Los Angeles County
Biographies
CAPTAIN HANCOCK BANNING
A scion of
one of the oldest English-speaking families of southern California the late
Captain Hancock Banning was born at Wilmington, Los Angeles County, May 12,
1865, the son of General Phineas and Rebecca (Sanford) Banning. General Banning was the founder of the town
of Wilmington, named after the city of the same
name in Delaware, where he was born in Newcastle county, on
September 19, 1831, a son of John A. and Elizabeth (Lowber) Banning. The founder of the family in America was one Phineas Banning, a native of England,
who settled in what is now Kent
County, Delaware, during the colonial period
in American history, and with other colonists tilled the soil. The prestige of his association with public
affairs descended to his son John, who became a merchant in Dover, and a distinguished member of the
Council of Safety during the Revolutionary war.
He was one of the three members from Delaware
casting the electoral vote that made George Washington the first president of
the United States.
Scarcely
less noteworthy was his son, John A. Banning, the father of General Phineas
Banning, and an early graduate from Princeton
College, and a man of
scholarly attainments. There being a
lack of opportunity and of money, Phineas Banning, the ninth in a family of
eleven children, left home at the age of twelve with his sole capital of fifty
cents and walked all the way to Philadelphia and joined his older brother
William, who had just begun the practice of law in that city. Phineas earned his board by working for him
in his office. He later found work in
the wholesale house and continued there until 1851, when he decided to cast in
his lot with California. He boarded a vessel bound for Panama, crossed the isthmus and took passage on
another ship that cast anchor at San
Diego. In 1852
he embarked in the freighting business between San Pedro and Los Angeles and this enterprise developed
into the Wilmington Transportation Company as the years passed. He founded the town of Wilmington,
California, built the Los
Angeles and Wilmington
railroad and managed it for years. By
service as Brigadier General of the First Brigade of State Militia, he earned
the title of General by which he was known throughout the later years of his
life. Seeing the possibilities of the
future Los Angeles,
and the necessity of a harbor for the southland, General Banning appeared
before the congressional committee in Washington, D. C., twice in the interest
of the San Pedro harbor. He bought and
improved six hundred acres of land adjoining the village
of Wilmington and sunk one of the
largest wells in this part of the county and with the aid of steam pumps and
reservoirs and pipe line supplied San Pedro, Wilmington and all the ships that visited the
harbor with ample pure water for all needs.
He showed his faith in the community in many ways by his works and by
his giving of his means to further every project he deemed of merit. General Banning was married twice. His first wife was Rebecca Sanford and the
mother of eight children. Three sons
lived to mature years: William, Joseph
Brent, and Hancock. His second wife was
Mary Hollister, a member of a pioneer family of California and they had three daughters, two
of whom survived their mother: Susie T.
and Mary H. General Banning died in San Francisco on March 8, 1885, and was survived by his
widow (since deceased) in Los Angeles.
Hancock
Banning attended the public schools and a private school in San Mateo and early began working on the
ships owned by his father, a business which was much to his liking for at the
early age of twenty he hold government license as master mariner. He took a business course later and his first
venture was to establish the Pasadena Transportation and Fuel Company. He later moved his office to Los Angeles and added a wholesale coal
business to his enterprise. In 1891 he
sold his Pasadena
business and with his two brothers organized the Banning Company. This company also owned considerable real
estate in Los Angeles and on the water front in Wilmington. The brothers had equal interest in Catalina Island, Hancock acting as vice president of the
Santa Catalina Island Company for twenty-five years, and it was principally
through his efforts that the island property was developed as a resort up to
the time it was sold. William Banning
was president of the company. In 1919
the sold this famous resort property to William Wrigley, Jr., of Chicago. They had built and operated the Hotel St.
Catherine, also the steamers Cabrillo and Hermosa that plied between the harbor
and the island. This represented an
investment of more than two millions of dollars and was very successful.
In
November, 1890, Hancock Banning was united in marriage with Anne Ophelia Smith,
a daughter of the Hon. George Hugh Smith, a Virginian of colonial ancestry and
an ex-judge of the appellate court of California. He was also a code commissioner of the
Supreme Court. He had served as a
colonel in the Confederate Army during the war of 1861-1865. He came to Los Angeles in 1869 and became a member of
the well known law firm of Glassel, Chapman & Smith, which later became
Glassel, Smith and Patton. To Colonel
Smith came important connections with counsel with litigation over the Spanish
land grants. He was personal attorney
for Don Pio Pico. He was a member of the
state senate 1877-1878, was a Supreme Court commissioner with Judges Gray,
Haynes and Cooper, 1899-1904; and afterwards judge of the appellate court of
southern California,
1905-1906. He possessed a brilliant
mind, devoting much of his time to writing and was the author of “Elements of
Private Rights,” “History of Modern English Jurisprudence,” “Logic and
Analytics,” and “Theory of State.” The
latter work was awarded the Phillips prize by the American Philosophical
Society of Philadelphia by a unanimous vote in competition with a large number
from all parts of the world. His
writings brought him a close relationship with most of the distinguished
philosophers of his time, including Herbert Spencer, and his work, “Theory of
the State,” receiving widespread attention in England, was responsible for his
election to the Victoria Institute of England, the foremost philosophical
society of the English speaking world.
His works on jurisprudence and allied subjects are today used as
text-books in California
schools. The mother of Mrs. Hancock
Banning, Susan Thornton Glassel, came to California,
a widow with four children, having lost her husband, Col. George S. Patton, at
the battle of Winchester. In California
she married Col. George Hugh Smith. She
came of a long line of distinguished Virginian ancestry. Of the union of Captain Hancock and Anne
Banning three children were born.
Eleanor Anne, a graduate of the Marlborough
School for Girls in Los
Angeles, attended the Miss
Spence School
in New York and the University
of California at Berkeley.
She married J. C. Macfarlane and is the mother of a daughter, Anne. Hancock, Jr., born in 1893 graduated from the
Virginia Military Institute and from Cornell
University. He became an apprentice with General Electric
Company, in their plant at Schenectady, New York, but when the United States entered the World war
he enlisted in the United States Navy and when the armistice was signed was
serving on the U. S. Battleship New York and was honorably discharged with rank
of Lieutenant, junior grade. George
Hugh, born in 1895, enlisted in the United States Army, became second
lieutenant, pilot in the air service, and then returned to the University of California. After receiving his degree he served a
two-year apprenticeship as a newspaper man on the San Francisco Chronicle. With the publication of his first book he
became a free lance, contributing to the various magazines. He is the author of the books, “Spun Yarn,”
“In Mexican Waters,” and “Six Horses,” and many magazine stories and articles.
From many
years Mrs. Banning has been active in social civic and patriotic
movements. During the World war she was
active in Red Cross work and in relief work for France, for which she received a
decoration from the French government of the Assistance League, an outgrowth of
the Red Cross work done during the war.
She is a member of the Colonial Dames, Women’s Athletic Club, Friday
Morning Club and other worthwhile bodies.
She is a woman of strong character and rare personal charm and is
interested in things really worth while.
Throughout her wide acquaintance Mrs. Banning is held in high esteem.
Captain
Hancock Banning was one of the organizers of the first yacht clubs in southern California and was very
much interested in racing for several years.
He held membership in the Native Sons of the Golden West, the Jonathan
Club, the Los Angeles Country Club, the Uplifters Club, an original member of
the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the Chamber of Commerce and the Newport Harbor
Yacht Club, and the San Francisco Bohemian Club. His efforts contributed notably to the
remarkable development of southern California
in the last half century. His circle of
acquaintances in the west was wide and for forty years he was a familiar figure
in California
life. He was a man of progressive
outlook and his far-ranging vision was responsive to the needs of the American
public; and the public spirited in meeting the obligations of his position.
Transcribed
By: Michele Y. Larsen on August 19,
2012.
Source: California
of the South Vol. V, by John Steven McGroarty, Pages 245-249, Clarke Publ., Chicago, Los
Angeles, Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 Michele
Y. Larsen.
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