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 82
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an amateur authority on these lines. His love for the outdoor was his recom- mendation for appointment as a member of the city park commission from which he resigned only when he removed from Fresno. At one time he was also a trustee of the city free library. He was a prominent member of the First Congregational Church. He had come to California for his health and though never robust, found time with the inclination for his favorite studies and his ambitions were rewarded. About ten years ago, while returning from a home visit with wife, he was a sufferer in a railroad accident at Kansas City, lost a limb and so seriously injured the other foot that he was per- manently crippled and his never strong health was seriously impaired. Not- withstanding the disability he continued his interest in outdoor sports in which he had been markedly proficient. His removal to Colfax was on the advice of doctors to go to a higher altitude and live in cottage in the woods near Colfax. There was a pathetic side to his life in that his talents might have had greater result but that the inspiration was not always at call in the long and overmastering struggle for health.
Robert L. Hargrove (obit April 28, 1919) was a lawyer of Madera and a recognized authority on the law pertaining to irrigation. He came to Fresno from Kansas in 1890 and associated himself with the firm of Van Meter & Warlow but settled that same year in Madera where he continued practice until health failed him. He was for years the attorney and manager of the Madera Canal & Irrigation Company, was also the attorney for the Italian- Swiss Colony and a member and first president of the Madera Chamber of Commerce. He owned one of the most valuable mining properties in the county and was high in the Masonic and Odd Fellows fraternities.
The death of William R. Hatfield at the age of seventy-four, May 1, 1919, at the cottage home at Pacific Grove in Monterey County, recalls a vet- eran, who had a part in the making of Fresno history. He was born in Ohio in 1845, but parents moved to Illinois and there he received his education and at Chicago his training in a military school. At sixteen he enlisted for the war and served two years. After the war, he took up railroading and, com- ing west, was an engineer with the Central Pacific as a pioneer of the rail- road era in the state and known throughout the valley through his long resi- dence. He was with the Southern Pacific during the construction period through the valley south from Lathrop, and was the locomotive engineer on the first train from Bakersfield to San Francisco. In 1893 he was placed on the pension list and he was one of the oldest if not the senior on that list. Because of his personal knowledge, applications for pension retirements were frequently referred to him for approval.
Mrs. Anna I. Tinnin, who died at the age of seventy-five following a stroke of apoplexy, was the widow of Wiley J. Tinnin, who died in 1910. He was a lawyer here of the days of a quarter of a century and more ago. She came by oxteam overland with her brother sixty-four years ago at the age of eleven and settled at Weaverville in Trinity County where she married at the age of seventeen. The Tinnins were prominent in Masonic circles and she in club life here. Mr. Tinnin was a miner in the early days in Trinity but all his life interested in politics as a Democrat. He is recalled as an assemblyman at the nineteenth and twentieth sessions (1871-74) from his home county and as a senator at the twenty-first session of 1875, elected to succeed William Irwin, who became governor, representing the counties of Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou and Trinity. Tinnin was a non-partisan candidate and elected mem- ber of the second constitutional convention from the third congressional dis- trict. He was nominated for secretary of state at the May, 1879, Democratic state convention but at the election was third of the four candidates in the race, Daniel M. Burns, Republican, elected. He was defeated for the same nomination at the next Democratic state convention at San Jose, and in 1884 elected a Cleveland elector from the Trinity first district. His political career closed with the incumbency of the United States Surveyorship of the port
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of San Francisco under a Cleveland appointment 1885-89. He was a fine old gentleman of the ante bellum type.
The death of Mrs. Mary E. Joplin, May 8, 1919, was at the age of eighty- seven and closed a residence in the county since 1875. Her early childhood was spent in Missouri, where at Sedalia she married Charles Joplin, a farmer, who died in 1905. The Joplins and their surviving children and the B. M. Stone family, also of two children, came to California, arriving at Kings- burg November 1, 1875, a period when it may be recalled that neither Fresno nor Kingsburg could yet boast of permanent improvements much less even of sidewalks. The families took up preemption claims about ten miles west of Kingshurg and on these lived until the Joplins moved to Fresno in 1912. In their new home conditions were so primitive and the neighborhood so thinly populated that there were only three other white women within a ra- dius of twenty-five miles from the farms. The families assisted in putting through the first Emigrant irrigation ditch and the work demanded their absence from home in the field for the greater part of nine months. School there was none until 1878 when there was found a sufficient number to per- mit of the organization of the Duke district with nine children and Miss Ella Guard as the first teacher. An abandoned settler's cabin was used as a school house, the children coming miles to attend. Mrs. Joplin had been a member of the M. E. Church South since her eighteenth year, and was born in the District of Columbia. The Duke settlement was one of strong sympathizers with the Southern cause.
Mrs. Mary Qualls, who died at Sanger when seventy-four years of age, was a native of Ireland, who came to California from Missouri in 1867 and to America from the old country at the age of nine years. She was the widow of N. E. Qualls, known to earlier residents as "Uncle Nick" Qualls, whose death had preceded by twelve years. Their residences in California were : first in Stanislaus County, and after 1873 in Fresno County, locating near Fairview.
B. E. Hutchinson, who died from an illness of six years aggravated by a street car accident in Los Angeles with spine injury, would have been eighty-three years of age had he lived until June, 1919. He had been a resi- dent of the county for thirty-five years, locating at Fowler after coming from Des Moines, Iowa. He was interested in the organization of the Iowa and California Fruit Company and in a half section of land which was developed into one of the model fruit farms of the county. The Hutchinson home was a part of the property of which he was the managing superintendent. He was considered an expert on fruit growing and in the early days identified in this section with fruit growing activities. In later years he was engaged in the insurance business in Fresno and also in San Francisco. His second wife and widow is Marie Van Loo of Fowler.
George C. Tabor, who died at the age of forty-nine from pneumonia, was at the time of his demise cashier of the California Associated Raisin Com- pany. Although a member of the state bar he had never practised law in California, though he was a practitioner in Boston, Mass., before coming to Fresno seven years before. With the organization of the association he was in charge of the law department, but during the war period accompanied the president, Wylie M. Giffen, as secretary of the Fresno City Exemption Board, returning to the association work as cashier. He was a native of New Bruns- wick and a sister was Mrs. G. R. E. MacDonald, wife of the rector of St. James Pro-Cathedral. His fatal ailment followed an operation for appendi- citis, which at the last took on an acute stage.
Notable in the pioneer and official life of Fresno, in the days after the war, was William B. Dennett, widely known as Major Dennett. He died at the Soldiers' Home at Sawtelle, Los Angeles County, admitted thereto by virtue of his service in the War with Mexico. He was the first city clerk of Fresno and his official records are models of punctility and method. He
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came to the county about 1870, from Alabama, with the "Alabama Colony" that settled, for agricultural pursuits, in that part of the county now known as Borden, in Madera. The party came via Panama, and included families that later took a prominent part in the political and social life of the county, but who came, as war-impoverished Southerners to make new homes, at- tracted by the glowing accounts of those who had preceded them to Cali- fornia and settled in the San Joaquin Valley. It was these Southerners who gave cotton-planting here the impetus that it enjoyed at one time. The Major engaged in wheat-farming, but farming was not to the liking of these Southerners, who had been accustomed to have their labor performed by negro slaves. The settlers had their successes and failures. The settlement was finally abandoned after several drv years, following the ravages of the loose cattle, before the days of the No-Fence law. The Major lost his home by fire, and while a farmer had an unfortunate accident in operating a harrow, almost losing an eye and receiving a scar that remained with him until death. Major Dennett was a fine gentleman of the old school and none will recall him save in kindliest remembrance. Mr. and Mrs. Dennett came to Fresno about 1880 and bought a small cottage on the terrace on the west side of Van Ness Avenue, between Tulare and Kern. It stood as one of the city's landmarks until about 1900, when, after the death of his wife, the property was sold and the house moved to Diana Street, where it now stands. The Dennett cottage was on the four lots immediately ad- joining the present Liberty Theater property. It had been constructed by Mr. Hale, father-in-law of the late Dr. Chester Rowell. With the incor- poration of the City of Fresno and the organization of the municipal govern- ment, the Major was appointed city clerk, also serving as city assessor, and held the former until the political upheaval of 1893, when the Democratic "triangle" that had held swav in the city board of trustees was ousted, to be followed by the Spinney Republican administration, which transition was characterized by some as jumping from the frying-pan into the fire. The Ma- jor retired from political life and was appointed secretary of the chamber of commerce, in charge of its exhibit and publicity work. In this activity he continued until the summer of 1902. Thereafter he lived a life of congenial ease, active until the last, claiming two states as his home, and one year making a last visit to his native state. The Major was a native of Hunts- ville, Ala., born June 12, 1829, and early in life was apprenticed to the print- er's trade and worked in his day as a compositor on the papers of New Orleans and other southern cities. He maintained to the last, and even in his days of affluence, his membership in the International Typographical Union, and was always proud of that membership. He was a youth in years when he enlisted, from his native state, for service in the Mexican War, and he was in some of the early engagements in the northern part of Mexico. The spirit of adventure fastened strong hold on him and, in the late fifties, when filibustering was the fashion, especially along the Gulf of Mexico, he joined, as a volunteer, the ill-fated Lopez Cuban filibuster expedition, a desperate adventure, that challenged the sanity of its members. He related many romantic and hair-raising tales of his connection with that ill-advised proj- ect and of escapes from military execution after capture by the Spaniards. Having had a taste of soldiering as a private in the Mexican War, he volunteered on the side of the South in the War of the Rebellion, in an Alabama regiment, and having influence, was given a commission and rose to the rank of major. In fact, during the war, he was practically in command as acting lieutenant-colonel, and thus he was "Colonel" to his friends and ac- quaintances in Alabama and "Major" to his later and newer friends in California. Coming to Fresno from the "Alabama Settlement" at Borden, Dennett worked at his trade as printer on the Fresno papers, but after final retirement he spent the following seventeen years, part of the time in San Diego with the family of Mrs. D. A. Dunbar, an adopted daughter, partly in
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Colorado at the Printers' National Home, and, when tiring of it, coming to California to tarry awhile in the sunny clime here at the Soldiers' Home. His last visit to Fresno was about 1910, and three years later he suffered a stroke of apoplexy from which he never fully recovered. Mr. Dennett was twice married, the first wife being a Miss Amanda Hope, who died early, and the second was Caroline Horton, of Alabama, who came with him and the "Alabama party." She was a member of the Presbyterian Church and her death was in Fresno, December 13, 1901. Major Dennett became a Mason in Alabama, transferred to Fresno and, as with his printing card, maintained that membership until the end. An only known relative in California is a nephew, Wilson D. Dennett of San Francisco. "Dennett Avenue" is named for the Major. At the time of his death he was a few days less than ninety years of age. He could hold his auditors for hours with the tales of experiences in his adventurous and picturesque career.
John J. Kern's death followed an illness of only a fortnight. Thirty- two years a resident of this country, twenty-four of them were spent here. He was one of the oldest saloon-keepers in the city, a genial and kindly man. A son, Sergt. Harry Kern, of Company. E, One Hundred Sixty- second U. S. Infantry, returned from over-sea service only the day before his father's death. The decedent was a member of the chamber of com- merce, the Owls, Foresters of America, the A. O. U. W. and the Sons of Hermann. In his latter days he impoverished himself in oil exploitations on the West Side of the county, in the vicinity of Silver Creek, and while in- dications were found the Kern Oil Company had located too high up on the mountainside and the deep and costly drilling crippled it financially.
Mrs. Leota I. Zapp, nee Burnside, and widow of the late John Zapp, died, from cancer of the stomach after a long and lingering illness, at the age of forty-one. Their name is connected with the amusement resort here when it was the only one in kind, and she will be remembered as a skil- ful and clever horsewoman, with a reputation as such earned in participa- tion in many street parades and at county and state fairs, as a celebrity with her pretty and well-trained horses. She was a native of Monterey County, moved to Hollister when a child, and to Fresno at the age of thirteen. She was a charter member and first treasurer of the Fresno Parlor, N. D. G. W., and remembered the organization at death with the gift of a glass punch-bowl and cups. The Native Daughters officiated at the funeral. An intimate friend sang, at request, a favorite selection of the decedent, and at her special request, also, Rev. Duncan Wallace, as the clergyman, conveyed a message to the mourners from her, of the pathetic reconciliation with her husband, summoned at her request, he falling a victim of the Spanish influenza and both at reconciliation after divorce, realizing that their days were numbered. Once well-to-do as the Zapps were, the petition for the probate of her will was in an estate valued at less than $10,000 consisting of an equity in two parcels of land of forty-five acres and a city-addition lot.
Julian J. Miley was a settler in the county in 1889 and later became prominent in the business world. He devoted himself to farming and was interested in Kern County oil during the development stage. At the time of his death he was a stockholder in two of the local banks and president of the Fresno Crematory Company. He was a director of the Chamber of Commerce and member of the Commercial Club. He was prominent also in fraternal orders, especially in the Knights of Pythias, of which he was elected a Grand Trustee at the state Grand Lodge meeting in Fresno, in May, 1919. He was also affiliated with the Woodmen of the World and the Modern Woodmen of America. He had political ambitions and several times was a candidate for supervisor but never held office. After the oil discoveries in Oklahoma, he was an absentee from Fresno for a few years. as the business manager there of the interests of A. B. Butler, formerly of
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Fresno, who was heavily interested in the territory and recouped a fortune there.
Morris E. Dailey, for eighteen years president of the State Normal School at San Jose, was found dead at his summer home at Pacific Grove, on the morning of July 5, 1919. Death was presumably from apoplexy. The decedent was fifty-two years of age and a man of fine physique. He was principal of the Fresno high school for two years, 1897-99, from here going to the vice-principalship of the Normal and succeeding to the presidency two years later. He was a graduate of the Indiana University.
WAR REMINDERS
No "slacker" was Fresno in this allied war against the Hun but it "went over the top" on every war measure. No county in the state has perhaps a greater cosmopolitan population. The war spirit was intense. Popular petition before the city trustees resulted in the change of the name of "Kaiser" Street to "Liberty," and another before the supervisors of "Ger- man" to "Kirk Avenue" after the near by school named for the late Thomas J. Kirk, who was county school superintendent and later state superintendent of public instruction. Private citizens also changed their names of German origin. Notably among the latter was the former secretary-manager of the Commercial Club, E. A. von Hasslocher, who was at the time immersed in Red Cross work and would not have his patriotism challenged. He changed his name to "Vaughan" and dropped the "von."
The 1917 quota of Fresno was $1,600 towards the million-dollar fund to provide books for the soldiers at the American military training camps.
The campaign for the third Liberty loan opened April 6, 1918, first anniversary of the declaration of a state of war between America and Ger- many, a day to be in future remembered as Liberty Day.
To such proportions had grown the business of the salvage department of the Red Cross Chapter that early in June, 1918, it was reported that the time had come when the work should be placed in the charge of a wide- awake business man to devote his entire time to it. An institute of the bureau of salvage of the Pacific Division of the American Red Cross was held this month to make Fresno headquarters for the southern part of the valley in the work from Merced to Bakersfield. The encouragement that this work re- ceived was an inspiration. Even boxes were hung to the electroliers in town for the reception of tin and lead foil.
Interesting figures are disclosed in the City Exemption Board's report of the first call for selective men for the service: Registrants 3,718, quota due 152, called for examination 854, absent fifty-two, accepted on examination 434, rejected 163, certified up 189, ordered to camp 165, failed to report three and nine rejected. Exemption claimants 469, allowed 443, denied twenty- six. Claimants included four clergymen, a German and 171 other aliens, two postoffice and a government employe, two hundred twelve married men, twenty-four with widowed mothers to support, twenty supporting aged and infirm parents, two supporting motherless children under sixteen, three claim- ing religious scruples, and two felons. Registered married men 1,722, unmar- ried 1,996. Married men called 390, accepted seventeen ; single men called 462, accepted 172 ; married exempts 373, single 292.
The "small boy" could not contain himself while the war spirit was rampant. There was a battalion of six companies of the Junior Marine Scouts and another of three troops of the Boy Scouts of America with un- attached troops in country towns. These boys gave much help in war work. The Junior Scouts for instance placarded the town one night with over 10,000 third Liberty bond posters and pieces of literature; the American Scouts in June made a canvass of city and county to locate every black walnut tree, securing options for the government use of the trees for the manufacture of rifle stocks and aviator planes. Who will say hereafter that there is no place in this world for the small boy and his invariable companion, pet dog?
In the foyer of the city hall was displayed for the first time on a day in February, 1918, a silken flag with twenty-nine stars in the union representing
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as many city employes as had entered the military service. The number of stars has been increased to thirty-five, and they represent the following :
Fire Department-James H. Brewer, William Nelson, John A. Brame, Samuel Parks, Chester A. Packard, Harry Hicks, J. C. Wagner, R. S. Shoun, W. S. Gilliam, J. A. Devlin, Tref Lassenay, John F. H. Fickel, L. M. Trivly, Walter I. Enright, Charles F. Freeman-fifteen. The name of Samuel Parks represents the first golden star on that flag.
Play Ground Department-W. F. Marsh, Wallace Boren, Mark Kellogg, Adrian Harp, Miller Allen, Miller Henderson-six.
Health Department-Drs. K. J. Staniford and W. L. Adams; Drs. J. H. Pettis and Clifford H. Sweet; Inspectors G. R. Hilliker and G. M. Jovich -six.
Street Department-G. W. Barnes and V. A. Shaw-two.
Electric Department-C. T. Coyle, Herold Hiatt and K. W. Schroeder three.
Parks Department-George L. Lambert and Claude Alexander-two.
Police Department-J. P. Murphy-one.
Service flags are shown everywhere, corporations employing large num- bers of men and fraternal organizations rivaling with each other in show of stars. To mention only two-there's the raisin association with 177 stars in the flag and the San Joaquin Light and Power Company with 101 for the district served by it.
Uncle Sam's postoffice has a service flag with ten stars in June, 1918, in- cluding Leon Camy and Fred P. Reiss, former employes over in France. The others in training camps were: C. W. Benedict Jr., Edward Hoffman, H. A. Fages, James Camel, Walter Moore, John A. Haynes, Dillon A. Wilkins and Fred Gallman.
In Department 1 of the Superior court of Fresno County over the judge's bench hang the American flag and a service flag, the latter showing the younger members of the bar that were in the service of the country. They are: Arthur Allyn, Loren A. Butts, Royle A. Carter, Floyd Cowan, G. Penn Cummings, Arthur H. Drew, Earl Fenstermacher, Bertrand W. Gearhart, J. C. Hammel, Ray W. Hays, Floyd H. Kellas, Herbert F. McDowell, John A. Shishmanian, Strother P. Walton, Chester Warlow, Earl Wooley- sixteen.
In government employ-H. W. Stammers, Charles Hill, Earl J. Church- three.
Registrants of twenty-onesters June 5, 1918, in the state with a few country and mountain districts not reporting, totalled 16,891-white citi- zens and declarants 13,105, negro declarants 205, aliens all races 3,581.
Before the war, Fresno city had Companies C and K of the Second In- fantry Regiment of the National Guard of California as part of the valley battalion of which Will Kelly was the major. The companies were sent for service and were for seven months on the Mexican border, returning and on the declaration of war were federalized and sent for duty in scattered parts as far as Nevada, Company K being on guard at the Union Iron Works in Alameda, Cal. Later the companies were concentrated at Camp Kearney -C under Capt. Frank D. Hopkins and K under Capt. Claude Fowler and still later consolidated as Company L of the One Hundred Fifty-ninth U. S. Infantry, the company officers assigned to other commands in the service and Kelly continuing as battalion major in the regiment. A machine gun corps was recruited in Fresno by Capt. T. L. Stephenson and sent to Camp Kearney at the inception of that training camp, leaving here August 4, 1917. All the Fresno company commanders were severed from their commands
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and assigned to other organizations in the interest of discipline. The ma- chine gun corps became Company C of the One Hundred Forty-fifth Machine Gun Corps Battalion. It was officered then: Captain Hugh Syden- ham of Sacramento; First Lieutenant Frank G. Everts and Second Lieuten- ants James Madison and Irving L. Toomey, the subalterns from Fresno.
Fresno has a Home Guards Battalion of Spanish War veterans and others who because of age were excluded from active service. It was originally of four companies and in November, 1917, was officially constituted and designated as the Third Battalion of California Home Guards. Its fourth company was heavily drawn upon later to recruit up two companies of Na- tional Guards under some mistaken interpretation of the state adjutant gen- eral's office, creating much disappointment and dashing the hopes of many an ambitious young fellow. After heroic efforts at recruiting two national guard companies for home service, replacements were made drawing from the Fifty-ninth Company of the Home Guards battalion but they had never much more than a beginning when the held out hope of active service in training camp proved a delusion. The officers held commissions in com- panies that had existence only on paper. One of these companies was officered by S. L. Gallaher as captain and B. U. Brandt and Ray M. Car- lisle as lieutenants, and the other by B. A. Primrose as captain and Ferd Detoy and Marvin J. Nichols as lieutenants. Carlisle and Nichols entered the service ; Carlisle in the engineer corps as a railroad man, crossed the sea and was assigned to other duty, and the other entering the naval training school at San Diego.
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