Los Angeles County
Biographies
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PEARSON
PEARSON, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, General Superintendent of the California Edison Company, Los Angeles, California, was born in Middelsex County, England, September 19, 1868, a descendant of the distinguished old Pearson family of Salopia. His father was Benjamin Pearson and his mother Sarah Louis (Maile) Pearson. He married Louise Wyatt at Redlands, California, July 30, 1892, by which union there are two sons, Harols(sic) Benjamin and Robert Rolland Pearson.
Mr. Pearson was educated in the St. Mary’s School, of Cowley, and the Uxbridge Grammar School, England.
At the age of fourteen years Mr. Pearson was apprenticed to the Grand Junction Company of England as a steam engineer and fitter. He made a study of steam and mechanical engineering and at the early age of eighteen years held a marine license under the London Board of Examiners. He remained in England until he was twenty years of age, when he decided to cross the Atlantic with the determination to build a career in the United States.
During one and a half years he followed various occupations throughout Europe and the United States, arriving in Los Angeles in January, 1889. He was then following steam and sanitary engineering as a profession and in 1896 began specialization in Hydro-Electric work.
In 1896, Mr. Pearson entered the employ of the Southern California Edison Company, with which corporation he has been identified for fifteen years. Beginning with the company at the lowest rung of the ladder he did not hesitate to engage in laboring work, being determined to ground himself thoroughly in which has become one of the most important engineering and industrial factors in the United States. During the years following he was repeatedly advanced through all the grades, owing to his mechanical and executive ability, until he was appointed General Superintendent of that great corporation.
He has devoted almost all of his attention to the success of the corporation, dealing fairly with everyone, using his ability to its fullest extent in the interest of the company.
Mr. Pearson has always been identified with the Republican party while at the same time being in sympathy with any non-partisan or partisan progressive policy. He stands squarely for the people and boasts that he would rather be known as a friend of “the man who works” than anything else. He is honest and fearless in the stand he takes with reference to his beliefs and the principles he considers essential in public or patriotic private life.
Mr. Pearson still is in the prime of life and works on an average of eighteen hours a day. He is well known as a philanthropist throughout Southern California, and after his day’s work is done, devoted his spare hours to helping those who are not so fortunate as he. He has spent a number of years in temperance and rescue work and has started hundreds of men in the right direction—always ready to extend a helping hand to any man “down and out.”
He has been instrumental in liberating on parole scores of prisoners from San Quentin and Folsom prisons in California, and is familiarly known to the great majority as “Uncle Ben.” Due to his efforts, hundreds of men have been turned from lives of crime and placed on the right track; and those who were a charge to the state are now enjoying the privileges of citizenship, wage earners and supporting their families.
In the early part of 1911, he was appointed by Governor Johnson a Trustee of the Whittier State Reform School. He is a director of the Union and City Rescue Missions and of the Prison Parole League.
He is a member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.
Transcribed 10-24-09
Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 343, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta.
1913.
© 2009 Marilyn R. Pankey.
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