USA > California > San Bernardino County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume III > Part 18
USA > California > Riverside County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume III > Part 18
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Mrs. Phy since the death of her husband has shown a great business ability in operating and maintaining the ranch and orange grove at
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Highland, and is one of that community's most respected citizens. She is a member of San Bernardino Chapter of the Eastern Star and was a member of the Rebekahs in Oregon. She takes an active interest in betterment work of all kinds and is chairman of the Home Department of the Farm Bureau of Highland Center, and a member of the Woman's Club of Highland.
ALLEN CORNELIUS first knew California in the role of a miner in the golden days of the early fifties. Some thirty years later he returned to the state, settling in the southern part, and from thereafter until his death was one of the useful and honored pioneers and business men of Ontario, where Mrs. Cornelius still resides.
Allen Cornelius was born at Williamsburg, Indiana, September 8, 1830, son of Allen and Maria (Platt) Cornelius. His father, a ship builder by trade, went to Indiana and took up a homestead. He had no knowledge of farming, little inclination for agricultural pur- suits, and he continued to do mechanical work and turned over the management of the farm to his wife, who was very efficient.
Allen Cornelius as a youth had limited opportunities to attend school. He worked on the home farm until 1850, when he and another boy of the same age joined a party of ten with a wagon and three horses and started overland for California. They took turns driving, one of them always walking to save the team. It was a six months trip to California. At Salt Lake they stopped and worked through the harvest to get supplies and necessary food. This made them late and storms had closed the trail, compelling them to abandon the team and, packing all they could carry, they struggled on afoot and were almost famished when they arrived on Feather River. At a place now known as Feather River Inn, Allen Cornelius rested a couple of days and then went to work in the mines, and remained here three years. When he returned East it was by the Isthmus of Panama. At that time it was customary for the natives to carry passengers over the mountain pass, but Mr. Cornelius disgusted the carriers and did his own walking. After his return to Indiana the Civil war broke out. and he early enlisted in the Seventeenth Illinois Cavalry and served all through.
In 1866 Mr. Cornelius married Miss Sarah M. Bates, who was born near Kokomo, Indiana, June 10, 1846, daughter of Isaac and Nancy (Noble) Bates. Mrs. Cornelius received a very good education for the time and had taught school before her marriage. She was about twenty when she married. Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius went to North- western Illinois and lived on a farm in Jo Daviess County, where all their children were born. In 1880 his health failed and he went to Kansas, but without relief, and then started for California, reaching this state in the spring of 1886. After several months of search for a location he settled in Ontario in August of that year and soon opened a hardware and plumbing establishment. Ontario was then a new community, with little business, and he had something of a struggle to maintain his place. Besides selling goods he did much contracting in plumbing and tinsmith work, made the plans and later installed the city water mains at Upland and was also contractor for the laying of the mains of the Ontario water system. His energy and thrift brought him a successful position in business affairs, and he enjoyed the activities of business as long as his health was restored. Mr. Cornelius died at Ontario July 26, 1913. He was a member of the Grand Army Post and a Methodist.
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The oldest of the four sons of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius is Arthur Cornelius, who was born in Jo Daviess County, Illinois, October 21, 1867, and is now postmaster of a sub-station at San Francisco. He married Sarah Esdale, and they have a son, Arthur Allen, born October 17, 1906.
Louis Noble Cornelius, born July 30, 1869, died at Ontario April 17, 1892.
Charles S. Cornelius, born March 6, 1872, is in the plumbing busi- ness at Ontario. He and his brother Arthur enlisted for service in the Spanish-American war, going with a California regiment. Charles Cornelius married Miss Lena Akey, of Minnesota. They have five children : Charles Hazen, born at Los Angeles November 25, 1902, is a graduate of the Chaffee Union High School; Lawrence, born at Los Angeles April 17, 1905, attending the Chaffee High School; Lewellyn, twin brother of Lawrence, who before he was sixteen years of age enlisted as an ordinary seaman in the navy on January 1, 1921, was for three years abroad the California and is a student of radio ; Oma Marie, born March 26, 1909, in Los Angeles, and died February 8, 1917 ; and Ralph Chadley, born at Ontario July 11, 1910.
Ralph J. Cornelius, fourth and youngest son of the late Allen Cornelius, was born December 4, 1876, and is associated with his brother in the plumbing business at Ontario. In 1901 he married Miss Annie Wier, a native of Canada, and they have three children : Marion, born April 27, 1902, a student in Pomona College ; Paul, born April 22, 1906, attending the Chaffee Union High School; and Jean Cornelius, born October 12, 1910.
Mrs. Allen Cornelius occupies one of the comfortable homes of Ontario. She is a very active member of the Ontario Pioneer Society, a member of the Woman's Relief Corps, and is also active in church. From her own experience she has been a witness of all the develop- ments in this section of the county for thirty-five years.
WILLIAM PLASMAN has been a resident of Ontario ten years, and in that time has gained a secure and enviable place in the business in- terests of the city as a real estate and insurance man, with offices at 204 South Vine Avenue.
Mr. Plasman was born at Holland, Michigan, April 14, 1879, son of Frederick and Henrietta (Brinkman) Plasman, farming people. William was one of eleven children, two of whom died in infancy. He grew up on his father's farm in Western Michigan, graduated from the Holland High School at the age of fourteen, and from that time he was diligently working to aid his parents in maintaining their large family. For several seasons he did work caring for the grounds of summer homes of Chicago people living around Holland. Even after reaching the age of twenty-one Mr. Plasman continued to give his parents some of his earnings, and he did this until he married and had a family of his own.
In 1902 he married Miss Margaret Slenk, also a native of Holland, Michigan, where her parents were farmers. She was one of a family of twelve children. Mr. and Mrs. Plasman have five sons and daugh- ters, the first three born in Michigan and two in California. The oldest, Miss Hazel, who was born on Halloween in 1903, is a. student in the Chaffee Union High School; John W., born July 4, 1907, is in the first year of the Chaffee High School, is a real boy and a live member of the Boy Scouts; Floyd Leslie, born January 2, 1909, is
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also a member of the Boy Scouts and a grammar school student; Gertrude Dorothy, born December 23, 1914, and William, Jr., born January 27, 1918.
It was due to failing health that Mr. Plasman first came to Cali- fornia, spending some time in San Francisco, and San Diego, and then going to Pasadena, where he remained six months. Being much improved physically, he returned to Michigan, but on October 12, 1911, he and his family left that state and after a month at Pasadena established their home in Ontario. Mr. Plasman secured temporary employment with the Hot Point Electric Company, until he could embrace an opportunity to get into business for himself. While in Michigan he had subdivided a 30-acre tract, which was a part of his father's farm, and sold several of the lots, and he therefore had something more than a general knowledge of the real estate business when he came to California. On August 1, 1912, he began doing business as a real estate broker in Ontario and also as a representative of some standard fire insurance companies. He handles city and close in properties, conducts a rental agency, and successive years have brought him a very substantial patronage. Mr. Plasman since casting his first vote has been a prohibitionist, and has courageously fought liquor and its interests. He was registered under the draft during the war, but was not called to the colors. Mr. Plasman has made his own way in the world. When he left for California he had only three hundred dollars, but he has contrived to better himself and at the same time has worked steadily for the advancement of the community.
JOHN G. GAYLORD came to Ontario a quarter of a century ago, and has since acquired and developed some of the most valuable orange groves in this section. He is one of the very substantial citizens of San Bernardino County. His Americanism is one of practical patriotic achievements and of an ancestry that runs back to the early Colonial period. Mr. Gaylord is a veteran of the Civil war, and two of his sons were in the World war, while one was in the Spanish-American conflict.
John G. Gaylord was born in Litchfield County, Connecticut, July 28, 1843, son of Lyman and Chloe (Chamberlain) Gaylord, also natives of Connecticut and of old New England ancestry. The Chamberlains were of English stock. The Gaylord lineage has been traced back into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when they were residents of Normandy, France. They were a family of wealth and noble prestige at that time. About 1550 some of the Gaylords left Normandy with other refugees and went to England, settling chiefly about Exeter and Tiverton. For a number of generations the chief occupation of the family was weavers of worsted goods and makers of Kersey cloth. One of the Gaylords sought freedom from the political and religious restrictions of the England of the early seventeenth century and brought his family to America on the ship Mary and John, arriving at Nantucket May 30, 1630. The American generations of the name have been identified largely with agriculture and horticulture.
Lyman Gaylord, father of John G., was a blacksmith by trade. He and his wife, Chloe, had four daughters and two sons, one of the former dying in childhood. In 1855 the family left Connecticut, bound for lowa. They went around the Great Lakes to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where the party of colonists to the number of sixteen secured three heavy ox teams and slowly and with great difficulty
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made their way through the woods, reaching in December of that year their chosen location at Nora Springs, Floyd County, lowa, where Edson Gaylord, a brother of Lyman, had preceded them and had constructed a log cabin. In this rough shelter the entire party were housed during the winter. While the congestion was great, doubtless, like other pioneers of the time, they always made room for strangers and guests. It was a severe winter, with deep snow and very cold, and the deer would break through the crust and could easily be killed, thus affording an abundant supply of venison, while there was also prairie chicken to vary the diet. Lyman Gaylord pre- empted land at Nora Springs and lived there, a substantial farmer, increasing his holdings to a large farm. He was born November 12, 1815, and died at Nora Springs November 26, 1892. His wife, Chloe, was born February 14, 1816, and died at the old homestead in Iowa March 12, 1902.
John G. Gaylord was twelve years of age when the family made its migration from New England to Iowa. Practically all his educa- tional advantages came to him in Connecticut. He shared in the vicissitudes of pioneer existence in Iowa, and became fully disciplined in the hard toil required of farmers who were breaking up the virgin soil and clearing away the wilderness. When the Civil war came on he enlisted on April 12, 1862, in Company A, Twenty-first Iowa Infantry. His regiment was in the Western Army, campaigning through Missouri and down the Mississippi, was at Pittsburg, at Mobile, and in other campaigns in Gulf states. Mr. Gaylord did his full duty as a soldier, but escaped wounds, and after being dis- charged he returned home to Nora Springs on July 4, 1865. After the war he farmed with his father until he married and bought land of his own.
On May 21, 1872, Mr. Gaylord married Miss Alice Jane LaDue, who was born December 26, 1845, and died in the same year as her marriage. On September 16, 1873, Mr. Gaylord married Miss Sarah Ankeney, who was born at Ankeneytown, Knox County, Ohio, March 3, 1848, and died at Ontario, California, February 5, 1918, nearly forty-five years after her marriage.
Mr. Gaylord was a prosperous lowa farmer for thirty years before coming to California in 1896. He bought ten acres of oranges at the northwest corner of Fifth Street and San Antonio Avenue in Ontario, and undertook a business entirely new to him, but he made a thorough study of orange culture and by experience and practice has become an authority in the citrus industry. When he located at Ontario much of the surrounding land was wild and unproductive, and his individual success has contributed to the general prosperity of the community. Mr. Gaylord now owns 321/2 acres of highly productive orchards and has other investments. He has bought and sold and still owns considerable real estate in Los Angeles, and has some profitable oil properties in Southern California. As this record reveals, Mr. Gaylord has been a man of action and industry, and his prosperity is the result of his individual accumulations. He is a mem- ber of Ontario Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, is a prohibi- tionist and has been a life-long member of the Christian Church. He has done his duty as a citizen and has reared and educated a family of sturdy sons and daughters.
All his seven children were born at Nora Springs, Iowa. Arthur, the oldest, born June 18, 1874, died in infancy. Alice, born January 7, 1875, is Mrs. H. E. Blazer, of Ontario. Miss Flora was born Septem-
6. Ensley.
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ber 16, 1878. George, born February 2, 1881, a veteran of two wars, has a more complete record in the following paragraphs. Sarah, born December 9, 1882, is the wife of G. A. Holbrook, of Ontario, and the ten children born to their union were Marion, Arthur, Guy (died in infancy), Aldura, Horace, Emma, John G., Eleanor, Mona and Guy Paul. The sixth child, Chloe, born August 16, 1885, was first married to Percy Dewar, who left one son, William Ernest, and she is now the wife of Ray R. Delhauer and has a daughter, Mary Alice. The seventh and youngest of the family is John G. Gaylord, Jr.
George Gaylord was only seventeen years of age when the Spanish- American war broke out, but he enlisted at the first call, in Company D of the Seventh California Volunteers, and was in service until the close of the war. Later he removed to the Imperial Valley, and he gave up a profitable position there to offer his services to the Govern- ment in the World war. He enlisted as a private in June, 1917, in Company D of the One Hundred and Forty-Third Field Artillery, was in training at Camp Kearney, where he was made a corporal, and in July, 1918, left Hoboken for France, landing at Liverpool. Four days later he embarked at Southampton and crossed the channel to Le Havre, thus going to Southern France, to Camp De Souge, near Bor- deaux, not far from the ancestral lands of the original Gaylords. While in training camp there he was advanced to sergeant. After the signing of the armistice he was put in the military police service, a duty that gave him opportunities to visit many interesting points, including St. Sulpice, where he guarded a prison camp, also did guard duty in the Pyrenees Mountains and passes and was at Chateau-Thierry and other points of the battle front. On returning to the United States he received honorable discharge at San Francisco July 1, 1919, and since resuming civilian life has become an orange grower at Ontario and is one of the prominent and influential business men of that city.
George A. Gaylord married Miss Beatrice Hardey Barham on October 30, 1921. She was born in Akron, Iowa, February 14, 1882, daughter of Charles Hardy and Susan (Ross) Hardy. Mrs. Gaylord came to Ontario, California, at age of five years with parents and was educated in the public and high schools of Ontario. At the time of her marriage to Mr. Gaylord she was the widow of Charles Barham, and has one son, John, by the former marriage.
The younger son, John G. Gaylord, Jr., who was born July 21, 1892, was educated in the Chaffee Union High School and early took up the citrus fruit industry. On April 16, 1918, he married Miss Lottie Doner, a popular and well educated Ontario girl. They have a daughter, Mary Louise, born August 25, 1920. Though mar- ried, John G. Gaylord, Jr., put in no claims for exemption in the draft, and in August, 1918, joined the colors in the Quartermaster's Depart- ment at Camp Lewis, where he was put in a replacement division. He received his honorable discharge January 6, 1919, and at once returned to Ontario and resumed his business connections.
JOHN PERRY ENSLEY has done the work of a pioneer in the develop- ment of Ontario's horticulture, and first and last has performed a great deal of conscientious, hard working service for the community from a civic standpoint.
Mr. Ensley, whose home is at 126 West D Street, has been a resi- dent of Ontario for thirty-five years. He was born near Auburn, Indiana, October 9, 1853, son of George and Lydia (Noel) Ensley. His parents were born in Pennsylvania, and the Ensleys are of
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original German stock, though the family has been in America for a number of generations. George Ensley was born in 1815 and died in California in 1888. The mother died in Indiana in 1884. They were the parents of nine children, John Perry being the seventh in age. George Ensley moved out to California in the fall of 1886, acquiring property in Ontario, where he spent the rest of his life. He had been in earlier years a farmer, but had the all around mechani- cal genius that enabled him to succeed in almost every occupation. At one time he operated a saw mill of his own construction, and after coming to California he was an orange grower.
John Perry Ensley is a thoroughly well educated gentleman. He graduated from the Auburn High School in Indiana and attended the Indiana State University. He taught eight winter terms of school, and refused the office of principal of the Auburn schools. While he did well as a teacher, it was not an occupation altogether to his liking, and his preference was for the practical side of farming.
In 1884 he married Miss Clara B. Clark, a native of Indiana, and in 1886, for the benefit of her health he came to Ontario and bought twenty acres of wild land at the northeast corner of Eighteenth Street and Euclid Avenue. This he cleared and planted to citrus fruits during 1887. His father in the meantime had purchased five acres of oranges on West Fourth Street and also ten acres of unimproved land on West G Street. After his father's death Mr. Ensley bought out the interests of the heirs and developed the unimproved tract to citrus fruits. All of this land he actually improved by his own labors and efforts, and he now has thirty-five acres of producing groves, besides other valuable investments, including his modern residence, which was constructed some years ago. His prosperity is the direct result of his earnest efforts and hard labors since coming to California.
By his first marriage Mr. Ensley had two children, one dying in infancy. His son, Oliver P. Ensley, born in Indiana May 6, 1886, graduated from the Chaffey High School at Ontario, from the Univer- sity of Southern California, where he pursued both classical and law courses, was admitted to the bar in 1912, and during that year pursued a commercial course in the Eastman Business College at Poughkeepsie, New York. He is now successfully established as an attorney at Hemet, California. He is prominent in the Masonic Order and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Oliver Ensley married Miss Catherine Todd, of Indiana, in June, 1919, and they have one son, Edward Clark Ensley, born March 23, 1921.
John P. Ensley lost his first wife at Ontario August 1, 1888, and his father died on the 26th of the same month. July 25, 1894, John Perry Ensley married Elizabeth Borthwick, a native of Liver- pool, England. Her father was a native of Scotland and her mother of Ireland. Her father was a jeweler, coming to America and being an early settler in Ontario, where he was one of the pioneer men of his trade. By his second marriage Mr. Ensley had five children, three still living; Isabel, born April 2, 1899, is a graduate of the Chaffey Union High School and the University of Southern California. Gladys Theresa, born December 24, 1901, is a graduate of the Chaffey Union High School and the Chaffey, Jr., College. Elizabeth Borth- wick, born August 7, 1906, is in her second year at the Chaffey High School. These children are all natives of Ontario.
John P. Ensley is a prominent democrat, and for a number of years was a member of the Democratic Central Committee. He is a stickler for good, clean government and decent citizenship. He served
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as trustee of Ontario fifteen years, having been elected a member of the first board at the incorporation of Ontario and serving nine years. Later he acceded to the insistent demand of his fellow citizens and became a candidate for trustee, serving this second time a total of six years and was very progressive in building good roads. For three years he was a director of the San Antonio Water Company, and has always been active in movements to benefit citrus growers as well as the general welfare of the community. At present he is director of the A Street Citrus Association.
Mrs. Ensley, born October 23, 1865, came to the United States with her parents, John P. and Margaret (Dunn) Borthwick, in 1869, locat- ing in Scranton, Pennsylvania. They came to Ontario, California, in April, 1884. The father died April 9, 1908, and the mother died in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Ensley was educated in the public schools of Pennsylvania. She was the first young lady to live in Ontario.
JOHN M. HORTON is one of the substantial citizens of Ontario, one of the old timers there, and has contributed to the development of the community largely through his individual energies and labors. He has assured himself of a competence and is now enjoying a com- fortable retirement.
Mr. Horton was born in Bedford, Indiana, February 10, 1846, son of John and Almyra (Finley) Horton. His mother was a native of Tennessee, and died when her son John was two years of age, leaving three children, George Finley Horton, William Hampton, who died at the age of four, and John M.
George Finley Horton volunteered in the Union Army at the time of the Civil war, and was killed in the battle of Corinth October 6, 1862. John Horton, who was born in Indiana November 6, 1817, died in March, 1885. He was four times married. Of his children only two are now living, Joseph Oscar and John M. The former is a resident of Salem, Nebraska. John Horton was a blacksmith by trade, and in 1857 moved with his third wife and family to Marengo, Iowa County, Iowa, where he bought land and spent sixteen years, and then moved to Van Buren County, Iowa, where he died in 1885.
John M. Horton was eleven years old when taken to Iowa, and he finished his education in a district school in that state. During his earlier years he farmed and was in the grocery business one year. At Marengo, Iowa, February 4, 1875, he married Miss Kate Morse, who was born at Brownhelm, Loraine County, Ohio, daughter of C. R. and Harriet A. (Bradford) Morse. Her father was a carpenter by trade, and moved to Iowa in 1855, purchasing land and being a farmer in that state. There were four children in the Morse family, Sarah, Kate, Ella J. and James E. Kate Horton was well educated and taught nine terms of school in Iowa.
On April 7, 1885, Mr. Horton arrived with his family at Ontario, California, and bought Lot 5 in Block 43, putting up a small house at 223 West B Street. This pioneer home he replaced twelve years ago with a modern residence, in which he and his family now live. Mr. Horton came here without much surplus cash, and had to con- trive means of making a living from the first. He engaged in teaming, caring for orchards and vineyards, hauled brick from Pomona for the old Stamm Block, in which was housed Ontario's first bank, hauled material for sidewalks, and for fourteen years his work was largely in the care and supervision of vineyards and groves for other owners.
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