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 21
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Arthur Louis Merry attended school at West Summerville, and on July 2, 1885, graduated from the Highland Grammar School, being first on the commencement program and reciting the oration on Wendell Phillips by John Boyle O'Reilly. Mr. Merry had special gifts as a mathematician. For a time he served as statistician on the Stock Ex- change and the Chamber of Commerce at Boston. He volunteered for naval service at the beginning of the Spanish-American war, and was on duty with the blockading squadron at Cuba. After the Spanish fleet had been destroyed he volunteered with the crew under Captain Ira Harris to return to Guantanamo Bay for the purpose of assisting in towing Cervera's flagship the Infanta Maria Teressa to New York. On the trip the tow-boat encountered a hurricane, and the Spanish flagship was abandoned and wrecked on the island. As a chief yeoman, Mr. Merry assisted at the burial of the only naval officer killed in the Spanish- American war, Ensign Worth Bagley, oldest brother of Mrs. Daniels, wife of the present Secretary of the Navy. Worth Bagley was buried on Guantanamo Hill. Incidentally, it might be mentioned that Captain W. T. Helms, now of Los Angeles, officiated as chaplain at that service.
In 1899 Mr. Merry went to Honolulu as chief clerk to the com- mandant, his uncle, then Captain John F. Merry, and assisted in estab- lishing a coaling station which was later made a naval station. He also assisted at the building of the immense docks and in the survey of Pearl Harbor.
While in Honolulu he met and on January 26, 1903, married Mrs. Adeline Inman Merithew. He was mustered out the following June, returning to San Francisco in October, 1903, and in January, 1904. establishing his home at Los Angeles. Here he entered the Department of Public Service and for eleven years was connected with the water department. He served as adjutant for three years of Roosevelt Camp of the United Spanish War Veterans.
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Mrs. Merry, whose maiden name was Adeline Inman, was born in Sacramento County, and comes of a family of California pioneers. Her father, Joseph W. Inman, crossed the plains in 1853 by way of Salt Lake to Placerville. Her mother, Minerva Gunter, also came across the plains from Wayne County, Ohio, to Placerville, where she met and married Mr. Inman. Their first child was born at Squaw Hollow, three other children were born in the Sacramento Valley, and there were three other brothers of Mrs. Merry and two half-sisters. Senator Jack M. Inman, who represents Sacramento in the State Senate, is a brother of Mrs. Merry.
July 31, 1881, Adeline Inman was married at Bishop, in Inyo County, to William Otis Merithew, an architect and builder. Mr. Merithew was a native of Maine and died at Los Angeles. They had two sons, Harry Otis Merithew, born June 5, 1883, at First and Spring Streets, in one of the old homes of the city, and Percival Inman Meri- thew, who was born in the old adobe house near First and Broadway, close to the present site of the Times Building, on November 19, 1884. Harry Otis Merithew is now associated with his uncle, Claud Inman, in the Inman Mines Company in Oregon. Percival Inman Merithew represents the E. K. Wood Lumber Company and other interests at Phoenix, Arizona.
Mrs. Merry is a member of the Woman's City Club, the Big Sisters League, the Roosevelt Auxiliary of the United Spanish War Veterans. For two years she was vice president of the Woman's Police Court Com- mittee, which Judge White was instrumental in establishing. She is a member of the Tenth Church of Christ Scientist at Los Angeles.
JAMES FRANK ELWELL, employing printer and a former newspaper man, came to Los Angeles eighteen years ago and established a com- mercial and job printing business at the corner of Third and Broadway. He has since made the J. F. Elwell Publishing Company a name signi- ficant of character, dignity and the highest quality in all branches of the printing art. The business has gradually developed several complete departments, including job printing, publishing and engraving. Through- out the history of this concern the personality of Mr. Elwell has been dominant. He is a man of the broadest technical knowledge and equip- ment in the printing art, has originality and long experience which enables him to give type forms an expressive quality that is itself a fine art.
Mr. Elwell was born at Bridgeton, New Jersey, and was educated in, the public schools of his birthplace and Camden. He learned the printer's trade at Bridgeton and subsequently was in newspaper work with The Bulletin in Philadelphia, and later engaged in the book and job business as a proofreader. In the early nineties he came West to Arizona, and at Phoenix was editor and publisher of a weekly called The Independent. From Arizona he came to Los Angeles in 1902, and ever since that date has been in the job printing business at 254 South Broadway under the name J. F. Elwell Publishing Company.
While in Arizona Mr. Elwell was a member of the National Guard and assistant adjutant general of Arizona, with the rank of major, serv- ing on the staff of Governor Oakes Murphy. He was also secretary and treasurer of the State Commission on Public Institutions for the Insane of Arizona. He was one of the organizers of the Arizona Society of the Sons of the American. Revolution and was its state secretary for several years. His eligibility to membership in that organization is due to his descent from the Lummis family on his mother's side.
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While in that territory he was prominent in church work. He was one of the organizers of the Arizona Christian Endeavor Society and its first secretary, also one of the organizers in Arizona of the State Baptist Young People's Union, and its first state president, serving for six years. Politically Mr Elwell is a republican.
He is affiliated with the various Masonic bodies of Los Angeles, is a member of the Scottish Rite Consistory and Al Malaikah Temple of the Mystic Shrine. He belongs to the Los Angeles Athletic Club, is on the Membership Committee of the Los Angeles Chamber of Com- merce, a member of the Temple Baptist Church, secretary of the Los Angeles Baptist City Mission Society, and treasurer and former pres- ident of the Los Angeles Baptist Social Union. He is also secretary and former moderator of the Los Angeles County Baptist Association.
June 28, 1905, he married Miss Catherine Davies of Los Angeles. She is president of the Woman's Society of the Wilshire Baptist Church. Their home'is at 454 South Gramercy Place. Mr. and Mrs. Elwell have four native daughters of California, named Edith Catherine, Frances Elinor, Beatrice Ann and Dorothea Mae.
CAPTAIN CLARENCE FAIRCHILD SMITH, who fell in action while leading his men in the battle of the Argonne on October 1, 1918, was a very popular and successful young Los Angeles business man, a member of the automobile distributing firm of Smith Brothers. Even among such soldiers as the American forces in France proved themselves to be, Captain Smith was an easily conspicuous leader, and the patriotism that prompted him to offer his services to his country and the bravery with which he fought and died comprise a record of which every American can well be proud.
He was born at Colton, Ohio, January 18, 1883, a son of E. B. and Flora (Fairchild) Smith, both natives of Ohio and both now living in Vienna, California. Captain Smith's home during his youth was at Toledo, where he attended the public schools. At the age of fifteen he ran away from home to enlist for the Spanish-American war. As a child he had played and imagined himself a soldier, and was fondest of military games, and even then a leader among his companions. At the age of fifteen he stood 6 feet 2 inches-and weighed over a hundred eighty pounds, and therefore easily passed for eighteen at the examination by the recruiting officers. He spent his time in camp at Chickamauga, and never saw active service in that war.
Later he entered the Culver Military Academy, in Indiana, and sub- sequently attended Cornell University. In 1904 he married Miss Susan Lotta of Toledo.
He was engaged in the real estate business at Mansfield, Ohio, until coming to Los Angeles in 1908. Here he engaged in the automobile business, and two years later a brother came from Spokane and joined him, establishing the Smith Brothers Automobile Company. His brother is Stanley W. Smith. Captain Smith was prominent in the local auto- mobile trade, and for one year served as president of the Los Angeles Automobile Dealers' Association. He was also a Knight Templar Mason and Shriner, an Elk, a member of the Athletic, Jonathan, Brentwood and San Gabriel Country Clubs, and in politics a republican. Besides his widow, he was survived by one son, Edward L. Smith, born October 8, 1911, and just seven years of age when his father was killed in France.
Captain Smith attended the first officers' training school established on the Pacific Coast, at Monterey, during July of 1917. During the
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following year he kept up his military studies, and at the beginning of the war with Germany the following spring he took his examinations for major and passed. However, he accepted a captaincy in order to get into the service at once. But for more than a year he had to curb his patience as best he could and be satisfied with duties assigned him on this side of the water. In May, 1917, he was ordered to the Presidio, where he became an instructor in the officers' training school. August 29, 1917, he was ordered to Camp Lewis, at American Lake, in Wash- ington, where he remained until the end of June, 1918. At Camp Lewis he was appointed adjutant of the Three Hundred Sixty-first Infantry, a unit of the famous Ninety-first Division. It was on July 4, 1918, that Captain Smith finally embarked for France, and soon afterward was hard at work at intensive training immediately behind the lines. Then in September his division moved toward the front.
It is most appropriate to take some space to quote a letter written by his friend, Frank P. Doherty, captain of Machine Gun Company No. 261, and later a major in the same regiment as Captain Smith. Captain Doherty, who was a personal witness of some of the concluding scenes in the experience in which Captain Smith lost his life, says in the course of his letter: "First I must state that none of us knew just how we would act under fire. It was a matter of speculation as regards our- selves, as well as other officers in our regiment. Those who appeared bold and defiant ten miles from the enemy grew less blood-thirsty as the regiment advanced to its place for the attack. With Clarence it seemed to make little or no difference. He was always the jovial, happy, ener- getic, playful and tireless worker. He was the one officer universally liked and respected throughout the regiment by every man in it. I re- member him so distinctly the afternoon before the end."
Then, after describing the position of his own company in the ad- vance salient where they were exposed to the intensive fire from the German guns on three sides, he continues: "Out of the whistling, bursting, tearing, shrieking inferno I heard some one right back of me shout 'Pat, where's the colonel?' There was Clarence. Whether he had slipped away from the colonel or vice versa I can not state. Both of them were for the firing line; dugouts in the rear were not for their kind. When I responded that I had not seen our colonel for nearly an hour, Clarence replied, with all of the mischievousness of a boy hooking school, 'Hell, I am going with you.' I did not take him seriously at that time, and as the Hun was giving us all he had, I was too busy to notice until we had gone forward about five hundred yards. Then, to my surprise, as I was crawling up to the crest of a small hill to locate some of the enemy machine guns that were just raining bullets on us, and while the high explosives, shrapnel, whizz-bangs, G. I. cans and gas shells were ripping us wide open, I felt some one throw himself down beside me and shout in my ear: 'To hell with this office work; this is the life for me.' He was unarmed in the front rank of the assault troops, voluntarily and from choice. There was no show or bluster. He was a fighter, pure and simple; he could not stay behind. He continued to advance with my company until the Hun threw down his guns and ran to our men, arms upraised, shouting 'Kamrade.' We gained the ridge and-we held it. An army officer in a high command, in speaking of our advance on this occasion, said: 'I never witnessed anything like it. Not a man turned to the rear.' A captured German officer said : 'You are all crazy.' I will not pass judgment on the statements of either ; both may be correct, but we won."
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A terrific toll was taken from the Ninety-first Division in the battle of the Argonne, and on two successive days two majors were killed, and on the afternoon of the 1st of October, Captain Smith was appointed major and put in command of the Second Battalion. Continuing the account of Captain Doherty: "He immediately went to the firing line to cheer up the tired, worn, wet and hungry officers and men. He was in it with his whole heart. About one hour after assuming command a high explosive shell hit about fifty feet from him and, with his face toward the enemy, our good friend Clarence fell, gave scarcely an audible sigh, and there passed out a brave, cheerful and unselfish soul. His body apparently bore no wound. He was too far from the shell to be killed by shell-shock. It is the general belief that a large piece of the shell hit him over the heart. Whatever it may have been, it resulted in immediate unconsciousness and death in a few minutes.
"'I relate the above in some detail because it is personally known to me, and I am conveying it to you so that those who were near to him may know that in the hour of the supreme test he was true to his duty and an example to his men. The belief and trust of his family, relatives and friends were not misplaced in him."
Captain Smith was buried in France on the battlefield, but later his body was removed to the American cemetery at Cierges, Ardennes.
JOHN DAGGETT HOOKER. The New England genius for invention and business, exemplified in an eminent degree by the late John D. Hooker, found a most fertile field when it was transplanted from his native heath to the kindly soil and climate of California. John D. Hooker was a resident of California half a century, was a pioneer in time and also in many lines of business, gained a fortune, and dispensed it so wisely and liberally that he has well earned the title of philanthropist.
He was seventy-three years of age when he died at his residence in Los Angeles May 24, 1911. He was born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire, May 10, 1838, son of Henry and Mary (Daggett) Hooker. He had a liberal education, attending Hollister Academy and Williams College. At the age of twenty-three he came West to California, locating in San Francisco, and from that time forward was seldom away from the Pacific Coast, except on business trips to the East and abroad. From 1861 to 1876 he was a hardware merchant at San Francisco. In 1885 he established a factory for the manufacture of steel pipe at Los Angeles under the name of The J. D. Hooker Company, and as its president he made that one of the largest and most important concerns of its kind in Southern California. In the year 1888 he invented a riveting machine and also a patent enamel coating for water pipes. In 1895 he became vice president of the Baker Iron Works, and became president of the Western Union Oil Company in 1900. The John D. Hooker Company was dissolved in 1908. About a year before his death he retired from active business, resigning his post as vice president of the Baker Iron Works.
There were many interests which distinguished John D. Hooker from the ordinary successful business man. He served as a member of the Board of Directors and as vice president of the Southern California Acad my of Sciences, and was deeply interested in scientific research and hod the friendship of many eminent scholars. Probably his greatest interest was in astronomy. Through his generous contributions he did much for the furtherance of research in that science. The chief object of these contributions was the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory. His
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total gifts to that institution aggregated about a hundred thousand dol- lars. He was the donor of the great lens and mirror known as the Hooker Lens, which were prepared for the observatory, and he displayed all the eagerness of a youth in every phase of this equipment, and only a few days before his death expressed himself as hopeful that the work would be finished in order that he might know what secrets of the heavens would be revealed through the new equipment. He also en- joyed the friendship of many men prominent in Los Angeles life, and especially was a frequenter of the quarter's of the California Club and the University Club. He did much for charity, but on this score the extent of his donations was known only to himself. In politics he was a republican.
August 26, 1869, Mr. Hooker married Katharine Putnam of San Francisco. Since his death his widow and daughter have made their home in San Francisco. The daughter is Dr. Marian O. Hooker, who makes frequent trips to Los Angeles on matters connected with her father's estate. The office of the Hooker estate is in the Marsh-Strong Building.
FREDERIC HOOKER JONES laid the foundation of his prosperity in his native New England, but for over fifteen years has been a resident of Los Angeles, and in many ways has participated in the business and financial affairs of his community.
He was born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire, November 30, 1866, son of Henry Mason and Julia (Hooker) Jones. His mother was the oldest of the nine children of Henry and Mary (Daggett) Hooker, a pioneer family of old New England, which in colonial times settled and still owns a place at Hinsdale. Several of the Hookers were Revolutionary soldiers. She was also a sister of the late John D. and Henry C. Hooker of Los Angeles.
Frederic Hooker Jones graduated from the Hinsdale High School at an early age and passed the state examinations for registered phar- macist. He had a successful business career in his native town for a quarter of a century, and in the fall of 1902, having sold his interests in the East, he came to Los Angeles. Here Mr. Jones was associated with B. R. Baumgardt in the Baumgardt Publishing Company. After the retirement of Mr. Baumgardt he became manager and president of that well-known business. For several years he was also associated with the California Auto Company, later selling his interests. He was also associated with the J. D. Hooker Company. He is now practically retired from active business, but has many investments in Southern California. He spends much of his time at his country places in the Sierre Madre district, where he practices agriculture and horticulture, having some groves of lemon and grapefruit. During the World war he gave liberally of his time and means to the promotion of various patriotic causes and campaigns. Politically he is first and always a republican. Mr. Jones in Masonry is affiliated with Golden Gate Lodge, Signet Chapter R. A. M., Golden West Commandery K. T., and Al Malaikah Temple of the Mystic Shrine. He is also a member of Lodge No. 99 of the Elks at Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Athletic Club.
At Ware, Massachusetts, in December, 1893, he married Miss Alice Spencer, daughter of James and Jane (Dickinson) Spencer of Hinsdale, New Hampshire. Hers was another old and prominent family of Hins- dale, and some of her ancestors played notable parts in the Revolutionary and Indian wars. Her maternal grandfather, Nathaniel Dickinson, was
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massacred by Indians near Northfield, Massachusetts. Mr. Jones is a graduate of the Northfield Seminary of Massachusetts and was an early member of the Ebell Club of Los Angeles, for many years was vice president of the Humane Society for Children, and has cultivated many civic and philanthropic interests.
MALCOM MCLAREN for a number of years worked at the stone cut- ter's trade. He could cut curves and straight lines in stone to the admira- tion of his fellows. Behind his skillful hand was a warm heart and a keen and penetrating intelligence and fine imagination. He was doubt- less doing a great deal of thinking all those years he followed his trade.
He was born in the city of Ottawa, Canada, July 10, 1865, son of Malcolm and Catherine (Paul) McLaren. His father was at that time a resident of Chicago and the mother was visiting in Ottawa at the time of his birth. Malcolm, Sr., was a native of Scotland and at the age of seventeen had gone to Australia as a gold seeker. The story is told how after ten years of hard work he had accumulated a modest fortune of eleven thousand dollars. He left Australia for New York with his gold in a chest. On arriving at his destination he had a chest, but it contained no gold. He had to begin life all over again, and the incident is told because of its significance for Malcolm McLaren, Jr. His father conducted a stone cutting contracting business in Chicago for a number of years, and there Malcolm attended school to the age of ten, when his mother died. His father then went to Des Moines, Iowa, and became superintendent of construction for the Iowa State Capitol. For about a year Malcolm, Jr., lived with his father's friend Archie Henderson, on a farm near Des Moines, and attended district school. Being dissatisfied he ran away and lived with the Quaker family of H. M. Whinery for several years. He wanted to do better than he could do in the circumscribed position of a country farm and again running away he returned to Chicago and spent a year learning carriage blacksmithing with the Abbott Buggy Company. Meeting with an accident he joined his father, who in the meantime had completed the State Capitol and was building the State Prison at Anamosa, Iowa. Young McLaren then engaged with J. A. Green Company, stone con- tractors at Stone City, Iowa, and for three months while learning his trade worked at fifty cents a day. He then began a four years appren- ticeship with Hubert Chalker, stone contractor, at Minneapolis, but after three years had made such progress that he was given a journey- man's wages of four dollars a day. His next place was at Bedford, Indiana, where he worked as stone cutter on piece work making eight dollars a day. In September, 1884, he returned to Chicago as a stone cutter and in December, 1885, upon his father's death he went to Ana- mosa, Iowa, and was assigned the task of teaching prisoners in the State Prison the art of stone cutting. With a change of administra- tion he was let out of the work May 1. 1886, and then returned to Chi- cago and resumed his trade, which he followed until 1899, when his health being impaired by the nature of his employment, he gave it up permanently.
A few years ago Mr. McLaren explained to a correspondent how he happened to follow his present line of work. He said: "I think it was always a desire to get at the truth. When I was a little lad I used to think how I would have solved the mystery of who got my father's gold, and later, when I heard the stories of men in the penitentiary, it was more with the idea of vindicating the innocent than convicting the
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guilty that I thought I would like to be a detective. So you see it was still wanting to get at the truth."
He began his new profession as an employe of the Mooney & Boland Detective Agency at Chicago. He had all the natural gifts and equipment for his work, including a dogged persistence which has not been excelled by any detective in fact or fiction. At that time he attracted the attention of the celebrated W. J. Burns, and in August, 1910, joined the Burns Detective Agency and was soon afterwards assigned the chief role in the case, probably the most celebrated in American annals of crime. This assignment' came in December, 1910, when Burns put McLaren on the hunt for the perpetrators of the Los Angeles Times dynamite explosion. He never left the case night or day until the arrest of J. B. McNamara and Ortie McManigal at Detroit, on April 12, 1911. The story of this hunt has been frequently told. The first month he spent at Cincinnati, covering the home of J. B. McNamara. He then kept the McManigal home in Chicago under his personal sur- veillance. The 'McManigal home was on Sangamon Street near Van Buren in Chicago. February 23, 1911, he first saw McManigal and wife and McNamara and lady leave this house and go to the Star and Garter Theater. February 24, 1911, McManigal left the house with McNamara. They carried four packages twelve inches square. McLaren shadowed them to the Iroquois Iron Works, at Stony Island Avenue, where they left the packages, and at 10:30 that night Mr. McLaren heard the explosion in the works. The dynamiters after leaving the iron works returned down town, McManigal to his home and McNamara to the Best Hotel. For some days after that Mr. McLaren was em- ployed in working up various angles of the case. On March 24, 1911, McManigal left his home in Chicago in the night and went to Spring- field, Massachusetts, where he blew up the Municipal Tower, on April 7, 1911. McManigal returned to Chicago, and on April 11, 1911, left for Toledo, arriving in that city at 7:45 p. m., where he met J. B.
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