USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Los Angeles county, Volume II > Part 81
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Also in 1910 Mr. Stephens and his brother, Otto T., together with James Irvine of Orange County and Geo. Turner, a capitalist from Van- couver, B. C., purchased a large tract of unimproved land in Kern County, California, and founded the present citrus colony of Jasmine. In 1912 Mr. Stephens organized a syndicate composed chiefly of officials of the Union Oil Company of California, who purchased 330-acre portion of the "Lucky Baldwin" "Rancho La Merced," lying to the north of and adjoining the Montebello tract which had already become an attractive and prosperous community of citrus-growers, florists and vegetable gardeners. In April, 1915, he purchased a half interest in the Montebello Supply Com- pany, a merchandising firm of which he still retains control, and which has remained one of the most successful and stable of the city's business firms.
A year or so later he was named as one of a committee to devise plans to prevent the cities of Pasadena and Alhambra from establishing a sewer farm on lands situated between the communities of Montebello on the south and Ramona Acres on the north. The activities of this committee resulted in the incorporation of the city of Monterey Park, which effectively thwarted the plans of the said cities.
The Montebello Chamber of Commerce was organized and became a successful civic body about January 1, 1920, electing Mr. Stephens its first president. During his administration of one year the chamber grew to upward of 100 members and inaugurated many important policies for the advancement of the community. Among these accomplishments was the obtaining of the exclusion of the Montebello territory from the city of Monterey Park and the re-incorporation of the city of Montebello as a city of the sixth class. Mr. Stephens was one of the five city trustees elected by the people at this time, and at the succeeding municipal election held in April, 1922, was reelected for the long term of four years. Mr. Stephens is active in various lines of endeavor, conducting a successful real-estate business, and is also in business as a leaser and broker in oil lands. He is an avocado enthusiast, being a charter member of the Cali- fornia Avocado Association, and owns one of the first commercial orchards planted in the state, which is situated in the La Merced Heights Tract, Montebello.
William Delos Stephens was united in marriage with Miss Lillian May Milligan, a native of Tennessee, at San Bernardino, November 28, 1898, and in 1899 they moved to Los Angeles. They have two living children, namely, William Harvey, aged twenty-one years, and Cecelia May, aged thirteen years.
William Harvey Stephens was graduated from the grammar school department of the Los Angeles Young Men's Christian Association at the age of twelve years, and from the high school department of Harvard Military School, four years later. During this time he was making a special study of classic literature and the drama, under the tutelage of Mrs. Flor-
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ence A. Dobinson, noted instructress. He entered the University of Cali- fornia, Southern Branch in 1919, continuing there for two years when he left to concentrate exclusively on dramatic work. He played in the Pilgrimage Play, Hollywood, in the summer of 1921, directed by Garnet Holm. The same year he played juvenile leads at Hollywood bowl in Shakespearean plays and was featured in the leading part in the desert play of "Fire" written by Garnet Holm and produced at Palm Springs in September, 1921. In September, 1922, this gifted young man signed a contract with Walter Hampden in Shakespearean repertoire, and is now playing with him in New York.
Cecelia May Stephens is finishing her eighth grade in the Montebello grammar school and will enter high school in September, 1923.
Mr. and Mrs. William Delos Stephens are interested along many lines and she, since the family located at Montebello in 1914, has been one of the leaders in the Montebello Woman's Club, serving several terms as its vice president. She has repeatedly declined the honor of the presidency owing to domestic cares. In 1921 she was elected and served as chairman of the drama section of the District Federation of Woman's Clubs.
Mrs. Stephens' special activities in the club have been in connection with the program and entertainment committees. She has written and produced several plays locally, also one produced in Los Angeles by the District Federation of Woman's Clubs, which was received with widespread com- mendation. Undoubtedly William Harvey Stephens inherits much of his dramatic genius from his talented mother. Both Mr. and Mrs. Stephens believe in a splendid future for Montebello where they expect to spend the balance of their days, and they are always to be found supporting every progressive and forward-looking measure.
WILLIAM W. LEE has for many years been prominently identified with the banking interests of Glendale. He is president of the First National Bank in Glendale.
This institution includes in its history the old Bank of Tropico. Trop- ico was at one time an independent village and is now part of Glendale. The Bank of Tropico was established in March, 1910, the two men most prominently identified with its early history being Daniel Campbell and John A. Logan. Mr. Campbell became the first president, Mr. Logan the first cashier and E. W. Richardson was the first vice president. The bank was organized with $25,000 capital and started business at the corner of San Fernando Road and Central Avenue. In 1917 it moved to a new building at the corner of South Brand Boulevard and Cypress Street, and that is the location of the First National Bank in Glendale. In 1921 it was reorganized as the Glendale National Bank and on January 1, 1923, became the First National Bank in Glendale. Its board of directors are: O. S. Richardson, W. H. Bullis, B. F. Lyttle, Dan Campbell, W. W. Lee and John A. Logan. The officers are: W. W. Lee, president; O. S. Richardson, vice president ; John A. Logan, cashier ; and Dan Campbell, chairman of the board. The bank now has a capital of $50,000, surplus $50,000 and deposits averaging $1,100,000. The bank building is a two- story structure of brick and steel, equipped with all the facilities of a modern bank, including safety deposit boxes. The prosperity of the bank has largely come from the community in which it was originally established.
William W. Lee was born at New London, Iowa, March 20, 1863, was educated in public schools there, and graduated Bachelor of Science in 1887 from the Iowa Wesleyan University at Mount Pleasant. After a few years of teaching he engaged in banking as cashier of the New London National Bank, and was with that institution for a period of sixteen years. Mr. Lee came to California in 1906 and for fifteen years he was president of the First National Bank of Glendale. He acquired an interest in the Glendale National Bank and was elected its president in September, 1922, and subsequently is president of its successor, The First National Bank.
Mr. Lee is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Methodist
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Church. August 25, 1890, he married Miss Luella Waller of New London, Iowa. They have a son, Raymond W. of Glendale, and one grandson, Ralph William Lee. Mrs. Lee was born and educated in New London, Iowa.
The cashier of the First National Bank in Glendale and one of the original promoters of the Bank of Tropico is John A. Logan, who was born at Oakland, California, March 16, 1878, son of Oliver C. and Nanny (McMichael) Logan. His father was born at Beavertown, Pennsylvania, and his mother in the City of Pittsburgh. Oliver Logan came across the plains to California in 1848 when eighteen years of age and after some experience in mining returned east. In 1850 he came to California and became a permanent resident of Oakland where for many years he was in the real estate business. In 1897 he came to Glendale and lived retired until his death in 1914 at the age of eighty-five.
John A. Logan acquired his education in the public schools of Oakland, worked in a photograph gallery there for a year, and on coming to Glendale was employed for a time by Mr. J. C. Scherer, was then in a grocery store and in 1898 enlisted as a private in Battery D of California heavy artillery for service in the Spanish American war. He served seventeen months in the Philippine Islands and received his honorable discharge in San Francisco. After this war service Mr. Logan was in the mercantile business at Glendale for twelve years and in 1910 he and Dan Campbell organized the Bank of Tropico and he has been cashier of that insti- tution and its successor. He is also vice president of the Community Savings and Commercial Bank of Glendale.
FRANCIS QUARLES STORY, a venerable, honored and influential citizen of Los Angeles County, with residence at Alhambra, has been one of the most prominent figures in the development and upbuilding of the great citrus-fruit industry of Southern California, and is a loyal and public- spirited citizen who specially merits recognition in this history.
Mr. Story is a scion of Colonial American ancestry on both the paternal and maternal sides, and is a representative of a pioneer family in Wisconsin, his birth having occurred at Waukesha, that state, on the 18th day of July, 1845, and his parents having been John P. and Elizabeth (Quarles) Story. Mr. Story graduated from the Waukesha High School when he was sixteen years of age, and thereafter he taught one term of school in the Badger State. After his graduation in the celebrated Eastman Business College at Pough- keepsie, New York, he went to the City of Boston, Massachusetts, where he became bookkeeper for a leading woolen house. His desire to learn the woolen business in all its details led him to take a position in the sorting room of one of the mills operated by the firm which employed him, and there he worked twelve hours a day for six months, without compensation. For three months thereafter he applied himself nine hours daily in a Boston woolen house, and he then opened an office and engaged in business as a broker in woolen goods. Later he purchased an interest in a wool-scouring mill, and in this connection made a special study of wool shrinkage. By 1872 he had gained a modest financial competency, but the great Boston fire of that year left his firm $10,000 in debt. Hard work and careful man- agement enabled the principals in the firm to pay off the indebtedness and gain a new start. Within a few years Mr. Story had again become success- ful in his business operations in the Massachusetts metropolis, but impaired health compelled his retirement, and in 1877 he came to California and became associated with B. P. Flint & Company, woolen dealers in the City of San Francisco. In 1883 he came to Los Angeles County, purchased land and erected a home at Alhambra and here set out an orange grove. He applied himself with characteristic energy and discrimination to the work of his new field of enterprise, informed himself thoroughly in scientific methods of culture and the manifold other details pertaining to the citrus- fruit industry, and for many years he has here been a leader in the growing and shipping of citrus fruits, the while he has done much to further the success of this important line of industrial and commercial enterprise in
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Southern California. Mr. Story has been president of the Alhambra Orange Growers' Association from the time of its organization in 1896; since 1897 he has been president of the Semi-Tropic Fruit Exchange and vice-president of the Southern California Fruit Exchange, besides which he has been president of the California Fruit Growers' Exchange from the time of its organization to the present. The last named association figures as the largest co-operative industrial and commercial organization in the world, and through its medium is marketed more than sixty per cent of the citrus- fruit output of California. During 1911-12 this association shipped 20,033,933 boxes of oranges, which netted the California growers $37,599,- 846.16, without a penny of loss. Mr. Story has been a leader in the execu- tive affairs of this and the other important organizations with which he is identified, as noted above, and he is also president of the California Fruit Growers' Supply Company, which is capitalized for $838,000 and which saves to growers fully $5,000,000 annually.
In 1891 Mr. Story became a member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, of which he has continuously served as a director since 1896 and of which he was president in 1902. He has been a member of some of the most important committees of this great institution and has wielded much influence in its affairs and the promotion of its fine civic ideals and progres- sive policies. In 1897 he was chairman of the citrus tariff committee of the Chamber of Commerce, which secured a tariff of one cent a pound on imported oranges and lemons. Since 1907 Mr. Story has been chairman of the executive committee of the Citrus Protective League, which has secured in the meanwhile a reduction of ten cents on each 100 pounds of citrus fruit shipped by freight from California, this resulting in the annual saving of more than $1,000,000 to the growers. Through the same medium was obtained an increase of one-half cent a pound in tariff on lemons. This league defeated the attempt by the railroads to increase freight rates on lemons and caused a reduction in referendum rates. In 1898, under the auspices of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Story headed the local executive committee of the National Educational Association and, in association with Judge Charles Silent, raised $23,000 for the convention of the association held in Los Angeles in 1899. In 1907 he was again allied with Judge Silent in raising $22,000 for the same purpose. The two con- ventions, each of which attracted about 50,000 people to Los Angeles, were among the largest in the history of the National Educational Association, and the local Chamber of Commerce adopted special resolutions of com- mendation of the splendid achievements of Mr. Story and his associates in this connection. In 1906 Mr. Story was chairman of the Citizens' Relief Committee of Los Angeles, which raised more than $300,000 in money and supplies for the sufferers in the great San Francisco earthquake and fire. In 1903 he was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce committee which raised funds and arranged entertainment for the International Methodist Episcopal Church Conference at Los Angeles. In 1901 he was chairman of the building committee which raised $350,000 to buy property and effect the erection of the present building of the Los Angeles Chamber of Com- merce. Mr. Story was chairman of the executive committee of the Nica- raguan Canal Association until 1899, when Congress chose the Panama route for the construction of the great canal.
The splendid zeal and service of Mr. Story have always been directed in the conservation of the natural resources of California and in the promo- tion of measures and enterprises tending to advance the material and civic welfare and progress of this great commonwealth. He is one of California's representatives on the National Conservation Commission, and has been state vice-president or a director for California since the formation of the National Irrigation Association, which induced the Government to expend $70,000,000 in the reclamation of arid lands. He is also president of the Arizona and California Conservation Commission, which seeks to effect control of floods and to bring about the reclamation of 8,000,000 acres of
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desert land within the borders of the two states and commercially tributary to Los Angeles. He was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce committee formed to raise funds to build fire breaks and to reforest the reserves of the San Gabriel Valley-a work that later was taken up by the Federal Government.
At an early period in his residence in Southern California Mr. Story aided in the organization of the San Gabriel Valley Transit Railway, and he served either as treasurer or general manager of the company until its property and franchises were sold to the Southern Pacific Railway Com- pany. He is president of the Los Angeles City Directory Company, a director of the First National Bank of Los Angeles, is president of the San Gabriel Valley Country Club, and is a member of the California Club of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Municipal League, the Southern California Automobile Club, and the Alhambra Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. He has recently resigned his position as a trustee of the University of Southern California, and, by reason of his advanced years, he is attempting to retire also from other important posts which have been marked by his admirable executive service and denoted him as a man of thought and action, of constructive genius and of fine civic loyalty. A review of this necessarily circumscribed order does not offer opportunity to give details concerning the great service Mr. Story has rendered in connection with the protecting and advancing of the interests of the citrus-fruit industry of California, but it is safe to say that few have wielded so large and benignant influence along this line as he, and that his name shall ever be one of prominence in the history of the development of this greatest of the industrial and commercial enterprises of Southern Cali- fornia. His political allegiance is given unreservedly to the republican party, and he has been active in the furtherance of its cause.
In the year 1876 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Story and Miss Charlotte Forrester Devereaux, daughter of General George H. Devereaux, of Salem, Massachusetts.
Mr. Story has figured as a big man in a big state, and his achievement and character have brought much of distinction and much of advancement to the state of his adoption.
ROBERT C. MANNING is one of the vital, progressive and popular figures in the automobile trade in Los Angeles County, and has developed a sub- stantial business as manager of the Long Beach Buick Company, which has the agency for the Buick cars at Long Beach, with headquarters at 1227-33 American Avenue.
Mr. Manning was born in the City of Buffalo, New York, December 6, 1880, and is a son of Courtland C. and Jessie W. (Atkins) Manning, who have been residents of Los Angeles, California, since the spring of 1912, when they came here from the old home in Buffalo. Courtland C. Manning, who is now living retired, served as United States Treasurer of Immigration at the port of New York City under the administration of President Harrison and in his native state he was prominent in the councils and campaign work of the republican party for a long term of years, both he and his wife having been born at Buffalo and being repre- sentatives of old and honored families of the Empire State.
Robert C. Manning, the only child of his parents, was in due course of progress "inserted" into the public schools of his native city, and with the discipline thereof he was so fully appreciative eventually that he completed the curriculum of the high school, in which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1897. In 1901 he was graduated in the University of Pennsylvania, from which he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He found opportunity to put both his bachelor and his art proclivities into constructive force when he entered the field of newspaper work in the national metropolis. As a cub reporter in New York City he initiated his activities at the princely stipend of $18 a week, and he has since given a somber statement that in this connection he passed
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much of his official time in "chasing ambulances." He continued his service as a reporter on the New York Journal staff about two years, and in the spring of 1903 he came to San Francisco, California, where he made his formal entry into the "automobile game." He was there connected with divers and sundry automobile concerns, and his cumulative experience proved valuable. He remained in San Francisco about one year after the great earthquake and fire brought ruin and desolation to that city, and in 1907 he established his residence in Los Angeles, where he entered the service of the Consolidated Motor Car Company, which then handled the old Pope and Franklin cars. Before the close of that year, however, he established himself independently in business in that city, under the title of the Manning Motor Car Company, and, with headquarters at 1012 South Main Street, he there continued a successful business in the handling of used cars until 1913. From that year to 1916 he was connected with the concern known in turn as the Leach Motor Car Company, the Leach Motor Car Corporation and the Security Motor Car Company. In 1916 Mr. Manning identified himself with the Howard Automobile Com- pany of Los Angeles, and with this concern he continued his connection until October 1, 1922, when he assumed his present position, that of manager of the Long Beach Buick Company. Well worthy of perpetu- ation in this connection are the following quotations from an article which appeared in the Long Beach Press of October 22, 1922:
"Robert C. Manning, one of the pioneers of the automobile selling game, took charge of the Long Beach Buick Company as manager, suc- ceeding Fred A. Steele, last week. Mr. Manning comes to Long Beach from the Howard Automobile Company of Los Angeles, where he was one of the most popular and successful sales executives in Southern California. For seventeen years Mr. Manning has been in the automobile business, and his ability and personality have brought him exceptional success. Winning the loyalty of the force of the Long Beach Buick Company in a few hours, Mr. Manning jumped into the business of selling Buick cars, and he has averaged more than one car a day, in fact the average has been fifty per month, since he took over the management of the agency."
In politics Mr. Manning is a stalwart of the regular camp of the republican party, and in the time-honored Masonic fraternity he received the thirty-second degree of the Scottish Rite when he was twenty-one years of age, his reception of various York Rite degrees not having come until later. All of his Masonic affiliations are still maintained in his native city of Buffalo, where his basic membership is in Transportation Lodge No. 842, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. In this connection it is interesting to record that his maternal grandfather, Robert Atkins, likewise was a thirty-second degree Mason and was specially prominent in the affairs of this great fraternal order in the City of Buffalo, the lineage of both the Atkins and Manning families tracing back to English origin and representatives of the Atkins family having been patriot soldiers in the War of the Revolution, on which basis the mother of Robert C. Manning maintains membership in the Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
HARRY VER BRIKE BROWN, M. D. One of the best known physicians in Los Angeles County is Dr. H. V. Brown of Glendale. He is a specialist in children's diseases, has been an officer of the California State Board of Medical Examiners for a number of years, and a number of other services have brought him unusual distinction in his vocation.
Doctor Brown was born at Chariton, Iowa, March 21, 1875. His father was the late John L. Brown, a native of New Jersey and was a Union soldier in the Civil war, being under the command of Col. Benjamin Har- rison, who later became president of the United States. He was wounded in the battle of Resaca, Georgia, but participated in Sherman's March to the Sea. After the war he became a newspaper man at Chariton, Iowa. and
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became prominent in State politics, being elected and serving two terms as Auditor of Iowa. He married Esther A. Templin, who now lives with her son, Doctor Brown, at Glendale.
Harry Ver Brike Brown was educated in public schools in his native city, and then entered Drake University at Des Moines, spending two years in the Collegiate Department and three years in the Medical course. From there he removed to Chicago and was graduated in 1902 from the Bennett Medical College. After taking his degree in medicine he engaged in private practice at Griswold, Iowa, until 1907, when he came to Los Angeles. Doctor Brown engaged in general practice until November, 1921, since which date his practice has been limited to Glendale and largely to his specialty in diseases of children. In August, 1918, he volunteered and was com- missioned a Captain in the Medical Corps and was in service until January, 1919, stationed at Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina, as Director of Am- bulance in the 321st Sanitary Train. He is now a member of Glendale Post No. 127, American Legion.
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