Kingsburg, Fresno, in 1886, and four years later to the county seat, associating himself with Dr. Dear- dorff. Shortly after, he was appointed county physician, made a specialty of surgery until failing health forced him to retire from practice, his later years being devoted exclusively to surgery. It was he that organized the Burnett Sanitarium and in 1901 he had built the structure on Fresno Street and was president of the corporation from its inception. He devoted much study to modern surgery, took a post graduate New York course, visited the leading American hospitals and spent a summer in study and travel in Europe, attaining more than local distinction. At the time of the Owl train disaster at Byron in December, 1902, Dr. Davidson was at Byron Springs, was hurriedly summoned to the scene of disaster and it was re- marked that it was a relief to every one as soon as he arrived, so vigorously and capably did he handle the awful situation. Personally he was a most likable man-gruff and not employing the choicest language but he had a heart and it has been known of his being in tears in informing a friend he must be operated upon at once for appendicitis. On a visit home to Tennessee in 1901 he married Mrs. Louise Peden, a Southern beauty. The much lamented surgeon breathed his last in his beautiful colonial mansion on K Street. Cremation was the end of his mortal remains.

George E. Babcock was prominent as an Elk and as a choir singer. He had been a resident for twenty years. He was circulation manager for the Republican for three years and later of the Portland Telegram. Upon return to Fresno he was associated with his brother-in-law, C. T. Cearley, as man- ager of the wholesale paper department. He was one of the organizers of the Unitarian Society.

A California pioneer of 1865 was Miss Mary Lafferty, who died at eighty-five in February, 1917, after a city residence of nine years. For twenty years she kept the Grand Hotel at Sanger.

Charles Gailey's claim to notice was that he was a Mariposan of 1861, followed carpentering, removed to Merced and eventually to Madera and erected the first dwelling in the town. In 1891 he made Sanger his home and his was one of the first brick buildings erected in that town.

R. H. Daly was a Virginian with a fine literary and legal education. He settled in Mariposa in 1850 and served terms as district attorney and county judge. He participated in the organization of Fresno County, was an earnest advocate and an indefatigable worker. His standing in the pro- fession was the equal of any one in this part of the state. Physical infirmi- ties beset his last years. He died at the age of fifty-six, leaving widow and eight children.

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Mrs. Catherine S. Waterman, who died at seventy-nine at Tulare, was the wife of Rev. J. H. Waterman, canon of St. James pro-cathedral, and was the mother of John, Edward and George Waterman, the latter city trustee, federal food administrator and a former president of the Commercial Club. The sons, son-in-law and a grandson were pall bearers at the funeral.

At his death, J. R. Kittrell was the Nestor of the Fresno bar, most highly revered in the profession. In his prime he followed such men as Chief Justice William H. Beatty, who was an intimate friend, John Garber, Harry I. Thornton, Hall McAllister and other notable colleagues of the day and leaders at the California bar. He was a man of intellect with a command of language that gave to his eloquence great force and conviction as well in "the dew of pathos as in the sheen of wit." At nineteen and until 1852 he was probate clerk at Enlam, Alabama; married then Elmira Hall and came to California via Panama. He was paymaster at the Mare Island navy yard, and thereafter practiced law. Failing in the effort to return to the south to join the cause of the Confederacy, he left for British Columbia, tarried there several years, returning practiced law at Portland and eventu- ally came to San Francisco, associating himself in the law with Zach Mont- gomery but the latter receiving a federal appointment he went to Carson City, Nev., and was state attorney general for four years after 1875; back to California he located at Modesto, later in Fresno and in 1908 retired from practice. He was in his day an able criminal lawyer. He was an active political partisan, always aligned with the Democratic party, as far back as 1858 with the division of the party when he was of the resolutions com- mittee of the Lecompton state administration convention, and again in 1861 at the Breckenridge Democratic state convention, when he moved an amendment to the convention resolutions that President Lincoln deserved impeachment. The amendment was lost by a close vote. The "general," as he was always known, was an uncompromising states rights man.

Thomas Dunn was at death at the age of sixty-eight a man of property, well preserved, prominent in public affairs, known for his private and Masonic charities, and foremost in the work of that fraternity with its various branches, and also in the Grand Army of the Republic. A Canadian by birth, le came to America at the age of one and one-half years, spent his boyhood at Racine, Wis., and at maturity came to Colorado and followed the cattle business. He served in the Civil War in the famous Black Horse Cavalry of the U. S. A. Later he was a Montana cattleman, came to California and Fresno in 1887, was highly respected for his sterling western ruggedness and worth ; was a city councilman from 1901 to 1905 and after 1909 a park commissioner, in that year having been considered for the mayoralty but relinquishing in favor of the late Dr. Rowell to solidify a movement in behalf of good government.

When he died in 1914, Horace E. Barnum had the distinction of being the man in the state who had longest been in continnous service in office as county auditor. He died in June of that year and had he lived until December would have been twenty years in that public service. He was recognized as an invincible candidate, had a remarkable personality as a campaigner and never was at a loss to call a man by his name and very generally by his Christian appellation. The son, Charles E., a deputy in the office, was appointed to fill the unexpired term and then was elected to succeed himself. H. E. Barnum was a pioneer of the county of 1875 and interested with the late T. R. Reed, for whom the town of Reedley was named, in the breaking up of ground and pioneer farming of the contiguous land, taking up about seven sections, using from eight to ten horses to a plow and reaping such a grain harvest that it required more than a score of sixteen, eight, six and four-mule teams to convey it to a shipping point. He also followed farming in Tulare, was a hotelkeeper at Lemoore, where he was burned out, returning to Reedley in the hotel business, entered 32

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politics, held minor positions and first was elected auditor in 1894. He had lost the left arm by the accidental discharge of a shot gun; despite that crippling he was an expert fisherman and hunter. They tell of a courthouse wag who for Christmas bought a pair of fine gloves and presented the left one to Barnum and the right handed one to Treasurer Ewing. Even the one- armed receivers appreciated the humor of the gifts.

James W. Ballard, a Kentuckian born, lived in Clark County, Mo., until 1911, when he came to Reedley in which community he was prominent and was its first recorder. He was a veteran of the Confederate army, enlisting from Missouri at sixteen. He was a great-great grandson of Capt. Bland Ballard, Kentucky pioneer and Indian fighter and comrade in arms of Daniel Boone. The remains were sent to Kanoka, Mo., for burial in the family plot. The war flag that he presented to the Boy Scouts to be hoisted over the Methodist Episcopal Church of Reedley was at half mast at the funeral. The decedent was one of the founders of the Mount Carmel M. E. Church in Clark County, Mo. He was always a central figure at reunions of war veterans.

Lucius Baker, who died at the age of seventy-two at the home place on Fig Avenue, three miles south of Fresno city, had the distinction of having lived in that one place in Fresno Colony school district for nearly thirty- five years. He was born in Michigan, graduated from Ann Arbor as a civil engineer, moved to California in the 70's, in 1881 laid out the large additions in southwest Los Angeles and in 1882 with others the northern branch of the Southern Pacific into Oregon. His residence in Fresno dated from 1883 and he was engaged in farming. He was one of the seven trustees of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Fresno city and the six surviving ones were the honorary pall bearers at the funeral. Mrs. Adora B. Baker died at the age of sixty-two at the home place one week after to a day.

Mrs. Mary E. Burleigh, who died aged over seventy years, was the widow of Frank J. Burleigh, pioneers of Fresno city of forty-four years ago, when it was only a village railroad station. For about ten years before and until 1878 they were residents at Pine Ridge where he was engaged in the lumber business. He was one of the first city warehousemen in 1880 at Inyo and Kern, engaged in the sale of lumber, stock and pigs, grain and hay, and in 1888 erected the second warehouse at Mono and Ventura. Mov- ing to the plains in 1878, he brought a six-horse load of lumber for a two- room house at J and Merced which with later additions was for many years a landmark. Covering the years before and after the war, he was engaged in freighting between Manhattan and Fort Leavenworth, Kans., also serving in the army and seeing much service against the hostile Indians. As with .so many other pioneers, he suffered in later years several reversals in fortune.

A. S. Edgerly was another pioneer and well known character in his day and in the 80's an active operator in the development of the city, then attract- ing so much attention throughout the state. He died at the age of eighty- four after an illness of more than six years following apoplexy, with mental impairment. He was the builder of the Edgerly block, a notable landmark at Tulare and J. In the collapse in values after the boom period, he lost most all his property but in spite of his years resolutely set himself to accumulate another competency. He was a most indefatigable spirit. He published an autobiography which was a literary curiosity. Surviving kin are four married sons and daughters, seven grandchildren, six great grand- children all of Fresno, and two sisters and a brother in New Hampshire.

Capt. A. Y. Easterby died at his home in Napa in June, 1893. He was a San Franciscan of 1849 and one of the founders of the first Masonic lodge. The large ranch tract east of Fresno was named for him; he was one of the very earliest extensive land settlers in the county ; a pioneer of the agri- cultural era ; one of the agents in the first successful application on a prac-

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tical scale of the theory of irrigation and instrumental with other landed in- terest to bring M. Theo. Kearney to start on his Fresno career as a land boomer and seller.

Mrs. Emily Phillips was a prominent and lovable woman in the early and rough days of Fresno, her residence dating from the year 1873. Her death was at Los Angeles in May, 1907. She was foremost as a musician, with the late Judge Gillum Baley was one of the founders of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and during the village days of Fresno gave concerts to help build the little, frame, first house of worship that was erected at Fresno and L. It was used in God's service for many years, afterward sold to a colored congregation, removed to a site west of the railroad and on a certain 4th of July night in part or wholly destroyed by fire. Mrs. Phillips was the relict of S. M. Phillips who died at Pensacola, Fla., in 1861 from pneumonia contracted in the Mexican war service under Jefferson Davis. They met at Jackson at the inaugural ball of Gov. Henry S. Foote and fell in love. Mrs. Phillips was a typical woman of the South with influential connections ; the influence of such women in the rough days of Fresno's infancy cannot be gauged today.

J. M. Collier will be recalled through his long connection with the first water and light company in the struggling village of Fresno, and his mem- hership in the first state guard company of the town; also as deputy under Recorder C. L. Wainwright after that office was divorced from the county clerkship and also under his successor, Gen. Tyree A. Bell.

One of the leaders in the campaign for moral and civic reform closing the 1890 decade and ushering in the 1900 with the change from the border town conditions to one approaching civic decency was the late J. P. Strother, who had long held an honorable position at the bar, who was regarded as a man of inviolable integrity and as a lawyer one of exceptional ability. A Kentuckian by birth, he was the second son of an M. E. South minister of the gospel, graduated in the law in 1859 from the Louisville Law School, was prominent in Missouri legal circles and during the Harden administration was a member of the state senate, and from 1881-87 judge of the sixth judicial district. He practiced law at Marshall and came to Fresno in 1892. In 1901 he was elected a city trustee as a member of the first board under the charter and after serving three years resigned to undertake the revision and rewriting of the charter which as it stands today is largely the result of his work and experience, although it is admitted that with the great expansion of the city it has outgrown many of the salutary limitations that once were demanded. He was an elder of the M. E. Church, South, and a frequent lay delegate to its convocations ; an exemplar of the true American citizen.

Newspaper mention was made of the visit at the close of June, 1918, of George E. Field to purchase 160 acres west of the state highway on the Madera County side of the San Joaquin River at $150 an acre or perhaps 100 times more than what he could have had it for when he first was located in this section. He came from Los Angeles and made the purchase, he said, to do his bit in this war raising corn to feed the world with. He installed a pumping plant and prepared to drill the corn kernels. Few probably recalled him as the engineer, who in the early 80's was in charge of the river irrigation project with rock dam at above Hamptonville, later known as Pollasky and still later as Friant, which proved such a colossal failure after eating up money as a gopher hole will absorb a stream of water. Profiting by the cx- periences, the Herndon canal was constructed to serve the lands of the Bank of California in that section. After leaving Fresno, Field put his engineering knowledge to use in the construction of dry docks at Philadelphia and in dredging large tracts in Florida and in other parts of the world. He recalled among his early experiences having driven sheep to market from Millerton and herded them on the site of the courthouse when the village of Fresno had barely 250 population. The pioneer is a man of seventy years.

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The last day in the month of June, 1918, marked for Leopold Gundel- finger severance of business connections with the Bank and Trust Company of Central California in the founding of which he assisted thirty-one years ago, his retirement as vice-president and a director and withdrawal from active business life after forty-four years dating from his arrival July 1, 1874, when valley, county and city were yet in embryo and when only the visionary and the most optimistic could conjure up what the future had in store. The retirement came unannounced and therefore excited comment in the local business world and financial circles. Mr. Gundelfinger had been active in the civic and business life of the community and influential in banking circles. With the exception of the late Louis Einstein, he was the largest stockholder in the company, long known as the Bank of Central California, popularly as the Einstein bank, and was with it since the first day it opened its doors in March, 1887. It opened with Mr. Einstein as president and Gundelfinger as cashier. They conducted the business alone for six months. When Mr. Einstein died he was continued as cashier but at the stockholders' meeting in January, 1915, he was also made vice-president. The first clerk in the bank was Frank Helm and he entered in September, 1887, when Mr. Gundelfinger went east to be married. The Einstein estate has large interests that are being improved and exploited through the Einstein Improvement Company, and among them may be mentioned the Liberty theater property, the Patter- son building, the Land Company building in which the bank is located and on which site but for the war probably a beginning would have been made ere this on a great skyscraper building, improved business properties in Inyo Street, La Sierra Tract, and various other scattered city holdings, most ad- vantageously located with the later growth of the city. In the first days of Fresno, Mr. Gundelfinger was a leading spirit in public enterprises, even to being an organizer of the first citizens' volunteer fire companies having the only piece of hand apparatus in the city and that lost in one of the early large fires, when hand pump and fire house were consumed. He was asso- ciated originally with the pioneer mercantile firm of Jacob & Co., which was succeeded by Silverman & Einstein and later became Louis Einstein & Co. with branches in many activities. It was in 1878 that he went to Kingston in charge of the firm's mercantile house there, remaining until 1886 when he took a pleasure trip to Europe. Few are there living who have been longer and so continuously associated with the business life of the city from the day of small beginnings and so intimately related with the growth and progress of the community as Mr. Gundelfinger. None has so well earned rest and retirement. In the conservative operations of the associated Ein- steins and Gundelfingers are epitomized the best achievements recorded in the history of the city's commercial, banking and sane speculative enterprises.

When Joseph Spinney died in San Francisco after an illness that had for more than two years sapped his vitality, leaving him a living corpse as it were, there passed away a local character of note and one who in his day helped to make history of a kind. His last illness was characteristic of him in life in tenacity of purpose. He combatted death long beyond the time expectations of his friends. He suffered from a complication of ailments to which the ordinary man would have succumbed early. Among these were cancer of the stomach, dropsy and peritonitis. Medical men had long given him up; his was a long and lingering death while breathing the breath of life. The name of Jo Spinney-no one ever called him by other term-and his career are inseparably connected with the early business and constructive period of the city and later with its political history. His own boast was that he was the man that built up Fresno. It was literally true. It has been written of him that his name will live as long as the records of the city hall are preserved, as long as those of the county are in existence and as long as Fire Engine House Number Three erected by him will stand as a monu- ment to him as the visible cornerstone is a granite slab bearing his name

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and of the others with him as members of the city board of trustees at the time and in power. One other board in later years thus perpetuated its names in the granite slab of the city hall under the regime of W. Parker Lyon as mayor and provoked as much public criticism as the Spinney slab. A living generation will have passed away before Spinney's unique methods will have been forgotten and passed into tradition. He was a native of Cadiz, Spain, and though he came to America at the age of twelve he never mastered the English language. A story was current concerning him that he was the illegit- imate offspring of a Spanish don as father and a peasant girl as mother. It must be accepted with a grain of salt. The fact is that he was sorely handi- capped in life. He could not read nor write and until the last never mastered more than the ability to write his name. Yet in his day he could make his check for thousands and it would be paid without question and he was the political boss of the city, the power behind the throne and exercised it. He was a man under normal stature, of appearance anything but prepossessing and lacking personal habits of physical cleanliness. And yet he was a re- markable man, possessed a most active brain, was big hearted, true to a friend in rewarding him and punishing those that thwarted him in his de- signs and ambitions. He landed at Cape Ann, Mass., farmed for three years, then apprenticed himself to a brick maker at Booth Bay, Maine, and serving his four years, mastered the trade and masonry in addition. Spinney was of course not his name. He was quick to enter business on his own ac- count, shipped brick to Boston, came to California and Fresno in 1877 with little of this world's goods. His first employment was as a laborer with the late Frank J. Burleigh. He established one of the first permanent brickyards in the building up of the village, and also entered the masonry building con- tracting business at a time when there was no established brick kiln nearer than Visalia. For the courthouse and other brick structures erected up to that time, special kilns were set up, ending operations with fulfillment of the particular contract. Spinney erected many of the early brick structures of Fresno, many standing to this day. Among the notable ones may be named the Bradley Block at Mariposa and J, the Farmers' Bank at Mariposa and I, the rear and original portion of the Y. M. C. A., the Odd Fellows' Building, the Barton Theater and Armory Hall Building, the latter portion demolished for the Cory Building, the Patterson Block, the Fresno Brewery and so many others of less note as to be too numerous to mention. Spinney became a wealthy man and in the 80's and 90's owned city and county property and buildings, the Spinney or Odd Fellows', the three-story West Side hotel erected in 1891 at the west side exit of the subway, also 160 acres west of town planted to vines. Following the bent of the times he set out Spinney colony to sell in subdivisions : was a stock holder in three of the local banks and in the Belmont-Blackstone Avenue horse car line and a man of large business interests. He entered local politics about 1893, when he defeated for the city trusteeship from the fifth ward B. T. Alford, who was and had been the political manipulator of the day and was a past master in the art of politics as pursued in those times. He continued in the office as the result of successive reelections until finally defeated for the place under the charter by W. J. O'Neill and political career ended. When he entered the board, it was divided and represented by two Democrats and two Re- publicans. Spinney was a Republican by choice and while a city trustee held the balance of power and was Republican, Democrat, or Populist as the exigency of the moment and the matter in hand and his particular political interests demanded. In 1895 when the board was evenly divided as between new members and hold overs, Spinney was the central figure in a spectacular bit of political hocus pocus. The man who could not read nor write nor do more than sign his name to a public document caused himself to be nom- inated and elected chairman of the board and ex-officio mayor. He had his triumph. He assumed the chair and in his unintelligible language thanked

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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 78

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