USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > Los Angeles from the mountains to the sea : with selected biography of actors and witnesses to the period of growth and achievement, Volume II > Part 11
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of feed mills and warehouses in the Imperial Valley and in numerous other parts of the country, extending as far north as Seattle, Wash- ington. In the last fiscal year the volume of business of the Globe Grain and Milling Company reached a total of over thirty-six million dollars, and their capital and undivided profits amount to over ten million dollars at the present time.
In 1916 Mr. Keller and associates formed the Globe Oil Mills and erected an oil mill at Vernon, California. This mill manufactures great quantities of cotton seed oil, cake, meal and linters, having a capacity of a hundred twenty tons of cotton seed daily. In January, 1917, they bought the cotton seed oil mill at Calexico, giving an added capacity of sixty tons a day. In June, 1918, this company took over all the plants of the Imperial Oil and Cotton Company, comprising a forty-ton mill at Calexico, and a seventy-five-ton mill at El Centro, making a total capacity of 295 tons per day of cotton seed crushed. They now have thirty cotton gins in the Imperial Valley, six of them being located on the Mexican side at Mexicola, and the others on the American side of the boundary. They also have two gins in the Palo Verde Valley, and six in the Yuma Valley, also one at Durham, in the Sacramento Valley, and one at Colorado Siding, on the Indian Reservation, just across the river from Yuma, making a total of thirty-eight gins. At Hobart, Cali- fornia, the company operates stock yards, where during the season 1918-1919 they fattened over five thousand head of cattle on cotton seed meal and hulls. The cattle yards are all paved with concrete, there being about thirteen acres of pavement, and a portion of cach pen is covered with corrugated iron sheds, thus the feeding troughs being kept dry in rainy weather. Five thousand head of stock can be fed at one time. This feeding yard has been acknowledged to be the finest and most complete in America.
It is in the very nature of a successful business and the same is true of a successful business man to grow and expand and attract and accumulate outside interests. Thus Mr. Keller for a number of years has also been identified with ice manufacturing, and is today president of the Valley Ice Company, whose three plants in California, at Bakers- field, Fresno and Modesto, have a combined capacity of fifteen hundred tons per day, the most of which is used to ice the fruit cars of the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe Railroads. These are by far the largest ice plants in the west. Mr. Keller is also president of the Globe Ice and Cold Storage Company of El Paso, Texas. The enterprises named above furnish employment to over a thousand people.
Besides being president and in active control of the great chain of industries above described, Mr. Keller is a director in the Merchants National Bank of Los Angeles, the Ralston Iron Works of San Fran- cisco, the Southwestern Portland Cement Company, having large plants at El Paso, Texas, and Victorville, California, and the International Packing Corporation, operating large fish canneries at San Diego and San Pedro, California, and his interests as a business man have long since taken him out of the class of a local leader and brought him into touch with the big men of the entire nation. During the past year he and associates formed the Federal Ice Refrigerating Company and have erected and now have in operation in Chicago an artificial ice plant that is probably the largest in the world. However, he claims and has long been proud of Los Angeles as his home city, his residence being at the southwest corner of Sixth street and Shatto Place. He is a member of the California, Los Angeles Country, Los Angeles Athletic and Westminster Gun Clubs of Los Angeles.
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CHARLES FORMAN. Of the careers that could properly be made a vehicle for telling the history of the real old West, one of the last to terminate was that of General Charles Forman, who first came to Cali- fornia in 1853, and who for over thirty years was a resident and prom- inent figure in business affairs in Los Angeles. He died January 9, 1919, at the age of eighty-four, and his death served to recall many interesting memories of events and conditions with which the modern generation is familiar only through the printed page. General Forman's personality and achievements were frequently made the subject of interesting stories published in the press, and of numerous biographies written of him one that contained a great deal of history was one prepared by Charles F. Lummis and Charles Amadon Moody and published in "Out West" in April, 1909.
General Forman was born near Owego, Tioga county, New York, January 14, 1835, son of Sands and Mary (Matthews) Forman. His grandfather, Miles Forman, was an officer in the War of 1812. His uncle, Colonel Ferris Forman, was a participant in both the Mexican and Civil wars. Mr. Forman had three brothers: Stephen, a farmer ; Sands, a machinist and inventor, and Edward, who for many years was secretary and manager of Spaulding & Company, the old reliable jewelry house in Chicago. These brothers are all dead. There were two sis- ters: Mary Elizabeth, who married Edwin S. Woodbridge, of Bing- hampton, New York, and died in 1912, at the age of eighty-six, and Miss Ellen A., who is still living at Binghampton, New York, aged seventy-nine years.
General Forman received his education in the public schools, gradu- ating from the Owego Academy in 1854, and the following year, at the age of eighteen, began to satisfy his lifelong thirst for adventure and the romance of the west. He came to California by the Isthmus route and for a time worked in the postoffice at Sacramento, where his uncle, Colonel Ferris Forman, the postmaster, had located four years previ- ously. On business connected with the postoffice department he made the overland trip to Washington with a small party. He visited relatives in the state of New York, and then returned to Sacramento by way of the old Santa Fe trail. For two years he was deputy secretary of state.
Mr. Forman was a pioneer of Nevada, going to that territory in 1860. For a time he was in the employ of Wells Fargo & Company at Gold Hill and Virginia City, and later engaged in mining on the Com- stock, being connected with the Eclipse Mill and Mining Company. One of his most successful mining adventures was in Pioche, Nevada, where he was superintendent of the Meadow Valley Mining Company during the strenuous days of the early seventies. While he was in Virginia City the town had a population of about two thousand. Shortly after his arrival he became a member of the volunteer military company or- ganized to protect the community against Indian attacks. He took part in many skirmishes and was in one fixed battle where ninety-seven white men fought five hundred Indians and only twenty-one of the whites survived. General Forman went through the five hour battle without a scratch. The title of general by which he was generally known came as a result of his appointment in 1881 by Governor John H. Kinkead as major general of the Nevada Volunteers.
In 1872 General Forman engaged in the lumber business at Salt Lake City with T. R. Jones. Much of the lumber for the "Amelia Palace" was sold to Brigham Young by this firm. In 1874 he returned to Virginia City, and with the exception of one or two years spent in Chihuahua, Mexico, remained in Nevada engaged in mining until 1887.
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In the meantime the glories of Virginia City as a mining center had begun to wane, and in 1887 General Forman permanently estab- lished his home in Los Angeles. He became interested in the street railway business, and was vice president and general manager of the old Los Angeles Cable Company, which later was sold to a group of Chicago capitalists. Owing to ill health he was obliged to retire from active business for a few years. In the early nineties he established the Kern River Company, a power company promoted for the purpose of bringing electricity from Kern River to Los Angeles. It was one of the pioneer efforts in America to solve the problem of long distance transmission of electric current, and the fact that General Forman was one of the active promoters of the company when in advanced years shows his vigor of mind and progressiveness, which were inseparable characteristics of his entire life. The Kern River Company eventually was merged with the Pacific Light and Power Company of Los Angeles. General Forman was president of the Kern River Company and secre- tary of the Pacific Light & Power Company until July, 1912, when he resigned. In the closing years of his life he devoted most of his time to the development of his ranch near Lankershim.
General Forman was a typical representative of the best of that flood of virile manhood which poured into California in the fifties and spread over the entire far west. He possessed courage, enterprise and initia- tive, good judgment and energy, and with all these traits he was quiet and unassuming and was unspoiled by good fortune. Through all his years he retained the esteem and confidence of his fellow citizens. Again and again he demonstrated his faith in Los Angeles, and made extensive investments there when no one could realize the brilliant fu- ture that has since unfolded. General Forman was a charter member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, for years was a member of its Board of Directors and its president in 1899, and the Chamber was represented at his funeral by a special committee. He was also a char- ter member of the California Club and at the time of his death was a member of the Engineers and Architects Association, the Jonathan Club and the Gamut Club. He was eminent commander of DeWitt Clinton Commandery of the Knights Templar in Virginia City in 1879, 1880 and 1881.
On October 15, 1862, General Forman was married at the old Rancho de la Puente, in Los Angeles county, to Miss Mary Agnes Gray, a step-daughter of John Rowland, one of the original owners of the Rancho. Mary Agnes Gray was born in Covington, Kentucky, September 19, 1843, and came to California across the plains with her mother, Mrs. Charlotte M. Gray, and two small brothers in 1851. Her father, John Gray, was killed by the Indians on the way. Mrs. Gray later married John Rowland, who received the grant of the Rancho de la Puente in 1841. Mary Gray was educated at Notre Dame Convent in San Jose and at Miss Atkins School in Benicia. After her marriage she went to live in Nevada with General Forman, but in 1882 the fam- ily moved from Virginia City to Los Angeles. A few years ago an interesting story was printed concerning the dismantling of a picturesque home in Los Angeles, known as the General Forman home. This house had originally been erected in Virginia City, Nevada, by General For- man at a cost of twelve thousand dollars. His family had lived in it for seven years, from the time it was erected in 1875. When the family removed to Los Angeles General Forman was loathe to allow his resi- dence, endeared to him by many associations, to become a prey to the
Many: A. Forse
MRS. CHARLOTTE M. ROWLAND
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process of decay then at work in Virginia City, and after some nego- tiation he had the house taken to pieces, shipped by the Southern Pacific Railway in ten carloads and set upon a new site in Los Angeles on a twenty acre tract near Pico and Figueroa street. That land was bought at an original cost of a hundred and fifty dollars an acre, but can be identified with some of the highest priced frontage in the Los Angeles of today. It is said that it cost General Forman six thousand dollars to transport and rebuild his residence, and he felt well satis- fied with the deal. For many years it was one of the show places of the city, but gradually business interests encroached and early in 1913 the residence was wrecked to make room for some tracks of the Los Angeles Railway system. For years this home on West Pico street stood in the midst of an orange grove, and was the scene of many pleasant social gatherings. Mrs. Forman had a wide circle of friends and her chief delight was entertaining them. One of the social events of the city was the New Year Watch held in the Forman residence. In 1901 the family moved to South Flower street. Mrs. Forman, who represented the fine spirit of old time hospitality in Los Angeles, and was also a benefactor to many of the unfortunate, died November 3, 1918, at the age of seventy-five. General and Mrs. Forman are sur- vived by two children, Miss Eloise Forman and Charles Forman, Jr.
MRS. CHARLOTTE M. ROWLAND was born on February 5, 1826, at Marietta, Ohio. She was the daughter of Isaiah Gavitt and Elizabeth Murphy, his wife.
Elizabeth Murphy's grandmother, Mary Perry, was an own cousin of Commodore Perry, the hero of Lake Erie. Her father, Martin Mur- phy, of Newport, Rhode Island, enlisted and served six years in the Revolutionary army.
Charlotte married John B. Gray, of Covington, Kentucky, a son of John and Deborah Gray. They had three children, Mary Agnes, James Andrew and John. In 1850 Mr. Gray left Covington with his family and came as far west as El Paso, Texas. The following year they started from El Paso for California. There were eighty persons in the party, including eight children and they had eight covered wagons, horses and mules, some oxen and three cows which were milked on the way. Mr. Gray was killed by the Indians in the Guadeloupe Mountains, between El Paso and Santa Cruz. The party was eight months on the road and arrived at San Bernardino in the summer of 1851. In this party were Dr. Obed Macy, his wife and several children; Ira Thompson, with his wife, Rebecca, and their children, and David Lewis, a pioneer of El Monte, who married Susan Thompson. So far as known, Mrs. Susan Thompson Parrish, still living at El Monte, at an advanced age, Mrs. Lucinda Macy Foy of San Rafael Heights, Pasadena : her brothers, William and Obed, and a sister. Mrs. Evans of Oakland, who was an infant at the time.
Mrs. Gray bought a small home near the present town of El Monte. where she lived with her three small children until her marriage to John Rowland, on September 16, 1852. Mr. Rowland was a native of Mary- land, who came to California from Taos, New Mexico, with his wife. Encarnacion Martinez de Rowland, and located upon the Rancho de la Puente, twenty miles east of Los Angeles, with William Workman. Mr. Rowland located on the Rancho in 1841, and received a Mexican grant to the land from Governor Pio Pico July 22, 1845. Mrs. Encarnacion dle Rowland died about 1850, leaving a large family. The only one living
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now is a son, William R. Rowland of Los Angeles. To Mr. John Row- land and his second wife were born three children, Albert, Lillian and Victoria. All are now dead.
Of the Gray children, Mary Agnes married Charles Forman of Gold Hill, Nevada, in 1862. She died on November 3, 1918. Mr. For- man died on January 9, 1919. Of their children, James Andrew died on May 12, 1875, and John died in early childhood. Albert Rowland married Abbie Lewis in 1879, and he died March 8, 1891. Lillian Row- land died in infancy. Victoria Rowland married Josiah Whitcomb Hud- son in 1879. Mr. Hudson died in 1914, and Mrs. Hudson August 9, 1916.
It is impossible to do justice to the admirable character of Mrs. Charlotte M. Rowland. This noble and beloved woman was one of the first American women to reach this section, a real pioneer. The sweet- ness of her disposition, and her native refinement won for her the esteem of the entire community, Spanish at the time. In those days, when all transportation was on horseback or by wagon, life was much simpler. The hurry and bustle of the present day was unknown. Every one found leisure to cultivate acquaintance. The hospitality of the Rowlands be- came a household word. Mrs. Rowland was soon known throughout the country for her gentleness and kindliness of character. The poor and unfortunate found in her an unfailing friend. She encouraged them when despondent, consoled them in sorrow, and rejoiced with them in their success and happiness. She it was who sat oftenest by the cradle of the new born, and who softly closed the eyes of many who had fallen into the last long sleep. But it was to her own family and household that she was most dear. An active, ever busy woman, with many and great responsibilities as the years passed, she was never too busy to answer the eager questions of childish lips; she was never too tired, no matter how heavy the cares of the day had been, to tell a story to her grandchildren. She has left to them a golden memory. After an illness of three years, Mrs. Rowland passed away on June 10, 1895, at the age of sixty-nine years.
The surviving grandchildren are Miss Eloise Forman and Charles Forman Jr. of Los Angeles, children of Mary Agnes Gray and Charles Forman; Mrs. Josephine Rowland Cross, wife of George E. Cross, a prominent business man of Puente, Frank Rowland of Puente, and Charles William Rowland of Santa Maria, children of Albert Rowland and Abbie Lewis, his wife; Miss Lillian Hudson of Puente, William Rowland Hudson of Puente, and J. Whitcomb Hudson of Puente, chil- dren of Victoria Rowland and Josiah Whitcomb Hudson. To these grandchildren, all men and women now, the memory of their grand- mother, Charlotte M. Rowland, has been a constant benediction through the years.
MRS. MABEL WALKER WILLEBRANDT. The professional career of Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt has embraced a period of but five years, all of which have been passed at Los Angeles, but during this time she has, by assiduous attention to her professional duties and by profound knowledge of her vocation and skill in its practice, won a place among the reputable practitioners of law, and at the same time has done much to open the doors of professional preferment to deserving and properly trained women.
Mrs. Willebrandt was born May 23, 1889, in Woodsdale, Kansas, a daughter of David W. and Myrtle (Eaton) Walker. Her father, a
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pioneer of western Kansas, was first a newspaper man, associated with some of the early journalistic efforts of his day and locality, and later went to Buckley, Michigan, where he was identified with banking en- terprises. Both he and Mrs. Walker survive and are residents of Los Angeles. Mrs. Willebrandt had normal training in the high school at Kansas City, Missouri, following which she enrolled as a student at Park College, Parksville, Missouri. Subsequently she pursued a course at Ferris Institute, Big Rapids, Michigan, where Governor Ferris was her instructor, and this period of study was followed by a short period of teaching at Phoenix, Arizona. Later she took a post-graduate course at Tempe, Arizona. On February 7, 1910, she was married to Arthur Willebrandt, who is now in France, having been a member of the famous Ninety-first Division, which covered itself with glory on the battlefields of Flanders.
From 1912 to 1914 Mrs. Willebrandt served as principal of schools at South Pasadena, California, but in the meantime had continued her law studies, and in 1915 was admitted to the bar. During that year she had the unique distinction of being the first woman city public de- fender in any city in the United States. She studied law at the Uni- versity of Southern California, where she received her bachelor's de- gree in 1916, and her master's degree in 1917. In the meantime she had engaged actively in the practice of her profession at Los Angeles, and in the fall of 1916 opened her present offices at No. 257 South Spring street. Her work has been largely of a probate character, and her practice has been singularly free from cases taking her clients into the divorce courts. From the start of her professional career her prac- tice has been a successful one, showing a constant and steady growth both in size and importance, and at this time she occupies a prominent place in the ranks of the fraternity. She has real estate holdings of considerable value and is accounted a clever and well-informed business woman.
Mrs. Willebrandt's activities in club life have engaged a large part of her attention and various honors have been bestowed upon her. She is chairman of the committee on legislation of the Friday Morning Club, secretary of the Professional Women's Club, secretary of the Women Lawyers' Club and a member of the Women's City Club. She is likewise past master of the Phi Delta Delta legal women's fraternity. a stalwart republican in her political allegiance, she did considerable campaigning for Miss Orfa Jean Shontz, the first woman to run for judge of the Superior Court. During the period, of the war Mrs. Wille- brandt subjugated her interests to those of the country and rendered services of the most valuable character. As chairman and secretary of the legal advisory board of District No. 11, the second largest board in Los Angeles, she had charge of all the legal work in her district, and superintended the work of fifty attorneys in handling questionnaires and registration, and in the settling of all legal questions that arose in connection with the presentation of claims for exemption and change of classification. Personally she handled some 10,000 questionnaires. A large part of her time was also devoted to the work of the Red Cross, where her fine legal talents were used in adjusting differences and settling controversies in regard to the work of relief.
It is but natural that Mrs. Willebrandt should be interested in suffrage, a field of endeavor in which she has been very active. Her comparatively short career has been largely devoted to constant effort for the equal advancement of both men and women in all educational
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and progressive activities. To this work she has given freely of all that she has gained through a constant study of fundamental principles and their application to the everyday life of the people.
MAJOR HENRY HANCOCK, during a residence in southern California of over thirty years, was a man distinguished by many experiences and by participation official and civil in the early history of Los Angeles and vicinity.
He was born in New Hampshire, February 22, 1822, and died in his sixty-first year in January, 1883. He served in the Mexican war, and in 1849 came to California, arriving here with few more possessions than he carried about his person. He went to mining, and in a short time took out twenty thousand dollars worth of gold. Much of this he invested in the Mexican grants, paying two and three dollars an acre. Chief of these grants which came under his ownership was the Rancho La Brea, west of Los Angeles. On a portion of lands formerly owned by Major Hancock were built the suburbs of Hollywood, Sher- man and Colegrove. Much of this original rancho is still intact, and constitutes one of the largest and most valuable land holdings in south- ern California.
Major Hancock located in Los Angeles in 1852. He was both an attorney and a surveyor. He surveyed many private ranches in differ- ent parts of California and for a number of years served as United States surveyor. He made the second official survey of the city of Las Angeles. He represented Los Angeles county in the Legislature. Of the talented and noble woman who became his wife, and who survived him many years, a separate sketch has been prepared and published in this volume.
When Major Hancock died a committee of the Los Angeles Bar Association prepared a memorial indicating in official language some of the facts already stated, and from which the following sentences are taken: "God in His Wisdom has called to his final rest our brother, the late Major Henry Hancock, long a member of this court and the courts of this state. We, his brothers in the profession in which he, by his integrity and ability, made himself a conspicuous ornament, and by his services to his country in the Mexican war, and in the late war between the states, gave evidence of his devotion and patriotism, there- fore,
"Resolved, That in the death of the late Major Henry Hancock, the bar of this city and the state loses a pure and upright man, able and energetic in his profession, one who at a loss to himself was ever will- ing to devote his time, energy and learning to redress the wrongs and injuries of others ; that in the death of Major Henry Hancock the com- munity in which he lived, the State and Nation, have lost the services of a pure and upright citizen, an able lawyer and a patriotic soldier."
IDA HANCOCK Ross. Among California women whose lives have been significant through character, richness of purpose, and extent of influence and charity, that of the late Ida Hancock Ross has an interest that is still vital, though she was taken from the living more than five years ago.
She was a real California pioneer, and she lived through and was impressed by the romance, the hardships and all the glamor which sur- rounded and invested the California of the past and the epic days of the west.
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