History of Kern 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, Part 98

Author: Morgan, Wallace Melvin, 1868- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1682

USA > California > Kern County > History of Kern 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 > Part 98

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OTTO HAESE,-The postmaster at Mojave is one of those capable, efficient young men who have been attracted to this section of the country through the development and construction work connected with the Los Angeles aqueduct. While coming hither merely to fill a temporary position on the clerical force of a contractor, he saw the opportunities of the country and, being an enthusiastic Democrat, he was induced to seek the appointment as postmaster. The recommendation of prominent Democrats and his own high reputation combined to bring him the position. June 6, 1913, President Wilson signed the papers tendering him the appointment and on the 7th of July he took charge of the office, at the same time purchasing the stationery and magazine business formerly conducted by Mr. Preble, and in addition he has charge of the public long distance telephone station.

From a very early age Otto Haese has been forced to make his own way in the world unaided by others. He was born at Manitowoc, Wis., October 16, 1883, and was only eight years of age when his father, Carl Haese, a farmer of Wisconsin, was taken from the family by death. Few opportuni- ties came to the orphan lad. Early in life he became self-supporting. For five years he engaged as a clerk in a hardware store. During much of that time his wages were only $2 per week, but he was gaining a business experi- ence of great value to him. While clerking during the day he devoted the evenings to the study of telegraphy. At the age of nineteen he was appointed assistant agent at Hilbert Junction for the Wisconsin Central Railroad. Six months later he was appointed assistant agent at Forest Junction, Calumet county, in the employ of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad. Three months later he was transferred to Menominee, Mich., to act as night operator and then became day operator and ticket agent for the St. Paul at the same place. At the expiration of three years he entered the Gem City Business College in Quincy, Ill., from which institution he was graduated in 1908. Coming to Los Angeles, a stranger on the coast, he secured employment as chief clerk for Dr. O. C. McNary at the Soldiers' Home hospital in Sawtelle. Three months later, in November, 1908, he came to Mojave to act as stenog- rapher and bookkeeper for D. J. Desmond, subsistence contractor on the Los Angeles aqueduct. In due time he was promoted to be chief clerk in the subsistence department and continued with Mr. Desmond until he was appointed postmaster at Mojave, when he relinquished an important clerical position in order to associate himself with the permanent interests of the town.

PAUL C. HILL .- A native of Massachusetts, Paul C. Hill was born in Groton August 2, 1886, the son of Capt. Joseph C. Hill, also a native of Groton. When the latter was fourteen years of age he went to sea and was in Calcutta during the Sepoy rebellion. He enlisted and served in the Fifth Bengal Yeoman Cavalry for one year and for his valued services he was presented with a medal from Queen Victoria. When he was eighteen years old he was the first man on record in the state of Maine to volunteer for the Civil war, enlisting in the First Maine Regiment as a private. He rose to the rank of lieutenant, was later transferred to the staff of General Rosecrans, and still later commissioned captain in the Fifth Kentucky Cav- alry. Some years after the war he served as chief of the Indian bureau in Washington for five years. Afterwards he entered commercial life and was for many years in charge of the western agency of the Scott's Emulsion Company in Japan, China and India, until his death in Yokohama.

The mother was Charlotte Caryl, a daughter of Alexander Hamilton and

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Elizabeth (Kipp) Caryl, the former being a manufacturer of horseshoe nails in Forge Village, Mass.

Paul C. Hill was reared in the various places where his father was located, having the advantages of the public school. When fourteen he began working for the Illinois Steel Company in Chicago and at seventeen became foreman of the blast furnace. In 1906 he spent six months with the Alleghany Ore & Iron Company at Iron Gate, Va., and then was foreman of the blast furnace of the Lackawanna Steel Company at Buffalo. In 1908 he was employed with Allen & Burke drilling gas wells in western New York.

In 1909 Mr. Hill came to California and was employed by the Standard at Coalinga, later with the Coalinga Oil Company, afterwards in the pipe line department of the Standard for one year, then a year with the Santa Fe Company. In January, 1912, he became foreman for the General Petroleum Company at Lost Hills and afterwards was made superintendent of the Lost Hills division for the same company.

HON. BENJAMIN BRUNDAGE .- The genealogical records of the Brundage family bear evidence concerning their long and honorable identifica- tion with America as well as their Anglo-Saxon extraction, indicating also that the name was established in the new world by three brothers from Eng- land, one of whom settled in York state, another in New Jersey and the third in Pennsylvania. Thomas, a native of New York and a descendant of the orig- inal immigrant to that state, followed the tide of migration into Ohio, where he took up raw land near Mccutchenville, Wyandot county, and improved a large farm. In his family there was a son, Benjamin, who became a success- ful attorney and honored jurist of Bakersfield, rising to influence through his own unaided efforts and the development of his splendid mental faculties. Working his way to the law through faithful services as a teacher, he was ad- mitted to the bar and practiced law at Sandusky, Ohio. At the time of Mor- gan's raid he enlisted and served as a private in a regiment of Ohio state militia. Immediately after receiving an honorable discharge from the army in the spring of 1865 he came to California and for a few months sojourned in San Francisco, where he acted as agent for an insurance company. During the autumn of 1865 he arrived in Kern county and opened a law office at Havilah, then the county-seat. In a short time his ability had won recogni- tion. When the question of county-seat removal began to be agitated he was engaged by citizens of Bakersfield to appear before the state legislature and secure the passage of a bill for the removal, which task he engineered to a suc- cessful and satisfactory consummation. Shortly afterward he removed his office to the new county-seat and continued his practice from this point. On the adoption of the new constitution he was elected the first superior judge and filled the position for one term, later returning to his private practice, which he conducted with unimpaired ability until six years prior to his demise. The close of his useful existence came January 29, 1911, when he had reached the age of seventy-seven years.

Upon coming west Judge Brundage was unmarried and it was in Cali- fornia that he first met the young lady who became his wife in the city of Sac- ramento, March 27, 1870. Mary B. Lively was born in Yelvington, Daviess county, Ky., and is now a resident of Bakersfield. At a very early age she was brought to the west by her father, Dr. Joseph Lively, who crossed the plains with wagon and oxen during the summer of 1850, and after a short sojourn in Nevada county began to practice medicine at Santa Clara in the county of that name. Later he removed to Glennville, Kern county, where from 1866 until his removal to Irvington, Alameda county, he engaged in professional work. For a time he also conducted the Hotel Glennville. His demise occurred at Watsonville. At the time of the removal of the family to

Ho. H. Schutz

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Kern county the daughter was a young lady, well educated for that day and a decided accession to the social and educational circles of the community. She was one of the first school teachers in Havilah and there she met Judge Brundage, who filled the office of school trustee. Their marriage was blessed with three children and two of these, Benjamin L. and George H., are still living. Throughout the county where for so many years he made his home Judge Brundage was well known and universally honored.

HERMAN H. SCHUTZ .- Born in St. Gallen, Switzerland, March 17, 1862, Mr. Schutz was the son of John and Catherine (Leverer) Schutz, farmers in St. Gallen, who in 1881 brought the family to Missouri, locating near Spring- field, where Mr. Schutz followed farming until his death about 1898. Mrs. Schutz came to Bakersfield, where her son Herman had removed and here she passed away in 1906. Five of the seven children survive them, Herman H. being the eldest ; he was brought up on the home farm and received the usual common school training in his native land. Reports of the encouraging out- look in America and a great desire to see the new country and try his fortune, impelled the family to migrate to the United States. For three years he followed farming in Springfield, Mo., after which, in 1884, he came to Cali- fornia. Turlock, Stanislaus county, was his first stopping place, and there he immediately found employment, starting at well-boring, which has since been his occupation. Two weeks later he bought the rig and engaged in contracting for the boring of wells in Stanislaus and Merced counties, having his headquarters at Turlock. It was in 1887 that he finally located in Bakers- field, as he recognized this to be a more central point for his line of work. At this time the boring was done by hand power, and later by horse power, but Mr. Schutz now has a steam engine rig and also a gas engine rig, which do the work more rapidly, and much more effectively. His work takes him all over the county, where he has bored wells from fifty to twelve hundred feet in depth, and he has brought in some good flowing wells. For many years he has done all the work for the Kern County Land Company.

In addition to his well-boring business Mr. Schutz is interested in ranch- ing at Wasco, his property having been improved from a desert tract. Of his three hundred and twenty acres, two hundred acres are already under cul- tivation to alfalfa and it is the intention of Mr. Schutz to sow the whole half- section to alfalfa. The pumping plant is equipped with a thirty-two horse power engine. Mr. Schutz has built two sets of buildings and has two tenants on the place. Prior to improving the above-mentioned property he improved four other ranches in the Rio Bravo country with wells and pumping plants for general farming and alfalfa. His home is at No. 2111 Twenty-first street, Bakersfield. He belongs to the Independent Order of Foresters and is a Republican.

LOUIS FRANK JOHNDROW .- French-Canadian ancestry is indicated by the genealogy of the Johndrow family. The first of the name to establish permanent residence in the States was the father of John B., who when the latter was a lad of thirteen years removed to York state. The youth was even then familiar with the shipping industry and for years he followed the lakes, but eventually, wearying of the constant exposure necessary to such an existence, he settled down on a farm. Naturally he chose a location not far distant from the lakes. The land which he developed was located in Jefferson county, N. Y., near lake Ontario, where so much of his previous life had been passed as a sailor. From that time until his death at the age of eighty- eight he continued on the same property and meanwhile he made a specialty of dairying and kindred activities. During young manhood he had married Julia Cornaire, a native of France, who died in New York at the age of forty- eight. Of their eight children only two survive.

Of the entire family the next to the youngest was Louis Frank, born

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January 7, 1850, at the home farm in Jefferson county, N. Y., near lake Ontario. From very early life he made himself useful on the farm. His father being a dairyman, it was natural that he should be instructed in milking, cheese-making and similar work. Efficient, energetic and persevering, his assistance was of the utmost value in the management of the stock and the land. It was not until 1876 that he decided to leave the old homestead and seek an opening in Mexico. January 1, 1877, he left Watertown, N. Y., on an emigrant train bound for San Francisco, where he arrived at the expiration of fifteen days of tedious travel. The country was so much to his liking that he abandoned all intention of proceeding to Mexico. For a time he worked in a dairy at Gilroy, Santa Clara county. Next he spent eighteen months in Monterey county, where he drove a stage between Soledad (then the end of the railroad) and Paraiso Springs. Returning from there to Gilroy, he became cheese-maker on the old Bloomfield ranch for E. A. Davidson, who manufactured drum cheese averaging about sixty pounds to the cheese. While in the employ of Mr. Davidson, aside from cheese-making, he milked a string of twenty-two cows or more, so that he was kept busy eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. On one occasion he had just finished making the cheese at 1 p. m., when the cows were brought in. About six milkers had left and help was scarce. Sitting down on the stool with his pail, he continued to milk until after sundown, at which time he had milked a total of sixty-eight cows for the day.

The next work that occupied the attention of Mr. Johndrow after leaving Gilroy was that of conducting a milk business at No. 1015 Valencia street, San Francisco. During 1882 he spent a few days in Bakersfield and received a favorable impression concerning this part of the country. Having closed out the business in San Francisco, in 1884 he started for Bakersfield to establish a permanent home in the locality. At San Jose he bought one hundred and seven head of fine dairy cows. These animals he drove through to Bakers- field, where he landed November 22, after twenty-two days of hard travel. The cows were not acclimated and in the next summer all but thirty-five died. Seven months later he sold the balance for $35 per head. He had paid $50 per head for the bunch. besides the expense of $4 each in bringing them to Kern county, so that in seven months he had lost $6.000. Had he brought his money to Bakersfield instead of bringing the cows and had he invested in some of the splendid land for which this county is noted, he would have been prosperous from the start. However, he did not allow the failure to discourage him. With undaunted courage he started anew. His knowledge of the dairy business was so thorough that Carr & Haggin engaged him to take charge of their dairy of three hundred cows, which were then grazing on a ranch extend- ing on both sides of Nineteenth street from the Panama slough west. For some time he had charge of the manufacture of cheese and butter and man- aged the large dairy acceptably to all concerned.

Having bought forty-four acres on section 4, township 31, range 27. in the Panama district, in 1892 Mr. Johndrow resigned his position with the great corporation of land-owners and devoted himself to the improvement of the land. It was not then known what products could be raised most profitably in the district, hence he experimented with prunes. The results were disastrous. In years when prices were high he had no crop and in seasons of large yield he could get only a very low price for the fruit, so at the expiration of twelve years of struggle he grubbed out the fine large trees and sowed the land to alfalfa. Thereafter with alfalfa and hogs on the land he was greatly prospered. Eventually he sold the property and in November. 1911, came to Bakersfield. where he erected two houses on the corner of Eleventh and N streets. In one of these he makes his home; the other is rented. While operating his ranch in the Panama district he became inter-

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ested in the Loveland Produce Company at Bakersfield. Since 1904 he has engaged in buying hay and grain for the firm and meanwhile also has had charge of the storage of the products in two large warehouses at Wible and Gosford. Since coming to Bakersfield he has given all of his time to the business of the firm.

Before leaving the east Mr. Johndrow was made a Mason in Chaumont Lodge No. 172, A. F. & A. M., at Chaumont, Jefferson county, N. Y., and his name has been enrolled among its list of members ever since 1876. In politics he has voted with the Republican party from the time of attaining his majority. His family comprises Mrs. Johndrow and their boy, Louis Frank Johndrow, a child of nine years. Prior to their marriage at San Jose October 3. 1883, Mrs. Johndrow was Miss Fannie Pyle. Her father, William Pyle, crossed the plains to California in 1850. For a time he ran a ferry across the Sacramento river. Afterward he engaged in wheat farming in Solano county and later in Fresno county. His last days were passed in Santa Ana, this state. The wife and mother, Mary Mack. is living at San Jose and at the age of eighty-four is hale and hearty. During the residence of the family in Solano county the daughter, Fannie, was born, and she accompanied her parents in their various removals, receiving her education in the public schools and at the University of the Pacific at San Jose.

WILLIAM ARTHUR SPROULE .- The Sproule family was established in the United States during the year 1846 by William A. Sproule, Sr., who brought his family of eight children across the ocean from Ireland and set- tled in Connecticut. Taking up the business of an undertaker, he continued to follow that line of work until his death. Prior to his departure from the home country he had lost his wife, Letitia (Henderson) Sproule, who was born in Ireland and was forty-five years of age at the time of her demise. Among their eight children the next to the youngest was William Arthur, who was born in Belfast, Ireland, June 25, 1842, and therefore had reached only the age of four years at the time of the landing of the family in the harbor of New York. As a boy he lived in the Greenwich, Conn., home and attended the public schools. When the Civil war began he had completed an apprenticeship to the trade of landscape gardener and had followed the occupation first in Connecticut and later in Pennsylvania. Enthusiasm for the Union cause led him to volunteer his services as a soldier. During 1862 he was assigned to Company K, One Hundred and Forty-third Pennsylvania In- fantry, which was mustered into service at Wilkesbarre, Luzerne county, and sent to the front with the old Fifth Army Corps under General Warren. With characteristic courage the young soldier bore his part in the battlefield and on the dreary line of march as well as when suffering the deprivations of camp- life. Not only did he bear arms in many small battles, but in addition he fought in eighteen decisive and bitterly contested engagements, including those of Gettysburg, Fredericksburg. Antietam, the Wilderness, second bat- tle of Bull Run, Spottsylvania Court-house, Cedar Mountain, Cold Harbor and Petersburg. Fortunate was his experience, for at no time was he ser- iously wounded, although he had many narrow escapes. When peace had been restored he received an honorable discharge in June of 1865 and resumed the ordinary vocations of the workaday world.

For some years subsequent to the Civil war Mr. Sproule was employed as a landscape gardener in and near New York City and many of the most beautiful grounds along the Hudson river bore evidence to his skill and cul- tured taste. After coming to California in 1871 he spent two years as fore- man on the Campbell ranch in Kern county and in 1873 established his head- quarters in Bakersfield, where shortly afterward he bought sixty-six feet of frontage on the corner of I and Twenty-first streets. At that time Bakersfield had one store and a very few houses. It would seem as if there was little

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need for a landscape gardener in a community so obscure and isolated, but with the incoming of people and the building of residences he was given constant employment in his chosen occupation. For twenty-two years he followed landscape gardening. Meantime lie laid out many of the beautiful grounds that make Bakersfield a city of beauty and a source of pride to its residents. Since retiring from the occupation in 1910 he has devoted his attention to the oversight of his private affairs and with his wife, who was Frances Greg- ory, a native of Connecticut, he enjoys the esteem and regard of the friends won during the long period of residence in the city. Mrs. Sproule was the daughter of John and Mary (Osborn) Gregory, natives of Danbury, Conn., and Poughkeepsie, N. Y., respectively. Her father was a merchant in South- port and there died, while her mother passed away in Bakersfield. In pol- itics Mr. Sproule has been stanchly Republican and in religion has adhered to the Episcopal faith in which he was reared. Their family numbers two sons and a daughter. The eldest, Warren, is now a clerk in a hardware store in Los Angeles, and the second, Albert, who is a conductor on the Southern Pacific Railroad, makes Watsonville his headquarters, while the youngest, Mrs. Jessie Argabrite, is living in San Diego.

ROWZEE F. SHACKELFORD .- Born in Brite's Valley, near Tehachapi, May 17, 1879, Mr. Shackelford is a son of "Dick" Shackelford, whose life record appears elsewhere in this volume. During boyhood he lived at the old home farm in Brite's Valley and attended the public schools of that locality. In work and in recreation the years of youth passed unevent- fully. When he reached the age of twenty years he started out to make his own way in the world. The Santa Fe Railroad Company in 1899 gave him employment as a fireman out from Needles running east and west, but the following year he resigned and returned to the farm to assist in the cultivation of the property. Returning to the railroad work in 1903, he again became a Santa Fe fireman out from Needles. In 1906 he was promoted to be an engineer and was transferred to Bakersfield, where he has since been retained by the company and where he has become a well-known and popular citizen.

The marriage of Mr. Shackelford was solemnized in Los Angeles in February, 1905, and united him with Miss Lillian Mae Culver, a native of North Prairie, Waukesha County, Wis. Their union has been blessed with two children, Ray and Marie. The fraternal and occupative associations of Mr. Shackelford are important and varied and include membership with the Eagles and the Masons. At the time of being made a Mason in Tehachapi Lodge No. 313. F. & A. M., he was raised by his father, a Mason of the pioneer period and long a prominent local worker in the order. For some years Mr. Shackelford has held membership with the Kern Valley Division No. 739, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, at Bakersfield. In addition he has been prominently identified with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen and at one time was honored with the presidency of Kern River Lodge No. 731 in Bakersfield, of which he is now recorder and financial secretary as well as one of the leading workers.

G. M. BUMGARNER, M.D .- In his native town of Guthrie, Ky., Dr. Bumgarner began to read medicine with Dr. Marshall when eighteen. For the arduous duties of a physician he had laid well the foundation of a thor- ough classical education, having been graduated with the class of 1889 from the college at South Carrollton, Muhlenberg county, Ky. This institution conferred the degree of A.B. upon him, while the degree of M.D. came to him in 1892 from the Beaumont Medical College at St. Louis. It is stated that he was not only one of the most gifted and intellectual members of the class, but the youngest as well. Upon leaving college he served for one year as interne in the Missouri Baptist Sanitarium in St. Louis, a position that gave him many valuable opportunities for different practice. After-

Pouze F. Shackelford

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ward he practiced his profession for eight years at Martinsburg, Audrain county, Mo., and meanwhile in 1893 married Miss Annie, daughter of Dr. J. N. Moorman, of South Carrollton, Ky.

Leaving Missouri to engage in professional work in the west, Dr. Bum- garner established his home and office at Escondido, San Diego county, in 1901, but in 1906 removed to the newly-developed Imperial valley, where he engaged in a general practice in the city of Imperial. From there in March of 1910 he came to Bakersfield, where he and his wife, with their two chil- dren, Polly and Waldo, have a comfortable home at No. 1722 Blanche street. At the time of the epidemic of typhoid he was appointed by the board of county supervisors to the position of county health officer and since Decem- ber of 1910 he has filled the position with devotion, tact and intelligence, endeavoring to conquer conditions that give rise to local epidemics and to so conserve the health of the community that such disastrous experiences may be prevented. The office of Dr. Bumgarner is on the second floor of the Brower building, on Nineteenth street.

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History of Kern 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, Part 98

Author: Morgan, Wallace Melvin, 1868- [from old catalog] Publication date: 1914 Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company Number of Pages: 1682

Author: Morgan, Wallace Melvin, 1868- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1682