San Bernardino County
Biographies
COLONEL JOHN FEUDGE
was born in Waterford, Ireland, November 3, 1824. His
parents came to the United States immediately after the inauguration of
President John Quincy Adams. The subject of this sketch was first engaged
assisting his father, who kept a market garden in the suburbs of New York city.
When about sixteen years of age he was apprenticed and learned printing and
stereotyping. He had worked some time, before becoming an apprentice, at type
casting, by the old hand-mold method, and also as composing room devil, fly-boy,
and wrapper-writer in the offices of the two great commercial papers of that
day, the Courier and Enquirer, and
Journal of Commerce, both on Wall street, the presses then being turned
by hand-crank.
General James Watson Webb was editor
of the former and " old Tom " Snowden business manager, two very prominent
personages in those days; David Hale and -- Hallack being the editors and
proprietors of the Journal. The first printing-office entered by the
subject of this sketch was the book and job office of Scatchard & Adams, 38 Gold
street, New York. This office was in the days of the old hand presses—before the
introduction of the power press—the largest in the city, probably in the
country. The firm was broken up by the sudden disappearance of Mr. Adams, whose
remains having been cut up and packed in a box, were discovered by the carman
who hauled the box to the wharf for shipment to a southern port, to which it was
consigned or directed. In the trial which ensued, on which our subject was
subpoenaed as a witness, the murderer was found to be a professional teacher of
penmanship and bookkeeping, and brother of Colonel Colt, of patent fire-arms
celebrity.
At the beginning of the year 1851, Messrs. John and Henry Beach, of the New York Sun, in connection with P. T. Barnum, commenced the publication of the New York Illustrated News, the first illustrated paper published in the United States. Like its London prototype the chief engravings were full-page folios, and, in printing from the originals, the green box-wood warping, they cracked and split when submitted to the pressure of the press, thereby greatly disfiguring the publication. As yet electrotyping had not been introduced, nor had paper as a substitute for plaster in stereotyping, and to successfully cast a quarto page plaster mold was a very difficult matter, and a folio entirely out of the question The publishers of the Illustrated News having been informed by the subject of this sketch that he was the inventor of a new method by which the largest page could be successfully and quickly cast, they at once awarded him the contract, at four dollars a page. Thereafter (from the third number), during its existence, the publication was entirely unmarred by any defect of the character here described. The new method was a complete success. Going West shortly after the suspension of the Illustrated News, he visited the tract of 4,300 acres of land purchased by a New York colony, of which he was a member. This land lay in Mitchell and Howard counties, Iowa. After disposing of his interest in these lands to parties in Dubuque, he returned East and immediately went to Texas, where, at the outbreak of the Southern rebellion, he was engaged in merchandising, in the town of San Antonio. In the summer of 1861 he was a Union refugee from Texas. Because of his unswerving loyalty to the American flag and uncompromising fidelity to the Union, he was obliged to flee, after the deposition of the Union governor, General Sam Houston. Being harassed and threatened by the secessionists and the ordinances of the secession convention, he was forced to abandon and sacrifice his business and property.
By the friendly assistance, as well as the official interposition in his behalf of the French consul, F. Gilbean, of San Antonio, he was enabled to make his escape in a small coaster, by running the blockade in the night, out of Sabine pass, a United States frigate standing off and on in the roadstead, in the Mexican gulf, blockading the harbor. On his arrival North, after many delays and dangers (twice being stopped and searched by secessionists in Berwick's Bay, Louisiana, and again at Clarksville, Tennessee), he joined the Union army, as a citizen, at Louisville, Kentucky, in the Army of the Ohio, commanded by General Buell, and was assigned the duty of forage master, under the Chief Quartermaster, Captain Alvan Gillem. After the campaign of Corinth, and by the invitation of Colonel Gillem, he recruited for the First Regiment, Middle Tennessee Infantry (afterward known as the Tenth), and served respectively as Captain and Lieutenant Colonel; commissions dated 1862 and 1863; was attached to the Fourteenth Army Corps; participated in nearly all the military operations in Tennessee till the close of the war; was honorably mustered out and discharged from the service, at Knoxville, East Tennessee, June 5, 1865. Commissioned Indian agent by President Johnson, for the Colorado river Indians, Arizona, 1865. At the close of Johnson's administration he settled in San Bernardino, California. He owns and occupies a ranch of about 100 acres in the Warm Springs and Central districts, two miles east of town.
He was married in Nashville, Tennessee, at the close of the war, to Miss Susan Kenifeck of Cincinnati, Ohio. They have four children, viz: Henry E., who is United States Railroad Mail Agent to Oceanside; Teresa, John B. and Mary Ellen. He is a member of Cornman Post, No. 27, G. A. R., of San Bernardino, and also of the order of Good Templars
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.- 510-511
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
DR. J. A. MACK,
of Redlands, is a native of Syracuse, New York, born June 24, 1842. He received his education in the schools of Syracuse and Fulton, New York, and commended the study of medicine with Dr. Townsend, of Syracuse; he also attended and graduated at the college at Geneva. He began practice at Syracuse, afterward continuing at Rochester, and later at Lyons, New York. Thence he removed to Chicago, where he attended Bennett Medical College (Eclectic), graduating in 1876. He practiced in Chicago until 1886, when he removed to California, and on the 9th of November of that year settled in Redlands; being one of the Chicago colony who located here. He conducted the Prospect House a year and a half, practicing also at the time. He then built his present handsome residence, on a tract of one and a half acres which he purchased. He has 40,000 orange seed bed stock, 2,000 of last year's buds and 6,000 of this year's buds, on his home place. He also has ten acres of land in the Crafton district, part of which is already planted to oranges, and the remainder will he in 1890.
Dr. Mack was married November 26, 1876, to Annetta Bishop, a native of New York city. They have three children living, viz.: John A., Jr.; Roy A. and Raymond. One is deceased, Grace, aged seven years.
Dr. Mack is a member of the A. O. U. W., of Lyons, and K. G. R, of Illinois. He is an active worker for the improvement of Redlands, and his own property interests in that vicinity. The Doctor is now out of practice, for the present, and is devoting his attention to business affairs connected mainly with orange culture.
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.- 511-512
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler