Los Angeles County
Biographies
PALMER
CONNER
Past
events, as recorded in history, are always interesting, and for some people
history hold a particular fascination.
Palmer Conner, eminently successful in a long business career, has a fabulous
collection of historical pictures, has written many booklets under the title,
“The Romance of the Ranchos”, and has delivered numerous historical lectures.
Presently
a sub-divider of land for shopping centers, operating under his own name, Mr.
Conner’s areas for property development include Rancho Hills and Holly Hills in
San Diego, Laurel Hills in Hollywood, and in the Antelope Valley.
Palmer
Conner was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on January 1, 1900, “the first day of the
first month of the century and of the millennium,” one of the three children of
Charles S. Conner, a lawyer, and Theodosia Brown Conner. They family came to California in 1901, taking
up residence in San Diego. Palmer Conner
received his elementary education in San Diego schools and subsequently
attended Pasadena High School.
Mr.
Conner was with the Title Insurance and Trust Company of Los Angeles from 1922
until 1937. He then founded the Land
Escrow and Safe Deposit Company at 36 West Bay State Street, Alhambra, which,
although Mr. Conner is no longer associated with it, is now, under the name
Security Title Insurance Company, the second largest title company in the west. Mr. Conner left this company in 1949 and
formed the Western Mutual Escrow Corporation at the same Alhambra
location. In 1953 Palmer Conner turned
the company over to his son, Charles P. Conner, who has expanded it to twenty-two
locations, although the main office is still at the original address. Palmer Conner is chairman of the board of the
company.
A
very precise individual, an asset both in the business world and the world of
historians, Mr. Conner was a member of the Alhambra
Kiwanis Club for many years, is a past president of the City Club of San
Marino, and belongs to the Oneonta Congregational Church in South
Pasadena. A support of Richard M. Nixon,
he was active in the recent Presidential campaign.
In
1922 Palmer Conner was married to the former Miss Helen Mae Crawford, who is
now deceased. His present wife is the
former Audene Merrill Adams of Berkeley. There are two sons and one daughter in the
Conner family: Mrs. Virginia Mae Hole,
an Altadena resident who attended San Gabriel elementary schools and Alhambra
High School, and is a graduate of South Pasadena High School and Pomona College
and the mother of three children; Charles Palmer Conner, the president of the
Western Mutual Escrow Corporation; and Steven Sanborn Conner, who is with the
State Department in the American Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, and who is the
father of one son.
Transcribed
by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Historical Volume &
Reference Works Including Alhambra, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel &
Temple City, by Robert P. Studer, Page 426, Historical Publ.,
Los Angeles, California. 1962.
© 2012 V.
Gerald Iaquinta.
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