Los Angeles County
Biographies
RALPH BRAMEL
LLOYD
Ralph Bramel Lloyd, business executive, was born in Neosho, Missouri, February 28, 1875, son of Louis Marshall and Sarah Elizabeth (Bramel) Lloyd and grandson of Absalom and Elizabeth (Wills) Lloyd. His father was a lawyer and ranch owner.
After receiving his preliminary education at public schools in Ventura and Berkeley, California, Ralph B. Lloyd attended the University of California during 1895-98. In the latter year he began his career as superintendent of his father’s ranching interests, and in 1904 became vice president and general manager of the Pacific Tank & Pipe Co. The company manufactured tanks and pipes for mining, city water works, and hydroelectric plants. In 1911 he sold his interest in this company and went from Portland, Oregon to Los Angeles where he took over the management of the Ventura Land & Water Co. which was incorporated in 1887 and owned by the Lloyd family. Together with E. A. Rasor he had made the first map of the Ventura Avenue oil field in 1898. With others, in 1914 he bought and leased approximately 13,000 acres of land on the apex of the Ventura field dome and made preliminary explorations and sufficient discoveries to attract the attention of the Shell Oil Company of California and the Associated Oil Co. It proved to be one of the most prolific oil and gas fields in California.
Mr. Lloyd has held during the years subsequent to 1914 a large block of this productive oil field area, from part of which he has received royalty payments and from another part of which oil and gas is developed by his own company, the Lloyd Corporation, Ltd. In 1926 Mr. Lloyd organized and has since been president of this corporation , which was formed to supervise his holdings, including oil lands and development, city and timber properties, city buildings, banking, farming, citrus growing and livestock raising. Those holdings are located in California and Oregon, the Lloyd Corporation, Ltd. being one of the largest property owners and taxpayers in the city of Portland. His timber lands are located in Curry County, Oregon.
Mr. Lloyd is a director of the Security First National Bank of Los Angeles and of the United States National Bank of Portland. He was a member of the Emergency Committee of 48 of the oil industry during 1932-33; a member of and secretary for the Governors’ Conference, Washington, D.C., 1933; chairman of the state regulatory committee of the oil industry for California under the National Recovery Act during 1933-35; and a member of the Petroleum Industry War Council during 1941-45 and of the National Petroleum Council, Washington, D.C. from 1946 to 1948. He is a trustee of the California Institute of Technology, a past-trustee of Yenching University, Peiping, China, and former member of the Associates of the University of California. He is a member of the California Historical Society and the Friends of the Huntington Library. He was a member of the Major Highways Committee of Los Angeles and the California Development Association. He is a director of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the American Petroleum Institute, and Western Oil and Gas Association, and the Oil Producers Agency of California.
He is a member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers and the Petroleum Production Pioneers, Inc.; the Chambers of Commerce of the United States, the State of California, Ventura County, Ventura, Los Angeles, Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Portland; and belongs to the Masonic order, Delta Upsilon, the Los Angeles Country, University and California clubs of Los Angeles, and the Arlington Club of Portland. His religious affiliation is with the Wilshire Methodist Church of Los Angeles, of which he is honorary president of the board of trustees. Politically he is a Jeffersonian Democrat. Mr. Lloyd finds recreational interest in cattle raising and ranching.
He has been married twice: (1) in Los Angeles, January 28, 1904, to Lulu Nettie, daughter of John Hull of Terre Haute, Indiana, and has four daughters: Eleanor Eliseo, Mrs. Mark Justin Dees; Edna Elizabeth, Mrs. William Thomas Davis; Ida Hull, Mrs. Homer Daniel Crotty; and Lulu May, Mrs. Richard Ronold Von Hagen; his first wife died in 1948; (2) in Los Angeles, February 22, 1949, to Edith Louise, daughter of Gustave Nattkemper of Terre Haute.
Residence address: 962 North Alpine Drive, Beverly Hills.
Office: 9441 Olympic Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California.
Transcribed 8-6-14 Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: Eminent
Californians 1953, by Lee E. Johnson & C. W. Taylor. Page 427-428, C. W. Taylor Publ., Palo Alto,
California, 1953.
© 2014 Marilyn R. Pankey.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES
BIOGRAPHIES