Orange County
Biographies
LOUIS SCHORN,
President of the Olive Milling Company, was born in Bavaria, Germany, in 1839, came to the United States in 1856, and engaged as clerk for a dry-goods merchant in Alabama until 1861, when he returned to the old country to visit his parents. In 1864 he again sought the "land of the free." After clerking three years in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, he spent one year in Kansas, and then until 1882 he was successfully engaged in the grocery and milling business in Texas. Then he came to California and purchased forty acres of land northwest of Anaheim, where he now lives, and where he devotes his attention to fruits and vines, and is very successful both in horticulture and in the manufacture of wines and brandies. He has since bought 160 acres of highly improved land a half mile southwest of the Southern Pacific depot in Anaheim, devoted principally to oranges and deciduous fruits. In 1887 the Olive Milling and Land Improvement Company was organized, with a paid up capital of $50,000. Those forming the company were Mr. Schorn, Thomas Dillon, C. Culvert and Washington Martin. For four years prior to this organization Mr. Schorn and Mr. Dillon had been carrying on the milling business successfully. In the fall of 1889 the mill was totally destroyed by fire; but through the energy and enterprising spirit of these men it has been rebuilt and is now in full running order, doing a business of over $2,500 per month. The intention of the company is to have a town at Olive, and with the railroad facilities now promised and the beauty of the location they have flattering prospects of success.
Politically Mr. Schorn is identified with the Democratic party, and though only recently a citizen of this place he has made a host of friends not only in his own party but in all the others. At present he is also president of the Anaheim Union Water Company.
He was married June 26, 1880, to Miss Minnie Stely, who died in 1885. They had two daughters.
SOURCE: An Illustrated History of Southern California: Embracing the Counties of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower California… Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890. p.- 843-844
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
LEONARD PARKER,
of Anaheim, was born in the town of Boston, New York, March
1, 1818. His parents, Joel and Annie (Woodcock) Parker, were natives of
Massachusetts. The senior Parker, by trade a carpenter, was employed as a
builder and contractor in the city of Buffalo, New York, for many years, and the
subject of this sketch had very little opportunity for getting an education. At
the age of twenty-one years he started out as a farmer, and afterward learned
the blacksmith trade, his early life being a rugged one. He walked five miles to
work and then cradled wheat for 50 cents a day, at the same time paying $2 a
bushel for corn! In 1852 he moved
to McHenry County, Illinois, and bought out a claim on the frontier, and this he
improved and cultivated for twenty years, being successfully engaged in general
farming and stock-raising.
April 1, 1870, he came to California
and bought 200 acres of unimproved land near Anaheim; it was then almost
completely covered with cactus and sage brush. One can scarcely realize now, as
he beholds the beautiful flowers and the orchards of oranges, apricots and
prunes full of delicious fruit, that the land was once so wild and bare. Surely,
Mr. Parker has made the "desert fertile and blossom as the rose." He has to-day
over 3,000 orange trees which yielded last year (1889) over 5,000 boxes of
fruit.
September 15, 1838, Mr. Parker married Miss Kate Kennedy, a native of Montgomery County, New York, and born in 1820, the daughter of Abraham and Catherine (McGregor) Kennedy, parents natives of Scotland. Mr. and Mrs. Parker have reared a large family of children, viz.: Joel B., of Orange; Anna L., wife of Simeon Tucker; Walter M., in Texas; Mary A., wife of Owen Handy; Della, now Mrs. R. A. Brown; Eva L., wife of Arthur Lewis of Los Angeles; Jesse R., of National City; Lydia, wife of Captain O. S. Wood, of Anaheim; Ernest T., of Orange; and Kate, who died at the age of sixteen years. Mr. and Mrs. Parker in 1888 celebrated their "golden wedding," and were the recipients of many valuable presents. They are remarkably well preserved, both in mind and body, having been all their lives in the practice of the principles of temperance, which they advocated, but do not believe in orthodoxy or Christianity.
SOURCE: An Illustrated History of Southern California: Embracing the Counties of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower California… Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890. p.- 844
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler