USA > California > San Bernardino County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume III > Part 64
USA > California > Riverside County > History of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, Volume III > Part 64
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Willis Edwin Leonard received his education in Boulder, Colorado, first in the public schools and then in the University of that city. At the age of 19 he moved to the city of Socorro, New Mexico, remaining there for eight years when he came to San Bernardino, where in 1889 he was in the stationery business with Mr. Barnum for one year. At the end of the year he returned to Socorro and was in the real estate and insurance business for four years, but he could not forget San Bernardino and her attractions and in 1894 he returned here.
For several years he was in the department store business and then commenced his real life work, handling of real estate and building homes. In the latter work he specializes and he has placed homes within the reach of many by selling them on the installment plan. In San Bernardino he has built and sold over two hundred homes, while in the city of Long Beach he has built and sold several homes on one tract, in addition selling 40 lots in the same tract.
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Mr. Leonard is a republican in politics. While in Socorro, New Mexico, he was County Superintendent of Schools, 1893-4. He is affil- iated with the Presbyterian Church, being an elder of that church.
MARTIN VAN WIG, whose home in retirement is at 676 Huntington Boulevard, Pomona, is an interesting type of the true pioneer, the man who is first or among the first to settle and develop land, endures the trials and vicissitudes of such enterprise, for he must discover his own precedence, and lives and remains to reach the rewards of his early labors.
Mr. Van Wig was born April 26, 1851, in Norway, where his parents spent their lives. He was left an orphan at the age of ten years, and as a youth he had few educational opportunities, his training being of a practical rather than a theoretical character. For several years he fol- lowed the seas, and as a seaman he first landed at the port of New York in 1869.
The most interesting factor of his life, however, began with his arrival in San Bernardino, in 1883, now nearly forty years ago. He had some small savings, and was willing to invest them in cheap lands that were considered useless even for grazing purposes. His first invest- ment was a small acreage in Section 22 on South Archibald Avenue, in the upper end of the valley. The land was covered with drifting sand, and only his unalterable faith kept him unceasingly at work until he could realize the objects of his vision. From time to time he acquired other land, until he owned more than a hundred acres. Against the advice of friends, relying almost entirely on his judgment, he went on with the work of improvement. Perhaps the most interesting feature of his pioneering was the sinking of a well with a view to securing water for irrigation. He entered upon this quest about 1900. His friends advised against, ridiculed and even pitied his foolish attempt, saying it was a waste of money and even should water be discovered it could not be utilized commercially. He went down 306 feet, and from that source of supply he was able to pump 112 inches. He attached one of the early gasoline pumping engines to his well, and it proved all that his most ardent expectations anticipated. It is an interesting landmark as the pioneer well in the district. Lands that previously had enjoyed a slow sale of ten dollars an acre rapidly advanced to a hundred dollars an acre. Most of these early holdings Mr. Van Wig has since sold at advanced prices, and the entire section has bounded forward in pros- perity and improvement largely due to his nerve and foresight. This district is now largely developed as an alfalfa and fruit producing sec- tion. His pioneer well is located in Section 23.
About 1888, Mr. Van Wig and James Roach succeeded by their combined efforts in prevailing on the county surveyor to lay out and open Archibald Avenue south from the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks to the river. They gave their personal aid to the surveyor, even to carrying the chain. This is now a county highway, paved with cement.
Mr. Van Wig came to California accompanied by his wife. He has five living children: E. J. Van Wig, of Puente; T. W. Van Wig, of Bakersfield ; Maud B., Mrs. Frank W. Roe, of Etiwanda; Estella, Mrs. W. McCutchins, of Los Angeles; and K. W. Van Wig, who was born on Archibald Avenue in San Bernardino County in June, 1898, and was called to the colors at the time of the World war, but did not get overseas. He is now living at Los Angeles and is married.
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Martin Van Wig is properly rated as one of San Bernardino County's most prosperous men. He was a democrat in early life but has been a republican since 1916.
DANIEL BREWER MILLIKEN .- The faith and optimism of a pioneer was the distinctive quality in the character of the late Daniel Brewer Milliken, whose enterprise opened up a great and new source of wealth for the famous Cucamonga District of Southern California. He was a pioneer Californian, running back almost to the days of '49, and had all the ruggedness and dauntless spirit of the real argonauts, though he had very little success in gold mining and his prosperity was due to more permanent lines of industry.
He was a native of Maine, born in the town of Brewer, November 26, 1829, son of Daniel W. and Rebecca ( Smith) Milliken, also natives of Maine. His father was a sailor, followed the sea all his life, and for many years was a skilled pilot in the Penobscot Bay and River.
Daniel Brewer Milliken was on the sea almost from childhood, mak- ing many trips with his father and as a regular seaman. He went once to Cuba ; also was on many coasting voyages along New England. In the fall of 1851 he left Boston, going to the Isthmus, and thence north by boat which reached San Francisco in June, 1852. His first location was in Mendocino County, where he engaged in lumbering, prospecting and contracting. While there he developed an extensive lumber indus- try, and this brought him his first real capital. In 1876 he removed to San Jose and vicinity of San Francisco for the purpose of making his permanent home there. Then for several years he participated in the mining industry, but without important financial success.
It was in 1883 that Daniel B. Milliken came to the Cucamonga Dis- trict of Southern California, and in partnership with George D. Havens purchased 520 acres of wild desert land. They were men of capital, vision and determination, but they set the land to grapes, chiefly wine grapes, without providing irrigation. Their effort was scoffed at and they were almost openly called fools for putting the cuttings into the dry sand, inviting disaster. But the prophecies failed of grim realiza- tion, and, as a matter of fact, the plantation outlived its planter and returned a tremendous measure of profit, the example thus set encour- aging a widespread development of this section to vineyards. Subse- quently the land was divided and half of its is still the Milliken estate.
Daniel Brewer Milliken died in 1912. In 1856 he married Miss Char- lotte Smith, daughter of Thomas Smith, a lumberman. She was born at Surrey in Hancock County, Maine, and died January 2, 1899, at the age of sixty-three. To this marriage were born three sons and one daughter. The oldest was Newell S. Milliken. The second, Reuben Morton, died in 1905, and his only son passed away in 1910. The two younger children are Richard R. and Ashie Mae, both unmarried and now living in England.
Daniel Brewer Milliken had a capital of about eleven thousand dollars which he invested in the new and untried experiment of grape planting in Cucamonga, and this capital was increased many fold by his invest- ments, and the vineyard has paid astounding dividends in subsequent years.
Newell S. Milliken was born in Surrey, Maine, August 11, 1857, and died August 16, 1919. He was well educated in Mendocino County, in the San Jose High School, and became an expert assayer. He followed mining in Idaho and other western states, and for a time was a full fledged cowboy working on the ranges. In 1886
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he joined his father at Cucamonga, and thereafter was closely as- sociated with the vineyard industry, and at his father's death in 1912 he took full charge. He acquired forty two acres adjoining the original estate, and developed that wild land to vineyard, also building a home there and another modern residence in Fairmont. Newell S. Milliken was a stanch republican and for a number of years a member of the Central Committee, served as deputy assessor fourteen years and for eighteen years was postmaster of North Cucamonga. His was a strong and upright character, and the work he did and the influence he exercised made his death a source of inestimable loss to the community where he had lived so many years.
On August 11, 1891, he married Miss Kate Sempel, who was born in Traverse-de-Sioux, Minnesota, October 11, 1864, daughter of Frederic August and Anna Barbara (Herkelrath) Sempel. She was one of eight children, and had come to California and was a teacher in the public schools of Cucamonga before her marriage. Mrs. Milliken is now guardian of the estate, and with her older daughter has demonstrated the abilities of a thoroughly successful business woman in handling the complex details of the industry.
Her oldest child is Ruth E. Milliken, who was born June 5, 1892, and is thoroughly well educated, being A. B. graduate of Pomona College, and had two years of post-graduate work in the State University at Berkeley. For two years she was principal of the Fort Bragg High School, but at the death of her father gave up her school work and has since been active in superintending the three hundred acre vineyard and handling the many harassing details of business administration in difficult times and under abnormal conditions. The second child, Mildred A. Milliken, was born January 23, 1900, graduated A. B. from Pomona College in June, 1921, and is now continuing her study of music in Pomona College Conservatory, being proficient as a pipe organist and pianist. The only son is Daniel B. Milliken, born May 12, 1904, and now a senior in the high school at Claremont.
JOHN RANKIN MERRILL .- The Merrill home is on Turner Avenue half a mile south of Riverside Boulevard, at Ontario. This is one of the very prosperous families in this locality, and one of the chief purposes of this brief sketch is to tell how that prosperity was achieved, through struggle and self denial and great exertion, in- cidentally paying a deserved tribute to the Merrills, especially Mrs. Merrill, undoubtedly one of the most resourceful of women in San Bernardino County.
John Rankin Merrill was born in Ohio in 1850, son of David and Martha (Rankin) Merrill, the latter a native of Pittsburgh. John R. was the oldest of six children, and when he was six months old his parents moved to Illinois. He acquired a good education in that state, graduating from the State University. About 1870 the family moved to Texas, buying lands around Fort Davis, in the extreme western part of the state. David and Martha Merrill lived there and were buried at Fort Davis.
In Texas John R. Merrill married Miss Nancy Baker, a native of Kentucky. She died in Texas, leaving two sons, William Kern Merrill, now a rancher near Lindsay, California, and Charles Thomas Merrill, who is a ranch owner at Chino, California. Both sons are married.
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In 1889 Mr. Merrill came to California and bought a ranch near Buena Park. In 1894 he married Miss Mabel Margaret Ayars. Mrs. Merrill was at that time twenty years of age. She was born August 30, 1874, in Texas, daughter of John Quincy and Elizabeth ( McClaini) Ayars, natives of Illinois. The McClain and Ayars families moved to Texas in early days with ox teams and settled near Moody in McLennan County, now one of the popular counties of the state, then on the frontier and sparsely settled. The McClain and Ayars families took with them their cook stoves and rocking chairs, and these were such novelties as few of the people of that region had ever seen. They took up Government land, living in log cabins, far from neighbors, and both the grandparents of Mrs. Merrill died in Texas in 1900. Her own parents were married in that state, and her mother died when Mrs. Merrill was seven years of age. There were two younger children, Nathan Sylvester Ayars and Eva Mozzelle Ayars. John Quincy Ayars, father of Mrs. Merrill, was three times married. By his first wife he had two children, John Irving and Lulu Daisy Ayars. By his third wife there were three children, Van Ness Rexford, Charles Frederick and Dorothea Delight Ayars. Mrs. Merrill's grandfather added to his homestead in Texas by pur- chase from time to time, and at his death left an estate of over a thousand acres of the finest cotton and corn lands in what is known as the black land belt of Texas. Mrs. Merrill was one of the heirs to this estate, inheriting a hundred acres of land and other property besides. Mrs. Merrill was nine years of age when her father moved to California.
About 1892 John R. Merrill bought a squatter's claim to hundred sixty-five acres in the Cucamonga Desert, and subsequently secured the regular Government patent to this land. After two years he moved out to this tract of sage brush and cactus, put up a small house, and for four years, being without even the facilities of a team, he carried water for drinking and domestic purposes from a distant school house. When he was able to buy a team he hauled water for five years more before he could sink a well. During the seven years while awaiting patent to his land he spent much of his time in Los Angeles, working to provide the necessities for his family, while Mrs. Merrill and her step-children held down the homestead, cleared the land, and set it to vines and deciduous fruits. Mrs. Merrill after selling her Texas property purchased other adjoining lands, and in 1910 they built their present modern and luxurious home, which with its landscape environment, its gardens and other improvements is one of the fine estates of the Ontario District. Altogether the family now have three hundred and twenty acres, practically all in bearing fruit, and the 1921 crop amounted to over a thousand tons of choice fruit. This valuable property has come as the result of almost superhuman endurance, labor and patience, and the orchards and vineyards represent a complete transformation from a waterless desert. Their first planting was on twenty acres, and the young trees had hardly been set out before great hordes of rabbits invaded the premises and destroyed every tree. They then replanted and protected the trees from these pests by wrapping them.
Mr. and Mrs. Merrill had six children. Lawrence W., born February 28, 1895, at Los Angeles, was, like the other children who grew up, educated in the Chaffee High School at Ontario, and he is now active manager of the home ranch. The other children were all born on the ranch at Ontario. Gertrude Catherine was born October 30,
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1898, and died February 11, 1904. Ida Belle was born October 20, 1900, graduates from Chaffee High School and from Pomona College in June, 1922, and has specialized in physical technic. Jesse Lowell, born September 24, 1904, graduates from the Chaffee High School in 1922. John Ralph was born March 9, 1908, and Ernest Millne was born November 2, 1911, and died at the age of eight weeks.
MRS. SOPHIA CASTEEL .- At the age of eighty-three Mrs. Sophia Casteel, whose home is half a mile east of Rivera, on the San Gabriel River, is one of the few still living whose recollections run back to the exciting days of the late forties, when her people were journeying over the plains to Salt Lake and later to California.
Mrs. Casteel was born November 9, 1839, in Missouri, while her parents were en route from Michigan to Iowa, making the journey with team and wagon. Her parents were Charles and Miranda (Fuller) Chapman, who were among the first pioneers to cross the plains to Salt Lake. Mrs. Casteel has a vivid memory of the journey from Iowa to Utah, the long train of teams pressing out over the prairie, the slow progress, the inevitable hardships of the journey, and the always iminent danger of Indian attack. Her father was a native of Michigan, of English ancestry. In the family were six daughters and three sons, and Mrs. Casteel has two sisters and one brother living. The family lived on the Iowa frontier at Montrose for seven years, and in 1846 they joined a wagon train and after many perils arrived at Salt Lake in 1847. A year later Charles Chapman came on to California, and about Sacramento joined in the great rush for gold. He remained eighteen months and was unusually prospered in his search for the precious metal. In 1852 he brought his family on to California. He was a man of property and had numerous horse and mule teams. The family started in a small party, but they picked up several other families of refugees en route, some of whom had no stock and were in a sorry plight. The Chapmans brought a large number of cattle to California. Charles Chapman settled at San Bernardino, buying a ranch on Lytle Creek, and continued here his business as a farmer and stock raiser. Later he moved to the Jurupa ranch, where he was in the stock business for twenty years. At that time the site of Riverside was a sheep pasture, the land covered with wild brush, and only one store was kept there, by a Jew named Rosenthal. After some twenty years Charles Chapman suffered reverses in the cattle industry, chiefly due to the affliction of the black leg, and he sold his remaining holdings and for a year lived in the San Joaquin Valley. He then returned to Los Angeles County and bought a ranch on what is now San Pedro Street, living there until his death. His widow passed away at Wilmington.
In 1856, some years after coming to San Bernardino, Sophia Chapman was married to Mr. Joshua Casteel. Mr. Casteel was born in Illinois, and he died at Los Nietos, California, April 8, 1913. Mr. and Mrs. Casteel reared their family of ten children: Martha Jane, now the wife of Leonard Labory ; Alzada, who married John Wiseman ; Orsen, deceased; Phoebe, deceased wife of R. W. Hagen; Jacob and Cyrus, deceased; Charles; May, who married N. B. Parazette, of Rivera ; Daniel and Robert, deceased. The son Charles has followed mining chiefly, and spent twelve years in Sonora, Mexico, and was also identified with mines in Arizona. He now lives with his mother on the old ranch at Rivera. His first wife, Miss Hattie Sicles, was a Vol. 111-29
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native of Oregon. For his second wife he married Miss Bessie Blunt, of Arkansas.
After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Casteel farmed around San Bernardino, raising cattle on the old Jurupa ranch for a number of years, their home being seven miles from Riverside. Later they bought land at Rivera, where Mrs. Casteel has had her home for a number of years. Joshua Casteel was a western pioneer, and was with the regular army in the Indian campaigns during the early fifties, serving under Captain Fitzgerald, a noted Indian fighter. He saw active service through California, Arizona, and New Mexico and for many years he drew a Government pension. He came to California about 1849. Mrs. Casteel is a member of the Latter Day Saints Church. In spite of her age she retains the vigor of her mind, and has a most remarkable memory for the early events of Southern California.
B. G. HOLMES .- Some men never learn what failure means no matter what obstacles spring up in their path, being able to overcome them and come out a winner. B. G. Holmes, of Big Bear Valley, is one of these men, and his success in spite of all kinds of hard luck and former poor health ought to stimulate others to follow his inspiring example. He was born January 26, 1872, a son of John and Amelia (Gay) Holmes, natives of Connecticut, where the former was born in 1837 and the latter in 1838. They were married in 1870, and B. G. Holmes is their only child. They came to Redlands, California, in 1889, where the father engaged in fruit growing. He first purchased a peach orchard of ten acres, but later planted it to oranges. His reason for coming to California was his failing health, and the fact that he now, although eighty-four years of age, is caring for his orange grove in West Redlands shows that the move was a very wise and beneficial one. His wife is also living and in the enjoy- ment of good health. They are most remarkable people, and B. G. Holmes is very proud of them and what they have accomplished.
After completing the grammar and high school courses B. G. Holmes entered the Redlands National Bank, and was doing very nicely when his health failed, and two years later he was forced to change his occupation for something which would take him out of doors. In 1894 he came to Bluff Lake to camp and recuperate, and then the next summer he, with the aid of two boys, packed in over the trail to Big Bear Valley. When he gained his first view of this region it was not very attractive, and only the realization of his need of some place where he could be in the open kept him from turning back, that and the innate determination to persevere in any undertak- ing. The old dam was fringed by dead trees which had been killed by the force of the water, giving to the scene a particularly desolate appearance. It is scarcely necessary to state that these have long since been removed, and the whole landscape changed. There were then few traces of human occupancy, save those afforded by the ruins of the old mining camps, which, too, were discouraging.
Having owned and dealt in orange and lemon groves, he felt he knew something about citrus growing, and so began his connection with the Valley in that capacity. He has always maintained his in- terest in the citrus industry, although his operations have expanded to cover many lines. He built the Mission Garage, Redlands, and sold the business in 1913 to Bartlett Brothers of Detroit, Michigan, retaining ownership of the building until 1920, when he traded it for
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an orange grove on Redlands Heights. In the fall of 1916 he pur- chased the Doctor Blaire group of log cabins, then thirty years old. There is a main road frontage of 307 feet, and he paid $5,000 for this property, which today is almost priceless because of the improve- ments he has put upon it. The following spring he bought of Judge Rex Goodcell 1461/2 feet road frontage, containing his present mod- ern residence. Combining these properties, he has arranged cabins into a most picturesque and modern camp, which he has named In- dian Lodge. Two years later he bought two-thirds of an acre from the Pine Knob Company, and in 1921 leased for twenty-two years four and one-half acres adjoining. On all of this property he has erected many cabins, and has them all modern equipped and fur- nished. The camp is most centrally located, and is very popular. It has a capacity of about sixty people. When he came here there were no buildings between his camp and the I. S. store. Since mak- ing his purchase he sold a portion of the Goodcell property at sixty dollars per front foot, which added to his profits, makes this a most fortunate investment.
In 1898 Mr. Holmes married at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Miss Blanche M. Walton, of that city, and they became the parents of four children, namely : Alden Walton, who was born at Redlands in 1899, graduated from the Redlands High School and is now a senior at Leland Stanford University. Through his mother he is a direct descendant of John Alden of Mayflower stock. The second child, Charles Chester, was born at Redlands in 1902, graduated from the Redlands High School, and is now in his junior year at Leland Stan- ford University. J. Walton, born at Redlands in 1907, is a student of the Redlands High School. Lillian, who was born in Los Angeles County, California, in 1909, is also attending the Redlands High School. Mr. Holmes is determined that all of his children shall re- ceive the best educational advantages obtainable, and they are prov- ing a source of great comfort to him in the progress they are making.
Mr. Holmes belongs to Redlands Lodge, B. P. O. E., but aside from that he has no connections outside his business and family ties. His interests center in Bear Valley, and he and Bartlett Brothers or- ganized the Bear Valley Chamber of Commerce, of which he is for the second term serving as vice-president. This is a live organiza- tion, and has played an important part in recent developments in the Valley. Indian Lodge stands upon one of the old camps of this region. When Mr. Holmes acquired possession of it the property was in poor condition, the cabins were in need of repair, and there were practically no improvements. Setting to work with character- istic energy, Mr. Holmes transformed the place, and now has one of the most desirable camps in the entire Valley. He has not acquired his present prosperous and prominent position by any easy road. From the start he has been confronted with obstacles. In his citrus growing he has been frozen out and ruined by hot waves, but has persevered through them all. Best of everything his health has so improved that it is difficult for the stranger to believe that he was ever in anything but a rugged condition. It is such men as Mr. Holmes who make a region. They come into a wilderness and per- sist until they develop it, and to them, and not to the recent comers, belongs the real credit. From Indian Lodge can be seen a constant stream of automobiles passing over the public highway, and it is difficult to believe that the first automobiles came into the Valley in 1909. Now they are as common as the ducks about the lakes, but
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