Los
Angeles County
Biographies
RUFUS LYMAN
A successful agriculturist of Iowa
throughout his active business career, Rufus Lyman spent the evening of life in
honorable retirement at Long Beach, California, and had attained the venerable
age of eighty-one years when called to his final rest. He was born in Defiance, Ohio, October 21,
1850, his parents being William and Sarah (Pierce) Lyman, the former a native
of Connecticut. In 1856 the family home
was established in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, where William Lyman became the
first school teacher and a pioneer agriculturist, and both he and his wife
spent the remainder of their lives on their farm in that county.
Rufus Lyman, who was a little lad of
six years when his parents took him to Iowa, acquired his education in the
public schools of that state. He early
became familiar with the work of the fields as he assisted his father in the
cultivation of the home place, and farming pursuits claimed his attention
throughout the years of his active career.
It was with a substantial competence that he came west to California and
took up his abode in Long Beach, where for many years he was enabled to enjoy
the fruits of his former toil in well earned ease. For twenty-two years prior to his death he
bore the affliction of blindness with cheerful fortitude and courage. He died on the 11th of February,
1932, and was buried in Angelus Abbey.
The funeral services drew a large concourse of people, for Mr. Lyman was
well known and highly esteemed in Long Beach and had won an extensive circle of
warm friends here.
On the 15th of April,
1877, near Council Bluffs, Iowa, Mr. Lyman was united in marriage to Laura E. Woodmansee, daughter of Lorenzo Dow and Mary (Niswanger) Woodmansee, the former
a native of New Jersey and a successful farmer and merchant. Mr. and Mrs. Lyman became the parents of five
children, as follows: Mrs. Erma Osler,
of Carson, Iowa, who is the mother of two children, Mrs. Gladys Russell and Lyle
Osler; Lorenzo Dow; Mrs. Edna Wood, of Pottawattamie County, Iowa; Edith, who
is the widow of Carl Wood and the mother of a daughter, Nova; and Evelyn, who
is Mrs. F. S. Forker and has two children, Lyman and Lois. Mrs. Laura E. Lyman, the mother of the above
named, is a member of the Women’s Relief Corps and takes an active part in
charitable and civic work in the city of Long Beach, where she resides in the
old family home at 1015 Dawson Avenue.
Transcribed by
V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: California of the South
Vol. III, by John Steven McGroarty, Pages 397-398, Clarke Publ.,
Chicago, Los Angeles, Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
GOLDEN
NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPIES