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 III > Part 14
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More recently Mr. Jenkins was the man behind an entirely new and unique organization on the Pacific Coast, a commercial yarn dyeing establishment known as the Jenkins-Wright Company, Ltd., yarn dyers and bleachers. This is the only establishment of its kind on the coast, and handles practically all the commercial work in that line between San Diego and Seattle. At the present writing improvements are under way for the purpose of doubling the size of the yarn dyeing plant until it will have a capacity for ten thousand pounds of worsted and ten thousand pounds of cotton yarn per week. There will also be a fireproof storage with a capacity for five hundred thousand pounds of yarn.
As this brief article has endeavored to show, Mr. Jenkins has had an interesting career and has an interesting individuality. His personal character is appreciated by his :many friends and associates in the various bodies of York Rite Masonry and the Shrine, the Benevolent and Pro- tective Order of Elks, the Jonathan Club, Brentwood Country Club, Wilshire Country Club, Los Angeles Athletic Club, Automobile Club of
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Southern California, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, and the South Coast Yacht Club, of which he was one of the first commodores. He is a member of the Chemist Club of New York, belongs to the Sons of the American Revolu- tion, and for five years while living at Pittsburgh was a member of the Naval Reserve and rose to the grade of junior lieutenant. He was on the old battleship Maine the year before it was blown up in Havana harbor. Politically he is a republican.
October 6, 1896, at Pittsburgh, Mr. Jenkins married Miss Hilda B. Lowry of that city, the daughter of the late Washington Lowry, who at one time was mayor of East Liberty, Pennsylvania, and became prom- inent in Pittsburgh. Mrs. Jenkins was born and educated at Pittsburgh.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PEARSON. Long service, all-round ability and experience, and many notable achievements, have brought Benjamin Franklin Pearson many of the most distinctive honors as an engineer, especially as a hydro-electric operating engineer. Mr. Pearson came to Los Angeles thirty years ago, and has practiced his profession and has done its hard work and drudgery, as well as handled many important executive responsibilities. He is and has been for several years general superintendent of the California Edison Company.
Of an old and prominent family in England, he was born in Middle- sex County, September 19, 1868, son of Benjamin and Sarah Louis (Maile) Pearson. His school advantages were confined to the first four- teen years of his life, during which time he attended St. Mary's School at Cowley, and the Uxbridge Grammar School. At fourteen he was ap- prenticed as a steam fitter and steam engineer to the Grand Junction Company and put to his work so much natural proficiency and en- thusiasm that at the age of eighteen he held a marine license under the London Board of Examiners. He worked in England and also in the United States for a year or so and reached Los Angeles in January, 1889. For several years he was a steam and sanitary engineer, but in 1896 began specializing in hydro-electric work, at which date he entered the service of the Southern California Edison Company. The white collar and the roll-top desk have been negligible incidents in the career of B. F. Pearson. There is probably not a common laborer in the serv- ice of this company who has done harder work and stood more hours in the mud and water than Mr Pearson He has had many advance- ments, and as general superintendent has for a number of years directed technical branches of the industry. While recognized as a mnost valt , man to his corporation, Mr. Pearson feels an intimate fellow- ship with the "man who works" and for a number of years he was hardly satisfied unless he had put in about eighteen hours each day at some useful occupation.
Mr. Pearson has never cared to be called a philanthropist but has never refused an invitation to get out and do things for those who need assistance. He has been identified with a number of temperance and rescue work undertakings, and has interested himself in behalf of prison reform in California. He has been instrumental in liberating on parole scores of prisoners from San Quentin and Folsom prisons, and in 1911 Governor Johnson appointed him a trustee of the Whittier State Reform School, and he is now a trustee of the State Industrial Schools of Cali- fornia. He is also a director of the Union and City Rescue Missions and the Prison Parole League. Hundreds of the men who have spent some part of their lives in the different prison and reform institutions
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know Mr. Pearson simply as "Uncle Ben." He is a republican in national politics, is president of the Civil Service Commission of Los Angeles, member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and is affiliated with Westlake Lodge of Masons.
J. A. GRAVES since June 1, 1903, has been active vice president of the Farmers and Merchants National Bank of Los Angeles, the oldest bank of Southern California. Mr. Graves has lent his personal resources, judgment and ability to many important business concerns in the state. He is given credit for organizing the first title and abstract company of Los Angeles. He was prominently associated with the organization of the Oil Storage and Transportation Company and the building of its storage tanks in Los Angeles and has been interested in some of the largest oil properties in California.
Jackson Alpheus Graves has spent nearly all his life in California and claims as his native state Iowa, a commonwealth which has con- tributed as generously of its citizenship to Southern California as any other eastern state. He was born at Hauntown, Clinton county, Iowa, December 5, 1852, son of John Q. and Katherine Jane (Haun) Graves. In 1857 the family came to California, first locating at Marysville in Yuba county, and in 1867 moving to San Mateo county. Mr. J. A. Graves acquired his early education in the public schools of Marysville, and graduated from the San Francisco High School in 1869. In 1872 he received his A. B. degree from St. Mary's College at San Francisco and the following year was awarded the degree A. M. and in 1912 the degree of LL. D.
Mr. Graves is one of the veteran members of the California bar. He studied law with Eastman and Neuman in San Francisco, and later at Los Angeles, of which city he has been a resident since June, 1875. He was admitted to practice by the Supreme Court, January 13, 1876. He was first associated as a member of the law firm Brunson, Eastman & Graves until June, 1878, from June, 1880, until January, 1885, was head of the firm Graves & Chapman, his partner being John S. Chapman, and in April, 1888, formed a partnership with Henry W. O'Melveny under the name Graves & O'Melveny. Later J. H. Shankland became a mem- ber of the new firm Graves, O'Melveny & Shankland. Mr. Graves practiced law nearly thirty years, and for the greater part of that time was regarded as one of the ablest lawyers of Los Angeles.
He was made vice president of the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Los Angeles in 1901, and in June, 1903, entered actively into the management of the bank, about the time Mr. I. W. Hellman moved to San Francisco. The Farmers and Merchants National Bank has many distinctions apart from its claim to being the oldest banking institution in Southern California. Among its officers and directors at the present time and in the past have appeared the names of men of the highest business and financial character. At the close of 1919 this bank had total resources of over thirty-six million dollars, and operates with a capital of one million five hundred thousand dollars and surplus and profits of two million dollars.
Mr. Graves has also been an official or director in a number of other financial institutions, including the Southern Trust Company, the Farm- ers and Merchants National Bank of Redondo, the United States Na- tional Bank of Azusa, the Security Savings Bank and the United States National Banks of Los Angeles; the Whittier National Bank, the First National Bank of Monrovia, First National Bank of El Monte, the
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National Bank of Long Beach and the Long Beach Savings Bank & Trust Company. For over thirty years Mr. Graves has been interested in orange growing, and some highly valuable orchards have been pro- moted and developed by him.
October 23, 1879, at Los Angeles he married Miss Alice H. Griffith. They became the parents of five children: Alice, wife of H. F. Stewart; Selwyn E., who died March 1, 1908; Catherine, wife of E. S. Armstrong ; Jackson A., who died March 23, 1910, and Francis Porter Graves.
ALBERT AXEL ECKSTROM, who was one of the founders and for many years vice president of the California Furniture Company of Los Angeles, was a native son of California, and his life, though terminated at the end of sixty years, was a complete exemplification of the dignity of labor, the beauty of friendship, and all the fruits that flow from sin- cerity and integrity of character.
He was born at Stockton, California, March 25, 1859, a son of Thomas and Elizabeth (Stuart) Eckstrom. His father was a native of Stockholm, Sweden, and came directly to California around the Horn to San Francisco. While at Stockton he met Miss Elizabeth Stuart. She was a direct descendant of the Stuarts of Scotland, where she was born. As a girl she came to Stockton by way of the Isthmus to visit a married sister, and in this sister's home she married Mr. Eckstrom. They were the parents of a large family, the late Albert A. being the second son.
He acquired his early education in the schools of Stockton and later attended the Franciscan College at Santa Barbara. He served an apprenticeship at the upholstery trade at San Francisco. On returning to Stockton he engaged in business for himself before he was twenty- one years of age. Not long afterward he sold out and went back to San Francisco, where he married Daisy E. L. Webb of that city, a mem- ber of another pioneer California family. Her father, John M. Webb, was born in England in 1806, and came to New York when very young. He was a California forty-niner, and after a few years in the mines around Sacramento took up his residence in Oakland. During the early sixties he became permanently blind. During the years of affliction that followed he was constantly and lovingly attended by his daughter, Mrs. Eckstrom. Mr. Webb had a poetic soul, and when so many of his activities were terminated by blindness, he expressed himself through the avenue of poetry that might well enjoy a high rank with that of other California poets. All of his work is still in manuscript and is carefully preserved by Mrs. Eckstrom, who during her father's affliction copied the verses as he recited them. He wrote many poems relating to his journey to California by water, to the Civil war period, and to historic places in his state. He died in San Francisco in 1884, at the age of seventy-eight.
Daisy Webb attended the public schools of San Francisco and was graduated from the high school of that city. She and Mr. Eckstrom were married when she was twenty years of age. On her eighteenth birthday she was a guest at the home of a girl friend also celebrating her eight- eenth anniversary, and on that occasion she met Albert Eckstrom for the first time.
After their marriage they removed to Seattle, Washington, and during the year and a half of their residence in that city their first daugh- ter was born. On January 1, 1882, they established their home at Los Angeles, where Mr. Eckstrom was employed by the old Los Angeles Furniture Company. Later he entered the wall paper business with two
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associates, under the firm name of Marsh-Eckstrom-Strasburg. Their first location was on Main, near Third Street, and later Mr. Eckstrom removed to Spring, between Third and Fourth Streets, and was in busi- ness for himself. As noted above, he was a founder and for fifteen years was vice president of the California Furniture Company, doing business at 644 South Broadway.
He was active in business, civic and other affairs practically to the end of his life. He died July 22, 1919, following an operation for appen- dicitis. Mr. Eckstrom was a member of the draft board from the be- ginning of the war until its close. He was well known fraternally, being affiliated with the Elks, Masons, the Mystic Shrine, and at one time was a charter member of a lodge of Knights of Pythias. However, he was best known and he took the deepest interest in the Native Sons of the Golden West. He possessed a beautiful loving cup presented him by the Native Sons as a token of love and deep gratitude for valuable services rendered during the San Francisco earthquake and fire. His ashes are now contained in the loving cup and occupy a niche in the columbarium of Forest Lawn Cemetery. He was a republican in politics. His funeral services were conducted by Ramona Parlor of the Native Sons. What his personality meant to many members of Ramona Parlor and other friends and associates was well portrayed in a memorial tribute paid him by the grand second vice president of the Native Sons. From this tribute the following paragraphs are appropriately quoted :
"He was intimately known as 'Al.' 'Al' Eckstrom's life must not be spoken of in platitudes. All the vast philosophies of life for him were molded into the simple text of the Golden Rule: 'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.'
"His friendship was a matter of your choosing; the only qualifica- tion he demanded was that you be trustworthy. He disliked equivoca- tion and did not equivocate. He despised the petty falsities of life. When his confidence was gained, he was your friend. In that friendship he was ever ready to respond to the call for aid and to render such assistance as was in his power. His friendship was a jewel to treasure. In response to his ideals of friendship he was strong in his attachments, constant in his purposes, and faithful to his fellowmen.
"He believed that life should not be a mere conflict and trial of strength, but that it should be a vast field of industry where the achieve- ments of all should commingle for the common good. He was indus- trious, self-sacrificing and honest. His life was governed by the tradi- tions of industry, hardihood and simple honesty of the pioneers from whom he sprang. He was loyal to his country, to his state and to his friends."
Three children were born to their marriage, all daughters. The oldest died at the age of five years. The second daughter is Mrs. Ed- ward Woodbury of Los Angeles. Edward Woodbury is the oldest son of Professor Woodbury, who founded the first business college in Los Angeles. The youngest daughter is Mrs. Etelka Skinner of Stockton, California. The Eckstrom home was at 1844 North Vine, a beautiful Italian villa, one of the show places of Hollywood, with sunken gardens and wealth of flowers and shrubs.
EDWARD W. COIT, who died at the age of seventy-eight, in Los Angeles, September 25, 1915, was for many years a distinguished figure in the industrial affairs of the nation. He was one of the pioneer manufacturers of iron pipe in the United States.
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He was born at Plattsburg, New York, and received his early edu- cation from his father, an Episcopal clergyman. He was one of six brothers, only one surviving, Dr. J. Milnor Coit, who at one time was chief of the American Red Cross Society in Munich, Germany.
Edward W. Coit when a young man lived for several years in Cham- plain, New York, and while there was appointed postmaster of the town. Soon after that appointment he married Miss Caroline Moore of Champlain. During the next year Mr. Coit endeavored to help a local hardware dealer solve a problem concerning his stock, and the interest aroused by that experience opened up a new avenue of usefulness for him and one in which his talents found a broad and congenial field. The American iron and steel industry was then comparatively in its infancy and there was abundant opportunity for a young man of his talents and earnest determination. He was soon invited to go to Phila- delphia for the Morris-Trasker Company and was rapidly advanced to responsibilities. He was one of the men originally connected with the production at Taunton, Massachusetts, of the first wrought iron pipe made in America. In 1878 Mr. Coit was called to the office of president and general manager of the Reading Iron Works at Reading, Pennsylvania. That was one of the greatest corporations in the country and he remained its executive head until 1892. He then resigned to become manager for W. R. Hart & Company, proprietors of the Lake Superior Iron Ore Company. Three years later he moved to St. Louis as manager of the National Tube Company's branch works there. In 1900 he was attracted to the west, lived in various parts of California and in 1904 settled permanently at Los Angeles, where he became an official with the Oil Wells Supply Company of that city. Thus until the very last his pioneer interest in the manufacture of iron pipe was the business that absorbed his talents and time. He never stopped work, and his death, the result of heart failure, occurred as he was prepared to go to his office.
During a career of a half century he naturally became associated with many other men conspicuous in American business affairs. Some of these who were his close friends were James B. Gowan, former president of the Reading Railroad, the late George F. Baer, another president of that road, Joshua Rhoades, R. T. Crane, and other great Americans. While he was president of the Reading Iron Works he acted in concert with Mr. Gowan, then president of the Reading Rail- road, in crushing the notorious "Mollie Maguires," then enacting a career of turbulence and riot in the eastern iron and coal district.
When the American Society of Civil Engineers was formed Mr. Coit was elected a charter member. His interest in his business was second only to his interest in his home, and his name was sought by many clubs and societies for an honored place on their list of member- ship.
Mr. Coit was survived by his widow, still a resident of Los Angeles, and four children. The youngest is Henry A. Coit, prominent in Los Angeles. The oldest son is Griffith Coit, whose home is at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The two daughters are Miss Helen and Miss Ruth Coit, the former a resident of Los Angeles. Miss Ruth Coit has long been prominent as an educator and scholar, and since 1907 has been head of the Cambridge School for Girls in Massachusetts.
HENRY AUGUSTUS COIT. It would be difficult to classify Mr. Coit as a business man. His energies and talents have been devoted to many
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important financial and industrial affairs of the west and also the east. For several years he was one of the leading men in the promotion and building of independent telephone plants in the Middle West. He has been interested in railroad building, banking and has been an industrial promotor, and his name associated with half a dozen or more large enterprises in Southern California.
Mr. Coit was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 3, 1875, son of Edward Woolsey and Caroline M. (Moore) Coit. Mr. Coit has many of the versatile gifts and talents which have distinguished his family. His father was at one time president of the Reading Iron Works at Reading, Pennsylvania, was a charter member of the Ameri- can Society of Civil Engineers, and died at Los Angeles in September, 1915. A great-uncle of Henry A. Coit, whose name he bears, intro- duced Italian grand opera to America. His uncle was founder and head of the St. Paul School at Concord, New Hampshire. A sister of the Los Angeles financier is Miss Ruth Coit, for many years head of the Cambridge School for Girls at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr. Coit's mother is still living at Los Angeles.
Henry A. Coit acquired his early education in private schools at Philadelphia, also with private tutors, attended Smith's Academy at St. Louis, and from 1893 to 1895 was a student in Washington Uni- versity at St. Louis, where he distinguished himself in athletics, particu- larly in football.
On leaving college he became a broker in crude drugs, and after a year or more bought an interest in the Missouri Telephone Manufac- turing Company, serving as sales manager. In 1897 with some prominent St. Louis business men as his associates he organized the Telephone Exchange and Construction Company; and was president of this or- ganization, formed for the purpose of building telephone exchanges and long distance lines. During the next three years they built and operated a number of large exchanges, one of them at Terre Haute, Indiana, being at that time the largest independent telephone exchange in the country. This company while Mr. Coit was associated with it was instrumental in giving many small cities and towns modern means of communication. In 1900 Mr. Coit retired to engage in other lines of business. In 1902 he was associated with Paul D. Cable in the trans- formation of the Santa Fe line between Las Vegas and Las Vegas Hot Springs in New Mexico into an electric interurban road. This was the first line of that kind in the west. Before it was completed he came to California and in 1904 moved to Los Angeles and opened brokerage offices, gradually specializing in the underwriting of financial enterprises. , In 1907 he organized the Burbank State Bank at Burbank. Two years later associated with Louis J. Wilde he organized the Federal Building Company at San Diego, erecting the American National Bank Building, an eleven story structure. The same year acting for Los Angeles capitalists he bought the Bank of Southern California, becom- ing secretary and director of the institution. This was sold in 1911 and subsequently became merged with the Home Savings Bank. While with this institution Mr. Coit organized the Yucaipe Land and Water Company, owning several thousand acres of ranch land in the Yucaipe Valley of California. In 1910 he was agent for the Southern California Cement Company, now the Riverside Portland Cement Company, in the sale of its underwritten bonds. He also helped finance Tejunca Water and Power Company, which was abandoned at the outbreak of the war. In 1912 he organized and financed the Oxnard Eucalyptus Mills at Ox-
Agnes Woodward
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nard California, the first mill in the United States to utilize on a com- mercial scale eucalyptus timber-subsequently sold to other interests.
Mr. Coit organized and is now connected with the Marine Cor- poration as its president. In the spring of 1918 he with others bought a boat, the "Bayocean," and put it in commission in Mexican trade. The government took it over, however, and made a gunboat out of it and it is still doing duty with the navy.
Mr. Coit spent the summer and fall of 1919 in the Northwest and as active head of the Marine Corporation opened offices in Seattle, Washington, where his company has established itself as underwriters of Marine Equipment Securities. They have correspondents and con- nections with some of the leading investment banking houses through- out the East and Mr. Coit has already brought to a successful con- clusion the underwriting of securities against ten large steel vessels which will operate out of Pacific Coast ports. It is the purpose of this active concern to take an important hand in the upbuilding of our growing American Merchants Marine and through Mr. Coit's company and its allied interests there are planned not less than twenty-five steel ships for delivery within the next twelve months. The financing of these vessels will be done through Mr. Coit's organization.
September 21, 1912, at Los Angeles Mr. Coit married Kathryne Howard. Mr. and Mrs. Coit share many literary tastes. She is a member and director and treasurer of the Galpin Shakespeare Club. Mr. Coit has given much of his leisure time to the pleasures of his extensive library, and since 1912 has written two plays, one "War's End," and the other "The Arbitrators," a three-act drama dealing with psychological situations, now being published by Richard G. Bager in Boston. Mr. Coit is a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club and other social and business organizations. He and his wife have one daughter, Catherine McLaran, born at Los Angeles.
MISS AGNES WOODWARD, whose unique talents have brought her recognized position in the artistic world, has been a resident of Southern California for about fifteen years. She was born in Waterloo, New York, a daughter of the late Surgeon-General Charles Meredyth Wood- ward, prominent in imilitary and railroad circles. Her mother was Martha L. MacGlashan.
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