USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Pomona Valley, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the valley who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 43
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Mrs. Kiler was Miss Candace Wills before her marriage, and she was a native of Brown County, Ohio. They were joined in matri- mony at Garden City, Mo., on September 10, 1874, and two children blessed their union. Lillian is Mrs. S. J. White, the mother of a son, Clarence, who is a student in Pomona College, and a daughter, Arline ; while Jesse L. is a civil engineer, who married Miss Emma Sprague, and has a son, Harold. For eight years Jesse Kiler was the city engi- neer of Sawtelle, Cal., and he helped survey and lay out Santa Monica Boulevard, thus coming to stand high in his profession; and now he has charge of his mother's ranch.
C
Leroy Minnich
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The late Mr. Kiler was one of the founders of one of the first packing houses, and was president of the California Produce Company and for many years secretary of the Kingsley Tract Water Company. He invented and patented a couple of devices for use in irrigating systems, one of which was a valve now in general use. When he died, on January 5, 1908, his passing was regarded as a serious loss to Pomona and vicinity, then so rapidly developing its landed interests. He had been active in the First Presbyterian Church, was a charter member of the Eastern Star and a Mason, and in all those circles he was highly esteemed for rare, desirable qualities.
LEROY MINNICH
Occupying a prominent place among the men of influence in La Verne, Leroy Minnich is not only an able and efficient bookkeeper but an expert in his line of work. He was born in Darke County, Ohio, November 20, 1884, and brought up in the farming district in Delaware County, Ind. After attending high school he supplemented this with a course at Manchester College at North Manchester, Ind., and afterward taught one term in the country schools, then returned to the same college and completed the commercial teacher's course and also took a course in stenography, being graduated in 1907 with the degree of Bachelor of Accounts. During this time he was also assistant professor in bookkeeping in the college and made a splendid record as instructor. In October, 1907, he came to Pomona where he became an employee of the Indian Hill Citrus Association at North Pomona. In the spring of 1908, he attended Woodbury's Business College at Los Angeles and received a certificate to teach commercial work in high schools, and at the time they were building the Owens River aqueduct to Los Angeles he became associated with the clerical de- partment of the Los Angeles City Water Department. He became chief clerk of the engineering department on Division No. 8 and later had charge of the office of Assistant Engineer Shuey, with headquar- ters at Independence, Inyo County. This was all in connection with the water development for the City of Los Angeles. In January, 1910, he returned to Los Angeles and May 20, 1910, he accepted the posi- tion of bookkeeper for the La Verne Orange and Lemon Growers Association, and when two separate associations formed, on September 1, 1919, he became bookkeeper for both the La Verne Orange Grow- ers Association and the La Verne Lemon Growers Association.
Mr. Minnich has been twice married. He was united to Etta May Bowman of Los Angeles, June 25, 1909, and she bore him two children, Ora Leroy and Mary Ellen. About two years after the bereavement of his wife, he married Catherine Robinson of Mary- land, and they are the parents of a daughter, Lillian Pearl.
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Mr. Minnich is prominent in the civic life of La Verne, is a member of the board of trustees of the city and is chairman of the water committee. He was the first secretary and prime mover in organizing the Fire Department and was later the chief of the de- partment. He has also served as city recorder of La Verne, as well as secretary of the La Verne Chamber of Commerce. He is secre- tary of the La Verne Land and Water Company, a position he has held for six years. He is also quartermaster sergeant of the One Hundredth Company of State Military Reserves ( formerly the Home Guard). In his church associations he is a member of the Church of the Brethren at La Verne, and in his fraternal affiliations, is a member of Pomona Lodge No. 107, Knights of Pythias, and the Knights of Khorassan at San Bernardino. Take it all in all, he is an exceedingly busy man, but in spite of this he is enterprising and liberal and willing at all times to give his time and means as far as he is able towards the upbuilding of his adopted city.
REV. EDMUND MORRIS PEASE, M. D.
In 1634, six years after the founding of Salem, there came to this young settlement among other immigrants of Puritan temper, a certain John Pease. He was the first of his family in the New World, and eight generations have been marked by his courageous faith, unswerv- ing loyalty to truth and devotion to God, qualities which peculiarly characterized Dr. Edmund Morris Pease in his life of service to God and men.
Descended from the John Pease of Salem through the following line of descendants are : John, David, Benjamin, Job, Job, Asa, Asa and Edmund Morris. Doctor Pease was born in Granby, Hampshire County, M'ass., December 6, 1828. After studying in the common schools of that place he went to Williston Seminary, in East Hampton, to prepare for higher training. This he later took in Amherst College, from which he graduated with the degree of A. B. in 1854. Three years later the degree of A. M. was conferred upon him by his Alma Mater. After graduation he became a teacher, first instructing for a period of two years in a boys' school in Baltimore, and then serving as tutor for one year in Amherst. He gave up teaching, however, in order to prepare himself for the medical profession, with a view to becoming a medical missionary, and in 1862 he graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. At this same time he pursued a course at the Union Theological Seminary, from which he also graduated.
No sooner had Doctor Pease finished his training than came the call for volunteers in the Civil War, and he immediately offered his services. He was appointed assistant surgeon in the Sixteenth Connec- ticut Regiment. One year later, October 27, 1863, he was given the
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position of surgeon, with the rank of major, in the famous regiment known as the Ninth United States Colored Troops. His regiment was assigned to the Army of the Potomac, and was the first to enter Rich- mond when that city was taken. When peace had been declared, he was sent to Texas and was chief medical officer of the Department of the Rio Grande. Later he was ordered to Louisiana, where he remained until the latter part of 1866, when he was honorably dis- charged at Baltimore.
Doctor Pease then entered upon professional life and practiced medicine for five years in New York, and for six in Springfield, Mass. In the latter place he met Miss Harriet A. Sturtevant, a native of Westport, Essex County, N. Y., to whom he was married in Borden- town, N. J., April 25, 1877.
In early life having decided to devote his energies to the cause of missions, Doctor Pease went immediately after his marriage to the Marshall Islands as a medical missionary. He located on Ebon, where a church and school had already been established by former mission- aries. After two years of labor he transferred the school to Kusaie, one of the Caroline Islands, and made it an effective training school for native workers. During Doctor Pease's eighteen years of service as teacher, preacher and medical missionary, twelve churches were added to an original three, ten native pastors were ordained to the ministry, and thirteen unordained native teachers were installed in the islands. After having acquired a mastery of the language, which, by the way, is totally different from the Polynesian, Doctor Pease began immediately to translate the New Testament and revise the Gospels and Acts already in the native tongue. As the result of his untiring labors his translation of the New Testament and the Psalms has been in use for several years. He also compiled a dictionary of the lan- guage and some educational books and added many songs to the hymn and tune book already in the Marshall Island dialect.
While in the islands two children were born to Doctor and Mrs. Pease: Edmund Morris, Jr., who is a graduate of Pomona College and also of Harvard Medical College and is now a physician at the Boston State Hospital, Mattapan, Mass. He married Miss Clara Luscombe of New Bedford, Mass., and has a daughter, Phyllis Lus- combe Pease. Francis Sturtevant Pease is a rancher and resides at Claremont. He married Miss Anna Crawford Forbes of Montreal, Canada, and they have one son, Edmund Morris Pease III. In order to educate his sons, Doctor Peace came with his family in 1894 to the United States. After spending several months in the East, he located near Pomona College, in Claremont, Cal., where he lived until his death.
During his residence in Claremont, Doctor Pease identified him- self with all the best interests of the town, aiding in every way the upbuilding of the college, community and church. He was a Mason
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and , was also identified with the Grand Army of the Republic. Although far from the scene of his missionary labors, Doctor Pease spent the last twelve years of his life translating the Old Testament into the Marshall Island language. It was his desire that the entire Bible should be in the hands of the natives, and this wish of his heart would have been fulfilled had he been spared for an additional seven months of labor. So now the whole Bible, except the minor prophets, is in the hands of the Marshall Islanders. At the age of seventy- eight, while still vigorous in mind and body, Doctor Pease was seized with the sudden illness which caused his death. On November 28, 1906, he passed away at his home in Claremont. A man of heroic mold, fearless and devoted to God's service, Doctor Pease 'ranks as one of the great men of the misisonary world.
. Since the death of her husband, Mrs. Pease has continued to reside at the old home on Columbia Avenue, Claremont, where she directs the affairs left by her husband and also takes a very active part in civic and religious matters. She is held in high esteem by the residents of Claremont, for her kindness of heart and many charities.
LEE R. MATTHEWS.
Among the men most closely identified with the development of Pomona into its present ranking with other cities of the growing state, Lee R. Matthews holds a prominent place as a civic worker and a factor for progress along lines which are far reaching and lead to even greater results than show at this day and age. A pioneer here since the beginning of things, in 1889, he has been in the vanguard with those who have faithfully worked for the advancement of the common good; and with such men at the helm, the city could not fail to reach its present growth, even in this comparatively short time.
A native of Illinois, Mr. Matthews was born on a farm in Tazewell County, August 5, 1870, a son of Levi and Marie (Sill) Matthews. The parents moved to Colorado in 1882, and lived there, retired, for some years. Of the seven children born to them, Lee R. was the only boy, and received his education in the common and high schools of Illinois and Colorado. In the fall of 1889 he came to Pomona, and after his arrival he worked at various occupations for a time. The following year his father followed him to this Valley, bought land and settled in the Kingsley Tract and engaged in orange growing. Lee R., in the meantime, engaged in raising alfalfa on land he bought south of town. Both of his parents are now deceased.
Fourteen years ago Lee R. Matthews established his place of business, the Opera Garage, and since that time he has centered his business interests in the building up of a first-class motor car agency, handling various makes of motor cars, and now he has the agency
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for the Chalmers cars. He occupies a double garage building on South Thomas Street, near Third, to care for his increasing business, and with fifteen men in his employ he is enabled to give the expert service demanded today by motorists; and his policy of keeping in touch with the automobile world assures the most modern of appliances in his modern building.
In addition to his business interests Mr. Matthews is an orange grower, his acreage comprising groves in La Verne, Rialto and the Kingsley Tract, besides other interests. His civic duties have been cheerfully and conscientiously performed for the betterment of his home community ; he served on the city council for several years, and when the new charter was proposed for Pomona, he helped draft that important instrument and was the first mayor under its ruling. During his terms in civic offices many needed improvements were made in the city's streets, walks and sewers, and along educational lines ; in fact, all lines which meant the further progress of the Valley as a whole.
The marriage of Mr. Matthews, which occurred September 7, 1914, united him with Miss Jessie Ray Smyth, who is prominent in the Ebell Club in Pomona. Mr. Matthews is a Scottish Rite Mason and a Shriner, also is a member of the Elks and of the Odd Fellows. Associated with him in business is Wayne D. Matthews, his son by a former marriage. Representative of the community in which they make their home and pursue their life interests, both Mr. and Mrs. Matthews have for their aim the further upbuilding of the community.
DENNIS L. PERSONS
One of the pioneer walnut and orange growers of the walnut district in the Valley, Dennis L. Persons helped materially in the devel- opment of both industries, and reached success through his progressive spirit and expert knowledge along these lines. A native of Wisconsin, when a young man he removed to Missouri, and later went to Butte, Mont., where he was with the J. W. McQuene Draying Company, teaming to the mines, later engaging in the furniture business in Butte.
In 1894 Mr. Persons came to California and settled in the Pomona Valley. He first bought ten acres at Walnut, and from time to time added to his property until he had forty acres planted to walnuts and oranges. He also bought and sold other groves in the district, and set out many trees in the Valley, devoting his time to a study of the industry and becoming expert in a line of work totally foreign to his early training, which speaks much for the character of the man, and his adaptability to his environment. He received large returns from his ranch properties and was one of the successful walnut and orange men of the Walnut district, one of the developers of land and a man highly respected for his sterling qualities. Fraternally, Mr.
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Persons was a member of the Pomona Lodge of Masons and of the Woodmen of the World. His death occurred September 28, 1908.
The marriage of Mr. Persons, occurring in Pomona in 1900, united him with Sadie G. Hummel of Missouri, who came to Walnut in 1894, and taught school there for four years, having fifty Spanish pupils at one time. One daughter blessed the union of Mr. and Mrs. Persons, Stella, who died at seven years of age. Mrs. Persons owns twenty-one acres in the Walnut district, one of the best walnut groves in this section and a fine producer.
ADDISON W. RICHARDS
Pomona Valley is in the front van in the march of progress, due to the fact that people coming to Southern California to establish homes are attracted to it by its beauty of situation, salubrious climate and fertile soil. Appreciating the fact that real estate is the founda- tion of wealth in the country and the medium through which the largest fortunes have been made, men of brains and energy have engaged extensively in this line of industry.
Addison W. Richards, real-estate dealer at Claremont, is a rep- resentative man of this class in the community. He was born June 28, 1856, in Watertown, Washington County, Ohio. His father, Thomas E., was born in Glamorganshire, Wales ; coming to the United States, he located near Marietta, the oldest city in Ohio, engaging in the mercantile business until he removed to Zanesville, where he was also a merchant until his death. He was grand dictator of the Grand Lodge of the Knights of Honor in Ohio.
Addison W., after graduating from Bearly Academy, engaged in merchandising with his father under the firm name of T. E. Richards & Son, wholesale queensware and wall-paper dealers, in Zanesville, Ohio, spending four months of each year traveling in Ohio, West Vir- ginia and Kentucky as salesman for Janeway & Carpenter, large wall- paper manufacturers, continuing over a period of twenty-three years.
Among the Eastern tourists who came to California in 1904, he arrived in Pomona March 13 of that year. He purchased and im- proved a thirty-acre orange grove on Fifth Street, and was one of the founders of the Sanitary Laundry at Pomona, which he managed for a year and a half.
In 1908 he located at Claremont, where he has dealt extensively in real estate, his slogan and trade-mark being "The Orange Grove Man." He has proved his faith in the citrus industry by owning eighteen orange and lemon groves in the Valley over a period of fifteen years, and his sales in 1912 came close to a million dollars. He has exchanged Los Angeles property, flats and apartment houses, and also
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property in Northern California, for Valley property. He has lived to see orange groves sell from $1,000 to $6,000 an acre, sales in which he has taken an active part.
Mr. Richards married Lulu Bagley, a native of Zanesville, Ohio, and they are the parents of four children, namely: Mabel, Mrs. C. A. C. Williams of Los Angeles ; Hayward T., associated with his father; Louise, attending Pomona College; and Addison, Jr., now in Clare- mont High. Mr. Richards is ex-president of the Claremont Chamber of Commerce. Fraternally, he was made a Mason of Amity Lodge in Zanesville in 1877 and is a charter member of Claremont Lodge, F. & A. M .; he is also a member of Modern Woodmen of America. In his religious convictions he is a member of the Congregational Church. Well-to-do, prosperous and progressive, he has built up a reputation for honest and fair dealing in his business and is well known in real-estate circles all over Southern California.
HENRY PRESLEY REYNOLDS, B. S.
The educational facilities of Pomona are unsurpassed, and in Prof. Henry P. Reynolds, the efficient principal of the Pomona High School, the city has a man of whom she may well be proud. Professor Reynolds was born in Titus County, Texas, September 20, 1869. He was reared on the farm, received his education in the public schools and after a two years' course at the Denton Normal School, now known as the North Texas Manual School, took a course at the University of Texas at Austin, graduating from that institution in 1901 with the degree of Bachelor of Science. He supplemented this with a graduate course at the University of Chicago. As a young man he taught his first school at the age of seventeen, and in this way he made his way through college. Before graduation he taught school one year at El Paso, Texas, teaching science and mathematics. He was then elected principal of the El Paso High School. After this he became associated with the American Book Company in Texas, traveling in that state for a school year. September 1, 1905, he came to Ontario, Cal., and taught the branch of science and was vice-principal in the Ontario High School, now Chaffey Union High School. In the fall of 1908 he was called to Pomona High School to take the position of vice-principal, and after one year became principal of the school, the position he now holds. His inauguration as principal marked an epoch in the educational life of the school. He has made a wonderful success since accepting the position. When he first took charge of the school there were two hundred seventy-five students enrolled. There are now eight hundred fifty students enrolled, and the school has advanced educationally along all lines.
Professor Reynolds was united in marriage with Hilda T. Gustafson, a native of Sweden. Her father, who was an officer in the
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Swedish Army, died in Texas. Seven children have been born of their union : Pearl E., Howard A., Lillian A., Elsie T., Ruth E., Lloyd H. and Esther A. The family live on the nine-acre orange grove that Professor Reynolds owns on Washington Avenue, a place he has owned for eight years, and is one of the finest orchards in the district.
Mr. Reynolds was elected one of the eleven directors of the new Y. M. C. A. recently formed at Pomona and for which a beautiful new building is in process of erection. In his religious associations he is a member of the First Baptist Church at Pomona, and fraternally is affiliated with the Woodmen of the World and Pomona Lodge No. 246, F. & A. M .; Pomona Chapter No .. 76, R. A. M .; Pomona Council, R. & S. M., and of Pomona Lodge No. 107, Knights of Pythias.
JOHN TINLEY BROOKS
A distinguished representative of the great state of Iowa, where he was born on the Brooks farm in Keokuk County, on October 17, 1850, John Tinley Brooks, vice-president of the First National Bank of Claremont, has attained deserved prominence as a conservatively aggressive financier of the Southland, intensely interested in and will- ing and anxious to promote the real progress of the commonwealth. His father was John G. Brooks, who had married Miss Mary Kyger, and they were natives of Ohio. They moved from Butler County, Ohio, in 1842, to Iowa, and took up from the Government some land. It was there that the subject of this sketch was born and reared.
He attended the common schools of Iowa of his day, and later was graduated from the Iowa Wesleyan College at Mt. Pleasant, in 1875, with the degree of M. S. Soon after graduation, he was admit- ted to the bar of Iowa, and at Sigourney he began the practice of law in partnership with Maj. John A. Donnell, who afterwards became a prominent lawyer and was district attorney in Los Angeles. After five years of active and successful practice in law, however, Mr. Brooks took up banking in 1881, and since that date he has been identified with that important field.
He commenced as cashier of the Union Bank of Sigourney, Iowa, -his home town-and afterwards, either as cashier or president, was the active manager and head of the following banking houses: the Bank of Hedrick, Hedrick State Savings Bank, First National Bank of Hedrick, and the Claremont National Bank, of Claremont. For a time, also, he served as a director and chairman of the loan and exam- ining committee of a fourth bank in Hedrick, the Hedrick State Bank. He was active in organizing and building up the Iowa State Bankers Association-one of the strongest associations of bankers in the United States-and his fellow-bankers elected him a member of the managing
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board of the Association for eleven successive terms. In 1905 he was elected treasurer of the Association, in 1906 vice-president, and in 1908 president. Coming to California, Mr. Brooks became president of the Claremont National Bank, a position he filled until the bank was consolidated with the First National Bank, since which time he has been vice-president of the latter institution. In the year 1881, in partnership with his life-long friend and business associate, W. H. Young, he laid out the now beautiful and thriving city of Hedrick, Iowa, which they named in honor of Gen. J. M. Hedrick.
The civic and political careers of Mr. Brooks are more than ordinarily interesting. He was first lieutenant of the college com- pany of Iowa State Guards, and was mayor of Hedrick for ten suc- cessive terms. He was a member of the State Senate during the twen- ty-ninth, thirtieth and thirty-first sessions of the Iowa State Legislature and in his first session served as chairman of the Senate Committee on State Buildings and Grounds ; while in the two following sessions he was chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture-the fourth ranking committee in the legislature. Always a Republican and a progressive, Mr. Brooks has been an advocate of Prohibition, al- though never a member of the so-called Progressive or Prohibitionist political parties.
At Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, on May 21, 1879, Mr. Brooks was married to Miss Lucy E. White, daughter of the Rev. James H. and Emeline White, and by her he has had four children: Mary, who is married to Raleigh Wilson of Strathmore; Florence, Alice and John White. Mr. Brooks was brought up in the Methodist Church and was a member of the board of trustees of the Hedrick, Iowa, charge, from the date of its organization, in the early eighties, to the present year. For a number of years he was one of the trustees of the Meth- odist College at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. He was made a Mason in Garfield Lodge No. 485, Hedrick, and is a past master. He is also a member of Ottumwa Commandery No. 31 at Ottumwa, Iowa, and Kaaba Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S., at Davenport, Iowa.
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