USA > California > San Bernardino County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume III > Part 3
USA > California > Riverside County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume III > Part 3
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Judge French is a son of Charles O. French, who was born at Williston, Chittenden County, Vermont, February 24, 1839, and as a young man became a resident of Burlington. where he graduated from the University of Vermont. During the Civil war he served in the Twelfth Vermont Volunteers with the Army of the Potomac, and at the close of the struggle was commissioned captain. After the war he became proprietor of a book and stationery store at Burlington, but, seeking a larger field of activities, sold out in 1876 and removed to New York City, where he entered a general publishing business, an enterprise that proved highly successful and grew to one of extensive dimensions, largely under his direction and as a result of his management. He was in this business until 1910, when he sold his interests and came to River, side to live with his son. While in New York he was president of the Dolores Valley Mining Company from 1882 to 1887.
George A. French. a son of Charles O. and Mary H. French, was born at Burlington, Chittenden County, Vermont, July 5, 1868. Up to
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the age of eight years he attended public school in that city, afterward in New York, and in 1880 entered St. Paul's preparatory school at Concord, New Hampshire, graduating six years later. In 1889 he received the Bachelor of Arts degree from Trinity College at Hartford, Con- necticut, his alma mater three years later conferring upon him the degree Master of Arts. He began the preparatory course of lectures in the fall of 1890 in the law department of Columbia University at New York, but the next year entered the New York Law School, graduating LL.B. in 1892.
Judge French was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of New York State, and although a young man his abilities quickly attracted a large and important clientele in New York City. After a year of very hard work he took a vacation, traveling in Europe from October, 1893, to June, 1894. He then visited Riverside, and its attractions proved a dominating influence sufficient to wean him altogether from the East. He bought a two hundred and forty acre ranch, and for three years lived outdoors, busied with its work and superintendence. He then moved into Riverside and resumed the practice of law, to which he has given his time ever since. He still owns a hundred sixty acres of farming land near Winchester and also a five acre orange grove in Riverside.
In 1907 he was appointed judge of the Police Court by Mayor S. C. Evans, and by reappointment from succeeding mayors held that position until 1915. Since 1918 he has been assistant city attorney. During the World war he gave to the cause and needs of the Govern- ment call upon his time and finances, and was also a member of the Second Company of the California Home Guards. Socially and fraternally he is a member of numerous organizations, including the New England College Club, College Men's Association of Southern California, National Geographic Society, Psi Upsilon fraternity, Royal Arcanum and Independent Order of Foresters.
At Riverside, July 25, 1899, Judge French married Miss Alice Lindenberger, of Winchester. Her father, Hon. F. T. Lindenberger, represented this district in the State Legislature in 1897. The four children of Judge and Mrs. French are: Dorothy E., a student in the Riverside Junior College; Mary H., Charles Oliver and David G., pupils in the Riverside schools.
A. G. HUBBARD came into the great West and Southwest shortly after the close of the Civil war. He had the training of a mining engineer, and the mining industry absorbed his enthusiasm, his strength and his abilities in California and in other sections of the Southwest until he had ac- cumulated a substantial fortune. In the meantime he had visited what is now the Redlands districts, had made some investments, and for many vears has been one of the foremost capitalists in directing and lending his resources to enterprises and individuals who have redeemed a desert country into one of the most profitable and beautiful sections of South- ern California.
Mr. Hubbard was born in Wisconsin in 1847. As a youth he studied and acquired a knowledge of chemistry, metallurgy and mine engineering. It was in 1865 that he started across the plains on horseback, riding all the way from the Missouri River to the City of Mexico. Thence returning to Texas, he came on West to the Pacific Coast in the fall of 1867. In 1886 Mr. Hubbard took charge of a copper mine for an English syndicate, and thereafter for several years was a mine super- intendent. had charge of reduction works, and did much expert service in reporting on prospects through Arizona, California, Mexico and New
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Mexico. From the active practice of his profession he accumulated enough capital to engage in mining for himself, and he opened and de- veloped and managed a number of mines in various states, giving prac- tically his entire time to the business until 1893.
While on a vacation in 1878 Mr. Hubbard visited Redlands and the Santa Ana River Valley. With the eye of a practical engineer he con- templated the construction of a flume to carry lumber from the San Bernardino Mountains into the valley. Subsequent investigation re- vealed the fact that the Bear Valley Water Company had already ap- propriated the waters. While this frustrated his plans, Mr. Hubbard was so impressed with the valley that he invested a hundred and fifty thousand dollars on his own account, and even then prophesied that an enormous wealth would some day be returned to the orange industry in this vicinity. Mr. Hubbard improved a large part of his holdings. But the lure of the mining game was still strong upon him, and leaving his investments at Redlands he returned to his occupation, having pur- chased and in association with his old mining partner, George W. Bowers, undertook the development of the famous Harqua Hala Bonan- za property in Arizona. They opened this at an expense of about two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, and in a short time had taken out ores to the value of a million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. With this success to his credit Mr. Hubbard sold his share of the property, and determined to retire altogether from mining. After two years of extensive travel throughout North America, Mexico and the Gulf countries, he returned to Redlands and at once proceeded to carry out some plans for improvement that he had cherished.
Almost his first act was to demolish the old Terrace Villa, one of the pioneer hotel properties of Redlands and where he had been a guest when it was in the course of construction. This was one of his first purchases in Redlands, and one the site he constructed the beautiful residence where he still resides and for which he retains the old name of the Villa Terrace. Subsequent years he has employed with wise public spirit and public generosity his resources as a capitalist, investing in property and also funding other men in their improvements and under- takings. To A. G. Hubbard Redlands owes in no small degree its won- derful prosperity.
He married in 1887. in Redlands. Lura Spoor. daughter of Rev. O. H. Spoor. of Redlands. They have three children: Herbert L., a graduate of Stanford and now engaged in farming in San Bernardino County : Mabel G., wife of Brooke E. Sawyer, of Santa Barbara; and Lura Hubbard. attending school.
Mr. Huhhard is a thirty-second degree Mason through both the York and Scottish Rite and is also a member of the Redlands Lodge of Benevo- lent and Protective Order of Elks. In politics he is a republican.
JAMES MCDOUGALL has given fully a third of a century of con- tinnous business activity to Riverside. He owns a large and profitable business in the painting and decorating trades, and more or less contin- uously since coming to California has also been interested in the develop- ment and ownership of orange groves.
Mr. McDougall was born at Woodstock. Ontario. Canada. August 3. 1856. son of Tames and Cecilia MeDougall. His parents represented fam- ilies that were pioneers in Hamilton and Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. His father had a successful career in those localities as an archi- tect and hnilder.
James McDougall acquired a practical education in the schools of Woodstock. and at the age of fifteen began a five years' apprenticeship
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in the painting and decorating business. He learned these trades thor- oughly, and they have been the foundation of his life work. For several years he had a good business at Woodstock, but in his enthusiasm for success took on heavier burdens than his strength would permit, and by 1886 he realized his health was more important than his business, and early in 1887 he sold out and came to Riverside, California. In that year he bought some town lots and erected a home, where he and his good wife have lived continuously for thirty-four years. He was soon re-established on a profitable basis in the painting and decorating business, and still directs a thoroughly equipped and efficient organization in that line. He has developed several orange groves during the last thirty years, and always has one as a side line interest.
Mr. McDougall is a man of more than one resource. As a child he was musically inclined, and at the age of fourteen was playing a clarionet in a military band attached to the Twenty-Second Rifle Regiment at Woodstock. He is a liberal republican in politics, with reform tendencies, is a member of the Masons and Elks, and he and Mrs. McDougall have been members of the Presbyterian Church since the church of that de- nomination was established at Riverside.
At Woodstock, Canada, February 9, 1881. Mr. McDougall married Miss Mary McLean. Her parents came from Scotland on a sailing vessel to Canada in 1850. Mr. and Mrs. McDougall had six children, four sons and two daughters, one son dying in infancy. The two older sons, S. R. and J. B. McDougall, both served with Company M of the Seventh Regi- ment of the National Guard at Riverside. S. R. McDougall now con- ducts a blacksmith and automobile shop. J. Boyd McDougall was deputy tax collector of Riverside County for seven years and died during the influenza epidemic of 1918-19. The third son, H. W. McDougall, is a refrigerating engineer. The two daughters, Jean and Winifred, are both married.
HENRY B. SLATER-Riverside for a number of years has been the chosen home of a scientist and inventor whose name and work are known to practically every student of metallurgy and the chemistry of metals. The career of Henry B. Slater has been unlike that of most men who has attained distinction in the field of scholarship. The zest for adventure which impelled him as a youth to sail to all ports and quarters of the civilized globe no doubt has been a factor in the pursuit of knowledge which has characterized his later years.
He was born at Birmingham. England. January 16. 1850. son of Frederick and Ann (Stokes) Slater, both of old English families. The Slater family runs back in Derbyshire for many generations. His grandfather was a member of Wellington's staff. Frederick Slater was a carter in England, an occupation better described in this country as that of a transfer man. Henry B. Slater has three brothers and two sisters living; James, a retired business man at Birmingham; Fred, a gentleman farmer. now practically retired. of Knowle and Birmingham: George. a Birmingham business man; Mrs Marie Fisher, wife of a business man at Irvington, New Jersey ; and Sarah Jane, of Birmingham.
Intellectual curiosity and the faculty of enterprise early matured in the character of Henry B. Slater, and he was a mere child when he made up his mind to see what the world was like outside of his local environment. At the age of ten he ran away and tramped to London, the romance of the sea appealing to him and he secured a berth aboard the steamship "Pilot" of the General Steam Navigation
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Company's line. He went on board as "call boy" at a time when no ships ·were equipped with electric bells or telephones, and when verbal messages had to be communicated from one part of the ship to another by messenger boys. On the Pilot he made several trips between London and Hamburg. He next joined the Sarah Scott, a full rigged ship bound for the East Indies. On his eleventh birthday, in 1861, he was going through the Mozambique Channel. The cruise con- tinued to the East Indies, Australia, the Philippine Islands, Japan, and in 1863 he sailed from Cebu, Philippine Islands, for London by way of Honolulu, San Francisco and the Horn. The boat dis- charged part of its cargo in San Francisco, thence departing, Decem- ber 16, 1863, around the Horn and arriving in London in May, 1864. Young Slater was afterward on different vessels on the French, German and Danish coasts and in the White Sea at Archangel. While at Jaffa in the Mediterranean he and three other shipmates took A. W. O. L. and visited in Jerusalem a week. Returning to Jaffa they found their vessel waiting for them.
Still another trip around the world was made by way of Cape Good Hope to the East Indies and back around the Horn. In 1868 he sailed from Newport, Wales, for Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the bark Janet of Liverpool, Nova Scotia. During the next two years he was in the coastal service out of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, to the West Indies and South American ports. Wednesday, January 25, 1870, Mr. Slater sailed from New York to Liverpool, Nova Scotia. The vessel en- countered a heavy blow from the northwest, and the ship was lost. The crew took to the ship's long boat and were exposed twenty-one days before being rescued. There were eleven in the boat, but all came through. That voyage of hardship coincided with the storm when the City of Boston of the Inman line disappeared. This boat left Halifax the last Saturday in January, 1870, and was never heard from again.
Mr. Slater made one more trip from Liverpool, Nova Scotia, to the West Indies, with the understanding that he was to receive his discharge in the United States. On arrival in New York in September, 1870, he was given his discharge and went to Cambridge, Massa- chusetts. He remained there until 1874, by which time he had completed his apprenticeship as a machinist with J. J. Walworth & Company, now the Walworth Manufacturing Company. He then re- visited England, returning to the United States late in the fall, and spent the time until the spring of 1875 in and around Liverpool, Nova Scotia. His early industrial experience was at Providence. Rhode Island, where he worked for a time in the tool department of the Brown & Sharpe Man- ufacturing Company and also in the Corliss Engine Works.
Mr. Slater set out for California in 1876. Circumstances caused him to abandon his journey and remain in Missouri, where he enrolled as a student in Drury College in Springfield. He pursued his studies there until July, 1879, and then returned East and for a year was in Brown University at Providence, Rhode Island. At Brown he studied Greek under Benjamin Ide Wheeler, whose name is familiarly linked with the University of California. While in Missouri Mr. Slater contracted malaria, and this, together with pecuniary embarrassment, caused him to give up the intention of completing his university career.
About that time he became associated with others in the business of electro plating. and that was his specialty for some time. Nickel plating was then in its infancy, and having made some improvements
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in the process he was employed by the Providence Tool Company of Rhode Island to set up its plant to do its own plating. In 1882 he was employed by the Singer Manufacturing Company of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to install the plating process there.
During 1882-83-84-85, while with the Singer Company, Mr. Slater became interested in chlorine, with special reference to its action upon mineral contents of ores. His continued studies and experiments of nearly forty years make him probably the foremost authority on the use of chlorine in economic metallurgy. In 1889 he obtained a patent for a process of extracting zinc from low grade ores, such as those found in the Leadville district of Colorado, whither he had removed in 1888. About that time he was also experimenting in electrical generators and motors, and was granted several patents for improvements on such machinery.
Mr. Slater was in Colorado until 1902, when he removed to Cali- fornia. For the past twenty years his time has been devoted principally to research along metallurgical lines. He; has been as- sociated for the last sixteen years with R. B. Sheldon, a prominent Riverside business man, whose career is elsewhere sketched in this publication. In the past eight years Mr. Slater has been granted ten different patents on improvements in metallurgical processes. The underlying principles in these processes involve the use of chlorine generated electrolitically in combination with other sub- stances in the formation of a leeching solution with which to extract the metallic values from ores. Copper ores have been the chief subject of his experimental work. Recently he has been engaged in the problem of simplifying a process for making of what is known as Dakin's solution, a chemical and medicinal preparation so success- fully used in surgery during the late war by Dr. Alexis Carrel. His aim is to arrange for production of this solution by those without technical training through the simple application of an electric current that will prepare it in the proper strength for immediate use.
Mr. Slater has received many recognitions of his scientific attain- ments. Drury College conferred upon him the honorary degree of Master of Science in 1889. He was one of the founders of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1884. He is a member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Asso- ciation for the Advancement of Science, the National Geographic Society, the Joint Technical Societies of Los Angeles. He is a member of the Gamut Club of Los Angeles, Present Day Club of Riverside, and Riverside Lodge No. 643, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. Many years ago he was member for three years of Company K, Fifth Regiment, of the Massachusetts State Militia. He votes as a republican.
September 19, 1889, at Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Slater married Miss Minnie Osmond, a native of that city. Her father was an Englishman by birth and a prominent physician at Cincinnati. Mrs. Slater died in March, 1893, and is survived by one son, Edwin Osmond Slater. He had been a student for three years in the University of California when he was called to the army, entered the Officers Training School at The Presidio, San Francisco, was commissioned a second lieutenant in Company K, 363rd Infantry, at Camp Lewis, and afterwards assigned to Company M, and went to France with the Ninety-first Division. While overseas he was promoted to first lieutenant, and saw active service through the San Mihiel and Argonne campaigns
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and in Flanders. After the signing of the armistice he was detailed for other duties and returned to this country in the fall of 1919, and received an honorable discharge.
JAMES H. BURTNER has to his credit forty consecutive years as a railroad man, and nearly half of that service has been in California. For a number of years he has been district freight and passenger agent for the Salt Lake Railroad now the Union Pacific System at Riverside.
Mr. Burtner took up railroading not far from the community where he was born. His birthplace was a farm near New Goshen in Vigo County, Indiana, where he first saw the light of day February 10, 1859. He represents an old American family of Pennsylvania Dutch descent and Revolutionary stock. His father, John Burtner, was born in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. A brother, Rev. George W. Burtner, who with his foster brother, John Carroll, of Dayton, Ohio, served in the Union Army all through the war. John Burtner was an itinerant minister of the United Brethern Church and a farmer, was reared at Dayton, Ohio and subsequently moved to Illinois. The old Burtner homestead in Dayton, Ohio, is now Shiloh Springs Sanitarium. The mother of James H. Burtner was Margaret Ann Berry, born in Rockingham County, Virginia, of an English family that came to America in 1680. James H. Burtner attended public schools and high school in Illinois, and completed a teacher's course at Westfield College in Illinois in 1879. While he had a year or so of experience as a teacher in Illinois, on January 1. 1881, he went to work for the Big Four Railroad Company at Paris, Illinois, remaining there five years, and altogether spent twenty-two years with the Big Four station work. On March 15, 1903, he began his duties as first agent of the Salt Lake lines at Pomona, was made first agent at Riverside in 1904, and later was commercial agent here and for 212 years was district freight and passenger agent at Salt Lake City. He then came to Riverside as district freight and passen- ger agent, and that has been his place of duty ever since except during the period of the war. When the Government took over the railroads the Traffic department was practically suspended, and he was assigned to duty with the operating department at Castmore, operating between Riverside and Castmore through to Rialto and Bly, and was prac- tically general executive of the operating division over that section during the war.
In younger years while at Paris, Illinois, Mr. Burtner was in the Sixth Regiment, Illinois National Guard, for five years, and part of the time was leader of the Sixth Regiment Band. He was quite active in republican politics in Illinois, and was alderman at Litch- field during the great railroad strike period. Mr. Burtner has been a director for many years of the Riverside Chamber of Commerce, is a past exalted ruler of the Elks, served as noble grand of the Odd Fellows in Illinois, and is a member of the Modern Woodmen of America. At Robinson, Illinois, May 31, 1883, he married Flora A. Burson, daughter of Henderson Burson, a merchant now deceased. Mr. and Mrs. Burtner have one daughter, Mabel H., a graduate of the Cumnock School of Los Angeles.
WILLIAM J. TEBO-In the affairs of Chino and the Chino Valley during the last forty years no one has played a more vigorous part than William J. Tebo, merchant, farmer, with constantly growing business
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interests, and at the same time a strenuous law and order man who has proved himself indispensable to the task of making this a clean and safe place in which to live.
Mr. Tebo was born at Dundas, Province of Ontario, Canada, June 20, 1865, son of George and Elizabeth (Strong) Tebo. His father was a native of Canada, where he spent his life as a farmer. He was lett an orphan when a child and was reared by friends until old enough to make his own way. He lived to the remarkable age of ninety-eight years, passing away August 27, 1921. His wife was born in England and came to Canada with her parents at the age of seventeen.
William J. Tebo, one of a family of four sons and four daughters, acquired a good common school education, and in 1881, at the age of sixteen, left Canada and went to Plymouth County, Iowa. That was a prairie county and new, cattle raising being the principal industry. He secured employment the first year working among the cattle and con- structing pole sheds covered with flax straw for protection from the winter storms. The following summer he farmed and then rented land and went on his own hook. He bought horses and tools, put in a crop, but later discovered that the horses he had bought were afflicted with a virulent disease, the glanders. The authorities took the animals, de- stroyed them, buried the harness and burned his shed barns as the offi- cial means to stamp out the disease. It was a heavy financial blow to Mr. Tebo. There was one consolation, however, he had planted his corn crop on a high ridge of land. A frost had killed most of the corn in that section, but his being on the high ground was uninjured, and he was able to sell the crop for seed corn at a premium.
In the fall of 1883 Mr. Tebo left lowa and came to Sacramento, California, working here one year. He then went back to Iowa, primarily to testify in behalf of a friend who, like himself, had bought diseased horses on time. The seller had sued his friend for damages, but Mr. Tebo's testimony established a defense that prevented the fraud. While in Iowa in 1884 Mr. Tebo married Miss Alice Hammond, a native of that state. Again for a season he tried farming there, and had a con- tract for breaking a large prairie. In that year Iowa became a prohibi- tion state and was afflicted with hard times. Mr. Tebo sold his teams, and two weeks later was on his way to California. After one year in Yolo County, where he broke and shipped horses to the Los Angeles market, Mr. Tebo, about 1886, moved south and bought a half interest in 120 acres of land east of and near Chino.
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