Butte County
Biographies
LEVI IRAD SPANGLER
LEVI IRAD SPANGLER. –A man well qualified for the position of foreman of the Centerville power-house plant of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company is Levi Irad Spangler, a resident of California since 1892. He was born at Walnut, Pottawattamie County, Iowa, on October 2, 1874. His father, Irad T. Spangler, was a native of Lebanon, Pa., who enlisted in 1861, for service in the Civil War, serving in a Pennsylvania regiment. At the Battle of Gettysburg he was wounded in the shoulder, but recovered and served until the close of the war. After the war he was married to Sarah Marshall, born at Wampum, Pa., and they moved to Iowa, where Mr. Spangler became a grain merchant and agricultural implement dealer at Walnut. He also branched out into farming and stock-raising and became a large landowner as well as a prominent and influential citizen. He died in 1914, in his sixty-ninth year; his wife had passed away in 1886. Of their three children Levi Irad is the second oldest, and the only one of the family in California. After graduating from the Walnut High School, Levi I. Spangler attended Dexter Normal for a time, and then he concluded to come to the Pacific Coast. In August, 1892, he located in Sacramento and was employed by the Sacramento Street Railway Company as motorman, then conductor, and afterwards in the car shops, until 1896, when he came to Butte County and began mining, afterwards continuing in Plumas and Yuba Counties. He was located in Oroville awhile, where with Mr. Eckman he built a custom mill to mill quartz, but not enough quartz being brought in to pay, they moved the mill to Strawberry Valley, where they also mined. Not securing satisfactory returns they sold the mill. Mr. Spangler then came to Pentz and leased the old Davis mine, operating the placer for a year with an arrastre, when he quit about even. He then came over on Butte Creek and ran a quartz mine for Butte Creek Mining Company, afterwards leasing the mine until April, 1900. Not meeting with the success he had expected in mining, he entered the employ of the Butte County Electric Power and Light Company, now the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, in April 1900, which date really marked the beginning of their great work here, and he continued with them and became head operator at the Centerville power plant, and in 1904 he was promoted to foreman of the plant, a position to which he has given his time and best efforts ever since.
Mr. Spangler has made several trips back to the old home in Iowa, but each time finds on his return that California has greater attractions for him. Fraternally he was made a Mason in Chico Lodge, No. 111, F. & A. M., and is a member of the Chico Chapter, No. 42, R. A. M., and Chico Commandery, No. 12, K. T., as well as Islam Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S., San Francisco. He was formerly a member of the Sons of Veterans. For some years Mr. Spangler has been a member of the National Electric Light Association.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1145-1146, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Sharon
Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies