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 27
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Eminent in his profession, he was naturally drawn into the army through his early associations with the frontier and with army officials, and doubtless also because of the military antecedents in his own an- cestry. One of his grandfathers was a captain of light artillery in the Revolutionary war, while the other was a captain of infantry in the War of 1812. His paternal grandfather passed on his military spirit to his son, William Hamilton Edgar, who at the age of seventeen enlisted
Mr J. Edgar
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from his native state of Virginia and was a soldier in the War of 1812. He then settled in Kentucky, later went to Missouri, and distinguished himself as a man of forceful character and of great energy. The last years of his life were spent under California skies, and he died in San Bernardino County in 1866. His widow then made her home with her son William in Drum Barracks, near Wilmington, until her death two years later. There were four children, the only daughter dying in in- fancy. One son was a lawyer and died at Los Angeles in 1862; an- other died in 1874 at the Edgar Rancho, at San Gorgonio, California.
Dr. William Francis Edgar was born on a farm in Jessamine County, Kentucky, in March, 1823. At the age of eight years he began making the daily journey back and forth between his home and the log cabin schoolhouse three miles distant. When the family located in Missouri he enjoyed better privileges, completing his literary education in the Bonne Femme College. After the panic of 1837 the family moved to St. Joseph, then a pioneer post on the Upper Missouri River. Early in life he had some associations with army surgeons, which determined his choice of a profession. He earned his own living while at St. Joseph as clerk in a drug store, and applied every spare hour to the study of medicine. and chemistry. Later he entered the Medical Department of the University of Louisville, where he was graduated with high honors in 1848. He was a pupil under Professor Samuel Gross. At the be- ginning of the second session of his college career he and two fellow students were appointed assistant demonstrators of anatomy, an appoint- ment he held until he entered the army.
After graduating in medicine he presented himself before the Army Board in New York and, out of scores of candidates, he was one of four to successfully pass the rigid test. He was appointed an assistant sur- geon in the United States Army in the spring of 1849 at Jefferson Bar- racks, and was first assigned to duty in Fort Leavenworth. He went into the army at a peculiarly strenuous and romantic period in the de- velopment of the west, when California was achieving its fame, and soon after the tide of settlement had begun to the northwestern states and territories. From Fort Leavenworth he was transferred to Oregon, and traveled by steamer to old Fort Kearney. While en route the Asiatic cholera broke out among the passengers, and Dr. Edgar had little leisure, devoting himself without fear of personal risk to the needs and neces- sities of his fellow travelers. Later he spent some time at Vancouver, at The Dalles in Oregon, and in the spring of 1851, under changes in- stituted by the government, came under the command of Major Philip Kearny, with headquarters at Sonoma, California. While in Sonoma Dr. Edgar became associated with men afterward famous in history, especially Joseph Stooker and George Stoneman. He was also stationed for a short time at Fort Miller, in the Yosemite Valley, and toward the close of 1853 was ordered to Fort Reading, at the present town of Read- ing, in Shasta County. For four years he had labored and exposed him- self without limit in his profession, and his weakened constitution made him an easy prey to the malarial conditions of his new post. One night he rose from his bed, ill with malaria fever, to attend a professional call, and returning to his quarters, fell unconscious, stricken with paralysis. He was relieved from duty, and after careful nursing at the home of a friend in the Tejon Valley he so far recovered that by the following March he was able to walk. After three months, part of which was spent in Kentucky and Missouri, he reported for duty at Jefferson Bar- racks, Missouri, and was assigned to the Second United States Cavalry
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Corps. With that organization he made the acquaintance of other mili- tary men whose names shine with peculiar luster in American history, including Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, William J. Hardee and George H. Thomas. For a brief time he was on duty in Texas, was then sent to Fort Meyers, Florida, and in the latter part of 1856 was ordered to New York, and the next year was again given duty at Fort Miller, California, under the command of Captain Ord.
In November, 1861, Dr. Edgar was ordered to report to Wash- ington, and was among the last regular troops to leave the Pacific Coast. During the Civil war he was a surgeon with the rank of major. He was assigned to General Buell's command in Kentucky, and reorganized and had charge of the General Hospital at Louisville. No branch of the service in an army in a great war entails more exhausting duties than that of the medical staff. Dr. Edgar's health again failed, and, against his wishes, he was relieved from duty and assigned to the medical di- rector's office in the Department of the East, with headquarters at New York.
At New York, March 8, 1866, in the Church of the Nativity, he married Miss Catherine Laura Hennifick. It was with peculiar pleasure, heightened by the memories of earlier associations, that Dr. Edgar ac- cepted his next orders to return to California, where his parents had also located. With the exception of a few years of private practice at Los Angeles, Dr. Edgar spent the remaining years of his professional career at Drum Barracks. While there he purchased a large ranch at San Gorgonio, in San Bernardino County. This ranch was managed by his brother, Francis Marion, until his death in 1874, at which time Dr. Edgar took personal charge of the property. He sold part of it in 1881, and in 1886 sold the remainder to the San Gorgonio Investment Company. For many years Dr. Edgar was a familiar and greatly be- loved citizen of Los Angeles, and in Los Angeles he found opportunities to express many of the desires of his public spirit and native generosity. He was an active member of the County Medical Society, the Southern California Historical Society, the Library Association of Los Angeles, the first agricultural society of the county and its successor, the Sixth District Agricultural Association, and was a member of the Main Street and Agriculture Park Railroad Association, serving as a director of the last named for more than five years.
Dr. Edgar died August 23, 1897, when in his seventy-fifth year.
JOHN F. VORDERMARK. The business activities by which he is best known in southern California connect Mr. Vordermark with the estab- lishment and executive direction of several w: 11-known independent gaso- line manufacturing companies. He had a wide range of business service and experience before coming west, and among other distinctions is a veteran of the Spanish-American war and son of a veteran of the Union Army.
Mr. Vordermark was born at Fort Wayne, Indiana, November 6, 1876. His grandfather, Ernest Vordermark, was an American frontiers- man, and established a home at Fort Wayne when it was only an Indian post, more than a century ago. Later he entered the shoe business at that city, and continued it actively for fifty-two years. John W. Vorder- mark, father of John F., was born at Fort Wayne in 1838, was cducated there, and during the Civil war served in the 11th Indiana Battery of Light Artillery. Following the war he took up the shoe business as successor to his father and retired in 1890. He died in 1906. He was
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a member of the Masonic Order and a republican. At Lafayette, Indi- ana, in 1872, he married Louise Quint.
John F. Vordermark attended grammar and high schools at Fort Wayne to the age of sixteen, and then worked in the construction depart- ment of the Western Union Telegraph Company, but in 1894, at the age of eighteen, was appointed a letter carrier to the Fort Wayne postoffice. He left that service in the spring of 1898 to enlist in the 28th Indiana Battery Light Artillery, and served as senior gunner corporal. He was honorably discharged from the service October 31, 1898, and resumed his position as letter carrier at Fort Wayne, but only for six months. His first independent business enterprise was as a restaurant proprietor for two years. He sold out and used his experience as a dining car con- ductor with the Pennsylvania for three years. He then relocated at Ft. Wayne, bought a restaurant, and while still proprietor of that he opened in 1907 the Victoria Hotel, at Gary, Indiana, one of the early hotels of that thriving industrious city.
Mr. Vordermark sold out his Indiana interests in 1909 and came to Los Angeles to act as assistant manager of the Scranton Life Insur- ance Company. He retired from the insurance field in 1910 and organ- ized the Pacific Gasoline Company, of which he became secretary and manager. This company had the distinction of being the first in Cali- fornia to manufacture gasoline out of natural gas. In 1912 Mr. Vorder- mark sold his interests with the Pacific Company and organized the Olinda Gasoline Company, with a plant in Orange County. He is still president and manager of that company, and in 1916 also organized the Sunset Gasoline Company, with plant near Taft, and he is president and manager of this corporation.
Mr. Vordermark is a Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner, an Odd Fellow, a member of the Spanish-American War Veterans, of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the Altodena Country Club, is a Republican and a member of the Christian Science Church. Mr. Vordermark has an interesting country home near San Gabriel, where his grounds are divided between orchard and a poultry farm. He married, at Los Angeles, August 12, 1915, Rachael Elizabeth Harper.
ELI P. CLARK. Los Angeles citizens of the present generation hardly need any reminder of the numerous big works and achievements that stand as credit to the career of Eli P. Clark. One of the most conspicuous and recent is the great Clark Hotel, an eleven-story structure that was completed in 1913, and is regarded as the largest re-enforced concrete hotel on the Pacific Coast.
Mr. Clark became identified with Los Angeles at a critical and vital time in its history. In 1891 he joined his brother-in-law, General Sherman, at Los Angeles and began developing, rehabilitating and ex- tending the electric railway systems in and around the city. At that time Los Angeles had forty thousand inhabitants, and was on the verge of civic bankruptcy due to the great financial depression follow- ing the collapse of the boom of 1887.
The first big achievement to their credit was the organization of the Los Angeles Consolidated Electric Railway Company, now the Los Angeles Railway, with General Sherman as president and Mr. Clark vice president and active manager. All the local lines were consolidated under this organization in 1894. Mr. Clark then acquired the local horse power lines in Pasadena, and in 1895 the Pasadena and Los Angeles ยท Interurban was in operation. The same year saw the beginning of the
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line between Santa Monica and Los Angeles, known as the Los Angeles Pacific Railway. This was opened for traffic April 1, 1896. Mr. Clark continued as its president and manager until the fall of 1909, when the property was sold to the Southern Pacific Company. Under Mr. Clark and General Sherman it became one of the finest suburban railroads in the country, and served to build up the entire foothill country from Los Angeles to the sea. Mr. Clark also planned and secured the property and rights of way for a subway, which when constructed will be the first in Los Angeles.
It was the building of the first electric railway that started Los Angeles toward a new goal of aspiration and prosperity. It is not too much to say that this was one of the main factors in producing within less than a quarter of a century the modern Los Angeles, one of the leading cities of the United States. The broad results of rapid transit facilities inaugurated by Mr. Clark and General Sherman are to be seen in the greater Los Angeles, occupying three times the original area of the city and thickly populating the entire region for miles around the older city.
Aside from his big achievements in Los Angeles and up and down the Pacific Coast the career of Eli P. Clark is interesting for many other reasons. He was country born and country bred and came to manhood in one of the smaller cities of the state of Iowa. He was born near Iowa City November 25, 1847, son of Timothy B. and Elvira E. (Calkin) Clark. When he was eight years old his parents removed to Grinnell, lowa, where he attended the public schools and also Iowa College. At the age of eighteen he taught a term of school. In 1867 he accompa- nied the family to southwest Missouri, where he continued teaching in the winter and farming with his father in the summer.
Mr. Clark became a true southwesterner when in 1875 he crossed the plains with a team to Prescott, Arizona, making the journey in nearly three months. At Prescott he first met his brother-in-law, Gen- eral M. H. Sherman. At Prescott he was a merchant and for one year was acting postmaster. In 1878 he became associated with A. D. Adams under the firm name of Clark & Adams, lumber merchants. In 1877 he had been appointed territorial auditor for Arizona, and filled that office five terms, ten years. While in that position he formed a friend- ship with General John C. Fremont, then governor of Arizona.
The experience and the vision which subsequently made him so im- portant a factor in the railway situation around Los Angeles were ac- quired while living at Prescott. He aided materially in the passage of a bill by the Legislature in 1885 granting a subsidy for a railroad to be built from Prescott to connect with the Atlantic and Pacific Railway at Seligman, Arizona. He was one of the organizers and secretary and treasurer of the original company. Within a year after the plans had been completed the Prescott & Arizona Railroad was in successful op- eration, and ten years later it was succeeded by the Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoenix Railway.
A more recent achievement in railway construction credited to Mr. Clark was organizing in 1906 the Mount Hood Railway & Power Com- pany at Portland, Oregon: Under his management as president of the company this project was pushed rapidly to completion, and after seeing it in successful operation Mr. Clark sold his interests. After that time Mr. Clark and General Sherman separated their principal properties and retired from the railroad field, and Mr. Clark has since devoted himself
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to his private investments, one of which has been noted at the be- ginning of this article. He has also been president of the Clark & Sher- man Land Company, a holding company, vice president of the Main Street Company, and president of the Sinaloa Land Company.
Some of his social and civil connections are as a member of the California Club, the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the University Club, the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, of which he has served as president of the Board of Trustees, and has been a trustee for Pomona College and of the Young Men's Christian Association of Los Angeles. At Prescott, Arizona, April 8, 1880, Mr. Clark married Miss Lucy H. Sherman. They had four children : Mrs. Catherine Clark Barnard, Mrs. Mary Clark Eversole, Miss Lucy Mason Clark and Eu- gene Payson Clark.
TOM C. THORNTON. The state of Texas lost one of its ablest law- yers when Tom C. Thornton moved from the Lone Star commonwealth to Los Angeles in 1900. At Los Angeles Mr. Thornton has continued his splendid work as a lawyer, and is also prominent in other business affairs, especially as president of the Los Angeles Title Insurance Com- pany.
He was born at Huntsville, Texas, August 16, 1863, son of Frank D. and Margaret (Leigh) Thornton. His father, of an old Virginia family, a native of Spottsylvania, was educated for the navy. In 1840 he went to Texas, was identified with that Republic in its early history, and in the vicinity of Huntsville set up as an extensive cattle raiser and planter. During the Civil war he served in the Confederate army and later was a cotton planter and broker at Huntsville. He died in 1882. As a resident of Huntsville he became a personal friend of its most famous citizen, Sam Houston, and on the death of that great Texas statesman early in the Civil war was one of his personal friends who helped bury him.
It was in the atmosphere of southern Texas and among some of its best known men that Tom C. Thornton grew to manhood. Until he was fourteen he attended district school, and then for several years worked as a laborer driving stock at ninety cents a day. At the age of seventeen he began the study of law in the offices of Senator A. L. Abercrombie. The daughter of Judge Abercrombie is now the wife of Judge R. S. Lovett, formerly chairman of the Southern Pacific Railway and now one of the most prominent men in the country in the management of great war industries. Mr. Thornton was admitted to practice in 1885 and soon achieved a high position in the Hunt County bar. He was also interested in state politics, and before leaving Texas was personally associated with such well-known national characters as C. A. Culberson, at that time attorney general of Texas, but now senior United States senator from Texas. Another Texan whom he frequently met is the noted Colonel E. M. House, known as personal adviser to the administra- tion of President Wilson. Others were John Shepard, father of the junior United States senator from Texas, and Judge Monta J. Moore and T. W. Gregory.
Mr. Thornton came to Los Angeles in 1900 and has carried and still carries a large volume of responsibilities as a lawyer. The Los Angeles Title Insurance Company, of which he is president, is one of the oldest institutions of its kind in southern California. He is a member of the Los Angeles County and State Bar Association, is a democrat, and is affiliated with Unity Lodge, F. & A. M., and is a
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Scottish Rite Mason, a Noble of the Mystic Shrine, and an Eastern Star. March 9, 1896, Mr. Thornton married at Greenville, Hunt County, Texas, Leona Turner, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Turner.
HARRY G. R. PHILP, now manager of the great Broadway Depart- ment Store, comes of a family of merchants and clothing manufacturers, and has had a progressive career of advancement in Los Angeles since early manhood, coming step by step to the responsibilities which he now enjoys.
Mr. Philp was born at Paris, Ontario, Canada, June 12, 1875, son of Rev. John and Margaret Rebecca Grafton Philp. His father was a Methodist minister and occupied pulpits in some of the largest and most important churches of that denomination in Canada, including churches in such cities as London, Hamilton, Toronto and Montreal. It is through his mother that Mr. Philp is most closely connected with the merchandise business. Her family were merchants, manufacturers of men's clothing, and operated furnishing goods stores in a number of cities in Ontario.
Harry G. R. Philp graduated from high school in 1893, and then became a member of the class of 1897 in Victoria College of Toronto University. Midway in his college course he left his studies and in November, 1895, arrived in Los Angeles. February 21, 1896, he be- came cashier and assistant to Arthur Letts, owner of the Broadway Department Store. Six months later he was made manager of the notion department, and thereafter he made a close study of all branches of the business. In June, 1897, he was appointed buyer and annually made several trips to New York. Later he became merchandise man- ager, and in 1908 was appointed general manager of the entire store.
Mr. Philp is a member of Southgate Lodge No. 320, A. F. & A. M., is a Knight Templar, a member of the California Club, Ad- vertising Club, Chamber of Commerce, is a republican and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Westlake Methodist Episcopal church. At St. Catherine's, Ontario, April 27, 1904, he married Charlotte Bo- gardus. They have three children: Grafton, born in June, 1905, now a high school boy; Stewart, born in January, 1909, in the grammar school and Elizabeth Mae, who is also attending grammar school.
LEWELLYN BIXBY. The history of many large and ambitious ranch and cattle holding enterprises and also the development of the city of Long Beach has kept the name of Lewellyn Bixby prominent in the affairs of southern California for over sixty years. Many of the enter- prises which the late Lewellyn Bixby, Sr., set in motion have been con- tinued and brought to successful issue by his son Lewellyn, Jr., one of . the best known citizens of Long Beach.
The elder Bixby was born at Norridgewock, Maine, in 1825, and had such advantages as the public schools of his locality could bestow. His life was spent uneventfully on his father's farm until 1851. In that year he came to California, making the trip around the Horn and settling in Amador county. Here he entered a partnership relation in the butcher business with his cousins, Benjamin and Thomas Flint. under the name of Flint, Bixby & Company. In 1853 all the cousins went back home to Maine, traveling via the Isthmus of Panama. When they came west again it was by the overland route, and a large herd of sheep which they had gathered among the farms of Iowa they drove over the plains. This time their headquarters were in Monterey, now
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San Benito county, where the sheep were turned loose to graze on extensive tracts of land purchased by the firm. It is claimed that at this particular time the firm was the largest land owner in California. In 1866 they extended their sphere of operations to Los Angeles county and bought the famous Los Cerritos Rancho, consisting of twenty-five thousand acres. About that time the firm of Flint, Bixby & Company and Jotham Bixby organized the J. Bixby & Company, which took over the ownership and control of Los Cerritos Rancho, and for several years devoted it exclusively to sheep husbandry.
In 1876 or 1878 Lewellyn Bixby, Sr., took up his residence in Los Angeles and looked after the interests of his firm in southern California until his death in 1896. He was a very ardent Republican, and was a trustee and active member of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.
Lewellyn Bixby and his brother Jotham (elsewhere referred to) . and his cousin John, all married sisters, members of the Hathaway fam- ily of Skowhegan, Maine, Lewellyn Bixby married at Skowhegan for his first wife, Sarah Hathaway, and after her death her sister Mary became his second wife. Mary Bixby died in February, 1881. They had three children : Mrs. P. J. Smith of Claremont, California; Mrs. Theodore Chamberlin, of Concord, Massachusetts; and Lewellyn, Jr. Both the daughters were born on the Rancho San Justo in San Benito county, California.
Lewellyn Bixby, Jr., was born in Los Angeles August 21, 1879, and as a boy attended the grammar and high schools of his native city. In 1896 he entered Pomona Preparatory School and from that Pomona College at Claremont, from which he graduated Bachelor of Literature in 1901. Besides his literary training he studied civil engineering in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he was gradu- ated Bachelor of Science in 1904, and after returning to California he acquired a general knowledge of the law by eight months of study in the offices of Hahn & Hahn at Pasadena. Since then Mr. Lewellyn Bixby has been a resident of Long Beach, and has been giving careful and indefatigable attention to the extensive real estate and other business proprieties left by his father. He is vice president of the National Bank at Long Beach, president of the Long Beach Savings Bank and Trust Company, president of the Long Beach Dairy Company, president of the Soft Water Laundry Company, vice president of the Mutual Build- ing and Loan Association, vice president of the Bixby Land Company, vice president of the Palos Verdes Company and vice president of the Alamitos Land Company.
Mr. Bixby is also a trustee of his alma mater, Pomona College, a member of the University Club of Los Angeles, the Virginia Country Club of Long Beach, and is a republican voter and a member of the Congregational Church. At Claremont, California, August 26, 1901, he married Miss Avis Smith. They have two children, Avis Hathaway and Lewellyn, Jr., the former born in 1905 and the latter in 1908, and both students in the public schools of Long Beach.
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