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 60
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Judge Valentine was appointed to the Superior Bench of Los Angeles County by Governor Stephens in August, 1917. A year later he was candidate for the regular nomination at the primaries and, with the endorsement and support of alinost every member of the Los Angeles County bar, was elected to preside on that bench for the regular term. Of his qualities as a judge, one of his fellow jurists has written: “On the bench he is courteous, dignified, patient, prompt on decision, and is endowed to a very high degree with the judicial temperament." Un- doubtedly his wide experience as a lawyer and man of affairs brings to the Superior Court those qualifications and attributes which are most essential to the integrity and proper functioning of the judicial office.
Judge Valentine is a member of Westlake Lodge No. 392, F. and A. M., is a Scottish Rite Mason, a member of the Native Sons of the Golden West, the Independent Order of Foresters, the Knights of the Maccabees and the Union League Club, City Club, Chamber of Com- merce and Los Angeles Bar Association. He is a republican and a Presbyterian. November 13, 1889, he married Miss Elizabeth Pearson. They were married at the old Hangtown of pioneer days, identified in modern geography as Placerville, Eldorado County. Mrs. Valentine was born in Placerville, and her father, John Pearson, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, was a pioneer Californian. Judge and Mrs. Valen- tine have two daughters. Jean is a graduate of Stanford University and the Los Angeles State Normal School. Claire is a graduate of Miss Head's Young Ladies' Seminary and the Los Angeles State Normal School. Both are now teachers in a private school at Hollywood.
JOHN NEWTON RUSSELL JR. The years of a very busy life, thirty or more, Mr. Russell has spent in California and the West as a rising factor in the insurance business. In 1917 he was honored with the office of president of the National Association of Life Underwriters. Mr. Russell is manager of the Home Office General Agency for the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company of Los Angeles.
He was born at Boonesville, Missouri, June 5, 1864, son of J. Newton and Emily Alden (Little) Russell. Mr. Russell is of old Amer-
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ican stock, as is indicated by the fact that he is a member of the Sons of the Revolution. His father was born near Charleston, Virginia, now West Virginia, in April, 1835, and as a boy accompanied his parents to Booneville, Missouri, where he finished his education in the Kemper Military Academy. For a time he was a farmer, but going to Texas be- came a manufacturer at Waco and Dallas. In 1883 he removed with his family to Los Angeles, and there engaged in the insurance business. In 1884 he moved his headquarters to San Francisco, and was one of the older insurance men of the state when he retired in 1911. Since then he has lived in Los Angeles.
John Newton Russell Jr. was educated chiefly in the public schools of Weatherford, Texas, also in Hill's Business College at Waco and Heald's Business College at San Francisco. He gained a knowledge of the insurance business under his father, and in 1889 came to Los An- geles as secretary of the Banker's Alliance Life Insurance Company. Six years later he became superintendent of agencies at Denver with the Conservative Life Insurance Company. When that company was con- solidated with the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1906, Mr. Russell returned to Los Angeles as secretary of the larger corporation for two years, and since then has been manager of the Home Office General Agency.
Mr. Russell is a member of the California Club, the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the Gamut Club, Los Angeles Country Club, California Automobile Club, City Club, Advertising Club, Sons of the Revolution, is on the Executive Committee of the Municipal League, and is a York Rite Mason and noble of the Shrine. Politically he acts independently.
In September, 1893, he married Miss A. Berdella Evans. Their only child is John Henry Russell, who was born at Los Angeles in Sep- tember, 1895. . He was educated in the local grammar and high schools, spent one year in the Culver Military Academy in Indiana, and after graduating from Stanford University of California in 1917, entered the special training class of the United States Training Academy at Ann- apolis. He was graduated in February, 1918, and assigned as ensign on the cruiser "San Diego," which sank. He was then assigned to the "Breese," after which he was appointed lieutenant. He was discharged in June, 1919, and then entered the Home Office Agency of the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company as secretary.
SAM BEHRENDT, president of the Behrendt & Levy Company, Incor- porated, one of the largest insurance agencies in the southern part of the state, is a native of Los Angeles and son of one of the California pioneers.
He was born on West Fourth Street, between Spring Street and Broadway, July 18, 1879. His father was Casper Behrendt. Born in Danzig, Germany, in 1831, of Jewish parents, he came to the United States at fourteen, and from New York extended his travels and adven- tures throughout a large part of the new world. With headquarters at Boston, he traveled through Old Mexico and for a time was located at Mazatlan, Mexico. In 1851 he came to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and after reaching San Francisco traveled as a merchandise peddler through all the mining camps in the northern part of the state. In 1855 he came to Los Angeles. During a period of forty years he did business in a city which developed from a Spanish town into one of the most attractive cities in the world. Casper Behrendt died in 1914. He was one of the oldest members of Los Angeles Lodge
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No. 42, A. F. and A. M., at one time served as treasurer of the B'nai B'rith, and was very prominent in Jewish charitable work. Politically he was a democrat. He married at San Francisco Hulda Cohn. Casper and Hulda Behrendt had four children: Jake Behrendt, deceased; Lily Behrendt Kahn, who married Sol Kahn, one of Oakland's leading mer- chants ; Gertrude B. Kahn, widow of John Kahn, founder of Kahn-Beck Cracker Company, and Sam.
Sam Behrendt acquired his education in the Spring Street and Eighth Street Grammar Schools at Los Angeles, and after he was fifteen years old spent one year in a business college. For two years he clerked in grocery and cigar stores, and then went to San Francisco and bought an interest in a cigar business, and remained there until 1900. Selling out and returning to Los Angeles, he became connected with the San Gabriel Electric Company, later merged with the Pacific Light and Power Company. He was employed as collector and later solicited new contracts for three years. On leaving that corporation, Mr. Behrendt entered the insurance business for himself, and in 1907 took in Mr. I. O. Levy as a partner under the name Behrendt-Levy Com- pany, and they incorporated the business in 1908. This is a general insurance agency and the establishment now employs twenty-one people. Mr. Behrendt is also a director of the Union Bank and Trust Company and a director of the Shiff, Lang & Company.
He is affiliated with Hollenbeck Lodge No. 119, A. F. and A. M., is a Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner, an Elk, a member of Corona Parlor of the Native Sons of the Golden West, the B'nai B'rith, Los Angeles Athletic Club, San Gabriel Country Club, City Club, Chamber of Com- merce, Merchants and Manufacturers Association, and the Friars Club of New York City. Mr. Behrendt is a republican.
At Oakland, California, October 7, 1903, he married Sadie Mos- bacher. Their son, George, born in 1904, is a student in the Hitchcock Military Academy, at San Rafael.
OSCAR C. MUELLER, a lawyer of long and successful experience, has also enjoyed some of the unusual honors of his profession and in, civic affairs. He was elected and served as president of the Los Angeles Bar Association in 1917, and during the same year was vice president of the California Bar Association. In 1918 he was president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Mueller was born in Denver, Colorado, September 7, 1876, but has lived in Los Angeles since early childhood. His father, the late Otto Mueller, was born at Dayton, Ohio, in 1846, was educated in public schools, and early removed to Denver, where he engaged in the commission business. In 1880 he brought his family to Los Angeles and established the first large furniture house in the city with O. T. Barker. This business is still continued as the Barker Brothers, reputed to be the largest retail furniture store in the United States. Otto Muel- ler retired from the firm after ten years and died January 25, 1890. He married at Dayton, Ohio, Nettie Kette.
Oscar C. Mueller was educated in the public schools of Los Angeles and Occidental College and studied law in the office of Judge W. H. Wilde. He is a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the California Club, Jonathan Club, is a York and Scottish Rite Mason and a repub- lican. At Los Angeles, April 5, 1900, he married Ivy Schoder. His only son, Douglas, born in 1902, is now a student in the Harvard Military Academy.
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CLARA MATILDA MOOHR, who has spent years in study and practice in the arts and sciences of chiropractic, neuropathy, and electro-therapy, is a prominent Los Angeles woman and was born at Sheboygan, Wis- consin, in 1870.
She was educated in the public schools of Calumet, Michigan, graduating from high school. As a school girl her ambition was to be a doctor. However, soon after the completion of her high school work, her family moved to Pueblo, Colorado, where as a young girl she married and went with her husband to Denver, where two children were born. Later they returned to Calumet, Michigan, where her son was born.
During a visit to Los Angeles with her husband and family she became infatuated with California, particularly Los Angeles, and deter- mined then that nothing should prevent her eventually coming to this state to live. In the fall of 1904 she came, a widow, with her youngest son. Los Angeles has always made a big and irresistible appeal to Doctor Moohr, with its quaint Spanish names, its romantic missions, its beautiful valleys, and she regrets that she could not claim the city and state as a native daughter. Though owning property at Venice and Long Beach, Los Angeles seems most to her among the California cities.
After she had been in Los Angeles five or six years, she entered the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic and was the first woman grad- uate from any college in California issuing diplomas in chiropractic. She received her degree June 6, 1912, from the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic. She has since acquired other diplomas, after six months' work receiving one in recognition of her post-graduate course with Dr. Alva A. Gregory, M. D., D. C., one of the foremost chiropractors in the United States and author of a chiropractic text book. This she followed with six months in neuropathy with Dr. A. P. Davis at the Davis College of Neuropathy, being granted a degree as Doctor of Neuropathy in 1913. For another six months she pursued a course in dissection under the auspices of the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic, and still later took a course in electro-therapy, for which she received the degree Master of Electro-Therapy in 1915. She was examined before the State Medical Board and given a license to practice in 1916.
Doctor Moohr is president of the Universal College of Drugless Therapeutics, under a charter from the state, with the power to issue diplomas. She conducts classes in chiropractic, neuropathy, physical cul- ture and dietetics, in addition to looking after a large private practice. Her offices are in the Columbia Building, on West Third Street.
Doctor Moohr is a member of the Rebekahs, and while without church affiliation, she endeavors to practice the Golden Rule. She is equally independent in politics and votes for principle and what she believes is for the best welfare of her city, county or state. She owns her home and other properties in Southern California.
ALFRED L. BARTLETT, a prominent member of the Los Angeles bar, came to California soon after leaving college.
Mr. Bartlett is a member of a very notable family, both on his father's and mother's side. He was born at Kansas City, Missouri, October 8, 1884. His father, Frank W. Bartlett, who was born at York Harbor, Maine, was educated at Dartmouth College, and became a pioneer in the Central West. He was one of the early homesteaders in Allen County, Kansas, and was in that state when Kansas was a center of the issues which were settled by the Civil war. During the sixties he made an overland trip by wagon train to Los Angeles, and
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went on an extensive exploring expedition through Lower California. On returning to Kansas he became superintendent of schools at Atchi- son, later went to Florida and was an orange grower, and eventually made his home at Philadelphia. For a number of years he made a practice of organizing tourist clubs and took such parties all over the world. He died in 1899.
Mr. Bartlett's father was a brother of Major General George T. Bartlett, who graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1881, and has been in the army nearly forty years. He was commissioned a major general in August, 1917, and became a member of the General Staff Corps in 1909.
Frank W. Bartlett married Francelia Lewis. Through his mother, Alfred L. Bartlett is a nephew of several men who have won high honors in journalism and authorship, one of whom is William E. Lewis, owner of the New York Morning Telegraph of New York City. Associated with William E. is Irving J. Lewis, another prominent New York news- paper man. Perhaps the best known of these Lewis brothers was the late Alfred Henry Lewis, author of the inimitable "Wolfville Tales," probably the most widely read and appreciated stories of the South- western country ever written. Alfred Henry Lewis was author of many other published works and for many years was the Washington corre- spondent for metropolitan newspapers.
Alfred L. Bartlett, who received his first name in honor of his author uncle, attended the grammar and high schools of Philadelphia, and also the public schools of New York City. He was also a student at Erasmus Hall until 1903, and then entered Amherst College of Massa- chusetts. Mr. Bartlett came to Los Angeles in 1906. He attended the law department of the University of Southern California, and was ad- mitted to the bar July 23, 1909. He has since been in regular practice, and now is member of the firm Randall, Bartlett & White, his partners being Lewis B. Randall and Thomas P. White.
Mr. Bartlett was elected a member of the California Legislature in 1914 and re-elected in 1916. He served until December 31, 1918. He was formerly a member of the Humane Animal Commission of Los Angeles, member of the State and Los Angeles County Bar Associa- tions, and is a republican in politics. At Los Angeles, June 29, 1912, he married Rallah Adams.
WALTER M. CAMPBELL is a Los Angeles lawyer, and a man of wide and diversified experience in law and in business, acquiring both during his residence in the Eastern states and as a citizen of California.
Mr. Campbell, whose offices are in the Security Building, was born at Red Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, June 14, 1871. His parents were Robert D. and Mary C. Campbell. During his youth he attended public schools, the Greenbrier Valley Academy, at Lewisburg, West Virginia, and was a student in Marshall College, at Huntington, West Virginia, until 1890. Mr. Campbell took his law course in the University of Virginia, at Charlotteville, and was admitted to the bar in 1894. He practiced law at Huntington as a member of the firm Camp- bell, Holt & Campbell until 1901.
Coming West, Mr. Campbell was identified with the city of Red- lands until he removed to Los Angeles. While there he practiced law, served as a director of the Citizens National Bank, as a member of the Board of Education and a director of the Board of Trade, and assisted in organizing and was director and treasurer of the Home Gas and
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Electric Company. He was also master of Redlands Lodge No. 300, A. F. and A. M.
Mr. Campbell came to Los Angeles in 1907, and has enjoyed a steadily rising prestige as a lawyer in this city and throughout Southern California. He is a director of the Los Angeles Dock and Terminal Company. He is also identified as a working member of the Chamber of Commerce, is a York Rite Mason, a member of Alhambra Com- mandery K. T., of the Mystic Shrine, and is a member of the Board of Church Extension of the Presbyterian Church of Southern California. He is a democrat and a member of the City Club.
At Hardinsburg, Kentucky, August 12, 1896, Mr. Campbell mar- ried Mary Elizabeth Bowmer. They are the parents of six children : Robert Bowmer, born in 1897, is a graduate of Alhambra High School and is now an employe of the Los Angeles Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company ; William Lewis, born in 1899, is attending the University of Southern California ; Mary Catherine is a student in Pomona College ; Walter M. Jr., born in 1905; John Edgar, born in 1910, and Franklin Gardiner, born in 1912, are all students in the Alhambra Grammar Schools.
NORMAN BRIDGE, M. D., A. M. The words "physician, teacher and business man" furnish a very superficial index to the life and service of Dr. Norman Bridge, who for nearly thirty years has been equally well known as a citizen both in Southern California and Chicago. From a boyhood of close fellowship with the hard toil and meager advantages of a pioneer farm in Illinois, Doctor Bridge has exemplified a positive rather than a conventional relationship with his environment, and at many times and under many conditions has been a leader battling against adverse odds for the enlightened principles and the higher ideals of professional, civic and business advancement.
While he has been too busy to give a conscious recognition to the fact, Doctor Bridge has in many ways repaid the debt of ancestry. On the Cambridge Common at Harvard College stands a bronze statue of Deacon John Bridge, from whom Doctor Bridge represents the seventh generation in direct line of descent. The statue represents his ancestor in the garb of a Puritan, and one of the inscriptions on the monument reads: "This Puritan helped to establish here church, school and repre- sentative government, and thus to plant a Christian Commonwealth." The tendencies and exertions of Doctor Bridge in his own generation have been as noteworthy as those of Deacon John, who settled at Cambridge in 1632. Doctor Bridge's great-grandfather, Ebenezer Bridge, was a colonel in Washington's army in the Revolution.
Doctor Bridge was born on a small farm among the Vermont hills, a few miles from the Village of Windsor, December 30, 1844, son of James Madison and Nancy Ann (Bagley) Bridge. After years of struggle in wringing a meager living from the rocky and unpromising farm in Vermont, James M. Bridge took his family West in 1856, and established them on a farm of unbroken prairie without buildings or fence, at Malta, in DeKalb County. The father moved to Iowa, where he died, honored and respected in his community, in 1879, and the widowed mother survived until 1903. Doctor Bridge's only brother, Edward, was a soldier in the Fifty-fifth Illinois Infantry, was wounded in the battle of Shiloh, and after being in a dozen battles died of disease.
Much of Doctor Bridge's later interest in education was inspired by his own early lack of advantages. He attended more or less regularly
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the country district schools in Northern Illinois, also the high schools at DeKalb and Sycamore, but never attended an academic department of a university or college. During the winter of 1862-63 he taught a term of country school. During 1864-65 he worked as a clerk in the postoffice at Sycamore and as a fire insurance agent in Grundy County. Some of his early experiences were similar to those of his contemporary, O. N. Carter, long distinguished as a Supreme Court justice of Illinois.
Doctor Bridge began the study of medicine in 1865, attending the Medical Department of the University of Michigan in 1866-67, and the Northwestern University 1867-68. He was graduated in the latter year, and in 1878 was awarded the Ad Eundem degree in medicine from Rush Medical College, and in 1889 was honored by Lake Forest College with the A. M. degree. In the intervals of his studies he worked on his father's farm.
It is significant that Doctor Bridge has given almost as many years to the service of teaching as he has to private practice. In fact, he began teaching medicine from the time of his graduation, at first in North- western University, then in the Woman's Medical College, and in 1873 became identified with Rush College. He was Professor of Clinical Medicine, then Professor of Medicine, and since 1901 Emeritus Pro- fessor of Medicine in Rush Medical College of the University of Chicago. For about twenty years he was an attending physician at the County and the Presbyterian Hospitals at Chicago.
The service he rendered in Rush College deserves more than passing mention. His first position in the college was received as the result of a concours or contest in lecturing before the faculty and students-a method that has forunately not since been in vogue. The college of that day was unconnected with any university, and like nearly all the medical colleges of the country, its trustees were mostly members of its faculty, only two courses of lectures were required for graduation, and the condi- tions of admission were cheap indeed. He joined his then younger colleagues in working for higher standards, long and more thorough courses, more laboratory work and connection with the university. He was one of those most influential in securing the affiliation of the Rush Medical College with the University of Chicago, giving the college a standardization of courses and facilities that makes it rank today as one of the leading centers of medical education in the world.
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Accompanied by his wife, Doctor Bridge has several times visited Europe, his two earliest trips being made in 1889 and in 1896. In those journeys abroad he spent much time in attending clinics and observing methods in the hospitals of Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Geneva, Strass- burg, Heidelberg and Erlangen. Doctor Bridge is a man of thorough literary tastes, and his skill with the pen has lent charm not only to his secular writings, but to his contributions to medical journals. He is author of forty-six papers on medicine and cognate subjects in medical journals and books and is also author of several individual books: The Penalties of Taste and Other Essays, published in 1898; The Rewards of Taste and Other Essays, 1902 ; Lectures on Tuberculosis, 1903 ; House Health, 1907, and Fragments and Addresses, 1913.
A breakdown in health in 1890 was the cause of his leaving Chicago, and in January, 1891, he established a home in California. From 1891 to 1894 his home was at Sierre Madre, at Pasadena until 1910, and then at Los Angeles. However, he still calls Chicago home, and resides when in that city at the Blackstone. By 1893 he had so far recovered his health as to resume work a few weeks each autumn at the College and
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Presbyterian Hospital at Chicago. He continued his college lectures there until 1905. Since that date he has resigned so far as possible his professional work, and has given his time to his growing business inter- ests. He has been associated with E. L. Doheny and Charles A. Canfield in the oil and gas industry, and has served as an official in several com- panies in Mexico, California, including the Mexican Petroleum Company, the Huasteca Petroleum Company and the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company.
From 1881 to 1884 Doctor Bridge was a member of the Chicago Board of Education, and during 1882-83 was president of the board. From 1886 to 1890 he was republican election commissioner of Chicago. He was a republican in politics, but was appointed to the School Board by the first Mayor Harrison, a democrat. The only elective office he has ever held was when chosen one of the board of freeholders of the City of Pasadena in 1900, to frame a new charter for the city.
May 21, 1874, Doctor Bridge married Mae Manford, daughter of Rev. Erasmus and Hannah (Bryant) Manford. The only child born to them died in infancy.
Doctor Bridge is a member of the Association of American Physi- cians, is corresponding member of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, a member and one year president of the American Climatological Association, a member of the Los Angeles Academy of Sciences, the various medical associations, and belongs to the Union League and University Clubs of Chicago, and the California, University and Sunset Clubs of Los Angeles.
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