USA > California > San Bernardino County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume II > Part 32
USA > California > Riverside County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume II > Part 32
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ALBERT W. Hook has been the junior partner of Hook Brothers, and practically all his business life has been closely associated with his brother Joseph, also an honored resident of Perris in Riverside County. Hook Brothers were in business at San Francisco, and some thirty-five years ago transferred their interests to Perris, where until recently they figured prominently as merchants, handling most of the grain crops of the valley. men of large capital themselves and controlling capital that has developed and enriched this country for the benefit of future generations.
Albert W. Hook was born at Skowhegan, Maine, December 11. 1855, son of Joseph and Mary Jane (Corson) Hook, also natives of Maine. His father came out to California as early as 1850, via Panama, and in 1861 identified himself permanently with California, expressing regret that he had ever left the state. He was a millwright, an engineer in the construction of many mills in the West. and was closely identified with the pioneer fortunes of both California and Nevada. He died in 1881.
Albert W. Hook was thirteen years of age when he joined his father at San Francisco. He finished his education in the public schools of Oakland and San Francisco, and served an apprenticeship as a machinist at San Francisco. Mr. Hook confesses that he never could get used to the whistle, and as soon as he had served his time he joined his brother Joseph, in 1876, in the firm of Hook Brothers, conducting the Sixth Street Bazaar at San Francisco. Some eleven years later they came to Perris, and until 1919 were in business as general merchants, feed and implement dealers, grain buyers and shippers and lumbermen. Hook Brothers at one time had as high as eight hundred acres under irrigation, growing alfalfa in the Imperial Valley.
Albert W. Hook is a republican. In Lake County, California, April 25, 1885, he married Miss Mabel E. Merritt, a native daughter. Her father. Rufus D. Merritt, conducted a feed store in Alameda County and later in the Santa Clara Valley. Her brother, Fred Merritt, is now county clerk of Lake County. Mr. and Mrs. Hook have two sons. Rufus N., the older, has the Riverside agency for the Wallis tractor. He is a master of the Lodge of Masons at Perris. He married Pet Ellis, a native of North Dakota, daughter of Judge William Ellis, of Riverside. Their two children, Rufus, Jr., and Elizabeth, are both attending school.
Frank miller
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Rolla Edwin, the second son, now an orchardist in Lake County, enlisted in the Aviation Corps during the war and was in the field at San Francisco, San Diego and Marshfield until after the armistice. He married Miss Eileen Allen, daughter of Joseph Allen, of Riverside. They have one son, Kenneth Allen Hook.
FRANK AUGUSTUS MILLER-From the fundamental plans and con- structive developments to the modern forms of beauty and atmosphere that are the distinctive features of Riverside, a lasting debt is due the enterprise and practical idealism of the Miller family, which through two generations and for almost half a century have lived their lives and expressed their ideals in this community.
The history of Riverside dates from 1870, when the Southern Cali- fornia Colony Association bought the mesa land from Louis Rubidoux. This land was a waste and the first efforts of the enterprising colonists from the North Central and the Eastern States were to construct an irrigating ditch and plant thousands of fruit and shade trees. In 1874 the two original navel orange trees from Washington were planted at Riverside, being the foundation of the citrus industry of California. Another influential group of men joined the Riverside Colony that year.
One of them was Captain C. C. Miller, chief engineer for the company. Christopher Columbus Miller, who from that date until his death was closely identified with the growth and development of Riverside, was born in Oneida County, New York, in 1824, son of Chauncey and Alice (Rimey) Miller, and grandson of Grant Miller, who as a pioneer built the first house in that section of New York. C. C. Miller was four years of age when his father died but acquired a good education in the public schools of New York, and when about twenty-one joined his mother and stepfather in Ohio, where he entered Oberlin College. Two years later he entered Cleve- land University, graduating in the Civil Engineering Department in 1852. For about two years he was employed in construction work on the Illinois Central and Atlantic & Ohio Railroads and then estab- lished a home at Tomah, Wisconsin. During the following decade he was identified with the building of many railroads in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and also did much surveying in the newer sections of those states. At the beginning of the Civil war he was commissioned captain of Company M, 49th Wisconsin Infantry. He was in Missouri under General Dodge and, his engineering skill being recognized, he was appointed chief engineer for the Federal forces in that district. He served until his honorable discharge in 1865. Subsequently he was assistant chief engineer in the building of the West Wisconsin & St. Paul Railway and was chief engineer of the Wabash & Lake Superior Railway.
It was on account of the ill health of his wife that he sought the milder climate of California, and in 1872 removed to Los Angeles. He began his duties as chief engineer and superintendent of the El Sob- ante de San Jacinto Rancho at Riverside in June of that year, and in October of the following year moved his family to Riverside from their home in Wisconsin. He planned the main irrigation ditch and had supervision of many other important works, such as the plotting, con- struction and tree planting on Magnolia Avenue. He was the chief engineer in the construction of the Gage Canal system, properly re- ferred to as one of the most important constructive enterprises in the
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early development of Riverside County. As a civil engineer his services were also called to other projects in California and Arizona.
In 1852 Captain Miller married Miss Mary Clark, whose father was a physician in Lorain County, Ohio. She was of Quaker ancestry, and though for about twenty years after her marriage her home was in new and undeveloped countries, she never failed to exemplify the culture and refinement that was a matter of both inheritance and training. She was a splendid home maker, and her children remember her as one in whose gentle nature were found mingled the elements of sweetness and light and a quiet fondness based on an unfaltering trust in the eternal goodness of God. In a record of the notable constructive influences flowing from the Miller family in Riverside appropriate credit should not be withheld from this good and noble character. Captain and Mrs. Miller had four children: Emma, who became the wife of G. O. Newman; Frank A .; Alice, who became the wife of F. W. Richardson and who has always been associated with her brother as manager of the hotel ; and Edward E., who married Miss Emma C. Tompkins.
In lieu of three hundred and seventy-five dollars back salary owing to Captain Miller for his services to the Land Company there was granted him in 1874 the block bordered by Main and Orange and Sixth and Seventh streets, and on that site was built the original adobe home of the family. Frank Miller, a barefoot boy under the instruc tion of an Indian, made the adobe brick which his father laid into the walls. The house when finished in the summer of 1876 was the largest in Riverside. In 1877 the little hotel on an adjoining block was burned, and the Miller family began taking boarders in their commodious home. Those chiefly responsible for the service, which became justly popular from the start, were the wife of Captain Miller and her son Frank and daughter Alice. It was first called the Glen- wood Tavern. When other buildings were added for additional accommodation the name was changed to Glenwood Cottages, and still later to the Glenwood Hotel. In 1881 Captain Miller sold his interests in the Glenwood Hotel to his son Frank, who has been the owner for the past forty years.
Frank Augustus Miller was born at Tomah, Wisconsin, June 30. 1858, and up to the age of fourteen his home was in that state. He had only a limited opportunity to attend public school and most of his instruction was imparted to him by his mother. Indians were his playmates and the outdoor life of the forest country was a splendid practical school for the acquisition of a varied knowledge. He fre- quently accompanied his father on surveying trips through the woods and the wilderness country.
During the first few years of his residence at Riverside he worked at any honorable labor to assist the family, herded sheep, drove mules, budded trees, clerked and acted as zanjero. For a time he conducted a successful grocery business under the name "Blue Front."
The institution with which Mr. Miller's interests have been longest identified and which is in itself a splendid monument to his public enterprise and public spirit, is the Mission Inn of Riverside, regarded by many as the most distinctive hostelry in California and starred by Baedeker as one of the world's greatest hotels. Historically it is the ouigrowth of the simple comforts furnished by the Miller family forty- five years ago in Glenwood Tavern. The essential features of the original mission construction, admirably adapted to the climate of California, have always prevailed in the successive groups of buildings,
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and there has likewise been maintained the spirit of hospitality of the old Missions. The Spanish motto at Mission Inn door is "Enter friend, this is your house." A part of the old adobe home of the Millers is retained in the present structure, used as a tea room. The old Glenwood Hotel finally became the Mission Inn of today. The present mission building was erected in 1901, to replace a number of buildings dating from the three previous decades. In 1907 Mr. Miller made his first European tour, and the result of that was the building of the Cloister and the great Music Room in 1909, exemplifying more of the distinctive features of the California Missions. Mr. Miller made a special trip to Spain to secure old time furniture for the Cloister. Then followed, in 1914, the building of the two Spanish wings and Art Gallery and the new Patio of the Fountain, in which were incorporated characteristic features of Spanish architecture. Even in its modern form Mission Inn emphasizes restful simplicity, expressed in a motto in the lobby : "Ye canna expec' to be baith gran and comf'table."
The Mission Inn has been repeatedly described in travel books and magazines, and its charm has been permanently impressed upon everyone who shared the hospitable comforts. The Inn covers an entire block, comprising the original tract granted to the late Captain Miller. It is four stories high, built in the style of a Franciscan Mission, furnished, decorated and filled with carvings, paintings and curios from the Missions of Mexico and Spain and with art treasures from all over the world. Therefore it is not only a luxurious hotel but has been well described as a library of information, a museum of antiquities, a palace of fine arts, and a place of delight in which to dwell and dream of the romance of the past.
Some of the features which have been greatly admired and written about are the Cloister Music Room (of which Mr. A. B. Benton was the architect ), with its cathedral organ; the Cloister Walk and El Camino Real, the Refectorio or dinning room, the Carmel Room and the adjoining Carmel Tower, the St. Cecelia Wedding Chapel, the Garden of the Bells, the Spanish Art Gallery, and the Spanish Patio; also one of the greatest collections of Bells and Crosses in the world, and a beautiful altar of exquisite workmanship and covered with gold leaf, recently brought from Mexico.
The impressive list of distinguished guests at Mission Inn includes four presidents-Harrison, Mckinley, Roosevelt and Taft. While a guest at the Inn May 7, 1903, President Roosevelt, referring to the building, expressed himself characteristically : "I like it. It is strong, simple and genuine-and strong, simple and genuine things are beauti- ful. I am delighted with the whole thing." On the same day Mr. Roose- velt replanted the original navel orange tree in front of the old Adobe and Campanareo at Mission Inn, Mrs. Frank Miller handing the Pres- ident the spade with which he executed the formality. Besides the great interest attached to the occasion by the presence of Mr. Roose- velt there is some valuable history connected with the tree itself. In his address to Mr. Roosevelt, John G. North, president of the Historical Society, said : "This little tree is of importance and historic value far beyond anything indicated by its size or appearance. It is the pro- genitor of that great industry which has done most to make Southern California famous. The two trees of which this is one, were brought from Bahia in Brazil and sent to Riverside by the Agricultural Depart- ment at Washington in the year 1874. From these two trees by the process of budding into seedling stock, all of the navel orange trees of California have sprung. We feel justified in asking you to plant it in its new home in order that we may cherish and care for it here and that
V+1. 11-15
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in our thoughts it may ever be linked with the President who planted it for us."
David Starr Jordan, while president of Stanford University, and during a visit to the Mission Inn, said: "It has been left for you, Frank Miller, a genuine Californian, to dream of the hotel that ought to be, to turn your ideals into plaster and stone and to give us in mountain-belted Riverside the hotel which a Californian can recognize as his own."
A symbol and a replica of the beauty and history of the past, Mission Inn is rapidly accumulating special historic associations of its own. It has been the inspiration for at least one beautiful musical composition. Carrie Jacobs Bond, America's great song writer, was driving up Mount Rubidoux when her machine stalled on the mountain grade. She walked down the mountain to the Inn, arriving while the chimes were heralding the close of day. The cross on the mountain, the Riverside environment and the chimes, were the inspiration for the words and the music which she composed into "The End of a Perfect Day."
"THE NEW ALHAMBRA"
The cherished volume of my youth was one
That held the legends of a Moorish King,
Who built a palace in the hills of Spain.
It stood, when battlements and towers were done, Protected and environed by a ring Of vast Sierra and wide verdant plains.
It was a pleasure house, for regal state ;
Splendid with courtiers, brilliant with the gleam
Of woman's jewels, and of warriors' arms, Unfading summer lit its bannered gates,
Ringing with song of bird and mountain stream, And hid by magic spells from war's alarms.
It seems so strange, in this far Western Land, To find my childhood's palace of delight ;
The mountains glistening in the summer air, The fragrant orange groves the valleys fanned By cooling breezes from the snowy heights, With roses upon roses everywhere. It is the same, the terraced roofs, the towers,
The arched portal and the massive walls, The overhanging balconies and courts,
The gay crowds idling through the happy hours,
In open gallery and pillared halls, The music, and the revels, and the sports. What flash of genius caught the grace and charm
Of those enchanting stories of the Past, And wrought them in the Glenwood of today,
Which stands a living picture, clear and warm,
Of that far time, and on its walls are cast
The splendors of an age long passed away ? M. L. E.
Reminiscent of President Taft's visit is the great chair known as the Taft Chair, occupying an honored position in the lobby of the Inn. It was made especially for the occasion, though the President, when in- troduced to it at the banquet following the historic dedicatory services on Mount Rubidoux, offered the good-humored criticism that "you didn't need to make it so big."
Of the men chiefly responsible for Mission Inn in its present state his friends unite in pronouncing him a rare combination of the business
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executive with the practical idealist, one who has been able to translate deeply considered plans and projects into the realm of reality. Only in recent years has he been considered one of the men of large capital in Southern California. The success of his achievements has been due in large part to his ability to impart his enthusiasm to others and secure the co-operation of moneyed men in his plans. Almost without excep- tion these enterprises have contributed directly to the general welfare of Riverside. One of the first public movements in which he engaged, and to which he gave strennons devotion for a period of four years, was the project securing county division and the establishment of River- side as the county seat. He went from one end of the state to the other to secure political co-operation and went into politics himself largely to achieve a result of which he was the only man from Riverside to realize and understand the eventual good that would be derived there- from.
Probably because of the Quaker strain in his ancestry Mr. Miller was always fond of the Indians, due also to his boyhood association with them in Wisconsin, and the noted Indian school near Riverside, known as the Sherman Institute, is the product of his personal interest, enthu. siasm and political work. He was active in securing the influence of Vice President Sherman through the co-operation of Collis P. Huntington and Albert K. Smiley.
Mr. Miller was one of the twenty-two men who subscribed to the build- ing of the first horse-car line to Arlington. Later he consolidated the three car lines, White's Addition, Hall's Addition and the Arlington line, and built what was known as the Riverside and Arlington Electric Railway, extending it to the city parks and to all depots. It was not financially profitable, and after carrying the heavy burden for several years he induced Henry E. Huntington, then the controlling factor of the Southern Pacific, to take over the system, and as a result it is now incorporated in the great Pacific Electric System of Southern California.
The first two modern business blocks of Riverside are also credited to the enterprise and initiative of Mr. Miller. Through the co-operation of C. M. Loring and a few local residents of Riverside he built the Loring Opera House, at the time the finest theater in Southern California. Later he built the Rubidoux Block on the opposite corner, that being the first three-story business block on the street.
Through the generosity and co-operation of Henry E. Huntington and C. M. Loring, after the City of Riverside had refused to co-operate, Mr. Miller engineered and handled the practical details in the building of the Rubidoux Mountain Drive and the establishment of Huntington Park. The culmination of this project was the dedication of the Father Serra Cross on the mountain. This service was conducted by Bishop Conaty and fourteen of his clergy. The inscription on the tablet on the mountain reads: "Fray Junipero Serra, 1713-1884. Dedicated April 26, 1907, by Rt. Rev. Thomas James Conaty, Bishop of Monterey and Los Angeles, in the presence of many people." On this occasion it is said more dis- tinguished men of the state were assembled than at any other time. Besides the Catholic dignitaries there were bishops of the Episcopal and Methodist churches, the governor of California and private trains with the parties of Henry E. Huntington, E. P. Ripley of the Santa Fe and United States Senator William A. Clark. Later President Taft un- veiled the tablet on the mountain in honor of Fray Junipero Serra. This tablet reads: "The beginning of civilization in California. Fray Junipero Serra, Apostle, Legislator, Builder. To commemorate his good works this tablet is here placed. Unveiled by William Howard
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Taft, Twenty-seventh President of the United States, October 12, A. D. 1909."
Reference has already been made to the banquet that followed the services on Mount Rubidoux. While it was understood the President would make no speech on the occasion, the peace and beauty of his environment impelled him to say: "I think it is fitting that the journey should end in a building like this, constructed to commemorate the Mis- sions that form so important a part in the history of this region which we have been privileged to visit today. I fully sympathize with the desire to preserve as historical memorials, worthy of preservation, these Missions and the style of architecture that the Missions represent. I sympathize with the people of Riverside in desiring their Government building constructed on the Mission plan. If we have any past of an historical character, we ought not to destroy it, and California is one of the few states that reach back far enough into the past to have memorials to which you can make the architecture accord. I am glad to go out of California with the sweet and pleasant memory of this function held in such a beautiful mansion and suggestive of all the sweet romance of the early history of the State."
Upon the suggestion of Jacob Riis, on the Easter following the dedi- cation of the cross, the first Easter Sunrise Service was held on Rubidoux, attended by about two hundred people. This has since become an annual event, attended by twenty thousand people.
Later still, on November 11, 1918, was started the annual celebration of the World's Peace. This service is held at Sunset and should become as great as the Easter Sunrise Service.
Ever since coming to Riverside Mr. Miller has been a member of the First Congregational Church, and for a number of years urged among his fellow members the importance of a permanent edifice whose archi- tecture should be fitting the environment. The result is the third building of the Church, one of the finest examples of church architecture on the Coast, in the Spanish Renaissance-Gothic style.
June 1. 1880, Frank A. Miller married Miss Isabella Demarest Hard- enberg. She died in July, 1908. For thirty years or more she had been one of the very useful influences in Riverside educational and social affairs, having been the first school principal in Riverside and one of the first women teachers in the district, and was closely associated with Mr. Miller in the execution of many of his plans, particularly those relating to the Mission Inn. One daughter survives her. Alice Hardenberg Miller, now wife of DeWitt Hutchings, who is assistant manager of the Mission Inn. December 8, 1910, Mr. Miller married Miss Marian L. Clark, of Riverside.
BENJAMIN STONE has been a resident of Highgrove, Riverside County, for the past several years, within which he has marked for himself secure vantage-place as one of the successful orange-growers of this section of the state. In his vigorous business activities he has bought and sold much real estate in California, as well as in other states of the Union, and his investments have brought to him substantial financial returns. He has been in the most positive sense one of the world's constructive workers, and he has found it difficult to abate his energetic business activities. About twelve years ago he purchased a fine home in the City of Los Angeles, with the intention of retiring from active business and, with his wife, enjoying the quiet life and many attractions of this home. Within a short time, however, both rebelled against the inactivity, and sought the open spaces, where, as he has said, he could find opportunity once more
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for putting his muscles into play and where Mrs. Stone could breathe freely. Mr. Stone was formerly an active worker and official in the Methodist Episcopal Church, but of later years he has had revelations which, he says, have made him a sceker after truth for its own sake, and he is using his mental powers in an attempt to find truth and to know its proper application to human destinies. In his search, with no thought of founding a so-called "cult," he has gained an appreciable following on the part of others seeking for light, and he finds his attractive ranch home at Highgrove an ideal place for study, self-communion and psy- chological and philosophical research.
Mr. Stone was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, April 26, 1858, and is a son of Edward and Mary ( Phillips) Stone both natives of England. The father became a prosperous framer in Nova Scotia, and was also a successful contractor in connection with railway construction under the direct supervision and control of the Government of Nova Scotia, where he and his wife continued to reside until the close of their lives, both having been nearly eighty years of age at death.
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