Yolo County
Biographies
Roy Emmett Cole
The prestige afforded by lineage of honored pioneer strain, illumined by personal prominence resultant from intelligent activities, bestows increased importance upon the standing of Mr. Cole, who as county treasurer of Yolo county, enjoys distinction as one of the youngest county officials in the state in point of years, and is the youngest county treasurer in the entire commonwealth. In point of fidelity to his trust and devotion to his duty he is surpassed by no other incumbent of the office in any part of the state, nor do the records of the past in his own county furnish the name of any treasurer more capable than he or more intelligently active in protecting the financial interest of the county. Whatever of success he already has attained it may be attributed to his own unaided exertions, for the had no help in starting out for himself and only his own resolute force of purpose enabled him to obtain an excellent education, for the family, although highly respected, possessed little means and naturally the struggle for a livelihood was constant.
The paternal grandfather of Mr. Cole, John B. Cole, was born in Kentucky. Later years found him in Iowa, and still later, in 1852, he came to California with his family, consisting of his wife and two children, William and David, and settled on a farm in Yolo county, and here he and his wife passed away. Before her marriage the grandmother was Julia Jacobs, a native of Missouri. David V. was born while his parents were living in Iowa and he was still a small child when removal was made to California in 1852. During young manhood he went to Oregon, having previously married Eliza Anderson, who was born in Sacramento county, the daughter of William Anderson. The latter was born in Missouri and in young manhood, about 1852, came to California. Here he married Drucilla Swinney, also a native of Missouri. Mr. Anderson died in Oregon, and his wife still makes her home in Gilliam county, that state. Returning to California about the year 1893, David V. Cole settled near Capay, Yolo county, but since 1902 has made Woodland his home.
Roy E. Cole was born in Gilliam county, Ore., September 20, 1885. After completing the studies of the country schools he entered the Woodland high school and in 1906 was graduated from that institution. Later he studied in the Woodland Business College. An examination in which he received credits unusually high enabled him to secure a teacher’s certificate and he then began to teach in the Eureka district. At the close of the term he was engaged as principal of the Cacheville school. In 1910 he entered the campaign for the nomination on the Democratic ticket for county treasurer and in the primaries won the nomination over two competitors, both of whom were popular and capable. He was elected by a good majority and took the oath of office January 2, 1911. Since entering upon his official duties he has given his attention closely to the work and has proved his fitness for the position. Among business men, as among his schoolmates in earlier life, he has been popular. It is said that the young men who have known him throughout the most of his life are his most ardent champions. In boyhood they learned to rightly estimate his personal worth. His sterling qualities of mind and heart they have recognized. Their appreciation of his companionship has been constant as also their regard for his genial temperament and his persevering industry. Older people, witnessing the self-denial of his early struggles and the honest impulses governing his acts, have become his friends and tender to his official career their zealous support.
Mr. Cole was married in Yolo county June 17, 1911, to Miss Louise Brownell, a native of Yolo county and the daughter of William and Ione (Hayes) Brownell, pioneers of the county.
Transcribed by Bea Barton
Source: “History of Yolo County, California” by Tom Gregory. Published by the Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1913, pages 348 – 351.
John Dickson Stephens
From the time of the establishment of the first bank in Yolo county until his demise almost thirty years later Mr. Stephens sustained a wide reputation as one of the most able and far-seeing financiers of Woodland. His the keen mental vision that discerned the need of adequate banking facilities in the then frontier settlement; his the sincerity of citizenship that gave to the community an example of unselfish devotion to duty; and his the intelligent insight into financial problems that laid stanch and deep and strong the foundations of a banking institution honored among the bankers of the entire state. Nor did he leave the impress of his fine personality alone upon banking enterprises, for he also was known and honored as a philanthropist of wise activities, a stock-raiser of successful experience, a pioneer miner of conservative policies and a citizen of cultured attainments. His death, which occurred August 27, 1898, was a loss not only to the bank of which he had been the first and only president, but also was recognized as a distinct loss to dignified, unselfish, high-minded citizenship.
A study of the genealogy of the Stephens family indicates a mingling of Welsh blood with that of the study Scotch race. Long before the Revolutionary war the family was transplanted upon the shores of America and united with the loyal followers of Penn in the early development of the timber lands of the Keystone state, where Peter Stephens was born about 1690 or 1700. Little is known concerning his life except that he founded the village of Stephensburg in Pennsylvania and held a position of influence in that community. The next generation was represented by Peter, Jr., who married Johanna Chrisman and moved to Wythe county, Va., thus founding the family in the Old Dominion. In his home there were reared seven sons and one daughter. A noteworthy indication of the patriotic spirit of the family is afforded by the statement that all of the seven sons served in the Revolutionary war. Five lived to see their country free and independent, but two fell upon battlefields.
Among the five patriotic brothers who lived to enjoy the fruits of their sacrifices as soldiers there was one, Joseph, in whom the pioneer instinct of developing the frontier was especially well developed and who became successively a pioneer of three great commonwealths. After his marriage in 1790 to Rhoda Cole he continued to live in Virginia for more than a decade, but the year 1801 found him and his family following the tide of emigration across the mountains into the blue grass regions of Kentucky, where he built a cabin in Wayne county, turned the first furrows of virgin soil and endured the dangers and privations of the frontier. In a search for better conditions he removed to Tennessee in 1815, but not finding the satisfactory environment that he desired he made a new move during 1817. In that year he loaded his possessions into “prairie schooners” and followed the blazed trail to the Mississippi river, crossed that stream, journeyed forward to the Missouri river and after crossing it he made a settlement in Cooper county, Mo., upon raw land thirteen miles south of Boonville. In this memorable journey he had been accompanied by all of his children excepting Mary, who had married and settled near the old home. After years of struggle and hardship he passed away May 7, 1836, at his home near Bunceton. His descendants are scattered throughout the entire west and are very numerous, for he was the father of twelve children by his first wife. One of these was Joseph Lee, the father of Lon V. Stephens, ex-governor of Missouri, and another son was Speed Stephens, president of the Bank of Bunceton. By his second wife, Catharine Dickson, there were nine children, as follows: John D., George D., Andrew J., Thomas H. B., Margaret, Alpha, Harriet, Isabella and Lee Ann.
John Dickson Stephens was born near Bunceton, Mo., September 23, 1826, and was the eldest son of his father’s second marriage. When he was a boy public educational institutions had not been introduced, but he had excellent advantages in private schools and was well qualified to teach. His first source of income came as a teacher from 1844 to 1846. At the opening of the war with Mexico he volunteered in the service, was assigned to a regiment and marched to the front, but his company saw no active service, the war having been brought to a successful issue. When all hope of military service had to be abandoned he turned to the study of medicine, and it is probable that he would have been a lifelong practitioner in Missouri had not the discovery of gold in California turned his thoughts toward the then unknown west.
Together with a brother and various of their acquaintances John D. Stephens sought fortune in the mines, but he met with so little success that he began to investigate other means of earning a livelihood. From Sacramento he traveled through Yolo county, then an unsettled region whose possibilities had not attracted attention from the emigrants. With keen discernment he decided that there was a chance for a struggling easterner in this county and accordingly he took up raw land and engaged in ranching. It is said that he was the first to successfully raise grain here. In addition he was a pioneer in introducing high-grade stock. For years his sheep won prizes at the state fairs and county exhibitions. In the raising of mules and horses, Durham cattle and Poland-China hogs, he was equally successful, the only drawback to material prosperity being the lack of adequate marketing facilities, also the shortage of water. The latter impediment, however, was overcome through his organization in 1863 of the Capay Ditch Company, which built a reservoir for storing the waters of the Cache creek canyon and thereby irrigating the plains below.
Various mining ventures, one of which brought him excellent returns from the Comstock lodge in Nevada, enabled Mr. Stephens in 1867 to return to Yolo county with increased finances for investments. Shortly afterward he formed an alliance with various moneyed men of Yolo county and financed the organization in 1868 of the Bank of Woodland, the first bank here, of which solid and substantial institution he became the first, and remained the only president until his death. Notwithstanding panics and depressions the bank never lost the confidence of depositors, never refused to meet an obligation and never betrayed the trust of even the humblest individual. Its record was unimpeachable, its investments conservative, its policy cautious yet progressive and its results certain and satisfactory, for which condition the stockholders gave the credit to the founder and president of the institution. He organized the Woodland gas works and managed it for many years. It was he, too, who started the water works of Woodland and was at the helm until it was sold to the city.
The marriage of Mr. Stephens and Mary F. Alexander was solemnized at Bellair, Cooper county, Mo., January 4, 1854, and thus began a union of mutual helpfulness and happiness. During the colonial era the Alexander family had crossed the ocean from Scotland to Virginia and had gained prominence in the Old Dominion, where the historic town of Alexandria was named for her grandfather. Later the family became established in Kentucky, where she was born. Of her three children the only survivor is Kate, wife of Hon. Joseph Craig, of Woodland. The children were born in an adobe house one and one-half miles west of Madison, Yolo county, the old homestead of the family, but later occupied by the family of the brother, George Dickson Stephens, who enlarged the original house that had been constructed by Indians in the old Californian style of architecture. In his marriage Mr. Stephens was most fortunate, for his wife possessed many superior qualities of mind and heart, exhibited an unfailing gentleness under all circumstances, and found in her home a vivid satisfaction that enabled her to radiate its happiness among her wide circle of friends. She survived her husband several years and died in Fulton, Mo., in 1906.
No record of life of the later Mr. Stephens would be complete without mention of his prominence in Masonry. He was made a Mason in Cacheville Lodge, at old Cacheville, and later was identified with Woodland Lodge No. 156, F. & A. M., and from that time he was one of its most popular members. August 16, 1859, he was initiated into the Sacramento Chapter of the Royal Arch degree and when Woodland Chapter No. 46 was organized he became one of its charter members April 9, 1873. He was created a Knight Templar and a Knight of Malta at Sacramento. On January 13, 1883, he with others instituted the Woodland Commandery No. 21 under dispensation. In this commandery he was honored with official responsibilities, and December 10, 1887, was chosen eminent commander. The philanthropic and brotherly principles of the order he exemplified by precept and action; its ministrations and services remained to him not only an ideal of duty, but also a source of comfort to his benevolent temperament. As one of those citizens whose pioneer services were of incalculable value, whose being thrilled with patriotic devotion to the county, whose loyalty to the community remained undiminished to the end and whose intellect was ever at the service of the home of his adoption, his name is worthy of perpetuation in the annals of the county.
Transcribed by Bea Barton
Source: “History of Yolo County, California” by Tom Gregory. Published by the Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1913, pages 351 – 357.