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 80

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 80

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lords until the marriage ceremony, Lily had once looked upon him, though never formally introduced. It was about two years before when Wee visited California and spoke in Fresno on the reform movement with which he was associated. Then it was that Mrs. Yung was commissioned to find a wife for him. She was found, and after all the necessary arrangements, financial and otherwise, were made, the bride was claimed one year after the com- mission. Arrived at Stockholm after a tour of the continent, the little bride discarded her Oriental apparel and resumed her American dresses as she wore them in Fresno, and from a simple, crowded home circle she was established in her own and ruled over three servants. The husband's con- sular duties ended in the summer of 1908 and after some travel the Wees planned to go to China to live. As far as customs and ideals of living are concerned, the little Fresno bride was to all intents an American girl in everything save religion as the family retained the worship of Confucius.

Three Fresno men that dabbled more or less in oil entertained with the developments of March, 1910, in the Maricopa and Coalinga fields in Kern and Fresno Counties the belief that fortune played them a scurvy turn but for which they might have been in a class with John D. Rocke- feller. They are Fritz Bader of the Worswick Paving Company, Louis Scholler of the Grand Central Cafe and the late Peter Rice of the Sunset Realty Company. Bader, Scholler and certain Hanfordites were interested in a Maricopa enterprise and might have been owners in the Lake View oil volcano which was erupting 40,000 barrels. of oil a day and had been con- tinuously for ten days in March, 1910, the product erupting so fast that there was no tankage for it and the oleaginous fluid was banked in a great lake. Bader is one of the valley's pioneer oil men and learned what he knows of oil in the Baku field in Russia on the Caspian Sea. Their Maricopa enter- prise was one of 1892 in a company that drilled 800 feet, drilled until they could raise no more money with which to drill and finally lost all they had invested. Bader, who owned the two and one-half-acre location, even for- feited ownership of the land because of inability to keep up the assessment work, though he continued operations for one year after the others had abandoned all hope and let their stock go for delinquent assessments. The gusher in 1910 spouted 40,000 barrels a day from a well at 2,400 and the development of which cost the interested and stock controlling Los Angelans approximately $90,000. Bader went bankrupt over the enterprise and re- turning to Hanford began business anew but on other lines. Scholler rumi- nated over a roll of $25,000 worthless delinquent share certificates of the original company on whose abandoned location the Lake View pumped up daily those 40,000 gallons, doing so in part through the very casing that they had put down in the hole drilled for 800 feet eight years before. Rice's experience at Coalinga was on different lines in his sale of a quarter section of land for $150 an acre, when on the day after the sale he was offered $750 an acre. The rise in value was on account of the bringing in of the Coalinga- Mohawk gusher, the sale having been consummated at an all night seance at Coalinga on the day before the gusher was brought in. Rice had been carrying an option of $100 an acre on the northwest and southwest quarters of Section 14-20-15, adjoining the Mohawk, and on the night of the sale before the next day's strike closed with G. R. Umbsen of San Francisco for $150 an acre. The next day's $750 an acre offer came too late. True the deal netted him a net profit of $16,000, but at $750 he might have realized six times as much. On the strength of the Mohawk gusher C. G. Wilcox, one of the organizers of the Mohawk and then largely interested in Coal- inga, sold the northwest quarter eighty acres of 14-20-15 for $100,000.

Robert Edmiston was an after-the-war pioneer of Fresno and before an Indian fighter. At death at the home of his son, Robert W. Edmiston, near Clovis, he lacked thirty days of attaining the ripe age of eighty-two years. For some years before he suffered from the effects of the exposures and

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hardships of army campaigning life. He was a native of Ohio and came west in 1852, entered the army and was engaged during his military service in campaigning against the Indians in Arizona and New Mexico. Eleven years later he enlisted for the Civil War and saw service with the First California Infantry Regiment, principally in Arizona. After his war service he located in Napa County, farmed for about two years and then made a home in the San Joaquin Valley. A reference to him in the newspaper obituary was as the first to conduct irrigation operations on the plains near Fresno. This may or may not have been so. The distinction has been credited to others. History does not record who was that pioneer. If history leaves in dispute as to definitiveness of day and date an event of such world significance and moment as the discovery of gold in Califor- nia, setting in motion one of the greatest waves of immigration, resulting in rapid settlement of a western wild, adding another star to the American constellation of sovereign states and writing in one of the most picturesque and unique chapters in the world's annals, it may be pardoned if history has not fixed the identity of the man that first irrigated the arid plains where Fresno stands today, event of relatively minor importance yet pregnant in local interest though it was. In any event, Edmiston was among the very first to irrigate the plains and he did have to do with the surveying and construction of the earliest ditches taking water from the Kings River which after all is the great irrigation water source in Fresno County. Robert Edmiston was first sergeant of Company K of the First Regiment Infantry, enlisting in San Francisco November 22, 1862. He was promoted second lieutenant of Company D in April, 1863, enrolling at Fort Craig, N. M. From the Company K sergeantcy he was promoted second lieutenant of Company A of the First Battalion of Veteran Infantry, enrolling April 27. 1863, and May 17, 1865. was promoted first lieutenant at Fort Sumner, N. M .. vice Erastus W. Wood promoted captain. Edmiston was mustered out with the battalion at San Francisco December 31, 1866. Battalion was formed in November and December, 1864, by consolidating veterans of the First In- fantry Volunteers into two companies and consolidating companies of the Fifth into five of the battalion. The stations of the companies had been in New Mexico, Texas and Colorado territory, but at muster out of battalion in September, 1866, such officers and men as wished to be mustered out in California were consolidated into a company and marched to the San Fran- cisco Presidio. Lieutenant Edmiston was with this return column.

Prominent in the political and civil life of Fresno was for many years the late E. W. Risley. In poor health for a long time, his last fatal illness was of a fortnight's duration. The immediate cause of death was arterial sclerosis. The services at the crematory were simple, ex-Judge M. K. Harris, a friend of many years delivering the eulogium. Judge Risley's request had been that at death there should be no flowers, "but dust to dust and unto dust to lie without glory, without pomp, without end." The career of the decedent was, before his coming to Fresno in 1885 at the height of the boom, conspicuous in the history of the rapid development of Arizona. He was born in New Haven, Conn., and was a direct descendant of Richard Risley, founder in 1635 of Hartford, Conn. His youth he spent at Gales- burg. Ill., and at the age of twenty-one graduated from Knox College, hav- ing studied law during the last two years of his collegiate life. He headed westward in 1874 with California as his goal and during the silver boom sought foothold in Nevada and in California from Shasta to San Diego. At the time of the great mineral discoveries at Tombstone in Arizona, he crossed the desert by pack train. He met the usual fortune and experiences of the prospector-a millionaire at one time in his mind, a pauper in fact at an- other. During his Arizona career he was at one time the official court sten- ographer for the territory necessitating travel from one end to the other of the vast domain. In political life he was a deputy U. S. marshal, deputy

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

district attorney of Cochise County in which is located the town of Tomb- stone, was clerk of the board of supervisors of Pima County wherein is located Tucson and during his residence in Tucson was in turn deputy U. S. district attorney, a member of the town council during the change from ancient Mexican pueblo to American city. Later also as a member of the territorial legislature he was chairman of the judicial and appropriations committee. After removal to Fresno following a stay in San Francisco, he was admitted to practice as an attorney at law in the state and also the U. S. Supreme court and was a deputy under the late Firman Church and Walter D. Tupper in the days when the district attorneyship was no sinecure in the prosecu- tion of criminal cases. Afterward he was city attorney under the Spinney city regime and diplomatic in preventing open ruptures between the oppos- ing factions in control of the administration of the city of Fresno in his insistence upon the enforcement of enacted ordinances. For six years he served as judge of the Superior court. A Republican in politics, he was elected as a candidate on the Populist ticket with endorsement by the Demo- crats. This was at a time when the Populists were on the crest of the politi- cal wave to be later swallowed up by the Democrats by coalition. During his career on the bench, he tried many criminal cases and his boast was that he was never reversed on appeal. At the close of his term he retired to private life, being a man of considerable business property most advanta- geously located. Still he devoted time as a freeholder in the framing of the first charter of the city and that document was largely the work of himself and of the late J. P. Strother. It was a document which was calculated to call a halt to many of the abuses that the city government had previously labored under at the expense of public economy and administration of the city's affairs. It was a document that was called for by the times and was not challenged until 1918 by a proposed charter as the old one with its dol- lar tax limit on the $100 for general administrative purposes and various other limitations was no longer suited to the times but a blocking stone to the growth of the city under new conditions and the expansion of the city. Mr. Risley was also police and fire commissioner for four years during which both departments were improved and enlarged. He left surviving a son Thomas E., who is in public life, and a daughter. The death of wife two years before was a great shock. He abandoned his Fresno home and a change came over him, so affected was he by the bereavement. It was also a great surprise to the community when on the day after his death there were placed on record documents executed after the death of the wife deeding all property to the son. He died at the home of the son and with death passed away one who was a wonderful example of nervous and vital energy and industry even unto the smallest detail.

Mrs. Margaret M. Beveridge, a prominent member of the Scottish Col- ony, a native of Dollar, Scotland, died in 1918, aged fifty-two years; she came to the county as a girl and was a resident of it for thirty years. She married June 26, 1889, George P. Beveridge who died in 1916, and for many years was the district agent of the California Wine Association. The surviving family consisted of four daughters and an only son named for his father. He was at Camp Middletown, Pa., in the aviation service during the war with Ger- many.

A Honolulu dispatch of December 3, 1908, announced the death of Wil- liam H. Marshall, a newspaper man who had a picturesque though stormy career. He had worked on the old Expositor of Fresno and in his day was connected with the newspapers of San Francisco, Sacramento and Stockton and afterwards at Manila and Honolulu. He was known in Fresno as Maverick Marshall because he had at one time edited a publication known as the Maverick. Marshall was accounted a brilliant writer, though an erratic character. His leaning was to champion the oppressed and in his writings hesitated not to criticise federal judges and the military, not infrequently

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

paying with loss of his personal liberty for the freedom of his printed utter- ances. An incident famous in California journalism was a decade or more ago when he was with the Bee of Sacramento and when a particularly scan- dalous legislature was in the closing days of the session. He headed his article : "Thank God, the Legislature Is About to Adjourn." It so offended the legislature that resolutions were passed favoring the removal of the state capital to San Jose. "The Third Estate" was in such bad odor with the state's solons that an act was passed requiring the printing of every thing in a newspaper over the signature of the writer. It was such an idiotic piece of legislation that it was generally ignored. No attempt was ever made to enforce it.

John W. Martin, who died in 1908, was an old and highly respected country school teacher. He was a Kentuckian born in 1848. It was in 1882 that he married here Miss Vienna Neal, daughter of the pioneer minister of the gospel. The widow Martin and six children survived.

Dr. J. Fount Martin died at the age of eighty years at the county hos- pital after a residence in the county of half a century. He was a graduate of a California medical college, an author, teacher and editor. School he taught here for nearly thirty years. He published after his teaching days a. magazine called "Fresno Forward" and later a religious book "His Master's Will," besides other religious works. Many will recall him as one of the city's striking personalities. Fortune deserted him in his last days. He was a scholarly gentleman of the old school.

The juvenile population especially received with genuine sorrow the announcement of the death of John Zapp, pioneer of Fresno, founder of Zapp's amusement park and zoo, the local P. T. Barnum of Fresno, a lover of animals and the friend of children. His death was a pathetic one. Death was from pneumonia contracted while visiting wife at a local hospital. The Zapps had been estranged, had been separated and divorced. The wife was in the hospital awaiting to undergo a capital operation. He had also survived a series of operations that left him a shadow of his former physical strength. She had him summoned for a farewell and a reconciliation. He responded and contracting the fatal illness in his weakened and debilitated state fell a victim of death a few days after. John Zapp was born at Reno, Nev., more than a half century ago. He farmed near Marysville in the Sacramento Valley, came to Fresno about thirty years ago and in the early days was connected with various mercantile firms. He then took up the draying business and made a financial success of it during the ten years that he was engaged in this line, having the monopoly in the excavating contracting business. He was then in his physical prime and a marvel for strength and muscular power. It was in the early part of 1900 that he married Miss Leota Burnside and securing the property beyond the city limits where Zapp's park is located on the banks of Dry Creek started a public amusement resort, equipped with zoo and various attractions bought from disbanding or overstocked circuses. The property enhanced in value with the extension of the city, the amusement resort was greatly improved and became a popular institution especially favored by the younger generation for its many allure- ments. He had in his optimism expressed the desire of dedicating the park to the city for the benefit of the young. This was before the conception and installation of the city playgrounds. After installing a swimming plunge, a skating rink and other amusement features, Zapp became financially embar- rassed and lost his interest in the park. Sickness overtook him and that he survived the ordeal of the operations that he submitted to is short of a miracle. It left him a wreck of his former self. Things went from bad to worse and the separation and divorce followed. Mrs. Zapp was an eques- trienne and a great lover and trainer of blooded horses.

Pathetic were the circumstances attending the death of Will Y. Spence in the prime of life at the age of forty years. He was a newspaper man, vine-

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

yardist and musician. When the United States entered the war he devoted his energies to the program of food production and at the second draft call in September, 1918, his name was drawn. To fit himself for the service in expectancy of a call to the colors, he underwent an operation for appen- dicitis. It left him with impaired vitality. He had not recovered from the operation when he returned to the drill activities of the drafted men in train- ing. He fell easy victim in the flare-up of the Spanish influenza during the second week in December, 1918, the contracted cold developed into pneu- monia and in less than one week he was dead. Surviving him are a mar- ried sister, a brother David A. with the raisin association and a veteran of the Spanish-American War and a younger brother, John Y., a lieutenant who was at the training camp at Camp Lewis, Wash., summoned in response to the first war draft call. The decedent was a Scotchman, born in 1878, and came in 1886 direct to Fresno with parents, the late Alexander D. Spence and wife, who settled in the Scandinavian colony district. He was a graduate of the Fresno high school. He served on the staffs of the Demo- crat, Tribune and Herald newspapers, was editor of the Tribune and city editor of the Herald. His last newspaper engagement was as editor of the country news page of the Sacramento Bee, returning then to Fresno about fifteen months ago to edit the Sun Maid Herald, the monthly bulletin publi- cation of the raisin association. W. Y. Spence was an accomplished musician and for years the organist of St. John's Catholic Church. He was a member of St. Andrew's Society and the family prominent in the Scottish colony.

The death at Oakland December 22, 1918, of John P. Clark following an operation for appendicitis recalls one who was an organizer of irrigation projects in this county. The funeral was held in Kingsburg and the remains were buried in the cemetery there. Clark was a Kentuckian and in early manhood came to Kingsburg where he clerked for years in the S. Davison store. His opportunity came when he was chosen secretary of the Center- ville & Kingsburg Irrigation Ditch Company, acquiring later ownership of the controlling stock in that company, the Fowler Switch and the Emi- grant canals. All these made possible the development of the land in the southern part of the county and still serve that region. Clark consolidated the three interests and all the territory between the Fresno Canal and the Kings River came under the control of the Consolidated Canal Company organized about 1900. Later he sold his interests to the capitalists who con- trol the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company and the chief irrigation in- terests in the county came under one head. Clark moved from Fresno to Oakland fifteen years ago.

Edgar H. Duval of Kingsburg and principal of its high school was a victim of the prevalent Spanish influenza on the last day of the year 1918, after an illness of about one week. He took his college degree in Stanford in 1905, taught in the Visalia high school and in 1907 was chosen for the Kingsburg principalship when school was in its second year of existence, having a hard struggle to maintain itself with one assistant, occupying va- cant rooms in the grammar school building, pupils scarce and considerable opposition to the continuance of the institution. He overcame the obstacles, tided the institution over that second year, won the community's coopera- tion and during the third secured a $5,000 building. The growth thereafter was easy and natural and a few years later a new building was erected cost- ing over $40,000. He was born near Ventura in January, 1878.

A. C. Cranor was a well known cattleman and active in food administra- tion work in the state during the war employed by the government in find- ing cattle feed. He was a native of Kentucky, aged forty-eight. He was a veteran of the Spanish-American War and served under Pershing as a scout in the subjugation of the wild tribes of the Philippines.

Mrs. Margaret M. Patterson was a resident of the county for thirty- nine years, of the city for fourteen, and nearly sixty-seven years of age at

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HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY

time of death. She was survived by five children and eight grandchildren. She was the mother of Mrs. George R. Andrews, wife of the county's public administrator. A brother is John Mitchell, many years president of the United Mine Workers of America and a leader who served on several federal labor commissions.

The death in San Francisco with the close of the year 1918 of Thomas L. Heaton recalls a man who held once important place in the county's edu- cational circles. He was an early city school superintendent and principal of the high school from inception in 1889 until the summer of 1896. For the last fifteen years he was assistant superintendent of the San Francisco city schools until illness compelled his resignation. He was a native of Ken- tucky and sixty-one years of age at time of death. It is recalled that under his Fresno superintendency many of the first schools were erected and notably the first high school building at Santa Clara and K in the upper floor rooms of which the classes were organized under his direction with the assistance of Prof. Carey Jones, now of the state university. The rooms becoming too crowded the classes removed to rented quarters on N Street, and later to a temporary building on the Central school premises, close to the courthouse. The high school building on the Tuolumne and O Street site was completed in the final year of his connection with the local schools. From Fresno he went to Eureka as superintendent, continued there for two years, became a member of the university faculty and remained in that work even after he entered upon his duties with the San Francisco schools.

Frank D. Fleming was a young newspaperman connected with city pub- lications at various times and with the first Y. M. C. A. war work campaign in November, 1917. In February, 1918, he was appointed publicity director for the Bank of Italy with headquarters at San Francisco and in October in that city fell a victim of the Spanish influenza.

The story of the life of Mrs. Julia A. Fink-Smith and her coming to Fresno County is woven into that of the history of the raisin industry of which she was a pioneer with a small band of Boston teachers who came from San Francisco, promoted and settled Central Colony, introduced the raisin grape in the county and first commercialized the product of their own packing. Associated with her in the colony were her sister Mrs. T. C. White, the late Miss Nellie Boyd the actress, Miss Lucy Hatch, and the Misses Austin, Cleveland and Julia Short. Mrs. Smith's was the Raisina vineyard in its day and long thereafter one of the show places. She was ninety-two years of age at death and came to California in 1852 by the isth- mus route to make her home in San Francisco until 1876. Her husband, Lyman K. Smith, died sixty years before her. She came to Fresno when more than fifty years of age, saw the village grow to a city and helped lay the foundation of an industry that has made that one time village famous the world over as its raisin center. She spent forty-two years of her life in this county and was one of the surviving pioneers of the agriculture and irrigation era. Her name is also associated with the donation to the city of the playground named for her. She was a member of the Unitarian Church and made gift to the trustees of the church building site. She was one of the earliest members of the Parlor Lecture Club and one of the founders of the Leisure Hour Club devoted to literary work, also actively interested in the Y. W. C. A., besides public charities.

Phillip Scott, who was for two terms a member of the county board of supervisors, was for over forty years a resident of the San Joaquin Valley and seventy years of age at death. He was one of the earliest trainmen in the service of the Southern Pacific, connected with it in 1866, coming to the valley in 1875 as a conductor in the days of railroad pioneering between Fresno and Bakersfield and for years after enjoying a large acquaintance- ship. It was in 1890 that in a hunting accident at Bakersfield he lost an arm. He was a member of the Elks and after retirement from public life 33

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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 80

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