History of Santa Clara County California with biographical sketches, Part 199

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

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Elle E. Booth,

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signed and built the Liberty Motor. He was com- missioned a colonel; Mrs. Clara Etel of Los Gatos; Hayes W., was also in U. S. Army, serving overseas in charge of the Army post office in Paris, being commissioned a lieutenant; Harold, is an inventor and designed and invented the California motor; he makes his home in Los Gatos. Budd Hall and his estimable wife have good reason to be proud of their family and particularly the distinguished scr- vice rendered the government during the war by their sons. They are both Republicans and also are members of the Santa Clara County Pioneer Society.

MISS ETTA E. BOOTH .- The College of the Pacific, in its enviable reputation as one of the lead- ing institutions for the study of art in the United States, owes much to the native genius, the trained talent and the attractive personality of Miss Etta E. Booth, the director of the School of Art, a gifted and accomplished lady, all the more interesting as the representative of an early Puritan family prom- inent in the Revolutionary War, whose history dates back to the Mayflower through Elder William Brew- ster, Stephen Hopkins, John Tilly and John How- land, names well known in early days.

The Booth family are descended directly from Adam DeBoothes, who came over to England with William the Conqueror in 1066. The American branch of the family are descended from three sons of George Booth, the first Lord Delaware, who was created Earl of Warrington and who came over to New Haven, Conn., in 1639. Miss Booth's great- grandfather, Joshua Booth, fought in the War of the Revolution, as did Hugh Gunnison, an ancestor in the maternal line.

Miss Booth was born at Goshen, N. H., the dangh- ter of Silas Booth, a farmer and teacher, who was a native of that place. He was a member of the New Hampshire Legislature for four years, and his father, Oliver Booth, who was prominent in the public life of his day, was a member of that body for eight years. Silas Booth married Miss Alice M. Gunnison, a talented woman with a great love for art, who also was a native of Goshen. Her brother, Lieutenant John W. Gunnison, who lost his life in the. Gunnison massacre at the time of the Indian troubles on the frontier, was a graduate of West Point and was sent out by the Government to explore and survey the western part of the country and was in command of the party making the first survey for the Central Pacific Railroad. He belonged to the Topographical Engineers and his labors in that corps won for him a name the first in the country. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Gunnison Mountain, Gunnison River and a town in Colorado bear his name. He wrote the first history of the Mormon church, one of the most interesting records of the interior growth of this country that has ever been written, and this book was afterwards republished in Europe. An- other uncle of Miss Booth, A. J. Gunnison, of the firm of Gunnison and Booth, was the oldest prac- ticing lawyer in the state of California at the time of his death. Before coming to the state he practiced in the courts of Massachusetts. At the time an at- tempt was made to detach the state of California from the Union, Mr. Gunnison was a member of the Legislature and vigorously resisted the attempt. He delivered an all-night speech to gain time against the secession movement, and this was one of the

most important factors in its defeat. Miss Booth's brother, Andrew G. Booth, a well-known lawyer of San Francisco and a member of the firm of Gunni- son and Booth, was a member of the Legislature and prominent in political circles. She has one sis- ter living, Mrs. George Nourse, who resides part of the time at the old Booth home at Newport, N. H.

Miss Booth entered Kimball Union Academy at Meriden, N. H., from which she was graduated as a student in the classical course; she also attended the Abbott Academy at Andover, where she did special literary work. From childhood she could draw and make pictures and she was also a ready versifier. She wrote poems for papers and magazines, and short stories at the beginning of her 'teens; and after a year's study in Boston, she took a teacher's course at the Normal Art School, always studying art dur- ing her vacations. She studied under Professor Geary and Miss Hoyt, and later came to California, where she studied, giving instruction at Napa.

She then went abroad to study and sketch through Germany and Holland, as well as in Belgium, Italy, England and Paris, and in the latter famous center of art she became a student at the Academie Julien and Academie Delacluse, and worked under the French masters, Bouguereau, Paul Delance and Cal- lot; she was also a pupil of Professor Ertz and Pro- fessor Van der Weiden and later of William Chase in the United States. Returning to California, Miss Booth studied at the Solly Walter School of Illustra- tion at San Francisco, and accepted a position at the College of the Pacific under Dr. Eli McClish, then president of the College, and since 1898 has been the director of the School of Art. Some of her best- known paintings are water-color scenes made in Carmel and Laguna and also at Boothbay Harbor, Maine; many of her works done in foreign art schools have been reproduced here, as for example, her study, "The Rag Picker." Many of her works have been exhibited in Paris. She makes a special point of always keeping in touch with the work of the Eastern art schools and artists, the better to impart knowledge. Her main work is to educate teachers for instructing in drawing and art in the public schools, and her highest testimonials are the pupils who have studied under her and later attained pro- nounced success as teachers of others.

Z. A. MACABEE .- A resident of Santa Clara County since 1864, Z. A. Macabee was born at Ma- lone, N. Y., October 14, 1857. His father, Edward Macabee, a Canadian by birth, was reared in New York from the age of six years, and later he became a farmer near Malone. In 1864, accompanied by his wife and three children, he came via Panama to San Francisco. Coming on to Santa Clara County, he purchased a farm in the Union district, following farming until 1868 when he returned East, but soon came back to Santa Clara County and followed ranching for many years until he became proprietor of the Alpine Hotel. When he retired he moved to San Jose, where he resided until his death. His wid- ow, Mathilda Francis, also a native of Canada, is still living at the age of eighty-four years. Of their eight children six are living.

Z. A. Macabee, the second of the family, came via Panama with the family in 1864; as stated, the family returned East in 1868, but in 1869 found their way back to California, coming by way of Panama

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each time. He was educated in the public schools in the various districts they lived, after which he en- tered the Garden City Business College at San Jose, where he was graduated in June, 1883, after which he was associated with his father in farming and in the hotel business until he engaged in the barber business in Los Gatos. After seven years his health became impaired and he was advised by his physi- cian to seek out-of-door employment. His first at- tempt at rusticating was to exterminate gophers that were girdling his cousin's fruit trees. He tried all kinds of traps and saw much need for improve- ment, and concluded he could make a better trap. Obtaining some wire and with a plier and vise he made a trap that suited him and was a success. This trap embraced the principles of his present Macabee gopher trap which has since become so popular and successful, not only famous all over the Pacific Coast region but also in the Middle West and East. On October 22, 1900, he patented the Macabee gopher trap and began their manufacture on Loma Alta Avenue, Los Gatos. He made all the machines used in their manufacture and is now mak- ing about 1000 traps a day, sold principally to the jobbing trade over the United States and Mexico, and it is estimated he has three-fourths of the busi- ness in this line in California.

Mr. Macabee was married in Los Gatos to Eliza- beth Gansburger, a native of Germany, coming to California with her parents when she was a young girl. Their union has been blessed with three children: Raymon, is assisting his father in business; Lucile is a graduate of the College of the Pacific, majoring in music; she is now director of music in the Napa public school; Rona is a graduate of Los Gatos high school and of Heald's Business College, and is now Mr. Macabee's secretary. Mr. Macabee for many years has been a member of the Odd Fel- lows and the Independent Order of Foresters, and belongs to the Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce.

REV. BENJAMIN V. BAZATA .- A lover of nature who has created a beautiful home place on Azule Creek, Saratoga district of Santa Clara Coun- ty, is Rev. Benjamin V. Bazata. He was born near Prague, Bohemia, September 28, 1867. His father, Francis Bazata, was a graduate of the gymnasium, became a literary man and scholar and there he mar- ried Antoinette Kletzau, and they had four children, born in that country. In 1870 he brought his family to Greenpoint, N. Y., and in time became a success- ful merchant in New York City until he retired. He has passed away, being survived by his widow, aged eighty years. Of their seven children, Benja- min V. Bazata is the fourth oldest. The scene of his first recollections is of Brooklyn, N. Y., where he attended the public schools. Later he entered Bloom- field Academy, where he was prepared for college, entering the College of the City of New York. Having chosen the ministry as his profession he quit the college in his junior year and entered the Union Theological Seminary in the same city, con- tinuing his studies for two years, when he took up college settlement work. In 1895 he came to Califor- nia and completed his theological course at the San Francisco Theological Seminary at San Anselmo, where he was graduated in 1896 with the Bachelor of Theology degree. Having accepted a call to Al- hambra, he was there ordained in 1897 in the Los

Angeles Presbytery, and he was pastor of the Pres- byterian Church in Alhambra for eight years.

In 1905 he was married in Alhambra to Miss Min- nie H. Bailey, who was born in Maui, H. I., a daugh- ter of William and Anna (Hobson) Bailey, natives of Hawaii and Connecticut, respectively. Her grand- father, William H. Bailey, went to the Hawaiian Is- lands in 1832 as a missionary for the Congregational Church and spent the most of his life there. Grand- father Hobson was master of his own vessel. In 1848 he established the Inter-Island Steamship Com- pany, and built the first railroad in the Islands.

Rev. Benjamin V. Bazata was called to the Con- gregational Church in Maui and there he spent two and a half years when he resigned to become pastor of the Congregational Church in Burlingame, remain- ing for three and a half years, when he resigned to devote his time to the improvement of his sixty- seven acre ranch he had purchased on the Pierce Road in the Saratoga district, and here he built a residence of Italian architecture.

Rev. and Mrs. Bazata have one child, Anna Eliza- beth, attending Palo Alto high school. · Mr. Bazata was made a Mason in Alhambra Lodge No. 126, F. &. A. M., and now a member of Burlingame Lodge of Masons. He is a member and president of the board of trustees of the Saratoga grammar school district. He is a member of the Santa Clara Council of the Congregational Church. He belongs to the California Prune & Apricot Association and politically he is a Republican.

CHARLES DUFOUR .- An enterprising and pro- gressive citizen who is much interested in the de- velopment of the Santa Cruz Mountain region and proprietor of "Edgemont" on the Summit is Charles Dufour, a native of Switzerland, born in Geneva, March 12, 1877. His father, John Dufour, was a restaurateur, and as a steward he traveled all over the world, finally settling down at his old home in Geneva. He had married Annie Brun, a native of that place, and they spent the remainder of their lives in Switzerland. Charles, their only child, after completing the local school entered Maria Hilf Col- lege, a Jesuit institution, where he was graduated, after which he was apprenticed and learned the trade of a jeweler and designer, and then entered L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva, where he was graduated with four first prizes. He then went to Paris, France, as a designer of jewelry until he came to Philadel- phia, Pa., in 1902, entering the employ of Rosenthal, a manufacturer, for six months; he then spent two years with Sheer, a manufacturer in New York City. Coming to San Francisco in 1905 he was a diamond setter for Shreve for a year, when he was taken ill and when convalescent with his wife he made a six months' trip to Switzerland.

On his return to California Mr. Dufour purchased a ranch at Felton, where he engaged as a viticul- turist and also had a summer resort for four and a half years when he disposed of his property and re- moved to Healdsburg, Cal., purchasing a ranch on the Russian River at the foot of Fish Mountain, which he named Chanticleer Ranch, a summer resort, and six months later sold it at a profit and came to Santa Clara County and purchased his present ranch, which he has improved for a year-around resort. "Edgemont" is a ranch of twelve acres, located on the State Highway at the Summit, five acres being

Chas. D. Herold

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devoted to orchards. And here he has built a large hotel and several cottages, and has an abundance of spring water for domestic use. "Edgemont" is set in the midst of beautiful redwood, oak and madrone trees. He secured the location of the post office at his hotel named Patchin, and he has been the post- master for eleven years. In all his successes he has been very ably assisted by his estimable wife, whom he married in Geneva, Switzerland, May 29, 1901. She was in maidenhood Hortense Serravalla, born in Geneva, a daughter of Antonio and Madeline ( Marcenavo) Serravalla, natives of Genoa, Italy. Her father was a dealer in musical instruments and music boxes in Geneva, Switzerland, where Hortense was reared and educated. She is the mother of two children, Ernest and George. Mr. Dufour is a member of the Italian Lodge of Foresters in Oak- land. He was made a citizen of the United States in Santa Clara County and gives his political alle- giance to the Republican party.

CHARLES DAVID HERROLD, E.E., R.E .- Characterized by the same energy, business apti- tude and integrity that distinguished his sturdy an- cestors, Charles David Herrold, the cminent elec- trical engineer and specialist in radio, head of the Herrold Laboratories and Herrold College of Engi- neering and Radio at San Jose, holds as high a posi- tion among the most respected residents of Santa Clara County, where he has lived for more than thirty years, as he does among the most capable leaders in the field of science in which, both in the prosecu- tion of his own interests as a professional man, and in the services rendered by him to the Government during the late war, he has accomplished so much. A man of ceaseless activity and extensive enterprise, he has been intimately associated with the industrial progress of the Santa Clara Valley, and by wise judgment and prudent forethought has steadily built up the famous business which he originated. Mr. Herrold is known far and wide as one of the first radio experts to operate on the Pacific Coast, and this speaks for itself, considering the importance attained by that branch of electrical science.

Charles D. Herrold was born in Fulton, Whiteside County, Ill., a Mississippi River town, on November 16, 1875, the son of Capt. William Morris Herrold, a veteran of the Civil War, who was a merchant and owned a large flour mill and grain elevator, and who had married Miss Mary Elizabeth Lusk, a school teacher and Bible lecturer. Mr. Herrold served in Company F, Ninety-third Illinois Volunteer Infan- try, and there as captain became one of the popular commanding officers. He was of an unusual inven- tive mind, although he had been denied a technical education, and he gave to the world several practi- cal, useful inventions, including the automatic prune dipper, used in every prune section of the country; and the "jumbo" wagon, so constructed as to be able to turn in a very small space, making it especially useful in orchards. He was a member of the first Grange, and for a number of years he was a director of the Farmers' Union of Santa Clara County. He owned a fine ranch of eighty-three and one-half acres, highly improved with peaches and apricots, which he planted at Riverbank, as well as having developed several of the finest ranches in Santa Clara County. He died in 1919. Mrs. Herrold-whose grandmother was among the first settlers in Illinois on the banks of

the Mississippi-passed away on September 15, 1920, a year after the death of her lamented husband. There are two surviving sons-Charles David, the subject of this review, and George H., who resides in St. Paul, Minn., filling the position of city planner. Mary Elizabeth Lusk Herrold had written and lec- tured extensively on Bible subjects. There is a genealogy of her family extending back to William the Conqueror and dealing extensively with the d'Omphrey Villes and the Humphreys.

In 1883 Mr. and Mrs. Herrold and family removed to Sioux City, Iowa, and the following year took up their residence at Sloan, in that state. This was situated in a rich grazing district, where the educa- tional facilities were very poor; but this did not deter Charles in his trend as a student, and aside from mechanics, he began to take an interest in natural phenomena. The only books on scientific subjects in the town were two volumes of Zell's Encyclo- paedia, and these books were read from cover to cover until they fell apart from sheer use. Fortu- nately for the lad, a teacher who was above the aver- age, J. M. Jaynes, arrived to take charge of the little school, and he gave him a good grounding in Eng- lish and mathematics, and helped him to gain clear concepts of science, so that in less than a year he had so far progressed as to be able to build unaided a perfectly-working telegraph line, including all the instruments and batteries, and even the insulating of the wires used in the coils.

After the fearful blizzard of 1888-in which a school teacher at Broken Bow, Nebr., just across the Mis- souri River, was frozen to death and her entire flock of little children lost-the Herrold family took a trip to California, to try and restore the little mother's health, shattered by the rigors of a prairie climate; and on their return to Iowa, Charles wrote up the records of the trip and won the rhetorical contest in which representatives from schools in several Iowa towns took part. The same year, the family migrated once more to the Coast and settled permanently in San Jose, and from that time on the facilities for Charles' education, immediately taken advantage of, rapidly improved.

In 1891 he was able to enter the high school at San Jose, and he began to evince intense interest in astronomy; and the files of the San Jose Mercury contain reports of his work in building a telescope and driving clock, as well as the observatory, which still stands at Fifth and Washington streets. During this period, he came in contact with R. S. Gray, the president of the National Microscopical Society, and became an expert microscopist, and he also succeeded in taking celestial photographs with his telescope, especially those of the sun, using a high-speed, focal- plane shutter of his own construction. The immediate result of his work on the sun was the formulation of the theory that there was a direct connection be- tween facular disturbances and terrestrial electro- magnetic phenomena. It was at this particular time. too, that he commenced his work as a teacher; and in his small private laboratory he trained students in chemistry, among others Dr. Will Bailey and Dr. Arthur Smith, now of Oakland. Although deeply engrossed in scientific studies or perhaps because of them, considering the relation of the work of Helmholtz, for example, to sound and music-he found time for a study of counterpoint and harmony.

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and of the pianoforte in the Conservatory, and wrote several musical compositions illustrating what he had learned.

Shortly after his graduation from the San Jose high school in 1894, the first reports of Marconi's experiments with wireless telegraphy across the Eng- lish Channel excited his interest, and stimulated his delving into the works of Herz, Maxwell and others relating to oscillating currents and electro-magnetic waves; and in the laboratory at Stanford University he saw repeated the Marconi experiments, and in his own laboratory at San Jose sent the first wireless message, transmitted sixty feet, in California. When he entered Stanford University, he selected astron- omy as his major subject, and he was one of two students enrolled in the new department; but when Prof. W. J. Hussey was called to Yerkes, the depart- ment of astronomy was left without a head, and so our subject changed his major to physics.

Continued ill-health compelled Mr. Herrold to take a year's leave of absence from university work, and after having accomplished over three years' study, he associated himself with an electrical undertaking in San Francisco, with which he continued until all operations were cut short by the San Francisco earthquake and fire. During the period he was able to keep active, Mr. Herrold produced over fifty dif- ferent electrical devices in dentistry and surgery, and he perfected an electrical deep-sea diving illuminator used by salvage companies and in the pearl fisheries, and he attained reputation as a pioneer in some re- markable developments in electrical machinery for pipe-organs. After the great disaster to the Bay City, he removed to Stockton, took up the teaching of engineering, and became the head of the technical department of Heald's College, where he remained for three years. Much important work was accom- plished during this time, including the designing and constructing by student labor of a high-speed tur- bine and electric generator, and he also laid the foundation of subsequent developments in under- water wireless, the firing of mines by wireless im- pulses, and radio-telephony.

In 1909 Mr. Herrold returned to San Jose and es- tablished a radio-telephone station, for experimental work, the oldest active radio-telephone station in the United States. He also opened, in 1909, a school of engineering and radio, which has turned out over 1,200 students. Perhaps his most important work was the training of some 200 young men during the late World War, 130 of whom were accepted by the Government and given work at the various stations and shops, so that at one time many of the Govern- ment radio stations on the Pacific Coast were in charge of men who had been instructed by Mr. Her- rold at San Jose. In 1910 he commenced develop- ments on the radio-telephone, and after two years of hard work developed a system of his own which was tested out at Mare Island Naval Radio Station and at Point Arguello, in 1913, and he had the dis- tinction of being the first to maintain a wireless telephone system for almost eight months in contin- uous operation between the top of the Fairmount Hotel and his laboratory in San Jose, a stretch of fifty miles, and this great scientific attainment was accomplished at a time when wireless telephony was unknown outside of a few technical and governmental laboratories. A number of patents were taken out

on these inventions, and at present Mr. Herrold is engaged in developments in the clarifying of speech by means of the radio, and apparatus for the magni- fication of heart sounds.

Mr. Herrold is principal of the Herrold College of Engineering and Wireless at San Jose, and the head engineer of the Herrold Laboratories. The electrical engineer, Robert J. Stull-a son of the late Judson L. Stull, of the mercantile firm of Stull & Sonnik- sen-was Mr. Herrold's first student, and a young man of decided ability, who is fast becoming well- known in the radio and magnetic-electric world. Their laboratory is located at 467 South First Street, San Jose, where path-breaking work, following ex- perimentation of a high order, is being accomplished day after day. There is table room for twenty stu- dents. Mr. Herrold perfected a successful street and station indicator in 1917, which underwent rigid prac- tical tests. He is an active member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, and also of the Institute of Radio Engineers; he holds licenses from the Gov- ernment for land radio stations, for portable stations, and for scientific experiments in the radio line, and without doubt he ranks among the best-known of California's radio experts, and it is safe to predict that, as the Herrold laboratories will continue to make San Jose a leading radio center on the Pacific Coast, he will become more and more famous.

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History of Santa Clara County California with biographical sketches, Part 199

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