USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Los Angeles county, Volume II > Part 75
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89
460
HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY
fields, being the representative at Long Beach for the Industrial Oil Syndicate properties in these districts.
Mr. Sewell, who has achieved a business prominence and prosperity rapidly within the last year or so, has had a most interesting career both in California and elsewhere. He is a native of one of the oldest Ohio oil districts, born at Mansfield, that state, September 27, 1881, and is a son of Homer P. and Harriet (Dickey) Sewell. He is of old American and Revolutionary stock on both sides. Some of the earliest Sewells settled in Virginia, where the family name was given to Sewell's Point. Mr. Homer Sewell is eligible to membership in the Sons of the American Revolution. His paternal grandfather, Sewell, was a Methodist minister, and for many years lived near Mansfield, Ohio. He is a native of Ireland. The maternal grandfather of Homer Sewell was Moses R. Dickey, who lived to be ninety-two years of age and died at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1907. He served with the rank of colonel in the One Hundred and First Ohio Infantry in the Civil war, and for many years held high rank as an attorney in his native city of Cleveland, being senior member of the law firm Dickey, Estep, Carr & Goff. An uncle of Homer Sewell, W. L. Sewell, who died at Buffalo, New York, a few years ago, was at one time United States consul at Toronto, Canada, under Roosevelt, and later at Pernambuco, Brazil.
Homer P. Sewell and wife since 1906 have lived retired at Denver, Colorado. Both are natives of Ohio, the mother of Cleveland and the father near Richland. Homer P. Sewell practiced law at Mansfield for over thirty years, and at the same time was also engaged in lead and zinc mining in the Joplin District of Missouri, where he spent part of his time. He is a thirty-second degree Mason and was active in Ohio politics. Of his three children Homer is the oldest; Harry D., is a physician and one of the proprietors of the Sewell & Sprague Hospital at Huron, South Dakota; and Edwin L. is connected with the First National Bank of Huron, South Dakota.
Homer Sewell finished his education in the Michigan Military Academy at Orchard Lake, Michigan. In 1901 he enlisted in the Twenty-ninth Infantry of the Regular Army and went to the Philippines, spending six years in those islands. After his discharge from the army he entered the Bureau of Engineering and Public Works at Manilla, and subsequently reenlisted as a private in the Seventeenth Regiment of Regulars. On return- ing to the United States he was private secretary to Gen. A. J. Warner, and was located at Gainesville, Georgia, from 1905 to 1907. In 1907 he removed to Denver, Colorado, where his parents were residing, and was associated with the Northern Coal & Coke Company. Following that his business headquarters were at Memphis, Tennessee, where he was with the Alamo Farm Light Company until 1921.
Mr. Sewell started for California in 1921, driving a car from Denver. He did not have enough capital to make the journey, and enroute he sold aluminum heels for women's shoes. He arrived in California with only fifty cents, and the second day he left the heel business to take charge of the local business of the J. G. McDonald Chocolate Company of Salt Lake City, representing that firm from July, 1921, to January, 1922, his terri- tory including everything from San Juan Capistrano, South, including the Imperial Valley and with headquarters at San Diego. When he gave up the chocolate business he entered real estate and oil lands, moving from San Diego to Long Beach, and his enterprise since coming here has brought him the foundation of a substantial fortune.
Mr. Sewell is a republican in politics, a member of the Episcopal Church and of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerc. He married Miss Allie Simmons on November 19, 1906, at Gainesville, Georgia. Her father, B. F. Simmons, was a wealthy and prominent resident of Gaines- ville. Her mother, Lucy (Cocke) Simmons, who died at Gainesville August 8, 1922, represented a distinguished southern family. Mrs. Sewell was born at Gainesville, and finished her education in Brenau College of
461
HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY
that city. Mr. and Mrs. Sewell, whose home is at 4505 East Second Street, Long Beach, have one son, Homer Simmons, a native of Gainesville, Georgia.
GEORGE HENRY FROST. The Frost family were among the pioneers of Pasadena, and George Henry Frost grew up there from the age of eight years, has had many active associations with local business affairs, and has done fully as much as any other individual to promote the success of the Tournament of Roses as a celebration nationally well known. He has been an active figure in this annual occasion for over thirty years.
Mr. Frost was born at Biddeford, Maine, October 8, 1868, and repre- sents an old New England family that was established on the shores of Massachusetts Bay in the early part of the seventeenth century. For a number of years there has been in existence the Frost Family Association of America, numbering more than five hundred families, descendants of Edmund Frost of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1635; Nicholas Frost, of Elliott, Maine, 1634 ; George Frost, of Winter Harbor, Maine, 1635; Wil- liam Frost, of Oyster Bay, New York, 1670; William Frost of Fairfield, Connecticut, 1640.
George Henry Frost represents a branch of the family early established in Maine. His great-grandfather, Jacob Frost, was born at Berwick, Maine, May 4, 1785, and died November 5, 1837. His wife was Sally Gould, born at Lyman, Maine, March 15, 1787, and died in April, 1875. Their son, Thomas Frost, born at Lyman, Maine, April 28, 1809, died September 10, 1879, and married Serene West, who was born at Pownal in 1809 and died June 4, 1881.
Edward Sands Frost, father of George Henry, was born at Lyman, Maine, January 1, 1843. He was a soldier in Company E of the First Maine Cavalry during the Civil war. His home for many years was at Biddeford, and he came from there to California, arriving in Los Angeles November 2, 1876. On the 1st of February, 1877, he established his home in Pasadena at the southwest corner of Marengo and Colorado streets. He came to California for the benefit of his health, and lived here for eighteen years. He was a prominent factor in the upbuilding of Pasadena. He organized John F. Godfrey Post No. 93 of the Grand Army in Pasa- dena, and built the Frost Block at 177 East Colorado Street as the home of the post. He was largely instrumental in securing the widening of Colorado Street from 50 feet to 100 feet, and was also responsible for getting the grade cut down at Marengo and Colorado streets, a depth of five feet, two inches, with a fill in front at 174 East Colorado Street at the Frost Alley of four feet eight inches, so that the thoroughfare presents an even brake from Broadway to Marengo. Edward Sands Frost died at Pasadena May 28, 1894. He married Ellen Frances Whitehouse, who was born at Dover, New Hampshire, August 25, 1843, and died at Pasadena November 20, 1908.
George Henry Frost attended school for a year or so at Biddeford, Maine, continued his schooling in Pasadena, spent two years in Columbia Hill College and subsequently had a private tutor under whom he finished his education. Mr. Frost earned his first money by selling papers, and from 1885 to 1889 was local agent for the Columbia bicycles and again in the later nineties acted as sales representative for the same company. From 1892 to 1895 he was in the grocery business at the corner of Colorado and Broadway, and from 1895 to 1907 was treasurer and manager of the Pasadena Grand Opera House and the Lowe Opera House. For three years Mr. Frost operated with his partner a retail candy and ice cream business at Avalon on Catalina Islands, under the firm name of Fischbeck Company. They bought out Fred Fischbeck, the founder of the business, but continued it under the old name.
Mr. Frost has been actively associated with the Tournament of Roses Association for thirty-three years, and for the past nine years has been a director and for one year was the chairman of the building committee for
462
HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY
the Tournament of Roses Stadium. He has appeared in every tournament except two during the past thirty-three years. For nine years he was drum major of the Americus Club Band, and he served two years with Company I of the California National Guard as drummer and bugler. Mr. Frost has always been a republican, is affiliated with Pasadena Lodge No. 272, Free and Accepted Masons, and the Royal Arch Chapter. He is a member of the Cauldron Club and the First Congregational Church.
At Pasadena Mr. Frost married Jeannette Elizabeth Henderson, a native of Platteville, Wisconsin, and daughter of C. M. Henderson. Her father was a traveling salesman for thirty-two years, representing a New York house, and died at Pasadena. Mr. and Mrs. Frost were the parents of three children : May Elizabeth, wife of Walter M. Boadway, at 1035 South Madison Avenue; Dorothy M .; and Edward Mortimer, who was born February 16, 1894, and died May 14, 1915.
FRANK L. BURLEIGH, M. D. Los Angeles County has the distinction of numbering among its leading citizens some of the ablest members of the medical profession, to whose careful training and unquestioned talent the people are indebted for their general good health. One of these repre- sentative physicians and surgeons who is enjoying a large practice and a well-merited prestige is Dr. Frank L. Burleigh, of Burbank. He was born at Lebanon, Indiana, January 28, 1865, a son of Dr. George W. and Margaret E. (Boyd) Burleigh, who came to California in 1883 and located at Los Angeles, where his death occurred in 1919. She survives him and is living at Hollywood.
Doctor Burleigh, of this notice, was reared at Faribault, Minnesota, where he attended the public schools and later took a business course. For a time he was in the employ of the American Express Company at Minne- apolis, Minnesota, and then came to California and enrolled as a student in the medical department of the University of Southern California, from which he was graduated in 1887, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. For two years thereafter he was engaged in practice at San Francisco, and then, going to Calaveras County, California, remained there for eighteen months. Returning to San Francisco, he continued there in practice until 1918, when he came to Burbank, where he is now permanently located, and where he is carrying on a general practice. He holds the confidence of the people of this community, and is accepted as one of the leading men of his calling in this part of the county.
On October 18, 1922, Doctor Burleigh married Alma Cramer White, of Burbank, but a native of Ashland, Wisconsin, where she was educated. Doctor and Mrs. Burleigh are consistent members of the Methodist Epis- copal Church. He belongs to the Masonic fraternity, the Knights of Pythias and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. Professionally he maintains membership with the Los Angeles County Medical Society, the California Medical Society and the American Medical Association. Through his connections with the Burbank Chamber of Commerce Doctor Burleigh keeps in close touch with the civic advancement of his home community, in which work he always bears a helping hand.
PROF. J. E. BLACKWELL. In the substantial upbuilding of Long Beach the locating here of educational institutions of merit has been an important influence in promoting cultural development and bringing about conditions that serve to elevate society. Among these institutions of which Long Beach may well be proud of, is the Long Beach Military Academy, which is under the direct supervision of its owner, Prof. J. E. Blackwell.
Professor Blackwell is an educator of long experience. He was born in Warwickshire, England, received his scholastic training there, and for more than twenty-five years has been in the teaching profession and pos- sesses many college degrees. For more than fourteen years he was head master and founder of Streatham Hill Military and Naval College, London, England, and during that period successfully prepared large numbers of
463
HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY
youths for the army, navy, universities and public examinations. While well qualified for any university professorship, Professor Blackwell has always found his interest centered in boys, and their mental, moral and physical development during the formative period of their lives he has held to be his highest duty and has practically spent his life in achieving it.
In 1908, accompanied by Mrs. Blackwell, Professor Blackwell came to the United States. They remained but a short time in New York, their objective point being California, and in 1913 Professor Blackwell established the Pasadena Military Academy at Pasadena. California. He continued his enterprise there until the physicians prescribed a little different climate for Mrs. Blackwell, and in 1918 he transferred his business interests to Long Beach and established here the Long Beach Military Academy, an institution that within five years has become favorably known all through the western country, and at the present time fifty sturdy, manly boys are enjoying its many advantages as pupils.
The Long Beach Military Academy could scarcely be more advantage- ously situated for its purpose. The location of Long Beach itself, fying high and dry for five miles along the Pacific Ocean, with a western background of the picturesque Palos Verdes hills, has no extremes of temperature, the atmosphere being, with its glorious sunshine, upbuilding and invigorating. The academy buildings are designed to afford a home atmosphere as well as thorough training for the boys, and they soon learn after coming here that in Mrs. Blackwell they will find a kind and sympathetic friend, just such a friend as all boys need when away from home. It is the aim of the academy to furnish thorough instruction and careful supervision, whereby the prin- ciples of a well regulated manly life will be instilled, and constant effort is made to train the cadets in habits that will permanently benefit character. and the reputation of the cadets for gentlemanly behavior proves that all these efforts have had the desired effect.
The system of study and training at the academy includes thorough instruction in Latin, the modern languages, mathematics, English, science, drawing and music, with the military training that is now recognized as of the greatest value to the boy who wishes to succeed in life. The military drills are under the supervision of Major Blackwell, a competent instructor and son of Professor Blackwell, and are very generally popular, and the cadets, in their handsome uniforms, are always sure of an admiring audi- ence when they appear in public. A thorough education for those who are preparing to enter business life after school is over.
Professor Blackwell is a member of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce. His school is non-sectarian, but he belongs to St. Luke's Epis- copal Church. He is a man particularly well qualified for the work in which he is engaged, possessing that intuitive knowledge of boys and their prob- lems that makes him patient, understanding and sympathetic, and at the same time through his own character sets them an example of courage, honesty, perseverance and courtesy that it is but natural for a "soldier" to admire in his superior and strive to emulate.
JESSE H. CLARK. One of the pioneer families in the Azusa section of Los Angeles County is represented by Jesse H. Clark, whose home is a mile and a half west of Norwalk, on the Norwalk and Downey Boulevard. He is a son of the pioneer George M. Clark.
George M. Clark was born in Cooper County, Missouri, December 27, 1853, son of Jesse M. and Nancy Jane (Fray) Clark, his father a native of Kentucky and his mother of Virginia. Jesse Clark and wife reared eight children. In 1873 the family came to California, first locating in the northern part of the state, near Marysville in Yuba County. George M. Clark was then twenty years of age, and had acquired a country school education in Missouri, but also attended school for a time after coming to California. A few years later the family came to Southern California, and Jesse M. Clark built the first house in what is now Azusa, then known
464
HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY
as Mound City. He bought land, but later abandoned it on account of a dispute over the title. Jesse M. Clark died in 1885, near Downey, and his widow survived him until 1904.
George M. Clark was a young man of twenty-five when he came South with his father in 1878 and began ranching, and continued his career as a farmer and stock man until 1915, a period of nearly forty years. In 1886 he bought forty acres a mile and a half west of Norwalk and in 1895 purchased from his mother twenty acres adjoining. George M. Clark married in 1881 Miss Nannie Elliot, of an old pioneer California family. She died in 1901. They were the parents of six children: Stella, wife of Fred Kurtz, of Long Beach; Lester A., a rancher at Chino; Jesse H .; Miss Anna E., a teacher in Los Angeles ; Paul E., a contractor and grader living in Norwalk ; and Carrie E., wife of Herbert W. Browning. In 1906 George M. Clark married Alice Seely. He and his family are Methodists.
Jesse H. Clark was born at Norwalk, July 29, 1885. He has spent practically all his life there, acquiring his education in the schools of Nor- walk and Little Lake. He did farming with his father, and subsequently became a driller and a worker in the production department in the oil fields. His ranch home west of Norwalk has been a profitable enterprise under his ownership and management, and there is every prospect that the famous Santa Fe Springs oil fields will be extended to embrace the Clark ranch. Mr. Clark is a democrat, and he and his family are Methodists.
On June 1, 1912, he married Miss Iris W. Hastings, who was born at Austin, Arkansas, April 13, 1886, daughter of Willis I. and Victoria Y. Hastings. Her parents were born in Tennessee, where her father died in 1917. Her mother, the wife of C. E. Clark, now lives near Lancaster, California. Mr. and Mrs. Clark have three children, all natives of Nor- walk: Nancy Jane, born December 27, 1913; Walter Edwin, born March 17, 1915; and William H., born September 22, 1921.
OMAR H. HUBBARD. In Long Beach and vicinity this name is distinc- tive by reason of its associations with one of the finest and most beautiful apartment buildings ever constructed here. As we review the last century of man's progress and achievement in the realms of science, art, literature, commerce and higher intellectual development, perhaps no phase stands forth more clearly than the effort to provide the utmost of luxury and refinement as a fitting surrounding for the crowning glory of man's ambi- tion, the home. With the progress of science and development inventive genius has provided a wealth of labor-saving plans and devices through which has been eliminated practically all the monotonous drudgery formerly occupying so large a space in the home. It was to provide a home marking the ultimate of seclusion and privacy, the best features of man's inventive genius, together with those desirable attributes pertaining to the modern, centrally located hotel, that the plans were drawn and executed for the Omar H. Hubbard Building. This building, completed in the early part of 1923, has been pronounced by students of architecture and of home economics one of the incomparable examples of its class. In beauty of design and impressive magnificence it will stand for years as a beautiful tribute, alike to the developed art of modern architecture and the science and skill of the West's most famous architect. Closely resembling the Italian Renaissance, of reinforced concrete, tile and marble, this structure presents an imposing architectural triumph, and also a lasting impression of stately magnificence.
It is an eleven story reinforced concrete structure, costing $700,000, containing one hundred and eighteen apartments. A beautiful entrance on Broadway opens directly on a large corridor running full length of the building, while a similar entrance on Cedar Avenue bisects this corridor.
The architect is Mr. John Parkinson, probably the most famous designer of commercial, public and residential architecture on the Pacific Coast. A noteworthy feature of the building is that the apartments are individually owned, the building having been erected on that very novel and modern
OH. Hubbard
465
HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY
principle, permitting home ownership in conjunction with those conveni- ences and comforts that are only available to cooperative enterprise.
An interesting and important feature is its community plan, including a community laundry, equipped with all modern machinery ; separate stor- age rooms for each floor in the building; a steam heating plant; a hot water plant which maintains hot water at one hundred forty degrees temperature in all rooms at all times ; an incinerating plant permitting all garbage to be emptied from every floor ; a refrigerator plant maintaining a temperature of forty degrees and refrigerators placed in every apart- ment. Throughout the building is furnished with the latest plumbing so that it can be controlled within each apartment. In the community dining room a hundred persons can be entertained at one time.
The man responsible for this magnificent contribution to Long Beach's building progress acquired a fundamental knowledge of the building busi- ness and property investment by forty years' experience in the purchase and construction of buildings and the study of various advanced methods of fireproof construction under the master mind of the late Homer Laugh- lin, Sr. Mr. Hubbard is a lawyer by profession.
Omar Howard Hubbard was born at Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, August 29, 1855, and his first name was given in honor of the great Persian poet and tent maker. He is a son of Ebenezer Howard and Phoebe Marchant (Rogers) Hubbard. His grandfather, Dr. Ebenezer Hubbard, came from Buffalo, New York, and was a descendant of Ebenezer Hubbard of Concord, Massachusetts. It was largely due to his patriotic enterprise that the handsome granite monument was erected at Concord to com- memorate the spot where the first battle of the American Revolution was fought.
Omar H. Hubbard finished his early education in the Wisconsin State Normal School at Whitewater, and for several years taught school in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. In 1879 he moved to Brainard, Minne- sota, where he taught school and also worked in the register of deeds office. He began the study of law with Judge C. B. Sleeper, and sub- sequently attended the Law School of the Wisconsin State University at Madison. He was admitted to the bar on examination by the Supreme Court of Minnesota in 1884, and practiced his profession at St. Paul. He afterward formed a law partnership with Charles H. Taylor, and was engaged in law practice there until 1898. Since coming to California he has been admitted to the bar, but has not sought clientage. In Minnesota he became interested in mining development, in real estate investment and building. Mr. Hubbard first came to California for the benefit of the health of Mrs. Hubbard. For a dozen years his home was in Los Angeles, and since 1912 he has been a resident of Long Beach. He was associated as confidential man with Homer Laughlin, Sr., for six or seven years in the development of the great downtown properties of Los Angeles. The culminating achievement of his extensive experience in handling and improving property is the Omar H. Hubbard Building, a structure with which any man might be gratified to have his name associated. Mr. Hubbard has never been engaged in banking, always acting as an independent in business and financial affairs.
While a resident of St. Paul he was a justice of the peace, was secre- tary of the Board of Education at Brainerd, was a member of the St. Paul Commercial Club and is a member of the City Club and Chamber of Com- merce at Los Angeles. He is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and fraternal brotherhood and, and was formerly a member of the Congregational Church at Brainerd, the Plymouth Congregational Church of St. Paul, and is now a member of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.
December 30, 1880, at Forest City, Iowa, Mr. Hubbard married Miss Didama L. Draper, daughter of Lewis H. and Deborah M. (Maben) Draper. `Both her father and mother trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower stock, and belong to the oldest and most prominent New England
466
HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY
lines. Mrs. Hubbard is a woman of very liberal education, and one of the leading students in Los Angeles County of the works of Shakespeare. Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard have no children of their own, but they reared three boys and one girl.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.