Butte County
Biographies
JOHN F. LEEPER
A successful business man who
has an interesting record of gradual advancement from one stage of prosperity
to another is John F. Leeper, who was born at Lane,
Franklin County, Kans., and came to California in 1883. His father was James A. Leeper,
a native of Kentucky, who removed to Kansas and served in the Civil War as a
volunteer in the Sixteenth Kansas Infantry, until he was mustered out in
1865. The same fall, after he returned
home, he died. Mrs. James Leeper had been Miss Elizabeth A. Grover, a native of Indianapolis,
Ind., born May 12, 1836, and she died at Seattle on May 13, 1912, in her
seventy-sixth year. Of this union there
were seven children, three of whom are living.
The second youngest, John F.,
was born on June 16, 1865, and was reared at Lane, Kans. His mother married a second time, and so he
made his home with Stonewall Clark, near Osawatomie, in the same state. He had a boy’s experience with chores about
the farm, and attended the country school, at the same time that he enjoyed the
comforts of a good home. He helped feed
the stock and even drove the cultivator, and in many ways he was being prepared
for the tests which later were to determine his capacity for success. For his first year’s work, he was given a
calf; and when he was thirteen, he had about twenty-one head of cattle, which
he sold for three hundred dollars.
His next move was to
Greenwood County, Kans., where he went to work for Tom Folk for a year, and
then he went on to Chase County. At
Cedar Point, a Mr. Ogden taught him telegraphy in the Santa Fe office; and
suddenly learning of the cut rate to California, in 1883, due to the
railroad-rate fight on at that time, he took the next train for the Pacific
slope. He put up fifty-five dollars for
a ticket and was to receive fifty dollars rebate, if he arrived in Sacramento
within a given time. A railroad wreck at
Agate, however, threatened to upset this plan, especially as there was no
operator there; but Mr. Leeper volunteered to
telegraph, sat down at the instrument, called up Denver, and flashed the
message, “Send wrecking train,” to the relief of passengers and conductor. The latter then signed an order by which,
when he arrived at Sacramento, John got his “half a hundred” back, making his
trip cost him almost nothing.
In 1888, Mr. Leeper embarked in farming, near Butte City, but the great
flood of that time so affected his ranch of six hundred acres that his entire
crop of grain was a total loss. The next
year, he moved to near Biggs, took up six hundred forty acres and rented
sixteen hundred acres more on Butte Creek, where he farmed until 1902. Then he bought a farm of eighty acres near
Butte City, on the Glenn County side; and in 1909 a company in which he had
become interested bought thirteen hundred seventy-six acres of the McDaniel
Estate, which they laid out in ten- and twenty-acre tracts. On going east, Mr. Leeper
sold a portion of his share; and in 1912, although vice-president of the
company, he disposed of the balance that he owned. Butte City had had an attraction for him, for
he had gone to school there, for a while, and had also worked for Mr. Grimstead, the farmer.
At Butte City, also he had clerked for W. Frank Miller in his store, in
exchange for his board.
By 1909, the family had
removed to Chico for better school facilities, and it was then that Mr. Leeper returned East to Chicago
and Detroit, where he busied himself selling the balance of the lands referred
to. In 1912 he, too, located at Chico,
and in 1913 he bought from S. H. Patterson the Polar Ice Plant. This he effected in partnership with Bruce
Woodruff and Charles H. Jackson, and together they conducted it a year. Then J. Leslie Leeper,
the son, bought out Mr. Woodruff, in May, 1914, and the following September he
took up the stock held by Mr. Jackson.
Under the new management of
John F. Leeper and Son, the plant of the Polar Ice
Company was enlarged and improved, until; now it has a capacity of eight
tons. The company manufactures and
retails ice, and so much has the trade grown that they now ship about four
car-loads a week, for four months of the summer. They run five wagons and an auto delivery
truck. They use the Brunswick system for
making ice, employ electric power, and have a boiler for distilling water from
their own deep well.
Mr. Leeper’s
first marriage was to Miss Sarah Madlock and occurred
at Oroville, on July 3, 1889; she was born near Biggs, the daughter of Jack Madlock, the pioneer and a farmer; she died in August,
1890, having been scalded to death. On
January 1, 1892, Mr. Leeper married a second time,
his bride being Miss Eva C. Clark, who was born at Biggs, the daughter of
Charles A, Clark, also a pioneer farmer.
Three children blessed this union:
Bertha A., Mrs. Henry Gianella, a normal
graduate, lives at Chico; J. Leslie, who is associated with his father in the
ice company, having had the advantages of a course at Heald’s
Business College where he studied bookkeeping and also mechanical engineering,
and was for a time chief draftsman for the Diamond Match Company; and Grace,
who is a graduate of the Chico High School.
J. Leslie Leeper,
one of the most energetic young men of the town, was married to Miss Leonora
Wallace, a native of Hanford, Kings County, and they have one child, John
Wallace. Mr. Leeper
is a member of the Red Men.
A Progressive Republican,
John F. Leeper was clerk of the Nelson school
district, and is a member of the Chico Business Men’s Association. In 1907 he was a member of the State Drainage
Board, a commission that has charge of all the drainage and levee work in the
State, but resigned when he went East on business. He was made a Mason in Emanuel Lodge, No.
318, F. & A. M., at Biggs, and belongs to the Franklin Chapter, No. 20, R.
A. M., at Oroville. He is also a member
of Chico Lodge of Red Men, in which he is Past Sachem and is District Deputy,
and he is president of the Northern California Past Sachem Association, and of
the Knight and Ladies of Security.
Transcribed by Priscilla Delventhal.
Source:
"History of Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 698-699, Historic Record Co, Los
Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2008 Priscilla Delventhal.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies