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 31
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Arthur L. Veitch, the only child of his parents, attended the public schools of Mayville, Michigan, graduated from the Los Angeles High School in 1902 and took his law course in the University of Southern California, graduating LL. B. in 1907 and LL. M. in 1909. Admitted to the bar July 1, 1907, his professional services were soon required in many prominent cases. His work as an attorney attracted the aden- tion of the District Attorney and in May, 1909, he was appointed a deputy and was one of the most vigilant members of the District At- torneys office for several years. While in the District Attorneys office he was employed in assisting to prosecute the McNamara dynamiting cases at Los Angeles and the subsequent "Dynamite Conspiracy" cases at Indianapolis. On January 1, 1915, after leaving the district attor- ney's office he began private practice, and on January 1, 1918, became a member of the law firm Fredericks & Hanna. Mr. Veitch was also special prosecutor employed by the State of Washington in a prominent case involving the I. W. W. when they stormed and made a demon- stration of force against the city of Everett, Washington, in the fall of 1916, seventy-four prisoners being brought to trial.
Mr. Veitch is a republican, is affiliated with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and a member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. July 5, 1909, on his twenty-fifth birthday, he married Miss Gertrude E. Mesplou, a native daughter of Los Angeles. She is a graduate of the Los Angeles High School. They have one son, Frederick Arthur, born July 31, 1910. Mr. Veitch and family reside at 1506 West 46th street.
MAJOR A. J. PICKRELL, whose home and business offices are in Los Angeles, has been a prominent figure in western mining life and affairs for many years, and is one of the leading factors in the great copper districts of the southwest.
Major Pickrell has lived his life in many states of the Union. He was born near Wapakoneta in Auglaize county, Ohio, August 23, 1862, a son of Andrew Jackson and Elizabeth (Vincent) Pickrell. Before he was ready to attend school his parents moved to the vicinity of Cherokee in Colbert county, Alabama. The father had a plantation and used a log building as a school for the benefit of his own children and those of other families in the neighborhood, hiring a teacher. When Major Pickrell was fourteen his parents moved to Iuka, Tishomingo county, Mississippi, and there he had his first instruction in public schools, and also some military training. When he was sixteen he went with his parents to Ennis, in Ellis county, Texas, where his father had a general merchandise business. There he again attended public school, and for one year also studied law.
The call of destiny came and was answered when he left his Texas home on horseback for Leadville, Colorado, at the time of the great gold and silver rush to that point. He started out with four- teen, but only five of them finished the trip. For three years he was in the mining district of Leadville, and then went to Aspen, Colorado, where he did some silver mining. About that time came a discouraging drop in the price of silver, and Major Pickrell moved his camp, hav- ing heard of some of his friends who were doing well in the gold and
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copper district near Prescott, Arizona. Prescott has ever since been the scene of his chief operations as a miner and mine operator. From 1902 to 1907 he was general superintendent o fthe Phelps-Dodge prop- . erties of northern Arizona, one of the greatest mining corporations in the southwest. At the same time he looked after his own mining in- terests at Jerome, where he is interested in the United Verde Extension Company of Jerome. This is one of the largest high grade copper ore bodies of any mining company in the United States.
Major Pickrell is president of the Tillie-Starbuck Gold & Silver Mining Company near Prescott, Arizona, which he organized, contain- ing several thousand feet of development work and opening up at a depth of some seven hundred to eight hundred feet of very valuable ore. An unusual feature of this enterprise is that it was developed with- out pay for official development and without commission on stock sales. Major Pickrell is a director of the Commercial Trust & Savings Bank of Prescott, a director of the Home Savings at Los Angeles, and a director of the Van Nuys National Bank of Van Nuys, California, near which place his home is located in the San Fernando Valley. He is a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the City Club and a democrat in politics. He married at Aspen, Colorado, Minnie L. Hale.
N. T. POWELL is treasurer of the city of Los Angeles. The official title alone hardly does credit to his long and varied service in behalf of the municipality, his splendid executive abilities and the range of service performed by him both in and out of office. Mr. Powell has been a resident of Los Angeles for a quarter of a century and comes of a distinguished Southern family. Ned Trucxstone Powell was born at Atlanta, Georgia, January 18, 1866, a son of Dr. Fielding Travis Powell, a prominent physician and surgeon who at one time was presi- dent of the Eclectic Medical Association of Georgia. He contributed much to medical literature and also was a writer of fiction and other forms of literary effort. He was a native of Tullahoma, Tennessee. He died at Atlanta more than twenty years ago. Dr. Powell married Martha Ann Jintsy Powell, a distant cousin, in 1849. She was born at Decatur, George, at the old Powell Plantation, August, 1830, and died in May, 1917, at the age of eighty-seven. The Powell Plantation is famous in history as the headquarters for General Sherman and Gen- eral McPherson during the Atlanta campaign. Three days after they left the plantation General McPherson was killed.
N. T. Powell was one of a family of two sons and one daughter. The youngest living member of the family, N. T. Powell, attended the public schools of Atlanta and later in a four years' course acquired a thorough academic education in a number of special branches. For a number of years he had a banking experience under the tutorship of the firm Maddox, Rucker & Company of Atlanta. From the south Mr. Powell removed to New York to perfect his knowledge of banking in Wall street, and in 1895 came to Los Angeles.
May 11, 1896, Mr. Powell married Miss Ada Gaty. They were married at the death bed of her father Edward W. Gaty, who was twice mayor of Santa Barbara, California, in which city the marriage was solemnized. Mrs. Powell was born in St. Louis and her grand- father Samuel Gaty owned and operated the first steamboat on the Mississippi River.
Soon after coming to Los Angeles, Mr. Powell was appointed finan- cial expert by the county grand jury to examine the accounts of the
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County of Los Angeles. In the spring of 1898 he was appointed by the Board of Education to take the school census of the city. The follow- ing year he was appointed Clerk of the City Courts of Los Angeles, filling that office for four years. He was then made chief deputy of the City Treasury, and has been connected with the treasury department ever since. He has been city treasurer since January, 1916. In con- nection with his official duties he has represented Los Angeles in im- portant financial negotiations in New York, Sacramento and elsewhere.
An unsual and unprecedented honor paid Mr. Powell, and one fitly bestowed in recognition of his official duties as city treasurer, is rep- resented by a framed resolution found in Mr. Powell's office, expressive of the sense of the City Council of the indebtedness of the community to his official administration. This formal resolution was passed May 3, 1917, and is part of the Council records of the city.
I The City Treasury of Los Angeles has to account for and handle over forty million dollars annually, and the city treasurer is also ex- officio trustee and custodian of the municipal paving bond funds. Ob- viously it is an office of great importance, requiring great executive ability, and it is the good fortune of Los Angeles that a man of Mr. Powell's qualifications presides over an institution that is so vital to the civic life of the community.
In politics, Mr. Powell being from the South was reared in a demo- cratic atmosphere but his chief concern in recent years has been to sup- port the best man for the place. Over his desk hang pictures of Wash- ington, Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson flanked by a large copy of the Declaration of Independence, his idea being the man not the party. He was chairman of the Municipal Offices Committee during all of the Liberty Loan drives, and disposed of over a million and a half dollars worth of bonds, in the five campaigns. He is a member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, City Club, Woodmen of the World and has served on a number of public committees. Mrs. Powell, who took a prominent part in Red Cross and Civic work, passed away sud- denly, from heart failure on October 28, 1919, at her home, 1721 South Burlington avenue.
EVERETT H. SEAVER, who came to Los Angeles from Kansas City, where he was well known in grain and Board of Trade circles, has been an active factor in business affairs of southern California since 1911. After William Wrigley, Jr., paid three million dollars for the Catalina Island resort in the winter of 1918-19, under the reorganization of the business Mr. Seaver became general manager of the Santa Catalina Island Company and therefore has the practical supervision of nearly all the business details affecting the administration of this famous resort.
Mr. Seaver was born at Salina, Kansas, September 2, 1886, but in infancy was taken by his parents to Kansas City, Missouri, where he lived until coming to California. His father, James E. Seaver, who was born at Batavia, New York, in 1853, was educated in the Michigan State Normal School to the age of nineteen, and then spent a few years pros- pecting for gold in California, in Canada and Mexico, but finally settled down to more permanent interests as a miller at Salina, Kansas. In 1887 he removed to Kansas City, Missouri, becoming a member of the Board of Trade and was active in the grain business there until 1916, when he retired. His death occurred March 12, 1918. He married while living at Salina, Kansas, Bella R. Carr.
Everett H. Seaver graduated from the Kansas City High School in
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1904, and then for two years was in the grain business with his father. With this experience he qualified as an independent member of the Board of Trade and was in the grain business for himself until 1911. On com- ing to Los Angeles Mr. Seaver became secretary and treasurer of the California Drug and Chemical Company, and held that post until 1915. In July, 1917, he organized the Fulton Shipbuilding Company, with Charles E. Fulton as president, and Mr. Seaver as secretary and treas- urer. In January, 1918, he became president and general manager of this business, and carried those responsibilities in addition to his other connections with the Catalina Island Company.
Mr. Seaver is a member of the California Club and Los Angeles Country Club. At Kansas City, February 3, 1909, he married Gertrude Sharp. They have three children: Charles H., born in 1911 ; Catherine J., born in 1913, and James E., born in 1918
ARTHUR R. PECK, Los Angeles inventor and manufacturer, has done much pioneer work in the field of invention, and has also supplied much of the business energy and resources responsible for the estab- lishment and prosperous conduct of the Anaheim Sugar Company, one of the largest beet sugar companies in California.
Mr. Peck was born at Aurora, Ontario, Canada, March 28, 1862, son of Rufus T. and Susan (Wells) Peck. When he was a child his parents removed to Cortland, New York, where he was educated in the public schools and Normal School. His first invention was made when about twenty-one years of age. He perfected a practical type of the cash register, had it patented in 1887, and for several years manufac- tured it on a successful scale. Mr. Peck sold this business in 1895, and removed to Syracuse, New York, where in 1892 he organized the Barnes Cycle Company. At that time the bicycle was enjoying the height of its popularity, and his company manufactured one of the best wheels on the market, known as the Barnes White Flyer. Mr. Peck continued as manager of the company until 1900, at which time the company was sold to the American Bicycle Company.
As a bicycle manufacturer it was only natural that he became a pioneer in the promotion of the automobile. Associated with Alexander T. Brown, inventor of the Smith-Premier typewriter, and three other men, Mr. Peck furnished the original capital to build the first three Franklin automobiles constructed, and which resulted in the formation of the great Franklin Automobile Company.
What brought Mr. Peck to Los Angeles was his association with C. M. Warner of the Warner Sugar Refining Company of New York. These capitalists organized the Anaheim Sugar Company in the year 1910, in which he and Mr. Warner are the principal stockholders. Mr. Peck is president, Richard Melrose vice president, L. H. Multer secre- tary and treasurer, and the other directors are C. M. Warner, E. T. Stimson, Frank J. Carlisle and Donald Barker.
The Anaheim Sugar Company was incorporated with a capital of $750,000, and the plant at Anaheim was put in operation in July, 1911, with a capacity of 600 tons of beets per day. The plant has been en- larged until its present daily capacity is 1,200 tons. The company con- tracts to handle the product of 12,000 acres of beets in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, and in 1917 the aggregate of business was valued at $2,500,000. In the plant and business 275 men find direct and regular employment, while it furnishes employment and revenue indirectly to over a thousand more. The Anaheim sugar plant has direct transporta- tion facilities over the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railways ..
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Mr. Peck is also a director of the National Bank of Syracuse, and of the Mack-Miller Candle Company of Syracuse, which he and an- other associate organized. His fame as an inventor also rests upon Peck's Pressure Filter, a device extensively used in mining and sugar plants. Mr. Peck is now having this filter manufactured.
He is a member of the California Club, Los Angeles Athletic Club, Sierra Madre Club and the Los Angeles Country Club of Los Angeles, and the Century Club, Onondaga Golf and Country Club and Citizens Club of Syracuse. Politically Mr. Peck is a republican. At Syracuse, in November, 1892, he married Miss Carrie Aldrich. Their one son, Aldrich R., born in 1896, was a student in the second year at Yale Uni- versity when he enlisted in the Naval Reserves.
MILTON G. COOPER. The wholesale district of Los Angeles has one of its most conspicuous institutions in the Cooper, Coates & Casey Com- pany. The president of this company and business organized it some years ago largely upon his extensive experience and demonstrated suc- cess as a traveling salesman.
Mr. Cooper has been connected with the dry goods trade prac- tically all his life, having begun it as a clerk in a large firm in Kansas City, Missouri.
He was born at Springdale, Ohio, October 9, 1873, son of Thomas and Sarah Cooper. At the age of fifteen he left high school to do any work that might be assigned him as a boy clerk in the wholesale dry goods house of Burnham, Hanna & Munger, at Kansas City. His diligence and intelligence found favor in the eyes of his superiors, and in 1894, when he was twenty-one years of age, he received the coveted honor of a place on the firm's pay roll as a traveling salesman. In 1895 Mr. Cooper came out to Los Angeles to represent his house in the Pacific Coast territory, and during the next eleven years he not only built up an immense volume of trade for his house, but became familiar with commercial conditions and built up an extensive acquaintance all up and down the coast.
Then in 1906 he organized the Cooper, Coates & Casey Company, of which he has since been president. This company does a wholesale business in dry goods, notions, floor covering, men's and women's fur- nishing goods. Their first plant was at 528 South Los Angeles street, where they had 24,000 square feet of floor space. Today the different buildings furnish 250,000 square feet. In 1912 they erected a five-story and basement building on the southeast corner of Seventh and Los Angeles streets, and in 1918 put up a five-story building adjoining the first building, part of this space being used for factory purposes, manu- facturing women's, children's and boys' garments. A subway con- nects the two buildings. The carload shipments arrive at their River Station warehouse, and the company owns a large garage and operates forty automobile cars and trucks. The company does both a domestic and export business.
Mr. Cooper is a Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner, a member of the United Commercial Travelers, Los Angeles Athletic Club, Los Angeles Country Club, and is not only one of the principal men of affairs of Los Angeles, but a citizen of the deepest public spirit.
At Plattsburg, Missouri, June 26, 1895, he married Miss Hattie M. Philips. They have one son, Stuart, who was educated in the gram- mar and high schools, the University of Southern California and Phila- delphia Textile School at Philadelphia, and is now making a practical use of his liberal education with the Cooper, Coates & Casey Company.
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GEORGE F. GETTY, a resident of Los Angeles since 1906, came to this city with a well established reputation as an attorney, practiced law for over twenty years in Michigan and Minnesota, but for the past fifteen years his chief interests have been in oil development and pro- duction. He is president of the Minnehoma Oil Company, one of the largest producing companies in the Oklahoma fields.
Possessing initiative and ability of a high order, and a long and persistent worker, Mr. Getty has never been in the class of the "average man." He was born at Grantsville, Maryland, October 17, 1858, son of John and Martha A. (Wiley) Getty. Soon after his birth his parents moved to eastern Ohio, where he received his early education. At the age of eighteen he entered the Smithville Academy in Ohio, and from that continued his studies in the Ohio Northern University at Ada, where he was graduated A. B. July 10, 1879. He left his impress on the student activities of that old and well known institution, and is one of its most loyal alumni and a trustee of the university. He was especially interested while in college in literary work and debating, and some years ago he founded the Getty Debating Club, contributing a fund from which two prizes are given annually. Mr. Getty was valedictorian of his class in the Ohio Northern. He was a student of law in the University of Michigan, and was admitted to the bar at Ann Arbor in 1882. He then located at Caro in Tuscola county, Michigan, and practiced law for two years, in which time he was Circuit Court commissioner of that county.
In 1884 he removed to Minneapolis, and was a member of the bar of that city for twenty-two years. A large practice came to him and he became a specialist in insurance law, a branch of work which gained him a clientage and practice over many states of the Union. While in Min- nesota he also served as secretary of the State Prohibition Party and editor of its party journal, The Reviewe.
Since removing to Los Angeles in 1906 Mr. Getty has become in- terested in several oil corporations, but chief among them is the Minne- homa Oil Company, which he organized in 1903, and, as the name indi- cates, the original personnel of the company were Minnesota men, while the field of operations is Oklahoma. Judge William A. Kerr is secre- tary of the company. This corporation owns a hundred wells, produc- ing 2,000 barrels of oil a day, and has about a hundred men on its pay roll. These properties are located in some of the richest oil territory of Oklahoma, around Tulsa, Cushing, Cleveland and Bartlesville.
As a business man Mr. Getty has caught the modern spirit of busi- ness and is as progressive as he is successful. In the spring of 1917 he organized the Loyal Petroleum Company, of which he is president and controlling stockholder. The rest of the stock is held by the leading em- ployes of the other corporations with which Mr. Getty is connected, and the primary purpose in organizing the company was to enable employes to profit from the business.
Mr. Getty is a member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, of the Gamut Club and Municipal League, the Brentwood Country Club, the Automobile Club of Southern California, the Mid-Continent Oil Produc- ers Association, and is a Knight Templar Mason and Shriner. In religious matters he is a Christian Scientist. In 1916 Mr. Getty shared honors with Governor Frank B. Willis of Ohio in delivering the principal ad- dresses at the commencement exercises of the Ohio Northern University at Ada. Governor Willis was a former instructor in the Ohio Northern. On March 31, 1916, the Ohio Northern conferred upon Mr. Getty the degree Doctor of Commercial Science. Mr. Getty has traveled widely
Gent. Jesty
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and was in Europe just before the World war broke out in 1914, leaving France the day before the opening of hostilities and returning to the United States on the Lusitania. At Marion, Ohio, October 30, 1879, Mr. Getty married Miss Sarah Risher. They have one son, Jean Paul, born December 15, 1892. From the public schools he entered the University of Southern California, was also in the University of California and Ox- ford University, at Oxford, England, and spent some time at the Sor- bonne in Paris. He is now interested with his father in the management of oil properties in Oklahoma.
WILLIAM JEFFERSON HUNSAKER has practiced law in Southern Cali- fornia for more than forty years. Few members of the profession have been more uniformly successful and have achieved more of the dignity and true rewards of the painstaking and conscientious lawyer. He was born September 21, 1855, in Contra Costa county, son of Nicholas and Lois E. (Hastings) Hunsaker. His father settled in California in 1847. His mother's uncle, Lansing Warren Hastings, was a member of the First Constitutional Convention of California.
Mr. Hunsaker was educated in the public schools of his native county and San Diego and began work in the office of the Bulletin at San Diego. He worked as a journeyman printer for the Bulletin and the San Diego World two years and a half. He began the study of law in the office of A. C. Baker, afterwards chief justice of the Supreme Court of Ari- zona. He was admitted to the bar by the District Court of San Diego county in 1876, and remained in that city in active practice until 1880. He then spent a year at Tombstone, Arizona, and in 1882 was admitted by the California Supreme Court. In that year he was elected district attorney of San Diego county, serving until 1884. In 1887 he formed a partnership with E. W. Britt as Hunsaker & Britt. Mr. Hunsaker moved his offices to Los Angeles in 1892 and has been one of the leading members of the bar of that city for over a quarter of a century. In 1900 he and Mr. Britt again became partners.
He is a member of the California and American Bar Associations. February 26, 1879, at San Diego, he married Florence Virginia McFar- land. Their four children are Mary Cameron Brill, Florence King Hunsaker, Rose Margaret Steehler and Daniel McFarland Hunsacker.
JOHN PARKINSON. The record of John Parkinson as an architect is written in Los Angeles building history during the period of a quarter of a century. In that time he has designed many of the most conspicuous structures in the business and outlying districts.
He was born in England December 12, 1861, and acquired his literary and technical education in his native country, graduating from the Me- chanics' Institute at Bolton, and received his diploma in architecture and building construction in 1882. He began the practice of architecture in Napa, California, in 1888, and practiced in Seattle, Washington, from January, 1889, to March, 1894.
Mr. Parkinson removed to Los Angeles in 1894. He was the designer of the Currier, Laughlin, Grant, Johnson and Hibernian Buildings, the Angelus Hotel, Maryland Hotel, California Club, Security Building, Title Insurance Building, Central Building, Union Oil Building, Trust & Sav- ings Building, Los Angeles Athletic Club, Pacific Mutual Building, Bul- lock's Store, the Broadway Department Store, the Arcade Depot, and as one example outside of California, the Utah Hotel Building at Salt Lake City, and among the latest buildings are the Blackstone Building, Security
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