History of Los Angeles county, Volume III, Part 32

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

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HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY

superintendent of schools in Menomonie, Wisconsin, at the time his son Paul Franklin was born. Shortly afterward he became professor of mathe- matics, drawing and sciences in the State Normal School at Whitewater, Wisconsin.

In 1885 Warren Seymour Johnson organized the Johnson Electric Service Company (now Johnson Service Company ) in Milwaukee. That has become a business of national scope. Warren S. Johnson was a pioneer in the application of electricity to the needs of modern life. When he organized this company electric lighting was in its infancy and very little progress had been made toward the use of electricity for power purposes. He also originated the Johnson System of Temperature Regulation, and obtained dozens of patents on that and other devices. The mother of Warren S. Johnson was Emeline Mccullough Johnson, a descendant of Lord John McCullough of Inverness, Scotland, this branch of the Mcculloughs coming to the American colonies before the Revolution.

Warren S. Johnson died at Los Angeles, December 5, 1911. He mar- ried Cora Estella Smith, who now lives at Altadena, California. She was born in Maine, daughter of Royal Brewster and Lydia Holt (Goodwin) Smith, who with their children migrated from Maine to Minnesota when Cora Estella was five years old. They traveled by rail to Buffalo, by schooner to Chicago and prairie schooner to Minneapolis. The Smiths went to the Minnesota frontier in time to share in the dangers due to the pres- ence of hostile Indians. Royal B. Smith in 1849 joined the gold rush to California, going around the Horn, and subsequently returned East to Minnesota and later removed to Wisconsin.

Paul Franklin Johnson as a boy attended the public schools of Mil- wankee, the State Normal School at Whitewater, and later, in 1898, grad- uated Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology at Boston. The driving power of scien- tific enthusiasm and industry put him into the ranks of workers when he was still struggling with the lessons of grammar school. At the age of nine he was allowed to operate a steam boiler and engine in his father's laboratory. A year or so later he was packing shingles in a lumber mill in Downsville, where one of his uncles was a lath puller and another a knot sawyer, and where his maternal grandfather had been head filer and where his father likewise had worked as a boy. From the age of thirteen during school holidays and vacations he was employed as office and errand boy in the Johnson Electric Service Company at Milwaukee, and from that time until he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he was with the company at intervals, with one continuous period of employment of a year and one-half. By work in the brass foundry, machine shop, assem- bling department, shipping department, construction department, as order clerk, bill clerk, pipe fitter, branch office manager, he pursued the suc- cessive routine that brought him a comprehensive knowledge of every phase of the business. Mr. Johnson and his brother Carl F. Johnson of Altadena are the two largest stockholders and are directors of the Johnson Service Company.

In the summer of 1898, following his graduation, Mr. Johnson spent a vacation in Shell Lake, Wisconsin, and enjoyed the experience of firing a woodburning logging locomotive and piloting a logging steamer. In Sep- tember of the same year he became an erecting engineer for the Johnson Temperature Regulating Company of New York, and installed what was then the largest clock in the world, in the tower of the Philadelphia City Hall. The clock is twenty-five feet in diameter, three hundred and fifty feet above the pavement, and started to record the time with new year's day 1899. From this Mr. Johnson returned to Milwaukee as superintend- ent of factory and purchasing agent of the Johnson Service Company, and later became secretary and manager of the San Francisco office; and is now secretary and treasurer of the corporation.

Mr. Johnson brought his family to California in June, 1909, by rail. While manager of the San Francisco office of his company he lived in

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Berkeley. The same fall he made a trip to Los Angeles on business, and then for the first time saw Pasadena. In January, 1910, he moved to Los Angeles, but in February was called back to Milwaukee. About five years later, in the summer of 1915, he returned to the coast, driving his model 1914 automobile by way of Seattle and San Francisco. This car, by the way, is still in use. During a month at the Exposition Mr. Johnson attended as a member of the International Engineering Congress and International Irrigation and Drainage Congress, taking part in the discussions in the heating and ventilating sections. There he became acquainted with the late John Brashear, then president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and a famous builder of telescopes. Mr. Brashear was not only a brilliant man in his profession, but very kindly and showed a great inter- est in Mr. Johnson's children. On leaving San Francisco they drove to Los Angeles, and first rented a place at Holliston and Palm Drive in Altadena, and in January, 1918, they finished and moved into their pres- ent home at 2940 Maiden Lane, Altadena. Since then Mr. Johnson has made many trips East by train on business. In the fall of 1920 he and his family all went to Massachusetts in the same old car that had brought them West six years earlier. The children were left in school at St. Louis and the return to California was made on Christmas day.

Mr. Johnson was assistant to his father in early experiments in radio or wireless. His father received a silver medal from the Paris Exposi- tion of 1900 for wireless transmitting and receiving apparatus. Doctor Lee DeForest, inventor of the three electrode vacuum tube now so com- monly used, was one of Warren S. Johnson's assistants at the time. Thus Paul Franklin Johnson's interest and experience with radio almost dates from the first practical experiments in this field. However, it was not until the ban was lifted after the war in 1919 that he resumed his radio experi- ments, and he took up the commercial side of the business at Altadena in January, 1921. He established his Pasadena business after visiting all the principal factories for the manufacture of radio apparatus in the East. In November, 1921, small stores being unobtainable in Pasadena, he secured a small space in the corner of Millers sewing machine store at 32 West Colorado Street. The business grew astonishingly, and as soon as possible he rented at 90 North Los Robles Avenue one of the new stores being constructed. On January 7, 1922, he moved to the new store, and on July 1, 1922, moved to still larger quarters at 562 East Colorado Street. His only important financial interests outside of the Johnson Service Com- pany are the Altadena Radio Laboratory (experimental and wholesale) and the radio store, of which he is sole owner. He also owns his residence and ranch in Altadena. Besides the local business he is shipping goods all over Southern California and to many Eastern places as far as New Jer- sey, and also to Mexico. Inquiries come to him from places in Europe, Hawaii, Philippines and even India, and with return to normal conditions abroad he expects to do a considerable export business.

However, Mr. Johnson's enthusiasm is centered on the experimental side of the radio. He began selling radio apparatus not so much with the idea of making money as to render real service and finance his further experiments, and practically all the profits of his business are spent on equipment and experimental apparatus. In Altadena he has the most com- plete receiving set obtainable and two complete radiophone transmitting sets, a ten watt five-tube set and a fifty watt two-tube set, the first for broadcasting and the latter for amateur and experimental work.

During the Spanish-American war in 1898 Mr. Johnson served as civil- ian aeronautical mechanical engineer in the naval aircraft factory, Philadel- phia, (League Island) Navy Yard. The only thing preventing his getting a commission was deafness. By appointment of the mayor he repre- sented the City of Milwaukee at the International Irrigation and Drainage Congress in San Francisco in 1915. Mr. Johnson is an independent, of the progressive democratic leanings in politics. Formerly he held mem- bership in the University, Milwaukee Athletic, Milwaukee Country, City

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Clubs, Westminster Civic League at Milwaukee, the Altadena Country Club and Jonathan Club of Los Angeles, but the only two clubs in which he is now a member are the Technology Club of New York and the Rotary Club of Pasadena. He is a member of the Christian Science Church.

June 26, 1900, at Philadelphia, he married Miss Hannah Foulke, daugh- ter of Joseph and Caroline Chambers Foulke. The Foulkes are an old Welsh Quaker family who settled in Pennsylvania in the first half of the seventeeth century. The two children of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson are Sey- mour Foulke, born May 7, 1901, at Milwaukee, and Eleanor Foulke John- son, born September 7, 1903, also at Milwaukee.

CHESTER WEAVER THOMPSON. How heavily a community loses in the passing away of so worthy a man and citizen as the late Chester Weaver Thompson, of Los Angeles, may never be adequately measured. His busi- ness energy and acumen were needful factors in the city's commercial life ; his persistent and honorable efforts along city betterment lines stood out as an example of real civic usefulness ; while his manifold but unostentatious charities and acts of true benevolence proved the high principles that actuated him for the benefit of his fellow men, for he neither asked nor desired public approbation or private reward.

Chester Weaver Thompson for many years was one of Los Angeles' prominent business men and highly esteemed citizens. He was born in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, July 1, 1867, a son of Samuel R. and Mary (Weaver) Thompson. His father, of Scotch descent, was a soldier in the Union Army during the Civil war, and afterward for a time was in the foundry business. Still later he was a newspaper man, and in this capacity was attending the exposition held at Pittsburgh at the time the exposition building was damaged by fire. He was subjected to exposure from which serious illness developed, and his death occurred soon afterward, leaving little provision for his family.

The public schools of Pittsburgh provided excellent educational train- ing in Mr. Thompson's youth, and before he was twenty years old he had secured a working position in the office of the city assessor at Pittsburgh. At that time, however, his health was not very robust, and this condition suggested the genial climate of California, with the result that he came here in 1887. Two years later, with health improved, he returned to Pittsburgh and in 1889 married there Miss Ella Louise Heaps, a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a daughter of George Heaps, a prominent business man of that city and an active Mason. He came of one of the old American families of Revolutionary stock and English descent. She accompanied him back to California. They located at San Diego, where he entered into the wholesale fruit and later the fancy grocery business, in which he continued until 1892, when he sold out and came to Los Angeles. While at San Diego he had taken such an interest in general affairs that he was invited to become clerk of the County Board of Super- visors, and later filled out an unexpired term as county clerk.

Mr. Thompson was a man of great energy and was gifted with business foresight. He was able to recognize business opportunities, and in taking advantage of them had the good judgment that insured a firm foundation for all his enterprises. After coming to Los Angeles in 1892 he organized the Keystone Produce Company, with which he was connected for many years, and in 1903 he was one of the main organizers of the Los Angeles Produce Exchange, of which corporation he became president in 1910 and so continued. Another important business enterprise of this city which owes its existence and substantial development to Mr. Thompson's busi- ness energy and sagacity is the Terminal Refrigerator Company of which he was the founder and its president until the time of his death, which occurred November 18, 1922, at Henrotin Hospital, Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Thompson had been stricken with appendicitis while visiting in that city, and so seriously that all the scientific skill of eminent surgeons could not

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save his life. He is survived by his widow and their one daughter, Dorothy, and his burial was in Hollywood Cemetery.

In political sentiment Mr. Thompson was a republican. During the World war he served as chairman of the Food Administrative Board for Southern California, which prevented price exploitation, was very active in the work of the Red Cross in which he was one of the directors, and liberally contributed to every local patriotic cause. For many years the family residence was on Scarff Street, but later removal was made to Gramersey Street, which is in the heart of the most exclusive residence district in Los Angeles. Mr. Thompson and family attended St. John's Episcopal Church. He was an active member of the Chamber of Com- merce, the Los Angeles Country Club, the Los Angeles Athletic Club and of the Jonathan Club, of which he was secretary and had been a director for many years. He was a member of California Lodge No. 278, F. and A. M., a Knight Templar and Shriner. Among the leading citizens of Los Angeles today are his fellow Shriners of a number of years back, all of whom as young men were members of the "Arrow Patrol," a branch of Al Malaikah Shrine. As a genial companion and loyal friend he was universally known, but perhaps few whom he met in the every-day walks of life had any realization of the meaning that the word "brother" conveyed to him. It meant help, protection, friendliness and affection, and his countless deeds of kindness proved his sincerity. A local writer in commenting upon this phase says : "Chester Thompson gave freely but he always refused to have his name appear in connection with his gifts. Every Christmas the check he gave for $100 to the basket-giving fund of a local newspaper was anonymous, and his name never appeared as one of the contributors to the fund he had organized, which supplied fresh milk throughout the entire winter to hundreds of little children in Los Angeles that would otherwise have suffered."

JACK NICHOLSON. The late Jack Nicholson was not spared to live out the full allotment of man, but during his brief span of life he won the confidence and held the respect of all with whom he was associated, and made a name for himself as a successful rancher of the Whittier District. He was born at San Bernardino, California, in 1865, and died at Whittier, California, in 1914. He was a member of one of the pioneer families of California, his parents having crossed the plains with ox teams at an early day.

In 1884 Jack Nicholson married Miss Alice J. Wade, and they became the parents of four children: Nellie, who was born at Los Nietos, July 14, 1885, married A. H. Howe, lives at Los Angeles, and has no children ; William, who was born January 1, 1892, married Miss Edna Roper, has one daughter, Dorothy; Laura, who was born July 15, 1897, married Arthur Dudy, lives at Santa Maria, California, and has two children, Elaine and William; and Jack, who was born March 3, 1904, is engaged in work at Santa Fe Springs.

Alice J. Wade was born in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, August 28, 1865, a daughter of William and Maragaret (Meagher) Wade, both of whom were born in County Tipperary, Ireland, he in 1823 and she, January 9, 1825. She died at Los Nietos in 1891, and he died there in 1895. They were both devout members of the Roman Catholic Church. When she was about twenty years old Margaret Meagher came to the United States, being one of a party of seven girls who came to this country in the hope of earning better wages here than could be obtained in Ireland. After her arrival she met her future husband in Pennsylvania, then engaged in surveying, and they were later married in that state. Mrs. Nicholson was their only child. A bricklayer by trade, William Wade decided to go West, and crossed the plains to Salt Lake City, Utah, through Mountain Meadow with a party traveling in wagons.

Upon their arrival at Salt Lake City Mr. Wade obtained employment upon the Mormon Temple, but following the Mountain Meadow massacre

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Gentiles were not welcome at Salt Lake City, and Mr. Wade realized that it was necessary for him to get his wife and daughter out of the Mormon stronghold. He secretly obtained a horse and wagon, and aided by a fellow countryman who, although he had become a Mormon, had not lost his friendly feeling for one of the "Old Sod," managed to escape, although they left with nothing but their clothing, and traveled night and day until they reached the little colony at San Bernardino, braving the dangers of the desert and attacks from the still hostile Indians, for this was in 1868. Too young to remember any of the hardships or circumstances of this hurried flight, Mrs. Nicholson heard of its details so often that they appear very real to her.

After a short stay at San Bernardino the Wades went to Los Angeles, and there Mr. Wade found employment in the Commercial Street Depot for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. About 1875 he bought twenty acres at Los Nietos, moved upon it and began at once its improvement. At that time the present site of Whittier was used as a sheep pasture, only a small part of the land in the San Nietos Valley was cultivated, and the most primitive of conditions prevailed.

Mrs. Nicholson was principally educated in the Sisters' School in Los Angeles, and is well versed in Spanish, being so adept in the language as to be employed as court interpreter. In childhood she attended services and mass in the old Plaza Mission. Oftentimes she accompanied the priest to the quaint old post office to get the mail. She was personally acquainted with Pio Pico, the first governor of California, and her knowledge of the conditions prevailing in the pioneer days of the Valley is vast, for she was reared among the old Spanish families of the neighborhood, with whom her parents maintained the friendliest of relationships. Mrs. Nicholson still owns twenty-two acres in Los Nietos, where her three last children were born. This land is close to the oil production at Santa Fe Springs, and companies have unsuccessfully endeavored to secure a lease on it. -

RALPH W. LUSBY, who is established in successful practice at San Fernando, is a young man who has the good judgment to combine the system of osteopathy as an effective adjunct to his general service as a physician and surgeon, and is thus following a professional precedent that is fully authorized and valued.

Doctor Lusby was born at Marshalltown, Iowa, January 22, 1893, and is a son of Charles D. Lusby, who was born in the City of Baltimore, Maryland, and who was for a term of years actively identified with business enterprise in the State of Iowa, whence he came in 1908 to California and established the family home at Glendale, where he is now president of the Lusby Mortgage & Investment Company.

The rudimentary education of Doctor Lusby was acquired in the public schools of Iowa, and later he attended those of Los Angeles. In June, 1916, after a course that included both medical and surgical instruc- tion of general order, as well as that pertaining to osteopathy, he graduated from the College of Osteopathic Physicians & Surgeons in the City of Los Angeles. He forthwith engaged in the practice of his profession, in which he continued until the nation became involved in the World war, when, in August, 1918, he enlisted and entered an officers training camp. He continued in service until the armistice brought the war to a close, and then received his honorable discharge. He has since been engaged in the practice of his profession with cumulative success and prestige, and is one of the vital and progressive young citizens of San Fernando, where in 1923 he holds the office of sergeant at arms of the Kiwanis Club. He is also a member of the San Fernando Chamber of Commerce. He and his wife are members of the Presbyterian Church, and Mrs. Lusby holds membership in the Ebell Club of San Fernando. She was born and reared in Tennessee.

May 21, 1919, recorded the marriage of Doctor Lusby and Miss Flor- ence E. Walling, and they have one child, William M.

Agrowing

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WILLIAM A. HAAS has to his credit a long and successful record of active connection with high-grade theatrical and general amusement enter- prise, and since 1914 has been director of Jack Root's attractions, his execu- tive headquarters being at the Strand Theatre in the City of Pasadena, where he is familiarly and appreciatively known as "Uncle Bill." Mr. Haas was born at Savanna, Illinois, and is a son of George and Phoebe (Miller-Foyle) Haas, the latter's father, James Miller, having been first fireman and later engineer of Robert Fulton's steamboat, the first ever placed in operation. Mr. Miller, while assisting in attaching a barge to this primitive steamboat, met with an accident that resulted in the loss of his left arm. George Haas was born at Allentown, Pennsylvania, Novem- ber 13, 1832, and was eight years old when the family made the overland journey with ox teams and wagons from Pennsylvania to Illinois. He was for forty-four years the only undertaker at Savanna, that state, where he died in 1919, and he was justice of the peace at Galena, Illinois, when Gen- eral U. S. Grant, a resident of that place, took his regiment into the active service of the Union.

William A. Haas acquired his early education in the schools of his na- tive place, and when a lad of twelve years gained his initial experience in connection with the newspaper business, through employment in the office of the Savanna Times, a weekly paper. His novitiate in the domain of public amusements was marked by his service as a theatre usher and ticket seller, and before he was eighteen years of age he had become a theatre manager. Mr. Haas was advance agent for Sol Smith Russell's "Edge- wood Folks," and he gave similar effective service with the famous Cherry Sisters Quartette, the Waite Opera Company, and Cora Beckwith, the English swimmer. For six years he was manager in New York City of James R. Waite's theatrical attractions ; for ten years he was manager of Jake Rosenthal's attractions, Dubuque, Iowa; and from 1914 to 1922 di- rected Jack Root's attractions in Pasadena, where his circle of friends are coincident with that of his acquaintances.

By inheritance and individual predilection Mr. Haas has been from early youth a loyal advocate of the cause of the republican party, and he it was who coined for the late Hon. Mark Hanna the party slogan, "The Advance Agent of Prosperity," for use in advancing the party's publicity campaign incidental to the first election of President William Mckinley. Mr. Haas is a life member of the Pasadena Lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and is affiliated also with the Knights of Pyth- ias, the Modern Woodmen of America and the Woodmen of the World.

At Savanna, Illinois, on the 5th of October, 1888, Mr. Haas wedded Miss Margaret Venora Patch, and the two children of this union are: Vera Venora (Mrs. G. L. Rickard) and Miss Wanda M. E. Haas, the latter being proprietor and director of the Ambassador Primary and Kinder- garten School in that wonderful, big hotel in Los Angeles. Recently Mr. Haas has taken over the management of the Theatre in the Ambassador Hotel and has brought "order out of the chaos" in making it a paying proposition for the first time since its erection some two years ago. The theatrical manager is to have a model picture theatre built for him by two prominent capitalists in Pasadena, where he expects to re-open amuse- ments in the beautiful Crown City, which the family always wishes to call their home.

ALBERT JAMES HOSKING. With the exception of some time spent in discharging public official duties the entire career of Albert James Hosking from the time that he started carrying papers as a newsboy has been devoted to journalistic work of one or another character, and at the pres- ent time he is associate manager and one of the publishers of the Pasadena Star-News, a publication with which he has been identified for more than twenty years.

Mr. Hosking was born at Grass Valley, California, May 14, 1875, and is a son of James and Alice Hosking, natives of England. They came, to

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History of Los Angeles county, Volume III, Part 32

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