Kings County
Biographies
LOUIS M. COLE
is associated with E. E. Manheim, they being partners and managers of the firm of Kutner, Goldstein & Co., general merchants at Hanford. The business was started in 1881, by Kutner, Goldstein & Co., with Mr. S. Rehoefer as manager, in a store building 25 x 100 feet, located on Sixth street. In 1886 Mr. Rehoefer sold his interest to Mr. Arthur Dinkelspiel, who then assumed the management. The business having grown to such proportions that greater facilities were necessary, an addition of 25 x 100 feet was made, and the capacity of the store doubled. A warehouse, 50 x 50 feet, was also added. Business was then continued very successfully until September, 1890, when that portion of the town was swept away by fire, the store and contents being entirely destroyed. Before the debris had ceased to smoke operations to rebuild had commenced, and sixty days from the date of the fire their present handsome store, 50 x 150 feet, was ready for occupancy. On December 31, 1890, Kutner, Goldstein & Co., the universal providers, was incorporated. Mr. Dinkelspiel then went to Fresno to reside and Messrs. Cole and Manheim, former clerks, were placed in management of the Hanford branch of their extended business. The new store is very handsomely and completely fitted, and their extended stock is all graded in the several departments for convenience of handling.
Louis M. Cole was born in Chicago, in 1870. His father, Samuel Cole, a practicing physician of that city, moved to Denver in 1871, practiced his profession there fourteen years and then returned to Chicago, where he still resides. Louis was educated in the Denver high school and took a course of study at the Bryant & Stratton Business College of Chicago. In 1887 he came to Hanford, and under the instruction of his uncle, Arthur Dinkelspiel, he learned the mercantile business.
E. E. Manheim is a native of California, born in San Francisco in 1868. His father, Isaac Manheim, came to California about 1852, followed mercantile life in Humboldt County until 1863, when he settled at San Francisco and continued the business there for many years. He is now an insurance and commission broker. E. E. Manheim was educated in the high school at San Francisco. Entering his father’s office, he acquired a knowledge of bookkeeping and in 1889 came to Hanford, in the employ of Kutner, Goldstein & Co. A short time ago the Kutner-Goldstein Company purchased an additional 25 x 150 feet on the west side of the present site, and after the construction of their new store will have a large amount of square feet than any other store in the county. They also do an extensive grain business, handling two-thirds of the crop brought to this market.
Memorial and Biographical History of the counties of Fresno, Tulare and Kern, California
Chicago, The Lewis Publishing Company, 1892 p. 299-300
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
GEORGE W. CODY
of Grangeville, was born in Oakland County, Michigan, in 1842. At the early age of seven years he began his pioneer life, by going with this parents to Dane County, Wisconsin, and settling near Madison, in that wild, unbroken, prairie country. His father purchased a small farm and there resided until 1859, when they again moved, settling in Johnson County, Nebraska, where everything was new and undeveloped. Mr. Cody enlisted at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, January 20, 1861, in Company H, Eighth Kansas Infantry, under Colonel John A. Martin, later governor of Kansas. The regiment was connected with the Army of the Cumberland and that of Tennessee. Our subject served three and a half years, passing through fifteen battles and skirmishes, and also spending fifteen months in the prison pens of the Confederacy. He was captured at Chickamanga, Georgia, and first confined in the Atlanta bull pens, and being frequently removed he passed through Libby and Andersonville, Pemberton, Danville, Charleston, and Florence prisons, besides many other tombs of incarceration. Upon his release, being greatly reduced and his time having expired, he was discharged and returned to his home in Nebraska.
He then began farming and milling, and subsequently moved to Tecumseh, where he opened a general merchandise store. In 1873 he sold out and came direct to Lemoore, Tulare County, California, where the family of his wife then resided. He purchased 320 acres of land, and renting other lands farmed to the amount of 1,000 acres annually, without water. Mr. Cody was connected with and aided in the construction of the Lower King’s river, the People’s and the Last Chance ditches. He farmed until 1881 and then moved to Orange, Los Angeles County, bought forty acres of land and set it to English walnuts and raisin vines. He remained there until the boom of 1886, and then moved to Los Angeles and engaged extensively in real-estate operations. In 1888 he came to Fresno and became interested in the Providence Mine in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Here they erected quartz mills and other expensive machinery, but the prospects were soon worked out and much money sacrificed. In the fall of 1889 he purchased his present ranch of twenty acres two and a half miles northeast of Grangeville, and eighty acres adjoining the town. The entire tract is now set to fruit and vines, where Mr. Cody devotes his time to his ranch interests.
Mr. Cody claims to have invented the most economical and perfect raisin dryer in existence. He makes the raisin culture a specialty; packs all his own and buys others and packs for some of his neighbors, etc. Packs but two grades, -- Three Crown London Layers and Three Crown Loose, -- grades the balance and sacks them. One grade is called Two Crown Loose, and the other Seedless Muscatel.
He was married at Elk Station, Johnson County, Nebraska, in 1865, to Miss Mary M. Gray, a native of Wisconsin, and daughter of Hon. A.W. Gray, whose biography appears elsewhere in this history. Mr. and Mrs. Cody have three children living, -- Thorley G., Harvey P., and Andrew Milo. Two are dead, Guy Tyrral and Marenda Josephine.
Memorial and Biographical History of the counties of Fresno, Tulare and Kern, California
Chicago, The Lewis Publishing Company, 1892 p 301-302
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler