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 69

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 69

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"Mrs. Sarah Ann Bush, pioneer, died at her home at Olive, where she had lived since 1869. In going, this remarkable woman leaves 105 descendants-ten children, fifty-five grandchildren, forty great-grandchildren. Her husband, John M. Bush, died seven years ago. Of their fourteen children, ten are living and nine were present at the bedside of their mother when death came. One, Taylor Bush, for many years zanjero for the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company alone was absent, being in the East on a visit. Everyone of Mrs. Bush's ten children are married. Each has a family, but none of them has equalled in numbers the family of their dear mother. One has nine, another eight, two have seven each, one has six, another five, two have four each, another three, while Taylor has two. Some of Mrs. Bush's children have grandchildren. Mrs. Bush came across the plains with her parents when she was a girl of twelve. Her father ran a hotel and did a freighting business at Dry Creek, near Marysville, during gold excitement days. It was in 1869 that she and her husband, John M. Bush, moved to Olive with her brother, Jonathan Watson, the well known pioneer sheepman. now an orchardist at Olive. The ten children left hy Mrs. Bush are: Mrs. P. J. Ralls, Charles T. and Jonathan Bush, Mrs. L. J. Stone and Mrs. Lillie Holloway. all of Kern County; Mrs. Elizabeth Borden, of San Bernardino; J. M. and J. Taylor Bush, and Mrs. Phoebe Burbank, all of Olive; and Mrs. S. C. Howard, of Long Beach."

John M. Bush, Jr., was born, a native son-of which fact he is naturally proud- on the home ranch above Olive, on December 18, 1880, and was educated in the public schools of Olive, in which community he also grew up. In 1903 he was married to Miss Amelia Lemke, the daughter of the late Chris and Julia Lemke of Olive, originally of German descent. She first came to America in 1890, and was fortunate in settling in the beginning in Orange County. They are the parents of three children: Victor M., Terry N. and Mildred. Both as an agriculturist and a horticulturist, Mr. Bush has attained an enviable position among Orange County farmers, and his thirty acres of

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walnuts and Valencia oranges, which he set out himself, might well be the pride of anyone ambitious of developing a ranch to a high state of productivity. He still cares for the old home ranch which is devoted to walnuts and has the oldest walnut trees in the county. He is a member and director of Mutual Orange Distributors Association at Olive, and for several years served as a trustee of Olive school district. Always a public-spirited citizen, Mr. Bush and his good wife respond in particular to any move- ment likely to-advance permanently the best interests of the town and the county in which they live and prosper.

GERALD W. SANDILANDS .- A well-trained American of Scotch parentage who has joined in helping to develop the resources of the state, and who, as manager and secretary of a live organization has aided in particular in advancing the citrus interests of Orange County, is Gerald W. Sandilands, a native of London, where he was born on April 28, 1874. He is the son of George M. Sandilands, who was in the government service at Singapore, India, and there served as a member of the local legislature; he had married Miss Jane F. C. Gordon, by whom he had nine children. Five of these are living; and among the family, Gerald was the second youngest.

Having been prepared at both public and private schools in England, Mr. Sandi- lands then attended the famous College of London, after which, at the age of eighteen, he came out to the United States. He had a brother at Anaheim, and this circum- stance led to his coming here and to buying a ranch at Placentia. For four years he raised oranges, and then he embarked in buying oranges at Riverside, and soon came to operate the largest packing house in that city. His brother handled the Riverside end of the business, and Mr. Sandilands for three years respresented the enterprise in New York.

Next Mr. Sandilands went to Porto Rico and Jamaica, and handled oranges there for three years, becoming thoroughly familiar with that market. After that he came back to California, while his brother went to Montreal, and for five years he managed the independent shippers. In 1909 he took the management of the Anaheim Citrus Fruit Association, which he so well organized that he built it up to be the largest association, in membership and acreage, in California. The original organization be- came so large that it was necessary to organize another association, which was done in July, 1918, when the Orange and Lemon Association came into being in order to properly handle and market the fruit. The membership of the new association is over 150 and the acreage represented is more than 2,400. During the season it takes 20) persons to handle the output, which averages each year 1,000 carloads of fruit. Besides his connection with the marketing of citrus fruits, Mr. Sandilands is actively engaged in growing oranges, having developed one grove himself. He has thirty-five acres of oranges in his two groves and is the second largest producer in the association. His success has been made possible because he is familiar with every branch of the busi- ness he has followed for the past twenty-eight years, from preparing the soil to selling the product, a recognized authority on all subjects connected with each department.

On November 2, 1898, Mr. Sandilands was married to Miss Rose B. Robison, and their fortunate union has been hlessed with the birth of one son, Donald W. Mr. Sandilands is a Mason, but so full of the fraternal spirit that he is capable at all times of demonstrating his public-spiritedness, and his willingness to cooperate with others for the highest standard of good citizenship.

THOMAS E. DOZIER .- Two highly-esteemed pioneers of Orange County, who represent distinguished families of North Carolina, among the flower of Southern chivalry and worth, are Mr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Dozier, who reside in their elegant and hospitable home at 532 East Chapman Avenue, Orange. Mr. Dozier was born in Booneville, Yadkin County, on December 9, 1849, and lived in North Carolina during the Civil War. When he was nineteen, however, he struck out into the world, leaving the ancestral home for Missouri, where he already had a hrother, who was doing well. The head of the family was Dr. Nathan Bright Dozier, who for thirty-five years prac- ticed medicine at Booneville; he had been married in Yadkin County, the same state, to Miss Olive C. Vestal, so that both father and mother were born, married and died in North Carolina. They had fourteen children, and among them Thomas was the fifth in the order of birth. Grandfather Dozier, who became a substantial planter. migrated from Old England, and in doing so brought with him, for his posterity, some of the best blood inheritable.

Our subject arrived in Missouri in the fall of 1870 and at once hired out to work on a farm in Platt County. After a year, he went on to Boone County, Ark .. and thence went up to Hardin County, Iowa, where he was married to Miss Nancy C. Reese, on February 12, 1873. She had been born in the same county in North Carolina, on July 29. 1851, the daughter of Martin and Sarah Ann (Woodruff) Reese, and had attended

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the same school where Mr. Dozier studied. After their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Dozier farmed in Hardin County, lowa, for thirteen years, and thence they moved to Sumner County, Kans., where they remained for a couple of years. And from Kansas they came to California during the great boom in 1887.

Settling in Whittier with his wife, Mr. Dozier broke the first ground for the first five-acre orchard ever planted in Whittier. It was owned by Strowbridge and Wiggins -Frank Wiggins, who was then, as now, a leading spirit, and is now the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles. After a year and a half, the Doziers moved over to the Villa Park District, then Los Angeles County and there bought twelve acres of land; and for a generation, or twenty-one years, they continued to reside in and work for the development of Villa Park. For the past eleven years they have lived in the city of Orange. They helped start the McPherson Heights Orange Growers Association, and worked hard for good roads and prohibition, as well as city sewers and other needed and not always easily-obtained improvements. They joined the Friends Church at El Modena, and also the Orange County Farmers Mutual Insur- ance Company. He was much interested in the formation of the new county of Orange, and was on the election board when it was voted.

Four children have been granted this worthy couple who have always endeavored, as in matters of popular education, to advance the interests of childhood generally. The eldest, Melvin Bright, died in Iowa when he was eighteen months old; Ray Syl- vester is a walnut grower at Walnut Center, near Puente; Martin Edward is manager of the Orange packing house at Garden Grove; and Ernest Leland is an orange grower and resides on South Tustin Street, Orange. Orange County has prospered through just such pioneers as Mr. and Mrs. Dozier, who may well be regarded as having helped to lay the cornerstone of the new republic along the Pacific. At present Mr. Dozier is devoting himself to real estate, with an office at his residence; and his known expe- rience, good judgment and honesty easily make him a desirable agent for those who wish to invest securely and for the future.

MRS. SARAH AMANDA WATSON .- The romantically successful career of a long-honored California pioneer is recalled in the interesting family history of Mrs. Sarah Amanda Watson, widow of the late David Watson, an early sheepman and citrus grower, and for years one of the leading merchants of Olive. He was born in Mis- souri on November 29, 1846, a son of Henry and Tilda Watson, who were married in Missouri and came to California with their family in 1849, when David was only three years old. Of English, historic ancestry, Henry Watson was born in Virginia in 1812, and in his younger years had settled in Missouri with his wife, whose family name was Cox. The call of California, however, due to the discovery of gold, so affected them that they abandoned their comfortable Jackson County home and in company with thousands of other emigrants, hurried across the great plains. They tarried for a while where they first landed, in Sacramento, and then went to Dry Creek, near Marysville, where Mr. Watson had a hotel, at the same time that he engaged exten- sively in freighting. After a while, he sold out his interests there, and lived suc- cessively at San Jose, Watsonville, and Visalia, and he was also interested in the sheep business, in the San Joaquin Valley. For a while, too, he ran a grist mill. In 1869 he came to what is now Olive and became the largest landowner here, buying a part of the Rancho Santa Ana de Santiago, the property of the Peraltas.

David Watson also became a large landowner. His first marriage made him the devoted husband of Mary Ann Field, who died in 1874. leaving him three children: Louis, who is at home with Mrs. Watson; Nealy, the rancher, who is married and lives near Olive; and his twin sister, Minnie, now the wife of Chris Loptien, who resides at Delano. Mr. Watson was married a second time in Santa Ana, in 1875, to Miss Sarah Amanda Stewart, a native of Chattanooga, Tenn., who was taken by her parents to Arkansas when she was two years old, and there lived until her fourteenth year. Then she went to Texas, and there grew to young womanhood, being nineteen years old when she came to what is now Olive, then called the Bull Well Point. There was then nothing at Orange, and nothing worth while at Santa Ana. After their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Watson settled on their ranch at Olive, and Mrs. Watson brought up her three stepchildren.

As has been said, in early days, David Watson was a sheepman; and keeping thou- sands of sheep, he had a full complement of herders, cooks and other employes. When he disposed of his sheep, he bought a grocery store, which he managed for twenty years. He also became the owner of a grain farm of 300 acres. When he died, he owned the twenty-four-acre ranch at Olive, and also 160 acres near Newhall, Los Angeles County. On this ranch of twenty-four acres, Mr. Watson died on October 17. 1919, after an illness of about four years. He was a member of the Christian Church at Orange, and was interred in the new cemetery south of town.

Fr. 2 Flere. Samuel armor as Pioneers of Orange Bal.

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Mrs. Watson, who also owns a ranch of eight acres near Olive, is a daughter of John and Eliza ( Wood) Stewart, both of whom were natives of and married in Georgia. Her father was a school teacher, and died when she was a baby, followed to the grave soon after by her mother. They left four children. She was brought up by her grand- mother, Agnes Wood of Georgia, who passed away when our subject was twelve years of age. Sarah Stewart then went to live with her oldest sister, who was married and resided in Texas; and from the Lone Star State, she came with her brother, Robert Stewart, now the rancher at Stockton, to Southern California, in June, 1869. Mrs. Watson, like her husband, is also a member of the Christian Church. In many ways, her lines have since fallen in pleasant places; and today Mrs. Watson enjoys the esteem and good will of a large number of admiring friends.

MR. AND MRS. SAMUEL ARMOR .- A native of the state of New York, Samuel Armor was born near Moriah, Essex County, March 20, 1843. He remained with his father's family until he was eighteen, working on the farm in summer and going to school in the winter, wherever the family might be. In the fall of 1854 the family moved to Le Claire, Iowa, where they remained about eighteen months. From there the Armors went to Sheffield, III., to stay another eighteen months. They then went to Lucas County, Iowa, where they remained until the family gradually broke up during the early years of the Civil War.

The subject of this sketch left home about the year 1861 and went to Illinois, where he found farm work south of Galva in the summer, going to school each winter. In1 1863 he went with half a dozen young men to St. Louis to join the army; but the other young men backed out, so all returned home. He then entered the C class of the Kewanee (Il1.) high school and continued with that class until the spring of 1865, when he enlisted with classmates and others in the Ninth Illinois Cavalry to fill in the ranks that were decimated at the battle of Nashville. In September of that year he was discharged from the service by reason of the close of the war.

After teaching a small school a year, to partially recover his health, Mr. Armor took up his studies again, this time in Knox Academy and College at Galesburg, Ill., with the class of 1871. In the middle of the Freshman year he changed over to Oberlin College in Ohio, where he continued through the classical course and graduated with his class. All these years of study he paid his way by working at whatever he could find to do, teaching one term of school in the winter each year.

About two months after graduation Mr. Armor married Miss Alice L. Taylor, of Claridon, Ohio, a classmate at Oberlin. Having obtained employment of the United States Government as principal and matron of the manual labor boarding school on the Indian reservation at White Earth, Minn., the young couple left for their new field a few weeks after their marriage. They organized and conducted this school with marked success for two years, until the Indian agent was changed, when they resigned their positions and went into a similar school on the Sisseton and Wahpeton reserva- tion in Dakota. Here they remained only one year, hecause of the failure of Mr. Armor's health, which necessitated their coming to California.

The first winter in this state they spent in Los Angeles compiling a directory of that city; but, Mrs. Armor having obtained a position in the Orange schools, the couple moved to West Orange April 25, 1875. Previons to leaving Los Angeles, Mr. Armor had taken up carpenter work, with which he was familiar, for the sake of the exercise in the open air; this he continued to follow for several years in Los Angeles and Riverside counties. Meantime, he improved a thirteen-acre ranch on North Main street; but, having to hire so much of the work done, he sold the place and moved into Orange in the year 1881. About the same time he quit carpenter work and went to teaching again. After three years and a half in the Orange schools he resigned his place, on account of the nervous strain, and finished the year clerking for W. B. Forsythe. About August, 1885, Mr. Armor started a book and stationery store on the corner where the Ainsworth block now stands, and later a stock of shoes was put in on the other side of the room. Prohahly no store in Orange ever did as much business on so small a capital as this store did during the first five years of its existence. From early morning till late at night two persons, and sometimes three, were busy waiting on customers. The next ten years, from 1890 to 1900, the business gradually fell off to practically nothing, for reasons that will appear in the succeeding paragraphs.

When the county of Orange was formed in 1889. Mr. Armor was persuaded to ac- cept the office of supervisor in his district; this office he held for nearly ten years, being elected three times. In 1892 he was appointed to fill the vacancy on the board of directors of the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company, caused by the resignation of William Blasdale. He continued in this position nearly thirteen years, ten of which he served as president of the company. In 1900 he was elected a member of the board

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of trustees of the city of Orange, which position he held for eight years, being president of the board for two years. In each and every one of these offices he was an active worker, personally examining everything that came before the board and standing firmly against whatever was prejudicial to the interests of the whole people.

As already intimated, the business of the store commenced to dwindle almost as soon as Mr. Armor began to hold office. This was not due to any neglect of the store, for he always kept the best of clerks and gave much of his own time to managing the business; but it was due to antagonisms created by his sturdy defense of the public interests while he was in office. It is not necessary to give examples of such antago- nisms or to explain the deterioration and depletion of the stock; suffice it to say that the store was voluntarily closed in 1900 by its owner with no loss to any one, except himself.

But even this loss had is compensations, for, with the sacrifice of his business, Mr. Armor had more time to assist his wife with her newspaper, and thereby use it in defense of his public work, the success of which was more important to him than any personal gain would be. Hence, he wasted no time in vain regrets and would not have changed any of his acts in the past, if he could. In fact, the logic of events since has vindicated the wisdom and value of his pioneer work for the county, the city, the water company, the schools, the churches, and good government generally.

At the present time Mr. Armor is serving his second term as justice of the peace of Orange township. Since the community is orderly and the merchants, doing business ont a cash basis, have few collections to make, the justice is not overburdened with official business; nevertheless, any one seeking his aid or counsel generally finds him at the office in office hours. None of his decisions have been reversed by the higher courts, and the only reflection on his judicial work-if such it can be called-is found in the fact that, in criminal cases, the "rich malefactor" hires a lawyer who invariably calls for a jury trial and wins his case, while the poor devil, overtaken in a fault, pleads guilty and gets "justice" dealt out to him by the court. Perhaps the jury thinks the payment of a lawyer's fee is punishment enough for the offender to undergo!

Alice L. Taylor was born August 20, 1848, at Stockholm, St. Lawrence County, N. Y. Her father, Rev. E. D. Taylor, was one of six brothers, who were all Congre- gational ministers. Her mother was Mary Ann Lewis of Lenox, Madison County, N. Y. When Alice was about three years of age, the family removed to Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and four years later to Claridon, Geauga County, Ohio. Mr. Taylor was pastor of the Congregational Church at Claridon until the death of his wife in 1872, and in that place his children spent the years of their childhood and early youth. As the schools of that period were primitive in character, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor taught select schools at different times and in these and the district schools their children received their earlier education, later attending private schools and academies in other places, the two girls being students for a time at Lake Erie Female Seminary at Painesville, Ohio. The only son, E. D. Taylor, Jr., served for three years in the Federal Army during the Civil War.

In the fall of 1865 Alice Taylor went to Algona, lowa, with an uncle, Rev. Chaun- cey Taylor, a pioneer home missionary of that state. She remained in Iowa a year, teaching two terms in country schools. Returning home in the fall of 1866, she went in November to Lexington, Ky., in the employ of the American Missionary Association, and taught in the colored schools of that city until June of the following year. In the fall of 1867, she entered Oberlin College, beginning the first year of the literary course. During the four years of her college course, she taught school several terms and also taught classes in the preparatory department of the college. Shortly after graduation, August 9, 1871, she was married to Samuel Armor and with him took up school work among the Indians for the Government. After three years of this work, the Armors came to California in the fall of 1874 and to Orange in the following spring.

Mrs. Armor got a first grade certificate at the teachers' examination for the county of Los Angeles and on the same papers she was granted a first grade state certificate and life diploma. She taught many years at Orange, Garden Grove and Tus- tin and was considered a first class teacher. Superintendent Hinton urged her to apply for a place in the Los Angeles schools; but she told him that, if his rating of her work as first class was correct, they needed first class teachers in the country as well as in the city and she would stay where she was. All this time she was doing her own housework, caring for the animals when Mr. Armor was working away from home, singing in the choir and at all kinds of meetings and entertainments and teaching a class in Sunday school. Members of that class of ahout thirty-five years ago, learning recently of Mrs. Armor's illness, sent her valuable presents and letters expressing their appreciation of her worth as a teacher and gratitude for the help and inspiration her teaching had been to them.

H. C. Head

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About 1890 Mrs. Armor quit teaching and began work on The Orange Post as proofreader, city editor, bookkeeper and general factotum. As the proprietor was contemplating giving up the struggle, Mrs. Armor put in her account for work with some additional money and bought the paper in January, 1892. She inherited literary tastes and was a graceful writer; her articles in college entertainments, teachers' insti- tutes and literary periodicals were well received and won her praise. However, news- paper work for her, without sufficient capital to hire help for the routine work, was like harnessing Pegasus to the plow-too much drudgery to keep the poetic afflatus active and aglow. Nevertheless, it is her proud record that she got out the paper on time each week for twenty-three years without missing a single issue. During the set- tling up of the country and the formative period of its institutions, The Orange Post had considerable influence in getting things started right and was liberally quoted by its exchanges.

After the sale of her paper early in 1915, Mrs. Armor found ample scope for her usefulness in the King's Daughters, the Woman's Relief Corps, as a deaconness of the Presbyterian Church, in visiting the sick and shut-ins, and in writing letters of cheer and comfort to those at a distance. In these ministrations of helpfulness, she herself has often heen cheered and comforted by the calm fortitude and abiding faith of these un- fortunates, "of whom the world was not worthy."

HORACE CALDWELL HEAD .- Prominent among the distinguished members of the California Bar, and as favorably as he is well-known, must be mentioned Horace Caldwell Head, who has been a resident of California since his sixth year, when he accompanied his parents on their removal, in the famous Centennial Year of 1876, from their home state, Tennessee and located near Santa Ana, then Los Angeles, but now Orange County. He was horn at Troy, in Obion County, Tenn., on August 22, 1870. a son of Dr. H. W. Head, a prominent physician and surgeon in great demand in that county, who had married Miss Maria E. Caldwell, a lady of accomplishments. In 1876, Dr. Head came to California with the intention of retiring from the practice of medicine, and engaged in horticulture; hut the scarcity of physicians forced him, out of regard to society, into practice again, and he spent several years alleviating pain and doing good. He was also much interested in and became prominent in civic affairs- so much so, that the citizens of his district elected him in 1882 a member of the Assembly of the State Legislature; and he served in that responsible capacity for the sessions of 1883 and the special session of 1884, and later took a leading part in the formation and organization of Orange County. He became, in fact, a well-known pioneer. who was a prominent, familiar figure throughout the county; but in later life he lived retired, and died on December 5, 1919, survived by a widow and seven children.

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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 69

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