Portraits of 1912

During a research session for my upcoming book tentatively titled Pride of the Foothills, An Illustrated History of Glendora (upcoming = 2011), I came across this delightful collection of drawings in the April 1912 issue of Out West magazine. What I find most interesting is that it lacks the inclusion of both Whitcomb and/or Silent, perhaps the two most influential men in the community in 1912, just one year after incorporation.

History in Hibernation

For an indefinite period of time, while I officially begin the research for his next book (a detailed and well illustrated history of Glendora yet to be titled), this site will not witness any updates. My apologies.

However, the search for photography and other Glendora-related ephemera to include in the book continues. If you have any materials in your collections that are available for copying, please contact me at: ryankarap@sbcglobal.net

Glendora’s Ghosts

They’re all around, one just has to look a little closer to see them. We live in their space, just in a different time, and we follow in their footsteps, every day crossing familiar thresholds into their usual haunts. Take a stroll by the Boulder Grange house on Foothill late some night, cut through the abandon lot south of the post office where the train station use to be, or listen to the way your tires gently bump along the pavement of Glendora Avenue. The squeaky staircase in the City Hall and Glendora Mountain Road winding into the darkness above town are well-traveled places, each hiding secrets and keeping quiet the stories of more than five generations of Glendorans that have lived where we live now, walked the same sidewalks and enjoyed the quiet sounds of a chilled autumn night.

It is interesting to ponder that if one were able to transplant an old Glendoran from 100 years ago, he’d still be able to tell you how to get from the Santa Fe station to the First National Bank building, where the Woman’s Club meets or that the Brown’s house is at the top of Pennsylvania Avenue. And he’d know a lot of other things too: Why there are Bougainvillea plants on Minnesota, how much water should come out of Dalton Canyon during the rainy season and how far it is from his orchard to the packing house.

But then again, it might not be too much a stretch of the imagination to think that maybe the spirits of all those people are still here walking among us, giving Glendora a sense of history, a silent pride that helps each one of us get through our days and nights, knowing that the present is never too far from the past.

Make your Halloween a safe one, and if on some especially dark and lonesome night, someone approaches you—perhaps while you’re wondering about a strange light in windows of the Hamlin House or if you’re startled by an eerie noise outside the old city hall—and he asks what time the Pacific Electric makes its last run into LA for the night, just tell him midnight and send him on his way.

And if you want to turn to watch him walk away, don't be alarmed if he's no longer there. Then again, maybe he was never there to begin with...

Geo. D. Whitcomb, We Hardly Know You, Part II

The Family Man: 1860 to 1871

This second section in the three-part biography of Whitcomb will cover the family stage of his life, his marriage to Leadora, the various positions he held at the many railroads around the Great Lakes States and the birth of his children. As with the first part, this portion of the biography will be as complete as possible, only limited by the available information.

One could easily say that October 19, 1859, was the first day of George Dexter Whitcomb’s next stage in life, that of a family man. It was the day he said “I do” to Leadora Bennett and the day they started their lives together…but more importantly, they wasted no time in having children.

The “Web-based” bio says, “Shortly after their marriage, in 1859, the Whitcombs moved to Chicago, where George returned to railroading and became a purchasing agent for the Chicago and Alton Railroad.” This contradicts the Lewis text which claims: “In 1856 he went to St. Paul, Minnesota, and for many years was accountant and general agent for parties conducting a large hide and leather business.” Though four years can be considered a few, it would be a stretch to call it “many.” Plus, an all important fact that their first son, George Bennett Whitcomb was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, exactly one year and one day after their wedding, October 20, 1860. Apparently, he hadn’t yet moved to Chicago and as it turns out, wouldn’t for many years to come.

That’s not to say the Whitcombs didn’t move. In the next 20 years, they would find themselves skipping all around the Great Lakes States, George in an effort to ever advance his career and Leadora dutifully filling bassinettes in each successive home.

For certain, they stayed in St. Paul up until the latter part of 1863, because records show that their second son Henry Whitcomb was born there on March 8, 1863. Besides George’s work at the large yet unnamed leather and hide business, Leadora was still living near her parents, Abraham and Elizabeth Bennett, who had moved there around 1855.

But that same year Henry was born, 1863, Leadora’s father was tragically struck by a train. It is easy to assume, that with little ties left in St. Paul, perhaps they decided to leave town and for George to return to working for a railroad. The Lewis publication says: “In 1864 Mr. Whitcomb was employed by the Panhandle Railroad Company as its purchasing agent, and took up his residence in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.” And this has been shown to be not true, at least it is too soon for George’s employment with the Pan Handle Railroad. In 1864, the Whitcomb family (perhaps with Leadora’s mother, Elizabeth in tow—she didn’t pass away until 1867) seemed to be in limbo, somewhere between St. Paul, Minnesota, where Henry was born, and Steubenville, Jefferson County, Ohio, where Carroll Sylvanus was born in 1865.

Contradictory to all that has been published in the past about Whitcomb’s life after St. Paul, at this time, George returns to his railroad career by becoming the purchasing agent for the Chicago and Alton Railroad in 1864. Up until then, he was working in the hide and leather company in St. Paul. This is completely plausible for two reasons.

Reason One: On January 2, 1864, Henry Whitcomb, who was then only nine months and 25 days old, dies for reasons not recorded to history. The strange part is that the infant was buried in Jonte Cemetery, a small cemetery tucked up in a glen surrounded by a stand of trees and farmlands in Schuyler County, Illinois, the most out of the way place possible, about 300 miles southwest of Chicago. On his marker, it states, “Whitcomb, Henry—son of George and Leadora Whitcomb 9 mo. 25 days—Jan 2, 1864.” (most historians/genealogists list June instead of January).

Why was Henry buried there, as it doesn’t follow with the up-until-now accepted timeline for the Whitcomb family? Why not bury him in St. Paul or Chicago? In fact, if George’s next move was back to Ohio, why not there? Why Schuyler? Interestingly enough, the tracks of the old Chicago and Alton Railroad goes through the east end of Schuyler County and perhaps the Whitcombs resided nearby. On the map to the right, look at the arched route going from San Jose to a place called Road House; at the apex of this arch is roughly east of Schuyler County. So perhaps George had a job with this particular railroad at this particular time when his second son passed away. It seems to fit.

Reason Two: To add proof to the theory of George working for the Chicago and Alton Railroad sometime around 1864, a listing of company officers found in the Second Annual Report of the President and Directors of the Chicago and Alton Railroad, published in 1865 (for the year ending in 1864), shows a particular purchasing agent by the name of G.D. Whitman. That is a little too close for coincidence, especially since there is no other man by the name of “G.D. Whitman” in the railroad industry. So, there is plenty of reason to suspect a misspelling of his name must have steamed Whitcomb when he read the report.

According to the Western Historical Manuscript Collection in Kansas City, part of the Christopher James Fleming papers: “The Chicago and Alton Railroad began service in 1847 in the state of Illinois as the Alton and Sangamon Railroad which by the early 1850s linked Alton to Springfield and to Joliet. However, financial reverses forced the Company through several bankruptcies and name changes until about 1855 when the Road was reorganized as the Chicago and Alton.

“The heyday of the Chicago and Alton Railway occurred after the Civil War when it operated nearly 1,000 miles of track. By 1879 the Line was complete: beginning in Chicago, it bridged the Mississippi River at Louisiana, Missouri, extended through the town of Mexico to bridge the Missouri River at Glasgow and arrived at Kansas City, its western terminus, all on its own rails. Approximately 1900, the E.H. Harriman Syndicate bought the Line, watered its stock, and shifted its assets first to the Union Pacific, then the Rock Island and finally the Clover Leaf.”

It was during this time that much of the railroad was hastily being constructed, and if it ever needed a purchasing agent, that was it. From Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri edited by Howard L. Conard in 1901: “In 1857 the road was reorganized as the St. Louis, Alton & Chicago Railroad, but it was not until 1863 that it was extended to St. Louis and assumed its real character. In 1862 the road from Godfrey to Milton was opened, and became part of the Jacksonville line, and a branch was built from Roodhouse, Illinois to Louisiana, Missouri. In 1872 it extended its system into Missouri by building the road from Louisiana through Mexico to cedar City, opposite Jefferson City, on the Missouri, and in 1879 to Kansas City, by securing control of the Kansas City, St. Louis & Chicago Railroad. In 1879 the Chicago, Illinois Railroad was bought, and became the Coal City Branch.”

It seems that many of Whitcomb’s jobs at various railroads over the years has been as a purchasing agent, but what does a purchasing agent do exactly? In the 1916 book Railway Organization and Management by James Peabody, the job of a purchasing agent is explained: “The duty of the purchasing department is to supply material required by various departments in such quantity and of such quality as they specify and to do it in the shortest possible time and at the least cost. There are many advantages to be gained in concentrating purchasing power in one department. Having general advance information of the requirements of all departments for the year, it may order many classes of material in large quantities and in consequence obtain them at lower prices. Uniform specifications, for many general classes of material, facilitate inspection and so improve the quality of material. Further, the records of the department soon afford the means for establishing cost data, which is very essential in forming a judgment as to the fairness of prices asked on similar material. Usually rail and equipment purchases are not made by the purchasing department, the executive department attending to such large matters. The purchasing agent is usually assisted by a fuel agent, a tie-inspector, a stationer, and a general storekeeper.”

During this time, 1861-1865, there was this little thing called the Civil War, which pretty much took over the lives of every American (and Confederate), and it isn’t certain if Whitcomb got involved. According to the “Web-based” bio: “When the Civil War broke out, George volunteered for duty with the Union army, and his service assignment was production of ties and supplies for use on Union railroads. While assigned to the war construction supply, he and Leadora lost their infant son Henry, in January 1864.”

The Civil War began on April 12, 1861, and George Whitcomb was still in St. Paul, Minnesota, and would be for the next three years, working for the unnamed hide and leather company. He wouldn’t return to his budding railroad career until he started work for the Chicago and Alton Railroad in 1864.

Did Whitcomb volunteer with the Union army early in the war? If he did, there’s no record of his name on any roster or list associated with the Union army. There is a record of a George D. Whitcomb (with a birthplace of Vermont) volunteering in Maryland in October 1862, but the problem with this is that his listed age was 21, six years too young, and his description was a man with fair hair. But, if he volunteered in 1862, it would have been in Minnesota and he would have been put in a uniform and given a rifle, as his career as a railroad man hardly existed at the time, therefore he didn’t have the credentials to warrant a “specialty” (his only experience in railroads on his resume was as an accountant for the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad Company back in 1853 while he was in college).

There were 21 organized regiments in Minnesota, from the 1st Regiment Cavalry (Mounted Rangers) to the 11th Regiment Infantry (regular infantry), each with well developed lists of volunteers. Of the roughly 26,000 men who signed up to fight with their fellow Minnesotans, Whitcomb was not among them. It is also interesting to note that as of April 12, 1861, there were no railroads in Minnesota and there wouldn’t be until the Minnesota and Pacific Railroad Company built the line that ran from St. Paul to St. Anthony Falls (all of 10 miles) in July 1862.

So what exactly was he doing for the Union army between 1861 and 1865? Nothing probably. He was working for the Chicago and Alton Railroad. The purchasing agent job with the Chicago and Alton Railroad Company took him to Illinois in 1864, but as was shown earlier, it wouldn’t have been his responsibility to make ties and other supplies for use on Union railroads. In fact, northern railroads balked at the Union army using them at all, at least without them being well paid. So, what was the Chicago and Alton Railroad doing for the Union army? Nothing unusual, but ferrying troops, supplies and materiel around the country, like the nearly 200 railroad companies that existed in the 1860s.

From “Railroads in the Civil War” by Bob Amsle: “At the beginning of the hostilities, the northern railroads did not contribute as they should have to the Union war effort. Most railroad executives were more concerned about the rates for transporting war material and the profits they would make due to the high demand for their services than they were for the welfare of the Union. For a period of time after the South fired on Fort Sumter, which initiated the war, miles of track ripped up by Confederate raiders were left in a state of disrepair and, while boxes of food and ammunition sat on sidings, railroad executives haggled with army officers over the cost of transporting the goods. Lincoln's Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, who was a prominent investor in numerous railroads, was forced to resign because of his profiteering by manipulation of the rates the War Department would pay for the transportation of its soldiers and material. Such corruption in the rail industry prompted the enactment of the Railways and Telegraph Act of January 31, 1862. This legislation enabled the President to take possession of railroads and run them as required to preserve public safety. The War Department would supervise any railroads taken over by the government. This act was the precedent for the United States Railway Administration of World War I and government influence on railroads in World War II.

“Few northern railroads were seized under the act but those that were seized were organized into the United States Military Railroad (U.S.M.R.R.). The railroads, faced with this tough legislation, immediately fell in line to aid in the Union war effort for fear of being seized. Profiteering and corruption immediately fell off and trains began to move in an expedient way.”

It isn’t preposterous to suggest that Whitcomb had volunteered his services to the Union army, perhaps a little grandiose in its claim, as Whitcomb hadn’t the wherewithal to supply an army, but he may have indirectly done his part as a civilian working for his employer that happened to be a railroad.

The war ended with the signing of the surrender at the Mclean home in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1965, and by then, Leadora Whitcomb was very much pregnant with their second surviving child, Carroll Sylvanus Whitcomb, who was born on July 1, 1865 in Steubenville, Jefferson County, Ohio. “Web-based” bio speaks about his post-war activities: “His endeavors included a construction contract for a major bridge across the Ohio River and several hundred miles of track for the Panhandle Railroad.” This might be factual, and it seems to follow in line with where the Whitcombs were during the birth of their next two children, Carroll Sylvanus and William Card.

Though he couldn’t have worked for the Pan Handle Railroad officially until 1869, when it was incorporated, perhaps the confusion lies with the naming convention of two different railroads during this era, both of which were nicknamed the Pan Handle Railroad. The railroad from Pittsburg to Columbus was known merely as the Pan Handle Route, and to add to the confusion, sometimes the Pittsburgh & Steubenville Railroad used the name Pan Handle Railroad during the 1850s. Both of these railroads would eventually fall under control of the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, a subsidiary of the giant Pennsylvania Railroad system.

Several sources insist Whitcomb worked as a purchasing agent for the Pan Handle Railroad as early as 1853 and as late as 1872. The Lewis text states: “In 1864 Mr. Whitcomb was employed by the Panhandle Railroad Company as its purchasing agent, and took up his residence in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania,” though it doesn’t actually come into play until roughly 1865, and it might seem possible, that they meant he was working under one of the arms of the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, possibly the Steubenville and Indiana Railroad or the Pittsburgh and Steubenville Railroad (both of which were referred to as the Pan Handle Route or the Pan Handle Railroad at one point or another during their existence, shown on the 1868 map above). This would put Whitcomb in Steubenville in 1865 for the birth of Carroll Sylvanus and in Pittsburg in 1868 for William Card’s birth, and since there is no other account of his life between these years, it does seem possible. Also, it is said in the “Web-based” bio that, “His endeavors included a construction contract for a major bridge across the Ohio River and several hundred miles of track for the Panhandle Railroad.” Of the two possible railroads operating in that area during those times, only the Pittsburgh and Steubenville Railroad was responsible for crossing the Ohio River.

This is possible. In his capacity as a purchasing agent, he would have been intricate in obtaining the material needed to build a bridge. Of course, the text gives the impression that he (or a company he had formed) was solely responsible, and that just isn’t the case; as with his involvement with the Civil War, he worked at both endeavors as a company employee. Either way, which bridge was his company involved with? At Steubenville, Ohio, there are five bridges that cross the Ohio River: Fort Steuben Bridge, Veterans Memorial Bridge, Steubenville Railroad Bridge, Market Street Bridge and a Rail Bridge, and the only one that is old enough is the Steubenville Railroad Bridge, which was opened to rail traffic on October 9, 1865, connecting the Steubenville and Indiana Railroad to the Pittsburgh and Steubenville Railroad. There’s no doubt that if he was involved in constructing a bridge, it was this one, which is still in use today (shown above).

Where most of the confusion comes from is the fact that the Pittsburgh and Steubenville Railroad was sold under foreclosure on November 6, 1867, to be reorganized as the Pan Handle Railway. On April 30, 1868 the Pan Handle Railway, Steubenville and Indiana Railroad and Holiday Cove Railroad merged to form the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railway. All of which was called the Pan Handle Railroad at some time.

Put into context with George Whitcomb’s personal life, the pieces of this part of the puzzle—where the Whitcomb family was between 1865 and 1869—seem to fall together. On October 3, 1868, William Card Whitcomb was born in Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. It seems like an odd choice of names, William Card, but there’s a good reason and here’s why:

George Westinghouse Jr. is a household name, but before he became a vastly successful manufacturer, his steel casting foundry at Schenectady, N. Y., one of his first businesses he started to create parts for his two first railroad-related inventions (this was before he was even 18 years old), was a complete failure. Instead, he traveled to Pittsburgh in 1867 to have Anderson, Cook and Company build two of his patents. According to the book Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Spirit by H.H. Westinghouse, “This connection proved of great future value because it provided the opportunity of forming a wide and favorable acquaintance with many leading railway men throughout the country, which subsequently served a valuable purpose in the introduction of the air brake.”

After reading in a magazine about the use of compressed air in the building of Mt. Cenis tunnel through the Alps in Switzerland, he devised an invention to provide safer and more reliable railway brakes by using similar methods. In Pittsburgh, he met Ralph Baggaley, a young man like himself, recently out of college, and who was engaged in the foundry business. Baggaley quickly recognized its commercial possibilities and provided the money to build and test the prototype. For comparison’s sake, a normal brake would stop a train going 30 miles an hour in 1,600 feet, whereas Westinghouse’s new brake could achieve the same results in only 300 feet.

Westinghouse continues: “In the meantime, Mr. Westinghouse had brought his invention to the attention of a number of railroad men in this district. Among them were Messrs. Robert Pitcairn, A. J. Cassatt and Edward H. Williams of the Pennsylvania railroad, and George D. Whitcomb and W. W. Card of the Panhandle railroad. These gentlemen, including Mr. Baggaley and Mr. Westinghouse, formed, in July 1869, the Westinghouse Air Brake Company with a capital of $500,000,00.”

By 1869, Whitcomb was indeed working for the Pan Handle Railroad, most likely as a purchasing agent, which would be an even better reason for young Westinghouse to want Whitcomb to see his invention. The 1870 census for Montgomery Township in Ohio shows Whitcomb’s occupation as “Supply R.R. agent.” What is interesting about the story, however, is the mention of W.W. Card, who was the Superintendent of the Steubenville Division of the Pan Handle Railroad in 1869. He and Whitcomb were either such good friends or Whitcomb admired his superior so much, that it seems he named his third surviving son William Card Whitcomb in his honor.

As for W.W. Card, he ended up doing quite well for himself. He agreed to allow Westinghouse to install the braking system on a test train on his route. On the return trip, as the train was exiting the Grant Hill tunnel in Pittsburgh, the engineer saw a horse drawn wagon blocking the tracks ahead. The brake was applied and the train came to a stop just feet from the wagon driver. George Westinghouse organized the Westinghouse Air Brake Company in 1869, and he did not forget those who helped him: Card was appointed to the position of general agent.

With the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, easier quicker and cheaper methods of locating and processing coal were now in great demand. That demand drove the need for more advanced drilling and processing machinery as well as a safer method to transport the coal from the inside of the mines. Men with pickaxes and mules and wagons had long been the means of locating and moving the coal to the surface. Whitcomb recognized the need for more advanced methods and went on to invent a small battery operated locomotive that would pull coal cars safely from the mines. He also developed more precise coal drills and processing machinery that speeded up as well as made safer the coal mining process.

Sometime during 1969, Whitcomb moves from Pittsburg to Montgomery, Ohio, and perhaps the following year, 1870 or early 1871, it would appear that Whitcomb resigns from the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railway, and takes up residence in Chicago to pursue his new endeavors. However, contrary to this is The American Railway Officials' Annual of 1872, which shows Whitcomb as still being employed by the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railway and still living in Pittsburgh. There are two explanations for this: One, it’s wrong. At the beginning of the book, it states that the information is “collated from the best sources” and maybe those sources are two years old; or Two, Whitcomb had a deal with the railway to continue working for them while he developed his own business in Chicago. The first scenario seems most likely.

Even though, three of his children have yet to be born, Leadora (1871), Elizabeth (1873) and Virginia (1877), a major turning point in Whitcomb’s life has been reached. His move to Chicago signaled the start of the next phase of his life, that of a businessman, manufacturer and inventor. On August 29, 1871, two months before the birth of his fourth Child, Leadora, Whitcomb files for Patent Number 118,501, from his home in Chicago Ill.

It is his first patent—a foreshadowing of what’s to come—a device for “Improvement in Machines for Undermining Coal.”


Next:
Geo. D. Whitcomb, We Hardly Know You, Part III
The Businessman: 1872 to 1914

Geo. D. Whitcomb, We Hardly Know You, Part I

The Young Man: 1834 to 1859

It’s surprising that a wealthy businessman can come from Chicago to California with the plans and ambition to build up the town of Glendora from the dust and the weeds of a fairly lonely foothill settlement, and he ends up being mostly a mystery. For as long as people have been writing about Glendora, the facts of his life have been clouded by myths, inconsistencies and disputes, none of which are recorded properly nor cited accurately. What is left is a sense of vagueness, hints of details of a man’s life that changed so much for the Azusa Valley. The current incarnation of his biography originates from two places: One is the pomp and pageantry that is the sugary sweet Lewis publication, a who’s who of the 19th Century to be read with a grain of salt. The other was written by a now living relation of Whitcomb who has requested to remain anonymous, and it is the version modern readers of Glendora’s history will find the most references to, as it has been mimeographed time and time again on those Wikipedia-type encyclopedia Web pages. In this story and others, it will be referred to as the “Web-based" biography. Generally, these two sources have been accepted as dyed-in-wool fact, though they are mostly white-washed accounts of his life, offering an overview picture painted in broad strokes, a fuzzy timeline and some clues to the holes left between the lines.

The three-part series to follow will squeeze out as much information about George Dexter Whitcomb as is currently available from dozens of period-written books, pamphlets, advertisements, photographs and current sources. Sometimes the sources are inaccurate and vague and sometimes they contradict each other, but what will result is the most complete biography of Glendora's founder, written within the limits of the information available.

George Whitcomb started several companies, worked for great railroads, traveled the country, had many children and founded our town… but who is he? So far, no history book or article about his life does him justice. For starters, nobody’s really sure what state in which he was even born. Some say Ohio. Some say Vermont. One even claims Pennsylvania. The ambiguousness stems from the 1889 Lewis Publishing Company’s An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California referenced above, where it states: “Mr. Whitcomb is a native of Vermont, and dates his birth in Brandon, Rutland County, in 1834. His parents, Dexter and Emily E. (Tilton) Whitcomb, were natives of New Hampshire.” Then, the next sentence completely contradicts the first (punctuation in tact). “In 1814 his parents left Vermont and located in New York. From thence, in 1815, they moved to Michigan, and in 1816 finally located in Portage County, Ohio.”

By this alone, it would seem that his parents started in New Hampshire, moved to Vermont in 1814, then New York, then Michigan in 1815, and Ohio in 1816. Where they seemed to stay, as there is no mention of them returning. The closer one looks at the evidence, the more it seem like they did return to Vermont. According to the 1840 U.S. Census, Dexter Whitcomb was living Brandon Township, in Rutland County, Vermont, and had children whose ages fit that of his family, whereas the 1850 census shows him and his family in Portage County, Ohio. On the 1850 census (the 1840 census does not list individual family members only tick marks under various age brackets), it lists that all five of his children at the time were born in Vermont, starting with then 18-year-old Harriet down to 7-year-old Elizabeth. This would put the Whitcomb family in Vermont until at least 1843.

But first… an interesting discovery...

The 1880 U.S. Census shows Emily A. Whitcomb living with George Whitcomb and his family in Chicago, which begs the question, what happened to George's father, Dexter Whitcomb? It is very common in those days for an aging parent to live with his/her children, especially if it is a widowed mother.

However, by the 1880 census, Dexter Whitcomb is very much sill alive. He was reported to have lived to the ripe old age of 98, dying in New Hampshire in 1904. The “Web-based” short bio of the Whitcomb family claims that Dexter Whitcomb was a shoemaker and a mechanic, and according to the 1870 Census, there is a 63-year-old Dexter Whitcomb listed with an occupation of shoemaker and living in Warner, Merrimack, New Hampshire in the house of 85-year-old John Whitcomb, his great uncle. Also living in the house at the time was Almira Whitcomb.

Ten years later, in 1880, Dexter is living in his birthplace, Henniker, New Hampshire, with his wife, Almira Whitcomb. The only problem is that Almira Whitcomb is not Emily Tilton. Was there a divorce in the family that nobody’s talking about?

As it turns out, yes there was.

But first, a little genealogy about the Whitcomb family. In History of the Town of Henniker, Merrimack County, New Hampshire: From the Date of the Canada Grant by the Province of Massachusetts, in 1735, to 1880; with a Genealogical Register of the Families of Henniker, Leander Winslow Cogswell (published in 1880) traces the entire Whitcomb lineage, starting with this title information: “The Whitcombs have been in Stow, Massachusetts, for nearly two centuries.”

The first Whitcomb to come to Henniker was George Dexter Whitcomb’s great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Whitcomb, early in the 1700s. While in Stow, Benjamin married a woman by the name of Dorcas and had five children, one of which was Benjamin, Jr., born after 1748 but before October 1758. Cogswell writes: “Some of their children came to this town [Henniker], and at one time, the family was quite numerous here. Some of their descendants yet reside here.” A simple search through the telephone book of Henniker (population 5,081) shows seven Whitcombs still living there, while in Stow, Massachusetts, there are 85 in the area.

Benjamin Jr. “Came to this town shortly after his brothers, and settled up on the farm now owned in part by Asa Whitcomb; his house stood on the step of land south-east of Mr. Whitcombs [assuming this to be Asa’s].” He married Sarah Rice, daughter of Elijah and Rachel Rice. As a side note, Elijah Rice settled in Henniker at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, and was a carpenter by trade. He served at the battle of Bunker Hill and was commissioned an Ensign in 1779. He acquired the tract of land now located in the center of Henniker, which is now the site of a hotel. Benjamin and Sarah had seven children, one of who was Zaccheus, born November 20, 1780.

Zaccheus resided on the family homestead, married a one Mary Hale of Jaffrey (a small town about 30 miles south-south west of Henniker). Dexter was born on June 29, 1806, to Zaccheus and Mary, who had six other children: Maria (no birth info given); Mary (January 29, 1803); Roxana (December 14, 1804); Luke (February 6, 1808); Olive (June 26, 1810); and Sarah, (June 26, 1812).

The Cogswell book lists a Dexter Whitcomb with the following text: “md., first wife, Dec. 2, 1830, Emily A. Tellou [the last name is crossed out and an illegible word starting with the letters Ti is written by hand in the margin]; md. Second wife, Elmira Whitcomb. A shoemaker and general mechanic.”

The next line in the book is quite to the contrary about anything else mentioned about George D. Whitcomb’s life so far. It states that Dexter: “Resided in Ohio many years, where his children were born.” According to this account, which predates the Lewis book, George was born in Ohio. Then it goes on to list George, who was the second born on May 13, 1834, and his seven surviving siblings. Harriet, born April 9, 1832, was followed by George D. After George, the family went through a spell of tragic deaths. The next child, Jerome H., was born January 8, 1837, but died five months later on May 3, 1837. Either Dexter and Emily really liked the name Jerome or maybe they were bent on naming a son after an elder family member, as the next child born on April 10, 1839, was also named Jerome (with a middle initial S instead). Sadly, he was killed by a falling tree. Over the next 13 years, the Whitcombs added five more siblings to the house: Henry O. (July 10, 1841); Susan S. (August 20, 1843); Elizabeth S. (1844) Edwin W. (July 3, 1850); and Frank W. (August 27, 1852).

However, it is unclear when Emily Tilton and Dexter Whitcomb were divorced, but sometime between 1860 and 1870, they had split and Elmira and Dexter were living together. There are two 1870 censuses that record Emily living with her sons, both in Ohio. The first census, recorded on June 15 in North Ward, in Columbus, 56-year-old Emily is living with daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Jacob Beatty (the relation listed is “none” however). As well, another census, taken on July 6, 1870, in Montgomery Township in the county of Franklin, shows a 57-year-old Emily living with George D. Whitcomb and family. The discrepancy of her age is easily explained as her birthday was June 19, but what is confusing is that on one, her birthplace is listed as Vermont and on the other it is New Hampshire.

An interesting note about Elmira Whitcomb is that she didn’t have to change her name when she got married to Dexter. Born March 30, 1816, in Henniker, New Hampshire, Elmira was born to John Whitcomb (born March 29, 1785) and Polly Gibson. John’s father is Jacob Whitcomb (born September 13, 1743 and was the eighth settler in Henniker) who married Olive Weatherbee. Jacob’s father is Benjamin Whitcomb. Benjamin Whitcomb is both Dexter and Elmira’s great-great-grandfather.

In addition to Brandon, Vermont, many sources claim that Whitcomb was born in Kent, Summit County, Ohio, which is a series of interesting mistakes altogether. For starters, Summit County didn’t exist in 1834, as it wasn’t officially established as a recognized county until 1840. And the city of Kent wasn’t named so until 1864…furthermore, it isn’t even located in Summit County. Located along the Cuyahoga River, the land that would become Kent was settled in 1805 by Pittsburgh businessman John Haymaker who started a gristmill on the river. Soon, two separate communities sprang up, the “lower” village was named Franklin and the “upper” one was named Carthage. After a while, the two merged together and was renamed Franklin Mills, which ended up being located in Portage County, not Summit. In 1807, Portage County was formed from the original Trumbull County, and Franklin Township, including Franklin Mills, was made a part of the new county.

With the emergence of the railroad, Franklin Mills became the home of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad workshops, which led to the town being renamed Kent in 1864 after railroad owner Marvin Kent.

Given all of the information above, there’s no doubt that George Dexter Whitcomb was born on May 13, 1834, but it seems clear that it was Brandon, Vermont and not Ohio. Unfortunately, birth records in Portage County prior to 1867 are unavailable and according to the assistant town clerk in Brandon, Vermont, there are no records about George Whitcomb in and around 1834. So proving this beyond a well-educated benefit-of-the-doubt is nearly impossible.

What happened to George between his birth in 1834 and his first recorded job with a railroad (it is widely accepted that his first meaningful job was with a railroad which provided the direction for the rest of his life) has been mostly lost to time; those historians that have tried to nail it down have done so by guessing or ignoring it altogether. The Pflueger book doesn’t pick up on Whitcomb’s life until he arrives in Los Angeles in 1884, and Jackson’s book glosses over the era, merely calling him a “well to-do Chicago industrialist.” Bettin’s book hands the task over to merely reprinting portions of the Lewis book, which says: “Mr. Whitcomb was early in life trained to business habits, and when less than twenty years of age commenced life as a clerk in the railroad employ, and later was employed as an accountant by the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad Company.” The only other attempt at piecing together Whitcomb’s life comes from the “Web-based” bio, which states: “Young Whitcomb attended public schools and later worked as a ticketing agent and telegrapher for the Panhandle Railroad to pay his tuition while at business college in Akron, Ohio.” Both agree that he went to business school and worked for a railroad, but where, which and when?

Immediately, it seems clear that while he lived in Franklin Mills, he could have attended business school in Akron (only less than 10 miles away), but which one? Currently, there are listed over 35 colleges in the greater Akron area, of which, only a few are business schools…and most of those are no longer offering courses: Hammel College, Middletown Business College, Mansfield Business College and Buchtel College. Without further information, this is a dead end.

But, one thing is clear: He didn’t start working for the Pan Handle Railroad until roughly 1869; before then, the railroad from Pittsburg to Columbus was known merely as the Pan Handle Route, and to add to the confusion, sometimes the Pittsburgh & Steubenville Railroad used the name Pan Handle Railroad during the 1850s. However, it was a much different Pan Handle Railroad.

The Pan Handle Railroad (the office on 7th Street in Pittsburgh is shown here during the great railroad strike of 1877), together with the Steubenville & Indiana, merged in 1869 to form part of the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, a subsidiary of the giant Pennsylvania Railroad system. The route was named the Pan Handle Railroad. It started from Pittsburg, crossed the Virginia panhandle (where it gets its name), went through Columbus and split in Bradford, Ohio, where one branch went to Chicago and the other to St. Louis. The railroad roughly followed today’s Interstate 70 to Columbus and then onto Bradford on the western boundary of the state. It doesn’t go anywhere near Akron or Franklin Mills, a most inconvenient commute for a college student from Franklin Mills.

However, the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad Company seems to be a better fit, considering its origins. According to the Western New York Railroad Archive, “Marvin Kent, of Franklin, Ohio, was the proprietor of a glass works, woolen factory, and flour factory, among other enterprises, and wanted railroad connections to bring his products to market. To accomplish this, he received a charter on March 10, 1851 from the Ohio legislature for the Franklin and Warren Railroad. The charter gave Kent the right to build a railroad from Franklin, Ohio to Warren, Ohio, and east to the Pennsylvania state line and south to Dayton. Work on the line began in July of 1853 with Henry Doolittle and W. S. Streater as contractors. In September 1853 the company changed its name to the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad Company.”

From Edward Atkinson’s 1868 book Railroads of the United States: A Potent Factor in the Politics of that Country and of Great Britain: “The broad-gauge through route between New York and St. Louis, by way of Cincinnati, consists of the New York and Erie road, from New York to Salamanca, four hundred and fifteen miles; the Atlantic and Great Western road, from Salamanca to Cincinnati, by way of Akron, Mansfield, Galion and Dayton, five hundred and seven miles ; and the Ohio and Mississippi road, from Cincinnati to St. Louis, by way of Vincennes, three hundred and forty miles ; total, twelve hundred and sixty-two miles. The running time for the entire distance is forty-eight hours. The Atlantic and Great Western Railroad affords us another example of the benefits of railroad consolidation. It is only about six years since this enterprise was commenced, and it has now five hundred and seven miles in operation.”

The Atlantic and Great Western Railroad Company officially began in September 1853, which fits nicely with the Lewis timeline, that Whitcomb started working as an accountant for the railroad when he was just shy of 20 years old, roughly 1853. No proof of this exists beyond what Lewis had written.

What is known, on the other hand, is that he didn’t work there long. For whatever reason, he left the employment of Marvin Kent and headed north into Minnesota around 1856 to work with a hide and leather outfit, presumably trading with the Native Americans, though there are no details offered in either the Lewis or “Web-based” bios as to where he was working or what exactly he was doing beyond accounting work. Lewis writes: “In 1856 he went to St. Paul, Minnesota, and for many years was accountant and general agent for parties conducting a large hide and leather business.” Parties? A general agent? Too vague to go on, and too vague to dispute.

It is known, though, in October 1856 Whitcomb purchased a plot of land in Section 12 of the newly formed Belle Creek settlement about 300 miles southeast of St. Paul, which seems fairly too remote to make a living as a businessman in St. Paul. Whitcombs neighbors were Lapiata Cornell and Patrick Heney, both of which bought land about four months before him, but whether he lived there or not is a point of conjecture. Perhaps he had already begun to formulate his grand scheme of one day starting a town and this maybe seemed like a good spot (it is still rural farmland today).

Whatever he was thinking and whatever it is he was doing in Minnesota (the Minnesota state census for 1860 shows him living in Ramsey County, in which is located St. Paul), a monumental change was near on the horizon. There, in St. Paul, while working for this unknown large hide and leather business, he met and married Leadora Bennett on October 19, 1859, and immediately started a family.


Next:
Geo. D. Whitcomb, We Hardly Know You, Part II
The Family Man: 1860 to 1871

To Follow:
Geo. D. Whitcomb, We Hardly Know You, Part III
The Businessman: 1872 to 1914

Leadora Bennett Gets into Trouble

By 1850, Minnesota had just become a territory, and as Charles E. Flandrau walked down the gangplank off of the riverboat that took him from New York City, he entered a new world, the frontier. In New York, he had been practicing law in the firm of his father, Thomas Hunt Flandrau (he was a law partner with Aaron Burr…the Aaron Burr who won the duel with Alexander Hamilton in 1804).

But now he was on his own, and Minnesota is not New York City; business for attorneys in the fledgling territory wasn’t exactly ripe for the picking. In fact, Flandrau’s friend who had traveled with him in similar prospects of making a fortune, Horace Bigelow, packed up his shingle and turned instead to teaching.

Twenty-five-year-old Flandrau himself gave up his sparsely-patroned law practice for a while and explored his new environment, eventually settling in a small backwater area that had just been recently opened to white settlement, Traverse des Sioux, a place that one could not only cross the Minnesota River but it was also considered a jumping off point to cross the entire Great Basin.

In 1843, Native Americans were entrenched in the mission system, where a small town flourished around it. The year 1851 saw the signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, in which the Sioux sold 24 million acres of land in Minnesota for seven cents an acre and were confined to various reservations. So many new settlers were flowing into the territory from New England that Minnesota was soon being called the “New England of the West.”

Once Flandrau returned to law the following year, his path soon led him to his desired fame and fortune in the Minnesota law circles, as he became one of the first judges elected to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

According to Minnesota Lawyers and Judges Who Made History by Cheryl Heilman, “Justice Flandrau [left] served on the Court with Isaac Atwater, who came to Minnesota from New York in 1850, and Chief Justice Lafayette Emmet, who was born in Ohio and came to Minnesota in 1851. The Court heard arguments in a room in the north capitol building; the justices often conferred together in one of their homes, as there was no official room for judicial conferences.”

In one of these makeshift courtrooms in the north capitol building, in December 1859, then 20-year-old Leadora Bennet Whitcomb, who had been married to George Whitcomb for only two months, took to the witness stand to plead her side of the case known in Minnesota legal circles as Bennett v. Gillette.

There are not many facts known about Leadora Bennett (right) before she married Whitcomb or followed him out west 20 years later, as most records of her early deeds have been lost. However, Leadora was born on January 16, 1839, into a riverboat family. That much is clear. When she was young, she attended the Young Ladies Seminary in Wheeling, Virginia (the city is now in West Virginia, as the western counties ceded from Virginia during the Civil War). Leadora’s father, Abraham Bennett, (1803-1863) was a well-known steamboat captain on the Mississippi and a landowner, plying his trade on regular runs from Wheeling to New Orleans, as it is said that he piloted one of the first ships to use a steam whistle and carry a new invention called a life preserver. An 1838 edition of the St. Louis Bulletin describes an early version of the invention at the Chelsea Water Works in 1820: “It was an iron whistle, which, piercing the top of the boiler, descended into it, near to which the water could with safety be evaporated. The moment the water became exhausted below that level the steam would rush up into the whistle and ‘pipe all hands,’ giving the warning of danger.”

Little Rock, Arkansas, riverboat captain William H. Fulton wrote to the Marine Journal in 1885 with the story of the first whistle: “In the spring of 1844, Capt. Abraham Bennett, of Wheeling, West Virginia, J. Stut Neal, of Indiana, and myself had a boat built at Pittsburgh, which was named Revenue. While the boat was being finished Mr. Andrew Fulton, the great bell and brass foundry man, made a trip to Philadelphia on business. On his return he spoke of a great curiosity he had seen there in the way of a steam whistle, which could be screwed on the top of one of the boilers. Mr. Fulton described the whistle in such a manner that Mr. Neal, who was an engineer and one of the owners, ordered one to be put on the Revenue. I was to be clerk of the boat and induced the Captain to put into the staterooms rubber life preservers. I now state without fear of contradiction that the steamer Revenue was the first steamboat on Western waters to use a steam whistle or a life preserver."

Leadora’s mother, Elizabeth Barney, was Abraham’s second wife (it is unknown what happened to the first), and Leadora is the oldest of four other siblings (and three from the first wife): Miriam (“Minnie”), Abram, Edwin and Elizabeth (“Lizzie”). Like her brothers and sisters, they were all born in Wheeling, in Ohio County, Virginia, Leadora on January 16, 1839.

Times for riverboat captains were changing in the 1850s and 1860s. The railroad industry was taking off, which mean more tracks and more destinations, but most importantly, it meant that you could ship something somewhere and a river wasn’t needed to get it there. From John R. Borchert’s 1987 book, America’s Northern Heartland: An Economic and Historical Geography of the Upper Midwest, “Dramatic changes in water and road transportation accompanied the explosion of railroad building. River packet traffic declined catastrophically. Slow boats on a few tortuous streams could not compete with the trains for passengers, express, mail, or general cargo. The upper Mississippi waterway had become obsolete except for the movement of logs and lumber. The upper Missouri was also going out of use. But it was being abandoned in discontinuous segments.”

Perhaps business wasn’t what Abraham Bennett wanted it to be or maybe he felt his age was catching up to him, but in the early 1850s, soon after Minnesota became a territory and after all of his sons and daughters were born, Abraham Bennett took his family to a small farming community between Minneapolis and St. Paul and began life anew as a farmer. According to the History of Ramsey County and the City of St. Paul, Abraham Bennett was appointed by the governor to the position of Ramsey County Commissioner, a responsibility he held from 1855 to 1858.

The location of the Bennett farm was in the town of Roseville, now a suburb just north of the midway point between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Interestingly, in the middle of Roseville is a lake named Bennet Lake (spelled in some sources with only one T), but the same source named above credits the lake to one E. Bennett, an early settler. On May 11, 1858, Roseville was organized into a town, where 22 men were elected into various positions; Abraham Bennett was elected as "overseer of the poor."

Incidentally, rather ironically perhaps, especially considering how the railroads led to the eventual death of the riverboat packet business along the Mississippi and other great rivers of the Mid-West (Missouri, Ohio), Abraham was killed in 1863 when he was hit by a train. Elizabeth soon followed, passing away in 1867; both of her parents are buried in the Oakland Cemetery in St Paul (Lot 62, Block 2).

Years earlier, when the subject of this story takes place, it is on Saturday August 13, 1853, in St. Paul, Minnesota, that Leadora was visiting a friend’s house, as she was regularly accustomed to do. Since her house was some distance from St. Paul, Abraham Bennett, when the time was appropriate, sent one of his sons (it is unclear which one, either Abram or Edwin) with a team of horses and the carriage to bring her home.

Having no information as where the Bennett house actually was or which friend Leadora was visiting, it is difficult to know how long it took the Bennett boy to get to Leadora’s friend’s house, but when he did, he didn’t stay for long. Hitching up the two horses to the fence outside the house, he told Leadora that he wanted to go into town for an unknown reason.

The 1886 book by John Proffatt The American Decisions explains: “On his arrival he drove up to the house where his sister was, and fastened both horses to the fence near the house. He then saw his sister and informed her that he brought the team in to carry her home; he then went down town, leaving the horses where he had fastened them.”

We know from several sources that George Dexter Whitcomb (left) entered Leadora’s life soon after he arrived in the St. Paul area in October 1856, after purchasing land in Section 12 of the Belle Creek area (about 350 miles southeast of St. Paul). Three years later, they were married on October 19, 1859, and Leadora gave birth to their first son, George Bennett Whitcomb, exactly one year and one day later.

As an aside: This is where some controversy comes into play. Most historians say that Henry Whitcomb, born October March 8, 1863, and died June 2, 1864 was the oldest Whitcomb. From most every non-sourced online biography of the Whitcomb family says the same thing, something along these lines: "By 1865, Whitcomb had been promoted to General Purchasing Agent for the Panhandle Railroad and the family included George Bennett Whitcomb and Carroll Sylvanus Whitcomb." This is a fine claim, but seems unlikely, especially considering that Henry was born in March 1863, and it says two more boys were added by 1865, specifically by July 1, 1865, when Carroll Sylvanus was born. Although it is physically possible to given birth twice in 27 months and perhaps a common occurance in those times, but if you look closely at the births of the Whitcomb children, with the acception Virginia, all of the children were born approximately two to three years apart: George, 1860; Henry, 1863; Carroll, 1865; William, 1868; Leadora, 1871; Elizabeth, 1871; and Virginia, 1877.

In addition, the Panhandle Railroad wasn't officially started until 1868, so George Whitcomb couldn't have been an employee of it in 1865: "An act incorporating the Panhandle Railroad Company was passed by the West Virginia Legislature on the 15th day of July, 1868, for the building of a railroad from Holliday’s Cove via Wellsburg to Wheeling," so says the company's history. There was a "Panhandle Route" through Virginia started by the Pittsburgh & Steubenville Railroad as early as 1858, but the railroad itself wasn't incorporated into a company until 1868, being utilized by the Pittsburg, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railway Company but before being bought out by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1876.

Anyway, back to the story:

On this August 13, 1859, Leadora was interested in getting the attention of a young man by the name of Gillette. Given that she was to be married in less than two months, the interaction can be considered nothing but innocent; however, the court report, especially the one written in Proffatt's The American Decisions sounds slightly more scandalous: “Shortly after this, the defendant came by and was accosted by Miss Bennett, who informed him that she desired to see him, and he went in. While in the house it was suggested by some one, who is unimportant, that they should attend a funeral which was to take place at a church at some distance from the house where they were; a lady present remarked that the distance was too great to walk, and Miss Bennett suggested that ‘there were the horses, and he [the defendant] could drive us down.’” The quotes above are from court testimonial in Leadora’s own words.

Agreeing, Gillette unfastened the horses and drove the two women, Leadora and the unnamed woman—perhaps the friend Leadora was visiting—downtown to attend a funeral.

Along the way, tragedy struck. The horses, startled by something, bolted. In Cases on the Law of Agency by Floyd Russell Mechem (1893), it is described that, “the horses became frightened, ran away, threw out the occupants of the carriage, demolished the carriage and killed themselves.” Easily the equivalent of getting into an accident, totaling the car but being able to walk away from the crash uninjured.

It isn’t clear how Leadora and her brother returned to the Bennett farm in the country; they were obviously without the horses and carriage, but it is easy to understand Abraham Bennett’s rage. For starters, his son left the carriage unattended, and then Leadora allowed another man to drive it, which led to its destruction.

It makes sense to assume that money was tight for the Bennett family, as they had become farmers, not necessarily the most lucrative of professions in Minnesota. For already strapped families, horses and buggies weren’t cheap. An inexpensive horse in the mid 1800s would set a man back around $100, at a time when $20 a month was a good income. The carriage, on the other hand, depending on how nice it was, could be anywhere from as much as the horse to several hundred dollars. Given Bennett’s status and his income, Leadora and Gillette’s blunder on August 13, cost Abraham perhaps around $200.

He was quite angry, so much so that he contacted his lawyers, secured the law firm of Sanborn, French and Lund in St. Paul and sued the Gillette family for the loss of his property, entering the Minnesota legal system with case Minnesota 423: 74 AM. DBO. 774, Bennett v. Gillette. The case was heard in December 1859, two months after Leadora’s wedding (though she’s still referred to as “Miss” in the court records).

Despite Bennett’s suggested lack of funds, he found himself one of the best law firms in all of St. Paul, and its lead council led a spectacular life, as outlined in Lawrence A. Martin’s 2001 article called “Observations on Architectural Styles, Part 3: St. Albans/Lower Crocus Hill”:

“John Benjamin Sanborn moved to St. Paul in 1854, was Minnesota adjutant general and quartermaster-general at the start of the American Civil War, was Colonel of the Fourth Minnesota Regiment, participated at Iuka, the Vicksburg campaign, Corinth, Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills, Jefferson City, Booneville, Independence, Big Blue, Little Blue, Osage, Marias des-Cygnes, and Newtonia, conducted a campaign against the Indians of the Southwest in 1865, opened all the lines of communication to the territories of Colorado and New Mexico, and terminated all hostilities with the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Apaches of the upper Arkansas River in treaties in 1865, was a member, with Kit Carson and William Bent, of a federal Indian peace commission, was a member of the Minnesota House in 1859-1860, 1872, and 1881-1882 and of the Minnesota Senate in 1861 and 1891-1894, was a member of the law firm of Sanborn, French and Lund, was a member of the Minnesota Historical Society for 48 years, married Catherine Hall in 1857, married Rachel Rice, the daughter of Edmund Rice, married Anna Elmer Nixon in 1865, was the father of John B. Sanborn, a member of the Minnesota House 1913-1916, died in St. Paul of arteriosclerosis, cerebral thrombosis, and gangrene of the foot, and is buried in Oakland Cemetery.”

From Pen Pictures of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Biographical Sketches of Old Settlers, From the Earliest Settlement of the City, Up to and Including the Year 1857: “John B. Sanborn was born in Epsom, New Hampshire, December 5, 1826, the youngest of five children. Interested in the law, he attended one quarter at Dartmouth College (1851-1852) but left to join the law office of Asa Fowler in Concord. He was admitted to the bar in 1854, and moved West, settling in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he and his partners began the firm of Sanborn, French and Lund on January 1, 1855. He maintained an active role with the firm until ca. 1880.”

Unfortunately for our principles in this story, all of Sanborn’s training and experience wasn’t much help. He lost his case, Abraham Bennett was out money and a team of horses, and Leadora was probably still in trouble…though this time she was Leadora Bennett Whitcomb.

The presiding judge in the case was Charles E. Flandrau, who offered his ruling on behalf of the three presiding judges in the Minnesota Supreme Court: “In this case, we cannot see how there was any impropriety in the daughter of the plaintiff using the carriage which had been sent into the city for her for any of the general purposes which such property is devoted to in families, either in conveying her to a friend's, or to church, as in this instance; nor do we think she exceeded the limits of a prudent exercise of her privileges, by extending them to her friends who were present. She certainly did not by so doing violate any known law of courtesy, but we think exhibited a degree of forethought and prudence in securing the services of the defendant to drive the horses, which was commendable to her judgment. We do not think the defendant can be said to have taken the property at all, or to have had it under his control or in his custody or possession, but he was simply a passenger at the invitation of the plaintiff's daughter, who had competent and adequate authority, by virtue of her relation to the plaintiff, to use the carriage and horses for the purpose for which they were being applied. The case does not make out any negligence on the part of the defendant in the manner in which he drove or otherwise, and we see no principle upon which he can be made liable for the loss the plaintiff has sustained. It is one of those unfortunate accidents for which the law furnishes no redress.”

“The judgment of the court ... is affirmed.”

Leadora and George Whitcomb lived in several places over the course of the next 20 years—Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois (mostly in Chicago), but finally ended up in Los Angeles in 1884 on land that would one day be Glendora. Written by Virginia Whitcomb Sloan in 1945 for Helen Kennard Bettin’s book, This I Remember, Leadora’s youngest daughter, writes: “My mother missed Chicago and her friends. The quail on the place increased her home sickness by their call, ‘Chi-ca-go.’”

Leadora made many trips back to Chicago, as evidenced by the records of the 1895 Directory of the Oakland M.E. Church and Sunday School. That year, Leadora served on the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society as the Second Vice President, which “meets the first Thursday afternoon of each month, in the lecture room. Luncheon served at 12:30. Devotional exercises at 1:45. Literary and business session from 2 to 4. Every lady of the church is invited.” According to the directory, the Whitcombs (which included George Dexter and Leadora, their daughters Leadora and Elizabeth and their son William Card and his wife Julia Chamblin) are included under resident members and all listed to reside at “The Tudor” on the corner of Ellis and 42nd Street in Chicago. It is unclear whether it is a hotel or a nickname for their house (from the famous Tudor Hotel in New York City), but it is only five blocks from the Oakland church.

One strange inclusion in the Directory of the Oakland M.E. Church and Sunday School is that it lists a Virginia Whitcomb as being a part of Bible Class Number Four (coincidentally taught by a F.A. Gillette) at living at 191 44th Street. In 1895, Virginia, if she was George and Leadora’s daughter, would have been 18 years old, hardly an age to be going to Sunday School now days, but back in 1895 it was customary to be in Sunday School until adulthood. What is more strange is that she is not listed as living with the rest of the Whitcomb family.

As a side note, Virginia (George and Leadora’s youngest daughter) would grow up to become an artist. According to Edan Hughes’ Artists in California, 1786-1940: “While in Los Angeles in 1900, Whitcomb studied at the School of Art and Design. Her married name was Sloan at the time of her death there on Jan. 1, 1947.”

Abstracted from the 25th Anniversary sermon delivered by the Pastor, Dr. P. H. Swift, Sunday evening, March 4th, 1894: The Oakland M. E. Church was organized March 7th, 1869. But, as is usually the case, there was a beginning back of the beginning. So far as any record can be obtained the first Methodist services conducted in this vicinity were class meetings, which were held during the year 1867, at the residence of Mr. M. Van Allen, who then lived at No. 28 Langley street. During that year an attempt was made to organize a church and put up a building. Lots were secured on Cottage Grove Avenue, and lumber enough promised for the erection of a chapel. But the plan failed and the lots were given up. Nothing further was done till late in the fall of 1868. It is probable that the first one to propose the organization of a Church in this community was Mr. Asahel Otis, who broached the subject to Mr. William Rand. The latter gentleman at once offered the use of his parlors as a place where Methodist services might be held.

The Oakland M.E. Church building at 3956 S Langley Avenue is still on the corner of Oakwood Boulevard and Langley Avenue in Chicago, though in 1918 it changed ownership and became Blackwell Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church.


The image at the top of this page is Leadora Bennett standing in front of her 1910 Cadillac... again with a chauffeur.

Glendora’s Famous Map

During the period from 1850 to 1890, many artists were employed by major eastern lithographic firms to produce bird’s-eye views of the new towns springing up in the west. This lucrative field was soon entered by companies centered in San Francisco, of which Britton & Rey and A. L. Bancroft & Co. were the largest.

The hand-drawn promotional map shown here is quite a popular one—unquestionably recognized by most anyone familiar with Glendora’s history—as it has been displayed prominently in the Glendora Library for years, and most of the modern historical accounts use it in some way to show what Glendora looked like soon after George D. Whitcomb carved out the town site in 1887.

What is not widely known is that there are two versions of this map (technically three), one a primitive rough sketch (top), while the second version enjoys a more polished appearance (bottom). Although they are both generally identical, in that they show the buildings and streets of the infant town, they do share many specific differences that make each version unique all to its own. And, there are a couple of mistakes worthy of note.

Although it is sometimes mistakenly called a Cleland illustration, the original drawing was completed by Edwin S. Moore in January 1888. By 1886, he had made a name for himself as an artist specifically tailored to the promotion of the land boom, and over the next five years, Moore drew 19 views similar in style to Glendora’s, all but three depicting towns and cities in California.

From Views and Viewmakers of Urban America: Lithographs of Towns and Cities by John William Reps (1984): “Most of Moore’s California views show the new towns that speculators created or vastly expanded during the Southern California land boom of the 1880s: San Jacinto, Azusa, Elsinore, Coronado Beach, Monrovia, Glendora, Alosta, Redlands, and Alhambra.”

“Moore lived in Los Angeles at this time; at least his name appears in the city directory for 1888 with an address at 11 Schumacher Block. Either he moved or traveled extensively, for in 1888, he drew views of Bakersfield and Merced and, in the following year, Grass Valley. His three Oregon views, of Ashland, Salem, and Grants Pass, are either dated 1890 or can be assigned to that year.

“In 1891, he must have returned to California. His three views of that year show towns in or near the San Francisco Bay area—Berkeley, Redwood, and Vallejo—and the Berkley view gives Moore’s address as Oakland. The undated lithograph of San Rafael, located in this same region, probably belongs to this last year of his recorded work.”

At the bottom of the map, it states “View taken when six months old,” which would could mean two different dates. 1) six months after the land sale in April 1887 (that would mean it was drawn September 1887); or 2) six months after the town’s official map was recorded with Los Angeles County on September 22 (which would mean it was drawn in March 1888). Since it is known that Moore was in Oregon for most of the year, perhaps January 1888 is accurate and the six months old figure was an estimate.

John William Reps adds: “His lithographs, therefore, help to document a fascinating period in the region’s development. At least two of his views in this category were published by the land companies responsible for the existence of the communities they depicted.”

The Glendora Land Company (and the Coronado Beach Company) were the two examples of land speculators paying to have the maps printed for promotional purposes. Whitcomb, no doubt, oversaw the creation of the Moore map and then paid to have it distributed around California in the hopes of attracting attention and new land owners to Glendora. Perhaps these first versions of the map were drawn in haste, Whitcomb longing to get them into the hands of potential land buyers and Moore eager to get to Oregon for another job. Whatever the circumstances, the early version of the Glendora map is rough, with hardened sketch lines, almost similar to a wood cut print of 30 years earlier. Reps dismisses his attempts as an artist by criticizing his attention to detail: “It is unconvincing in its handling of topography, and it is mechanical in execution.” Streets don’t properly line up—Whitcomb Avenue becomes a jagged stretch of road, trees and bushes are scribbles of lead, and all of the elements lack a focused definition.

On the old version, there are no streets named above Leadora and Vista Bonita doesn’t line up with Whitcomb’s house at the head of the street. However, on both versions, Wabash is mostly illegible.

The second version is polished, shaded, with darkly outlined features and it shows a higher degree of exactness to the detail. The dog-eared portions of the map are drawn with realism, the streets have been straightened and the pepper trees are more uniform and regular. Trees have an element of care and realism and they almost appear larger and more mature, as if time has passed (a specific example is the difference between the trees right above the sixth car on the Santa Fe) . It was also reproduced by a professional publisher specifically tailored to create lithographs of exactly this kind of work. In the bottom corner of each of the maps—even the rough one—it shows that it distributed in lithograph form by the H.S. Crocker & Company out of San Francisco.

There is no record of the dealings of this company at that time, so it can only be surmised that they began reproducing the original Moore drawing while another artist was busy fine tuning Moore’s work. The difference between the two is phenomenal when you start to study the details and perhaps H.S. Crocker & Company desired to create a better product so they had the original redone, adding some details and subtracting others. This is why there are technically three versions of the map: 1) early version drawn by Moore and printed by him and Whitcomb; 2) early version drawn by Moore but printed in lithograph form by H.S. Crocker & Company; and 3) retouched version maybe remastered by Moore—probably someone else—and printed by H.S. Crocker & Company.

H. S. Crocker, who would soon become the president of his company, arrived in California on the cusp of the Gold Rush on August 13, 1850. Six years later, he started “H.S. Crocker Company Printers” in a tent in Sacramento and purchased the first offset-lithographic press manufactured in America (it is currently in the Smithsonian). A small sign stood outside the tent promising “first class printing” to all customers. The company soon moved to San Francisco and built a five-story plant in 1885 (left), “considered to be the finest commercial printing establishment in the West.” Expansion continued with the purchases of other companies, including Independent Lithograph Company in 1958 and Strobridge Lithograph Company of Cincinnati in 1960, H.S. Crocker acquired Fraser Label Company of Chicago in 1969; and, in 1972, it purchased Lockwood Folding Box Company, in business in Norristown, Pennsylvania, since 1850 and long noted for pharmaceutical carton production.

Over 150 years later, H.S. Crocker & Co. are still known for their outstanding printing; however, there were a few problems associated with the Glendora map. Though most of which probably fall to the fault of Moore and the original version, a few slipped into the second printing. Below is a list of anomalies and peculiarities associated with each version of the map as well as them compared to each other:

The mysterious Ohio Avenue, centered halfway between Pennsylvania and Grand Avenues is on no other map ever produced for Glendora, including Whitcomb’s own plat map. According to his map, Pennsylvania is the western boundary of his property and the town.

Above Sierra Madre are listed two streets that appear on no other known map of Glendora, including Whitcomb’s original plat map (the two streets on this map show up on Whitcomb’s plat map but they are unnamed). Oakwood and Summit avenues no longer exist in Glendora. Summit is now Crestglen, going from Vista Bonita to Banna; however Oakwood has been merely enveloped into the neighborhood and has disappeared.

No single locomotive in 1888 was capable of pulling seven passenger cars, but this might have been an exaggeration to subconsciously convince potential buyers that so many people were headed to Glendora, they needed seven cars attached to every locomotive to handle the influx. Also notice that the first two cars in the new version have been changed to freight cars. Also, whomever remastered the original for the second version thought it necessary to add "Santa Fe R.R." over the tracks where they cross Carroll.

There are 10 small buildings on the northeast corner of Ada and Ohio that disappear in the new version.

In the older version, the Bellevue Hotel is smaller and not accurately drawn.

The building on the northwest corner of Michigan and Bennett avenues switches sides of the street in the newer version.

On the southwest corner of Virginia and Minnesota, a cluster of houses in the new version are replaced by a stand of trees.

In the older version, it appears as though Minnehaha is spelled wrong (with an S in place of the last A).

In the inset of the “Public School Building,” an extra chimney has been added on top of the right-most gable. In the next frame on the left, the man standing in the doorway of the Land Company Building (Whitcomb himself maybe?) has gone missing in the second version. In the Jefferson Patten inset, the people in the image grow shorter in the second version.

In the new version, Meda Avenue no longer goes through to Pennsylvania. Instead, it stops at Vermont, and that is strange because Meda has always gone through to Pennsylvania. What’s more interesting, is that the lighter shading used to cover up the street is still visible.

Jefferson Patten’s store, the first lot sold in Glendora, is mistakenly drawn on the southeast side of Michigan and Bennett avenues in the second version, when it should be where the First Christian Church is now. He did own several properties, however.

However, the largest clue on the map in relation to the accepted history of Glendora is the presence of the Santa Fe Depot, accurately drawn as it was originally constructed. Assuming the map is correctly dated, and it shows Glendora as it looked when it was roughly six months old, when exactly was the depot built? Most Glendora historians place the build date sometime early in 1888, claiming that a boxcar was used for the first year of operation. Specifically, in "Glendora--Its History" by Ruth Pratt Kimball, she writes: "By March of 1887, the railroad was operating two daily trains..." That must mean the depot, as depicted in Moore's sketch, was literally brand new, arguably one of the newest buildings in the drawing.

And here, you thought it was all the same map…