Biographical Sketches

One of the Old West's most famous lawmen.

1848-1929. Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was one of the Wild West's most colorful and famous lawmen, best remembered as a survivor of the storied and much filmed encounter known, somewhat incorrectly, as the gunfight at the OK Corral, which took place in Tombstone, Arizona, in October 1881. Wyatt Earp spent his last years in West Adams, Los Angeles, living with his common-law wife Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp, in a bungalow at 4004 West 17th Street, between Arlington and Crenshaw and Venice and Washington Blvd.

read more...

Much imitated film comedian known for his curmudgeonly wit.

1879-1946. William Claude Dukenfield was born in Philadelphia to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and American Kate Felton. William dropped out of school after four years to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. His father beat him often so William left home at eleven, living in a hole in the ground and stealing his food and clothing. At thirteen he got a job delivering ice, and began to practice juggling, an art at which he became extremely skilled. At fourteen he was hired as a juggler at Fortescue's Pier in Atlantic City , New Jersey . He went on to become one of vaudeville's most successful performers, billed as "W. C. Fields, the Eccentric Tramp Juggler."

read more...

Cofounder and long-time treasurer of the industrial city of Vernon.

1872-1950. A founder and long-time city treasurer of the pioneering industrial city of Vernon. Thomas J. Furlong was born on a ranch in what is now Compton to Robert Furlong and Martha Kehoe. He was the eldest of three, his brother James and sister Annie. In 1881 the family moved to a ranch in what is now Vernon, at 2048 E. 52nd Street, where another sister, Judith, was born. Thomas's father Robert died that same year, when Thomas was 9 and his brother James was 5. After this their uncle managed the ranch, which adjoined his own until they were grown.

read more...

Italian immigrant farmworker who became the biggest wine maker in California.

1859-1927. Secundo Guasti immigrated to Los Angeles in 1878 from Asti, Italy , via Mexico . In Italy he had been a farm laborer. In Los Angeles he hired on as a cook in an Italian restaurant. There he fell in love with and married the daughter of the proprietor. He and his wife explored the desert area around Cucamonga and discovered a plentiful water table beneath the sandy soil, leading them to believe the area was suitable for growing wine grapes. In 1901, Guasti purchased some 5,000 acres in the area around South Cucamonga at 75 cents an acre. While many scoffed, Guasti in 1904 established the Italian Vineyard Company and soon built it into the largest winery in California . Guasti started several varieties of grapes and wine that he imported from Italy and France .

read more...

Physician, philanthropist, radical political reformer. Instrumental in adding the rights of initiative, referendum, and recall to the Los Angeles City charter and the California state constitution.

1853-1937. Born in Fairmont Springs, Pennsylvania, to parents of British descent. Haynes grew up in the state's anthracite coal region where his father, James Sydney Haynes, was a coal operator. His mother, Elvira Mann Koons, was of British and Dutch ancestry. On the British side her forebears arrived in America in 1635 and fought in the American Revolution and the War of 1812.

read more...

Important figure in winning the vote for women in California. Cofounder of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation.

1859-1934. Dora Fellows was born and grew up in the coal mining region of Pennsylvania. Her father, like her future husband's, was a mine manager, and the two families were friends. John and Dora married in 1882 after Dora returned to Pennsylvania from a year's attendance at Wellesley College. Their only child, Sidney, died at the age of three of scarlet fever, an event that motivated the couple's move across country to the budding metropolis of Los Angeles. There, John set up a medical practice and entered into business as a real estate investor. He and Dora established themselves in local society. Dora assisted in her husband's medical office and hosted social gatherings at home. She joined the Friday Morning Club, the Ruskin Art Club, and other groups involved in cultural and civic affairs.

read more...

Director of the Ebell Club, the largest women's organization in Los Angeles, in the 1920s.

We have no personal information about Mrs. Leslie Hewitt except that she was a principal figure in the Ebell Club, the largest women's organization in Los Angeles in its day, and that she lived at 1212 S. Alvarado. The Ebell Club was founded in 1894 in a pattern originated by Dr. Adrian Ebell of Berlin in a club created in Oakland , California , in 1876. The Los Angeles Ebell Club built its own clubhouse in West Adams in 1906, at 1719 South Figueroa Street .

read more...

Hardware millionaire, early West Adams social leader, amateur scientist and astronomer, and donor of the Hooker 100 inch telescope at Mt. Wilson, the largest telescope in the world when it was built.

John Hooker (1838-1911) and his wife Katharine Putnam Hooker (1849-1935) (see entry) were important figures in the early days of West Adams society, between 1886 and 1911. John, born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, was a hardware and steel-pipe millionaire. John went to California in 1861, living first in San Francisco. In 1869 he married Katharine Putnam of San Francisco. They had two children, both born in San Francisco, Marian, in 1875, and Lawrence, in 1878. Sometime after that they moved to Los Angeles.

read more...

Early leader of West Adams society. Survivor of two shipwrecks and the San Francisco earthquake; noted travel writer about Italy. Close friend of astronomer George Ellery Hale, naturalist John Muir, and psychologist William James.

1849-1935. Katharine Putnam was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her mother, was Elizabeth Noble Whitney. Elizabeth's brothers, Katharine's uncles, were Josiah Dwight Whitney and William Dwight Whitney. Josiah (1819-1896) was a Harvard professor of geology who became chief of the California Geological Survey (1860-1874) and for whom Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the United States, is named. William (1827-1894) was a professor at Yale and the leading Sanskrit scholar of his day.

read more...

German-American lumber and electric power millionaire and land developer who bequeathed buildings in his name to USC, UCLA, and Cal Tech, and endowed a cutting-edge heart research institute in Germany.

1856-1929. Kerckhoff came to Los Angeles from Indiana with his young wife Louise Eshman Kerckhoff in 1878 or 1879. He began his California career with the Jackson Lumber Company, serving the whole of the Los Angeles basin. To transport lumber, Kerckhoff in 1887 built the first ocean-going vessel in the United States to use oil for fuel.

read more...

Pages