History of Santa Clara County California with biographical sketches, Part 159

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

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The marriage of Mr. Montmayeur united him to Miss Catherine Fayeance, also a native of France, and they have one child, a daughter, Irene, who is a graduate of Notre Dame and now employed in the Garden City Bank. Mr. Montmayeur is a stanch adherent of the principles of the Republican party. and fraternally he is a member of the Elks and Odd Fellows; also a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants Association. He is broadminded and public-spirited and is intensely interested in the progress of the community in which he resides.

WASHINGTON B. COATES-A highly-esteemed veteran of the Civil War, respected and beloved for his sterling American patriotism and his exemplary Christian character, Washington B. Coates, of 29 South Twenty-first Street, San Jose, exerts a wide and enviable influence. He was born in Susquehanna County, Pa.,. on August 19, 1841, the son of William H. and Jane ( Morley) Coates, and when four and a half years old was taken by his parents to Green County, Wis., where he settled at Monticello. He is of English descent, for his father hailed from Eng- land, and his mother's family came of good old Pilgrim stock.

Washington attended the public schools at Mon- ticello and grew up on the home farm of his father, who cleared a piece of timberland in the Burr Oak openings, and there built a house and barn. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he volunteered and enlisted September 5 in the Fifth Wisconsin Battery, Light Artillery, under Captain Oscar F. Pinney, of Monroe. One month later he was called to Racine to drill at Camp Utley. His battery was sent into action along with the Fifty-ninth, Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Illinois Infantry, and the Twenty- second Indiana Infantry, comprising the brigade ut1- der General Jefferson C. Davis.

Mr. Coates was first sent to Cairo, Ill., then to New Madrid, Miss., and after that to Louisville, Ky., where has was placed in the Army of the Cum- berland. He was in twenty-two engagements, in-

cluding the celebrated Battle of Chattanooga, and he and his comrades were cut off and hemmed in until Grant and Sherman came to their rescue. He was also in the battles of Stone River and Chickamauga and many others. He was twice taken prisoner, and for two weeks, or until he was exchanged in 1865, he was in Libbey prison. He reenlisted at Chattan- ooga, Tenn., in January, 1864, and served throughout the war, until June, 1865.

Our intrepid veteran passed through many hazard- ous experiences, without once being wounded, and this good fortune he attributes to Divine protection. One instance in particular, he himself relates. He was in charge of an expedition to forage in the sur- rounding country, when he was suddenly confronted by five rebels who came upon him unexpectedly. They all pulled their carbines and shot repeatedly, but not one of them was able to hit him, although he was taken prisoner. After the War, he returned to Wisconsin and attended school at odd times dur- ing a period of three years; and then, teachers being at a premium, he taught school. During this time he attended Hillsdale College.

On August 25, 1868, at Jonesville, Hillsdale Coun- ty, Mich., Mr. Coates was married to Miss Eliza- beth A. Goodwin, a native of that place, whose par- ents were born in New Hampshire, or on that state line. They came to Michigan when they were a young couple, and had a family of six daughters, among whom Mrs. Coates was the third. Her father was Londres Goodwin, and he married Miss Cornelia Bowman; and the latter died when Eliza- beth was sixteen years old. Elizabeth attended Hillsdale College, where Will Carleton, the poet, also studied, and it was there that she met Mr. Coates. A year after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Coates re- moved to Nebraska and there took up 160 acres of Government land eleven miles from Crete, in Saline County; they proved up and lived upon this homestead for eleven years, meanwhile raising grain as their principal crop. Then they sold out their farm and went back to Michigan to care for Mrs. Coates' father, who was in failing health, and who lived only two and a half years after their return. Subsequent to his death, they ran the old home ranch until 1882, when they came to California and settled at San Miguel, in San Luis Obispo County, where they rented a grain ranch.

In 1894 Mr. and Mrs. Coates removed to San Jose. and resumed farming with the raising of fruit. They rented a ranch for awhile. and then bought forty acres of bare land and set fourteen acres to fruit, in particular apricots and prunes. This ranch is located eleven miles east and somewhat south of Santa Jose, beyond Evergreen; and there they lived for several years before moving into San Jose, when Mr. Coates retired from active ranch work. He sold a half-in- terest in the forty acres to his third son, and he still retains a half-interest in the farm. For the past eleven years he has lived in San Jose, where he is a member of the Sheridan-Dix Post, G. A. R., in which he is a past commander. In politics he is a Republican.

Mr. and Mrs. Coates have been given four chil- dren, all sons. Wilbert A. married Miss Cruess, and they live in Oakland with their five children-Earl. Luella, Viva, Wilbert and Emma-one child, Zelma, having died. Clifford G. married Miss Jamison and

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now lives near Pleasanton; they have two children- Willis and Lucile-and have lost one. Herbert L., who is on his father's ranch, married Miss Maude Holland, and they have one child, Morris. Victor H. lives on Nineteenth Street, in San Jose, with his wife, who was a Miss Billings, and their three chil- dren-Henry Loraine, Hubert Le Roy, and Elmer Elery. Since 1858, Mr. and Mrs. Coates have been consistent Methodists. Mrs. Coates is a member of the Ladies of the G. A. R. Mr. and Mrs. Coates have one great-grandson, Paul Gilbert, the son of Mrs. Luella Gilbert.

ANDREW RUSSELL-Another enthusiastic lodge worker, widely and everywhere pleasantly known through his various fraternal associations, is Andrew Russell, the efficient and popular superintendent of Plant No. 2 of the Richmond-Chase Packing Com- pany, at the corner of Cinnabar and Montgomery streets, San Jose. He was born in bonnie Scotland, and first saw the light near Glasgow on August 21, 1873, the son of Lawrence Russell, an expert ac- countant while he was in his native country. He came to the United States in 1885 and immediately settled at Clifton, Arizona, and three years later he brought his family to California and pitched their tent at Saratoga, in Santa Clara County. Near that town he purchased eighty acres of land, which he devoted to prunes and apricots; and there he engaged actively in both the growing and packing of fruit. He organized and conducted the first cooperative fruit packing association in the county, located at Saratoga, and thus centralized the efforts of the growers in marketing; and for the last thirty years he has been enviably influential as a wide-awake, far- seeing man, known among the horticulturists for exceptional executive ability, still supervising the plant he so successfully organized, although in reality practically retired. He married Miss Mary Mac- Vicar, and she became the mother of our interesting subject who, under her intelligent encouragement, attended both the grammar and the high schools, and then matriculated at the College of the Pacific. Lawrence Russell is still living on his ranch near Saratoga, at the ripe old-age of seventy-one, and Mrs. Russell is still devotedly at his side, one year the younger. Eight children were born to the worthy pioneer couple, and among them the oldest is the subject of our review. Hamilton Russell is with his father on the ranch. Jessie became Mrs. A. L. Cil- ker, of Los Gatos. Belle is at home with her par- ents. Alexander is a California State civil engineer. Margaret is also at home with her parents. Mary, whose marriage made her Mrs. A. E. Stewart, lives at Berkeley; while Lawrence, affectionately recalled by many appreciating friends, passed away at the age of twenty-four.

The inception of the packing business at Saratoga came from a suggestion by Andrew Russell that he and his father would better put up their own fruit on account of the erratic prices in the prune market at that time. Up to then, very few in that neighbor- hood had had any experience in drying and packing. There was a Chinaman who was working for a Mr. Rose at Los Gatos; and in order to get an insight into the work under the Chinaman, Andrew offered his services gratis. He stayed a month, and then, hav- ing by accident acquired the secret of packing strictly

first-class fruit, he returned home and assisted his father to start their business. Their first year's out- put was two car loads, while today thirty car loads is the annual output. They still retain many of their original customers, and with some they have supplied their needs for about twenty-five years. In all this time, the Russells have made a specialty of packing only first-class dried fruits; and their fine products. easily marketed under the "Russell Brand," are widely known throughout the United States.

After having been thus associated with his father for twenty years, Andrew Russell's health became im- paired, and he went to work for the Peninsular Railroad Company, as conductor and then as adver- tising man, with which company he remained for a decade. When, however, E. N. Richmond established a fruit-packing business at Edenvale, he became iden- tified with him, remaining there for three years; and from the time of the incorporation of the Richmond- Chase Company at San Jose, in 1918, he has been the superintendent of the packing department of their Plant No. 2, in San Jose. This plant alone, in 1919, put out about 22,000,000 pounds of fruit, and in 1920, under less favoring condition, the output was still the enormous amount of about half of that quantity- a fine testimonial to Mr. Russell's knowledge, execu- tive and technical ability.

Mr. Russell has also experimented, for the past three years, with the manufacture of "Blanco," a factory-finish whitewash designed to withstand the elements, to retain its color, and never scale or peel off. He has overcome most of the obstacles hitherto encountered in the use of whitewash, and he expects to have the product upon the market in the near future, when the secret, patented formula will have been perfected, thereby adding another contribution made by the Russell family toward the industrial development of the Golden State.

At San Jose, on July 12, 1897, Mr. Russell married to Miss Annie Davidson, a native of Marin County, and the daughter of Henry and Laura Davidson, now both deceased. From her fourth year, Miss Annie attended school in the San Jose district; and there, amid a growing circle of devoted friends, she was also reared. Two children sprang from this fortunate union: Dorothy L. Russell graduated from the State Normal School at San Jose, and is now a teacher in the Willow Glen School, and a member of San Jose Chapter No. 31, O. E. S .; and Norman A. Russell, a charter member of DeMolay Order, is with the Union Oil Company, at San Jose.

Mr. Russell, naturally a live-wire member of the San Jose Chamber of Commerce, is a Republican in matters of national political import, yet a non-partisan "booster" such as any community would always wel- come. He is a member of San Jose Lodge No. 10, F. & A. M., also a charter member of Pyramid No. 9, A. E. O. S. of San Jose, and he is, too, a member of Loyal Oak Lodge No. 4997, I. O. O. F., and is a past noble grand of this order, and is affiliated with the Manchester Unity, the parent of the American order. He is equally enthusiastic about the Woodmen of the World, and belongs to Alamo Camp No. 80, of San Jose, of which order he has been an active member for twenty-four years. He is also a member of the Foresters of America, and has passed through all of the chairs of this order, while from 1896 to 1906 he was the Foresters' financial secretary.

Andrew Russell

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FRANK L. HUFF .- If asked to designate a per- son that would typify the best manhood of Santa Clara County's present-day generation of native sons, there would be no mistake in nominating Frank Huff, the present postmaster at Mountain View. He was born on the old Huff homestead on the Charleston Road, two miles north of Mountain View, March 24, 1867, a son of the late James A. and Emily E. (Gard) Huff, honored pioneer settlers in this part of Santa Clara County, being the second oldest of the five sons surviving of a family of nine children, and grew to manhood on his father's farm. He was early called upon to follow the plow, and as a boy, attended the Whisman school, while his vacation days were busied with work on the farm. The elder Huff was very much interested in the success and welfare of the Whisman school, serving as chairman of the board of trustees for many years and taking a very active interest in the education of his children. He himself having had very meager educational ad- vantages, without doubt made him all the more solicitous in matters pertaining to education.

Having completed the home school, Frank entered Washington College at Irvington, Alameda County, pursuing the scientific and commercial courses, graduating from both departments in 1888. During his senior year he was called upon to teach Algebra and to assist in the business department. After his graduation, during the years from 1888 to 1891, in- clusive, he was a teacher in the commercial depart- ment of said institution. When Stanford opened in 1891 he matriculated with the first class. For the next two years he was a student there, after which he was called back to Washington College to become the head of its business department; but after one year resigned and resumed his studies at Stanford for another year. He then took the teachers' exam- ination in Santa Clara County, receiving the high- est standing in a class of thirteen. His first experi- ence as a public school teacher was four years as principal of the Boulder Creek Grammar School in Santa Cruz County, where he was also a member of the county board of education, after which for eigh- teen years he held the position of principal of the grammar schools in Mountain View, where he feels was done his greatest work as a school man. He resigned this position in the fall of 1917 to accept the principalship of the city schools.

He resigned the principalship of the Washington School in the fall of 1919, wishing to give his full time to his orchards, never having entirely relin- quished the determination formed when a boy to own and manage a fine orchard, making his life work in horticultural pursuits. In 1900, while teaching at Mountain View, he had set out the twenty-acre home ranch on Levin avenue, owned by his wife, to prunes and apricots, and he lived upon it and cared for it during the major part of the time he was engaged in teaching. In 1920 he purchased a splendid young orchard planted in prunes and peaches at Hollister which he still owns and manages.

He married on December 28, 1898, at Mountain View, Miss Mame Levin, the daughter of Joel and Mary (Swall) Levin, well-to-do and highly honored pioneer citizens of Mountain View. Mr. and Mrs. Huff have but one child, a son, William E., born

February 20, 1900, who graduated from Stanford in January, 1922, having majored in Geology. He was top sergeant at the College of the Pacific during the war, and at its close was in the officers' training camp Waco, Tex., with the infantry replacement troops. He is now engaged in the engineering de- partment of the Cinco Minas Mining Company in the state of Jalisco, Mexico.

In politics Mr. Huff is a stanch Republican who sincerely believes in America for Americans, and is strongly opposed to the immigration into our coun- try of people who are out of harmony with Amer- ican institutions and ideals, particularly those of such blood as cannot be assimilated by the Caucasian race to its benefit. While supervising the Washington School, Mr. Huff had under his charge something like eight hundred pupils from the kindergarten to the eighth grade, largely of Italian parentage, and during the World War, in his school and war work, he had fine opportunity to observe the Americanism of men and women barely able to speak the language and of their children not yet out of the grammar schools. As a result he has great faith in their pos- sibilities as citizens, and wishes it distinctly under- stood that his objection to foreign immigration is based on duty to our own and our children's chil- dren, and a desire to build up a clean-cut American type with similarity in ideals of life and government rather than on the question of the possibility, through our schools and civic life, of bringing the foreigner to American standards. Whatever Mr. Huff may have accomplished, or may yet accomplish along other lines, his greatest work will remain the im- planting of American ideals of character and conduct in the minds of the hundreds of children who have come under his influence, and in the training he has given them for clean American citizenship. In a recent talk on American ideals to the pupils of the Mountain View high school during graduating exer- cises he said to them in closing, "Fit yourself for accomplishment; be virile; take your part in affairs, and help to see that the Golden Gate swings only outward to those who hold not our American ideals." One of the greatest satisfactions of his life is the esteem of those who were once his pupils, and the feeling that he may have aided in the building of a character that fitted them for success.

Mr. and Mrs. Huff are prominent in religious and social circles. Mr. Huff had much to do with the building of the Presbyterian Church at Mountain View, and for many years, prior to leaving to take charge of the school in San Jose, served as a mem- ber of its board of trustees. It was during his term as trustee that the title to the present church prop- erty was cleared and the new church building erect- ed. Believing thoroughly in the principle of co- operation in selling the products of the soil, Mr. Huff belongs to the Prune and Apricot Growers' Associa- tion, while every other project intended to promote the general welfare receives his encouragement. He was active in the campaign that removed the saloons from Mountain View. He declined invitations to ac- cept civic honors other than those of a teacher on the grounds that one civic position is all that should be intrusted to a person at a time. He is at the present time chairman of the civic affairs' committee

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of the Chamber of Commerce, a stockholder in the Farmers and Merchants National Bank of Mountain View, a member of the Mountain View Grange, an Odd Fellow, and a Native Son of the Golden West. He is also a member of the committee for putting over the project of a new $200,000 high school for Mountain View. His appointment as postmaster at Mountain View came to him in April, 1922, and he entered upon the active duties of his office on the fifteenth day of the month following.

Coming from one of the county's best families, being still a comparatively young man and an un- tiring worker, with a thorough education and a high moral character, it is safe to say that his career will be graced by even greater successes and higher honors than he has already achieved.

JAMES T. DUNN-A noted apiarist whose fame has extended far beyond the confines of Santa Clara County is James T. Dunn, a native son, born at La Fayette, Contra Costa County, on December 28. 1876, the son of Edward B. and Anna B. (Walker) Dunn. A great unele on the Walker side came to California far back in 1792, is buried in the family plot at Martinez, Cal., and Walker's Pass, leading to the Yosemite Valley is named after him. Edward B. Dunn is a native of Kentucky, and he crossed the plains on foot driving an ox-team in 1850. Hav- ing arrived safely at Sacramento, he pushed on in the spring of 1851 to San Jose. Three generations ago. the Dunns came from Ireland; while Mrs. Walker's family came originally from Missouri. The Walkers were large stockmen and owned the west side of Mt. Diablo into the valley.

Edward B. Dunn spent some four years hauling quicksilver ore from the New Almaden mines, and then he moved to Contra Costa County and near La Fayette engaged extensively in grain, stockraising and dairying. He had two ranches, and for many years he ran a threshing machine, with old-fashioned horse power, in the days prior to the "Old Minne- sota Chief" threshing machine. In connection with his farm land, Mr. Dunn also had considerable hill land for range. He ran a stock farm and cheese fac- tory and resided there for thirty years, or until a short time before his death; he lived to be seventy- two years and ten months old. Mrs. Dunn died at the age of fifty-four, and both are buried in Martinez. They had eight children, among whom our subject is the youngest living; and he and a sister, Mrs. Han- nah Young, of Oakland, are all that survive.

James T. Dunn attended the grammar school at La Fayette and at the completion of school he served an apprenticeship in the hardware trade under Rit- tingstein, of Oakland; and at the end of the three years he went to work for the Hawley Bros. Hard- ware Company, of San Francisco, with which con- cern he remained until he became of age. He also attended evening school in Oakland for a couple of years. As soon as he attained his majority, how- ever, he took up the bee business, for which he had always had a fancy, and he commenced with two colonies of bees in the fall of 1882 at La Fayette. He spent several years in Fresno and Butte counties and gradually increased his holdings; and while liv- ing in Fresno, he served for several years as county bee inspector. In Butte County he had a large

apiary on the Phelan ranch, and he was also bee inspector of that county.

For the past seventeen years, Mr. Dunn has made San Jose his home, and while here he has taken up the "queenery business," and has also branched out into extensive shipping of bees, and as one of the authorities on bees along the Pacific Coast, he has naturally come to enjoy a very enviable prosperity. His queenery he started in 1900 from almost nothing; and yet in 1919 he raised and shipped 8,000 queen- bees to all parts of the world, all raised in Santa Clara Valley. He breeds only the Italian bees, as they are the least susceptible to the various diseases the California beekeeper has to deal with.

In 1917 Mr. Dunn took up the shipping of bees from California to distant points in the United States, and also abroad, and he uses small boxes, each one containing two pounds of bees; and while they are enroute, the bees are fed by a solution of sugar water, until they arrive at their destination. As an illustration of how this interesting industry, under the farsightedness and experience of Mr. Dunn, has grown, it may be stated that in 1917 he shipped only 400 of these two-pound boxes, while in 1920 his volume of exports exceeded five tous. He also buys many bees in Monterey County, Salinas Valley and at Carmel, purchasing hundreds of colonies; he does much of the shaking of the bees at Salinas, and from that point they are hauled by way of auto- trucks to San Jose, where they are packed and sent off by express. San Jose is the logical shipping point, and among apiarists San Jose is regarded as the greatest bee-producing town in the world, just as Santa Clara County is regarded as the center of the queen-bee producing industry-a faet not gener- ally known and appreciated. Mr. Dunn's shipments alone of two-pound boxes to the Western Honey Corporation of Reno, Nev., will also give an idea of the extent of his growing trade in bees. On June 10, 1921, he sent sixty packages; on the twelfth, seventy-one; the next day, seventy-seven; on the sevententh, 250; on the twenty-first, 231; on the twenty-fourth, 122; on the twenty-fifth, 118; on the twenty-eighth, sixty-five; on July 9, 120; on the tenth, forty; on the twelfth, eighty-five; on the thir- teenth, 150; and on the fourteenth, 100. During the war, the price of bees soared to $2,000 a ton; but at present it is $1,500. Mr. Dunn has two queeneries -- one in San Jose, and one at Lathrop, on the San Joaquin River. When the season's nectar gives out in the Santa Clara Valley, he moves his queenery to Lathrop, where the bees feed on the alfalfa nectar. Mr. Dunn is also general field inspector for the Western Honey Corporation, with his head- quarters in the Claus Spreckels Building, San Fran- cisco, and travels all over the west and Mexico. To show the rapid growth of the production of honey in California, the estimate of the honey erop for 1922 by the Western Honey Corporation is 1,000,000 pounds of honey. Mr. Dunn is a member of the California State Beekeepers Association.

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History of Santa Clara County California with biographical sketches, Part 159

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