History of Orange County, California : with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its earliest growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 121

Author: Armor, Samuel, 1843-; Pleasants, J. E., Mrs
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1700

USA > California > Orange County > History of Orange County, California : with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its earliest growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 121

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Orange was then only a country cross roads with a store and blacksmith shop. The place was wild land and with his customary zeal he leveled and improved it, setting out an orchard. He was very prominent in and served as an officer of the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company, was secretary of the company for some years and after- wards became superintendent of the company until he resigned. He bought other ranches and improved them and then sold them. He also owned valuable property on West Third Street, Los Angeles; he passed away in Los Angeles on October 27, 1918. Interested in the cause of education, Mr. Gardner was school trustee in Orange from the early days, serving acceptably for many years. He was also a prominent member of the board of trustees of Orange and helped materially to shape the destinies of the town. He was, however, most prominent in organizing and building up the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company, and with his associates he made it one of the best irrigating systems in the state.

Mr. Gardner was married in Downey in 1872, when he was united with Miss Emma Howard, who was born in Pennsylvania, but educated in Rock Island, Ill., where she was a graduate of the Rock Island Normal. She came to San Francisco with her mother in 1872, and soon afterwards to Los Angeles, where she was engaged in teach- ing, and it was here she met Mr. Gardner, the acquaintance resulting in their marriage. Mrs. Gardner is a lady of culture and refinement and always encouraged and assisted her husband in his ambitions. Their union was blessed with seven children: H. H. is a rancher at Villa Park; Dian R. is an attorney-at-law now residing at Orange; Vera P., a graduate of the University of Michigan with. the degree of M.D., saw service with the Red Cross overseas and was in charge of the bacteriological laboratory for the American Commission in Poland, being stationed in Warsaw; she is now the wife of Dr. A. J. Chesley of Minneapolis, Minn .; Mrs. Ora Devereaux resides in Los Angeles; H. Reginald is superintendent of a mine in Plumas County, Cal .; Margaret is a graduate of Stanford University with the degree of A.B .; she afterwards studied law, was admitted to the bar and she was deputy city prosecutor of Los Angeles until the war when she volunteered in the Red Cross, serving overseas one year in France, then 41

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in Poland, where she was head of the department of home communication for the American Commission. She is again practicing her profession in Los Angeles; Sydnie is the wife of M. M. Fogel of Santa Monica. Mr. and Mrs. Gardner with Mr. and Mrs. Robt. Tenor were greatly interested in starting the first public library in Orange, which eventually grew and became the Orange County Public Library, of which they were the organizers. Mrs. Gardner continues to make her home in Los Angeles sur- rounded by her children, who assist her in caring for the interests and property left by her husband. She is now one of the few remaining pioneers of old Orange County.

CLYDE D. BUTLER .- A live, progressive factor in the development of many Orange County interests in recent years is Clyde D. Butler, a native of Goldendale. Wash., where he was born in territorial days on April 6, 1883, the son of J. H. and Lizzie E. (Hasty) Butler, born in New York and Maine, respectively, who located in and have been associated with Santa Ana since 1894. When he was six months old the family moved to Arapahoe, Nebr., and there he was reared until his eleventh year. In 1894 he came to California and Santa Ana and here finished the courses of the Santa Ana high school. While still a student at the high school he was also in the office of the city engineer and there learned enough of engineering to encourage his taking an engineering course in the University of California.

Mr. Butler next became an assistant in the city engineer's office at Santa Ana, and at the end of two years, when the Orange County Highway Commission was formed and the bond issue carried for the construction of highways in Orange County, he entered the employ of the commission, first, in the discharge of office work, later as resident engineer in the field, and lastly, as chief field engineer for the highway commission.

When the new highways had been completed, Mr. Butler helped to form the Orange County Engineering and Construction Company, which was organized on September 21, 1916. From the very beginning it proved a success and its operations, aggressive and extensive, pointing the way and raising the standards of such work, had much to do with the rapid and sound development, not merely of Santa Ana and the immediate ontlying districts, but also with Orange County. The company does general engineering and survey work, together with heavy concrete construction, and has built many highways in the county, including miles of concrete paving in Santa Ana, and making a specialty of both rock and oil and asphalt roads. They have also put up some notable structures, such as the beautiful Evergreen Mausoleum in Oakland Cemetery, which cost about $125,000.

He was active in the affairs of the company until January, 1920, when, finding his other interests occupied too much of his time, he sold his interest and resigned and since then is looking after his own affairs; particularly is he occupied with his official duties as deputy city manager of Anaheim as well as deputy city surveyor and department street superintendent of the same city. He still follows surveying and civil engineering, making his home in Santa Ana. He takes the deepest interest in all problems pertain- ing to the future of both city and county and is ever willing to lend a hand in the most unselfish manner in order to attain the desired ends.

ANDREW J. TEAGUE .- An experienced, enthusiastic, influential and effective "booster" for Orange County, whose services, always freely given, are widely appre- ciated, is Andrew J. Teague, the special agent for the Union Oil Company at Hunting- ton Beach. A native of Missouri, he was born in Texas County on March 3, 1883. and reared on a Missouri farm, in a flourishing district, where he learned a good deal about the best way of doing things, according to the latest American methods in agri- culture. He attended first the district, and then the high school at Houston, Mo., and was eventually graduated from the State Normal School at Ravenden Springs, Ark., in 1906. He received a teacher's certificate and taught for six years in the rural schools of Arkansas.

In 1912 Mr. Teague came west to California and settled at Santa Ana, equipped with a diploma from Dranghon's Business College of Little Rock, Ark., and for three years he demonstrated his ability in trade lines as a clerk for the Santa Ana Mercantile Company. Then he became a salesman for the Standard Oil Company, and later acted in the same capacity for the Union Oil Company of Santa Ana.

Having thus gained a thorough knowledge of the commercial side of the oil business, he was naturally the most available man to manage the new plant of the Union Oil Company at Huntington Beach, which was completed in 1917. He has succeeded well with this responsibility, both for the interests of the company and for his own advancement, and his success is undoubtedly due to his having considered the wants of the community as well as the wishes of his employers.

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Mr. Teague has always taken a live interest in the affairs of Huntington Beach and has made this interest felt in his work as a member of the Chamber of Commerce. He has been in favor of everything which would make for a larger, more go-ahead and still more prosperous community, and for the most desirable conditions likely to make Huntington Beach the ideal town; believing that the young city already contains a large number of the best sort of families and the most public-spirited citizens.

When Mr. Teague was married, he took for his bride Miss Essie Ulmer of Arkansas; and their fortunate union has been blessed through the birth of two children, Nerna and Jack. When twenty-one years of age, Mr. Teague joined the Odd Fellows in Arkansas, and was secretary of the lodge at Imboden, Lawrence County; and now he is treasurer of the Huntington Beach Lodge No. 183, of this order.

ALCEDAS B. ROUSSELLE .- Among the interesting narratives connected with early American history, none is more absorbing than the adventures of the seven Rousselle brothers who came over to Newfoundland from Boulogne-sur-Mer, in France, just before the battle of Waterloo. They believed in the principles enunciated by the Prince of Peace, and set out to make the mainland of Massachusetts; but they were wrecked and got no further than the coast of Newfoundland, from which they scattered to Canada, New Orleans and New England.

The paternal grandfather of our subject was Xavier Rousselle, who settled in Canada, and his father was Moise Rousselle, who was born there, married there and afterward migrated to Connecticut. The Rousselles had been an aristocratic family in France, intimately connected with the early military history of that country, but op- posed to the principles of conquest that followed in the wake of the Napoleonic wars; and hence their movement toward the New World with its more promising future. Moise Rousselle, who was a farmer in Canada, married Miss Armine Bessette, a Cana- dian by birth, and then moved to Taftville, Conn., where he continued agricultural pursuits on a much large scale. They had eleven children; and Alcedas, the youngest and the only one now living, was born in Taftville, June 17, 1878.

When he was two years old, his mother died, and on his father's removal to Chicopee, Mass., he was sent to live with relatives of his mother at Worcester, kind folks, who did for him what they could. Two of his uncles became priests and he lived with and was reared by one of them-the Rev. J. C. Bessette, for the past twenty-five years rector of Our Lady of Consolation at Pawtucket, R. I. The Bessette family were among the early families of Canada, and in France they had risen to distinction as professional men of literary, scholarly pursuits, being for several generations at the head of college and church affairs. It was the desire of his relatives in Connecticut, therefore, that Alcedas should be a priest, but business appealed to him more strongly.

He attended the public schools, and after school hours and on Saturdays clerked in a large clothing store at Worcester, owned by his family relations. They had, in fact, a chain of stores in New England cities, and he rose to be manager and buyer. Under this severe strain, however, his health broke down, and this misfortune brought him to the Pacific Coast. He spent his first year in Seattle, the next in San Francisco, and in the third year, or 1905, came south to Los Angeles, where he engaged in real estate transactions, making a specialty of beach, oil and mining properties. He was at Tonopah and Goldfield for awhile, and came out of the Nevada gold fields a winner. He also did well at Venice, Ocean Park, Santa Monica and Redondo, and was one of the pioneers in the early development of Southern California beaches.

Mr. Rousselle came to East Newport in 1911, and sold off the tract of 500 acres belonging to Stephen Townsend of Long Beach, thereby handling nearly a million dollars' worth of East Newport, Balboa, Newport and Newport Heights-now called Costa Mesa-property; and he also took over the unsold holdings of the Townsend-Van de "Water Company of Long Beach. As a result he himself has invested heavily in all parts of these coast towns and has come to have the interests of the vicinity really at heart, and to enjoy a sublime faith in Newport Bay and Newport Beach and its en- virons. He organized the Balboa Chamber of Commerce, was its first president, and is now a director and chairman of its harhor committee. He is also a member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and a member of its foreign trade club and one of the World Traders.

While in Los Angeles, Mr. Rousselle was married to Miss Florina A. Gendron, a native of Worcester, Mass. She is the daughter of Joseph T. and Domitile (Roche- leau) Gendron, natives of the Province of Quebec, Canada, of French parents. Her maternal grandfather. H. L. Rocheleau, became a large merchant, beginning in the Province of Quebec, and finally establishing the nucleus of their present large chain of stores in New England. Joseph T. Gendron was a prominent architect in Wor- cester, Mass., until he retired, when he spent most of his time traveling abroad. Hence on all sides they are among the early families of Massachusetts. Mrs. Rousselle is a

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cultured, refined woman, her education having been completed in the Sisters of St. Anne school at Worcester, Mass.

In 1919, Mr. and Mrs. Rousselle made an extended trip to Alaska, and on their return to Seattle took in Yellowstone Park, Niagara Falls and Boston, then motored through Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the balance of the 1,700 miles down the St. Lawrence from Montreal to Quebec and St. Anne de Bean-Pre. When at home, Mr. and Mrs. Rousselle have likewise participated in the best things of social life. He helped to organize the Newport Harbor Yacht Club, of which he is still an enthusiastic member, and was its first fleet captain and a member of its first board of directors. He was also a "booster" for and among the first members of the Orange County Country Club, with its fine golf links, and for ten years has been a prominent member of Lodge No. 99, of the Los Angeles Elks.

Mr. and Mrs. Rousselle left in the fall of 1920 on a tour of eight months. including the Mediterranean and other countries of Continental Europe, their intention being to return through the Suez Canal and visit the Islands of the Pacific thereby materially adding to a knowledge of the world ordinarily not possessed by less favored men.

DANIEL MCKINLEY .- As the special agent for Orange County of the M. M. Cobb Company, packers and shippers of green vegetables, with headquarters at 203 East Walnut Street, Fullerton, Daniel Mckinley is numbered among California's native sons who have achieved success in business life.

He was born at Los Angeles, January 19, 1884, and is the son of Daniel Mckinley, Sr., a native of Ireland, who was among the Argonauts who crossed the plains in the days of '49 in quest of the yellow metal that lured so many to California's shores in early days. First locating in northern California, the elder Mckinley in later days drifted to the City of the Angels when it was a small hamlet, and was among the pioneers of that place in the line of horticulture before the day of the Navel orange. He planted an eighty-acre ranch to seedling orange trees and other varieties of fruit in the South Park district of Los Angeles, between Forty-seventh and Fifty-first streets, followed the nursery business and fruit raising and lived on and developed his ranch until the time of his death.

Daniel Mckinley, Jr., was educated in the public schools of Los Angeles, and in 1905, after attaining his majority, came to Fullerton and entered the employ of M. M. Cobb, who had just completed a warehouse at Fullerton, and was entering the vegetable shipping business in Orange County. The M. M. Cobb Company represents one of the oldest vegetable packing companies in California, the business having been started by M. M. Cobb, who has been in the business over thirty years. The company was incorpo- rated as the M. M. Cobb Company about 1913. Their Fullerton packing house was the first one built in the packing house district of that place. During the fifteen years that Mr. Mckinley has been with this concern he has worked his way up from the bottom until he has attained the position of the company's special agent, and his example of self-won success should be an incentive to ambitious young men starting life on the road that leads toward the goal of their hopes. Mr. McKinley's marriage, in 1914, united him with Miss Mattie K. Lamb, a native of Chicago, and two children have been born to them, Daniel, Jr., and Alice, both natives of Fullerton. Mr. and Mrs. Mckinley have many warm friends and are among Fullerton's respected and honored citizens. Mr. McKinley is a member of Anaheim Lodge, No. 1345, B. P. O. Elks.

ANGUS McAULAY .- Among the representative and progressive business men of the Fullerton and Anaheim districts in Orange County we find Angus McAulay, whose reputation as a "live wire" is easily demonstrated by his activities in the Fullerton Board of Trade and as the owner and proprietor of Fullerton's undertaking parlors. Of foreign birth he first saw the light in Nova Scotia on April 20, 1886, and as his name indicates his Scottish lineage, the characteristics usually associated with that nationality are not lacking in Mr. McAulay. A strong sense of justice, unswerving integrity and thorough reliability have won the confidence and esteem of his associates in business and social life. His parents, Malcolm and Elizabeth (Scott) McAnlay, in searching for a quiet nook in which to spend their declining years came to California in 1895 and located at Anaheim where the father lives retired from the active cares of life. Mr. and Mrs. McAulay became the parents of nine children.

Angus was educated in the public schools of California and in the larger school of experience and for twelve years he was engaged in the furniture and undertaking business at Anaheim with F. A. Backs. In January, 1914, he opened an establishment in Fullerton and in 1915 erected the modern building at 411 North Spadra Street in which his parlors are located. The huilding is fully equipped with all modern con- veniences for the conduct of his business; has a comfortable chapel, display and oper- ating rooms, and full motor equipment. His careful consideration and efforts to please

Sherman Faster

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those he is called upon to serve is bringing him the reward his sympathetic and kindly attention deserves.

His marriage October 23, 1912, united him with Miss Suzanne D. Beebe of Ana- heim. The children resulting from their union are named respectively, Pearl, Agnes and Jay. The family are members of the Presbyterian Church, in which Mr. Mc- Aulay is an elder. Politically Mr. McAulay votes the Republican ticket and fraternally he holds membership in several lodges in Orange County. He belongs to the Fullerton Club, is a member of the Board of Trade, and is actively interested in the growth and development of Orange County.

SHERMAN FOSTER .- A Californian upon whom Dame Fortune has smiled so that now he is one of the most ardent boosters for the Southland, and particularly for Orange County, is Sherman Foster, one of the well-known citizens of Orange. He was born in Aurora, Ill., on October 16, 1864, the son of George S. Foster, a veteran of the Civil War, a native of New York and a blacksmith by trade, who came to Illinois and set himself up at Aurora as a farmer and blacksmith. He served in the Civil War in an Illinois regiment, and in that state married Miss Martha L. Greene, also a native of New York state. In 1868 he located at Hiawatha, Brown County, Kans., driving there with horses and wagons; and after a while he bought a farm on the Kickapoo Indian Reservation, eleven miles southwest of Hiawatha, where he was a farmer and a black- smith, and there both he and Mrs. Foster died.

The third eldest of the four children in the family, Sherman, was reared in Kansas and attended the local public schools, finishing at the Hiawatha Academy. At Fairview, Kans., on February 11, 1894, he married Miss Nellie Johnson, a native of Brown County, Kans., and the daughter of Arthur Johnson, who was born in Wisconsin. He had mar- ried Miss Mary White, a native of Missouri, after which they settled in Brown County, Kans. Miss Nellie was the only child of this marriage, and like her husband, attended the public schools.

For a while, Mr. Foster farmed the old home ranch of 320 acres, planting grain and corn and raising stock; and in 1898 he made a first trip to California. He remained nine months at Orange, and bought a house and lot on East Chapman Street, which he later sold. In 1906, he came again to California and to Orange, and bought twenty acres two miles north of Orange, on Taft Avenue. It had fine orchards of walnuts and apricots, to which he gave a rancher's attention for eighteen months, when he sold the property and returned to Kansas on another visit.

In the fall of 1909, however, Mr. Foster moved to Orange permanently and bought the residence where he has since been living. He also bought two and a half acres on Walnut Avenue, which he set out to oranges, and sold. Then he bought a walnut grove of nine acres on Fairhaven Avenue, managed it for four years, and sold it; after which he bought forty acres at Hemet, which he later sold. Next he purchased a resi- dential place on North Main Street, and that he also sold. Twenty-three acres south of Santa Ana, which he then bought, has very rich soil and an artesian well and pump- ing plant for domestic use as well as irrigation. This he devotes to the raising of sugar- beets, and has a record of the large yield of fifteen tons to the acre. In partnership with Mr. King, Mr. Foster also bought a lot on South Glassell Street, where he built a business house.

Two children blessed the union of Mr. and Mrs. Foster. Harold is a graduate of the Orange Union high school and now attending Throop Polytechnic at Pasadena: and Gladys is in the class of 1921, Orange Union high school. Mrs. Foster is a member of the Christian Church; Mr. Foster joined the Odd Fellows at Fairview Lodge No. 399. at Fairview, Kans., of which lodge he is a past grand. In national politics a Republican. Mr. Foster believes in the greatest latitude as to local affairs, and in local movements is strictly nonpartisan.

HENRY SCHULTZ .- The city of Anaheim, the oldest city of Orange County, was founded and settled by fifty Germans, all citizens of the United States. They were a sturdy set of pioneers and without their courageous spirit, which enabled them to endure the hardships and discomforts of pioneer life, the great commonwealth of Orange County might have remained for many years longer a wilderness, with barren. sandy plains. The fame of this progressive German community reached the Fatherland and among the later settlers in this section of Orange County is Henry Schultz, who was born in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany, February 12, 1847.

To get away from military oppression Mr. Schultz immigrated to the United States in 1871, locating first in Shawano County. Wis., where he bought timberland. three forties of land, fifty of which he cleared himself. While living there he took out his first naturalization papers, and after removing to Orange County, in 1892, he took out his final papers, so that he has been a full-fledged citizen of the United States

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since 1892. After remaining in Anaheim a short time looking around for a location he purchased a rauch of twenty acres, paying at that time but $65 an acre. The land had been a part of the Stearns Rancho and had been plowed but once. He has made all improvements on the place and now has a comfortable, well-kept ranch, where he engages in general farming and also conducted a dairy business for many years. He sold ten acres in 1916 and on the balance he has four acres of walnuts.

In 1878 Mr. Schultz was united in marriage with Miss Wilhelmina Strasman, also a native of Germany, and three children have been born to them: Mrs. Emma Hein of Brookhurst Road and mother of five children; Mrs. Sarah Gust, living near the Garden Grove Road, who has three children; and one child, who died in infancy. Mr. and Mrs. Schultz are active in the membership of the Evangelical Church and are highly respected in their large circle of friends and have been supporters of all the movements that have helped make Orange County.

MISS LILLIAN E. YAEGER .- When one considers the astonishingly large number of women who are today using automobiles as more or less expert drivers, often quite familiar with the mechanism of their car, it is not surprising to find a woman dealing in autos; and when one reviews the successful career of Miss Lillian Yaeger, it is quite as natural to learn that she is the agent for northern Orange County, repre- seting the Dodge Brothers motor cars. She was horn, a native daughter proud of her association with the great state of California, at Anaheim; and her parents are among the old-timers in that section where they were married. Jacob Yaeger, a native of Germany, married Miss Stella Kelp, born in Anaheim, and both are now living in Fullerton; they had five children-four girls and a boy, among whom Miss Yaeger was the oldest daughter. Mr. Yaeger was a wagon maker, and few craftsmen were more skilled in the technique of their trade. In the light of his handicraft and its relation to the problems of early transportation, therefore, it is more than interesting that his gifted daughter should today carry on, in a more advanced stage, that same work of solving the problems for another generation.

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History of Orange County, California : with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its earliest growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 121

Author: Armor, Samuel, 1843-; Pleasants, J. E., Mrs Publication date: 1921 Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co. Number of Pages: 1700

Author: Armor, Samuel, 1843-; Pleasants, J. E., Mrs
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1700