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 22
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McNamara and both stopping at the Meyerhoff Hotel, where they were assigned Room No. 11. Next they went to Detroit, and here, all the various lines of evidence having been formulated, Mr. McLaren, assisted by Raymond Burns, Billy Read and Guy Bidenger, captured the men in the Oxford Hotel. After the arrest McLaren so impressed McManigal with the knowledge of all his previous movements that McManigal finally blurted out all that McLaren did not know and "wished to know." From Detroit the dynamiters were removed to Chicago and arrived in Los Angeles April 26, 1911. They pleaded guilty December 5, 1911.
In the meantime Mr_ McLaren had been appointed Chief of County Detectives of Los Angeles County in the District Attorney's office and filled that position until January 3, 1915. He then resigned to establish himself independently, and has since been head of the Malcolm McLaren Investigating Bureau, and has developed a corps of efficient detectives that constitute this one of the most reliable agencies of the kind in the West of the entire country.
Mr. McLaren was employed by District Attorney Thomas Lee Woolwine on the cases of David Caplin and M. A. Schmidt, who were a part of the dynamiting crowd. In that investigation he had to go to Honduras, South America, to look up McManigal, who had been released and whose services were wanted as a witness. For several years now Mr. McLaren has been a solicitous good friend of McManigal, who now lives near Los Angeles happy with his family. In 1917 Mr. McLaren was engaged by Snohomish County, Washington, to appre-
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hend the I. W. W.'s who had killed a number of people at Everett, Washington.
This brief sketch should not close without a hint of his personal character, as drawn by a writer in the Sunset Magazine a few years ago: "The man is tall, slight, wiry, and so quick in his movements as to contradict his fifty years. His is a countenance to inspire trust, It shows sagacity, shrewdness, conscience, humor, kindliness verging on com- passion, and displays relentlessness only when speaking of a man who con- trives a cold-blooded murder to look like an accident, or of a wretch who endeavors to cast a burden of crime upon a child. He impresses one as having the judicial faculty highly dev loped, as weighing things. It is not difficult to understand his popularity among the unfortunate class with which his position calls him to deal, for there is in him an essential fairness which disarms resentment."
Mr. McLaren is a Scottish Rite · Mason, an Elk, a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club and a republican. He is most devoted to his home and family. At Anamosa, Iowa, May 9, 1886, he married Alice McGowan. They have three children: James, born in 1890, served in the United States Navy during the war and is now connected with the Standard Oil Company. Robert Lee, born in 1893, is a member of Company M of the 362nd Infantry, 91st Division, with the Army of Occupation in Germany. The only daughter, Irene, born in 1901, is a student in the Glendale High School.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BLEDSOE, judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, has been on the bench continuously either as a State or Federal official nineteen years. The modern world appreciates the fact that real ability can not be properly measured by length of years or age, yet Judge Bledsoe's position is the more conspicuous because it is one usually associated with the dignity and weight of years and the wisdom supposed to belong to long life and study. As a matter of fact, Judge Bledsoe came within the provisions of the last army draft act, so far as his age was concerned.
Moreover, he is a native Californian. He was born at San Ber- nardino, February 8. 1874, son of a prominent lawyer, Robert Emmett Bledsoe, and descended from Hon. Jesse Bledsoe, one time United States senator from Kentucky. Judge Bledsoe's mother was Althea Bottoms.
He acquired a liberal education, attending the public schools of San Bernardiro until 1891, and graduating A. B. from Leland Stanford University in 1896. In the same year he was admitted to the California bar and was in practice at San Bernardino in partnership with his father four years.
. He was first called to the bench in 1901, when elected judge of the Superior Court of San Bernardino County. He entered unon his six- year term in 1901, and was re-elected in 1906 and again in 1912. There was no opposing candidate when he was re-elected either in 1906 or in 1912. In 1910 in the state primary election he was nominated by the democratic party for the office of associate justice of the Supreme Court. Judge Bledso resigned as judge of the Superior Court of California on October 23, 1914, to accept the appointment from President Wilson as United States district judge of the Southern District of California. He has presided over that tribunal five years and in every respect has justified the utmost confidence of the legal profession and the general public as to his ability, fairness and breadth of comprehension in handling the many matters which usually come before this court.
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Judge Bledsoe is now a resident of Los Angeles, his offices being in the Federal Building. For several years he served as a director in the Farmers Exchange National Bank at San Bernardino and is now a director of the West Coast-San Francisco Life Insurance Company of Los Angeles. In 1898-1900 he was United States referee in bankruptcy for San Bernardino County, and as that was largely a judicial office, he may be said to have been on the bench continuously for more than twenty years. For fourteen years he was a trustee of the City Public Library of San Bernardino, and was president from 1905 until 1913. He was president of the San Bernardino Y. M. C. A. in 1911-14, and since 1912 has been a member of the State Executive Committee of the Y. M. C. A. of California. Judge Bledsoe is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, and has had many of the highest honors ot his order. He served as grand master of Masons of California in 1917, and is now (1919) grand commander of Knights Templar of California. In 1911 he was grand chancellor of the Knights of Pythias of California. Judge Bledsoe is also a Phi Beta Kappa, Delta Upsilon and Phi Delta Phi. He is a democrat, and in church affiliation a Congregationalist.
December 25, 1899, at Council Bluffs, Iowa, Judge Bledsoe married Katharine Marvin Shepler. Mrs. Bledsoe graduated from Stanford University in 1898. She is a Phi Beta Kappa and Delta Gamma. They have two children, Barbara Shepler and Frances Priscilla Bledsoe.
IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY CHURCH was organized early in 1911, the parish boundaries extending from Hoover Street to Western Avenue, and from Temple Street to the foothills. It was a part of the adminis- trative work and church extension carried out by the late Bishop Conaty. The parish boundaries had previously been included in the pastorate of Father Murphy of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament. The site for the new church was donated by the Sullivan family of South Hollywood. The first Mass was celebrated in the partially completed building Decem- ber 17, 1911, by Father Forde, and the church was solemnly dedicated February 22, 1912, by the late Bishop Conaty. While only about a hundred fifty families were comprised in the original parish, the church has been growing and prospering, and it is now well sustained and a vigorous organization. In April, 1915, a rectory was begun and was completed during the same year. The church also has developed some strong and useful societies, including the Altar Society and the Young Ladies' Sodality, and also the men's club, known as the Cahuenga Club, which has done much to provide the social needs not only of the church, but of the non-Catholic community as well.
The pastor of the church since January 7, 1912, has been Rev. S. F. Cain, and it has been under his effective and zealous leadership that the church has had its best growth and effectiveness.
Father Cain was born at New Haven, Connecticut, son of Stephen and Mary E. (Ryan) Cain. He attended the public schools of New Haven, graduating from high school in 1890, and received his literary education in Niagara University of New York. In 1894 he entered St. Bonaventure College and Seminary, from which he graduated in 1897. He took his theological course in the same institution, and on February 22, 1902, was ordained at Niagara Falls by Bishop James Quigley, later archbishop of Chicago.
Father Cain was assigned to his first duties at Watsonville, Cali- fornia, as assistant pastor of St. Patrick's Church for two years. He was then assistant pastor at St. Andrew's Church at Pasadena nine months,
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and on January 6, 1906, was appointed by the late Bishop Conaty as pastor of St. Francis de Sales Church at Riverside. From there he was transferred to the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, at 4950 Santa Monica Boulevard. Father Cain is a member of the Knights of Columbus.
IRVING E. INGRAHAM. There were two widely distant communities upon which the life of the late Irving E. Ingraham was deeply impressed. One was his birthplace, the scene of his business activities and the home of his ancestors, Bristol, Connecticut, and the other was Los Angeles, which, after the choice presented by world-wide travel he has selected as the most delightful place for a home.
Mr. Ingraham was born at Bristol, Connecticut, December 5, 1860. His grandfather, Elias Ingraham, was a pioneer of Bristol and gave that little city its chief industrial and commercial character. He was the maker of the first Ingraham clock and established and built up the Ingraham clock factory to large proportions. After the death of Elias Ingraliam it was carried on by his son Edward E. Ingraham. The Ingra- hams were all men of fine calibre, highly respected and beloved in their communities and all of them married women who were daughters of prominent men.
Irving Ingraham, son of Edward E., was educated in the schools of Bristol and also attended a military school for several years. He left school to enter his father's business. He had two brothers and two sisters. The three brothers carried on the clock business after their father's death, and that business was the source of the fortune which Mr. Irving E. Ingraham used so wisely and so well.
For a number of years he had lived retired from business and he and his wife spent much of the time in travel which took them to every part of the civilized world. They were travelers over both the conventional and the unfrequented routes of world journeys again and again. Finally their quest for the most beautiful land in which to live brought them to Southern California, where they located permanently in 1897.
Mr. and Mrs. Ingraham were married July 21, 1893. While they had no children of their own, they had many nephews and nieces, and derived a great deal of happiness from these younger people. Mr. Ingraham was a great hunter and a member of various hunting clubs.
In selecting a home at Los Angeles he located at 2000 West Adams Street. While that is now in the most exclusive section of the city. at the time of Mr. Ingraham's purchase of a large acreage the site was a barley field. It was not accessible to gas nor electricity, and only a water supply was provided. The first year Mr. Ingraham and wife planted thousands of small pines, and now after twenty years the pines have become large and stately trees and underneath is a perfect carpet of pine needles. It is probably the only cultivated pine forest in South- ern California. Later in their travels they selected the rarest blooming plants, and many choice varieties of fruit trees and other exotics. These are now splendid adornments of the spacious grounds. One tree on the grounds is the Australian strawberry tree, standing six or eight feet tall. There are many rare varieties of the guavas, also the Avocado pears as tall as the pines, and it would require a horticultural and botanical expert to properly enumerate and classify all the splendid flora found in luxuriance at the Ingraham place.
Aring @ Ingrateau
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The house is a spacious mansion on a hill, from the windows of which a view is cammended down the slopes into the gardens and for- ests. The basic principle of the entire arrangement of the house was "for comfort." At the driveway is a house with perfect, spacious and comfortable quarters for the servants, where all the cooking for the menage is done. The central and dominating feature of the residence quarters is the great living room. It has, of course, a fireplace, where pine logs and pine needles are burned. Each reading chair, and there are many of them, has its own individual reading lamp. The late Mr. Ingraham and Mrs. Ingraham found their greatest pleasure in their home and their ample means enable them to provide it with facilities for comfort, while their good taste avoided the impression of extreme or fantastic luxuries. The late Mr. Ingraham was one of the most lion- orable of men and respected and loved by all. His public spirit doubt- less found its chief expression in the Los Angeles Symphony Associa- tion of which he was one of the founders and he was always a warm sympathizer with its aims and a generous contributor to its purse. It was largely due to his initiative, enthusiasm, that the Association has grown in artistic fulfillment and also in financial strength. When Mr. Ingraham passed away he requested that no tomb be placed above his grave. Recently as a fitting memorial Mrs. Ingraham subscribed five thousand dollars for a life membership in the Symphony in his name. She had previously subscribed a similar amount for a life membership of her own. The Los Angeles Symphony had its first home in the Mason Opera House. When Clune's Auditorium was built it was largely due to the encouragement and initiative of Mr. Ingraham that the Auditorium became the new home of the orchestra. Other mem- bers of the association hesitated on account of the expense, but he declared that the best was_ none too good for such an institution and his convictions and enthusiasm carried the day.
Mr. Ingrahamı was a member of the California Club, of many hunting clubs, and was very fond of outdoor life, including the sports of tennis, golf and hunting. He knew many of the great artists. Fre- quently in former times Paul de Longpre would ride over on his bicycle from Hollywood and enjoy the comforts and good society of the Ingraham home. Mr. Ingraham died in August, 1912.
ANDREW JAMES COPP JR. The name Copp has been prominently identified with the law and business affairs of Los Angeles for over thirty-five years. Andrew James Copp Jr. is a lawyer, and has also spent many years in the California National Guard, and quite recently was discharged from active duty as a lieutenant-colonel in the judge advocate general's department, United States Army, at Washington.
Mr. Copp, whose law offices are in the Copp Building, was born at Millerton, Dutchess County, New York, October 15, 1880, and has lived in Los Angeles since he was four years of age. His parents are Andrew James and Carrie Pettee (Bostwick) Copp, who have been residents of Southern California since 1884. His father graduated from Yale University with the degrees A. B. and M. A. in 1869, studied law in the Columbia University Law School, and was a practicing lawyer in Los Angeles from 1884 to 1892. His chief business in Southern Cali- fornia, however, has been handling his own investments and the buying and selling of real estate. He put up the Copp Building at 218 South Broadway in 1896, and he and his wife still own that property. He was also chairman of a special committee appointed by the mayor in
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1895 to provide employment for the many who were out of work during that financial crisis. He and his wife reside at 1222 Ingraham Street. They had a family of five children: Eddie, who died at the age of twenty-five; Carrie Bell, who died at the age of ten; Andrew J. Jr .; William W., in the mining business in Arizona, and Joseph P., who holds a permanent position as a lieutenant in the navy and is on duty with the U. S. S. Beaver at Honolulu.
Andrew J. Copp Jr. was educated in the grammar schools of Los Angeles, graduating in 1895, and was prepared for college in the Boston Latin School at Boston, Massachusetts, where he completed his work in 1899. He received his A. B. degree from Stanford University of California in 1902, and studied law at the University of Michigan. In 1902-03 he was a teacher in the Harvard Military Academy at Los Angeles, being head of the Latin and Greek department and physical training, and in 1903-04 taught Latin and physical geography in the Los Angcles High School.
Admitted in 1904 to the California bar, he was also admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court in 1919. During 1904-05 he was in the office of Oscar Lawler, and since then has handled an individual practice. While his work as a lawyer has been of a general nature, he has avoided criminal cases, and also clients from orientals or colored people.
Colonel Copp was a member of the National Guard of California fourteen years, with the ranks of first lieutenant and captain in infantry, and was also major in the judge advocate general's department. He was on active duty with the United States army from July 30, 1918, to November 29, 1919, as major and lieutenant-colonel in the judge advo- cate general's department, spending six months in the field and ten months at Washington. He now holds a commission in the Officers' Reserve Corps. He returned to Los Angeles with his family on December 5, 1919, and soon afterwards opened up his law office in the Copp Building.
Politically he is a republican. He served one term of two years as a member of the Board of Education from July 1, 1915, to July 1, 1917. Two years preceding that he had been a member of the Municipal Charities Commission. He is a Knight Templar Mason, a member of Al Malaikah Temple of the Shrine, and the Royal Arch Chapter. He is also a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, belonging to the Los Angeles Chapter, served as a director of the Chamber of Com- merce three years, and is a member of the Jonathan Club, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the Officers' Club of Washington.
Colonel Copp, who with his family resides at 314 South Union Avenue, married, at Los Angeles, November 26, 1912, Miss Cora East- man Lord. She was born and educated at Conway, New Hampshire, and is a graduate of the Robinson Seminary, at Exeter, in that state. Mrs. Copp and the children were with her husband while he was absent on military duty in Alabama and Washington. The two children are Andrew' James III, born in 1913, and Jane Pendexter, born in 1917, both natives of Los Angeles.
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JUDGE WALTER BORDWELL. California has no more honored figure among its lawyers and public-spirited leaders than Judge Bordwell of Los Angeles. He came to Southern California thirty years ago, and is still carrying the burdens of a large private practice.
He was born on a farm in Eckford Township, Calhoun County, Michigan, in 1858, son of Charles M. and Eliza (Ingersoll) Bordwell.
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He was educated in public schools, in Olivet College, at Olivet, Mich- igan, and in Eastman's Business College, at Poughkeepsie, New York. His carly years were spent in commercial pursuits, and he prepared for the bar as a student in the law office of Samuel J. Kilbourne, at Lansing, Michigan. He was admitted by the Michigan Supreme Court October 11, 1888. Early in 1889 he came to California and was admitted to the bar in this state, and in the same year admitted to practice in the Federal Courts. He enjoyed a general growing practice until he was appointed judge of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County by Governor Parded in 1905, and in 1906 was elected for a full term. He served on the Superior bench until he resigned January 1, 1913, and has since resumed private practice. In 1914 he was a candidate for chief justice of Cali- fornia. He is now senior member of the well-known law firm of Bord- well & Mathews, and they represent a complete organization of lawyers and a broadly efficient legal service. Their large suite of offices are in the Merchants National Bank Building.
July 18, 1883, Judge Bordwell married Miss Mary E. Willis. They have one child, a daugher, named Helen.
FRED H. SOLOMON. From a penniless newsboy on the streets of San Francisco, to the "Dance King of the West" has been the rapid rise within a little more than two decades of Fred H. Solomon, now one of the best known citizens of Los Angeles and Southern California. Absolutely through his own efforts, he has built up one of the largest amusement institutions of America which furnishes instruction and entertainment daily and nightly to thousands of Los Angelenans, namely Solomon's Greater Penny Dance de luxe.
Mr. Solomon was born in San Francisco, August 17, 1876, to Chapman and Sarephine Solomon. His parents had previously come to California from Louisiana. His father crossed the plains in the early days to San Francisco and was engaged in the wholesale jewelry busi- ness until his death in 1902. The widowed mother is now living with her son in Los Angeles.
As a boy, Mr. Solomon attended public school in San Francisco until he was 14 years of age. His first big enterprise aside from the sale of newspapers was as a traveling salesman covering the state of Texas for M. J. Brandenstein, a wholesale tea and matting merchant. He sold his wares over that great state for over four years, then he returned to San Francisco to form a partnership with his brother Chap- man, to engage in the Japanese curio importing business. Fred Solo- mon was the traveling representative for the firm and was on the road practically all of every year for a period of twenty years.
After retiring from this field of business endeavor, Mr. Solomon came to Los Angeles and established what is known as Solomon's Grand Avenue Dancing Pavilion. Starting out to make his pavilion the Mecca of exclusive and fashionable society people of the Southland, he set the regular price of dancing at five cents per couple. There was not enough patronage at this figure and the prospects for further continuance of the enterprise were not encouraging, when one day out of a clear sky came a valuable suggestion from a Los Angeles newsboy. The little merchant of the streets, used to dealing in pennies in the selling of his papers, suggested to Mr. Solomon that he inaugurate a penny dance. This was in 1915 at a time when coppers were just beginning a popular circulation in Los Angeles. With grave doubts and considerable misgivings as to the results, Mr. Soloman adopted the
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suggested change, and the consequences have been little short of mar- velous. During the past two years, he has handled upwards of six million people at his main gate, has paid over a quarter of a million dollars for music, and has checked enough hats to supply every American soldier who took part in the great war with a headpiece. The only refreshments sold at the pavilion are ice cream and soda water. More than fifty-six persons are on the Penny Dance payroll which aggre- gates several thousand dollars a week. Another feature of the pavilion is the popular-priced dancing lessons, ten of which are given for the ridiculously low sum of one dollar. Every year, more than ten thou- sand pupils have received instruction in the art of dancing by a staff of ten highly paid instructors, several of whom receive a salary in excess of one hundred dollars per week.
The Dance King is particularly noted for his charitable proclivi- ties. Every holiday season in Los Angeles, the newsboys of the city look forward eagerly to the annual Christmas dinner given by Mr. Solomon at which the venders of the different Los Angeles journals are the honored guests at the pavilion, and are furnished everything to make that day memorable in their lives. This is only one of many philan- thropic enterprises with which the Dance King is connected. There is scarcely a charitable institution in Southern California that has not received a subscription from "the man who made the penny famous."
During the Fourth Liberty Loan in Los Angeles, Mr. Solomon bought thirty thousand dollars worth of bonds with fifteen thousand pounds of pennies. That was the largest purchase in weight of cash made in the entire United States. For several years Mr. Solomon has maintained a cot at the new Methodist Hospital for working girls. This cot was placed at the disposal of the Y. W. C. A. cases, and has taken care of from one hundred to a hundred and fifty cases every year. The cot was dedicated to Mr. Solomon's mother, Mrs. S. C. Solomon, who personally looks after most of the cases. Mr. Solomon is also a veteran of the Roosevelt Spanish-American War Veterans. He was in the Spanish-American war in 1898 as member of Battery B. First California Heavy Artillery.
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