USA > California > Los Angeles County > Ingersoll's century history, Santa Monica Bay cities prefaced with a brief history of the state of California, a condensed history of Los Angeles County, 1542-1908 > Part 41
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The following year Mr. Langdon settled with his family in Sawtelle and cast his fortune with the then small hamlet, made up of seven buildings and occupants thereof, and from that time has been one of its most active and enterprising citizens.
He has invested heavily in city realty and now owns eighteen cottages, which he leases, besides other business and residence property. He built the Langdon Hotel in 1903, which for a time was operated upon the American plan but is now upon the European plan.
He has been somewhat active and influential in city politics and was one of the original movers for the incorporation of the city, the history of which move- ment may be found elsewhere in this volume. The second election for incorpor- ation, held November 26th, 1906, carried about three to one, and Mr. Langdon was elected to the Board of Trustees and subsequently chosen chairman of the board, which position he later resigned in favor of the present incumbent. Mr. Langdon's services as a public official have proven eminently satisfactory to his fellow townsmen. His attitude upon all questions affecting the public weal has always been consistently in favor of a clear government and healthy condition of public morals. A man of the strictest integrity and high ideals of citizenship, the people have implicit faith in him as a true and faithful public servant.
Mr. and Mrs. Langdon have two sons and two charming daughters. Nellie is wife of Frederick Pardee, of Los Angeles; Cassie, a graduate of the Dobinson School of Expression, Los Angeles, is now Mrs. Harry Keys, of Bisbee, Arizona. The older son is Frank Clifford Langdon, of Modesto, Cal., and the youngest of the family is Tedd Russell Langdon, at home.
Mr. and Mrs. Langdon are leading members of the Church of Seventh Day Adventists, of Sawtelle, and are ready workers in all movements favoring the moral and spiritual upliftment of their home city.
K. B. SUMMERFIELD, of Santa Monica, is a native of Vernon, Indiana, born May 15th, 1864. His father, John W. Summerfield, was a lawyer and for many years practiced his profession at Vernon, the county seat of Jennings County. Later in life he held for two successive terms the office of County Clerk of Jennings County. He married Katherine McClaskey. The Summerfields descended from Dutch ancestors and the McClaskeys were Scotch. Mr. Summer- field passed the days of his youth in his native town and was educated in the public schools of that place. He came to California in 1883. For eight years he was in the employ of W. D., W. S., and E. J. Vawter, acting as an accountant, and for four years he served the Bassett & Nebeker Lumber Company in the same capacity. Later he held the position for two years as local manager of the Sunset Lumber Company. He received the appointment of U. S. Postmaster for Santa Monica, April 6th, 1902 and was reappointed in 1906. He is an efficient and popular public servant.
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HENRY DWIGHT BARROWS was born in Mansfeld, Conn., February 23rd, 1825, a son of Joshua Palmer and Polly (Bingham) Barrows. His paternal grandparents, Joshua and Anna (Turn- er) Barrows, were, like his parents, natives of Mansfield. The Barrows family came to America from England and settled at Plymouth, Mass. Thence, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, two brothers moved to Mans- field, Conn., where eventually their name became more numerous than any other family name in town. In 1845 the subject of this sketch counted more than thirty families of the name in that place.
The maternal grandfather of Mr. Barrows, Oliver Bingham, was known and venerated as "Uncle Oliver Bing- ham, the miller of Mansfield Hollow." He is remembered by· his grandson as a large, well-proportioned man, re- sembling in appearance the pictures of George Washington. He had a brother, a miller on the Willimantic HENRY D. BARROWS. River, known widely as "Uncle Roger Bingham, of the old town of Windham."
Joshua Palmer Barrows was born in 1794 and died in Mansfield in 1887; his wife was born in 1790 and died in 1864. They had three children, viz .: Mrs. Franklin S. Hovey, who died at Beverly, N. J., in 1890; Henry D. and James A., who for many years have been residents of Los Angeles.
The early years of the subject of this sketch were spent on a farm. He received his education, first, in the public school, and later in the high school at South Coventry, Conn. Afterward he spent several terms in the academy at Ellington, Conn. Commencing when he was seventeen, he taught school for four winters. During this period he devoted considerable time to music, joining the local band, of which he became the leader, and taking lessons on the organ under a skillful English teacher in Hartford. In the village where Mr. Barrows was reared (South Mansfield, or Mansfield Center as it was known) books were scarce, but he read all he could get. "Dick's Christian Philosopher" delighted him, and he still regards it as one of the best works extant to widen one's ideas of the world around him.
His first business experience was clerking in New York in 1849. The next year he went to Boston, where, as entry clerk and then as bookkeeper, he worked
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in the large dry goods jobbing house of J. W. Blodgett & Co. for over two years, acquiring a business experience that was very valuable to him in after years. He greatly enjoyed the superior advantages in the way of books, lectures, musie, ete., which a great eity affords over a country town. He also heard with delight the early operas of Verdi, as well as those of Donizetti, Bellini, ete., as presented by Benedetti, Truffi, and other artists of that period, under the leadership of Max Maretzie.
April 26th, 1852, Mr. Barrows sailed from New York on the steamer Illinois for California. The passage of the isthmus at that time was full of hardships, the connecting steamer on this side was the Golden Gate. Soon after arrival in San Francisco, Mr. Barrows went to the northern mines, going as far as Shasta: but, as the dry season had set in, he returned down the valley, working at haying at $100 a month on Thomas Creek, near Tehama. He reached San Francisco, July 31st, full of chills and fever, which the cold, harsh summer climate of that city, in contrast with the extreme heat of the Sacremento valley, only aggravated. He then went to San Jose, where he raised a erop of wheat and barley. At that time (1852-53) flour was very high, retailing at twenty-five cents a pound.
In the fall of 1853 Mr. Barrows went to the southern mines, working at placer gold mining near Jamestown. Later he obtained an engagement as teacher of music in the Collegiate Institute in Benicia, remaining there until October, 1854, when the late William Wolfskill, the pioneer, engaged him to teach a private school in his family at Los Angeles, from December, 1854, until the latter part of 1858. Among his pupils, besides the sons and daughters of Mr. Wolfskill, were John and Joseph C. Wolfskill, sons of his brother, Mathew: William R. and Robert Rowland; the children of Lemuel Carpenter, J. E. Pleas- ants, ete. In 1859-60 he cultivated a vineyard on the east side of the river. He was appointed United States Marshall for the southern district of California by President Lincoln in 1861, holding the office four years. In 1864 he engaged in the mercantile business, in which he continued about fifteen years.
Mr. Barrows was married November 14th, 1860, to Juanita Wolfskill, who was born November 14th, 1841, and died January 31st, 1863, leaving a daughter, Alice Wolfskill Barrows, who was born July 16th, 1862, and who became the wife of Henry Guenther Weyse, October 2nd, 1888. Mrs. Juanita Barrows was a daughter of William and Magdalena (Lugo) Wolfskill. Mr. Wolfskill was born in Kentucky in 1798, of German and Irish parentage, and was one of the very earliest American pioneers of Los Angeles, having arrived here in Febru- ary, 1831. He died in this eity October 3rd, 1866. His wife was born in Santa Barbara, California, the daughter of José Ygnacio Lugo and Dona Rafaela Romero de Lugo, Don José Ygnacio Lugo being a brother of Antonio Maria Lugo and of Dona Maria Antonia Lugo de Vallejo, who was the wife of Sergeant Vallejo and the mother of General M. G. Vallejo. Mr. and Mrs. Wolfskill were married at Santa Barbara in January, 1841; she died July 6th, 1862. There were born to them six children, viz .: Juanita Francisca, born in 1843 and be-
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came the wife of Charles J. Shepherd; Joseph W., born in 1844, married Elena Pedrorena; Magdalena, born in 1846, married Frank Sabichi; Lewis, born in 1848, married Louisa Dalton, daughter of Henry Dalton, the pioneer; and Rafaelita, who died in childhood.
August 14th, 1864, Mr. Barrows married Mary Alice Workman, daughter of John D. Woodworth, and the widow of Thomas H. Workman, who was killed by the explosion of the steamer Ada Hancock in the bay of San Pedro April 23rd. 1863. She was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and died in Los Angeles March 9th, 1868, leaving two daughters: Ada Frances, who was born May 21st, 1865, and was married October 25th, 1890, to Rudolph G. Weyse (by whom she has three children) ; and Mary Washington, who was born February 22nd, 1868, and died in infancy. The present wife of Mr. Barrows was Bessie A. Greene, a native of Utica, N. Y. They were married November 28, 1868, and have one son, Harry Prosper Barrows; the latter born December 14th, 1869, and married August 19th, 1893, to Bessie D. Bell, a native of Michigan. They have three children.
Until the formation of the Republican party Mr. Barrows was a Whig. He voted for Fremont in 1856, and has voted for every Republican candidate for president since till 1900, when he voted for William J. Bryan. He believes that that great party, in its earlier years, made a glorious record as a champion of the rights of man and of constitutional liberty. But he has found occasion. in common with many other original and sincere Republicans, to lament the departure of the party from its earlier simplicity and singleness of purpose in behalf of universal freedom, being dedicated wholly, as it was, "to the happiness of free and equal men." For many years prior to the '80s he took an active part in public education. For much of the time during fifteen years he served as a member of the school board of this city. In 1867 he was elected city super- intendent, and in 1868, county superintendent. He has written much on many subjects for the local press, and especially on financial questions, including resumption of specie payment, bimetallism, etc. He contributed one of the thirty-nine essays to the competitive contest invited in 1889 by M. Henri Cer- nuschi on International Bimetallism. He also wrote philosophical essay, in 1904, entitled: "Cosmos or Chaos? Theism or Atheism?" From 1856, for nearly ten years he was the regular paid Los Angeles correspondent of the San Fran- cisco Bulletin, then one of the most influential newspapers of the Pacific Coast.
Mr. Barrows has administered a number of large estates, including those of William Wolfskill, Captain Alexander Bell, Thomas C. Rhodes, and others. He was appointed by the United States district court one of the commissioners to run the boundary line between the Providencia Rancho and that of the ex- Mission of San Fernando. Also, by appointment of the superior court, he was one of the commissioners who partitioned the San Pedro Rancho, which con- tained about twenty-five thousand acres. In 1868 he was president of the His- torical Society of Southern California, of which he was one of the founders,
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and to the records of which he has contributed many valuable papers of reminis- cences. He is also one of the charter members of founders of the Society of Los Angeles Pioneers. He wrote about one hundred sketches of early pioneers of Los Angeles, most of whom he knew personally, for the Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, issued in 1889 by the Lewis Publishing Co., of Chicago. He also wrote the text of the Illustrated History of Central California, published by the same company in 1893. Copies of both of these works may be found in the Los Angeles Public Library.
Mr. Barrows has a strong conviction that every man and every woman should be a fully developed citizen; and that while all men and women should be guaranteed their natural equal rights and equal privileges in order that they may be enabled as nearly as may be, to fight the battle of life on an equal footing so far, at least, as the state can guarantee such natural rights and privileges to all its citizens. He holds that every citizen also owes manifold obligations to the state and to the community in which he lives-obligations which, though they cannot be legally enforced, he is, morally at least, not entitled to shirk. "Who," says Mr. Barrows, "can imagine the beauty of that state in which every person, however humble his lot, enjoys, not only theoretically, but practically, all the natural rights and privileges that every other person enjoys, and in which at the same time every person voluntarily and freely renders, proportionately to his ability and opportunity, to the state and to the community, all the varied obligations pertaining to his personal and particular sphere that the best citizens perform. There are myriad ways of doing good in the world open to every person, and there are myriad obligations which every person owes the com- munity which, if every person freely and faithfully performed according to his or her several abilities, this world would speedily become what it was intended to be, an earthly paradise." Loyalty to these principles and loyalty to the moral government of the universe and to the Great Being who upholds and rules that universe, Mr. Barrows adds, constitute his creed, his religion. In his opinion they are broad enough and true enough to serve as the basis of a universal re- ligion, of a creed which all men can subscribe to, and live by, and, die by !
JOHN CHARLES HEMINGWAY, Clerk of Santa Monica, was born in the City of Chelsea, Suffolk County, Mass., October 19th, 1858, the son of John Hemingway a farmer. He spent his boyhood in the city of Boston. He attended Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. After leaving school he engaged in newspaper work as a reporter for the local press. Later, for a period of about ten years, he worked as a reporter on the leading daily papers of Chicago. In 1883 he came to Los Angeles and accepted a position in the same capacity on the Los Angeles Daily Herald. He followed journalism in the capacity of news correspondent until April, 1902, when he was elected City Clerk of Santa Monica. He was re-elected to the same office April, 1907, under the Freeholders Charter.
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November 10th, 1889, Mr. Hemingway married Miss Emma J. Hayden, a native of Portland, but from childhood a resident of East Los Angeles. They have one daughter, E. Mearle.
Mr. Hemingway is a member of the F. and A. M., I. O. O. F. and B. P. O. E., of which latter organization he is Exalted Ruler. Mr. and Mrs. Hemingway are members of Saint Augustine Episcopal Church of this city.
Santa Monica has no more popular citizen than J. C. Hemingway and his record as a public official is beyond reproach.
(At my request, Dr. Orin Davis, a venerable and beloved citizen of Sawtelle, has favored me with the following autobiographical review of some of the inci- dents of a long, useful and exemplary life .- The AUTHOR.)
In the township of York, Living- ston County, N. Y., in 1823, forests covered the landscape with their leafy drapery excepting here and there an open clearing made by an early settler, and upon one of these there stood a log house with a clay-stick chimney and from within the curling smoke rolled up from an ample fireplace whose broad, uneven hearth-stone was quarried from the earth near by.
From this chimney place hung the iron crane, embellished by several swivel jointed hooks and traminels of variable lengths, equipped for cul- inary service ; doors on wooden hinges and fastened by wooden latches; in one corner a rudely constructed lad- der, with holes and round sticks made to fit by the jackknife, led to cham- ORIN DAVIS, M.D. bers aloft, which were divided by calico curtains and white sheets; below, in the opposite corner, a caseless clock, from whose motor weights were suspended by cords communicating with hands that pointed to figures on the dial and whose bell strikingly announced the passing of golden hours. On the uppermost border of the plate was the smiling image of the moon just rising from invisible depths. Such were some of the environments on June 26th, when the helpless, half animate, new-born child of Asa and Sallie Clarke Davis was forced into this mysterious earth of ours to en- counter the hazards of life's alluring temptations and bitter sufferings-the sub- ject of this brief sketch.
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My father was not only a farmer by occupation, but also a nurseryman, and I had training in raising for sale the better kind of grafted fruit trees. As years rolled on, the old log house was supplanted by a large frame one, the colts grew to be horses and were harnessed to useful undertakings, loads of fruit trees brought cash, and with this constant unfolding of animal and vegetable life, the subject of this sketch also advanced and resolved that his future should be further unfolded in the study and practice of medicine.
Early I became interested in the remedial properties of the then little known, indigenous materia medica, comprising many of those important domestic agents that had gained no standard remedial reputation in the dispensaries. Three years were devoted to the study of the regular text books in medicine preparatory to attendance upon two full courses of lectures in a regularly chartered college. I finally passed the quiz successfully and was honored with the Degree of Doctor of Medicine, in June, 1846. Immediately I entered upon the arduous duties of active practice and January, 1847, was elected to edit a monthly journal, the Eclectic Medical Reformer, published at Dansville, New York. In the follow- ing June I co-operated with two medical graduates and two professors from Cincinnati College in a preparatory two months' course of instruction for medical students who later intended to be better equipped for the college curriculum. Obstetricy and diseases of women and children was the department assigned to me for their instruction.
On the following and during succeeding years, classes of students attended four months' courses of medical instruction in Central Medical College at Roches- ter, N. Y., where liberal principles of medicine were advocated by our faculty and the Eclectic Medical and Surgical Journal, until the college and its educational interests were transferred to New York City where a new charter was obtained. There it still continues to flourish, a successful exponent of medical progress, reflecting honor upon the cause of American medicine.
In 1854 I established a Health Institute at Attica, New York, and for fifty years continued as its proprietor, treating chronic diseases of both sexes, making pelvic ailments of women a specialty. These remedial efforts were successful so that previous to the Spanish War, which greatly enlarged our domain, my patrons were living in every state and territory of the Union, with the single exception of Alaska. In the meantime my contributions to medical literature embraced a wide range of topics, some of which were published by the state legislature of New York, also in various medical journals and thus obtained a wide circulation. One family work on popular medicine which I wrote is report- ed in numbers of copies published to exceed the two million mark.
In 1874 | was elected president of the New York State Eclectic Medical Society and, among other timely topics, presented the idea originating high license as a means of reducing and ultimately destroying profitable traffic in alcoholic stimulants. Not only at the time of my inaugural address, but ever
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since then it has engaged attention of temperance reformers and has continued to be a live issue and contending factor in discussions in temperance organizations.
For more than thirty-five years I have been a Master Mason, a conscientious believer in the enduring truths and upright principles inculcated by this worthy order, and have been a living witness of its benign influence and of the incalcula- ble good resulting not only to its faithful followers, but upon society at large.
I have ever taken a deep interest in church music. In religious organizations its salutary, uplifting influence upon the community is second only to the gospel ministry of truth. Poetry wedded to music renders most expressively the yearn- ing of the emotive faculties which hopefully and confidingly bring us in close spiritual relation with our Heavenly Father. While the grand truths of science and religion are celebrated in song, yet it is such faculties as sympathy, joy, hope, confidence, love and devotion when blended by music, that raise the thoughts to a heavenly sphere-to the spiritual verities that ennoble the soul, giving increasing breadth and basis to universal charity. In matters of faith and spiritual know- ledge I believe in continual advancement, daily demonstrating in spirit the quality of life's purposes; by self-denial, repressing selfishness and perfect confidence in the Love that will finally be all in all.
I attribute much of my success throughout life to the inspiring presence and genius of my beloved wife, who in 1843, for better for worse, joined her life and fortune with my own. Through all succeeding events, her counsel, timely assist- ance, punctuality, order and regularity in her every day duties, accompanied with evenness of spirit, made opportunities possible for the better devotion of my time and talents to the arduous duties of my profession.
One daughter and two sons are living and one son passed away in early childhood. Many are the sweet remembrances that crowd upon the memory of a long and eventful life-of professional friendships and social endearments that are consciously reproduced and cheer us while passing the evening of our days in the quiet of our semi-tropic home in Southern California.
DANIEL ALTON, a substantial citizen of Sawtelle, is a native of the State of New York. He was born in Jefferson County, February 20, 1843. His father, Christopher Alton, was a prosperous farmer and a native of County Limerick, Ireland, who came to America about the year 1828 at thirteen years of age and located in Canada where he spent his youth. At Kingston, Canada, he married Miss Ann Montgomery, a native of County Mayo. They came to New York and located on a farm near Watertown, the county seat of Jefferson County. They raised a family of four sons and one daughter, the oldest of whom was Adam, who married and located in Waudena County, Minn., and there died at about the age of fifty-nine years. Elizabeth married Charles Bloss and lived in Munroe County, Wisconsin. She is now deceased. Daniel, the subject
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of this sketch is the third born. Michael, the fourth born, is now (1908) a resi- dent of Clark County, Wisconsin, and lives near Neelsville. Joseph, the youngest, lives at Watertown, Munroe County, Wisconsin.
Mr. Alton left home when a lad and went to Hartford, Washington County, Wisconsin. Later he lived in Janeau County. There he enlisted in the Union Army to fight the rebellion, June 21st, 1861, went forthwith to the front engaged in the second Battle of Bull Run where he received a severe wound in the right thigh. From the battlefield he was conveyed to the Military Hospital at West Philadelphia where he was confined until April 14th, 1863, where- upon he was honorably discharged from the army by reason of his disability and returned to Wisconsin. In 1865 he went to Minnesota and located in the town of Tenhaussen, Martin County, where for thirty-two years he engaged successfully in general agriculture.
On March 22nd, 1866, Mr. Alton married Miss Mary E. Dennett and they raised and educated a family of six children all born on the old Minnesota home- stead. Lorenzo, the eldest, was born February 11th, 1867 and died in December, 1871. Carrie, born October 29th, 1869, is now Mrs. Fred Howland, of Serra Vista, Santa Monica. Alfred D., born April 13th, 1871, lives on the old home- stead. Josephine, born February 25th, 1874, is now Mrs. Abraham Kyle, of Tenhaussen, Minnesota. Alonzo E., born January 5th, 1877, lives at the old home in Minnesota. Herbert D., born May 22nd, 1883, now resident of Spokane Washington, and Lester Lee, born August 26th, 1889, lives at Serra Vista, Santa Monica. The family was reared under the best of social influences and all re- ceived a thorough High School or college education.
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