Los Angeles County

Biographies

 

 

 

 

MOSES H. SHERMAN

 

 

     SHERMAN, MOSES H., Railroad Builder and Banker, Los Angeles, Cal., was born in West Rupert, Bennington County, Vt., Dec. 3, 1853, of sturdy New England stock which dates back far into the colonial days in America and originally came from England.  He married in 1885, Harriet E. Pratt, daughter of H. G. Pratt, one of the distinguished builders of the Central Pacific Railway.  They have three children, Robert, Hazeltine and Lucy Sherman.

     He graduated from the Oswego (N.Y.) Normal School.  Then, long before he was out of his teens, he taught district school in New York State, leaving before he was twenty to go to Los Angeles.

     He did not stay long in Los Angeles, but went into the sparsely settled territory of Arizona, to the then remote mining town or Prescott.  There he continued his calling of teaching until 1876, when he first came to public notice.

     Although only twenty-three, he impressed Governor A. F. K. Stafford of Arizona as the suitable man to represent Arizona at the Philadelphia Exposition or World’s Fair in 1876, the first of the series of America’s great world displays.  His duties kept him at Philadelphia the one summer, after which he started on his return to the Pacific Coast.  He took back with him his sister, now the wife of the Hon. E. P. Clark, of Los Angeles.  They started the journey by way of the Isthmus of Panama, taking a Pacific Mail steamship at New York.  While in the Windward passage, near the island of Cuba, the steamer was wrecked.  For three days the disabled vessel was kept afloat, drifting helplessly about, when finally the passengers and crew were rescued by a steamer running from South America to Liverpool.  After various vicissitudes the two reached Los Angeles in safety.

     Upon the return of young Sherman to Arizona, Governor John C. Fremont of Arizona appointed him Superintendent of Public Instruction for the Territory.  Arizona had at the time of his accession to office practically no public school system, but he created and organized one so complete that even the most isolated communities could enjoy the benefits of education, a remarkable situation in the West of those early days.  When his appointive term was over the office became elective.  He was nominated on the Republican ticket and was elected by a large majority.  Arizona was strongly Democratic at the time, and he had the added distinction of being the only Republican to be elected to office.  During this term the Legislature asked him to rewrite the school laws of Arizona.  His draft was adopted unanimously without change, and remains the school law of Arizona to this day, after more than thirty years.

     Still less than thirty years of age, he was a conspicuous public figure in Arizona at the expiration of his second term as school superintendent.  He was then immediately appointed Adjutant General of the Territory by Governor G. A. Tritle.  He found the National Guard situation as he had found that of the public schools.  There was no organization and everything had to be done from the beginning.  He was reappointed Adjutant General by Governor C. Meyer Zulic, and during this term of office he put the National Guard on a solid basis.

     While he was yet a public official he began the foundation of his business career.  In 1884, at the age of thirty-one, he started the Valley Bank of Phoenix, Phoenix, Arizona.  He was its first president.  This bank has now the largest resources of any in the State.  He remained actively interested in its affairs, which prospered, until 1889, when he happened to make a visit to Los Angeles.

     There he discovered a new opportunity.  Los Angeles was then just well started on its career of great growth.  A syndicate of Chicago men had just completed a costly cable tramway system.  The cable system was frequently paralyzed by the winter rains, which washed sand into the cable slots, causing delay for days at a time.   General Sherman knew that in a couple of the Eastern cities electric street railway systems had been successfully started.  It occurred to him that the failure of the cable system left an opening for the electric.  He acted at once on the idea, enlisted his brother-in-law, E. P. Clark, raised capital, secured a franchise, and built the first tracks of the Los Angeles Railway.  General Sherman was the President of the system and Mr. Clark vice president and general manager.  Soon thereafter the electric system absorbed the cable railway.

     The success of the first electric venture was such that the Los Angeles and Pasadena Electric Railway was organized and built to Pasadena and Altadena by General Sherman and Mr. Clark.  Later this property, as well as the Los Angeles railway system, was sold to H. E. Huntington.

     The next venture in the electric railway field was the construction by the brothers-in-law of the Los Angeles Pacific Railway to Hollywood, Soldiers’ Home, Santa Monica, Ocean Park, Redondo and other points.  They covered with a close network all the territory between Los Angeles and the Santa Monica bay beaches.  They sold this system to the late E. H. Harriman, not long before his death, for a very large sum of money.

     Mr. Sherman and Mr. Clark were the pioneer electric railway builders of the Pacific Coast, and have the credit of building the greatest interurban system in the world.  The systems, now consolidated, all of which they started, make Los Angeles an interurban center greater than any half dozen cities in America combined.  Mr. Sherman is still a director in all the “Harriman” electric railways in Southern California.

     He did not confine his railroad construction to Los Angeles.  As early as 1884 he built the Phoenix Railway. This line he still owns.  He extended it in 1910 to Glendale, Arizona, to connect with the Santa Fe system.

     He is a stockholder in the Farmers and Merchants’ National Bank and the Southern Trust Company of Los Angeles, and has very extensive oil interests.  He is a director in many companies and is one of the large property owners of California and Arizona.

     He is a member of the California Club, the Jonathan Club, Country Club, Bolsa Chica Gun Club and others of Los Angeles, and of the Chamber of Commerce.  He is also a member of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco.

 

 

 

Transcribed 8-19-08 Marilyn R. Pankey.

Source: Press Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I,  Page 127, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta.  1913.

© 2008 Marilyn R. Pankey.

 

 

 

 

 

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