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
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