History of Santa Clara County California with biographical sketches, Part 128

Author: Sawyer, Eugene T
Publication date: 1922
Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1934

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tober 13, 1868, third son of Charles and Elizabeth (Hudson) Haman, the father of German parentage, while the mother was born in Tennessee, of En- glish and Irish descent. Three of their sons are living: John H. is a retired farmer and capitalist of Canton, Mo., and president of the Monticello Trust Company. William F., a minister in the Christian church, now residing at Canton, Mo., was formerly pastor of Christian churches at St. Louis, Mo., and at Sedalia, Mo. The youngest of the family is Carl W., of this sketch.

Bereaved of his mother when he was only six weeks old, C. W. Haman was reared by his uncle and aunt, Frederick and Elvira (Lair) Haman, of Shelby County, Mo., who, having no children of their own, legally adopted him, and there C. W. re- ceived his early education. After graduating from the high school he entered the State Normal School at Kirksville, Mo., finishing the regular four years' course there in the class of 1889. After graduating, he began teaching at Salem, Mo., where he was first assistant in the high school. In 1892 he helped organize the bank at Bethel, Mo., and became its cashier, occupying that position until 1895, when he and his wife came to California.

Settling at Santa Clara, Mr. Haman entered the newspaper field, working on the Santa Clara Jour- ral, a semi-weekly, for a year, N. H. Downing then being the proprietor. Later he and the Messrs. Downing purchased forty-three acres of land near Santa Clara, which they set out to prunes, this marking Mr. Haman's entrance into horticulture, and he still owns part of this tract; he also has other orchard interests. Next he engaged in the feed and fuel business at Santa Clara, continuing in this for five years and operating his orchard properties at the same time. Several years ago Mr. Haman began as a fruit buyer for Rosenberg Bros. & Company, buying from growers in Santa Clara County. He has been very successful in this work and is now assistant manager of the Santa Clara plant.

On August 27, 1890, Mr. Haman was married to Miss Bertha Morgan, who was born at Salem, Ifi., a daughter of John M. and Catherine (Bright) Mor- gan, both natives of Ohio. When Mrs. Haman was nine years old her parents moved to Kirksville, Mo., and there she was educated in the public schools and at the Kirksville State Normal School. The father is deceased. but Mrs. Morgan is still living at Kirksville, the mother of six children: A. R. Mor- gan is principal of the Sherman School at St. Louis, Mo .; Martha is the widow of the late Newton Wil- iiams of Kirksville, Mo .; Alice is the widow of G. D. Dawson of Memphis, Mo .; Adah became the wife of John M. Gates of Kirksville, Mo., and passed away in 1891, leaving a daughter, Adah, now Mrs. Craig Reddish of Washington, D. C .; Bertha E. is Mrs. Haman; Olive is at home with her mother. Mrs. Haman is a talented, cultured woman, and both she and her husband are members of the Bap- tist Church at Santa Clara, Cal., Mrs. Haman being in charge of the music, and Mr. Haman being Sun- day School Superintendent. Popular in Masonic circles, Mrs. Haman is past matron of Santa Clara Chapter No. 195, O. E. S., while Mr. Haman is past master of Liberty Lodge No. 299, F. & A. M. He is also an officer of San Jose Commandery No. 10, Knights Templar, and belongs to Islam Shrine of San Francisco. He is a stockholder of the Santa

Henry. Christian Walter.

Mary & Water

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HISTORY OF SANTA CLARA COUNTY

Clara branch of the Bank of Italy and of the Bank of San Jose, and for eight years was president of the Santa Clara Board of Education. Hc served several years on the Republican County Central Committee, and is numbered among the influential citizens of Santa Clara.

JOHN W. STRANDBERG .- Among the well known ranchmen and cattle dealers of Santa Clara County is John W. Strandberg, whose activities have constituted a valuable contribution to the de- velopment and upbuilding of the district in which he lives. Although living a retired life, his com- petency was gained only through many years of hard toil. He was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, Decem- ber 14, 1840, a son of Jacob and Annie (Hendrick- son) Strandberg. During the year of 1844 the father passed away and the following year the mother died, leaving John W. an orphan. Friends of the family took the boy in and his time was spent between the city and country so there was very little chance for schooling, his days being spent in hard work. When he became old enough, he secured work in the steamship shops of Gothenburg, remain- ing there until he was twenty-two years of age, then spent two years in Stockholm and then he embarked for the United States with the determi- nation of finding work in the copper mines on Lake Superior. He came to America in 1864 and soon after enlisted in Company K, Twenty-eighth Michi- gan Infantry under General Schofield and General Thomas. His company saw service in the battles of Three Rivers, N. C. and battle of Nashville and he was discharged from the service June 6, 1866, at Raleigh, N. C. He was then employed with the Union Pacific railroad, working in the shops at Omaha, North Platte and Laramie City, Wyo., and then he worked for the Western Union Telegraph Company on construction work along the railroad toward California. He was thus employed until the fall of 1869, then removed to Omaha and worked there until 1870; then to Helena, Ark., then to New Orleans, thence to Chicago and on to St. Paul, working on the building of the Northern Pacific railroad from St. Paul to Bismarck, N. D.

The work on the railroad was discontinued in 1873, and Mr. Strandberg took up a farm fourteen miles north of Bismarck, building a house and other- wise improving the place, and during the great flood of that year caused by the overflowing of the Mis- souri River everything was washed away, leaving him utterly ruined. He then removed to Mineral Hill, Nev., where he spent two years in the mines; thence to Eureka, Nev., engaging in mining until 1886; then came to San Francisco, after a short trip to Alaska. Upon returning to California, he filed a claim for 160-acres of government land near Mt. Hamilton, Santa Clara County, later acquir- ing by purchase an additional 160 acres. These 320 acres were grazing land and for twenty-seven years Mr. Strandberg was engaged in stockraising. After disposing of his ranch, he removed to Oakland where he spent one year, then to San Jose and has resided here continuously for the past ten years.

The marriage of Mr. Strandberg, in January, 1877, in Omaha, Neb., united him with Miss Mary Eliza- beth Bergquist, a native of Sweden, and they became the parents of three children; Jennie, employed in the Bank of Oakland; Edith, now Mrs. C. Peterson,

residing in Oakland; Alma died at the age of twenty- one. Mrs. Strandberg passed away in 1887 while residing on the ranch. Mr. Strandberg is a mem- ber of Sheridan-Dix Post No. 7 of San Jose, he is a member of the Theosophical Society of San Jose and at the advanced age of eighty-one years is living retired at 531 East William Street. He has never had occasion to regret his determination to come to the West and, utilizing the opportun- ities here offered, has made a name and place for himself in the city of his adoption.

DR. DAVID PAUL CAMERON .- A very skil- ful dentist who has become a leader in his profes- sion and is today one of the most distinguished rep- resentatives of the second dental college in the world, is Dr. David Paul Cameron, of 410 View Street, Mountain View, at which place, for practically one- quarter of a century, he has resided and practiced. He was born at Cincinnati on January 3, 1867, the son of Dr. J. G. Cameron, one of the first dentists in that city, and who, for forty years, was one of the ablest professional men there. Grandfather Wil- liam Cameron was a farmer in Cecil County, Md., and lived upon a portion of a grant given to the Cameron family by Lord Baltimore, which grant has been in the Cameron family for 200 years. The Camerons may trace their ancestry back to noted Scotchmen of birth and honor, and this branch of the Cameron family became prominent in the states of Maryland and Ohio.

David Paul Cameron grew up in Cincinnati and lived there until he was thirty years old, educated in private schools and for a while attending the Chick- ering Institute, whose prescribed course of study he completed. He then studied dentistry under his father, and when only sixteen could fill teeth. After that he entered the Ohio Dental College at Cin- cinnati, the second oldest dental college in the world. of which his father was a trustee, while a brother, Dr. Otis L. Cameron, was a lecturer there; and he was duly graduated from the college, with the class of '90. Thus favored with a complete course in den- :istry, Dr. Cameron opened a dental office in Cin- cinnati, and he practiced independently of his father, who remained eminent in that city for four decades. Upon the latter's death in 1892, our subject suc- ceeded to his patronage, maintaining a suite of offices with his brother, Dr. Otis L. Cameron, who prac- ticed medicine at 132 Garfield Place.

After a siege of double typhoid-pneumonia, when he hovered between life and death for 110 days with that dread malady, Dr. David P. Cameron came out to California in 1897, abandoning the extensive practice he had taken such pains to build up. Not only had his life been despaired of, but he had been reduced to a mere skeleton, and when he came to California, he was so weak that he could scarcely walk a block. He stopped for a while in Los An- geles, but not being content, he went to San Fran- cisco and began to pick up both strength and flesh; he weighed 108 pounds when he reached San Fran- cisco; then he gained thirty-four pounds; after that he went back to 135 pounds, where he stood for two years, next he advanced to 170 pounds, and now for several years past his normal weight has been 160 pounds. As he grew stronger, he began to look for a place to locate, and in 1898 good fortune directed him to Mountain View, where he has built up an enviable practice, with his office at his residence.

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HISTORY OF SANTA CLARA COUNTY

At Cincinnati in 1890, Dr. Cameron was married to Miss Florence Edith White, of Cincinnati, mem- ber of a prominent Southern family and a third cousin of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confed- erate States; and their union has been blessed with three children: David Paul Cameron, Jr., was grad- uated from the Mountain View high school with the class of '21, and he is now taking post-graduate work at the high school, and is the captain of the high school's football team; Otis Little is in first-year work at the high school; Joseph Gay is still at home.

MRS. CATHERINE DUNNE .- It is not often that Californians, alert to honor those pioneers who have made straight for posterity the paths once so crooked, have the opportunity to repay their debt of gratitude to a nonagenarian such as Mrs. Catherine Dunne, who has already attained the fine old age of ninety-four and looks forward eagerly to sceing her hundredth year. She first reached the Pacific on June 16, 1851, and more and more, as the years have gone by, has she and her worthy family enjoyed, as they have merited, the esteem and good-will of everybody.

Wexford, Ireland, was the scene of her birth, on August 3, 1828, when she entered the family of John and Mary O'Toole, but she was scarcely two years on the Emerald Isle when her parents migrated to Canada, establishing their home near Quebec, and there Catherine grew up to enjoy the advantages of the French-Canadian education. In 1851 she met and married at her home Bernard Murphy, born in 1818, in Canada, whose father, Martin Murphy, had made his way to California in 1844 and there founded the Murphy family which has since risen to such prom- inence in California, especially in Santa Clara County; and it was natural enough, that instead of remaining in Canada, Mr. and Mrs. Murphy should start for the Golden State. They traveled by way of Panama, and arrived at San Francisco on June 16. Only a short period of bliss was in store for this ambitious ard worthy man; for on April 11, 1853, he was one of many who met death through the blowing up of the steamer "Jenny Lind," while crossing San Francisco Bay. One child, Martin J. C. Murphy, had been born to these devoted parents in June, 1852; and while a mere youth his brilliancy gave promise of a future in which he would be a sustaining comfort to the mourn- ing widow; but the Providence whose ways are ever such a mystery called him away from his books when at Georgetown College, whither he had gone to study law, when just nineteen years, eleven months old, on May 25, 1872. His remains were brought West to Gilroy and interred beside those of his father in the old cemetery in that town.

On May 6, 1862, Mrs. Murphy remarried, taking for her husband James Dunne, who had arrived in Cal- ifornia in the late '50s, and after twelve years of mar- ried life of the happiest kind, he died on June 4, 1874. He had lived to see the birth of their three children, Mary Phileta, Peter J., and Catherine B. Dunne; and to know that his widow would inherit rather a vast estate, mostly large tracts of land in Santa Clara County. Mary become Mrs. Joseph H. Rucker, the wife of the San Jose realty dealer; Peter J. married Miss Josephine Masten, the daugh- tel of N. K. Masten of San Francisco .; Catherine B. is Mrs. Ralph W. Hersey of Santa Barbara. Peter J. is a graduate of Santa Clara College, has had a suc- cessful business career in San Francisco, and since

1895 has been the right hand man of his aged mother, managing with rare ability her extensive estate. This property was originally held by Bernard Murphy, but in the hands of both James and Peter Dunne, its valuc has greatly appreciated. Much of the credit of this wise management of a large and varied prop- erty, as well as credit for the enviable status of each member of her family, must be given this estimable gentlewoman who looks back over almost a century; for as wife, mother, neighbor and citizen she dis- charged her responsible duties, showing exceptional ability in many ways for such a task, and never los- ing her faith in a future for the land of her adoption, and the county and the town so closely associated with his home ties. Mrs. Dunne is now residing with Mrs. Hersey at Santa Barbara. Santa Clara County is more than pleased to honor such a sturdy pioneer, whose life has run parallel with the lives of thousands who have found their ultimate goal and the lealiza- tion of their dreams in this favored section.

JOSHUA HENDY IRON WORKS .- Few peo- ple, no doubt, have any adequate idea of the im- portance and magnitude of the Joshua Hendy Iron Works at Sunnyvale, a wonderful monument to its founder, the late Joshua Hendy of San Francisco, and also the late John Hendy, its former president and general superintendent, whose widow is one of the most highly-esteemed residents of Sunnyvale. The present company was incorporated in 1903; it started to build its great plant at Sunnyvale in 1906, and in February of the following year, it commenced to operate. Following the death of their uncle, the said Joshua Hendy, his two nephews, John and Samuel Hendy, operated the works. On the death of his brother, Samuel J. Hendy, John H. Hendy became president and, on May 8, 1920, he was stricken with apoplexy and passed away at the family home a few days later.

The city organization is located in San Francisco, and that branch takes care of all sales, contracts, etc., the organization at Sunnyvale turning out the products desired. The officers are: president and general manager, F. J. Behneman of San Francisco; vice-president and assistant manager, Morris Levitt, also of San Francisco; secretary and treasurer, C. C. Gardner of Alameda, and the general superintendent, H. S. Rexworthy of Sunnyvale. During the World War, the Hendy Iron Works did its duty in con- tributing a hugh share of what Uncle Sam needed for his success at arms, but it was able to accomplish this only by running shifts of men-500 during the day, and 400 during the night. It helped out the Government by putting out a vast deal of heavy work. Thus at this plant it built ten sets of triple- expansion marine engines weighing 124 tons each and having 2,800 horsepower each. It made one single casting which weighed fifteen and one-half tons. This was only a small part of the work done at Sunnyvale.

The works occupy twenty-nine acres facing on Sunnyvale Avenue in Sunnyvale, and the main build- ing was carefully designed with reference to the proper heating, ventilation, lighting and water sup- ply. This building is one-eighth of a mile long, and it is supplied with three traveling cranes of fifteen, twenty and thirty tons capacity. The company owns forty acres of additional ground near to the plot upon which the works are located, and it has put in a 700-foot well in which the water rises 300 feet, and

Catherine Fume.

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HISTORY OF SANTA CLARA COUNTY

is then pumped by means of a large centrifugal pump, driven by electricity into a water tank or tower eighty feet high. This supplies water in suf- ficient quantities for the use of the works, and also for irrigating the lawns in front of the main build- ing and adjacent lands; the lawns are well-kept and beautiful, and so are the spare lands on which are planted orchards and gardens. Tracks of the South- ern Pacific Railroad Company enter the premises, where the company has installed a weigh-box with railway weighing scales which gives the weight of every car as it enters and leaves the works. Elec- trical power from the Pacific Gas and Electric Com- pany furnishes the motive force, and gigantic trans- formers provide the quality of power needed for the various mechanical operations, while three great air- compressors provide compressed air for operating, riveting machinery, trip-hammers, clippers, etc. The eastern quarter of the main building is the assem- bling room; but at times the job is so big that the assembling has to be done outside, especially in the building of the massive head-gates for irrigation pur- poses. The main buildings contain hundreds of thou- sands, if not millions of dollars worth of up-to-date, heavy steel and iron-working machinery.

To the rear of the main building are the foundry, "the largest on the Pacific Coast), the carpenter shop and lumber yards, the pattern shop, the pattern store, the yard crane, the general store room, the car shop, which contains a number of forges, and blacksmith and plate shop, where is being manufactured at the present a large number of construction cars for use on the Dom Pedro Dam, at the head of the Modesto and Turlock irrigation projects, and hydroelectric works. Here is manufactured structural steel for mining companies. There is also the building con- taining the two great electrical transformers and the three great air compressors. The foundry is a mar- vel of efficiency and magnitude, and among its strik- ing architectural features are three gigantic cupolas, tor melting the iron, and three vast pits where the moulds are made and metal is poured for massive castings. The main building contains the offices of the works, including the administration and engineer- ing offices and the general superintendent's offices, and also the commodious and well-arranged drafts- men's rooms, and the storehouses; and among the massive, truly wonderful machines installed in the main building may be mentioned a great gear-cutter that can cut gears with exactness in solid steel up to twelve feet in diameter, and up to a seventeen-inch face. There is also a sixteen-foot vertical boring mill, and a Putnam lathe of eighty-eight-inch cen- ters with a thirty-six-foot bed, which is capable of turning out fifteen-ton crank shafts and other big work; a horizontal boring mill forty tons in weight, designed and built and set up in these works. The plant as a whole is very well lighted and ventilated, with all sanitary conveniences and first aid for the injured. The expanse of windows may be judged somewhat from the fact that it costs about $500.00 for a single window cleaning.

Among the products of these famous works are heavy mining machinery comprising stamp mills, rock or ore crushers, ball mills, and machinery of all description pertaining to mining, irrigation, hydro- electric works, etc., etc. Machinery manufactured at Sunnyvale have been set up in the most remote parts of the earth,-as when two Hendy mills were in-

stalled at Nome, Alaska, in 1912. There are two- stamp and three-stamp mills, and each is a model in design and workmanship. The iron works also manufacture ore and rock cars, for which they are tamous, and these include Hendy's Ideal Car, steel double side dump "V"-shaped body cars, gable bot- iom cars, and cradle or U-shaped body side dump cars, and the Matteson side and end dump cars. Original and leaders in their own path-breaking movements, the Joshua Hendy Iron Works keep pointing the way for others to follow, and they leave no stone unturned to send out only perfectly-finished goods, howsoever bulky and common in general style they may happen to be. Both Sunnyvale, Santa Clara County, and San Francisco are to be con- gratulated on having such a product of the Twen- tieth Century as the Joshua Hendy Iron Works of Sunnyvale and the Bay City, the former boasting of the factory whose efficiency is largely due to the exceptional superintendence of the genial director, Mr. H. S. Rexworthy.

LEWIS LARSON .- Prominent among the lead- ers in the prune and apricot growing industry in Santa Clara County is Lewis Larson, the thoroughly progressive, if wisely conservative rancher of Sunny- vale, where he owns ten acres given up to a valu- ¿ble orchard and four choice acres within the town site. He was born near Victoria, Knox County, Ill., on August 29, 1870, the son of Halvor Larson, who was born in Sweden, married there, in 1867, and in that year came to America, accompanied by his good wife. They settled in Knox County, Ill., where Mr. Larson followed farming for ten years. Then he ard his family removed to Stromsburg, Polk County, Nebr., and there Lewis grew to be sixteen years of age. His father bought eighty acres of railway land; but selling out in 1887, he came to California and pitched his tent for a while at San Pedro. He soon moved to Selma, Fresno County, but at the end of one and a half years, he shifted again to the vicinity of Paso de Robles, in San Luis Obispo County. Later, they moved to San Miguel and farmed there. Four children honored Mr. and Mrs. Larson: Lewis is the eldest; Ida, now the wife of August Landen, resides on Murphy Avenue, Sunnyvale; Amanda lives at home and presides over Mr. Larson's house- hold; Jennie died at Selma when she was nine years old. Both parents died at Sunnyvale.

Lewis Larson attended school at Stromburg, Nebr., and when he struck out for himself, he rented a grain ranch at San Miguel, which he operated for seven years. The long droughts were so severe, however, that the seed grain did not sprout, and he nad three crop failures in seven years. In the mean- while his father had come over to this same place, and he bought the ten acres during the winter of 1897-98, when he started planting prunes, peaches and apricots, with which he has been very success- ful. Mr. Larson is a member of the Prune and Apricot Association, and he did very active and effective work as the chairman of the drive which resulted in getting many signers in Sunnyvale, Bur- ley and Jefferson districts. He has served repeat- edly on the board of trustees and on the jury. In 1915 he was elected to the board of trustees of Sunnyvale, and he was chairman of the board just before John Hendy became chairman, and he was reelected a trustee.

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HISTORY OF SANTA CLARA COUNTY

URIAH WOOD .- Starting for the west as early as 1852, Uriah Wood upon his arrival in California bravely endured the hardships of a pioneer existence, cheerfully accepted the privations consequent to frontier life, and persistently pushed his way forward in the face of discouragement and occasional reverses, and in the latter years of his life reached a position where, with abundance of means and a record of a well-spent life, wielded an influence born of material success. When he crossed the plains he was a young man, full of ambition, courage and perseverance, but with scarcely any capital. Many of the characteristics of Mr. Wood were his by inheritance from an hon- orable ancestry, of remote German extraction, but long identified with the United States. His grand- father, David Wood, who was a native of New York, suffered the terror of being taken captive by the In- dians when a boy, but made his escape and reached home in safety. When the Revolutionary War broke out he became a soldier and fought for independence with a bravery characteristic of his race. Uriah D. Wood, son of this Revolutionary veteran, was born and reared in New York and later engaged in lumber- ing in the Allegheny Mountains. While the Missis- sippi Valley was still an unknown region and its wealth and fertile soil unrealized, he took his family from New York to Illinois in 1839, making the trip with horses through Ohio and Indiana. They stopped in Chicago long enough to visit a drug store and purchase a remedy for ague, the prevailing dis- ease of those days. Arriving in Whiteside County, he settled near Portland, where he took up land, turned the first furrow in the soil and, being a car- penter, erected all of his buildings. In 1841 he re- moved to LaSalle County, where he engaged in agri- cultural pursuits for the balance of his life. In poli- tics he was a Whig, while in religion he was a mem- ber of the Methodist Episcopal Church. At the time of his death he had reached the age of eighty years. His wife, Anna (Cline) Wood, was born in New York of Mohawk-Dutch ancestry, and died in Illinois. They were the parents of eight children. One son, David, was a pioneer of 1849 in California and con- tinued to make this state his home until he passed away, at Gilroy, about 1891.

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History of Santa Clara County California with biographical sketches, Part 128

Author: Sawyer, Eugene T Publication date: 1922 Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co. Number of Pages: 1934

Author: Sawyer, Eugene T
Publication date: 1922
Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1934