San Diego County
Biographies
J. H. LOUCKS,
manager and owner of the "San Diego Bath House," was born
at Sharon, New York, March 18, 1838. He was the second in a family of nine
children, and at the early age of four years his parents emigrated to Michigan,
where his father took up a Government claim of 160 acres, in a wild, unsettled
country. In 1853 they moved to Illinois, and, as times were hard and the family
quite large, the subject of this sketch, at the age of fourteen years, began
taking care of himself, working on
farms until 1862, when he listened to his country's call and enlisted in Company
D, Captain Cooper, of the Second Illinois Light Artillery. They fought
under both Grant and Sherman, and were in the battles of Fort Donelson,
Pittsburg Landing, and the long siege and heavy fighting at Moscow. They were
under Sherman in his thirty-two days' march from Memphis to Meridian,
Mississippi, and were at Decatur, Alabama, during the three days' fight against
Hood, winning by an accident, as until re-enforced they held their position by
strategy. Mr. Loucks was in the Quartermaster's department at Decatur and
rendered valuable service in preserving papers of great value to the department.
He was in no other large battles but many skirmishes through Alabama, Tennessee
and Kentucky. At Memphis he was taken sick with small-pox and was mustered out
from the hospital, May 30, 1865. He then engaged in farming and other
occupations until the spring of 1875, when he came to Santa Cruz, California. In
1881 he came to San Diego and was variously employed until 1886, when he built
his handsome bath-house and residence adjoining on the water front, Atlantic
street, between C and D. The building is seventy-five feet front by sixty-four
feet deep, and is neatly and conveniently fitted up with tubs for either hot or
cold water. In the rear he has a swimming tank 30 x 60 feet, with dressing rooms
adjoining. The water for baths is always pumped at high tide and from 400 feet
out in the channel, thus procuring clear, pure water.
Mr. Loucks was married in Clark County, Missouri, January, 1862, to Miss Eliza E. Lucas. Having no children they devote all their time to the neat maintenance of their establishment.
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.- 120
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
E. Z. BUNDY,
one of the industrious and enterprising business men of
Elsinore, claims as his native place, Springville, Iowa, and dates his birth
August 18, 1862. His father, Joseph W. Bundy, and his mother, Martha (Gregg)
Bundy, were natives of Ohio. Their family consisted of eight children, but
two of which survive: Mr. E. Z. Bundy and
his brother, O. J. Bundy, both residents of Elsinore. Bundy spent his boyhood,
until he was sixteen years of age, in Iowa. In 1882 he engaged in the blacksmith
business and has followed it ever since. He came to Elsinore in 1885 and found
one blacksmith here before him. He bought him out and built a good shop in
1886 that would be good enough for any town in the State, and here for the past
five years he has done the work for the people for ten miles in every direction
from Elsinore. Realizing for the first time in March, 1889, that it was not good
for a man to he alone he submitted his case to Miss Hattie L. Stilson of San
José, who had been the school-teacher in Elsinore for the two previous years and
who is a native of California, born in Half Moon Bay. This union of two has
resulted in a third, Essie Blanch, a beautiful daughter, born December 9, 1889.
Mr. Bundy is a member of the Elsinore Business Men's Association and of the
committee on mines and mining, and is now a member of the city council. He owns
one of the hot mineral spring bath houses, for which Elsinore is so justly
celebrated, and is steadily with brawny, bare arms and sturdy blows, gaining for
himself and those he loves, a good living and a competency for later years. All
honor to the men who thus benefit themselves and the country in which they
reside.
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.- 120-121
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler