History of Santa Clara County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 62

Author: Sawyer, Eugene Taylor, 1846-
Publication date: 1922
Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1928

USA > California > Santa Clara County > History of Santa Clara County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 62

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At the age of twenty-eight years Miss Folsom be- came the wife of A. E. Hayes. In addition to tak- ing charge of their home at Waterloo, Wis., and rearing their three children, E. A., Jay O., and May Hayes, she preached as the spirit guided her. Often a large number of people would come to her home for religious instruction, and invariably she ministered to their bodily needs as well as their spiritual neces- sities. About 1872 she made her first visit to Cali- fornia. After the death of Mr. Hayes, she accom- panied her sons to Santa Clara County and pur- chased the place that is now beautiful "Edenvale," situated on the Monterey Road, about seven miles south of San Jose. From the beginning of her resi- dence at Edenvale thousands visited her to seek coun- sel and throughout her remaining days she continued her ministrations to body and soul. Her second hus- band, T. B. Chynoweth, an attorney of San Jose, died about one year after their marriage, and from that time to the day of her death, her life was given wholly to religious labors. Her sons have become prominent men in the Santa Clara Valley and as owners of the San Jose Mercury and Herald wield a large influence in the permanent upbuilding of this portion of the state. The family have become weal- thy, prosperous and honored, and much of their riches has been devoted to spreading the primitive

Gospel before the world. This wealth came direct to Mary Hayes-Chynoweth as a reward for her un- selfish Christian labors. Her life record has no dup- licate in America, and notwithstanding her great wealth, she lived humbly and was constantly doing good among the people who knew and appreciated hier example and noble work.

The True Life Church, founded in 1903, has in its membership an earnest body of cultured people. The ceremony of organization, November 22, was simple, yet exceedingly impressive, and brought to the thoughts of the onlookers memories of the New Testament narrative of the founding of the early Christian Church. The declaration of principles was read and subscribed to, after which a board of trus- tees were elected to serve one year and the articles of organization were adopted. On the day of the founding of the church, Mr. E. A. Hayes read the statement of brief, previously signed by those who proposed the organization of the movement. It read as follows:

"We, the undersigned, for mutual help in spiritual development and in order to more effectually spread the knowledge of the truth, hereby associate our- selves together as the True Life Church of San Jose, Cal., and declare the cardinal principles of our re- ligious belief to be as follows:

I. "We hold that religion consists in pure and holy living and unselfish doing, and not in professions.

II. "We believe in God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, and in Him only as the author of salvation for every human being, through developing Himself in each soul to the fullness of the Christ life as shown forth in the New Testament. We believe that it is the destiny of every human soul, when he so wills and labors with sufficient diligence to that end, to develop to the same purity and spiritual power as Christ is represented in the Bible to have reached.

III.

"In order to reach that end a constant dual ef- fort by each individual is a necessity.

"First: Each one must pray unto God for an in- crease of His Life and power within him, and must desire as the chief of all valuable possessions to have incorporated in life and character all that is pure and holy in thought, word and deed.

"Second: Each must resist with all his will the promptings of his lower nature, and overcome as rapidly as he can the temptations to evil.

IV.

"We are convinced that the Christ standard of per- fection in human life is possible for each one of us and that spiritual light and wisdom come as results of growth and the overcoming of the physical ele- ments in each nature, because of the manifestations of God's life and power which have been brought to the world through Mrs. Hayes-Chynoweth. Among other things she has healed the sick by the lay- ing on of hands when no human agency could al- leviate their sufferings; she has preached the Gos- pel without previous study, but as the truth was given her through inspiration at the time; she reads the human heart as an open book, and knows its yearnings and needs which God helps her satisfy and supply; she has had revealed to her the where- abouts of the wealth hidden in the earth, as well

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as many of the mysteries of the spiritual world. God is no respector of persons and what He has done for Mrs. Hayes-Chynoweth He will do for all of His children who work for the spiritual life with the same zeal and singleness of purpose with which she has worked.

"We each pledge ourselves to do all in our power to overcome the physical elements in our natures and to grow from day to day in purity and godliness; to do everything we can to add to the interest of the meetings of this organization, and to induce as many others as possible to attend them in order that they may be benefited with ourselves."

Since its organization the True Life Church has grown in numbers, in zeal and effective service, and through the publication called "The True Life," has become a well-known factor in religious circles. With the deepest friendship toward all denominations and all sects striving to upbuild the world spiritually, Mrs. Hayes-Chynoweth endeavored, with all the pow- er of her forceful, prayerful life, to lead people to return to the doctrines of the Scriptures as preached by the Apostles. Up to the time of her death. she retained her activity, mentally and physically, and continued her self-sacrificing efforts in helping the poor and needy.

Mary Hayes-Chynoweth passed from this earthly sphere on July 27. 1905, beloved by all who knew her and mourned by her family and a large circle of friends. The following tribute paid by Dr. Eli Mc- Clish, president of the University of the Pacific, tells in simple words of her noble and self-sacrificing work and the high esteem in which she was held: "Today we come to stand by the side of the casket containing the remains of our neighbor, our friend, and the friend of humanity. For eighty years she has walked, from her humble parsonage hom through the paths of Wisconsin, out by the Great Lakes, across the plains to California, about the high- ways and byways of this county, and particularly about the beautiful home at Edenvale, everywhere scattering words of kindness, ministering in tender grace by sympathetic and healing touch to rich and poor, man or woman of any race, that she might help; and now, more cloquent than any words that can be uttered is this silent tribute of your presence. are those unbidden tears on your cheek, and the hushed lips that have so often moved in the utter- ance of truth. And what shall we say? How does it come that the largest church in the community is packed to its doors at this presence? I answer, because of what she was. In the first place, she was preeminently a religious woman. Not a graduate of a school. not a philosopher in the so-called sense of philosophy, not a philanthropist in the sense of having her name numbered as the founder of col- leges or planter of eleemosynary asylums for the needy, but as a devoted religious woman. Her re- ligion was not ecclesiastical, but was an expression of spiritual reality; faith in the unseen, which ren- dered her faithful. Her only recognition of a faith that was worth anything was a faith that makes one faithful. She was not careful about the articulation of a crecd, but she was intensely careful about the soul being open to God and responsive to His Spirit. The true life was what she aimed for, whether as a girl teaching school in Wisconsin, as a mother in her home, or as a grandmother ministering to the little children about her knec.

"She had two great dominating thoughts. You. possibly, are as familiar with them as I am. She believed in God and the human soul. She had no doubt of them, she had experience with both of them. She believed that there were many things that she did not know, but she believed that the law by which we comprehend God is the law of love, and that the law by which it shall unfold itself until it shall become like the Father is the law of love; and so, without the articulation of a creed, she insisted that we should hold ourselves as the bud on the rose, whose soul it is, receptive to the sun that shines for it and the breeze that blows upon it, open and receptive, so that under the divine sun and air we will come to be beautiful and fragrant and helpful; and so she taught that more important than the talk about God is the knowing God in the intimacy of the soul, and allowing the life to be un- folded by the direction and movement of the Divine Spirit; for God is not a far-off God, but immanent within, transcendent without, everywhere present with the strength of the Father and the tender grace of the mother.

"In the second place she was an apostle. You remember our Lord selected out of his disciples the apostles. I suppose it was no arbitrary selection. Some seeds grow into trees and develop foliage green and luxuriant but do not scatter seeds. Others as they grow gather energy from the sun and soil and dew and rain, and transmit it into the ripening flower, until with distended capsule it bursts and sends its seeds everywhere. There are men who spontaneously gather truth that they may enrich oth- ers by it. She never sought truth for truth's sake, but for humanity's sake. What cared she about phil- osophy? Let us find the truth that will feed the child. that will inspire the man, that will give him integrity, that will enable him to help humanity. That is the truth that she hunted, not to see its beauties as one turns a diamond, but a truth to be put into other lives to make them beautiful with the consciousness of God . . . .

"I noted her last words were. "I have never harmed anyone.' How she thought of humanity, of the tenants on the place! I was touched today as I saw one after another, men and women and children. enter the silent room and then return with the high- est tribute that man can pay, the tribute that can- not be expressed except by the unbidden tear. All out in the cottages, out in the park. the little children knew her, the toilers knew her, and they knew that she tried to live the True Life.

"'No angel, but a dearer being. all dipt in angel instincts,

Breathing Paradise, and yet all native to her place.'

"A comforter to those in sorrow, healing by her sympathetic touch those who were sick. harming none, helping all, she went through her eighty years of life and came down to her grave like a shock of corn in its season. Her name will linger; those dumb lips will speak. In the language of the apostle. 'She being dead yet speaketh.' "

WILLIAM CASPAR BLABON .- A member of an carly pioneer family is William Caspar Blabon, who has made a name for himself as a successful orchardist and well driller, and has been engaged in the latter occupation throughout California. He was born September 9. 1861, on the farm of Moses

of as Q. Quico

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HISTORY OF SANTA CLARA COUNTY

Blabon, his uncle, who resided on the Mountain View Road. His father, Walter L. Blabon, was a native of Franklin County, Maine, and his mother was Miss Anna F. White before her marriage and was born and reared in Boston, Mass. The paternal grand- father. Capt. Otis Blabon, came to California around Cape Horn in 1846, and was a member of the vigil- ance committee in the carly, turbulent days. Walter L. Blabon came to California via Panama in 1860. Here he engaged in farming and in 1864 purchased 130 acres, the old homestead, which he improved with a family orchard and followed general farming. William Caspar Blahon now owns his father's old home and a part of the old farm, which he now devotes to raising prunes. He was educated at the Lincoln school and in private schools of Santa Clara County, after which he engaged in well drilling. He has continued successfully in this line of work for twenty-five years and is still engaged in developing water wells in many sections of California.

The marriage of Mr. Blabon united him with Miss Annie Beasworrick, the daughter of John and Mary E. (Billings) Beasworrick, who came from England to Santa Clara. Mr. Beasworrick was employed in the New Almaden mines for many years and there Mrs. Blabon was born. They are the parents of two children, Annie May and William Caspar, Jr. Politically Mr. Blabon is an adherent of the Republi- can party. He is at all times interested in the pro- gress and advancement of the community which has for so long been his home.

MILTON A. BOULWARE .- The advanced and eminently satisfactory state of the undertaker's pro- fession in California today is undoubtedly due to such far-seeing, idealistic and progressive men as Milton A. Boulware, the secretary of the San Jose Under- taking Company, who was born in Little Calaveras Valley. Santa Clara County, on Washington's birth- day. 1856. His father, John Wesley Boulware, a farmer in Missouri, married Miss Louisa Rebecca Lewis, and together they crossed the wide prairies in 1849, settling at first in Little Calaveras Valley. fn 1860, they removed to Palo Alto; and there they continued to live until they died, aged about sixty- four years. They had seven children, and Milton was the second of the family. He attended the public schools in Santa Clara County, and then took a course in the business college; and when he was ready to do for himself, he sold merchandise in the General Farmers' Union. Next, for a number of years, he was bookkeeper for T. W. Hobson & Company, and after that. also for a number of years. bookkeeper and cashier for the Rucker Bros. Furniture Com- pany. When he left that firm, it was to assist J. E. Rucker for a couple of years in the real estate field. In 1900 he joined the staff of the San Jose Under- taking Company, and he has been here ever since.

On December 24, 1878. Mr. Boulware was married at San Jose to Miss Mary Elizabeth Rucker, the daughter of Joseph E. Rucker, a well-known pioneer realty man, and their union has been blessed with the birth of twin daughters. Helen K. is the wife of Grover C. Emmons, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Susie W., now Mrs. J. R. Connor, whose son, Douglas Conner, is the first grandchild of Mr. and Mrs. Boulware. The family attend St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church; and Mr. Boulware is a member of the Royal Arch and Knights Templar Masons, and for thirty-two years

was secretary of San Jose Lodge No. 10, F. & A. M. He also belongs to the Elks, the Modern Woodmen of America, the Eastern Star and the Order of Amar- anth. In national politics a Republican, Mr. Boul- ware, who is also fond of ranch and out-door life, finds his greatest pleasure in promoting, in a non- partisan manner, whatever is to the best interests of the community.

JAMES PIERONNET PIERCE. - Prominent among the noted captains of industry who have con- tributed greatly toward the development of the re- sources of the Golden State, the late James Pieronnet Pierce, will ever be given an enviable place in Cali- tornia history. His father, Henry Miller Pierce, was born in Axminster, Devonshire, England. His mother, Susan Pieronnet, whose parents were both French, was born in Wayford, England. In 1820, she, with her parents moved from England to Friendsville, Pa., and was soon followed by Henry Miller Pierce, whose father, John Harvey Pierce, had offered $10,000 to any of his sons who would go to America to live, having great faith in the future of this country. Therefore, Henry M. got both the money and the girl he had wanted before she left England.

James P. Pierce was born at Friendsville, Pa .. August 25, 1825, where he remained until he reached his majority, when he moved west to Michigan and there engaged in the business of general merchandis- ing at Constantine. There he met Miss Amelia Ann Pease, a native of Ann Arbor, whom he married at Jackson on August 25, 1852; he was then just twenty- seven years of age and she seventeen, and together they came to California in 1854, reaching San Fran- cisco by way of the Isthmus. Almost immediately they went to Yuba County and there, at Smartsville. Mr. Pierce engaged in hydraulic mining, becoming a Icading operator before he sold out in 1878. He might have continued uninterruptedly in that important field had not the death of a brother-in-law, A. H. Houston, drawn him back to San Francisco to take charge of an altogether different enterprise. Mr. Houston, as early as 1867, had undertaken to build part of the sca wall along the San Francisco water front, under contract with the board of state harbor commission- ers, and when he passed away he had finished only a part of that great undertaking and had gone to great cxpense in quarrying and cutting granite. Mr. Pierce succeeded to Mr. Houston's interests, and success- fully completed 1130 feet of the sea wall under a new and enlarged contract, receiving as his compensation $240 per lineal foot.

From 1868, for seven or eight years, Mr. Pierce's family lived in San Francisco, and during that time he established general offices there, although his main interests continued to be the exploitation of hydraulic mining properties in Yuba County, which he still operated for many years after finishing the sea wall. In 1866 he purchased from Mr. Lent a very beautiful country home, occupying eighty-eight acres on the west side of Santa Clara, naming the place "New Park," after the country home of his grandfather in England. The price paid Mr. Lent was $48,500, a very large sum for those days. It abutted on Frank- lin Street and included the present site of the Car- melite Monastery and a part of what is now the coun- try home of R. T. Pierce. He continued to own and operate the Blue Gravel Mine, which was enlarged to include a water proposition and a large lot of land, and renamed it The Excelsior Water & Mining Com-

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pany, under which title it was conducted until sold in 1881 to a syndicate composed of Haggin & Tevis, and others. His interest in this deal amounted to $600,000.

In 1877 Mr. Pierce bought a small planing mill in Santa Clara and changed its name of Enterprise Mill to the Pacific Manufacturing Company, and in- corporated it in 1879. He purchased some timber lands in the Santa Cruz Mountains and built a saw- inill at Ben Lomond and put in the first band saw to be operated in California. Mr. Pierce at one time owned the Empire Gold Mine in Grass Valley, which he sold in 1872 to the father of W. B. Bourn for $150,000. This mine was developed by the Bourns to one of the largest and most profitable in the state. Soon after organizing the Pacific Manufacturing Com- pany, Mr. Pierce became quite active as a lumberman and in addition to the Ben Lomond Mill he pur- chased timber lands and built a sawmill at Ash Creek at the foot of Mt. Shasta. At this time he was a pioneer in the sugar and white pine industry. He also owned timber lands at La Moine near Dunsmuir. He founded the Bank of Santa Clara County and erected the building which it occupied on the corner of Main and Franklin streets. He served as trustee of Mills Seminary, afterwards Mills College, for many years, devoting a great deal of time to its interests, and inaking it many gifts.

Seven children survived Mr. and Mrs. Pierce. The eldest son, James H. Pierce, president of the Pacific Manufacturing Company, resides on the Alameda in San Jose; he married Marion P. Thurston, and they had two daughters, Edith, now the wife of J. G. Ken- nedy of Palo Alto, and Mildred, now deceased, who was the wife of George Corner Fenhagen, a promi- nent architect of Baltimore, Md. Richard T. is the treasurer of the Pacific Manufacturing Company and resides on one of the finest fruit ranches in the Santa Clara Valley and has a beautiful home. Caroline L. became Mrs. W. J. Casey, and is deceased. Annie A. married F. D. Goodhue and resides in Pasadena. Grace I. became Mrs. F. D. Madison, and is deceased. Florence is Mrs. F. H. Beaver, and resides in San Francisco, where her sister, Frances, now Mrs. L. L. Morse, is also living. Mr. Pierce passed away on February 26, 1897, and was buried beside his wife in Laurel Hill Cemetery, San Francisco.

MRS. MARY A. WHITE .- A distinguished pio- neer who has seen the marvelous development and growth of Santa Clara Valley, and is today honored by all who know her for her own enviable part in that development and expansion, is Mrs. Mary A. White, who lives retired on Day Road, some two and a half miles northwest of Gilroy. She was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, on May 21, 1840, the daughter of Thomas and Winnifred (Spellman) Ford, well known in their land and generation. Thomas Ford died in 1842, and in 1844 Mary Ford accompa- nied her mother across the Atlantic to Boston, Mass. Meanwhile Edward and James Ford came to Califor- nia, and in 1855 Mrs. Ford and her family came out to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama, taking passage on the old steamer Sierra Nevada, from New York to Aspinwall. They crossed the Isthmus in a wagon and then traveled from Panama to San Francisco aboard the side-wheeler Golden Gate. Arriving in California, Mrs. Ford, Mary and two sons came on to San Jose, to which city two older brothers, Edward and James, had migrated.

Mrs. Ford died at Edenvale, December 17, 1886, aged eighty years.

At San Jose, in 1858, Miss Ford married Thomas White, who was born in Canada on November 24, 1836, and had come to California with his parents in 1853, via the Isthmus, traveling in much the same manner as had the Fords. He was a fine young man, and a very hard, honest worker; but his prom- ising life was cut off all too early, and he passed away in January, 1889, at his home near Gilroy. In 1879, the Whites had removed to a small ranch near Gilroy, after Mr. White had engaged in ranching for a while at Pine Ridge; and later Mr. White acquired 100 acres of the James Murphy ranch on Day Road, which he farmed to grain and stock. After the death of her husband, Mrs. White added eighty-eight acres to the ranch, at the same time that she was rearing and educating her twelve children, and later oversee- ing the rearing of two grandsons under her roof. Although past eighty years, she is singularly alert and her mental faculties are keen and still ready for the varied demands of a modern day.

The children referred to have been: Thomas, who died in infancy; Edward, who passed away when he was nineteen; William, who resides with his wife and three children at Gilroy; Annie remains at home with her mother; Thomas, married, lives with his wife and three children at Oakland, although they have a ranchi on the Watsonville Road; James, de- ceased, is survived by his widow and two children, and they reside at Colusa; John is also deceased, but his widow and a son are living at Gilroy; a daughter is Sister Viviana, a nun at the convent at Gilroy; Charles White, who married and has a wife and one child, is an orchardist on Day Road, Gilroy; Frank is deceased; Louis, unmarried, lives at home and is manager of the ranch; and Nellie also adds her charm to the home circle. Mrs. White has done much in her time to support St. Mary's parish; and as a Democrat she has also exerted her best influence for higher and better political conditions.

DAVID M. BURNETT .- A distinguished repre- sentative of the California Bar of more than ordinary interest because of his relation, as a descendant, to one of the illustrious forefathers of the Golden State, is David M. Burnett, son of John M. and Ellen (Casey) Burnett, and grandson of Peter H. Burnett, California's first governor. He was born in San Francisco the day after Christmas, 1870, and at the age of twelve matriculated at St. Ignatius College, from which he was graduated on June 3, 1891, with the Bachelor of Science degree. In the fall of the latter year he entered the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco; and while reading law, he was for a year an instructor in Mathematics and English in St. Ignatius College, and also for a year in Santa Clara College. In August, 1894, he was admitted to practice at the California Bar; and on the first of September he began the practice of law in the office of the late Charles F. Wilcox. Three years later, in March, Mr. Burnett and H. E. Wilcox formed a partnership which continued until February, 1917. While in the law school, Mr. Burnett joined the fra- ternity Phi Delta Phi, made up of law students; and since then he has become a member of the Young Men's Institute, Knights of Columbus, the Native Sons, the National Union, the Sainte Claire Club and the California Pioneers.

alex. P. Zurgotten

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HISTORY OF SANTA CLARA COUNTY

The story of the Burnett family tree is particularly interesting. Peter Hardeman Burnett was born in Nashville, Tenn., in 1807, and grew up to be a trader and a lawyer. In 1843 he made the overland journey to Oregon, and soon after took a prominent part in the organization of the territorial government. He was sent to the legislature in both 1844 and 1848, and then became a judge of the Oregon Supreme Court. The great excitement about the discovery of gold in California led him to abandon everything in Oregon and to hurry south, and for a short time he himself worked in the mines; but when the affairs of the Sutter family and estate at New Helvetia be- came so complicated, he accepted the responsibility of their agent. In 1849 he rose to prominence in actively urging the formation of a state government in advance of Congressional authority; he energetic- ally opposed the military direction of the territory by the U. S. Government; but he yielded to the calling of a constitutional convention, and under the new constitution was at once elected governor, and as- sumed office ahead of all Congressional action in September, 1850. He resigned the governship in 1851, practiced law, and then became one of the supreme judges of California in 1857-58. For seven- teen years, from 1863, Judge Burnett was very prom- inent in San Francisco as the president of the cor- poration known as the Pacific Bank; and in 1878 he published a volume entitled, "Recollections of an Old Pioneer," which is regarded as a very valuable contribution toward an understanding of the carly political and constitutional history of the Pacific Coast. In 1880, Judge Burnett retired and spent the balance of his life in the family circle of his son, John M. Burnett, where he passed away on May 16, 1895, aged eighty-seven years.

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History of Santa Clara County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 62

Author: Sawyer, Eugene Taylor, 1846- Publication date: 1922 Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co. Number of Pages: 1928

Author: Sawyer, Eugene Taylor, 1846-
Publication date: 1922
Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1928