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 2
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Mr. Craig was born at Watsonville, California, March 8, 1866. His father, Andrew Craig, was born in Zanesville, Ohio, June 10, 1836, was taken when a child by his parents to Chillicothe, Missouri, where he re- ceived his early education in the public schools. He attended college at St. Joseph, Missouri, and studied law with Congressman Charles H. Mansur at Chillicothe. In 1865, at the close of the Civil war, he came West to California by way of the Isthmus route, locating at Stockton, and later at Watsonville, Santa Cruz County, where he practiced six years, and where he lived until 1872, when he moved to Santa Cruz. Besides his private practice, he served from 1872 to 1876 as district attor- ney, and from 1876 to 1880 as county judge of Santa Cruz County. In 1880 Andrew Craig removed to San Francisco, and was one of the · successful members of the bar of that city until his death, in 1912. At Chillicothe, Missouri, in 1854, he married Mary Catharine Pace.
William Talton Craig, one of the nine children of his parents, at- tended public school in Santa Cruz, graduated from high school in San Francisco in 1885, and in 1889 received his Ph. B. degree from the Uni- versity of California. The following two years he spent in the Hastings Law College of San Francisco, and upon his admission to the bar formed a partnership with his father at San Francisco, under the name Craig & Craig.
Mr. Craig located at Los Angeles in 1892, and steadily since that date has carried heavy responsibilities in his profession and has enjoyed many of the important honors thereof. From 1913 to 1918 he served as a member of the Los Angeles City Civil Service Commission. He is a director of the United States National Bank and is president of the holding company of the Native Sons of the Golden West. He is a Scot- tish Rite Mason and Shriner, a member of Westgate Lodge No. 335, F. and A. M., belongs to the University Club, South Coast Yacht Club, Municipal League, Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles, State and Amer- ican Bar Associations and the Commercial Law League of America.
At San Francisco, November 20, 1895, he married Miss L. Etta Brown. They have one child surviving, Talton Robert, born at Los Angeles, October 11, 1899, a graduate of the Intermediate High and the New Mexico Military Institute of New Mexico, and now engaged in the wholesale rubber business.
JOHN ROMAN came to Los Angeles half a dozen years ago, after a successful business career in the East, but was not content to remain retired long, and his name is now well known in automobile circles.
He was born in Posen, Poland, April 23, 1867, son of Frank and Catharine Romanowicz. It was in accord with the process of simplifica- tion that Mr. John Roman left off the expressive Polish termination of his name, leaving one better fitted to American pronunciation and usage. However, Mr. Roman is stanchly allied with his people, though a sterling American in every sense of the word. At Los Angeles Mr. Roman organized and is head of the Polish Reconstruction Society. The purpose of this organization is to raise funds to finance Poles who enlist for overseas service in the "Polish Army in France," and provide for many other meritorious philanthropies in behalf of that war-stricken people. The general supervision of this fund is managed by the famous pianist, Paderewski.
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Mr. Roman was educated in his native country, attended the com- mon schools there to the age of fourteen, and was then apprenticed to learn the trade of cabinet maker. He became a very expert and skillful workman, and after coming to America he was largely employed in the finer and more technical processes of wood working. At the age of twenty, having completed his apprenticeship, Mr. Roman was called upon to serve two years in the German army. He was a member of a field artillery regiment, and most of his service was at Stettine.
After leaving the army he came to America and at St Louis was employed a year and a half at his trade with the Belden Church Furni- ture Company. He then removed to Chicago and for a year and a half was with the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, manufacturers of billiard tables. Following that Mr. Roman engaged in the billiard supply and manufacturing business on his own account, and continued his enter- prise successfully for fifteen years. He then diverted a portion of his capital to the ownership of a vaudeville and motion picture house, and continued its operation in Chicago until 1911, when he sold out and came to Los Angeles.
He lived retired here until 1914, when for a year he took the agency of the Studebaker automobile at Glendale. Selling that agency, he formed a company with G. F. Dustin, known as the Dustin-Roman Auto Top Company, of which Mr. Roman is secretary and treasurer. As described elsewhere, this is one of the exclusive and highly specialized businesses in automobile circles at Los Angeles, and is a growing and prospering concern.
Mr. Roman is a trustee of the Glendale Lodge of Elks and is one of the most prominent members of the Polish colony of Los Angeles. He is a democrat and a member of the Catholic Church. In July, 1898, he married, in Chicago, Mary Watezak.
N. A. Ross has been a resident of Southern California for fifteen years. He has been a successful merchant and coal mine operator in the states of Kentucky and Tennessee, and came to California for his health. He found it, and after a short time entered with recreated energy the real estate business. He has promoted some of the best sub- divisions around Los Angeles and is one of the men whose capital, enter- prise and influence are doing most for the agricultural and commercial upbuilding of the famous Imperial Valley.
Mr. Ross was born in Scott county, East Tennessee, July 9, 1866, son of F. M. and Sarah (Murphy) Ross, natives of the same county. This county was named for Winfield Scott, the famous general of the Mexican war. F. M. Ross spent practically all his life as a merchant. In the early days he owned a farm, and his store was conducted on the farm. Later, when the Cincinnati Southern was built through the country and within a mile and a half of his home, he moved his business to the town of Winfield and put up a building and opened the first stock of mer- chandise in that community. He remained there until 1884, when fire destroyed his store. Later he resumed business, but depended largely upon his son, N. A. Ross, for its management. F. M. Ross came to Los Angeles in 1906, and died there in May, 1916, at the age of seventy- four. His wife had died at Williamsburg, Kentucky, in 1892, at the age of forty-nine.
N. A. Ross acquired his early education in the public schools of Scott county, also attended Maryville College, in Tennessee, and a business college at Lexington, Kentucky. At the age of seventeen he was buying
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stocks of goods and managing the general merchandise business of his father. In 1892 he removed to Kentucky and began manufacturing lum- ber in the southern part of Pulaski county under his own name. He was there about four years, and then, returning to East Tennessee, en- gaged in coal mining in Morgan county. He was associated with John Fetterman in the coal mining business under the name Brushy Mountain Coal Company. The four years he spent there he was general manager of the industry. He made money, but found coal mining a hard proposi- tion, detrimental to his health and involving many other difficulties. His company had the only independent coal mine in that particular part of the country, all of the rest being operated by convict miners. Mr. Ross also stood for the "open shop," and that brought him the opposition of the mine union. In connection with his mines at Petros, Tennessee, he also conducted a general merchandise store. On leaving Tennessee, Mr. Ross moved to Knox county, Kentucky, and resumed coal mining at Rossland, a place named in his honor. Subsequently he was a mine operator at Artemus, Kentucky, and was interested in both localities until he came West to Los Angeles in 1904.
He had given up coal mining in Kentucky on account of his health. His doctor told him he had but twelve months to live if he remained in Kentucky, but under the wonderful California climate his health was rapidly restored and he feels that he has as good prospects for long life as the next man. On his way to California he visited and prospected in New Mexico, at Redlands and in the Imperial Valley, and while there bought two half sections of land. In Los Angeles he took up real estate subdivision work, first subdividing a tract southwest of the city. He then organized and incorporated the N. A. Ross Realty Company, of which he was president and general manager, and with offices in the Hellman Building. This company subdivided about five tracts in Los Angeles, and paid the stockholders 350 per cent dividends, and in the end gave each about six and a half dollars for every one invested. Mr. Ross finally bought out the other stockholders, dissolving the company, and has operated under his individual name.
For several years he has been developing his ranches in the Imperial Valley, and also has ranch property in Riverside county. He is president and general manager of the De Luxe Groves and Water Company of Riverside, owning a hundred seventy acres planted to oranges. The property all told consists of two hundred and five acres, with complete water rights and other improvements. He is also associated in another six hundred and ninety acre ranch, with ninety acres planted to oranges and deciduous fruits at Riverside, with A. B. Taylor of Los Angeles, a retired banker of Ohio. His ranch lands in the Imperial Valley are de- veloped for dairying purposes. Mr. Ross has three hundred and twenty acres just outside of El Centro, and six hundred and forty near Holt- ville, and much of this is now ready for subdivision purposes. Mr. Ross is a recognized genius in the subdivision business, and its constructive features and possibilities of widespread benefit make a strong appeal to him.
With his family, he is a member of the Christian Church at Holly- wood, where he resides. June 7, 1893, at Kissimmee, Florida, he mar- ried Miss Hettie A. Wilson, of Somerset, Kentucky, where she was born and educated. She is a daughter of James and Elizabeth (Porch) Wil- son, representing old families of Kentucky. Mrs. Ross is a member of the Woman's Club of Hollywood, but otherwise has been devoted to her home and family. They have four children, Eugene W., Nelson A.
Harris Novomatic
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Jr., Mary Elizabeth and Nellie. The three oldest are students of the University of California at Berkeley, while Nellie is in the Hollywood High School, from which the others are graduates.
HARRIS NEWMARK. It would have been a remarkable experience to have been merely a contemporary witness of the development of Los Angeles from a village of four or five thousand population, largely com- posed of the original Spanish or Mexican element and the Aborigines, into one of the great cities of America, thriving and prospering with all the varied life and complex institutions of modern existence. It is hardly sufficient to call the late Harris Newmark, who arrived in Los Angeles in 1853, merely a witness of the changing panorama which unfolded around him. His vigor was too insistent, his enterprise too constant, his influ- ence too steadily directed upon large projects intimately identified with the commercial and civic fortunes of the city, to give him a lesser place than that of one of the most stalwart figures in her earlier annals.
The life of this pioneer merchant and benefactor of Los Angeles began at Loebau, West Prussia, July 5, 1834, a son of Philip and Esther (Meyer) Newmark. Philip Newmark was born in 1795, and was a manufacturer of ink and blacking in Germany and Sweden.
J. P. Newmark, the older brother of Harris, and also a California pioneer, located in Los Angeles early in the fifties. Harris, after com- pleting his education in Germany, followed him and arrived here October 25, 1853. For ten months he and his brother were associated in business, and during that time Harris Newmark made rapid progress in the English and Spanish languages. In business, too, slowly though con- sistently, he made headway until in 1865 he established the then most important business in Los Angeles, first known as H. Newmark and then as H. Newmark & Company, wholesale grocers. General Phineas Ban- ning was for a time associated with him in this enterprise. In 1885 M. A. Newmark & Company succeeded H. Newmark & Company, and is still one of the very influential firms of the city.
Los Angeles, for many years the center of a little world in itself, has now been completely consolidated with the outside by every agency of modern transportation and communication. When Harris Newmark entered business in Los Angeles there was, in vivid contrast with this condition, an exceedingly limited local production, and the staple com- modities of the world's market could be brought in only by laborious overland pioneer transportation or by the slow-moving commerce borne by sailing vessels. In those early days Mr. Newmark not infrequently supplied trains of wagons that made their weary way across broad expanses of territory, and curiously enough he carried his trade farther into the interior than is generally done today.
When he retired from the wholesale grocery business in 1886 Mr. Newmark became a member of the firm of K. Cohn & Company, hide and wool merchants. Ten years later the firm was divided, Mr. Cohn taking over the wool and Mr. Newmark continuing the hide branch. The latter business was continued after he formally retired in 1906 and is now A. Brownstein & Company.
Practically from the beginning of his residence Harris Newmark showed his faith by investing in Los Angeles and Southern California properties, and in later years his various real estate holdings and other interests were incorporated under the Harris Newmark Company, of which he became president. Many years ago Mr. Newmark acquired extensive holdings in the San Gabriel Valley, and owned the eight
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thousand odd acres known then and since as the Santa Anita Ranch, which in 1875 he sold to E. J. (Lucky) Baldwin. He figured in many other big deals. About forty years ago he bought the Temple Block site, now a proposed location for the Los Angeles City Hall, and was president of the Temple Block Company, the corporation which he formed for its management. In 1875 he bought the Vejar Vineyard, facing on Washington street. This property, long since subdivided lies in the very heart of what is now Los Angeles' most active industrial district. In 1886 he acquired the Repetta ranch of five thousand acres, and subdivided it into five thousand lots. On this land have been built the towns of Montebello and Newmark; and here also is now unfolding one of the richest oil fields in California.
These are only a few of the individual instances of his business enterprise. That enterprise for half a century was one of the effective forces in the development and progress of Los Angeles, and the city has always regarded him as one of the most important of that coterie of pioneers who laid the foundations of all that we possess today.
He was one of the charter members of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, one of the organizers of the Los Angeles Board of Trade and a member of its first Board of Directors, one of the organizers of the Los Angeles Public Library, and for many years president of the Los Angeles Congregation B'nai B'rith. He was also identified with the Southwest Museum, endowed part of the Jewish Orphans Home in memory of his wife, was a member of the Los Angeles County Pioneer Society, National Farm School Association, and many philanthropic or- ganizations. He was a charter member of the California Club, and became a member of Los Angeles Lodge No. 42, A. F. & A. M., in 1858. His liberality was as well known as his business prominence. It is recalled that at the time of the Johnstown flood he took the lead in raising a purse for the victims, and this was the first money received for that purpose by the Governor of Pennsylvania.
It seems singularly appropriate that one who for fifty years was so keen an observer of the romantic and almost miraculous development of this great southwest should leave a record of the drama that he had seen unfold around him. It therefore afforded great pleasure and satis- faction to thousands of students of history and of citizens of Southern California when in 1915 Mr. Newmark published his "Sixty Years in Southern California," a volume whose six hundred fifty pages are replete with interesting stories and illustrations of the adobe days and the adobeites. The publication of this work came when his long life was drawing toward its close. Harris Newmark died April 4, 1916.
In Los Angeles on March 24, 1858, he married Sarah Newmark, who died in 1910. They were the parents of eleven children. Those still living are: Maurice H .; Estelle, wife of the late Leon Loeb : Emily, who married Jacob Loew; Ella, wife of Carl Seligman ; and Marco R.
MAURICE HARRIS NEWMARK. Long before the high tide of Harris Newmark's activities and vitalities had passed they were supplemented by the younger energies of his son, Maurice Harris Newmark, whose enterprise for over a third of a century has been identified with many of Los Angeles' greatest and broadest enterprises.
The son was born at Los Angeles March 3, 1859, and such capa- bilities as he inherited from his parents were strengthened by his early environment and training. As a boy, from 1865 to 1872, he attended
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private and public school in Los Angeles. Then, after a year at New York City, he was sent abroad and finished his education in Paris.
The year of his return to Los Angeles, 1876, marked his connection with the house of H. Newmark & Company, wholesale grocers, which had been established since 1865. When the elder Newmark retired from that business in 1885 the son was promoted to a full partnership and the first vice-presidency in the succeeding firm of M. A. Newmark & Company.
Mr. Newmark is one of that class of American business men whose activities in outside affairs broaden as their private responsibilities grow. He is president of the Harris Newmark Company, vice-president of the Los Angeles Brick Company, and is a director in other firms. He was president of the Associated Jobbers from its organization in 1899 until 1912, and from 1905 was president of the Southern California Wholesale Grocers Association until his resignation in 1916. He has also served as director of the Merchants and Manufacturers Associa- tion, the Chamber of Commerce, Board of Trade, Southwest Museum, and has been identified with practically every worthy movement intended for the civic and commercial betterment of Southern California.
An opportunity for broad public service, following his connection with the movement to consolidate San Pedro Harbor with Los Angeles, was accepted when he became a harbor commissioner of Los Angeles in 1909. He has been a leader in many of those movements directed toward the realization of a greater Los Angeles.
Mr. Newmark, in spite of his many activities, finds time to devote to serious as well as to lighter amusements. He is an enthusiastic fisherman. Nearly every boy has a fascination for collecting postage stamps. That boyhood enthusiasm Mr. Newmark has cultivated sedu- lously for over half a century, and is said to have a very fine and spe- cialized stamp collection. He is a member of the American Philatelic Society. He was one of the editors of his father's notable work, "Sixty Years in Southern California," and is a member of the Book Club of California, Automobile Club of Southern California, Los Angeles County Pioneers Society, the Hispanic Society of California. Mr. Newmark is a republican, a member of the Concordia and Jonathan Clubs of Los Angeles, San Gabriel Valley Club, Los Angeles Athletic Club, and is a Scottish Rite Mason and a member of the Shrine.
At San Francisco July 3, 1888, he married Miss Rose Newmark, daughter of Joseph P. Newmark. They have one daughter, Florence Newmark Kauffman, wife of P. L. Kauffman, president of H. J. Crocker & Company, San Francisco.
ALBERT G. BARTLETT. During the past forty years no name has been more intimately and influentially associated with musical history in Los Angeles than that of Albert G. Bartlett, the veteran music dealer and friend and associate of artistic talent.
Mr. Bartlett, who is now retired, was born in Devonshire, Eng- land, March 28, 1850. When he was about five years of age his parents. Samuel and Elizabeth Bartlett, came to this country and located at Adrian, Michigan. He received his education there, graduating from high school at the age of sixteen. For three years he was employed as clerk in a dry goods store, and then became assistant bookkeeper for a large manufacturing plant. In the summer of 1871 his employers sent him to Chicago to get more extended business experience and he was
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there until Chicago was destroyed by fire, October 8, 1871. Mr. Bartlett came West to San Francisco in 1874, and in January, 1875, arrived in Los Ang les. For a time he was located in Ventura, associated with his brother, Charles G. Bartlett, in the jewelry, music and stationery business. On the 4th of July, 1875, Mr. Bartlett earned more money than he ever had on any one day in his experience and found the opening where his talents could work to their best advantage. He was paid twenty dollars for playing a cornet in a local band that Independence day. Soon he began teaching music, organized bands around the country, and these organizations did much to bring business to his store. He organized the first local company to produce the opera Pinafore in Southern Cali- fornia, and sang the tenor roles in that and many other of the popular comic operas. In 1881 Mr. Bartlett turned the Ventura business over to his brother and returned to Los Angeles, starting a music house oppo- site the old Nadeau Hotel, on First Street. For a time he conducted a music class twice a week in the University of Southern California. · Dur- ing these days he organized the Seventh Regiment Band, and it at once became a feature of the flower festivals of that time and made trips to St. Louis, San Francisco and other places as escort to Grand Army and Masonic organizations. He occupied the position of bandmaster for eight years.
In 1883 his store was moved to the Nadeau Hotel, was there three years, then to the Wilson Block, on an opposite corner. While the store was there Mr. Bartlett was instrumental in bringing Adelina Patti to Los Angeles, and twenty thousand dollars worth of tickets for her concert were sold at his store. After six years in the Wilson Block, the business moved to the Philips Block, on North Spring, near First Street. Three years later increasing business called for larger quarters and a new home was taken in the Shumacher Block at 103 North Spring, and that store became the rendezvous for many famous artists while in Los Angeles. It was here many interesting concerts were given in the Bartlett music room by Chevalier DeKontski, the famous Polish pianist, then an exile from his country. After seven years Mr. Bartlett moved to the old Orpheum Theatre Building, on Spring Street, and six years later became a Broadway booster with quarters opposite the City Hall, where was developed a large and prosperous business. After another six years in those quarters, failing in health, he turned over his great and pros . perous business to his old employes, and, now retired, he has private interests of large magnitude to take up his time. He has always been a great booster for all city interests and was elected to the Board of Education from the Third Ward in 1896, and, acting in that capacity, was instrumental in introducing a fine system of music in our public schools.
Mr. Bartlett was elected president of the City Club in 1917, and again honored with the same office in 1919. He is a York Rite Mason, Knight Templar and the first candidate to be initiated in Al Malaikah Temple of the Mystic Shrine. He is also a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, is a republican and a believer in the Christian Science faitlı. At Ventura, January 19, 1882, he married Mae Ann McKeeby, daughter of the late Judge L. C. McKeeby. They have two daughters, Bessie H. and Florence E., the latter at home. Bessie is the wife of Cecil Frankel of Los Angeles and is past vice president of the Holly- wood Women's Club and now president of the State Music League and district president of the National Federation of Music Clubs.
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GEORGE MACK. For the past dozen years George Mack has been a factor in the oil and other development work in the Southwest, and has become well known among the mining interests centered at Los Angeles. He is a thorough business man, has had wide training in various affairs, and closed one of the largest deals in oil property transacted in recent years.
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