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 46
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During his busy life Mr. Emerson received many public honors. He was an influential republican and served as a presidential elector in 1888, was appointed a commissioner to the Paris Exposition of 1900, and to the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, and in 1900 was vice chairman of the Speakers' Bureau of the Republican National Committee. His speech replying to "Coin" Harvey's financial school was issued as a republican campaign document in 1896, and in 1900 over half a million copies of his speech on sound money were circulated throughout the country.
Considering his business achievements, it seems remarkable that he found time to indulge in literary pursuits. Undoubtedly he derived his chief satisfaction from literature. He began his career as an author over thirty years ago, his first book being "Winning Winds," published in 1885. The list of his important books is as follows: "Fall of Jason," 1889; "My Partner and I," 1896; "Buell Hampton," 1902; "The Build- ers," 1906; "The Smoky God," 1908; "The Flock Master," the title of which was subsequently changed to "The Treasure of Hidden Valley," published in 1911; "A Vendetta of the Hills," a truly typical California story, published in 1916; "The Man Who Discovered Himself," 1917, and many sketches and stories of travel. He was author of "American Valor," a speech delivered at Gettysburg in 1911. At his death he left the manuscript of a four-act play.
Mr. Emerson, who died in 1919 at his home, at 2964 West Seventh street, in Los Angeles, was a member of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, was a life member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, was a life member of Wichita Consistory No. 2 of the Scottish Rite Masons, a life member of Ellsworth Lodge of Masons in Kansas, a member of En- campment Masonic Lodge in Wyoming, of Korein Temple of the Shrine at Rawlins, Wyoming, and Apollo Commandery, Knights ~Templar, at Chicago.
June 4, 1907, Mr. Emerson married Miss Bonnie O'Neal, who had come to California with her mother in 1906.
JOSEPH W. JAUCH, M. D. For thirty years Dr. Jauch has been an able and esteemed member of the medical fraternity of Los Angeles, regarded not only for his professional services, but for his interesting personality and many scholarly attainments.
Dr. Jauch was born at Altdorf, in Canton Uri, Switzerland, January 31, 1863, a son of Joseph and Josephine Jauch. His mother was a native of Milan, Italy. His father, also born at Altdorf, was educated in medi- cine in Switzerland and Germany and practiced in Canton Uri until his death in 1868. Thirteen of his children are still living.
Dr. Joseph W. Jauch attended public schools and as a youth studied philosophy and theology in the Einsiedeln Monastery conducted by the Benedictine Order in Switzerland. He studied medicine in the Univer- city of Zurich, University of Bern and University of Basel, Switzerland, graduating in 1887, and afterwards attended the Universities of Munich
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and Heidelberg in Germany, and Wurzburg in Austria. He received his doctor's degree in 1889 and in the same year came to America and began building up a practice and professional reputation at Los Angeles.
Dr. Jauch is a republican. He married, at Los Angeles, Mrs. Mary Hotchkiss, August 6, 1906.
GEORGE H. TURNER, who came to Los Angeles in 1904, has, with the exception of the first two years, been engaged in the business of selling or handling plumbing goods and supplies, and a few years ago he organized the G. H. Turner Company, the leading jobbing and whole- sale concern of its kind in Southern California.
Mr. Turner was born in Steubenville, Ohio, February 24, 1874, son of Robert H. and Mary J. (Breen) Turner. He had a common and high school education and at the age of twenty-one went to work as clerk in the office of a department superintendent of the Carnegie Steel Corpora- tion at Pittsburgh. He was advanced from time to time, eventually be- coming an assistant superintendent.
He resigned in 1904 to come to Los Angeles, and the first two years here was with the Oil Well Supply Company. Since then he has handled plumbing supplies, and as a matter of experience there is none of his competitors who can excel him in thorough knowledge of every- thing connected with this industry. For two years he was a salesman for A. H. Busch & Company, then for two years a salesman with George H. Tay Company, sold goods for J. D. Hooker Company one year, and another year was with the Crane Company. In June, 1914, he organized the G. H. Turner Company and became its president and general manager and owner of the controlling interest. M. J. Turner is vice president and J. E. Swindell is secretary and treasurer of the company.
The first business location of this company was at 1052 North Ala- meda street. The warehouse and office was destroyed by fire in 1915 and the company then moved to Seventh street and Alameda. Rapid growth and development caused the next removal to larger quarters at 600-614 San Pedro street, where the wholesale department is now located. Since 1915 the company has also maintained a large display store at 122-126 East Ninth street, and also a display in the Building Material Association rooms in the Metropolitan Building. The Turner Company specializes in high-grade plumbing fixtures, and handles only the very best material the market offers, nothing but nationally advertised goods of the greatest manufacturers in America. The company does a great deal of local publicity work in advertising their goods, and all the resources of Mr. Turner and his associates stand behind the wares offered to the trade. The first year of the company's existence only eight people were em- ployed, while today the organization has a personnel of twenty-five. Besides other space, they own a warehouse of seventy thousand square feet. At the East Ninth street store an important feature of their display are ten completely equipped bathrooms and kitchens.
Mr. Turner is a member of the Masonic Order, the Optimist Club, the Ad Club, the Jonathan Club, Automobile Club of Southern California, Culver City Country Club, Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association and Chamber of Commerce. He is a republican and patriotic American. At Los Angeles, July 23, 1908, he married Miss Molly Miller of Canton. Ohio.
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JOHN D. COPLEN. While a resident of Los Angeles the fame of his achievements is in the great mining districts of the Southwest, espe- cially Arizona, where John D. Coplen, by his perseverance, his inventive genius and his rare insight and judgment, has literally created millions of wealth.
John D. Coplen was born in Fulton County, Indiana, March 7, 1844, son of William and Ruth (Ballou) Coplen. When he was twelve years of age his parents moved to Iowa, later to Kansas and Missouri and afterward to Denver, Colorado. He finished his public schooling at Denver. His experience in mining covers sixty years. He was sixteen years of age when he went to work in the mines along the South Platte River in Colorado.
He is also a veteran of the Civil war, having enlisted in 1864 in Company G of the Third Colorado Cavalry, after several unsuccessful attempts at enlistment because of his youth. When he was mustered out in 1865 he had the rank of corporal. After the war he located in Bent County, Colorado, where he served as justice of the peace. He enjoyed some considerable success mining in the San Juan country. Later he located and operated for a time the Silver Link mine, in Ouray County, Colorado. In 1882 he bought the Golden Wonder mine and the Golden Mammoth mine, at Lake City, in Hinsdale County, Colorado.
His name is prominently associated with the citizens who about 1870 organized the town of Las Animas, and succeeded in making it an important station on the Santa Fe Railway. After selling out the last mentioned mines, Mr. Coplen continued to follow mining engineering and was employed by Eastern capitalists as an expert on the examination of mines in the United States, Canada and Mexico. While thus engaged he bought a gold mine and built a mill at Water Canyon, thirty miles from Socorro, New Mexico, but soon afterward sold this property. His next enterprise was a mining property in Pinal County, Arizona, where he participated in the organization of the Arizona Copper Hill Mining Company and served as its manager until he sold his interests in 1898.
Mr. Coplen since 1883 has owned Noah's Ark mine, in San Juan County, Colorado, located ten miles from Silverton, near Eureka, the mine being at an altitude of twelve thousand feet. From 1875 until 1905 Dr. John Russell was associated in many mining ventures with Mr. Cop- len, the partnership being known as Coplen & Russell. Both of them operated the Noah's Ark mine until 1884, when it was closed on account of the demonetization of silver. Owing to the recent phenomenal ad- vance in the price of silver, Mr. Coplen is now making plans to reopen this mine.
However, his most conspicuous achievement in the mining industry was in Arizona. In 1898 he organized the Pacific Mining and Metals Company in Arizona, whose property adjoined the old Copper Hill mines.
He had the controlling interest in this company, which was later reorganized as the Inspiration Mining Company. In April, 1903, Mr. J. D. Coplen, with his son, J. B. Coplen, purchased a group of properties situated in the Globe mining district, Gila County, Arizona, which when taken over by the Inspiration Mining Company became a unit and was known as the Inspiration Group. From 1903 to 1908 this property was controlled and developed under part ownership and full management of J. D. Coplen.
During this time he was ridiculed by many for his poor judgment in buying a mine producing such a low grade of ore as the Inspiration.
JAGoplen
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But in mining Mr. Coplen has that high degree of honor which another field has been aptly described as making two blades of grass grow where one grew before. He had the faith and the perseverance to realize the possibilities of low grade ores, and therefore stands as a pioneer in that field. In this particular case he built a mill on the property and when he sold the mine to the Inspiration Copper Company in 1908, it brought three millions of dollars. He also took up come properties adjoining the Inspiration on the west, known as the Barney and Porphyry Copper Companies, of which he was the president and which have recently been consolidated into what is now known as the Porphyry Consolidated Copper Company, and of which he is still president.
As "father" of the Inspiration Mining Company, Mr. Coplen's work has been truly an inspiration. The Inspiration properties were examined and turned down by many of the leading expert mining engineers of the country, and the enormous production of wealth from that source is largely due to Mr. Coplen's skill and faith. He has spent practically a lifetime in building machinery and devices for the treatment of all kinds of low grade ores, and has a process for leaching this class of ore.
For two and a half years Mr. Coplen served as mayor of the city of Globe, Arizona. Inhabitants of that community admit that Mr. Cop- len's operations had much to do with the wonderful outcome of that section.
In Los Angeles, December 15, 1918, Mr. Coplen married Miss Bertha A. Davis, of Boston, Massachusetts. Mrs. Coplen is an accom- plished musician, having studied vocal music under prominent instruc- ors in Boston, New York and London, England, and previous to her marriage spent many years in public work.
RICHARD H. LACY. The Lacy Manufacturing Company, of which Richard H. Lacy is secretary and treasurer, is one of the oldest firms in Southern California engaged in the wholesale hardware business and as manufacturers of steel and iron work. During the past twenty years the plant has been developed into one of the leading institutions of Los Angeles.
The Lacys are a pioneer California family. The parents of Richard H. Lacy, who was born at Bolinas, in Marin County, August 15, 1866, were William and Isabelle (Riggs) Lacy, who five years later moved to San Diego, and when Richard H. was eleven years of age moved to Los Angeles. The son acquired his education in the public schools of San Diego and Los Angeles, graduating from the high school in the latter city at the age of nineteen. About that time he became associated with his brother William in their father's wholesale hardware business. Even at that time the firm carried on an extensive manufacture of steel pipe. When the father soon afterward sold the business, the brother established the Lacy, Ward & Company, a partner being Mr. L. A. Ward. The Ward interests were subsequently acquired and the business incorporated as the Lacy Manufacturing Company, of which Richard Lacy has been secretary and treasurer from the beginning.
The industry was started in a one-story building 50x100 feet at North Broadway and Alpine streets. At that time some thirty to torty people were employed. During the early nineties the plant was moved to the Santa Fe Railway tracks, where buildings had been erected cover- ing an acre and a half of ground and supplied with every facility and equipment for their special lines. At that time from sixty to one hundred people were working in the business. In 1899 the company established
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its plant at the present location, bounded by North Main, Date, Alhambra and Railroad streets, and also occupying part of an adjoining lot on Main street. The business is now one requiring the services of over three hundred persons. While the original line of manufacture is con- tinued, other departments have been added, including the making of heavy plate where sheet metal is required for the boilers, stills for refining of petroleum, storage tanks, water work appliances and the other general equipment which this company supplies.
Mr. Lacy is also a director of the Security Trust and Savings Bank, the United States National Bank and was formerly a director in the Puente Oil Company. He owns a great deal of valuable real estate in Los Angeles. He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, on its Harbor Committee, a member of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the Midwick Country Club, the California Club and the Elks, and is a republican in politics.
Mr. Lacy has been a trustee of the town of San Marino since it was organized in 1913. In that town he owns a beautiful mansion near those of H. E. Huntington and George S. Patton. February 27, 1893, at Los Angeles, Mr. Lacy married Maud Sullivan. They have six children : Richard, a mechanical engineer ; Marjorie; Helen, a student in the Uni- versity of California; Florence, Eleanor and Constance, all attending the Ramona Convent.
FRANK CHANCE. What has been asserted to be true of the legal profession is also true of great athletes, their names and deeds are fre- quently written in the sand. There are exceptions to the rule in the great American sport of baseball, and one of them is Frank Chance, "peerless leader," and undoubtedly one of the ablest players and man- agers the national pastime has ever produced. While unlike many great men in sport who after retiring have come to California, Frank Chance is a Californian by birth, and has always regarded the state as his home, though for nearly twenty years his profession kept him in the East.
He was born in Fresno County, September 9, 1877. His father, William H. Chance, a native of Missouri, was a California forty-niner. In that year he crossed the plains by wagon, and became a farmer in Modesta County. Later he moved to Fresno, where he was president of the First National Bank when he died in 1892. At Fresno he married Mary Russell. They had seven children: Arthur, a grocery merchant at San Francisco; Alonzo, a retired land owner at Fresno; Frank; Stella, wife of Frank Homan of Fresno; Claude; Bert, connected with the H. Jevne & Company of Los Angeles, and Harvey, who died in infancy.
Frank Chance graduated from the Fresno High School in 1890. This was followed by three years in Washington College, at Irving, California. While in college he earned his first reputation, a local one, as a baseball player. He first became a professional in 1896, when he went to Sullivan, Illinois, to play on the independent team. He had to overcome some strong objections on the part of his mother, and to satisfy her he returned to California in 1897 and began studying dentistry in the office of Dr. Doyle. While studying he played baseball in the Examiner tournament. He could see nothing in dentistry, and in time he determined to rely upon his special genius as a ball player as a means of rendering what service he could to the world of sport. He joined the Fresno baseball club, and while playing with that club was recruited in
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1898 by the old National League and given his first tryout by the Cubs of Chicago. In 1905 he was made captain, in 1906 was made captain and manager, and also bought a one-tenth interest in the club. He re- mained with the Cubs team until 1913, in which time he won four pen- nants and two world's championships, and was then bought by the New York Yankees and was manager of that team in 1913-14. He retired in 1915.
Since then Mr. Chance has enjoyed a well ordered and happy work- ing life near Glendora, California. In 1908 he had bought a tract of thirty-two acres there, and all of it is developed as an orange grove .: Recently he completed a beautiful twenty-five-thousand-dollar residence on his ranch. Even in his retirement, baseball has claimed something of his time and interest. In 1916 John Powers, president of the Angel City Baseball Association, persuaded Frank Chance to buy a third inter- est in the Los Angeles club, and Mr. Chance has since been vice president and director. He is also vice president of the Glendora Heights Orange- Lemon Company and owns the Frank Chance Building at Glendora.
Mr. Chance is a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club and is an Elk. At Chicago, October 3, 1903, he married Edith Pancake.
MARSHALL VALENTINE HARTRANFT. Reference to some facts per- haps not generally known will serve to establish Mr. Hartranft's dis- tinctive relationship with Southern California affairs.
About thirty years ago, while engaged in the fruit business at Phila- delphia, he imported from California the first oranges grown on the Pacific Coast and handled on the Atlantic seaboard. Becoming inter- ested in California, he established his home in Los Angeles in 1894, and through the Los Angeles Daily Fruit World, which he established in 1895, and the New York Daily Fruit World, established in 1898, both of which publications he still operates, has performed an invaluable service in advertising the distinctive products of California and advanc- ing the interests of the producers.
Probably of even greater importance was the organizing by Mr. Hartranft of the California Home Extension Association, which for years has developed and operated a plan of "group colonization," and under its auspices have been undertaken and carried out some of the most successful colonization movements in California. This association promoted the towns and colonies of Wasco in Kern County, Alpaugh in Kern County, Greenfield in Monterey County, and several other minor settlements, all of which were established during the period from 1904 to 1907. In connection with his broader work as a colonizer, Mr. Hart- ranft established a homeseekers' Journal, called The Western Empire, in 1900, and continued its publication for ten years.
Just before the close of the great war he developed the group colonization plan to extend population to many unoccupied subdivisions and city lots about Los Angeles. He has formed and established six or seven of the important water companies of the state in connection with colonization work. Mr. Hartranft, besides being an enterprising business man, is a student of many of the technical factors pertaining to his work, especially forestry and conservation subjects. He is president of the Lukens Memorial Forestry Society, which was recently formed.
Mr. Hartranft was born at New Brunswick, New Jersey, February 14, 1872. His father was Rev. Charles R. Hartranft, a Methodist minis- ter of the New Jersey Conference. Mr. Hartranft was well educated
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and for a time was a theological student in the Pennington Seminary at Pennington, New Jersey. He married Louise Owens, daughter of David Jennings Owens.
EDWARD DOUBLE, who, up to the time of his death was presi- dent of the Union Tool Company,-one of the greatest industrial organizations of Southern California, -- was a man of long and wide ex- perience in the oil industry, and a specialist in the mechanical and technical side of that work. He came to California in the infancy of petroleum workings on the coast and his own inventive genius and enterprise secured to him immediate recognition and rapid advancement, and contributed more than any other one factor to the quick yet substantial growth of the great organization of which he was the head, which makes and deals in all kinds of oil well equipment and supplies, internal combustion engines, mining machinery and steel and iron castings.
Mr. Double was born at Titusville, Pennsylvania,-one of the pioneer American centers of the oil industry,-on October 15, 1874, a son of Hamilton and Mary (Smith) Double. He grew to manhood in Pennsyl- vania, attended public school, and his early disposition and inclination to- ward mechanical work naturally threw him into the throbbing industries of Western Pennsylvania, where he came to know all phases of the oil business. He was especially interested in the manufacture of tools and appliances for the production of oil. In the course of time, and while he was yet a young man, he came to be recognized as one of the most skilled tool and machinery men in the oil fields of Pennsylvania.
About the time California came into prominence as a petroleum pro- ducing state, Mr. Double sought the far western field, in July, 1897, first locating in Santa Paula, Ventura County. He became intimately ac- quainted with the leading oil producers of that vicinity, and was soon interested in several enterprises. He established a plant for the manu- facture of oil tools and machinery, which, in 1901, was removed to Los Angeles and the business and plant enlarged, making it the leading estab- lishment of its kind on the Coast.
His great success was largely a matter of foresight, re-enforced by his own ability to manufacture and supply the rapidly increasing needs of the California oil district.
He was among the very first in the Southwest to adopt the use of tungsten or high speed steel, because, though the initial outlay for it was probably six times as great as carbon steel would have been, it gave him speed and efficiency and met the demands of his progressive methods.
At Los Angeles he built up an industry larger than any other in the manufacture of oil well tools and supplies for the Southwest. He also became associated with the Union Tool Company of Los Angeles, which was established in May, 1908, by the consolidation of the American Engi- neering and Foundry Company and the Union Oil Tool Company, each of which had been in existence for a period of years. Their combined production constituted the bulk of the important manufacturing done in the interest of the oil industry of the Coast. The new company, which was named Union Tool Company, was capitalized at one million two hundred thousand dollars, and under the handling of Mr. Double as presi- dent and general manager its growth and prosperity exceeded all predic- . tions. The company soon outgrew its facilities and its ground space in
Edward Double
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Los Angeles, and several years ago removed to the model industrial suburb of Los Angeles, Torrance, where, on twenty-five acres of ground, the company erected one of the largest and most complete manufacturing plants in the country. The buildings are all of concrete and steel con- struction, and have many times been called models of modern factory arrangement, appliances and sanitary equipment. Mr. Double himself furnished many of the basic ideas and designs for these buildings, and personally witnessed and directed every phase of their construction and equipment. The capital of the company was later increased to $2,500,000, and more recently was still further increased to $7,500,000. The plant alone represents an investment of one and one-half millions of dollars. The company maintains branches in all the oil fields of California, and it also does very substantial business in the East, having one large plant near Chicago and another at Carnegie, near Pittsburgh, and exporting large quantities of its products to European and Oriental countries.
Mr. Double was a most successful organizer and had the rare genius of surrounding himself with a corps of able assistants, whose talents he co-ordinated into a vital working unit.
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