USA > California > San Luis Obispo County > History of San Luis Obispo County and environs, California, with biographical sketches > Part 106
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Mrs. Freeman was born in Raritan, Henderson county. 01 .. m 18,1 Fler father, Charles W. Hardisty, was a college graduate and taught for some years. In 1879 the family moved to Glendale, Mont., where he was employed as weighmaster at a silver mine until 1889, when They came to Californ ..
When twelve years old Miss Hardisty accompanied her parents to this state : and in 1901 she was united in marriage, At Sants Rico, with Allart | Freeman, who was born in Marin county, February 5, 1858. His father. William D. Freeman, was a native of New York, born in Monroe county and
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his mother, formerly Mary Halsted, was born in Canada. He was one in a family of twelve children, ten of whom are living, all in California.
The year of their marriage Mr. Freeman bought eighty-three acres of land in the Santa Maria valley, and he has been farming successfully in this section ever since. Three children have been born of this union: Ivy Glen- dora, Vina Irene, and Grace Elsie, all at home. Both Mr. and Mrs. Freeman have won recognition in this valley for their hospitality, as well as for their progressive ideas and public spirit.
JAMES G. MARTIN .- Not every man can tell such interesting stories of pioneer experiences, from which the most profitable lessons of life may be derived as James G. Martin, a contracting teamster of Los Alamos. His father, a North Carolinan, was Thomas James Martin; and his mother, a native of Kentucky, was Miss Sarah Ann Goatley, before her marriage. During the war they lived in Audrain county, Mo., and at the end of that devastating period they first came West. It was in 1865 that the parents and most of the family joined a wagon train, headed by Captain White, on a journey destined to be marred by a raid of the Indians, whereby Mark Shearin, an nncle of M. L. Shearin, of Santa Maria, was killed. Captain White was charged with cowardice : and this led to a split in the ranks of the company, thirteen wagons proceeding over the prairies by themselves.
Thirteen children were the offspring of these sturdy parents. Two died when very young, in Missouri. Eleven started to cross the plains ; but Ida May, then a child of four years, died on the way and was buried near Salt Lake City. Only nine came through to the Coast; for the second sister married Allan Crosswhite, and settled with him in Nevada. The ten children are: Phoebe Ellen, who became Mrs. John H. Haydon, and is now deceased ; Louisa Elizabeth, Mrs. Crosswhite mentioned above; Martha Lavina, who married W. A. Conrad, a farmer who, since the fall of 1876, has been at Arroyo Grande, where she died, in 1915; C. W. Martin, another farmer near Santa Maria, who married Winnie Williams, and is deceased : Sarah Belle, the wife of C. II. Glines, of Santa Maria, now deceased ; Huldah Goatley, Mrs. R. F. AAllen, now a widow, whose husband was a Methodist Episcopal minister long at Petaluma ; James Gideon, the subject of this review ; Thomas Henry, who married Melvina Ilobbs, and resides on a farm near Lompoc : Robert Franklin, whose wife was Hattie Newlove, and who lives near Orcutt ; and Joseph Lee, who married Miss Hannah Moffman, of Lompoc, and resides at Los Alamos, where he manages the Los Alamos Transfer.
After spending three years at Santa Rosa, Thomas Martin removed with his family to Stanislaus county, where he farmed for another three years. Three years more were spent in farming in Shasta county, followed by a winter in Lake county. In the summer of 1875, he came to the Santa Maria valley ; and there he bought some school land east of Orcutt. At the age of -ixtv-six he died there ; and his wife passed away in the Santa Maria valley at the age of sixty-seven.
Born at Mexico, Mo., January 16, 1859, James G. Martin came with his patents to California, and attended the public school at Santa Rosa. In 1887. He was married to Miss Ida May Cash, the daughter of Jerome Bonaparte Ca-h, the well known pioneer of the southern part of the Santa Maria valley. After his marriage, he was engaged in farming, near Orcutt, for ten or twelve years : and in 1902 he came to Los Alamos. In 1907 Mr. Martin went to Lom-
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poc, where he spent five years ; then renting his property, he came once more to Los Alamos, and there remained until 1915. Going again to Lompoc, he was bereaved by the death of his wife, in June of that year. Ile then sold out, and has since resided in Los Alamos, conducting his business there.
Five children bear Mr. Martin's honored name: Thomas J., who married the widow of Arthur Coiner, and is in charge of the Pinal-Dome Oil ( o.'s lease near Los Alamos ; Nellie, the second child, who became the wife of A. P. Smith. a rancher in the Imperial Valley; Lester Lee, who married Miss Grace Ash. and runs a pumping station four miles west of Los Alamos at the Pan- Ameri- can siding, for the P. A. P. I. Corporation ; and Ray Goatley and Donald Leone, who are with their father. Like the father, all his children are hard workers, but workers who improve their minds if they do not always fatten their purses. Mr. Martin himself has not grown rich ; but in the consciousness that he has been a good citizen, he is reasonably happy and contented. In national politics he is a Democrat.
JOHN R. WICKENDEN .- An example of profitable and worth-while enterprise directed by a young man of self-confidence, and one who upholds the traditions of an historic, progressive and prosperous family, is furnished by J. R. Wickenden, superintendent of the Wickenden Corporation, con- trolling about 5,000 acres of land.
Born on the ranch, on February 8, 1879. John R. Wickenden, the young- est son of Fred and Ramona ( Foxen ) Wickenden (of whom extended mention is made in this work ), attended the public school in the Olive district. He pur- sued a general collegiate course at St. Mary's College, Oakland, and afterward a business course, followed by a commercial course, under Professor Arm- strong at the Business Institute, San Luis Obispo. He was next engaged as clerk for his brother, the late W. F. Wickenden, who ran a store at Los Ala- mos, and then moved, with his business, to San Luis Obispo. Not caring par- ticularly for the mercantile business, he looked about for an investment, and purchased one hundred Jerseys, which cost, in 1908, $1,200. To pay for these, he deposited eight hundred dollars that he had saved from his wages, and gave a chattel mortgage for the balance ; and from this small beginning he has invested more and more in cattle until today he is one of the large cattle men of Santa Barbara county.
In pursuit of this enterprise, and in response, perhaps, to his love for travel, Mr. Wickenden, in 1914, made an extended business trip to Magdalena. Sonora. Mexico, where he bought two hundred head of Mexican cattle known as feeders. He was accompanied from San Luis Obispo by other persons who had cattle interests, and altogether the party purchased 1,700 head. These were loaded, inspected and passed by the customs officers at Nogales, the vendors paying the United States the customs duty. Mexican cattle do not come up to the standard quality demanded by the United States authorities, neither being as heavy in the build as the American breeds, nor gaining flesh as fast; and one needs to be a good judge, as Mr. Wickenden is, to pick out. and quickly, the best cattle for feeding and breeding.
Aside from serving as superintendent of the Wickenden Corporation. J. R. Wickenden is renting pasture lands from the Santa Maria Petroleum & Pipe Line Co. and some eight hundred acres on the Wickenden ranch.
In 1904, John R. Wickenden was married to Miss Flora Kriegel, the daughter of Frederick Kriegel, a well-known pioneer, who had a butcher
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business at Los Alamos and Lompoc, and who died on December 14, 1915, at the agenti seventy-two years. Her mother died in 1902, in her fifty-fourth year. Her Jnie other child, Ida, is a graduate of Berkeley and a teacher. Mr. and 31 - Wickenden have two children : Winston and Marjorie. Mr. and Mrs. Wirkenden have traveled extensively. In 1909, they made an extended tour, visiting Seattle, where they enjoyed the Alaska-Pacific-Yukon Exposition, and then passed on to Canada and British Columbia ; and in 1915 they visited and enjoyed both the exposition at San Francisco and that at San Diego. They are vorites in the social circles of their community. Mr. Wickenden is a mem- ber of the Elks in San Luis Obispo.
JOHN T. AND DORA B. GLINES .- What good service a man of Character, and of substantial business enterprise and experience, may render this community, when appointed to office, is well illustrated in the case of John T. Glines, a ranch owner and road overseer of the Los Alamos district. wlio. with a brother-in-law. A. J. Holloway, owns a large stock ranch on the Kauno, where they keep about two hundred fifty head of beef cattle. His father was C. H. Glines, a pioneer elsewhere described in one of our sketches.
Born in Lake county, Cal., November 27, 1875, John Glines, when three months old, was brought to Santa Maria in his mother's arms, and grew up un his father's ranch near what is now Orcutt, then called Graciosa. He obmined his education in the old Graciosa school, as well as in the public school at Pine Grove, after which he farmed for a year in that vicinity. mutuoving next to Alamo, where he took up a homestead.
In 1898, he entered into a partnership with his father, and bought a much of six hundred forty acres; and soon afterward he filed on half as man acres of school land. Prospering in this venture, he bought his father Me and it was after the dissolution of this partnership that he helped form Tre min of Glines & Holloway, who now own a ranch of eleven hundred og hty acres, stocked with some two hundred fifty cattle. For eight years Mir. Glines lived on the farm at Alamo; but in 1904 he came to Los Alamos. ind for two years conducted a livery stable.
Appointed road overseer of the Los Alamos valley in 1908. John Glines Constructed and .repaired the highways for four years, meanwhile managing the Los Alamos Meat Market, and at the same time farming for hay and grain. In 1912, he rented a part of the Bell ranch, and a year later he put in four hundred acres to beans and three hundred acres to grain. Owing to the want of rain, however, and the consequent dry season, his efforts that Var proved a failure, and it has taken him several years since to recover What he lost. In December, 1916, on motion of Supervisor Presker, of Santa Maria, he again received the appointment as road overseer of the Los Vamos road district, and again he took charge of the public highways, at Ny same time farming one hundred twenty-five acres.
John T. Glines was married on December 10, 1895, at Los Alamos, to Miss Dora B. Holloway, the daughter of J. J. Holloway, whose interesting biographical sketch is elsewhere given. Mr. and Mrs. Glines have five elabren : Vera Lucile, a sophomore at Pomona College : Melba V., a junior m go Santa Maria high school ; Rebecca B., a pupil in the Bell school; and Defel C. and John HI. Glines. In the Bell grammar school. Mrs. Glines is A je teher ; and a very successful instructor she has proven to be. She is a worker, too, for besides her hours of teaching at the school, where there is an
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average daily attendance of forty-five, out of a total enrollment of fifty, she keeps house for her own family and takes care of her own children. Mrs. Gline- is a member of the Christian Church. In their beautiful home, built in 1911. a fine house with a large campus spreading over half a block of building lots. Mr. and Mrs. Glines and their happy family dwell, seldom venturing beyond their own hearth. Mr. Glines is a member of the Knights of Pythias at Santa Maria. In national politics, he finds the Democratic policies his best guide.
BRINTNALL EUCALYPTUS RANCH .- The influence of wisely invested capital upon the development of the latent resources of our state, is forcibly shown in the case of the celebrated Brintnall Eucalyptus, or Gum Tree, Ranch, three miles north of Guadalupe, on the mesa land immediately north of the Oso Flaco. The property is owned by William A. Brintnall, of Los Angeles, a former Chicago banker and millionaire, and is under the superintendency of Le Roy Francis MeClellan, a relative of General Mc- Clellan, and one of the most experienced eucalyptus growers in California. This great ranch nine years ago was nothing but a sandy waste, thought to be well-nigh worthless, and none but a capitalist could possibly have under- taken such a project as transforming the barren mesa to a valuable timber tract. Mr. Brintnall has already invested a quarter of a million dollars there, without having made his expenses from the venture ; yet the place is worth $300,000, and it is becoming more valuable each year as the trees grow larger. Three superintendents have in turn had charge of the estate. For two years Mr. Thompson managed the property. Then Charles Brintnall succeeded to the superintendency, which he continued for three years. Since that time. Mr. McClellan has held the responsibility. Besides the superintendent, six men are regularly employed on the ranch.
Mr. Mcclellan came to California in 1911, and soon entered the employ of C. H. MeWilliams, of Los Angeles, coming to San Luis Obispo to take charge of the seven hundred acres of eucalyptus for the Southern California Eucalyptus Growers' Association, which adjoined the Brintnall ranch He continued there until November, 1914, when he accepted his present position
In his capacity as superintendent, Mr. Mcclellan conducts two of thise important industries on the wide ranch. Besides the growing of encalyptus. an important poultry business is maintained at the farm. On the ground! floor of the poultry building, there is a brooder rooms, where fourteen of fifteen hundred baby chicks may be accommodated; And the laseretil is an incubating room in which four Jubilee incubators are metalled, Diventa capacity of over two thousand eggs for a hatching Full bloodel white Leghorns are the only fowls raised here, and then To a flock of home time three thousand laying hens.
The poultry business, however, is but a small part of the dome. of the ranch, the raising of the eucalyptus trees being the many lode my Nte hundred fifty acres are planted to eucalyptus globules, with fortysite den- are given up to other varieties. There are twenty acres, for dem by plate to resiniferous eucalyptus, or red gum ; fifteen trovare giftige en Sony and ten acres, to sugar gum. The ranch contame about J jhostessel agie- and some six hundred forty trees are planted to the acre The first time occurs in the seventh year; and conditions of growth Jel offer 20. 00 stances determine the time of later thinning. Some trees were pantal
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from seed eight years ago, and the next year many were re-planted. Now the average thickness of the eucalyptus in the Brintnall groves is from six to eight inches.
A distilling plant, capable of distilling eucalyptus oil from one and one- half tons of lopped-off leaves in a day, is a feature of the ranch ; and another center of activity is the wood department, in which material for the handles of axes and other tools is selected, while a thousand cords or more of fire- wood are piled up annually. All in all, the Brintnall Eucalyptus ranch is a monument to the enterprise and initiative of its large-minded owner, and a splendid testimonial of merit to the superintendent, than whom no better couldl anywhere be found.
ALBERT P. WICKENDEN .- A native son of California and the oldest child of Fred and Ramona (Foxen) Wickenden, pioneer citizens of Santa Barbara county, Albert P. Wickenden was born in San Luis Obispo, March 17. 1864. He studied under the tutorship of a teacher employed to come to the house in Foxen canon, before the days of the public schools, and later attended at the Olive school, built in 1875, the first school in that part of Santa Barbara county. On closing his books, he helped in the raising of cattle and sheep on the home ranch, and assisted in the country store run by his father.
December 22. 1902, witnessed the marriage of Mr. Wickenden to Miss Emma Castro, a daughter of Vicente Castro, a member of the family so distinguished for its own exploits in the early annals of California, and for its important associations with Pio Pico, the last of the Spanish governors, and his régime. Mr. and Mrs. Wickenden have had four children-Albert R., Ida Ramona, Louise Henrietta, and Julius Emmett-all of whom are devout members of the Catholic Church at Los Alamos. In 1911, Mr. Wickenden bought twenty-three acres immediately south of Los Alamos; and there, besides making other improvements, he has built himself a handsome bunga- low home.
A citizen endorsing the platforms of the Republican party, Mr. Wicken- den takes a live interest in the larger questions of the day. He has always been an active advocate of the state highway, and still maintains that this should be widened to thirty feet, not merely for civic use in times of peace, but to provide a great thoroughfare for the transportation of troops in time of war or national peril. According to the conclusions of this experienced student of public affairs, nothing short of a great highway stretching along the Pacific Coast from British Columbia to Mexico will be adequate, should ever the government need such a military artery.
WALTER HUGH DEISING .- As superintendent of the Harris ranch, for the Union Sugar Co. of Betteravia. Walter Deising has made his influ- ence felt as an expert raiser of sugar beets and as manager of large interests. He began at the bottom of the ladder with the company, with everything to learn in regard to the cutivation of beets; and since 1904 he has been grad- ually working his way to the front, until in 1913 he was placed in his pres- ent responsible position, which he has filled with credit to himself and with profit to the company.
A native of Germany, Walter Hugh Deising was born in 1884, a son of Henry and Elizabeth (Leapor) Deising, natives of Prussia, who were mar- ried there, and who came to the United States in 1891 and settled in the
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neighborhood of Buffalo, Minn. There the father began farming : and there the son went to school, although he had attended the German schools and could read and write in his native language.
In 1897 the family came West to California, and settled in Creston, San Luis Obispo County. The father died in San Francisco, whither he had been taken to a hospital for an operation, on February 3, 1912, aged sixty- seven years ; the widow now lives in San Diego. There were two sons and four daughters in their family: Lizzie, the widow of Andrew Arreado, of Hanford ; Walter H., the subject of this sketch ; Emma, who married Jacob Kawalsky, of San Francisco; and Ilattie, Olga and Arthur, who are at home in San Diego.
Walter Deising attended school until 1898, and then hired out as a farm hand and worked on different ranches near Creston. He finally entered the employ of the Union Sugar Co. at Betteravia, and has since been in their service. He was married in 1910 to Miss Emma Bontadelli, of Guadalupe, a daughter of Amelio and Antoinetta Bontadelli, both deceased. One daughter, Evelyn, has been born to brighten their home.
Mr. Deising is a member of the Laguna Lodge of Odd Fellows, and of Guadalupe Lodge, No. 337, F. & A. M., at Guadalupe. Ile has a high sense of civic responsibility, and has performed every duty that came his way. He is modest, well balanced and discerning, and is justly popular with all with whom he comes in contact.
MARCUS KINNEBREW .- A man of pronounced force of character and executive ability, and a jolly good fellow, in harmony with all the world, is Marcus. or Mark, Kinnebrew, the driller foreman for the Pan-American Petro- leum Investment Corporation, operating five miles to the northwest of Los Alamos, on the Bell property. His father is A. B. Kinnebrew, a rancher at Amarillo, Tex., who has a record of several years' service in the United States Department of Agriculture, where he was employed in trying to eradicate the boll weevil, the great cotton pest of the South. A. B. Kinnebrew is a native of Georgia. He served in the Confederate Army as a soldier in an Alabama regiment ; and when he was twenty-five years of age, he came to the Lone Star State. At the close of the war, he married Miss Blanche Edwards, of Alabama.
Born, April 4, 1875, at Corsicana, Tex., the fourth of eight children still living, Mark Kinnebrew grew up on a ranch at that place and attended the excellent Texas public schools, taking later a commercial course at Chambers Business College there, and a year or two at Professor Tom Smith's private school at Blooming Grove. At the age of eighteen, he went into the oil fields at Corsicana to dress tools ; and for three years following he was employed by the American Well and Prospecting Co., acting for two-thirds of the time as a driller.
In December, 1898, Mark Kinnebrew married Miss Ella Burrow, of Corsicana, and two years later set out with her for California, full of con fidence in the future. He first took up his residence at Bakersfield, where he was engaged as driller for the Associated Oil Co. in the Kern river field and in that responsible position he continued for three years. In 1903 he went to Coalinga. Ile remained there six months, and then returned to the Associated, this time in the Santa Maria field. He left them in 1914, when he was appointed drilling foreman for the Doheny forces at Coalinga In the
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summer or fall of 1916, he started the first drilling on the new lease at Los Alamos, for the Pan-American Petroleum Investment Corporation. These responsible positions have given Mr. Kinnebrew a considerable acquaintance with important business affairs, and a valuable knowledge of men.
Five children have blessed the union of Mr. and Mrs. Kinnebrew : Elise, Edward, Lester, Ailene and Alice. A sister of Mr. Kinnebrew, Mrs. Swear- ingen, resides at Santa Maria, and a brother is Lee Kinnebrew, of Shreveport, Louisiana.
Of Scotch ancestry, and therefore sociable by nature, Mr. Kinnebrew is a leading spirit among his associates. Politically, he is a Democrat.
WILLIAM CALVIN OAKLEY, JR .- What can be accomplished by prudence. perseverance and push, the "three P's of success," is demonstrated in the successful management of large ranching interests by William C. Oakley. Jr .. of Los Alamos, who, as the director of the 6,000-acre Shaw ranch. in partnership with his mother-in-law, Mrs. Sophia Bonetti, is meet- ing with more than the ordinary degree of success, especially for a man of his years. This is one of the largest ranches in Santa Barbara county, and the largest in the Santa Maria valley. "Will" Oakley, as he is more familiarly known, is a son of Francis D. Oakley, who was born in Sacramento county about 1850, and a grandson of Carey Calvin Oakley, a native of Tennessee who came across the plains with ox teams in 1851, mined for gold for a time, and then turned his attention to ranching as a more stable means of making his fortune. In 1869 he left the northern part of the state and came to the Santa Maria valley, becoming one of the first settlers of this part of the county. He homesteaded a quarter section of land opposite the pres- ent site of the depot in Santa Maria, and here he farmed with very good results. He had the distinction of bringing one of the first threshing machines into the valley, and he operated it for years. While he was living in the northern part of the state, he married Elizabeth Whaley, a member of a pioneer family of Sonoma county; and they had eleven children born to them. He died in 1890.
Francis D. Oakley was the oldest of the eleven children born to his parents, and he had only the advantages of the pioneer schools of the state. The early became a farmer, following in the footsteps of his father. He mar- niel Miss Mollie Step, whose mother, now eighty-two years of age, is living (p) Santa Ynez, near which place she owns a good ranch. She crossed the nltins with her second husband. The train of which they were members mol- a large one, and brought a good number of horses and cattle with them. Grandfather Step lived to be eighty-nine, and was a man of extraordinary Trength and vitality. Mr. and Mrs. Francis Oakley had six children : Bartha May, who married Charles Bennett, of Lompoc ; Alice E., the wife of 1 1, Parker, of Los Alamos; William C., the subject of this review : Sadie KM Vrs. Philippini, of Santa Barbara; AAda Pearl, who is married to Paul Thompson, an employe of the Associated Oil Co. at Sisquoc ; and Henry Kiwi. of Santa Barbara, in which city the parents reside.
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