Los Angeles County
Biographies
EDWIN JESSOP MARSHALL
MARSHALL, EDWIN JESSOP, Capitalist and Banker, Los Angeles, California, was born at Baltimore, Maryland, March 18, 1860, the son of H. Vincent Marshall and Amanda C. (Jessop) Marshall. He married Sallie McLemore, June 7, 1892, at Galveston, Texas. There is one son, Marcus McLemore Marshall, born July 9, 1893.
The Marshalls are one of the noted families of America. The first of the name came to America in 1682, one Abraham Marshall, and settled in Chester, Pennsylvania. He was a member of the Society of Friends, or, as they are general known, Quakers, and was a member of the colony of William Penn. The family in England in the generations before his coming produced men of note, and distinguished members reside in Scotland today.
Abraham Marshall was the father of nine children. His eighth son was Humphrey Marshall, the first great American botanist, and one of the ablest that his country has produced. Humphrey Marshall gave to the city of West Chester a park that is today unique in America, and is very highly prized by that community. He gathered, from the different localities of the temperate zone, the finest varieties of useful and ornamental trees and set them out, and there they stand today, one hundred and sixty years old or older, the pioneers of many varieties now common to the United States. The park is frequently visited by landscape architects and botanists who want to know just how certain trees in their maturity will look. Humphrey Marshall duplicated this park on his own estate on the Brandywine river, and it has been preserved through the centuries to the present day by its owners, a branch of the Marshall family.
E. J. Marshall is a descendant of the third son of the first settler, one John Marshall, who had a family of eight children. His sixth was Abraham, who had twelve children, nine of them sons, and his seventh, Abraham, was Mr. Marshall’s grandfather.
Several of his grandfather’s brothers had careers that could be called romantic, even though the Quaker blood in their veins suggested and even demanded peaceful and settled lives. One, George, went to Spain, and then to Cuba, and won the heart and hand of the daughter of the Captain General of Cuba. In the service of Spain, he led an adventurous life, and died a romantic death in his prime.
Another brother went to sea at the age of fifteen. Nearly all of the crew on his ship were taken down with yellow fever and died. The Marshall boy brought the ship into St. Augustine, Florida, with the help of one or two sailors, and there he was stricken and died himself. Vincent, another of the granduncles, became a famous physician, at Cincinnati, Ohio. His son, Vincent, moved to San Francisco, where he aided in the organization of the San Francisco Gas Company. He owned the three houses located on the highest point of San Francisco, which miraculously escaped the great disaster of April 16, 1906. He left half his property to his niece, Helen Marshall, whose sister. Dr. Clara Marshall, is dean of the University of Pennsylvania, Women’s Medical Department, one of the most famous women in medicine in the United States.
Abraham Marshall, the grandfather, had a career that in life was interesting and in his death tragic. He was a lawyer, and, in order to settle a certain estate for which he was attorney, he was compelled to ride horseback all the way from Philadelphia to Illinois. He received as his fee a large tract of land in Illinois then of little value, but which with the populating of that State increased rapidly in worth.
The young lawyer became a big figure in the Illinois community, and the county of Marshall, Illinois, was named in his honor. During the war between Mexico and Texas, when Texas was fighting for its independence, he was persuaded that in the event the Texans were successful there would be great opportunities opened.
He made the journey by boat down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and from there to Galveston with a company of men. He and his men were at once sent to the front and in a few days was fought the battle of San Jacinto, the decisive struggle of the war, in which the army of the Mexican general, Santa Ana, was wiped out. Santa Ana himself was taken prisoner and General Houston delivered the prisoner to the charge of Captain Abraham Marshall. A few weeks later Marshall was taken with a fever, and one night, in his delirium, he wandered off into the wilderness. He was never seen or heard of again. Years later a noted phrenologist and General Greene, chief of staff for General Houston, wandering around in that vicinity of Texas, happened to pick up a naked skull. For his amusement the phrenologist read what he thought must have been the character of the possessor of the skull in life. General Greene struck with the similarity of the reading and the character of Captain Marshall that he wrote a letter saying that he thought he had found the captain’s skull. This letter is now in the possession of E. J. Marshall.
John Marshall, the greatest of the chief justices of the United States Supreme Court, who really fixed and defined the position of the Supreme Court in the United States Government, is of the same family, descended from the branch that settled in Virginia.
In spite of the fact that the chief tenet of the faith of the Quakers was an abhorrence of fighting, the Abraham Marshall who lived at the time of the War of the Revolution organized a company, of which he was captain, and reported to General Braddock, who was then waging a campaign near the Marshall farm on the Brandywine river. The company at once saw fighting.
But the Society of Friends, of which Marshall was one of the most prominent members, in spite of their patriotism did not approve of warfare. They sent him a communication that unless he stopped his unholy conduct they would read him out of the society. He was a God-fearing man, and put his religion before his fighting. He resigned from the captaincy, and the grandfather of General McClelland, of Civil War fame, was elected by the company in his stead.
Years later General Palmer, founder of Colorado Springs, who was a member of the Society of Friends, was taken to task for the offense of fighting in the Civil War, but he wrote a letter so eloquent in his defense that he was retained by the society, and the letter is now treasured in the archives of Chester County.
The original Marshall farm of two hundred acres, on the Brandywine, in Pennsylvania, is still owned by a member of the family. The house is a stone one of two stories, in an excellent state of preservation. One of the treasured documents is the deed to the farm, yellow with age, signed by William Penn, and in connection with which there are several letters from William Penn. They are kept in the original wallet belonging to the original grantee. These documents are of priceless historical value.
Allied closely with the Marshalls of Chester County is the Sharpless family; so closely, in fact, through intermarriage, that the two families are as one. The importance of the two families in Chester County is curiously evidence in the Chester County National Bank, which has been in existence for two hundred years. It is still housed in a beautiful banking house, designed by the architect of the National Capitol at Washington. In the directors’ room of this bank hang numerous portraits of former Marshalls and Sharpless who have been presidents of the bank, and the present head is a Sharpless.
The Marshalls have played their part in the development of the United States. The family, with its connections, now numbers in the thousands, and they are found in every part of the Republic and in many lines of endeavor.
Mr. Marshall’s father, H. Vincent Marshall, was a chemist, who at one time was connected with the house of Sharp & Doane, of Baltimore, one of the large chemical manufacturing houses of the United States.
E. J. Marshall’s early education was obtained in the country schools in the vicinity of Baltimore and in Illinois. When he had reached the age of fifteen he received an appointment, through President Grant, to West Point, but owing to the Quaker traditions and the fact that Rush Roberts, an uncle, who about the same time was put on General Grant’s peace Commission, sent to confer with the Sioux Indians, visited Mr. Marshall’s father on his return and objected strenuously to the West Point course, the boy did not enter the school.
It was a sore disappointment; so much so that he determined to end his studies then and there and go out into the world for himself. He cast himself adrift, penniless, before he was sixteen years old. His first experiences were more than ordinarily distressing. He was willing to work, and found work, but he was at the very start brought face to face with some of the sternest realities of life.
His first position of consequence was when he was at the age of fifteen. He was given a clerkship at St. Louis in a railroad office, a place he was given as a reward for exceptional integrity shown in an incident in which he suffered some unpleasant consequences.
His next place was with the Central Pacific, now a part of the Union Pacific, at Atchison, Kansas. He fell sick, and during his illness Jay Gould bought the Central Pacific and the offices were transferred to St. Louis. Recovering, he went to the Great Lakes, and for several months in his enfeebled condition, the boy roughed it on a steamer. In Chicago he met the superintendent of the Pullman Palace Car Company, who gave him a position as Pullman palace car conductor, running out of St. Louis. This was in 1878, at the age of eighteen. He met Frank P. Killeen, General Manager of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe, a part of the present extensive Santa Fe system, who made him his private secretary, a position he held for two years, when he was transferred to the transportation department, of which he was later put in charge as master of transportation.
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe bought the road, and in the process of absorption, there was a shake-up in the entire official body. Mr. Marshall, however, kept his office for about a year under the new management.
He had, meanwhile, bought a ranch near Lampasas, Texas, with about $2000 which he had saved from his salary. He formed a partnership with a man and together they bought herds of sheep. They started in well, but the tariff on wool was suddenly stricken off by Congress, and in a day their business was rendered unprofitable. The partnership was dissolved and he took the land while the other took the livestock.
Just at this time he was offered the position of cashier of the new First National Bank of Lampasas, Texas.
For the next seventeen years he lived the life of a busy, hard-working American. He was cashier of the bank, and finally became its president. He managed his ranch and familiarized himself with the cattle business, which he made profitable. He handled increasingly large herds, and before the end of the seventeen-year period had amassed what would be considered by many a comfortable competence.
The turning point in his career came in 1900. Into the activity of his life were introduced incidents spectacular beyond all his expectations. He was taking a herd of two thousand head of cattle to the Osage Indian Reservation, in Oklahoma, where he had leased some Indian land, when he received word that a great oil gusher had been struck at Beaumont, Texas, flowing eighty thousand barrels a day. He was himself not inclined to pay much attention to the oil discovery, but was persuaded by one of the directors of his bank, and a valued association, to come and look over the field.
The Beaumont oil field, like every other to which there is a rush, had been snapped up for miles around, and the most fanciful prices prevailed. There was one tract of fifteen acres over which a whole confusion of interests were fighting. Mr. Marshall and his associate, Swayne, decided that here was their opportunity. They got together the warring interests, among whom were those represented by Governor Hogg of Texas, and formed the now historic Hogg-Swayne Syndicate. There were five men in the syndicate, Marshall, Campbell, Hogg and two others, and each took a fifth.
The syndicate agreed to cover all claims at a price of $315.000. The total price was to be paid in sixty days and the initial payment was to be $30,000.
Mr. Marshall was made trustee and handled all the finances. An hour after the agreement was reached, when the checks were still in Mr. Marshall’s pocket, an attorney by the name of Rose appeared and said he had an option on two-and-a-half acres which he insisted on exercising. He brought $100,000 with him in $1000 bank notes, prepared to pay cash for the option. If he were not permitted to buy the option he was prepared to sue. Rather than face litigation at that time, Mr. Marshall and the syndicate accepted the offer and took the $100,000.
It was never necessary to use the $30,000 in checks.
Dry holes had been sunk all around Spindle Top, which resulted in concentrating all the rush on Spindle Top itself. The same day the syndicate advertised that they would sell leases at the rate of $100,000 an acres. Towne, a former candidate for the Presidency of the United States on the Populist ticket, who had stepped aside to make way for Watson, bought a lease on a quarter acre for $28,500 cash. Three more were sold before night. Practically all the $315,000 which had been paid for the property was at once paid off. In thirty days enough leases were sold to cover the cost and leave a net profit of $300,000, and the syndicate still had half of its fifteen acres.
An English syndicate here came in and made an offer of $2,000,000 for the half that was left. They deposited $25,000 while the bargain was pending and Mr. Marshall went to London to complete the negotiations. He arranged to build two pipe lines from Beaumont to the coast at Port Arthur, near by, and to build five steel tanks each of a storage capacity of 55,000 barrels. When this was done the Englishmen were prepared to pay the $2,000,000. At a cost of $150,000 the pipe line and storage plant was put in, under the supervision of a former Standard Oil manager, but the Englishmen never closed on their option.
Mr. Marshall and his associates were, therefore, compelled to continue in the oil business. They spent $200,000 more on the storage plant. The storage facilities were still not enough to take care of the oil that was offered them, and the business was growing to unexpected magnitude.
It was decided to interest more capital, and a committee went to New York, where they conferred with John W. Gates, Ellwood, J. S. Culinan and others. They came to an understanding. Meanwhile Mr. Marshall, J. S. Culinan and Campbell formed “The Texas Company,” and to the stock of this concern Gates and his associates subscribed.
The Texas Company is now the second largest oil company in the world. It has a capital of $50,000,000. It has pipe lines covering Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, and competes with the Standard Oil Company in twenty states. Mr. Marshall was its first treasurer.
Mr. Marshall then went to Paris, on another mission, and on his return made arrangements to close out his oil interests and go to California. Mrs. Marshall and their son had been in California the greater part of three years for the sake of the son’s health. He arrived in Los Angeles January 1, 1904.
The famous Spindle Top had a comparatively short life. Wells were sunk so closely together that no one got much oil, and finally, through carelessness, salt water was admitted to the oil bearing strata. The seven and a half acres on which the syndicate had an offer of $2,000,000 is now practically worthless. He sold his last block of Texas Company stock to John W. Gates in 1906.
He assumed the office of vice president of the Southwestern National Bank of Los Angeles on the day of his arrival, and he was connected with it in that capacity until its consolidation with the First National Bank in 1905. He was offered an official position with the enlarged bank, but his private interests had become so large that he declined.
Shortly after his arrival at Los Angeles he began looking around for opportunities to buy ranches, his favorite form of investment. J. S. Torrance offered him five adjacent ranches in Santa Barbara County, on which oil wells were being drilled. He offered him the five, with a total acreage of 63,000, retaining the oil rights, but he bought only three of them. This is now one of the model ranches of California, containing 42,000 acres. It is located north of the city of Santa Barbara and fronts the Pacific Ocean for fifteen miles.
On it at the present time are 4000 head of pure Hereford cattle, pronounced by experts to be the finest herd in the world. They have been very profitable, a thousand had being sold each year at special prices. The ranch has already paid for itself, and is now valued around one million dollars. Fifteen thousand acres are under cultivation and a thousand acres are under lease to a sugar company for the growing of sugar beets.
Since 1904 he has also bought the famous Chino Ranch, whose lands are located between Pomona, Riverside and Corona, California. Associated with him in this purchase are J. S. Torrance, E. T. Earl, J. S. Cravens and Isaac Milbank. Mr. Marshall is president of the company.
The area of the Chino ranch when bought was 46,000 acres. Water was developed and other improvements made, and a portion of the property put on the market. Twenty thousand acres have been sold to small settlers. Some of the most thickly settled portions of Southern California surround the property, which has grown to be exceedingly valuable.
Since the purchase of the Chino property he has bought the Grand Canyon ranch, for which was paid $250,000. This is used as a breeding ground for the Chino property. On this property he owns all the water sources, and has piped this water distances of ten to fifteen miles that it might be available for the livestock. He can now run from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand head of cattle on this ranch.
But the largest of his ranches is the Palomas, in Mexico. This is, in fact, the largest ranch in the world, two million acres, within fence. This also, he has acquired since coming to Los Angeles. The north line stretches across the entire southern boundary of New Mexico, a distance of 170 miles. On this he runs one of the world’s largest herds of cattle. This property is not entirely grazing land. Probably 200,000 acres can be reclaimed by irrigation. One of the largest artesian belts in America runs through it, and a section is watered by a fine river. Only a part of this area has up to the present time been reclaimed. He has associated with him in this property J. S. Torrance and H. S. Stephenson.
He is president of the Sinaloa Land Company, a company that owns 1,500,000 acres in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico. He was induced to become president and manager of the company in order to carry on development more rapidly. The company originally obtained the land in payment for a survey of the state of Sinaloa. The land is not in one tract, but is scattered all over the state. A plant irrigating 100,000 acres of land has just been completed. The water is drawn from the Culiacan river and spread over the valley lands adjacent.
The Sinaloa lands are especially valuable because they are well watered, with a rainfall of thirty-five inches and upward annually, and five large rivers flowing through them. Upwards of $2,000,000 has been spent on surveying and development work. With the opening of the Panama Canal the lands will be colonized.
A summary shows the enormous scale on which he operates. He is easily one of the largest stock growers of the country; very few can be classed with him His combined herds number 100,000. On the three ranches, Grand Canyon, Santa Barbara County, Palomas and Chino, considering the size of the herds on each property, each stands in a class by itself, unequaled in breeding and in the quantity of production.
He is one of the largest farmers in the United States and in the world. He cultivates 15,000 acres on the Santa Barbara ranch, 20,000 acres on the Chino ranch, and 5000 to 6000 acres in Mexico. This makes a total of 40,000 acres under plow.
Although there has been much of the spectacular in his business career, it can be said that practically all of Mr. Marshall’s success has been due to good judgment and hard work. Through seventeen years of close application to the duties of his various offices in the Lampasas Bank, and his good judgment in the management of his farm, he prospered until, when his great chance came, he was ready to take it. Even then he did not plunge recklessly as even staid business men are tempted to do; costly as it appeared he bought the absolutely proven oil ground of Spindle Top itself. His part in the formation of the Texas Company earned him a place as one of the big oil operators of the United States, but his career in oil could be stricken out entirely and he would yet have reached approximately his present standing. After he had drawn his profit out of the oil business, hardly more than the profits of straight investment, he went back to his original callings of banking, livestock and farms. And it is in these that his thoroughness, managerial ability, and knowledge of the business have had their greatest reward. He took hold of great tracts of land and increased their value five-fold.
He is the president of the Chino Land and Water Company, Sinaloa Land and Water Company, Palomas Land and Water Company, Grand Canyon Cattle Company and Jesus Maria Rancho.
He is a director of the Los Angeles Trust Company, First National Bank of Los Angeles, Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company, Home Telephone and Telegraph Company of Los Angeles, Home Telephone Company of San Francisco, and over thirty other companies. He is vice president of the J. H. Adams Company, of Los Angeles, one of the strongest bond houses in the United States, with a capital of $3,500.000 and which deals solely in bonds.
He is part owner in the Central Building, the Security Building and the Chester Building, three of the largest steel office blocks in Los Angeles.
He is a member of the California, Jonathan, Los Angeles Athletic, Los Angeles Country, Pasadena Country and Bolsa Chica Gun clubs, of Los Angeles and Pasadena, and also of the Bohemian of San Francisco.
Transcribed 5-11-09
Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: Press Reference
Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Pages 267-270, International News
Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2009 Marilyn R. Pankey.
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