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 30
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Los Angeles, in 1882, and was soon busy with a large private practice and took upon himself many responsibilities in the republican party. Soon after coming to Los Angeles he was elected a member of the Board of Education. His law partner at that time was Lieutenant Governor John Mansfield. He was elected to the Superior bench of Los Angeles County in 1884, and he and Judge Anson Brunson were the only judges of that court at the time, and the first republican to have been elected to the Los Angeles County bench up to that time. Judge Cheney handled all the work of the criminal department of the court and gave himself to the duties of the office with indefatigable energy and with such sure and careful administration that his name will always stand high in the judicial annals of the county.
Upon retiring from the bench, in 1891, Judge Cheney was chosen chief counsel for the' Los Angeles Gas & Electric Corporation, and filed that office until he retired from practice. Along with other duties, he was lecturer on constitutional law at the University of Southern Cali- fornia Law School from 1904 to 1912. Judge Cheney has been one of the notable orators in the republican party of California for many years, and when not on the bench his services were freely given to the cam- . paign committees. He is a Unitarian, a member of the University Club, is a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of Southern California, and has found new strength and recreation by frequent changes of occupa- tion rather than complete rest. He has always been a student, is a lover of painting, sculpture and science, has contributed to many professional periodicals, and is also author of a book entitled "Can We Be Sure of Mortality," published in 1911. Out of his long experience, Judge Cheney has formulated a particular philosophy applying to the lawyer. He be- lieves that a young man aspiring to success in the law should "know everything about some things and something about everything."
In 1871 Judge Cheney married Annie E. Skinner of New Haven, Connecticut. She was a woman of unusual intellect and the author of a volume of poems entitled "Dreams of Hellas and Other Poems," pub- lished in 1917. She died at her home, 1913 Ocean View Avenue, on April 26, 1916. Judge Cheney has one son, Harvey D. Cheney, a well- known Los Angeles lawyer.
OSWALD BARTLETT. From the age of eleven until he was about eighteen, Oswald Bartlett lived in the Castaic district of California. His home was a ranch in the mountains. While the Ridge Route now makes that district accessible, at that time it was regarded as almost without the pale of civilization, being in fact the rendezvous of all the outlaws and gunmen in that section. For the training of a young man for the responsibilities of American business, hardly a less promising environ- ment could be imagined. However, it had its compensating advantages. It endowed Mr. Bartlett with his unconquerable love of outdoors, and the solitude, grandeur and rugged wildness of the mountains and incom- parable hills of California. There was a country school which he and a brother and sister attended. They made up half of the entire number of pupils. Every day they walked about three miles each way over rough, rugged mountain hills to the school.
This early chapter in Mr. Bartlett's career is pertinent chiefly by way of contrast to his busy and fruitful experience in Los Angeles. He has lived in this city twenty years and in that time his consecutive in- dustry and insatiable passion for mercantile knowledge brought him to a position where he is recognized as one of the foremost merchants and
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is president and general manager of California's finest store, Black- stone's.
Mr. Bartlett was born at Birmingham, England, February 24, 1882, son of Cornelius and Elizabeth (Hobbins) Bartlett. His father was also a native of England, but when a boy came to America, spending about two years in Norfolk, Virginia, and two years in Hampton, Massa- chusetts. Later he returned to England, married in 1881, and engaged in business as a coal merchant. Becoming dissatisfied with the hum- drum ways of old England, early in 1890 he gave up his business and, returning to America, settled first at Denver, Colorado, where he became a merchant, and in 1893 he moved to California to satisfy his desire to live the life of an agriculturist. His agricultural ventures in the Castaic district were a failure, owing to the lack of water and three or four consecutive dry seasons.
The successful business man is one who learns how to adapt him- self to circumstances and solve each day's problems as they come up. Probably in all his career there was no greater need for this adaptability than when Mr. Bartlett arrived from the ranch a green country boy and, without knowledge of city ways, gained his first knowledge of Los Angeles. Barker Brothers had just moved into their new building on South Spring Street. Young Bartlett was then a member of the Sunday school class in the First Baptist Church, at Sixth and Broadway, his teacher being Mr. C. H. Barker. Through this acquaintance he secured the position of elevator boy in the new building. Barker Brothers were then, as now, the largest furniture store in Los Angeles, having at that time a pay roll of nearly forty people. Oswald Bartlett ran the elevator several months, his wages being increased to seven or eight dollars a week. It supplied the immediate necessity of employment, but had no future. He next requested work in the drapery workshop, where his salary was reduced to three dollars a week on account of his lack of experience. While there he acquired some knowledge of the different sorts of drapery fabrics, and then made a new move to get into the selling end of the business. His next position was stock boy and second sales- man in the drapery department of the Niles Pease Furniture Company, then located in what is now the Harris & Frank Building, at 443 South Spring Street. In successive years there were other changes of em- ployment, each change being actuated by the broader opportunities appar- ently presented. He was with W. & J. Sloane of San Francisco as salesman in the decorative department ; the Eastern Outfitting Company of Los Angeles as general salesman of furniture, carpets and draperies ; and with the J. M. Hale Company of Los Angeles he acquired his first experience in buying. His first real executive position was as buyer of floor coverings and draperies at the Broadway Department Store, where he remained several years. He left that establishment to take charge of Bullock's Basement Store. This was the first basement store established in Los Angeles carrying all lines of merchandise. It was a merchandising idea then an innovation and now in the experimental stage, and its thorough success was largely due to Mr. Bartlett's genius. After about a year with Bullock's, he accepted another opportunity to go with the Hamburger store as buyer for floor covering, furniture, drapery and picture departments, a line in which he was specially inter- ested. With that house he remained about ten years.
While these successive changes are briefly told, during those years of service Mr. Bartlett had achieved the knowledge, the executive sense and the broad and detailed comprehension which are the chief qualifica-
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tions of a successful merchant. On this foundation his subsequent progress seems merely a matter of course. February 1, 1917, he availed himself of the opportunity for still further advancement, when he became merchandise manager for the N. B. Blackstone Company. Not long afterward he succeeded to the position of president and general manager, and as such he is directing the service of a store known nationally and internationally.
Notwithstanding all his various duties and responsibilities, Mr. Bart- lett has been a close observer of social and political conditions affecting the welfare of his city and nation, particularly in recent years. He is one of the stanch business men to whom Americanism is something more than a mere word. He conceives of it as a set of principles, involving not only sound patriotism, but sound political economy, instruction in which should begin in the grammar grades of public schools, so that the next generation at least will be properly trained and as a direct result of training and education be competent to solve the problems which now cause social and industrial unrest. Mr. Bartlett is a republican and a firm believer that all municipal politics should be strictly non-partisan. He is an active member of the Commercial Federation of California, a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, The Brentwood Country Club and a thirty-second degree Mason, being affiliated with Hollywood Lodge No. 355, F. and A. M., and Los Angeles Consistory No. 3, and a Shriner. He is a member of the First Baptist Church of Hollywood.
December 31, 1904, at Los Angeles, he married Miss Louise Ecker- man, daughter of Alexander and Rosa (Bullock) Eckerman of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Alexander earned all the honors due to a brave and faithful soldier and veteran of our Civil war. He was in fourteen battles and numerous skirmishes, including the battle of the Wilderness, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Spottsylvania and Petersburg, in the last engagement his younger brother being shot down by his side. For a period of fifty-eight years until the time of his death he was engaged in the drug business in Michigan. Mr. and Mr. Bartlett have two children, Oswald Jr., born in 1909, and Elizabeth Louise, born in 1917.
MOSES H. SHERMAN. To have been at some time a11 employe, subordinate or co-worker of General M. H. Sherman is an experience that many prominent Californians never neglect to mention with a degree of pride and satisfaction, thereby claiming credit not only to themselves, but unconsciously expressing a high tribute to this pioneer and master railway builder of Southern California.
The great work General Sherman and his brother-in-law and busi- ness associate, E. P. Clark, has done in developing the electric transporta- tion in Southern California need here be only briefly outlined as part of the personal history of General Sherman.
He was born at West Rupert, in Bennington County, Vermont, De- cember 3, 1853, of sturdy New England ancestry. General Sherman's achievements apparently have been a result of the steady and sturdy de- velopment of his own powers and experiences. He completed his educa- tion in the Oswego Normal School, in New York, and was a district school teacher in New York State. At the age of twenty he made his first visit to Los Angeles, and soon thereafter went to the sparsely set- tled territory of Arizona, locating at Prescott, then only a mining town. There he taught school until 1876, when the Territorial Governor selected him, at the age of twenty-three, as a suitable man to represent Arizona at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. After discharging his
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duties at Philadelphia, he started to return to the Pacific Coast. The voyage was made by the Isthmus of Panama, the steamship being wrecked near Cuba, and altogether was a trying adventure for all concerned. At that time General Sherman was accompanied by his sister, who later became the wife of Mr. E. P. Clark. On his return to Arizona, young Sherman was appointed by the then Governor, John C. Fremont, super- intendent of public instruction. In that office he had the first crucial test of his abilities as an organizer. Arizona then had no public school system and young Sherman had to solve the many difficult problems of providing school facilities for the scattered population of the territory. After his appointive term, the office became elective, and he was chosen as his own successor, being the only republican elected to a territorial office. During that term, at the request of the Legislature, he rewrote the school laws of the territory, and those laws, unanimously adopted, remained the standard for over thirty years.
His next public task after leaving the office of superintendent of schools came in the shape of an appointment by the Governor to the office of adjutant-general of the territory. He was reappointed by the succeeding Governor, and during his two terms accomplished for the National Guard or Militia what he had done previously for the public school system.
In the meantime he had entered business, having established, in 1884, at the age of thirty-one, the Valley Bank of Phoenix, Arizona, and serv- ing as its first president. Later this became the largest bank of Arizona. He also gained his first experience in railroad building in Arizona, build- ing the Phoenix Railway in 1884. He retained the ownership of that line and in 1910 extended it to Glendale, Arizona, to connect with the Santa Fe system.
It was during a visit to Los Angeles in 1889 that the big oppor- tunity of his lifetime was presented to General Sherman. The city at that time had in operation a costly cable tramway system, built by a Chicago syndicate. The system was frequently paralyzed as a result of winter rains washing sand into the cable slots, and there was no end of dissatisfaction on the part of the public. While General Sherman had spent most of his years in the Southwest, he had kept in touch with modern scientific progress, and had followed with interest the first experi- ments in the use of electricity as a motive power for driving street cars. Electric traction, however, at that time was still in an experimental stage, though in two or three Eastern cities its possibilities had been demon- strated. General Sherman determined that a most promising field for electric traction was open in Los Angeles. He enlisted the services of his brother-in-law, Mr. E. P. Clark, in raising capital and securing a franchise, and together they built the first tracks of the Los Angeles Railway, and soon afterwards the first electric street cars were put in operation. General Sherman became president of the system, with Mr. Clark vice president and general manager. They absorbed the cable railway and from their initial success went on to larger projects, includ- ing the organization of the Los Angeles & Pasadena Electric Railway. All this property was subsequently sold to H. E. Huntington. General Sherman and Mr. Clark then turned their enterprise to another field, organizing the Los Angeles Pacific Railway and building lines to Holly- wood, Santa Monica and eventually covering all the territory between Los Angeles and Santa Monica Bay. This system was sold to E. H. Harriman, and became the nucleus of the present great Harriman trac- tion holdings in Southern California. General Sherman is still a director in this system.
Chas. Winsel
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This is a mere outline of General Sherman's activities in Southern California. It would be difficult to estimate the tremendous influence he has exercised over many lines of development which are now essential features of modern Los Angeles and surrounding territory. He is also a banker, being president and director of the First National Bank of Miland, vice president and director of the First National Bank of Cal- exico, vice president and director of the First National Bank of Van- Nuys, vice president and director of the State Bank of Owensmouth, director of the Farmers and Merchants National Bank of Los Angeles, president of the M. H. Sherman Investment Company, and also a director in many other corporations in California and Arizona, and is an extensive property owner. He is a member of the California Club, Jonathan Club, Country Club and other social and business organizations at Los Angeles and elsewhere.
General Sherman married, in 1885, Harriet E. Pratt. Her father, R. H. Pratt, was one of the distinguished builders of the Central Pacific Railway. They have three children, Robert, Hazeltine and Lucy.
CHARLES FREDERICK JOSEPH WINSEL has been a Californian since 1887. In former years he was a landscape gardener whose skill and taste were in the service of the Southern Pacific Railway Company and were responsible for the adornment of many of the station grounds of that road in California. Mr. Winsel is founder and is senior member of the Winsel-Gibbs Seed Company, one of the leading firms of the state handling seeds, nursery stock and other supplies for the farm and garden. This establishment is located at 211 South Main Street, and the nursery is at Glendale.
Mr. Winsel was born at Brussells, Belgium, June 4, 1869. His parents were Charles Isidore and Josephine (Riems) Winsel, both native Belgians. His mother was born in 1830 during the Belgium Revolu- tion and died at Ghent in 1914. The father was born in September, 1823, and died at Brussels, August 28, 1872. In early life he was an officer in the engineering department of the Belgium army, later trans- ferred to the government administration of railways in Belgium. Of six children, two daughters and four sons, all are living except the youngest whose name was Adolph.
Charles Frederick Joseph Winsel is the only member of the family in America .. He received his early education in Brussels, and was an honor student of the University of Ghent, where he graduated in 1887. He had specialized and won distinction in horticultural study and practice at the University. At the time of his graduation he was awarded a prize in competitive examination, this honor conferring upon him the privilege of a free trip to America and return, with prom- ise of a post in the Belgium Government. He came to America, land- ing at Philadelphia in 1887, and was so impressed by the opportunities and advantages of the new world that he never went back to his native land. From Philadelphia he went to Cincinnati, to New Orleans, to Chicago, to California, and after visiting San Francisco located in Los Angeles.
For seven years Mr. Winsel was in the employ of the Southern Paci- fic Railway Company as their landscape gardener. This work required much travel, over all the California lines of the company. Eighteen years ago Mr. Winsel began his present business in the block where he is now located. His first associate was Louis LeGrande, superintendent
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of city parks at the time William Workman was mayor of Los Angeles. Mr. Winsel assisted LeGrande in laying out the city parks of Los Angeles. The Winsel-Gibbs Seed Company is a firm of the highest standing and reputation, and is member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles Trade Association.
While with the Southern Pacific during the Spanish American war Mr. Winsel was a member of Cavalry Troop D at Los Angeles, and enlisted for service in the war. On July 20, 1916, he was made vice consul for Belgium in Los Angeles, and has retained that post of respon- sibility and honor ever since. Throughout the duration of the war he was president of the Allies Committee, made up of consular and other representatives of the allied governments in Southern California. A native Belgian, a representative business man of California, Mr. Win- sel very appropriately became the focus of the many lines of influence radiating from every household and home in California for the relief of the oppressed Belgian people. The value of the work he did was fit- tingly recognized during the visit of King Albert of Belgium to Cali- fornia. On July 21, 1919, the king personally conferred upon Mr. Winsel the degree of Chevalier de L'Ordre de Leopold II. At the same time the Belgian queen personally decoratd Mrs. Winsel with the medal of Queen Elizabeth in recognition of her services to Belgium.
In 1897, at Oakland, California, Mr. Winsel married Miss Bertha Ott, a native California daughter. Her uncle was the late Moses East- man, who founded the big firm of the Oakland Paving Company. Her father and mother, now deceased, came to Oakland from the east and later lived in Los Angeles. Mrs. Winsel is a member of the Serbian Relief Committee and was on the original Belgium Committee. They have three daughters, Elsie, Laura and Charlotte, all natives of Los Angeles. The younger daughters are now attending high school at Glendale. Elise is the wife of James Thomas. Mr. Thomas was born in Los Angeles, where he now resides, and he was in training in the Field Artillery when the war closed.
WILLIAM E. RANSOM. The untimely death of William E. Ransom was a distinct loss to the world of art. Mr. Ransom, who left a very large collection of original paintings, foreign and domestic, was for twenty years a resident of Los Angeles, and died at his home in this city, at 1722 Fourth avenue, October 17, 1919.
Mr. Ransom was a man of many gifts, and had been successful in business before he took up art collecting. He was born at Rochester, New York, February 14, 1856. In his veins was the blood of some of the old Norse Vikings. Early in the sixteen hundreds four Ransom brothers came to America, and from these four brothers are descended practically all the extensive family of Ransoms now found on the Amer- ican continent. Ex-Senator Matt Ransom was one of his near relatives, and a cousin was Ex-Surrogate Judge Ransom of New York state ..
William E. Ransom was a son of Adonijah and Alice Ransom, who in 1859 moved to Cleveland, the city in which William E. Ransom ac- quired his education and began his early business career. He was a graduate of the Cleveland High School, and also took a law course. When only twelve years of age he invented and constructed a miniature steam engine, which was exhibited at the Ohio State Fair and attracted much attention and interesting comment on account of the youth of the inventor. His early business career at Cleveland was in the lake trans-
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Jrm. E. Rawsom
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portation industry. He owned several boats in the traffic of the Great Lakes. He was also in real estate, and his business in that line was a factor in the growth and development of the city of Cleveland. For some five years before entering art work Mr. Ransom was engaged in handling etchings, photogravures, steel engravings and other fine prints.
In 1888 Mr. Ransom removed to New York City, and there laid the foundation for his art business, which later made him internationally known as a critic and collector. He first opened an art store on the site of the present Flatiron Building, and continued in business in New York tintil 1900. He made yearly trips to Europe, collecting famous pictures, and establishing close personal friendships with artists and collectors. In 1900 Mr. Ransom removed to Los Angeles, where he continued in the art business. He took a deep personal interest in establishing and de- veloping a high-class art in Los Angeles, and was widely known for his fight against art frauds. As an importer, he brought to this country many famous works now found in the Yerkes, Havermeyers, Henry E. Huntington, Widner and other exhibits. The business founded and con- ducted for many years by Mr. Ransom is now continued by his two sons, Adrian C. and Don E. Ransom.
One of his close friends among European artists was Count Vic- toria Guaccimanni, who at the time of the death of Mr. Ransom was engaged in a strenuous race with threatening blindness to finish a picture at Mr. Ransom's order. Other European friends of Mr. Ransom were Tambourina, once court painter to the King of Italy ; Verestschagen, the famous Russian painter of war scenes; Robert Hillingsford, the Eng- lishman, and John Frazier of England, while in America he numbered among his personal friends Thomas Moran, Harrison Fisher, Kenyon Cox, Ralph Blakelock, Stanford White, Charles F. McKim, Paul de Longpre, Ranger, Bruce Crane and James G. Tyler.
In 1877 William E. Ransom married Miss Minnie Sterne, their two children being Adrian C. and Don E. Adrian C., who was born in Cleve- land in 1881, was educated in the common schools in Hiram College of Ohio, and in a university college at Toronto, Canada. He has been closely associated with his father's business for a number of years, and accompanied his father on the last trip to Europe. He was privileged to meet many of the prominent artists and spent several days in the old castle home of Count Guaccimanni. While in Venice he saved the life of an Italian baby about to drown in the Grand Canal, and for that act was offered a medal by. the Italian government.
Don E. Ransom was educated in the common and high schools of Los Angeles, took a business course, and served as night deputy sheriff in Los Angeles under Sheriffs Hamill and Cline. He was at Yuma. Arizona, one year, serving as a motorcycle officer under Sheriff "Mell" Greenleaf. During the late war he was in the service twenty-two months as a sergeant and was with Colonel Gambrill in the Quartermaster's De- partment at Los Angeles. He is now associated with his brother in caring for the business established by their father.
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