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 23
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Mr. Solomon attributes the bulk of his success to consistent and sensational advertising. More than once, he has made Los Angeles sit up and take notice with the various stunts he has staged to give front page publicity to the Penny Dance de luxe. Mr. Solomon has received many invitations from other cities to come to them and establish penny dances, and while scores of lucrative offers have been made, he has persistently refused, insisting that he is anchored to Los Angeles and Southern California for good and all.
MARTHA NELSON MCCAN. By her services at home in Los Angeles and abroad, Martha Nelson McCan is regarded as one of the most bril- liant and popular women of Southern California.
Born at Plymouth, Wisconsin, she is a daughter of Horatio Nelson Smith, a native of Vermont. Her mother, Laura Chase, was a grand- daughter of Bishop Philander Chase, the first. Episcopal bishop west of the Allegheny Mountains and subsequently founder of Kenyon College, a great Episcopal school in Ohio. Horatio Nelson Smith was a Wis- consin pioneer and was identified with the real building of the North- west and prominent in politics.
Martha Nelson McCan attended public school at Plymouth, also a school of the Episcopal Church, and later attended and graduated from
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Milwaukee College, now known as Milwaukee Downer College. She married George H. Yenowine at Louisville, Kentucky, who was prom- inent in newspaper work both at Louisville and Milwaukee. After his death Mrs. Yenowine came to California and became the wife of David Chambers McCan of New Orleans, a Los Angeles business man.
Martha Nelson McCan was elected president of the Southern Cali- fornia Woman's Press Club, vice president of the Friday Morning Club and then president of the latter, serving as chairman of the Publicity Committee in the suffrage campaign. For years she has written a great deal for newspapers and magazines, and is still actively identified with the Woman's City Club, the Friday Morning Club and Woman's Press Club. When she retired from the presidency of the Friday Morning Club, Mayor Alexander appointed her on the Civil Service Commission. She was the first woman to be called to that responsibility, and during four and a half years she gave her undivided time and talents to the work, serving as vice president and later as president. She resigned to go into the Federal Employment Bureau, and when war broke out was appointed chairman of the Publicity Committee of the Red Cross Chap- ter. She resigned that commission to go to England to investigate women's work, going over on one of seven ships in a convoy, and she was one of fifteen women on board. She spent a brief period of service in St. Dunstan's Hospital for the Blind Soldiers and Sailors, and was then assigned to duty at Liberty Hut on the Strand, which had been established by the Y. M. C. A. as a clearing house for soldiers. On her arrival in London occurred the first moonlight air raid, and during her subsequent stay of several months there were many exciting raids.
On returning to this country Mrs. McCan was sent out by the Bureau of Public Information to speak from the standpoint largely of her knowledge and personal experience. She lectured all through the Middle West states and the Northwest, winding up her speaking tour in California. On returning to her home state she managed the woman's campaign to elect Mayor Snyder, and at different times has been active in other municipal and state campaigns in California. She is a resource- ful publicist, a democrat, and a great admirer of President Wilson and his administration. Mrs. McCan has been around the world a number of times.
HON. CHARLES HIRAM RANDALL has had a busy and eventful career. It began as a schoolboy printer on the plains and prairies of Nebraska while his father was doing missionary work in building up the Methodist churches there. He still has an active fellowship with newspaper men and for ten years was a California editor. But the honors and re- sponsibilities that chiefly distinguish him have been his three terms of service in Congress as representative of the Ninth California District, serving in the Sixty-fourth, Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth Congresses, a period constituting one of the most critical and significant epochs in American and world history.
Charles H. Randall was born at Auburn, in Nemaha County, Ne- braska, July 23, 1865, a son of Rev. Elias J. and Sarah F. (Schooley) Randall. He had the advantages of the Nebraska district schools to the age of seventeen. While his father was in charge of a Methodist church at Table Rock, Nebraska, he went to work as apprentice in the printing office of the Table Rock Argus, and subsequently was promoted to the responsibilities of local editor. The office was not a strenuous one, and except on the two or three very busy days of the week he
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attended school and managed to keep up with his studies. In 1883 his father moved to Fairmount, Nebraska, and there Mr. Randall was printer and local editor for the Fairmount Signal one year. His independent career in journalism began in 1885, when he went to a new county, Kim- ball County, and founded the first newspaper, known as the Kimball Observer. He was its publisher and editor and also for three years assistant postmaster. Selling his paper, he sought a new field at Harris- burg, Nebraska, and again did some pioneer work, founding the Banner County News, which was the first paper in the county and was started when the county had only twelve families within its boundaries. Mr. Randall sold his interests at Banner in 1891 and for a number of years was in the Railway Mail Service, running on fast mail trains between Omaha and Ogden. In 1904 he removed to Los Angeles, and for two years was advertising manager for the Santa Fe Railroad Company. In 1906 he established the Highland Park Herald, and continued as its publisher for ten years.
In the meantime his time and abilities were being increasingly taken up by public responsibilities. In 1909 he was appointed a member of the Municipal Park Commission of Los Angeles and served until 1910. In the latter year he was elected a member of the State Legislature and served in the sessions of 1911 and 1912. Mr. Randall was secretary of the first progressive regublican local organization in Southern Cali- fornia, known as the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, which was organized at Highland Park. In his political work he has been a progressive in spirit and service, as well as in name.
When, in 1914, Mr. Randall was elected a member of the Sixty- fourth Congress, he registered as a prohibitionist. He won the demo- cratic and prohibition nominations, defeating C. W. Bell, and had the distinction of being the first candidate of the prohibition party to be elected to Congress. In 1916 he made the race on all the tickets, being the primary nominee of the prohibitionists, republicans, progressives and democratic parties. In the primary election he received twenty-five hun- dred more votes than all the other nominees put together. The election in 1918 was largely a duplication of his previous performance, the only variation consisting in the fact that there was no progressive ticket. He received the votes of democrats and prohibitionists and had seven thous- and majority.
Mr. Randall is a Methodist, a member of the City Club and is affiliated with the Woodmen of the World and Modern Woodmen of America. At Kimball, Nebraska, November 14, 1885, he married May E. Stanley, formerly of Gardner, Illinois. They have one child, Violet, now Mrs. Clyde Cassels of Los Angeles.
GODFREY HOLTERHOFF, JR., a prominent official of the Santa Fe Railway at Los Angeles, has been a resident of the state for forty years and practically throughout that time actively identified with the prac- tical and financial problems of railroading.
He was born at Cincinnati, November 4, 1860, son of Godfrey and Helena C. (Guysi) Holterhoff. He graduated fromthe Woodward High School in Cincinnati in 1877 and fo ra year or so thereafter was in several lines of business in Cincinnati.
On account of impaired health he came to California (Los Angeles) in October, 1879, and after recovering his strength in the fall of 1880, he became secretary to the managing agent of a syndicate at San Diego which organized and built the California Southern Railroad which
afry Ballenhoff Jr.
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later was succeeded by the Southern California Railway Company, and in 1902 acquired by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Com- pany and was during the intervening years in various departments of the railroad, but since 1883 solely in the financial department. In 1893 he was promoted from cashier and paymaster to secretary and treasurer and later when the road was formally acquired by the Santa Fe Railway, Mr. Holterhoff was made assistant treasurer and assistant secretary of the Santa Fe and in charge of the financial department of the com- pany in its far western territory. Since then he has become an officer and director in over thirty corporations, the majority of them con- trolled by the Santa Fe. He has also given his services as a director or in other executive capacities to the Brea Canon Oil Company, Kings County Development Company, East Highland Improvement Company, California Portland Cement Company, Los Angeles Trust and Savings Bank, Southern Trust and Commerce Bank at San Diego, and has many important interests in orange groves, oil and land properties, and com- mercial and manufacturing enterprises. In financial circles Mr. Holter- hoff is easily one of the best known men in Southern California.
He is a republican, and in Los Angeles is a member of the South- western Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, the California Club, Sunset Club, Los Angeles Country Club, Midwick Country Club, Crags Country Club, Cerritos Gun Club, and the Landmarks Club. He is also a member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
At Los Angeles September 5, 1889, he married Mrs. Louise Schaeffer Lewis. They have one daughter, Leila S. Holterhoff.
CHARLES N. WILLIAMS, clerk of the United States District Court at Los Angeles, has had a long and varied experience in public affairs and has been connected with his present office as deputy and in charge of nearly all the executive and administrative details for a number of years.
Mr. Williams was born in Humboldt County, California, January 26, 1860, and is the son of a forty-niner. His father, R. M. Williams, was born in Oswego County, New York, in 1823. He grew up and was educated there, became a druggist, and for several years lived in New Orleans. On starting for California in 1849 he made the journey across the Gulf and overland through Mexico, and on the west coast of Mexico he and his party chartered a boat for San Francisco. He located in Northern California and operated a pack train between the supply centers and the mines until 1851. That year he established his headquarters in Humboldt County and continued in the transportation and mercantile business until 1854. After five years in the West he went back East, again through Mexico, and spent six months in New York. He mar- ried Olive A. Tiffany. On returning to California he became interested in cattle and horse ranching and farming in Humboldt County and also operated pack trains until 1865. That year he moved to Eureka, and was a merchant until he retired in 1873. The close of his life he spent in Los Angeles and died in 1875. Of his eight children only three are now living: Mrs. Cecelia Owen of Los Angeles, Charles N. and Bertram E., also of Los Angeles.
Charles N. Williams had his first schooling at Eureka, in Humboldt County. In 1873 he came with his parents to Los Angeles and graduated from the city high school in 1877. He was a member of the third gradu- ating class of the high school. After a year in the University of Cali- fornia, he went back to his old home vicinity at Eureka and operated a
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shingle mill until 1884. Selling out that property and returning to Los Angeles, he was deputy county clerk for a few months, and then clerk in the United States Land Office four years. For three years he was salesman and bookkeeper with H. Bartning, wholesale tea and coffee merchant. About that time Mr. Williams entered upon his duties as office deputy to the clerk of the United States District Court, and for a number of years handled most of the detail of the office. In January, 1918, upon the resignation of Mr. Van Dyke, clerk of the court, Mr. Williams was appointed his successor by Judge Bledsoe and Judge Trippet.
Mr. Williams is a member of the Masonic Order and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and in politics is a democrat. He married, at Los Angeles, August 21, 1881, Miss Lydia A. Raney. They are the parents of six children : Olive A., at home; Clarence N., in the motion picture business at Fresno; Ralph S., a farmer in Los Angeles County ; Harold T., who was with the Twentieth Engineers in France, and is now home; Paul R. was in the Aviation Corps, stationed at Langley Field, in Virginia, now also at home; and Ruth L., who handled the responsibilities of deputy clerk in her father's office until she married W. L. Refenberick of Berkeley. Mr. Refenberick is with the Shell Oil Company.
JULIUS HAUSER. A business of most substantial growth and stand- ing in Los Angeles and representing services and enterprise of a family of thorough business men is the Hauser Packing Company, the begin- ning of which was a small meat shop conducted by Julius Hauser at Sacramento nearly fifty years ago.
Julius Hauser was born in Baden, Germany, January 7, 1847, son of Michael and R. (Federer) Hauser. It was customary in the German system of compulsory education for boys to attend the common schools to the age of fourteen. After reaching that age, Julius Hauser was put to work on his father's farm. For two and a half years he was a butcher's apprentice. Having a working knowledge of that trade, he went at the age of eighteen to Alsace, and two years later his journeyings brought him to Zurich, Switzerland, where he continued working as a butcher. Six months later, having become discouraged at the outlook and prospect in Europe, he set out for America, returning to Baden long enough to say farewell to his parents and friends. He sailed for New York in 1867 and had only four dollars in his pocket when he began life on American shores. His first employment was on a coal boat on the Hudson River at a dollar a day. What he considered a better oppor- tunity to make his way in the New World was an offer as a farm hand laborer in New York State at the rate of fifteen dollars a month. Then for a time he worked as a butcher at Poughkeepsie, New York, and after two years resigned his job and set out for California in 1870.
His first experience in this state was in the small town of Wash- ington, across the river from Sacramento. His modest savings of seventy-five dollars meant no capital at all in those golden days of the West, and he accordingly went to work in a meat shop, and at the end of eight months he bought out the shop at a nominal figure, and from that time forward there was no question as to his ultimate success. In a short time he took his brother Valentine into partnership, and continued the business there for twelve years. In 1882 he sold his Sacramento interests to his brother.
It was at that time and stage in his affairs that Julius Hauser trans- ferred his interests to Los Angeles. Here he bought a meat market at
Orathlied G. Guerill
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the corner of First and Main Street, which was his stand for the thir- teen years following. In 1895 he bought the Mott market, which enjoyed a period of renewed prosperity as an addition to the rapidly growing Hauser enterprises.
Julius Hauser really founded the present packing company in 1891, on West Washington Street, seven miles from the Court House. The industry grew rapidly, was added to and increased from time to time. By 1904 it was necessary to seek a new location, and the firm was then incorporated as the Hauser Packing Company, a close corporation, its stockholders and officers being Julius Hauser and his sons. By 1906 the plant and stock yards of the packing company, covering twenty acres, was completed and put in operation. It is one of the largest industries for the preparation and conservation of meat products in the West, and prior to the great war did an annual business of more than five million dollars. The products of the company were exported to many foreign countries, including England, Japan and Europe. The active officers of the Hauser Packing Company are Julius Hauser, president; E. C. Hauser, vice president ; H. J. Hauser, secretary ; L. A. Hauser, treasurer, and F. M. Hauser, superintendent.
Julius Hauser as a conspicuous business man has been a member of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, the American Meat Packers' Association, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade and Retailers' and Jobbers' Association, is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and a member of the Elks and Odd Fellows.
Julius Hauser married, at Sacramento, September 11, 1878, Caroline Hergett. To their marriage were born five sons and one daughter. The sons already named are actively associated in the business and Clarence F. is deceased. The only daughter is Louise W. 1
KATHLEEN ALICE AVERILL is one of the most competent business women in Los Angeles. Every one who makes a success in business must have at least one big incentive. Mrs. Averill confesses that she had two: A strenuous endeavor to drown the overwhelming grief of an irretrievable loss, and second, an ambitious determination to make good as a business woman.
The story of her career is an unusual one. Some people who have been thrown from circumstances of luxury and comfort into compara- tive poverty spend all the rest of their lives living in the past. Mrs. Averill by contrast while keeping green the memory of her happy early years, has enthusiastically lived for the present, and has made the duties of the day ever paramount.
Her family name was Enright. She was born at her father's estate Templemaley near the town of Ennis in County Clare, Ireland. Her father, Captain Andrew Enright of the Clare Militia, afterwards the London Irish Rifles, was also born at Templemaley. Her mother was Alice Greenhill, a native of Canonbury Park, Islington, London, and daughter of William Greenhill, senior member of the firm of Green- hill Brothers of the London Stock Exchange. Alice Greenhill had one sister who married Alfred Cellier, a famous operatic composer of London and a close friend of Sir Arthur Sullivan, the composer.
The marriage of Mrs. Averill's parents was a runaway match of somewhat romantic character. On both sides there were objections because of the youth of the pair. They eloped from Ireland, were mar- ried in London at St. John's church, Norfolk Square, and set sail im- mediately for New Zealand on a sail boat, sailing vessels at that time
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constituting the only means of transportation to that faraway country. They reached Dunedin, New Zealand, in exactly three months from the day they set sail from London. Captain, Enright took up sheep farm- ing on a large scale, and they lived in the wilds of New Zealand for three years. The oldest brother of Mrs. Averill was born there. In the meantime there had been a family reconciliation, and Captain Enright being an only son and child returned to Ireland at the earnest request , of his parents. When they returned to Ireland they had traveled com- pletely around the world on a sailing vessel. Captain Enright then built up another family estate in County Clare adjoining that of his father. On the death of his parents he inherited the entire estate, and became a large landed proprietor. His individual property he called Trina- derry. He and his family including Mrs. Averill were wonderfully happy for a number of years. Captain Enright like all the other pro- prietors of landed estates in Ireland at that time was boycotted, but manfully tried to overcome the deplorable conditions under which the landed gentry of Ireland were obliged to live. Finally Kathleen Alice and her two brothers, very young children, were deliberately set upon and stoned by the boycotting peasants, and would probably have been killed had not several of the police known as Irish Constabulary, then billetted in temporary barracks on the Enright estate, came to their rescue.
In disgust at this circumstance Captain Enright moved to England to a beautiful home called Kempston Lodge, in the village of Kempston, in Bedfordshire. From private tutors at home Kathleen Alice was sent to complete her education at a private college in the town of Bedford called Madame de Marchots French Protestant College. She graduated there at the age of sixteen. Two years later her father having in the meantime gone on the London Stock Exchange risked his fortune and lost, the entire family emigrated to America direct to San Diego, Cali- fornia. Shortly after coming to California Kathleen Alice Enright met her husband, Origin V. Averill, an only son of Dr. Maria B. Averill and Voltaire Averill, and was married. They lived very happily together for fourteen months, when Mr. Averill contracted typhoid fever, and Mrs. Averill was left a widow without children.
Such were the circumstances which prompted her to a business career. After a course in the Brownsberger College of Los Angeles, she went to work with the City Dye Works and Laundry Company, at that time a very small concern, in the year 1901, as stenographer and bookkeeper. Mrs. Averill has given eighteen years of close application to this business. It is with no small degree of pride that she has watched its marvelous growth, under the able direction of the president and proprietor Mr. J. J. Jenkins (a sketch of whom appears elsewhere). When Mrs. Averill entered the business it was a small shop, employing a half dozen people. Now it is one of the most scientific and sanitary plants of the kind in the United States and has a pay roll of two hun- dred and fifty employes. Mrs. Averill has been secretary and assistant manager of the company since 1908, and those who know the business are aware that she has been very instrumental in its upbuilding.
Mrs. Averill now lives at her beach home which she built a few years ago in Venice, and drives back and forth to her work every day in her Buick car. She was reared in the Protestant faith as an Epis- copalian, but has no church affiliations at present. The lure of the moun- tains and the charm of California are the attractions which entice her and her friends to the country every Sunday. She is a firm believer in the religion "out-of-doors."
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P. G. WINNETT. The friends and associates of P. G. Winnett are not without complete justification in claiming for him a special genius as a merchant and business organizer. Mr. Winnett started at the very bottom round of the ladder in mercantile affairs, and it was through the route of work, a constant and unremitting diligence and study that he attained his present enviable position.
Mr. Winnett was born at Winnipeg, Canada, April 3, 1881, son of John W. and Lydia (Roe) Winnett. His father, a native of County Clare, Ireland, came to America when a boy and located at London, Ontario, Canada, where he was a furniture manufacturer. Later he moved out to Winnipeg, had a furniture factory there, sold it in 1889, and went to Victoria, British Columbia, where he took up the real estate business. In 1896 he moved to Los Angeles and was a real estate operator in this city until he retired in 1905.
During these several sojourns of his parents, P. G. Winnett acquired his education in the public schools of Winnipeg and Victoria, and soon after reaching Los Angeles, in 1896, went to work as errand boy in a dry goods store. There was perhaps nothing in the routine of that store which was omitted from the program of his experience, and he utilized every opportunity to acquire further knowledge of the business.
In 1900 Mr. Winnett resigned from his first place of business and helped organize the Bullock Store. This is one of the largest and finest stores on the Pacific Coast. Mr. Winnett is vice president and director of the company and assistant general manager of the entire business.
He is a member of the California Club, Hollywood Lodge of Masons, the Brentwood Country Club, and in politics is independent. Mr. Win- nett has a delightful country home at Santa Monica Canyon. The site is a magnificent one, commanding a twenty-mile view of the ocean and of the canyon and mountains.
June 7, 1905, at Los Angeles, Mr. Winnett married Helen Hutton, a native of Los Angeles, daughter of Judge A. W. Hutton. They have three children: Jack, born at Los Angeles, December 26, 1906, now in the public schools ; Kate Irene, born at Los Angeles, February 27, 1908; and Glen Helen, born September 8, 1910 , both of whom are students in the Academy of the Holy Names at Santa Monica.
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