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 II > Part 6
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Guy Stockton was born on January 26, 1880, in New Mexico, on the divide between that country and Colorado. His father died when he was but a small child, and his mother later married N. C. Caldwell, an attorney- at-law, and moved to Fresno in March, 1887. Guy attended the Fresno public schools as far as the seventh grade, when he called his education com- pleted and started on his up-hill climb toward success in life. As early as seven years of age he began selling papers on the streets of Fresno, the Ex- positor and the Fresno Republican. Afterwards he worked at odd jobs to earn a living; in the Clovis Planing Mill for seventy-five cents per day ; in a dairy for eight dollars per month and board; then as delivery boy and clerk for Melvin & Blaney; for H. Graff, the grocer; for Kutner-Goldstein Company ; and in the fruit packing houses. His first real start up the ladder came when he entered the bee business. He went into Kern County and leased an apiary on shares, making $500 the first season. With this as his capital, he came to Fresno and bought 100 hives of bees and ten acres of land, on Church Avenue, paying $300 for his first real estate, which he still owns. Here he set to work with enthusiasm and produced, bought and sold honey on a large scale. He was a member, from its organization, of the local Beekeepers' Association, and at one time its secretary.
In 1907, Mr. Stockton started in the real estate business, his first sale being a forty-acre orange grove at Centerville for $26,000, which opened his eyes and gave him an insight into what could be accomplished in that line.
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He was the first man to develop north-end property. Buying five-acre lots, he subdivided these and sold them off in one-acre lots. He sold lots in Sunny- side Gardens, Baker Heights, Recreation Park Tract, and Boyd's Addition. In 1917, Mr. Stockton built sixteen houses in Fresno. They were sold before being completed, and the call for houses has continued as good since. One five-acre piece of land near the Normal School is full of houses erected by Mr. Stockton. He became exclusive agent, in September, 1917, for the Peerless Orchards Company, and has sold 400 acres of their properties in twenty-acre to forty-acre lots. The Peerless Fig Orchards are located near Clovis. The soil is especially adapted to the growing of Calimyrna figs, now one of the important industries of Fresno County. Mr. Stockton is the owner of an eighty-acre Calimyrna fig orchard in the Peerless tract; and he also owns eighty acres of unimproved land situated one mile east of Lane Sta- tion, and 160 acres on the west side, besides the ten acres where he originally had his bees. In addition to these real estate holdings, he owns valuable city property in Fresno. A man of unusual enterprise and vigorous energy, Mr. Stockton has been remarkably successful in his work as a promoter of real estate in the county. He specializes in suburban property, and can without exaggeration be called one of the real builders of Fresno. It is to such men as Mr. Stockton that the county owes its phenomenal growth of the past decade, and its rank as one of the most prosperous counties of California.
Mrs. Stockton was in maidenhood Florence Brocklebank, a native of Freehold, N. J. She is a cultured and refined woman, possessed of rare business acumen, and is actively assisting her husband in his enterprises. By his former marriage Mr. Stockton has two sons, Frank R. and Norman.
DR. WM. TILLMAN BURKS .- The notable career of Fresno's pioneer physician, Dr. Till Burks, as familiarly known, who for nearly forty years, had been identified with the life of Fresno City and County, came to a very sudden close October 21, 1918, after an illness of only one day from influenza. Dr. Burks was born at Shelbina, Mo., October 7, 1858, and after completing his education in his native town, he entered Boone College, from which he was graduated. He came to Fresno in 1880 and joined his brother, Charles F. Burks, who had established the first drug store in Fresno, at the corner of Mariposa and I Streets where for some years Dr. Burks acted as a drug clerk. He completed his medical education at the College of Physicians and Sur- geons of San Francisco from which he graduated in 1899 with the degree of M. D. and engaged in practice in Fresno. He married Miss Annie J. Wil- liams of Fresno, sister of E. A. Williams, the well-known attorney of Fresno, and W. R. Williams, bank commissioner for the state of California. She was born in Redruth, England. By her he had one son, Dr. Floyd L. R. Burks, who has established a practice in Fresno. There was an estrangement which led to Mrs. Burks securing a divorce and she now resides in Sacramento. For a short period in his early manhood Dr. Burks served as ship's surgeon on a Pacific liner, and in this capacity visited the South Sea Islands on a cruise which extended over a year. While returning from this cruise in 1890, the ship touched at a Mexican port, and President Diaz of Mexico enlisted him to stamp out a plague of yellow fever that was then raging in Mexico. Pres- ident Diaz gave Dr. Burks unlimited authority to overcome the scourge, and placed the army and navy at his disposal, to be utilized in making conditions more sanitary. It is stated that in three months he had the epidemic under control, and after a residence of ten months in Mexico he returned to Cal- ifornia.
Dr. Burks resumed his practice in Fresno, and from that time on took an active interest in matters pertaining to public health, and was for some- time president of the board of health and county health officer. While con- nected with the board of health, Dr. Burks is reported, by his friends, to have insisted on the observance of the public health laws without fear or favor.
ROV Briseve
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In 1898, Dr. W. T. Burks' second marriage occurred, when he was united in marriage with Miss Bessie Croft, by whom he is survived.
As an evidence of the high esteem in which Dr. Burks was held by his Alma Mater, special exercises were held in honor of his memory at the Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons at San Francisco, Dr. Charles Boxton, dean of the college, delivering the eulogy, the unit of student-soldiers in the Stu- dent Army Training Corps at the college stood at attention during the cer- emonies.
Dr. Burks was a prominent Mason, a Knight Templar and Shriner and was also a charter member of Fresno Lodge of Odd Fellows.
R. W. BRISCOE .- There is no question but that success depends upon energy directed by intelligence, and courage undaunted by adversity. It is often that the plans of men are thwarted by circumstances over which they have little or no control, but if they could through industry and perseverance overcome the seemingly insurmountable difficulties, as R. W. Briscoe has done, success would come to them as it has come to him.
He was born in Lewis County, Mo., in 1863. His parents were natives of Kentucky, but were married in Missouri. The father was a farmer in Mis- sonri, but in the fall of 1886 came to California with his family and settled west of Malaga, buying land of the Briggs Estate. The family at this time consisted of the father, Walter H., and mother, Mary E. (Wallace) Briscoe, and four children : James W., now an oil man in the Kern River field ; Robert W .; Eliza, unmarried, a milliner in Porterville; and Gertrude, now Mrs. Mel- vin Stone. When they came to California the father became a fruit-grower and soon interested himself in the oil business, and owned wells in Kern Connty. He died eight years ago at the age of seventy-three years. The mother is living at Bakersfield, and is in good health at the age of seventy- nine.
R. W. Briscoe grew up on a farm in Lewis County, Mo., and attended the common schools and a graded private academy at Gilead, Mo. He came with his father's family to California in 1886. He followed farming and cattle feeding in Missouri for two years. On coming to California he bought forty acres of land from the Briggs Estate, one and a quarter miles southwest of Malaga, improving it and planting it to vines, fig and prune trees, and alfalfa.
On December 25, 1888, Mr. Briscoe went back east to Indiana and was married at Kokomo to Miss Elizabeth Caroline Mugg, daughter of James and Catharine (Ingels) Mngg, and who is a descendant of Daniel Boone, the great Kentuckian. Shé attended Franklin College, Franklin, Ind., one year, and two years at La Grange College, Mo., and it was in her college days that the acquaintance began that led to their union. Their honeymoon trip ended in Fresno County, Cal., where Mr. Briscoe resumed his farming and fruit- raising.
In the early nineties Mr. Briscoe was hard hit by the panic that landed so many men high and dry. He had purchased heavily in land, could not meet his payments and lost his possessions. Here is where grit and determination, backed up by the optimism of his wife, came to the rescue. He started again, and now he owns 1,100 acres in various localities. The home ranch consists of forty acres in muscat grapes ; 120 acres near Skaggs Bridge, close to Ker- man, in vineyard; 100 acres in the De Wolf District, in vineyard; also he has 730 acres near Sanger which he bought last year, which he uses as a stock ranch. In 1917 he had planted 100 acres in corn and built three silos, and he also had 100 acres in corn in 1918. To nse up all this feed he has 240 head of cattle mostly feeders, 300 hogs, 20 mules and horses. He has sold 160 acres of land to his four oldest sons. In his time, Mr. Briscoe has planted over 500 acres to vineyards. In 1909 he raised twenty-three carloads of raisins, all his own, seven cars of which he shipped to Minneapolis. He is actively interested in the Raisin Growers Association.
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In the cultivation of his vast holdings, Mr. Briscoe has used all of the latest improved farming implements, and brings to his aid three tractors, the Moline, the Case and the Fitch. He finds them invaluable in the cultivation of his vineyards as they do most excellent work, and as more than half of his land is in vineyards, it is necessary that he use such machinery as will do the work among the vines. He has resisted the temptation to go largely into the oil business, but did venture into that field a few years ago, and came out about even. Mr. Briscoe has kept aloof from politics, but is greatly interested in education, and has served on the election board for fifteen years. Having so many interests and they being somewhat scattered, Mr. Briscoe does bus- iness in Sanger, Fowler, Malaga, Fresno and Kerman, and as a consequence has a large acquaintanceship among the business men of these communities, and is highly esteemed by all of them.
Mr. Briscoe and W. R. Nutting, now of Fresno, got the first one hundred members to the Raisin Growers Exchange, and this was the foundation of the California Raisin Growers Association which has been of such benefit to raisin-growers in the San Joaquin Valley.
Mr. Briscoe is an untiring worker, and since the war began has been do- ing almost double duty, putting in at times as much as twenty hours a day. He is a man of excellent judgment and has great executive ability. He is kindly considerate, and public-spirited. His wife is an accomplished woman, a devoted mother. and a worthy helpmeet. Their home is surrounded with the things that make for high standards of living, and abounds with good books, farm periodicals and papers. Their family is most interesting, and consists of seven children : Ernest, married to Margaret Weimert. of Fresno, ranchers, living near the De Wolf school: Elmer, married to Delcie Barr, lives in the same vicinity : Walter married Gladys Wells, of the same vicinity ; James, a soldier in France: Roy, now at home; Beryl, a senior in Fowler High School; and Fred, in the grammar school. All the older boys attended Heald's Business College at Fresno.
Most highly esteemed by all who know them, it was a happy day indeed, when in 1886, the Briscoe family cast their lot in Fresno County. Fresno and Fresno County will ever extend a hearty welcome to men of Mr. Briscoe's character.
HON. L. B. CARY .- That adverse conditions build up the strong has found convincing evidence in the life of L. B. Cary, whose dauntless .spirit has surmounted many obstacles, and drawn helpful lessons from disheart- ening circumstances. He was born in Ohio, June 26, 1848, and at the age of five years he removed with his parents to Iowa. His father, Rev. J. R. Cary, was one of the pioneer ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and with his little family went through all the hardships incident to itinerant pioneering in that then far-western state.
In spite of poverty and privation, L. B. secured an academic and col- legiate education, and later taught school for a few years and studied law. This he abandoned to take up newspaper work, in which he continued till coming to California, in 1902. In 1912, Mr. Cary was elected to the State Legislature as representative from the Fifty-second District in Fresno County. He distinguished himself as a champion of the agricultural interests of the state, and was notably instrumental in defeating the measure to bring farm labor under the eight-hour law, which would have proved of great in- jury to the agricultural, stock and fruit interests of the entire state.
In 1914, he was reelected and became noted as one of the leading cham- pions in the movement against corrupt practices, and in securing legislation, and later was instrumental in securing the passage of an amendment to the constitution making it unlawful for a member of the legislature to hold any other office, trust or employment under the state during the term for which he was elected or for two years thereafter.
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During the session of 1915 a measure was passed having for its aim the abolition of party lines in California. A protest against this measure in the form of a referendum was carried to the people. Mr. Cary at once became one of the leading champions of the referendum, which was approved by the people with no uncertain majority. At a special session of 1916 the same measure was again forced through the legislature in spite of its repudiation by the people. Mr. Cary was made chairman of the legislative committee to carry a second referendum of the question to the people. He made a thorough organization of the state and after a brilliant and heated contest had the satisfaction of seeing the measure for the destruction of party lines in California again rejected by the people by an overwhelming majority, all but four counties in the state registering their protest against the destruc- tion of party integrity.
As a platform orator and ready forum fighter, Mr. Cary has few superiors. He was never known to flinch from any contest in which he saw imperiled the cause of justice and right. Being a man of intense conviction, and having once decided as to the justness of the cause, he took his stand accordingly, without fear or favor, and regardless of who might be against him. Through- out his whole life he has had but one rule to guide his line of action-that of humanity, justice and right. Policy never entered into his calculation. For this reason he has made a name for himself in California which will live after him in connection with the history of the causes he has championed.
L. S. SHANNON .- Prominent among the interesting men of Fresno County whose acknowledged ability in their chosen fields makes it perfectly natural that they should be entrusted with important affairs and attain to a leadership meaning much to themselves and the community in which they reside. is L. S. Shannon, one of the owners and the superintendent of the famous Shannon Estate vineyard; a son of the late J. M. Shannon, long the well-known townsite agent of the Pacific Improvement Company, and grand- son of Hon. Gillum Baley, a distinguished pioneer. Few men had greater foresight, or a higher sense of honor combined with aggressive, executive power, than J. M. Shannon, who was an acting director under A. N. Towne, president of the Pacific Improvement Company-the holding company for the Southern Pacific-and had such influence with Messrs. Stanford, Hunt- ington, Crocker and Hopkins, that he secured the valuable donation of sev- eral blocks in Fresno for the site of the Court House and Court House Park. Judge Baley was the presiding judge when the county seat was removed from Millerton, and was widely esteemed as a man both of native ability and great brain power. Elsewhere in this work the lives of these historical personages are very properly presented in detail.
L. S. Shannon was born at Millerton, at that time the county seat of Fresno County, on Independence Day, 1871; but since he was only three and a half years old when his parents moved to Fresno, he has only faint recollections of his birth-place. His father, as the student of local history may recall, had served as under sheriff ; and when the county seat was moved, in 1874, he brought his family with him to Fresno where our subject grew up and attended the public schools. When a mere lad, in the middle of his teens, he knew every business man and every prominent farmer in the city and the county; for he was entrusted with the delivery of telegrams, and this service for the Western Union Telegraph Company compelled him to move about with his eyes and ears wide open.
Having finished his course of study at the White School, where the late D. S. Snodgrass, afterward the banker at Selma, was his last teacher, young Shannon attended the Alameda high school, and then went to a business college at Oakland. About the same time he became chainman for a party of surveyors employed by the Pacific Improvement Company, and his ability coming to the attention of his superiors, he was taken into the company's
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main office at San Francisco, where he remained for eight years. Next he accepted a responsible position with the Oakland Gas Light & Heat Com- pany, and he was with that concern for six years.
On August 2, 1903, Mr. Shannon was married at Alameda to Miss Jane Lawrence, a native of Napa and the daughter of Charles and Ann (Willis) Lawrence, natives of Stockholm, Sweden, and England, respectively. Mr. Lawrence came to San Francisco as a cabin boy on a ship and in the Bay City became a ship carpenter. Mrs. Lawrence came to California an orphan, and was brought up by an older sister, with whom she remained until she married at San Francisco, in 1868. The other children in the Lawrence family were Catherine, Willis and Mary. Mrs. Shannon was reared at Alameda and was graduated from the Alameda high school, in the Class of '94; after which she attended the San Jose Normal School, graduating with the Class of '98; and teaching in the city schools of Alameda until she was married. Mr. and Mrs. Shannon have two children, Milam Jefferson and Lawrence Dudley.
Mr. Shannon's particular responsibility, in helping to manage the Shan- non Estate owned by the several brothers, is for the most part the raising of table grapes and in this field he has been signally successful. Through many years of work and study he has become a specialist in both the grow- ing and marketing of table grapes, and at present has ninety acres in malagas. Their products are packed and shipped from Miley, on the Santa Fe, and are marketed under the label of the "Shannon Estate Brand," and they com- mand high prices, and find a ready market in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia. There are also eight acres in emperors, a table grape maturing very late in the season, and eighteen acres of muscats and sultanas. He has thirty-five acres in peaches, while the balance of the land is in alfalfa and pasture. The Shannon Estate Vineyard uses eight horses and employs five men all the year around, and as many as twenty-five men during the harvest- ing season.
Although a Republican, and one with live ideas as to national political reform and progress, Mr. Shannon has loyally supported the administration in its difficult war work. For six years he served as trustee of the Walnut school district, while he lived in that section, and he has maintained a live interest in popular education ever since. He is a member of Halcyon Parlor of the Native Sons of the Golden West at Alameda, and he also belongs to Fresno Lodge, No. 439, B. P. O. Elks.
DR. EUGENE W. LAISNE .- One of Fresno's most promising profes- sional men, Dr. Eugene W. Laisne, was surely destined, by virtue of his natural ability, to be a genius among Optometrists. Unusually gifted as a mechanical manipulator and inventor, the human eye has been to him an open book. His intellectual perception also amounts to a real intuition, by which he is able to discover the actual visual condition of his patients, apart from their own statements regarding their eye troubles. Dr. Laisne obtained his training and experience in optical work in that great center of world life, New York City, and in several other leading cities of the East, where he studied and practiced under some of the most noted men in the profession, and became familiar with the latest apparatus and methods. In 1909 he came to California and in July of that year graduated from the Los Angeles College of Optometry and Ophthalmology.
Dr. Laisne chose Fresno as the place in which to build himself up in his rising profession, and in 1910 he opened an office in the Republican Building, and began the practice which has placed him-in the opinion of those most familiar with his work-among the very best Optometrists and Opticians in California. After the death of Dr. Rowell in 1912, Dr. Laisne was able to occupy the well known rooms in the corner of the second floor of the Repub- lican Building, which Dr. Rowell had used for so many years. Here he re- mained until May, 1918, when his increasing business and growing reputation
S. E. W. L'aisne 1
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demanded a more commodious and accessible location. He leased and fitted up his present admirably equipped offices and work shop, adjoining the Bank and Trust Company of Central California, at 1054 J Street, and exactly opposite that old landmark, the Grand Central Hotel. Since removing to this prominent location, his business has more than doubled, and will undoubtedly increase rapidly from year to year.
If we add to his genius for Optical work and invention, a rare philo- sophical insight and an intense desire to be thorough in all his professional work, together with an unusual amount of industry, we have the causes of his remarkable success in treating the eyes of thousands of people in this city and county, and in the valley at large. In many of his cases, Dr. Laisne has been wonderfully successful in restoring and strengthening vision, and in removing the source of various nervous disorders, as well as that of various other organic troubles which (the medical profession now asserts) are largely due to defects of vision, and are amenable to correcting lenses. The writer confidently predicts that Dr. Laisne's fame as an eye specialist will extend throughout the State of California, and probably throughout the country.
LORENZO B. CHURCH .- Among the worthiest representatives of well-known pioneer families of California must be mentioned Lorenzo B. Church, the son of the founder of the canal system in Fresno County, and a native of Lake County, Ind., where he was born in 1845. His father was M. J. Church, a native of Illinois, who removed to Lake County and there married Sarah Whittington. He was a blacksmith by trade; but he gave up his business connections in the East and in 1852 crossed the great plains with his family, coming to California with the conventional ox teams and wagons. He settled on a ranch near Stockton, where he again opened a blacksmith shop; but after a year he removed to Napa County, near Middle- ton, in what is now Lake County, not far from the head-waters of Putah Creek, and there embarked in the stock business. He continued there as a stockman for eight years, and then he took up his residence in Napa City, built a large blacksmith shop and conducted that for a couple of years. When he sold out, he located in Fresno County at Centerville, and there he en- gaged in sheep-raising for another two or three years; and in 1870 he started the canals that made Fresno County famous. He began about three miles above Centerville, and took the water needed from the Kings River, calcu- lating, as he progressed, on gravity ; he bought lands and traded water rights; and as is more definitely set forth in the historical portion of this work, he constructed a system much needed and of the greatest value to the communi- ties they sought to serve. Finally, he sold all of his interest in the canals, and in the transaction was cheated out of about one-half of what he was en- titled to, so that the matter is still in the courts. Lorenzo's father then went to Oakdale and bought the Lane Mineral Springs; and he kept that resort and a cattle-ranch near-by until he died. When Mrs. Church died in Fresno she was the mother of eight children, only three of whom are still living. The oldest are Lorenzo B. and a twin sister, Mrs. Lodema Fanning of Fresno, and Amanda, Mrs. Munn of Fine Gold, Madera County.
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