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 145

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 145

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Elo Miles.

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Although Mr. Brown through unfortunate circumstances was denied the advan- tages of a good education in his boyhood days, he is a stanch champion for good public schools, and is now serving his fourth three-year term as clerk of the Garden Grove grammar school, one of the best schools of its kind in Southern California. While carefully conserving the public funds he is liberal and generous, and the school children of this favored district reap the advantages thus afforded. He is an honest, upright, straightforward, common sense man, frank and honorable in every deal, and his life will ever remain an encouragement to all who are compelled to start life under the handicap of limited means and lack of opportunity. He has been ably assisted in his battle through life by his true and loyal wife, a woman of splendid good sense and strong character, and a dutiful and loving wife and mother. Mr. Brown's daughters are members of the Garden Grove Methodist Church, and in his fraternal affiliations Mr. Brown is a member of the Modern Woodmen of America.

E. C. MILES .- Cooperation having come to be recognized, more and more, as one of the most indispensable requisites of success in modern industry, it is not sur- prising to find in Fullerton, which has already set the high water mark in various fields of endeavor, an organization of such merit as the Fullerton Mutual Orange Association, whose efficient secretary and manager is E. C. Miles. Not less than thirty- five people are employed to carry on a work directed for the past seven years by him. Mr. Miles was born in Keokuk County, Iowa, on January 13, 1867, the son of Daniel Miles, a farmer well known in lowa for the common sense and thorough methods he employed in tilling the soil and harvesting. He was a native of Ohio, and married Miss Deliah Fear, who was born in Iowa. When the Civil War threatened to divide these United States, Mr. Miles enlisted for the cause of the Union, and for three years served with the Thirty-third Iowa Regiment. Both parents are now dead.

The oldest of eleven children, E. C. Miles was educated at a rural school and later attended a business college at Trinidad, Colo., which gave him a valuable drill in the methods of commerce and industry. He had . remained at home with his father until he was twenty-one years of age, and then located at Trinidad, Colo., where he was in the wholesale grocery business for seven years. In Denver, the dry goods business attracted him for three years, and then, at the beginning of this century, he came to California.

Settling for a while at Monrovia, Mr. Miles went into the packing business; and later he was engaged in contracting and building for ten years. In 1911 he removed to Fullerton, and bought an orange grove; and soon after he assumed his present position with the Fullerton Mutual Orange Association. Very naturally, Mr. Miles is a member and greatly interested in the Fullerton Board of Trade. Mr. Mites is also interested in developing a ranch in Tulare County, devoted to vineyard, as well as a lumber, hardware and building material business at Venice Hill, Tulare County.

The marriage of Mr. Miles and Miss Alice Richardson occurred at Trinidad, Colo., on June 14. 1892, and this union has been blessed with the birth of two children: C. Neal is a rancher in Tulare County; and Bessie is the wife of Foster E. Chambers of Orange. Mrs. Miles was born in Illinois. Neal Miles has proven, as a soldier who went to the denfense of his country, a son such as any parent might be proud of. He enlisted in the United States Coast Artillery, and was made a sergeant of the first class. A Republican always desirous of doing his full civic duty, Mr. Miles is a Mason, a Modern Woodman, a member of the Woodmen of the World and a Yeoman. He is a director of the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Fullerton, and is a member and financial supporter of the First Baptist Church of that place. Fond of hunting and fishing, he rejoices with thousands of others that California affords such sport in both of these fields.

J. M. WOODWORTH .- Orange County will never forget the important and necessary part played by the far-sighted, experienced and conservative bankers in her agricultural, commercial, philanthropic and even social development through which she has come to take a front place of honor and influence in the Californian conclave and prominent among the agencies which have made for the greatest progress in the South- land must be mentioned the First National Bank of Garden Grove, now one of the healthiest ten-year-olds in the state. Its success is undoubtedly due, in part, to the conviction of the wide-awake people in the community it tries to serve that it possesses every banking facility and meets every local requirement; while, on the other hand, its increased working capital. together with recent physical changes in the bank's interior, adding to the convenience and general satisfaction of the patrons, has widened its territory, added rapidly by new acquisitions to the number of its depositors, and enabled it to do husiness on a broader and more liberal, if at the same time thoroughly con- servative basis. Much of these innovations and improvements and this additional

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growth is due to the personal attention to every detail, and the hard, conscientious work by J. M. Woodworth, the Iowa banker who settled here in 1918 and purchased a controlling interest, through which he was made president and came to assume the active management.

For twenty-five years or more Mr. Woodworth was interested in three or four banks in Iowa, and came from the well-known town of Grinnell thoroughly familiar with the conditions of investment he was to deal with here. He associated with him as officers Vice-President C. B. Scott, Jr., and Cashier F. A. Monroe, and made up a board of directors composed of himself, Mr. Scott, H. C. Head and W. S. Fawcett. The latter, now a large rancher in the Imperial Valley, was a boyhood friend of Mr. Wood- worth, and, as a frequent caller at Garden Grove, keeps in intimate touch with the progress of local affairs and the management of the bank, although he also discharges the responsibility of a director of the First National Bank of El Centro as well as the Southern Trust Company of San Diego. It is no wonder that the First National Bank enjoys the entire confidence of the people of this section, for it has become a member of the great Federal Reserve System, and as such is sure to provide the best of banking conditions through good times and bad.

It was really early in 1909 that a few men-those men of both vision and faith who work miracles, expand communities and develop commonwealths-seeing the neces- sity for a financial institution, especially when Garden Grove was mostly a postoffice among merely barley patches, but patches and fields of the greatest promise, estab- lished the Bank of Garden Grove. That fall it was opened for business under a state charter, and, as the policy of the institution from the beginning was to work for the best interests of the district, the bank grew rapidly and strongly with the community and the town. In September, 1918, it was converted into "The First National Bank of Garden Grove," and since that date its growth has been especially gratifying. Indeed, at the last call from the Comptroller for a statement of its actual condition, it showed a working capital of $50,000, and total resources of over one-half million dollars. It has assisted Garden Grove to rise from a grain field of uncertain quantity to productive acres bringing cash returns of $1,000 each in a short space of ten years. There were actually shipped from Garden Grove station over 700 carloads, valued at over two millions of dollars, miscellaneous products grown in the immediate vicinity of Garden Grove for the year 1919, and Garden Grove, properly appreciative, has assisted to give the bank, by its generous, good-willed patronage, all the stability that could be desired. Thus not only have soil, water and climate lavished blessings to all who would partake, but the courage, ambition and knowledge of the settlers have been liberally rewarded, and all have gained immensely who had faith and vision to invest and work out results.

With a general bank equipment the equal of any country bank in the county, and a management and expert force ready and anxious to serve customers within and from without the community, the bank has a fireproof vault in which can be stored at small cost valuable papers and records, and a complete set of maps showing all platted lands and ownership in the community, which maps are always at the service of the public.

PAUL BENJAMIN ROY,-A dependable citizen of Garden Grove, a locality chosen by him for residence and work as the most attractive he ever found anywhere in his wide travels, is Paul Benjamin Roy, who has attained to his present position of affluence and influence after an interesting development in varied lines of endeavor. He was born in the city of Montreal, Canada, on July 4, 1866, the son of Benjamin Roy, a French-Canadian who was also a native of Montreal and became a steamboat man on the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, where he piloted the important steamers of the mail line, and made railway time between Montreal and Hamilton. He was so expert that he could pilot the rapids of the Thousand Isles, the Long Sioux Rapids, the Cascades, the Shoat a Balom Rapids, as well as the rapids beneath the Victoria Bridge. He was married in Montreal to Miss Annie Sweeney, a native of England whose father and brother were marine engineers under the British government, and who grew up in Montreal. Eleven children were born to them, and three are now living. Sarah is the wife of John Olszewski, a hotel chef who resides in Los Angeles; Paul Benjamin is the subject of our review; and Adeline is the wife of William Roy- no relative of P. B. Roy-and lives at Montreal, where her husband is boss in a cotton mill. Benjamin Roy, at the age of thirty-seven, was one of twenty-two persons lost on Lake Ontario in November, 1875, when, at ten o'clock at night, his steamer caught fire, and crew and passengers were drowned. Mrs. Roy, the mother, lived with her children, Paul and Sarah, until she died in California at the age of seventy.

When thirteen years old, Paul Benjamin entered the service of the same line by which his father had been employed, when he was pilot for the Spartan and the Cor- inthian, working for two years as a mess-room boy. When he left the Richelien line. he went on the propeller boat Prussia as head porter, and for several seasons remained

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with this merchant line which carried passengers between Montreal and Chicago. The second year he was transferred to the St. Catherine and was on that ill-fated vessel when, at three o'clock in the morning, it was struck amidships and sunk by an American vessel. The passengers and all hands save a fireman escaped, but the vessel went down within thirty minutes.

For eight years Mr. Roy followed steamboating, next going on a freight boat of the Ward line running out of Detroit, and between Duluth and Buffalo, on which line he remained for two seasons, acting as lookout man or second mate. The next season he followed Captain Will Compo on the Northwest, a vessel of the Great Northern Steamship Company and at that time the finest fresh water boat, plying between Duluth and Buffalo. In the meantime, too, he had ventured into the barber's business, and for a couple of years ran a barber shop in West Superior, Wis., so that when he came to California nearly a quarter of a century ago, he was so well equipped with experience that he soon became the leading tonsorial proprietor of Los Angeles. He owned the Metropolitan Barber Shop at 219 West Third Street, which had a full equipment for Turkish and other baths, then the largest and finest barber shop in the world. During his long and eventful career in steamboating, Mr. Roy met many famous men and women. Among them was the Prince of Wales, later King Edward of Eng- land, and he shook hands with the Princess of Wales, and chatted with her for several minutes.

Mr. Roy has owned and improved several ranches, among them one of 200 acres devoted to apples and alfalfa in Victorville, and from there he went to Perris, River- side County, and engaged in raising alfalfa, purchasing a ranch of eighty acres. For a while he lived in San Diego County, where he was proprietor of the Kilkenny Hotel, at the same time that he developed a lemon grove of twenty acres four miles east of San Diego. When he sold his alfalfa ranch at Perris in 1919, he removed to Garden Grove, where he owns a ranch of twenty acres, largely a Valencia orange grove. Eighteen years ago he bought 100 acres of raw land at Anaheim, but disposed of it later at an advanced price. He set out walnut trees, and the grove is now known as the Cleveland ranch. He also built up and replanted the Big Four ranch at North Rialto in San Bernardino County, and this is still known as the "Roy" ranch.

When Mr. Roy married, in 1888. he took for his bride Miss Amelia Provost, a native of St. Paul, Minn., who is as enthusiastic concerning Garden Grove as he is himself. One daughter blessed their union, and she is now Mrs. W. L. Christian of Los Angeles. Mr. Roy is a naturalized American, and an active Republican. Mr. and Mrs. Roy have been extensive travelers, having been through Europe, Japan, Australia and Philippines.

Mr. Roy is a good deal of a sport, and has something to show for it. While a boatman, he became an expert swimmer and came to boast of the world's championship medal for long distance swimming. Through this prowess he really first came to California; for he intended to swim from Catalina to the mainland-a feat he never undertook, after all. He also drove the first automobile-a steam car which he himself owned-seen in the streets of Santa Ana, and made early record trips from San Diego to Los Angeles, and from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. In the first case, on country roads he covered the ground in six hours and six minutes; while on the run to Santa Barbara he motored about four hours. He has put from $50,000 to $60,000 into his present estate at Garden Grove, and still plans other improvements. He is a member of numerous fraternal orders and clubs.

AMOS. B. EVERETT .- Numbered among the respected citizens of Buaro pre- cinct is Amos B. Everett, a man who despite the hardships and tragedies encountered in his earlier life has maintained his poise, and now enjoys a tranquil life on a walnut grove in Buaro precinct. Eight acres of the twenty he owns is planted to twelve-year- old walnut trees, two acres to two-year-old budded walnut trees, eight acres to budded trees, and he has two acres for a family garden.

Mr. Everett was born in Trumbull County, Ohio, June 23, 1852. a son of Benjamin and Catherine (Lowery) Everett, natives of New York State and Ohio, respectively. The father was a farmer and went to Illinois when Amos B. was only two years old, settling at Knoxville, Knox County, where Amos was reared on his father's farm and assisted him with the farm work while two of his brothers served in the Union army during the Civil War. He began working on the farm when very young, drove a team and plowed when nine years old and had to stand on a box in order to harness the horses. When he was twenty-one years old he began to work for wages, and migrated from Illinois to Kansas, settling near Hutchinson where he took a tree claim and proved up on it, and lived in Kansas twenty-five years. From Kansas he went to Nebraska, where he was married to Emma Pearson, and there in Cherry County was in the stock business five years, when a disastrous prairie fire overtook his wife when

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she was out driving, and she lost her life. By a strange coincidence this was the only time she had ever left her little daughter at home alone. The child, Stella May, is now the wife of Fay Brown, a farmer of Partridge, Kans., and they are the parents of a daughter named Edith. The same prairie fire also destroyed about 100 head of cattle be- longing to Mr. Everett. Alone and discouraged he decided to change his environment and went to Kansas, from whence he came to California in 1903. Three years before coming to California Mr. Everett was married a second time, his wife, who was Miss Flora Davis before her marriage, is a native of Ohio and was reared in Kansas. They are the parents of six children: Lester and Elmer work at Santa Ana; William, Ada, Olathe and Grace are at home.

Mr. Everett is recognized by all as a man of strict integrity, and his kindly and considerate nature has won for him many warm friends during the seventeen years of his residence in the Garden Grove district. In his political views he is a Republican.

DR. JOHN I. CLARK .- From the time of the founding of our great republic, and indeed long before in the traditions of the Anglo-Saxon people, the status of the physi- cian has been an enviable one in the representative community, village, town or city, on which account the part played in the municipality of Santa Ana by such a progressive humanitarian and scientist as Dr. John I. Clark, the physician and surgeon, is all the more interesting. He was born at Craig, Nebr., on February 4, 1875, the son of William A. Clark, a farmer and stockman who married Miss Mary E. Kennedy, and when the time came that the North and the South faced each other in the awful Civil War, he served his country faithfully in the Federal Army. They were the parents of five children-three boys and two girls-among whom our subject was second in the order of birth. Both parents are now dead. Having attended the grammar schools at Craig, while he grew up on his father's farm, and been graduated from the high school there, John Clark matriculated at the Rush Medical College in Chicago, and graduated from that famous institution with the class of 1897, with degree of M.D. Then he became an interne at the Presbyterian Hospital in Chicago, where he began to acquire his first valuable practical experience.

Once equipped to follow his professional work, Dr. Clark practiced for a year at Craig, Nebr., and then continued his practice for four years at Idaho Springs, Colo. His fortunate geographical location brought him soon into contact with many from distant as well as near by points, and so his reputation rapidly developed. On coming to Santa Ana in May, 1904, Dr. Clark established himself with ease; and it was not long before he was a director in the Santa Ana Hospital. More and more, he enjoyed the entire confidence of his fellow-citizens; and for twelve years he was city health officer. In national politics a Republican, he has never failed to participate without partisanship in all civic discussions and endeavors for the public good.

At Craig, Nebr., on April 6, 1898, Dr. Clark was married to Miss Mollie D. Clark, an estimable lady of no relationship, the daughter of Dr. Samuel W. Clark of Iowa; and since then Mrs. Clark has participated in the deep interest of her husband in the development of the community in which they have lived, and in his outdoor life with golf and fishing. He belongs to the Masonic order being a Knight Templar and Shriner, his membership in the latter being in Al Malaikah Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S .. Los Angeles. He is also a member of Santa Ana Lodge of Elks and of the Orange County Country Club.

As might be expected of one so favorably known as a highly-trained practitioner, Dr. Clark is a member of the American Medical Association, the State, Southern Cali- fornia and the County Medical societies; and his activity in these organizations con- stantly helps to maintain Orange County in pleasant association with the outside scientific world.

ANDREW MEYER .- The excellent cultivation, tillage and good management expended in the care of the property operated by Andrew Meyer, lying two miles northwest of Orange, bespeaks the thrift and good judgment of the owner. Mr. Meyer has four acres in Valencia oranges and six acres of walnuts, and takes a just pride in the neat appearance of his acreage. He was born in Clinton County, Ill., August 24. 1880, and when five years old, in 1885, accompanied his parents, August and Fredericka (Pfeiffer) Meyer to Neosho County, Kans., where the father became the owner of a 160-acre farm. The parents and their seven children are living, and Andrew is the youngest son and fifth child in order of birth in the parental family. He early became accustomed to ranch work, plowing when only ten years of age, and grew to young manhood on the home farm, assisting in the various duties that pertain to life on a farm. He was educated in the common schools of his home district, and in 1906 went to Idaho and Washington, returning after eight months to his Kansas home. The next vear he removed to northwestern Kansas where he remained three and a half years.

I& Clark

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He was associated with his brother George in this venture, and they purchased 320 acres of land, which they afterward traded for 480 acres. From 1906 to 1912 they ran from eighty to one hundred head of cattle and about the same number of swine on their property.

In 1913 Mr. Meyer went to Wichita Falls, Texas, where he worked at the carpen- ter's trade for one year. He then tried his fortune in central Kansas, continuing the same occupation, and afterwards went to northwestern Kansas and engaged in the real estate business for one and a half years. Then California's charms appealed to him and he decided to cast his lot in that state. He came to the Pacific Coast in 1915, and in November of that year established domestic ties by his marriage with Mrs. Emma Struck, born in Pennsylvania, daughter of Herman Heim of Orange and widow of the late Max Struck, who was well and favorably known to the community. As a child Mrs. Struck came to Kansas with her parents, and later the family removed to Orange, Cal. She is the sister of Albert and Carl O. Heim, whose sketches appear elsewhere in this work. At the age of twenty-two she married Max Struck, whose death occurred in 1908 as the result of an accident. Mr. Struck owned the ten acres that Mr. Meyer now operates and which continues to be their home. Mrs. Meyer is noted for her housewifely qualities and fortunate indeed is the passing stranger or the friend who is invited to share the hospitality of the genial host and hostess in their model and excellent home. Mr. Meyer enjoys to an exceptional degree the esteem and confidence of his associates, and he and his wife are members of the Lutheran Church at Orange, and have many warm friends.

JOSEPH BRICKE .- The spirit that prompted our forefathers to leave their native land to carve out their fortunes in a new world has its counterpart in this generation in many who, animated by a desire to avail themselves of broader opportunities, have left the older civilization to seek the newer fields of untried possibilities. That this spirit, coupled with industry and perseverance, will almost invariably succeed is mani- fested in the life of Joseph Bricke, the citrus grower of Orange, who is the owner of two prosperous ranches.

Born in Bavaria, Germany, June 10, 1872, Joseph Bricke is the son of Joseph and Mary (Knoth) Bricke, the father being engaged in the undertaking business and having agricultural interests as well. Joseph remained at home until he was twenty-one years of age, when he left the old home for America, landing at Philadelphia on August 27, 1893. He soon located in the vicinity of Buffalo, N. Y., remaining there for thirteen years, engaged in farming.

In 1905, Mr. Bricke decided to seek his fortune in the milder climate of California and that this decision was a wise one is evidenced by the splendid success he has made as a rancher. For a time after arriving in Orange County Mr. Bricke worked out on the farms of others, gaining experience in the agricultural modes of this part of the country and accumulating capital to embark in the ranching business for himself. He is now the owner of two ten-acre citrus ranches, which he has planted and developed himself, and which he has brought up to a high state of productivity, so that both ranches now bring him a handsome income. His home ranch is situated two and a half miles northeast of Orange and here he has resided since 1908. His other place is located on Seventeenth Street, Santa Ana, and his time is busily occupied in looking after these properties.

Mr. Bricke was married January 5, 1911, to Miss Ethel House, who was born in Arizona, and they are the parents of one son, Donald Earl, born July 31, 1914. Mrs. Bricke is descended from two generations of California pioneers, both her father and grandfather having been among the early settlers of the state. Her parents are Edmond Shirley and Alice Henrietta (Grimes) House, who are both still living, the father at the age of eighty-one years, and since October, 1919, they have resided with their son, Edmond H. House, on a part of the Irvine ranch at the head of Peters Canyon, in Silverado precinct.

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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 145

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