Tulare County
Biographies
ELBERT L. ASKIN
The invention of the gasoline motor, which gave to the world the automobile and the motor bus, is responsible for the establishment of transportation lines into districts where the railroad has not yet found its way. One of these transportation routes is that operated by the Sequoia National Park Stage Company, of which Elbert L. Askin is manager. He was born in Santa Maria, Santa Barbara county, California, in April, 1889. When he was about five years old his parents, James M. and Sarah (Jasper) Askin, removed to Visalia. His father died soon after this and his mother married Albert Ogilvie, under whose care Elbert grew to manhood.
After attending the Visalia high school, Elbert L. Askin studied in Heald’s Business College in San Francisco and the Stockton Business College at Stockton. He then took a course in electrical engineering under Oscar Kern, engineer for the Mount Whitney Power Company and nationally known among electricians. For six years Mr. Askin remained in the service of the Mount Whitney Power Company, which was the parent of the Southern California Edison Company. For two years during the World war he was field superintendent of the California Oil Company.
In the meantime Thomas Luttrell had obtained a franchise to operate a line of motor busses between Lemon Cove and the Sequoia National Park, but failed to exercise the privilege. In 1918 this franchise was purchased by Mr. Askin and Orval Overall, a sketch of whom appears on another page of this volume. They also obtained a franchise to operate a bus line to the Mineral King resort, beyond the Sequoia National Park at an elevation of eight thousand five hundred feet. Fifty thousand dollars were expended upon equipment, Packard motor busses, filling stations, etc., and the line was opened. This equipment and franchise is now owned by Mr. Askin and his two half-brothers, W. J. and F. N. Ogilvie. Mr. Askin also operates a bus line between Exeter and Visalia, via Ivanhoe, Woodlake and Lemon Cove. He is also interested in a section of oil land in Kern county, in connection with Mr. Overall, Barney Oldfield and others.
Mr. Askin is a Royal Arch Mason and a member of the Lemon Cove and Visalia Chambers of Commerce. He married May Hammond, a daughter of W. H. Hammond and a niece of John Hays Hammond, the noted mining engineer. Her father founded the Mount Whitney Power Company, which was financed largely by her uncle, John Hays Hammond. She is a native of Visalia.
History of Tulare County and Kings County, California – Kathleen Edwards Small & J. Larry Smith, Vol. I, Chicago, The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1926, Page 475
Transcribed by Jeannie Miyama
HUGH G. ASSELSTINE
Success comes only as the result of legitimate and well applied energy, as well as unflagging perseverance in a definite course of action. This is finely exemplified in the career of Hugh G. Asselstine, the efficient manager of the Tipton branch of the Alfred’s Pure Ice Cream Company. He was born in Clayton, Jefferson county, Missouri, in 1894, the son of William H. and Anna (MacLachlin) Asselstine, the former of whom was a jeweler and watchmaker by vocation. After the family came to California the subject completed his elementary education in the high-school at Eureka. He then entered the agricultural college of the University of California, from which he was graduated in the course in dairying in 1915. His first employment was as a milk and cow tester in the state department of agriculture, and he was also connected with the United States department of agriculture. He then entered the employ of the Alfred’s Pure Ice Cream Company and as manger of the branch plant at Tipton he has demonstrated in a definite way that he thoroughly understands every detail of the handling of milk and cream. This preliminary work, prior to sending the product to the main plant at Los Angeles, is of the utmost importance to the future purity and wholesomeness of the ice cream into which it is to be manufactured. There are fifteen employees in the Tipton plant, where the production of four thousand cows is handled daily.
Mr. Asselstine was married to Miss Sarah Collins, of Brockport, and they have a son, George. Mr. Asselstine is a member of the Free and Accepted Masons and the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. He is a genial and courteous gentleman, with whom it is a pleasure to associate, and he enjoys to a pronounced degree the favor and good will of the people of this community.
History of Tulare County and Kings County, California – Kathleen Edwards Small & J. Larry Smith, Vol. I, Chicago, The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1926, Page 475
Transcribed by Jeannie Miyama