Born: unknown
Died: unknown
Categories
Author: Admin
Categories
Bruce Ruby Udell Ashton
Born: June 27, 1893; Littleton, Arapahoe, Colorado
Died: July 10, 1948; Carpenteria, California
Categories
John Hoffman Wheeler
Born: February 22, 1857; Oswego, New York
Death: June 14, 1939; St. Helena, California
John Hoffman Wheeler was born February 22, 1857 in Oswego, located on Lake Ontario in the northwestern corner of New York. The son of Charles and Caroline Wheeler, John was born into a family of entrepreneurial pioneers with a passion and quintessential gift for agriculture and viticulture. Charles Wheeler and friend Charles Krug – just up the valley from the Wheeler farm, were best described as the “who’s who” among Napa Valley vintners, businessmen and pioneers of the time. It can also be said that John Hoffman Wheeler was a self-made early California entrepreneur.[1]
At the young age of two, his mother, Caroline, died in Oswego. Charles moved John and his brother, Rollo, west to Vallejo in 1867 and in 1869, purchased property two miles south of St. Helena at Pine Station, later known as Bell Station and Zinfandel Station, and today known as Zinfandel Lane. At this location he built a stone winery on the family farm known as Wheeler Farms.
John and his brother worked the family farm until 1875, when he entered the University of California, Berkeley (the first graduating class was in 1873). A bright scholar, he studied chemistry, specializing in pesticides for the grape industry, experimenting on the vineyards surrounding the campus. He was said to have been great at doing things outside of the curriculum. John was mentored by Professor Eugene Hilgard, who today is considered the father of modern soil science in the United States. Together they conducted experiments on the University grounds using carbon bisulphide (now known as carbon disulfide) to kill ground squirrels. Wheeler published his findings from experiments in a University bulletin in April, 1878.[2]
At the time he graduated from Berkeley, the grape growers of the world were threatened with a plague of plant lice called phylloxera, which was devastating their vineyards. In France, they discovered that the plant lice could be controlled with bisulfide gas, but the California growers could not afford the imported price of between 50¢ and $1.00 per pound. Wheeler experimented with making the carbon bisulfide in a small factory on the bay shore of Berkeley. He founded the San Francisco Sulphur Company; soon turning out commercial grade bisulphide at prices around 13¢ per pound, making it available to vintners as well as general stores for pest killing purposes.[3]
In 1879, John married Frances V. Jones of Chico. Their four children were Ella Cornelia, Elliott, Rollo Clark and Ysabel. They fondly referred to their father as “Papa John” and their mother as “Mama Frank” and those names have stuck to the current day. In 1881, John H. Wheeler was appointed by the governor of California as the first Secretary of the State Board of Viticulture and served as its executive head in 1888.The report of the first Fruit Growers Convention was written by Wheeler and was published by the Pacific Rural Press. The report was said to have been “a mine of horticulture information because it preserves the names and declared purposes of the men who were leaders in laying the foundations for the great achievements of the present day.”[4]
In 1889, John’s brother Rollo, who had been managing the winery and orchards back in the Napa Valley, was kicked in the head by his horse and died. John returned and to take his brother’s place with his father. Growing grapes and wine making were the major activities of Wheeler Farms until the Prohibition Era ended the demand for alcoholic products. The farm then expanded to produce walnuts and prunes. Although the winery has since been torn down, the original craftsman style home still stands on the west side of Highway 129, just south of the railroad tracks at Zinfandel Lane.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Sulphur Company was growing rapidly and expanded into making bone meal fertilizers and other agricultural products, relocating to Seventh Street and Snyder Avenue in West Berkeley. A competing chemist across the Bay in San Francisco, John Stauffer, took note and the two decided to merge their companies. Stauffer turned to banker Christian de Guigne (a founder of the Bank of California, now Union Bank) for advice and financial assistance. Although the shirt-sleeved working chemist and the elegant older Frenchborn banker had very different lifestyles, they held identical views on thrift, integrity, and the value of hard work. Not only did de Guigne encourage the merger, he decided to become a part of the company.[5]
On July 19, 1895 the Stauffer Chemical Company was incorporated under California Law with a capitalization of $300,000. Christian de Guigne became Chairman, John Wheeler, Vice President and John Stauffer, Secretary. The three men ran the company for 37 years in great harmony and with outstanding success.[6]
Stauffer Chemical Company grew from its family owned and operated firm to a multinational, multi-billion dollar corporation, going public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1954. John Wheeler served as Vice President of the Stauffer Chemical Company from 1895 until his death in 1939. His second son, Rollo Clark, took his place as Vice President on Stauffer’s Board of Directors until his passing in 1962.[7]
Of John Wheeler, it was later stated that “Simply a university student had the sense and sand to do something which prescribed studies did not require of him, but which practical operation made necessary to agriculture and ministering to the need made profitable to the originator”. According to a published University bulletin, “Although he has done many original stunts on his fine fruit far in the Napa Valley, we always think of him as the youth who jumped a lecture course on the feasibility of perfume farming in California, and built a bisulphide joint on the bay shore which, though not much bigger than a Dutch oven, made more smell than all the perfume of Araby the Blest, and was the foundation of the largest business of carbon bisulphide manufacturer in California.” The university author complimented the young entrepreneur with the closing remark “We like young men when they do things their teachers do not know enough to teach them to do!”[8]
[1] Napa Register, date unknown.
[2] University of California Bulletin, April 1878.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Pacific Rural Press, vol. 31, no. 10, March 1886.
[5] Stauffer News, Stauffer Chemical Company, 1977.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
Categories
John Patterson Magill
Born: December 17, 1916; Calexico, California
Died: August 31, 1994
John Magill was born and raised in Calexico, California, situated on the Mexican border. He attended the University of Texas and after World War II, moved to Tulare in the San Joaquin Valley to join his father in the cotton brokerage business. John later went into journalism, then elementary school administration and was a school principal until his retirement.
John had an artistic passion for black and white photography and his favorite subject matter was nature. His first love was Yosemite, a landscape photographer’s dream. He and his family journeyed there often. His daughter Cathy (Catherine Magill Good) recalls numerous camping and pack trips when John would drag his cameras along and photograph the surroundings.
John owned many medium format cameras over the years. He was able to adjust the film and the lens planes to control the depth of field and the size relationships of objects in the frame. Having a natural eye for texture, depth, layers, shadows, shapes, patterns and lines, he achieved a profound sense of ‘color’ through a well-planned and executed black-and-white image. He worked in natural light and sometimes waited for days to get just the right kind of light in his photographs.
John was a great admirer of Ansel Adams and modeled many of his photos on those of the famous Mr. Adams. All the famous images found in Yosemite, or the High Country are represented in his collection. Among the best are Yosemite Falls, Vernal Falls, Half Dome, and El Capitan. Also, lovely ones of white dogwood in the first days of bloom.
Later he spent time on beach scenes, especially on vacation on Vancouver Island. He experimented with taking shots of sand bars and tidal streams; again, noting the light and shadows that made them so interesting. He would lie on the ground and find a view with beach grass in the foreground and the bay in the background.
Ansel Adams said, “The negative is an equivalent of composer score, and print is the equivalent of the conductor’s performance.” “Back in the 1950s, the process of developing film and then printing photos was complicated and time-consuming. In his own darkroom, John developed and dried the film. Then working in the dark or with a red light on, he printed single photos. John used a machine called an enlarger to select just the right part of the negative to print, how large and adjust the light and darkness. The process was completed by placing the paper into a series of chemicals and drying it.
John’s passion was to make photos that showed the beauty of nature and to educate others about the importance of preserving nature. He taught us that we should focus on photographing how a scene feels— not just how it looks. His legacy lives on with the extraordinarily beautiful prints he created.
Categories
Sydnia Anne Jones
Born: June 3, 1832; Centerville, Kentucky
Death: June 12,, 1927; Chico, California
With her family, she left Centerville on May 20, 1852, taking a coach to St. Louis where they took a steamer to Independence, Missouri. From there they crossed the plains by covered wagon, over the emigrant road through the Carson Valley, arriving in Sacramento in the fall of 1852, the year of the flood.
Her family settled above Colusa, then went to Shasta, where she met George Foster Jones, Sr., whom she married in 1853. They were married by the grandfather of Governor Pardee. Their marriage license was one of the first procured in Northern California, issued in Monroeville, then the county seat. They went to Canyon House in Shasta County where they spent three years. This was about the time of the Trinity mines. They later moved to Lone Tree Ranch, then Colusa, then Chico.
Jones bought out E. B. Pond at First and Main, which shipped goods down the Sacramento River at the time. In 1865, he bought property at 1st and Broadway and erected a building which still stands, used as a Masonic Hall. He conducted a general mercantile business under the name of Jones and Reilly.
Categories
George Foster Jones Sr
Born: April 4, 1827; Hillsborough, New Hampshire
Death: November 7, 1878; Chico, California
George Foster Jones was born in 1828 in Millsboro, New Hampshire (birthplace of President Franklin Pierce). He came to California around Cape Horn during the Clipper Ship Days, arriving in San Francisco in July of 1849. He hurried to the mines of Georgetown in El Dorado County, where gold had been discovered about the same time as in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The hub of an immensely rich gold mining area, Georgetown had a population of about three thousand in 1854-56. As a gold rush camp, the community outlasted many other towns because the gold found nearby was solid primary deposits, as opposed to placer deposits. Gold production continued until after the turn of the 20th century.
Jones spent two years in Georgetown and succeeded well. He then moved to Shasta County and became the proprietor of a hotel “near the old road from Redding to Shasta”. He met Sydnia Ann McIntosh, who he married in 1853. With her family, Sydnia had left Centerville, Kentucky in May of 1852, traveling via Independence, Missouri by covered wagon over the emigrant road through the Carson Valley, arriving in Sacramento in the fall of 1852. The McIntosh family settled in what was then Colusi (now Glenn) County and created the Lone Tree Ranch, near what is Corning today. The Jones lived for three years at Lone Tree Ranch, and then moved to Chico where Jones bought out E. B. Pond at First and Main Streets, becoming very successful at shipping goods up and down the Sacramento River. In 1865, he bought property in Chico and erected a building which still stands today, used as a Masonic Hall. He at one time served as Sheriff of Colusa County. Mr. and Mrs. Jones had eight children, and most of his descendants are still in California today. He passed away at the age of 50 in 1878.
Categories
Lawrence Howard Good
Born: July 2, 1910; St. Helena, California
Death: October 5, 1991; Sonoma, California
Lawrence Howard Good (“Howard”) was born in 1910 in St. Helena, California. He was the son of Stanley Wells Good and Cornelia Wheeler Good, known to their grandchildren as “Tapah” and “Namah”. Stanley spent his career in trans-Pacific shipping when ships, along with railroads, were the primary mode of long-distance transportation. While general manager of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in San Francisco, Stanley made voyages to Hawaii, then a territory of the US. He established a worthy reputation in the Islands and the Far East, and when the Dollar Steamship Company expanded its Pacific trade, Stanley was hired to lead the Honolulu office in that effort. He and his family moved to Honolulu in 1920. Howard, his older sister, Harriette and older brother, Stanley Jr. (”Stan”) were early students at Punahou School, and Howard graduated in 1928.
These were glory years to grow up in Hawaii. Howard, Stan, and their friends were surfers, enjoying the beach at Waikiki with the likes of Duke and Louis Kahanamoku. Duke became known as the father of Hawaii surfing; a monument in his memory can be found at the Diamond Head end of Waikiki Beach. Howard’s surfboard, the “Shark”, made from the wood of a koa tree, was about 16 feet long and weighed over 100 pounds. The board was without a skeg, which had yet to be invented.
Howard became an accomplished swimmer, winning the state backstroke championship in his junior and senior years at Punahou. He graduated in 1928 and spent the summer with his brother Stan on a Dollar steamer to the Orient as cabin boys. They stayed at the now famous Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong for its grand opening that year.
Howard attended the University of Hawaii from late 1928 through 1931, majoring in civil engineering. These were the early days of the Great Depression when the national unemployment rate was approaching 20%. Engineering jobs were non-existent in Hawaii, so Howard returned to Dollar Steamship for the next four years.
In 1935, he took an engineering position with the American Bridge Company, which was constructing the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Across the Bay at the same time, the John A. Roebling’s Sons Company was building the Golden Gate Bridge and Howard soon joined the engineering team there. He worked on the main cable before the roadway was built, sometimes working over 700 feet above the water. The bridge would become the longest suspension bridge in the world. The Bay Bridge was completed in late 1936 and the Golden Gate in mid-1937.With the bridges completed, he joined Hawaiian Pineapple Company in San Francisco, furthering his export and import expertise. With the annexation of Hawaii to the United States in 1903, selling agricultural products to the mainland became much more profitable because – those products were notsubject to import tariffs. Howard helped build Hawaiian Pine’s sales to the Orient.
All the while, Howard’s grandfather, John Hoffman Wheeler, maintained Wheeler Farms in St. Helena as the family gathering place. While visiting one weekend in 1936, Howard met Jane Lines, who was a friend of his cousin, Patsy, at Mills College. They would be married in the fall of 1938.
During World War II, Howard worked at the naval shipyard in Sausalito. Before the war’s end, Howard and Jane had three children-Valerie, Tony, and David. Son Stuart was born in 1951. After the war, he met Walter Boysen, who was expanding his paint company in Emeryville. Walter envisioned exporting paint and other building supplies to the war-torn areas of the Pacific- primarily Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippine Islands. With his knowledge of the South Pacific and exporting, Howard was a natural and joined Boysen in 1946, where he remained as Export Manager until his retirement in 1970.
In 1953, the Goods purchased a lakeside property in Homewood, 6 miles south of Tahoe City. The property was known as “Snug Harbor” and over the ensuing years, Howard remodeled the main house, built a separate garage complex complete with a dormitory and workshop, installed a paddle tennis court and constructed a pier and boathouse. Howard acquired a 51’ Chris Craft yacht from his brother in the mid 60’s, the HMS Pinafore, which the family enjoyed for years. Valerie, Tony, David, and Stuart spent many idyllic summers at Tahoe. Valerie and David were also fortunate to attend many events at the 1960 Winter Olympic Games in Squaw Valley, including the ice hockey gold medal game won by the first USA “Miracle Team”, led by Harvard’s Cleary brothers.
Sadly, son Stuart contracted a form of lymph cancer in the summer of 1969 and passed in January 1970, a day before his 19th birthday. During Stuart’s decline, Howard and Jane visited Tahoe less and less. Coupled with their children having jobs and families of their own, The Goods sold their Tahoe estate in 1971.
At the same time, Howard and Jane began spending time in Sonoma, often staying with Gary and Leilani Burris Welch, who was Jane’s ‘little sister” at Mills College. The Welch home at 29 East MacArthur Street had been in Anna’s family since David Burris settled in Sonoma in 1851. Gary and Anna had no children to inherit the estate, so when they decided to sell it, Howard and Jane bought it in 1972. Although different than Tahoe, the estate became a haven for family holidays and weekends. Three generations have many memories of visits there for the next 25 years. Howard had a passion for
cars which he stored in the old barn. His favorite was a 1974 Jensen Healey.
After Howard passed in 1991 and Jane in 1995, “Sunnyside Farm”, as it was known in the family, was sold to Suzanne Brangham. She soon converted it into a country inn, today known as MacArthur Place.
Categories
John Dwyer Ashton
Born: September 14, 1866; Salem, Essex, Massachusetts
Died: October 24, 1948; Pasadena, Los Angeles, California
John Dwyer Ashton was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1866. He was named after his grandfather, John Dwyer, a shipping magnate in Salem, primarily importing leather and pig bristles from St. Petersburg for his brush factory in Boston[i]. John grew up in the same house as his grandfather at 336 Essex Street, built prior to 1800[ii]. The house still exists[iii].
John chose accounting and finance as a profession and in the1890’s, he moved to Yonkers, New York joining the Okonite Company, which was in the cable manufacturing business. Yonkers is the fourth most populous city in New York State, (behind New York City, Buffalo, and Rochester), and the most populous city in Westchester County. Often referred to as the “6th Borough”, it borders the Bronx and is located two miles north of Manhattan. There, he met Ella Cowles, whose family ran the Yonkers Herald Statesman, the dominant newspaper in Westchester County. The newspaper had been founded by Ella’s grandfather, John W. Oliver, in 1860. John and Ella were married in 1892.
John was an avid Democrat, became involved in local politics, and was elected as the Yonkers fire commissioner in 1907. He was outspoken in his criticism of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party political machine that controlled the party’s nominations and political patronage statewide. However, Tammany Hall also served as an engine for graft and political corruption, perhaps most infamously under William M. “Boss” Tweed in the mid-19th century. John’s outspoken political views caught the attention of young Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly before FDR ran for his first political office as a state senator in 1910. Ashton actively supported Roosevelt’s candidacy and influenced the Statesman Herald’s advocacy of Roosevelt. FDR was elected and John became one of his early unofficial advisors[iv].
By the time Al Smith from New York became the Democratic nominee for US President in 1928 (but lost in the general election to Herbert Hoover), FDR was Governor of New York. Ashton and FDR remained friends and Roosevelt sent his autographed picture (above) and a letter to John Ashton (below), lamenting the loss in the presidential election. It is interesting to note that the letter from FDR came in April, six months before the stock market crashed, leading to the Great Depression (and the rise of FDR to the Presidency).
Ashton rose to become Assistant Treasurer of The Okonite Company, which had grown rapidly with the expansion of the Trans-Atlantic cable and had gone public. But in October of 1918, Ella died of pneumonia. William Bright Ashton, their younger son who had contracted influenza on a troop ship returning from World War I, tragically died of influenza within 9 hours of his mother[v]. The loss must have devastated John, and shortly afterwards, he resigned from Okonite and liquidated his stock in the company. In an interview David and Valerie Good had with John McLean Ashton (“Uncle Mac”) in 2000, Uncle Mac recalled that John Ashton had amassed a fortune in Okonite stock[vi]. With the proceeds of his stock sale, he bought US Treasury bonds yielding 5%[vii].
We don’t know exactly when or why, but John moved to Pasadena, California in the 1920’s. We can only suspect that it was impacted by his daughter, Eleanore and her husband, Vance Lines, moving to a ranch in Ontario, California after their marriage in 1915. John’s other son, Oliver, had also moved to Southern California where he and Vance built up several automobile dealerships. Vance and Eleanore had a daughter, Jane, born in Pasadena in 1916. She called him “Mompy”, a term of endearment that has followed him for generations. He lived to see her graduate from Mills College, marry Howard Good, and have three great grandchildren-Valerie, Tony and David. He passed in 1948.
[i] Papers of Eleanore Ashton Lines, circa 1978.
[ii] Ibid
[iii] David and Cathy saw the house in Salem in 1998.
[iv] Ibid
[v] Interview by David and Valerie Good with John Mclean Ashton, 2000.
[vi] Ibid
[vii] Ibid
Categories
Woodland Farms
Coming soon!
Americans sought to establish a domestic wine industry as far back as Britain’s settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. The Jamestown colony didn’t succeed at it because settlers tried to do it with European grapevines of a species that could not survive for long in America. Still, throughout the American colonies and after the American Revolution luminaries like Thomas Jefferson and his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush kept the dream alive. The dream became reality in the early 19th century with the discovery of hybrid grapes with names like Catawba and Isabella, which were field crosses between transplanted European and Native American vines.
Catawba vineyards came to the 5,000 square mile Finger Lakes region of New York with the arrival in 1829 of Reverend William Bostwick in Hammondsport, at the southern end of the unusually y-shaped Keuka Lake, in the heart of the region. The good reverend planted grapes both for eating and for sacramental wine. By 1836, Samuel Warren established the first Finger Lakes commercial winery located about 80 miles northwest of Hammondsport in the town of York, at the western edge of the region. The winery lasted a few decades but was done in by the eminent domain of the railroad.
Meanwhile, from Bostwick’s plantings, Keuka Lakers developed a successful table grape industry. Then in 1858, Charles Wheeler of Hammondsport established the first Keuka winery, followed by the Pleasant Valley Wine Company in 1860. Between 1860 and 1880, dozens of wineries came and went around Keuka and by 1880, when the Taylor family established what would become the wildly successful Taylor Wine Company, the lake had become the center of the New York State wine industry, holding that position for more than 100 years, with Catawba among the most successful grape varieties.[1]
Born in Vergennes, Vermont, Charles Wheeler had built up a successful grain and milling business in Oswego, New York. In 1867 Charles moved his two sons, John H. Wheeler and Rollo C. Wheeler, to Vallejo, California and entered the grain business there. In 1869, he purchased property two miles south of St. Helena at Pine Station, later known as Bell Station and today known as Zinfandel Lane. The original vineyard of Charles Wheeler was about one mile north of Ink and southwest of the junction of the highway and Zinfandel Lane, and conveniently near Bell Station. He bought this Napa property from James M. Thompson (a son of Simpson Thompson, owner of the Suscol Ranch dating from the 1850s). At this location was built a stone winery on the family farm known as Wheeler Farms, constructed by W. P. Weeks and J. Weinberger.
Wheeler increased the vineyard to some eighty acres and established a home. He built a stone winery in the mid-1880s and his two sons, Rollo and John H., as they grew learned both viticulture and winemaking. Before his death, Wheeler Sr. turned over the business to Rollo, who remained in charge until his own tragic death in 1889 from a horse’s kick. John was the younger brother and a graduate of the University of California, class of 1879.
Under the influence of fellow ‘Cal Boy’ Charles Wetmore Wheeler purchased land in the Livermore Valley in the mid-1880s and there planted a vineyard that he named the Cornelia, after his eldest daughter, but he continued to live at Bell Station. In 1891 he was credited with making a half million gallons of wine, but as the capacity of the Bell Station winery was only 300,000 gallons, this total must have included wine made at Calistoga, (where he also had a vineyard and a winery), and possibly some wine made from grapes grown in his Livermore vineyard.
About 1894 Wheeler greatly increased his holdings by purchasing a one-hundred-acre parcel that lay north and east of the highway and Zinfandel Lane. The land had been settled in 1852 by Matthew Vann, who had crossed the plains from Illinois in 1850. Along with general farming, Vann began planting wine grapes about 1865; in the early 1880s he had sixty-four acres in grapes and built a winery. He maintained the winery in partnership with his sons until selling out to Wheeler.
According to accounts recorded by Thomas Pinney, A History of Wine in America (2005), “another longtime Napa winegrower, one with connections going back to the early days of the industry there, was John H. Wheeler. Wheeler whose winery was at Zinfandel Lane, south of St. Helena, had been replanting his vineyards to walnuts and other crops in anticipation of the coming Prohibition, but still had some 60 acres of vines in 1924. Wheeler made wine at Bell Station until Prohibition, and he had a distillery that produced from six to ten thousand gallons of brandy annually. He made only a little wine during the Prohibition, but he could not manage to get rid of even that little and had to ask the authorities for permission to dump it. In 1930, the operation was wound up, and although Wheeler reopened his winery on repeal, he was then an old man, able to continue for only a few years.”[2] Part of the old winery building was incorporated into the house now occupying the site.[3]
The winery has since been torn down but the original craftsman style home still stands on the west side of highway 129 just south of the railroad tracks at Zinfandel Lane.[4]
Although Wheeler was a successful vineyardist and winemaker, it was rather through his chemical factory at Melrose in Alameda County that he became wealthy. He began by producing bisulphide and eventually led to the founding and growth of Stauffer Chemical Company.
[1] http://www.fingerlakes.com/wine downloaded from internet on April 27, 2015
2 Thomas Pinney (2005). A History of Wine in America: From Prohibition to the Present, Volume 2.
University of California Press, Jun 5, 2005
[3] Peninou, Ernest P. (1965). A History of the Napa Viticulture District comprising the counties of Napa, Solano, and Contra Costa – with grape acreage statistics and directories of grape growers. An Unpublished Manuscript, 1965, 1993, 1995, 2000 pgs.50-52
[4] Image 97. From Valerie Goods collection of photos.