Los Angeles County
Biographies
EDWIN A. MESERVE
Born in Prairie City, Sacramento county, California, on July 28, 1863. Son of Alvin R. and Elizabeth H. Meserve. Alvin R. Serve came to California from the state of Maine, landing January 1850. Elizabeth H. Meserve came to California in 1854 from the state of Illinois. They were married in the city of Sacramento, September 20, 1860. Alvin R. Meserve at the time conducted a “general merchandise store” in the then town of Prairie City, located on what was then the main stage and teaming road from Sacramento, via Placerville, Meyers, Lake Tahoe, Kings Pass, Carson City and Virginia City. After the twenty-two miles of railroad were built from Sacramento to what became the town and then the city of Folsom, most of the business, formerly done at Prairie City, was transacted in Folsom. During the time from 1856 until 1863, Alvin R. Meserve, in connection with his general merchandise business, travelled through the easterly pat of Sacramento and that portion of El Dorado county lying within the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, one of the main features of his business being the handling of gold dust produced by the placer miners. In December 1863, Alvin R. Meserve and his family moved to the city of Santa Cruz, California, where he again entered upon a general merchandise business which he conducted in that city until early in 1877. In September 1874, Alvin R. Meserve and C. F. Loop bought a large tract of land from the widow of Don Ignacio Palomares, one of the original grantees of the famous San Jose Rancho. The portion thus purchased included the Palomares adobe ranch house and its surrounding trees. In February 1877, Alvin R. Meserve and his family moved to this property, taking up their residence in the Palomares adobe ranch house. The city of Pomona was laid out in the fall of 1874, but the railroad from Los Angeles was not completed to and through Pomona until a number of years later. When the subject of his sketch, with his father and mother, took up his residence in the San Jose Valley about two and one-half miles north of the town of Pomona, there was one combination freight and passenger train each way a day between Colton and Los Angeles over the Southern Pacific. After attending school in the Pomona Valley were he also received instruction from a special tutor then living in the San Jose Valley he, in the fall of 1879, entered the Los Angeles high school in the city of Los Angeles. He gradated from this school on June 20, 1880. Immediately thereafter he entered the employ of Lankershim and Van Nuys, then owners of the major part of the San Fernando Valley. Young Meserve, at that time, going to work on what was then known as the Keslar Ranch, the ranch houses then being and some of them still standing in what is now the city of Van Nuys, Los Angeles county. After working on this ranch for a year as a regular teamster, he returned to the Pomona Valley, where he worked for nearly another year. In the summer of 1882, he went north to San Francisco and at the beginning of the college year entered the University of California. In beginning of the college year of 1882, he also registered and entered Hastings College of Law of the University of California, keeping up both courses until in the spring of 1885, when he felt himself obliged, as he then supposed temporarily, to give up his work at the university proper. In May 1886, he was graduated from Hastings College of Law of the University of California, with the degree of LL.B. On May 4, 1885, while still a student of the college of law of the university, he went to Sacramento and took the examination before the supreme court and was admitted to practice in all of the state courts of the state of California. Notwithstanding, he continued his work in the college of the law. After graduating from the college of law in 1886, he remained in San Francisco for eight or nine months as a clerk in a prominent law firm of that city. In the spring of 1887, he came back to Los Angeles county and took up his home with his parents in the San Jose ranch house above mentioned, where he continue to live until the month of September 1889. At this time he was working as attorney for several water and subdivision corporations, doing business in the county of San Bernardino, which then included a part of what is now Riverside county. On the 28th day of June, 1887, he married Helen Davis, daughter of Adolph Davis of Montreal, Canada. They moved to Los Angeles in September, 1889, and on October 1, 1889, Mr. Meserve opened his law office in the city of Los Angeles, where he has continue to practice law. On October 7, 1889, his son Shirley E. Meserve, was born in Los Angeles. Shirley E. after his preparatory work at Harvard Military Academy in Los Angeles, entered the University of California in the class of 1912. In 1914, he entered his father’s law office in Los Angeles, there then being formed the firm of Meserve & Meserve, which in 1923 was changed to the firm Meserve, Mumper, Hughes & Robertson, of which both Edwin A. and Shirley E. are members. Helen Davis Meserve died in the city of Los Angeles, January 6, 1898. On September 20, 1899, Edwin A. Meserve married Mabelle Locke, daughter of R. A. and Julia E. Locke, who then conducted what was then known as the Locke Hotel on the northwest corner of Second and Hill streets. There were no children born to this marriage. Mabelle L. Meserve died in Los Angeles, September 9, 1933. On May 4, 1935, Edwin A. Meserve completed his fifty years as an admitted attorney, during which time he has practiced before the supreme court of the United States, the subordinate courts of the United States in the states of California, Arizona and Nevada, and in all of the courts of the state of California. He is still actively engaged in the practice of the law as a member of the firm of Meserve, Mumper, Hughes & Robertson.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: California
of the South Vol. V, by John Steven McGroarty, Pages 555-557, Clarke Publ., Chicago, Los Angeles, Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 Joyce Rugeroni.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPHIES