History of Los Angeles county, Volume III, Part 12

Author: McGroarty, John Steven, 1862-1944
Publication date: 1923
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 844

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The early education of Lemuel L. Test was acquired entirely in private schools, including boarding schools, and the only public educational insti- tution which he ever attended was the Coleman National Business College at Newark, New Jersey. As a youth he clerked in a grocery store in New Jersey, and with the same line of enterprise he was identified during the first eighteen years of his residence at Pasadena, California. In 1902 he here engaged in the life-insurance business, and in the same year he opened an office also in Los Angeles, and he has continuously represented the Provident Life & Trust Company of Philadelphia, for which he is now associate general agent. He was the first agent in California for the Provident Life & Trust Company, and on paid production of business for the company he has continuously maintained leadership in connection with' the company's general agency at Los Angeles. His record in the field of insurance has been remarkably creditable and has given him high reputation as an underwriter and as the promoter of clean, careful and straightforward business. He has developed a large business for his company, and has made for himself an inviolable place in popular confidence and esteem.

In politics Mr. Test was originally a democrat, but he repudiated the free-silver policies and other doctrines of William J. Bryan and was for some time aligned with the republican party. In national politics he is now affiliated again with the democratic party. Mr. Test is a director of the Pasadena branch of the Security Trust & Savings Bank of Los Angeles. He was president of the old Pasadena Board of Trade, and since the same has been transformed into the Chamber of Commerce he has continued his connection with the latter, of which he has been a director from the time of its organization. He is a director of the Pasadena Y. M. C. A., and has been influential in its affairs for many years. He is a member of the executive committee of the local organization of Boy Scouts, is a member of the Overland, Golf, Masonic and Rotary Clubs at Pasadena, and has been long and prominently identified with the Masonic fraternity in this section of the state, he having been for sixteen years inspector for the fraternity in the Pasadena District. His basic affiliation is with Corona Lodge No. 324, F. and A. M., at Pasadena, and in the Scottish Rite he has received the thirty-second degree, and the honorary degree of Knight Commander of the Court of Honor. Both Mr. and Mrs. Test are active members of the Pasadena Presbyterian Church.

At Pasadena, January 27, 1891, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Test and Miss Catherine M. Cook, who was born and reared at Rock Island, Illinois, her paternal grandparents having been the very early settlers in Rock Island County. Archibald J. and Rachel (Deal) Cook, parents of Mrs. Test, came to Pasadena in 1888, and here they passed the remainder of their lives. Mrs. Test is a member of the Shakespeare Club and also the local chapter of the P. E. O. Mr. and Mrs. Test have two children. Lawrence C. graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, with the degree of Bachelor of Science, and prior to this had been for two years a student in Leland Stanford, Jr., University. He is an architect by profession and as such is engaged in practice in the City of Los Angeles. Miss Marjorie Ardes Test is (1922) a student in Leland Stanford, Jr.,

HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY

University. The attractive family home at Pasadena is at 360 Oakland Avenue.

CAPT. ISAAC POLHAMUS was one of the very oldest survivors of the California forty-niners. He came of the hardy and enterprising Holland- Dutch stock that originally settled in New York, and the spirit of adventure in his ancestors prompted him to a life on the frontier, and he derived his greatest satisfaction from the romance of discovery and adventure in new surroundings. He was the pioneer of the steamboat industry on the Colo- rado River, and spent more than sixty years at Yuma.

He was a descendant of Isaac Polhamus, who came to America with old Peter Stuyvesant from Holland. He was the first minister of the Dutch-Reform Church in this country. He was sent to Von Rensselaer, where he established a settlement. His sons were the first passenger pilots on the boats on the Hudson.

The late Capt. Isaac Polhamus was born in New York City in 1828. His youth was spent on the Hudson River working for his father, whose home still stands in Albany. Captain Polhamus joined a crew of hardy men who set sail for San Francisco in the late forties, and came around the Horn in 1849. A mutiny occurred among the sailors on the boat, and there were many other exciting interests in connection with the three hundred and twenty-seven day voyage. More than seventy years inter- vened between this voyage and the death of Captain Polhamus on Jan- uary 16, 1922, at the age of ninety-four. He was the oldest member of the Elks order in Arizona, and the Yuma Lodge of Elks had charge of his funeral services.

For a few months after his arrival at San Francisco he worked the placer mines along the American River. A sudden rise carried away the food cache of Captain Polhamus' party, and he then went back to the steamboats. For several years he steamboated on the Sacramento River. Then, in 1856, he established his home at Yuma, where only one house then stood. A mercantile steamship line was operated from San Francisco to Port Isabel at the mouth of the Colorado River, and steamboats picked up the cargoes there and carried freight as far north as the Boulder Canyon. From that time for a quarter of a century, until the building of the Southern Pacific Railroad, Captain Polhamus was closely identified with the steam- boat traffic on the Colorado. In fact he continued the operation of small steamboats on the river until 1904, when the construction of the Laguna Dam by the Reclamation Service above Yuma closed the river to traffic. Before the era of railroads his boats carried freight from San Diego to Yuma. Captain Polhamus made many trips back to New York, several of them overland by prairie schooners. After the advent of railroads he converted his steamboats into passenger boats, and operated them so until about twenty years ago. Some of these old boats are still standing in the Colorado River.

Captain Polhamus as a result of sixty-six years of residence in Yuma was a recognized authority on the history of the Southwest. Names and happenings scarcely known to the younger generations, except as recounted in some volume of history or in some romantic tale of the early days, were remembered at first hand by this old steamboat captain. An adobe building where the Gandolfo Hotel now stands was the only structure in Yuma when he arrived there in 1856 to become superintendent of the Colorado Steam Navigation Company.

Not all his adventures were in the field of material circumstance. He had a real romance in his courtship and wedding. Senorita Sacramento Sambrano was a real "daughter of the dons" of La Paz. She did not have command of a word of English and Captain Polhamus was unfamiliar with the Spanish, and he therefore had to resort to an interpreter as a means of pressing his suit. She was a daughter of the historic Farrar family, owners of an immense cattle ranch at La Paz on the Colorado above Yuma. There being no priests in this section, Captain Polhamus sent to

HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY

San Diego for a Father of the church to perform the ceremony, and a special stage brought the padre at a cost of $500. They lived happily together for a half a century, until the death of Mrs. Polhamus in May, 1922, at the age of seventy-six.

Captain Polhamus was a river man by training and occupation, also a miner and gold seeker, and many mining ventures in the Southwest had his support. The children who survived this pioneer were: Mrs. F. H. Oswald, of San Pedro, California; Thomas M. Polhamus, of Avalon; Mrs. Agnes Hodges; Mrs. T. T. Cull; Miss Jennie Polhamus; James M. Polhamus, sheriff of Yuma County ; Charles H. and Isaac, Jr., of Yuma ; and A. A. Polhamus.

Albert A. Polhamus, who died March 10, 1922, was widely known in Pasadena and Southern California as a railroad man. As a youth he entered the service of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, and was ticket agent at Los Angeles, and for the last fifteen years of his life was the general agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

Death came to him at the comparatively early age of forty-five. His death was the result of a fall while he was playing with one of his children. The late Mr. Polhamus was educated at San Francisco, and his home was at 1503 Monterey Road, Pasadena. He married Miss Kathleen Huckabee, a native of Alabama and of English ancestry. Mrs. Polhamus and two sons, Albert and Robert, survive.

GEORGE VAN DUSEN BAER. Because of its location Pasadena possesses as one of its principal industries the preserving of fruits, and in this con- nection one of the leading enterprises of its kind in the city or on the coast is the Braden Preserving Company, manufacturers of citrus and deciduous fruit products. Allied with this concern are men of ability and energy, among whom is George Van Dusen Baer, vice-president of the company, and one of the business men of the younger generation who have already proven their worth and capacity.

Mr. Baer was born at Medford, Massachusetts, September 22, 1891, and is a son of Dr. John Willis Baer, one of the foremost citizens of Los Angeles County, a sketch of whose career will be found on another page of this work. George Van Dusen Baer attended the public schools of Medford, Massachusetts, and a preparatory institution, the Hill School, at Pottstown, Pennsylvania, following which he accompanied his parents to California. Here he enrolled as a student of Occidental College, Los Angeles, from which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1911, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts. During his college career he established a reputation as a splendid athlete, and after his graduation went back to the Hill School, where he acted as coach of the football and baseball teams for one year. On his return to California he became private secretary to Arthur H. Fleming, of Pasadena, and continued in that capacity until the latter part of 1917. He then enlisted in the air service of the United States Army, receiving his commission as second lieutenant, and from January, 1918, until May, 1919, was located variously at Columbus, Ohio; Kelly Flying Field, San Antonio, Texas; Fort Crook, Nebraska; and Ross Field, Arcadia, California. When honorably dis- charged from the service he returned to Pasadena and became vice-president of the Braden Preserving Company. The offices and plant of this concern are situated at 455 South Raymond Avenue, and branch offices are maintained at 105 Hudson Street, New York City, and 324 Lachman Building, San Francisco. Mr. Baer is nominally a republican in politics, but reserves the right to vote for the candidates of another party if his judgment tells him they are better fitted for official responsibilities. He belongs to the Rotary Club of Pasadena, of which he was treasurer during its first year of existence ; the Flint Ridge Country Club, the Annandale Golf Club, the University Club of Los Angeles and the Chapparal Club of Los Angeles. His religious faith is that of the Presbyterian Church.

HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY

At Everett, Washington, October 7, 1915, Mr. Baer married Miss Cremora A. Agnew, who was born at Hurley, Wisconsin, and educated at St. Mary's Faribault, Minnesota, and the National Park Seminary, Washington. She is a daughter of Andrew J. Agnew, of Everett, Wash- ington, a wholesale hardware merchant and chief executive of the Agnew Hardware Company, who spends about eight months of each year at Pasadena, where the family has been coming for a number of years, and where its members are well and favorably known. Mr. and Mrs. Baer are the parents of one daughter, Barbara Ann, born at Pasadena. The pleasant and attractive family home is located at 453 California Terrace.

WILLIAM CHALMERS, whose offices are established in the Staats Building in the City of Pasadena, has here won high standing in his profession, that of civil engineer, as well as a loyal and progressive citizen.

Mr. Chalmers was born at Blair-Gowrie, Scotland, on the 17th of July, 1870, and is a scion of Scottish families of ancient and honorable lineage, the history of both the Chalmers and Brown families running through the annals of many centuries in Scotland. David and Sarah (Brown) Chalmers, parents of the subject of this review, likewise were born and reared at Blair-Gowrie, a town in Perthshire, about sixteen miles distant from the City of Perth, and there the father became not only a leading merchant but also operated saw mills and was a prominent representative of the lumber business in that locality, where both he and his wife passed their entire lives, he having been eighty-two years of age and his wife eighty-one years at the time of their death. David Chalmers served in the Scottish military forces, with the rank of major, and was familiarly known as Major Chalmers. He was long and actively affiliated with the Masonic fraternity. William Chalmers, of this review, is the elder son in a family of two sons and three daughters, all of whom survive the honored parents, he being the only representative of the family in the United States.

The excellent schools of his native place afforded William Chalmers his early education, and after joining the Engineering Corps of the British Army he received three years of technical training in the school of military engineering at Chatham, England. Thereafter he was in engineer- ing service three years in Hong-Kong, China, and upon his return to the old home in Scotland he there remained one year, at the expiration of which, in 1896, he came to the United States. He disembarked in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, in November of that year, and there he remained until 1898, when he went to Mexico. There he passed three years in effective service as a mining engineer. In 1901 Mr. Chalmers came to California, and after remaining one year in San Francisco he removed to Los Angeles, in 1902. For ten years thereafter he was retained as engineer for the Huntington Land & Improvement Company, for which he did a large amount of important engineering and development work, and since 1916 he has been engaged in private practice as a civil engineer, with headquarters and residence in the City of Pasadena. He has served as city engineer of San Marino from the time of its incorporation in 1913.

In the World war period Mr. Chalmers was in the employ of the Government at North Island, his special service being in the making of maps from photographs taken from aeroplanes. Mr. Chalmers is aligned loyally in the ranks of the republican party, is an active member of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, and in religion, he retains the ancestral faith, that of the Presbyterian Church.

In the City of Boston, on the 6th of November, 1897, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Chalmers and Miss Margaret Mckenzie Grant, she likewise having been born at Blair-Gowrie, Scotland, where she was reared and educated, and where her father, John Grant, a farmer by vocation, passed his entire life. After the death of her husband the mother, Mrs. Helen (Duncan) Grant, then somewhat more than seventy

F.Rlldeling

HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY

years of age, came to California, where she is now a loved member of the family circle of Mr. and Mrs. Chalmers, she having celebrated in 1922 the eighty-fourth anniversary of her birth. Mrs. Chalmers came to this country about 1895 and established her residence in Boston, where she remained until her marriage. The Chalmers home is at 73 North Hill Avenue, and is a center of gracious hospitality and social activity.

Major Peter Chalmers, an uncle of the subject of this sketch, was a gallant officer of the English Army in the Crimean war, and he attained to the venerable age of eighty-six years. He was a loyal devotee of golf, the national game of Scotland, was a left-handed player and was a familiar figure on the golf links at St. Andrew, Scotland, virtually up to the time of his death. The Chalmers family has been established at Blair-Gowrie, Scotland, more than 600 years.

JOSHUA REED GIDDINGS. The men who were instrumental in the settle- ment of a large part of Los Angeles County are gradually passing away. Their fortitude, endurance, wise judgment and ambition form a part of the history of California, while the result of their actions remains and will have its lasting influence upon the development of the section. Forty years ago the community was not what it is today. While some of the conditions of pioneer life had been bettered, it was still largely a wilderness and its cities were mere settlements. Its possibilities were recognized, but they were still undeveloped, and even the most sanguine could not foresee what the next four decades would bring forth. While matters were still lying unborn in the future an enterprising man named Joshua Reed Giddings came into Los Angeles County and settled at Pasadena in 1874. From that year to the present he has been a salient factor in the most important movements brought before the people of the county, and has gained considerable reputation as an agriculturist and business man, as a public-spirited citizen, and as an open-handed and big-hearted promulgator of acts of beneficence.

Mr. Giddings was born in Ashtabula County, Ohio, October 10, 1858, a son of Levi Warren and Luna A. (Wilder) Giddings, and a descendant of a family which possesses its coat-of-arms. As his name would indicate, he is in the direct line from Joshua Reed Giddings, an American statesman and abolitionist, who was born at Athens, Pennsylvania, October 6, 1795, admitted to the Ohio bar in 1820, elected a member of the Ohio Legislature in 1826, and in 1838 elected a member of the National Congress, where he was prominent for many years as a bitter opponent of the institution of slavery. In 1861 he was appointed consul-general to British North Amer- ica, and his death occurred at Montreal, Canada, May 27, 1864. He was also an author, among his best-known works being "The Exiles of Florida" (1858) and "History of the Rebellion" (1864).

In 1860 Levi Warren Giddings moved to Marshalltown, Iowa, where he entered the agricultural implement business and was also the owner of a farm. After fourteen years of residence in that community he drove overland to Omaha with his wife and six children (three sons and three daughters), and from Omaha shipped his teams, household goods, etc., to Sacramento, California, in 1874, subsequently driving down the valley to Pasadena. There he took up 157 acres of United States Government land at the mouth of Millard Canyon, four miles north of Pasadena, on which he engaged in farming and also set out numerous fruit trees. He died at Pasadena September 23, 1891, aged sixty-five years, his widow surviving until September 26, 1905, when she passed away at the age of eighty. Both were laid to rest in Mountain View Cemetery, which had been established by Mr. Giddings and incorporated in 1883 by E. H. Roice, Calvin Hartwell, John L. Hartwell, Levi Warren Giddings, G. L. Giddings and Joshua R. Giddings. The original tract was twenty-three acres, but to this Joshua R. Giddings has added by gift until the cemetery now includes about fifty acres, and has an appropriate chapel and crematory, built in 1907. One of the daughters of the founder, Laura C. Giddings, was first to be buried in this cemetery, which now has about 11,000 graves.

HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY

Joshua Reed Giddings was educated at San Jose and Los Angeles, the school at the latter place being located on the present site of the Court House. For a few years after completing his education he conducted a general merchandise store at Pasadena, and for the past twenty-five years has been president of the Mountain View Cemetery Association. Mr. Giddings built his present residence at the corner of Hollister and East Colorado streets twenty-eight years ago, and here have been born all of his children. He has lived on this corner, however, since 1881, in which year 2,700 acres of land were placed on the market and Mr. Giddings purchased the first twenty acres, securing this first parcel of land at $25 an acre. At that time his property was at the extreme east end of Colorado Street. He still owns over ten acres of this original purchase, having sold some and given the rest to his children. The old home place which his father took up at Altadena in 1878 from the Government, and which originally consisted of 157 acres, has now dwindled down to fifty-seven acres, of which twenty acres is now in all kinds of splendid fruit and is owned by Joshua R. Gid- dings. This fifty-seven-acre tract Mr. and Mrs. Giddings have turned over to disabled veterans of the World war, under the supervision of the Gov- ernment for five years, at one dollar per year, this being his personal con- tribution to the heroic soldiers of the great struggle who fought and suf- fered. There are twelve small cottages and two large cottages on this prop- erty, and a fine stream of fresh mountain water furnishes water for all purposes. One of the larger buildings, located four miles from Pasadena, on Lincoln Avenue, at Altadena, is used by the soldiers for a library and recreation hall, and is known as Giddings Heights.

Standing in the back yard of the Giddings home place is an old live oak tree that was planted by Mrs. Giddings' mother many years ago. Twelve years ago the pioneers of Pasadena, by vote, decided to meet in June of each year, on the second Saturday, under this old tree, which they have since called their official meeting-place or home. On one occasion more than 350 people stood under the branches of this venerable giant of the forest at one of the Pasadena pioneer gatherings, and the Ohio Society has also honored this meeting-place by their presence. Mr. and Mrs. Giddings are both big- hearted people, and the greater number of their acts of charity are never known. For years Mr. Giddings has made it a practice to distribute oranges from his orchard to the different orphan asylums and some schools of this locality, and in this way has given away many loads of delicious fruit. In politics he is a republican.

On December 30, 1880, Mr. Giddings married at Pasadena Miss Jennie L. Hollingsworth, and they are now the oldest married couple living at Pasadena who were married here. Mrs. Giddings traces her ancestry back to her great-great-grandfather, Valentine Hollingsworth, Sr., a Quaker born at Cheshire, England, who came to America with William Penn on the good ship "Welcome" in 1682 and settled in what is now Newcastle County, Delaware. She is entitled to membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution through a Revolutionary ancestor. Her parents were L. D and Lucinda Hollingsworth, who came to Pasadena in February, 1876, when the railroads had not been extended to this locality, and the journey from Caliente, California, had to be made by stage. Her brother, Dr. H. T. Hollingsworth, now of Los Angeles, was the first postmaster of Pasadena. Mrs. Giddings was born at West Branch, Iowa, where she was educated, and in girlhood was well acquainted with the parents of Herbert Hoover. She belongs to the P. E. O. and the Shakespeare Club of Pasadena, and for four years was president of the Federation of Parent Teachers Associations of Pasadena. She was one of the vice presidents of the Woman's Civic League of Pasadena, and is now president of the Pioneer Association of Pasadena. Mrs. Giddings is a gifted writer, and many beautiful articles. have appeared in the papers and magazines as the product of her pen. She and her husband are the parents of four sons and two daughters : Lawson H., of Pasadena; Levi Warren, of Pasadena; Joseph R., of Pasadena ; Blanche, the wife of George Douglass Brown, superintendent of

Mrs. Jennie L. Giddings.

HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY

the Mountain View Cemetery and Crematory ; Paul H., who went overseas during the World war with the Ninety-first Division from Camp Lewis, later being transferred to the 196th Field Artillery, was postmaster for his company in the Army of Occupation, and in France served as a French interpreter, and now lives with his parents; and L. June Rose, a teacher at Mills College for Girls at Oakland, California, of which she is a graduate. She expects to go to Columbia University in 1923 to secure her Masters degree. The children were all educated at Pasadena and all graduated from the Troop School except L. June Rose, who graduated from Pasadena High School. Mr. and Mrs. Giddings' children, son-in-law, daughters-in-law and grandchildren now number eighteen.

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History of Los Angeles county, Volume III, Part 12

Author: McGroarty, John Steven, 1862-1944 Publication date: 1923 Publisher: Number of Pages: 844

Author: McGroarty, John Steven, 1862-1944
Publication date: 1923
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 844