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 73
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MISS FLORA A. RICE
The superintendent of the David and Margaret Home at La Verne, Miss Flora Rice, has won for herself a warm place in the af- fectionate regard of the community for her years of devoted service to the children in her care at the Home. She was born in Rochester, Minn., the daughter of Rev. W. C. Rice, born in Joliet, Will County, Ill., who enlisted in the Civil War, but was rejected. He was a graduate of Hamlin University, the growth of which he has always been actively interested in and was ordained a minister in the M. E. Church. He preached in southern Minnesota for over fifty years and was also a presiding elder. He is now seventy-eight years old and he and his wife reside in St. Paul. They were the parents of five children : Mrs. Helen Peck, residing in San Francisco, is a deaconess ; Mrs. Edna Gerlick, residing in Minneapolis; Jessie, died in infancy; Flora ; and W. A., a Methodist minister in St. Paul.
Flora Rice was educated in the schools of St. Paul and attended the Winona Normal, from which she was graduated, having majored in kindergarten work. In 1905 she came to California and taught in the Palo Alto schools, doing a special line of work. In 1908 she was in charge of the kindergarten department of the Fred Finch Orphanage in Oakland, after which she taught for a short period in Fergus Falls, Minn. In April, 1911, she accepted her present position as superintendent of the David and Margaret Home. With the same zeal and energy that had characterized her former kinder- garten work, she took charge of the institution a few months after its establishment, when the building was only half finished, the grounds and yard uncared for, and there were no fruit or shade trees.
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Now they have a well-furnished, attractive and comfortable home, a beautiful lawn, well-cared for garden and a fine variety of young fruit trees.
Miss Rice, and her devoted assistant, Miss Elsie Barton, as the present condition of the Home indicates, are qualified for the posi- tion with their natural ability and love for children and their educa- tional training along those lines. They preside over the institution with dignity and grace. The children respond to their devotion and show by their obedience and willingness their deep affection for them. The children all live at the Home and attend the public schools and the Methodist Episcopal Sunday School at La Verne. The object of the home is to help train and teach children to be self-supporting. There are at present eighty-seven children in their care, forty-three girls and forty-four boys. Flora A. Rice is indeed engaged in the most noble work possible, for nothing can equal her labor of love. With all the multitudious cares devolving upon her in connection with the Home, she still finds time to take an active part in the religious life of the community. She is a devoted member of the Methodist Episcopal Church at La Verne, and prominent in the work of all its societies, especially that of the Epworth League.
GEORGE CYRIL PLATT
A very successful and influential young man of San Dimas is George Cyril Platt, cashier of the First National Bank of San Dimas and the San Dimas Savings Bank, who is a native of Brantford, Ontario, born February 19, 1887, the only child of Geo. F. and Catherine (Mudge) Platt, born, respectively, in Brantford and New- foundland, who were agriculturists at Brantford until 1887, when he came to the San Fernando Valley, California. His wife and baby boy joined him in 1888, and here the father engaged in horticulture, setting out an orange grove at Chatworth Park. This ranch he sold in 1892 and located at San Dimas, where they have since engaged in citrus culture.
George Cyril Platt's first recollections are of sunny California, where he received a good education in the San Dimas schools and in the Pomona high school, graduating from the latter in 1906. Soon afterwards he entered the Bank of San Dimas which was later nation- alized as the First National Bank, in time becoming assistant cashier. When the San Dimas Savings Bank was organized in 1911 he was also made assistant cashier of that institution and so well did he fill them that he was in July, 1919, elected by the directors of the above insti- tutions as cashier of the two banks, his years of experience making him well qualified to hold the same.
Mr. Platt was married in Covina, where he was united with Miss
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Vyvyenne Faulder, born in Los Angeles, a graduate of the Covina high, and two interesting children, Robert and Priscilla, have blessed the union.
Having leave of absence from the bank Mr. Platt served in Y. M. C. A. war work in different California army camps from June, 1918, until December, 1918. He is an active member of the San Dimas Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Platt was made a Mason in San Dimas Lodge No. 428, F. & A. M., being a past master of the lodge. He is a member of Pomona Chapter, R. A. M., and with his wife is a member of the Episcopal Church in Covina.
HORACE E. HOWARD
An Eastern gentleman who has made his contribution to the successful development of the citrus industry in California is Horace E. Howard, who lives at San Dimas and whose ranch is located on the Foothill Boulevard. He was born at Vineland, N. J., on January 19, 1877, the son of E. E. Howard, who became a physician and orange grower in Florida, and is now deceased. He married Miss Clara Graham and she is also now deceased. The only child of this union is the subject of our review. His education began with the public schools at Wilmington, Del., and extended to the high school of that town, from which he went to the Philadelphia College of Phar- macy, where he was graduated in 1898. For nine years thereafter he worked in Philadelphia as a pharmacist. All this while he was steadily preparing for the work he was to do once he had settled on the Pacific Coast in 1900.
After eleven years in the drug business in Los Angeles, Mr. Howard turned his attention and energies to citrus growing in San Dimas, and in that field he has been more and more successful. The truth is, that few men understand the problems of citrus culture better, while Mr. Howard has the advantage that he is both productive of new ideas and willing to introduce new ways of doing a thing.
In Los Angeles on December 15,1906 Mr. Howard was married to Miss Emma A. Banta of Claremont. She was born in Albany, Ore., and has been deeply interested all her life in the gradual and splendid development of her native section.
A thoroughly patriotic citizen, and one who is a member of the U. S. Navy League and vigorously supports every patriotic program of the government, Mr. Howard is nevertheless a man above party and seeks to vote as he thinks-independently, every time. He is a Mason, a member of the Consistory, and also a Shriner, and in all fraternal circles is second to none in well-deserved popularity.
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MITCHELL K. METZ
A native of the artistic and thoroughly up-to-date city of Buda- pest, Hungary, where he was born on December 25, 1872, Mitchell K. Metz enjoys the distinction of being the leading fashionable tailor of Pomona. He was educated in his native city, and while still in his home town started to learn the tailor trade; but when eighteen years of age he sailed from Europe for America, and at New York, of late years recognized as one of the great tailoring centers of the world, he finished his apprenticeship. He then removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, and there became associated with the Cincinnati Woolen Company ; and he followed the trade in Baltimore and Chicago.
At the age of twenty-four, he started in business for himself, and opened a shop at Farmer City, near Chicago, Ill .; but satisfied that the Pacific Coast had an even more brilliant future than the great interior metropolis by the lake, he journeyed west to Los Angeles and became a cutter for Messrs. Popkin & Nestor, the well-known tailors. In 1905, he made his last removal, and cast his lines in Pomona, where he has since resided.
Mr. Metz busies himself with tailoring for both ladies and gen- tlemen, and caters only to the first-class trade. In so doing, he has built up a fine reputation for quality and "class," for once that his patrons have come to test his expertness and proficiency, they have seldom or never left him for others. His knowledge of Old World styles, and his anticipation of New World wants have made his work very popular.
Mr. Metz has also been quite active in real estate development in Pomona Valley. He has erected three houses in Pomona, and bought and sold a number of orange groves; and at present he owns five acres in oranges in full bearing in the Ontario district. He also owns a ranch of 160 acres in the Imperial Valley near Brawley, which is under a high state of cultivation. He came to Pomona a perfect stranger, and by hard, self-making work, he has "made good."
At Farmer City, Ill., in March, 1897, Mr. Metz married Miss Nellie Watson of Farmer City, Ill., a daughter of William Watson, a pioneer of that country. She is a cultured woman, and a member of the Ebell Club of Pomona, and the mother of four sons. Herbert W. served four years in the United States Navy and became a first-class boatswain on the United States steamship "Frederick," on patrol duty in South American waters, and later on the United States transport "Koningin," he made fourteen trips to France during the war. The second in order of birth, Harry T. Metz, also served in the navy on the same boat with his brother during the World War. A third son is Carl F., and the youngest is Stewart W. Metz. A prominent Mason, Mr. Metz is a member of the lodge, chapter. council and commandery in Pomona, a Shriner, and is also a Knight of Pythias.
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HERBERT S. GILMAN
A director of one of the most important public utilities, who has been fortunate in bringing to the service of the concern he has in charge a first-class scientific and technical training, is Herbert S. Gil- man, the manager of the San Dimas Water Company and the San Dimas-Charter Oak Domestic Water Company, who was born at Rochester, Minn., on September 17, 1883. His father was Nathaniel F. Gilman, a native of Derby Line, Vt., who came to Racine, Wis., and was a pioneer farmer. He responded to the call in the Civil War and served in Company K, Forty-ninth Volunteer Infantry, and was wounded in the Battle of Port Gibson, before Vicksburg; after four
years' service he was honorably discharged. When the Civil War was over he removed to Rochester, Minn., and aside from farming he was engaged in contracting and building. He died in 1912. The mother of our subject was Anna Morris, born in Dayton, Ohio, who came with her parents to Minnesota in pioneer days. She resides at the old home in Rochester, the mother of four boys and four girls. Herbert is next to the youngest and the only one in California. He not only attended the grammar and high schools of Rochester, graduating from the lat- ter, but for two and a half years was a student at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, leaving the lecture room only on account of a siege of typhoid fever. Then for five years he was foreman and construction engineer on water works and sewers with William C. Fraser, consulting engineer and contractor in different cities in Wis- consin, Minnesota and the Dakotas.
In 1908 Mr. Gilman resigned to come to California. Settling at San Dimas, he bought a ten-acre orange grove, his present place, and went in for citrus growing. Becoming interested in the problem of irrigation, he became president of the San Dimas Water Company, holding that position for three years. After that he was made mana- ger of the two San Dimas water companies, since which time he has given them his time and best efforts. The companies now deliver both irrigation and domestic water to the San Dimas and Charter Oak dis- tricts, and no other companies, perhaps, have such a record for gen- eral satisfaction.
At Pasadena on June 30, 1910, Mr. Gilman married Miss Jeannette Cole, also born in Rochester, Minn., whose parents were John A. and Mary E. (Van Dusen) Cole, born in Boston, but now residing in Pasadena. Grandfather John M. Cole served in a Massa- chusetts regiment in the Civil War. Three children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Gilman : Anne, Herbert S., Jr., and Jean.
In national politics Mr. Gilman is a Republican, although in local issues he never allows partisanship to interfere with the endorsement of the best men and the most desirable measures. Fraternally he was made a Mason in San Dimas Lodge No. 428, F: & A. M., and is
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junior warden; he is also a member of Pomona Lodge, Knights of Pythias. He believes in cooperation for the rancher, so is a member and director of the San Dimas Orange Growers Association and is active as a director of the San Dimas Fruit Exchange. He is a director of the San Dimas Chamber of Commerce, and with his wife helped to organize the Union Church at San Dimas, in which he is a trustee, while Mrs. Gilman is a member of the Wednesday Afternoon Club and the Entre Nous Club.
CARL W. MIDDLETON
A specialist in a department of high-grade, artistic work, involv- ing superior mechanical skill, who has done much to fashion and main- tain the art taste of Pomona and to develop a proper appreciation of first-class technical skill, is Carl W. Middleton, proprietor of the Mid- dleton Quality Jewelry Shop at 162 West Second Street, Pomona. He was born at Utica, Mo., on July 1, 1886, there attended the public schools, and later learned telegraphy. His parents were Charles W. and Margaret (Gillies) Middleton, natives of New York and Scot- land respectively ; and he started in life with some advantages.
After serving as telegraph operator on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, he took up the trade of a watchmaker. He arrived in Pomona in 1910, and again engaged in railroading, acting as tele- graph operator and ticket agent for the Salt Lake Railroad for five years.
In 1917, Mr. Middleton bought out the jewelry store of E. E. Fite, and since then he has conducted the establishment under his own name. He started with a very small capital; but through hard work, strictly his own effort, and fair dealing with the public, he has gradual- ly built up his trade to its present proportions-a degree of comfort- able prosperity in which he naturally takes great pride. When he assumed charge of the business referred to, there was no watchmaker employed for its patrons, and he immediately started in to make a special reputation for that kind of work; today he employs four expert repairers. He pays the highest wages to his assistants, and commands, therefore, the most expert.
Mr. Middleton carries a general line of high-grade jewelry, which includes cut-glass and silverware, diamonds and watches; and he uses unique and original ideas in advertising. Once the passers-by were greeted with the announcement, "We teach watches to tell the truth;" and he issued in 1917 and 1918 calendars so unusually attractive that they are worthy of special mention. On his 1917 calendar, for exam- ple, was a picture of his little daughter, with a watch to her ear; and under it were the lines, "Sure, it ticks; daddy makes 'em tick !" while on the calendar for 1918 was a picture of the same daughter in colors,
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dressed in the garb of a Red Cross nurse, sitting at the bedside of her sick doll, with a watch in her hand, taking the pulse of her doll! These calendars attracted wide attention and once more showed the value of brains plus printers' ink. Mr. Middleton is the official watch inspector for the Pacific Electric Railroad in Pomona.
Mr. Middleton was married on March 27, 1907, at Chillicothe, Mo., to Miss Bessie Conklin, a native of South Dakota, and the daughter of F. M. and Maria Conklin. Three children have blessed the fortunate union : Carl W., Jr., Earl F. and Pauline.
RALPH S. CLARK
The efficient foreman of the El Camino Citrus Association, at Claremont, Cal., Ralph S. Clark was born in Clark County, Ind., December 10, 1877, and came to San Diego, Cal., with his parents a lad in his thirteenth year, in 1890, completing his education in the San Diego high school.
As a young man the life of the range appealed to him, and he became a cowboy, riding the range in Imperial County, Cal., and in that least known part of North America, Lower California, the land of desert and drought, but of wonderful possibilities. While in Lower California he was with John Canfield, and bought 400 head of cattle for six dollars per head, drove them to the range, fattened and sold them. Later, he rode the range for two years on the Cuyamaca Grant of 22,000 acres in San Diego County, owned by Governor Waterman, and afterwards worked on the Kelly Ranch. During his life as a cow- boy he had many thrilling and interesting experiences. He came to Claremont in 1900 and became box maker for the Claremont Citrus Association. In 1911, when the El Camino Citrus Association was formed, he became foreman of the plant, the position he now holds. For thirteen years he was a member of Company D of the Seventh Regiment, California National Guard, and rose from a private to the rank of first lieutenant. He spent three months at the Presidio at San Francisco learning the rudiments of the big defense guns, and during the late war was drill master of the Claremont Home Guards. Out- of-door life appeals to him and he spends much of his spare time in the mountains hunting and fishing, being very expert with the rifle and reel.
He married Miss Grace D. Robker, a native daughter, reared in Pomona, and they are the parents of two children, Pearl, attending Claremont high, and Edith. In their religious associations the family attend the Christian Church at Pomona, and fraternally Mr. Clark affiliates with Pomona Lodge No. 789, B. P. O. Elks, and the Knights of Pythias.
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THE DAVID AND MARGARET HOME FOR CHILDREN
No more worthy and appealing charity exists than the provision for the care of little homeless children, who, through no fault of their own, have been deprived of the advantages of a home with loving fathers and mothers to care for them, caused in most instances by the death of one or both parents. During the ten years of its existence, the David and Margaret Home for Children, at La Verne, has justi- fied the most sanguine of hopes in the real good it has accomplished in the lives of the many children who have been cared for during that period.
In 1910, Mr. and Mrs. Henry L. Kuns of La Verne presented to the Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Southern California Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church a tract of land con- sisting of seventeen and a half acres near La Verne on which was a sixty-room building originally designed for a hotel. The gift was a memorial for their deceased son and Mr. Kuns' father and mother, David and Margaret, and it was their desire to maintain a wholesome, sanitary Christian home for children where they could receive a train- ing that would equip them for a better and more useful future than would otherwise be possible for them. At that time the old building was unfurnished, and the floors, with the exception of a few rooms that had been refloored by Mr. Kuns, were a menace to health and bare feet ; the yard and grounds were uncared for, with no place for cows or stock of any kind, and no fruit or shade trees. Loving, patient work, however, has transformed the whole surroundings, and now there is a well-furnished, attractive and comfortable home, warmed with hot-air furnaces; a completely equipped concrete laundry build- ing; a beautiful lawn, bordered with plants and flowers; a well-cared- for garden, which helps supply a goodly portion of the supplies for the table ; a fine variety of trees, both citrus and deciduous ; and a small barn and corrals for the horses and cows.
Ideally located in a fertile valley, amid orange groves, and com- manding a fine view of the Sierra Madre Mountains, the environment cannot help but have a beneficent influence on the lives of the little ones who are being cared for here. It has always been the ideal of its founders to make it a real home instead of an institution, and that this has been attained is shown by the love and appreciation the children feel, for to many of them it is by far the happiest home they have ever known. The Home is cared for by a superintendent, assistant superin- tendent, five department matrons, a cook, a laundress and a farmer, all of whom are not only well fitted for this work, but who are devoted to its service.
At present the Home is caring for eighty-seven children, forty- three girls and forty-four boys, and many needy cases have to be turned away for lack of room and funds to care for more. The prime
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object of the Home is to teach and train the children to be self-sup- porting and industrial training is especially emphasized. Besides regu- lar attendance at the La Verne district school, they are taught to share in the work of the household and garden in every possible way. Prac- tical lessons are given in sweeping, sewing, mending, bed making, etc., and much time is also devoted to religious and moral training, the children all attending the Sunday school of the Methodist Episcopal Church at La Verne.
To the devoted superintendent of the Home, Miss Flora Rice, a review of whose life is given elsewhere in this volume, is due the larg- est meed of praise for the years of loving, consecrated service she has given to its upbuilding. Coming here in 1911, she took charge of the institution in its infancy ; she was exceptionally equipped through her former kindergarten work to bring order out of chaos, and with the added enthusiasm that comes from devotion to a labor of love. State officials whose business it is to visit and investigate institutions of simi- lar kind throughout the state have given her work the warmest com- mendation, for through her efficient administration the average cost per capita is much lower than that of many others. The board of man- agers of the institution also deserve the greatest credit for their years of work and time they have given to raising the funds to make it pos- sible to carry on the noble work, and Mr. Kuns gives the credit to the ladies of the Home Missionary Society and to the management for its splendid success, that has exceeded his sanguine expectations. Mrs. Henry L. Kuns passed away in 1915, but Mr. Kuns continues to give the work his warmest interest and support ; one of his recent donations is an additional sixteen acres of land, and on this he expects to erect another building. Other substantial bequests have also been made to be used for additional buildings, thus making it possible to give this loving care and training to a larger number of children.
ORMAL G. HARDY
It is not often that one so loyal to a town as Ormal G. Hardy has proven himself to be to Pomona, vicinity and the Valley, is as well rewarded, after years of hard work, in a monopoly of the field which few if any deem it desirable or worth while to challenge; for Pomona, large and enterprising as it is, boasts of no other establishment like or equal to his. He was born in Monroe County, Iowa, on February 22, 1862, and reared in western Iowa, where he attended the usual country schools. At an early age he started to work on a farm, and later he farmed for himself on a farm ranch of eighty acres in Mills County, Iowa, where he raised corn, hogs and cattle.
In 1899 he came to Pomona, and here he learned the trade of a plumber with J. H. Wilkinson, who had a plumbing shop on North
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Main Street. He was with him for six years, and during that time worked in the finest homes in the Valley. He then started contracting for himself, and opened a plumbing shop in Claremont, which he managed with success. Among the many fine homes in that city in which he installed superior plumbing, may be mentioned in particular the residences of F. P. Brackett, Dr. A. V. Stoughton, J. L. Tomlin- son, S. J. Meade, and A. W. Richards.
In 1917 Mr. Hardy returned to Pomona, where he has since been contracting. In the fall of 1919, he opened up a plumbing shop again in Claremont, and there he put his nephew, John Hardy, in charge, still retaining, of course, his fully-equipped Pomona establishment. Since then he has been rushed with business, so that he employs two men steadily. His work being first-class and as near to perfection as one can make it, he has built up a reputation which is in itself capital. None among the many who have lived and prospered here, and looked back upon the town with gratitude, has outdistanced Ormal Hardy in his loyalty to the town that has been so loyal to him.
In the year 1883, and in the town of Glenwood, Iowa, Mr. Hardy was married to Miss Pella Cook, a native of Ohio, who has contributed to her husband's advancement; and since marrying he has become an Odd Fellow, being now a member of the Pomona lodge, where he is a past noble grand and has reached all the chairs of the Encampment.
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