Los
Angeles County
Biographies
ORVILLE S. SPEAR
AGNES LANGDON SPEAR
Two
long time residents of the San Gabriel Valley, Orville S. Spear, a retired oil
man, and his wife, Agnes Langdon Spear, have lived in this area since
1918. They are both from families which
date back many generations in this country—Agnes Langdon Spear’s ancestors
being among the first settlers in Virginia.
Orville
S. Spear was born in York, Nebraska, on November 14, 1884, the first son of
George Spear, who had taught school in the Midwest and who was a private in
Company D of the 7th Ohio Infantry in the Civil War, and Mary Ellen
(Anderson) Spear. The senior Mr. Spear
died when his son was ten years old.
Making his first trip to California at the age of five, with his
parents, Orville Spear and his family stayed in this state for two years. From 1891 until his return to California in
1916, he made his home in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Mr. Spear has fond memories of the days when
he played right end on the Cottage Grove High School football team in
1903. In 1953 Mr. Spear was honored,
with seven of his teammates, at a banquet at Cottage Grove High School for
members of the team of 1903, and of each subsequent decade, including
1953. All but one of the living members
of the fifty year squad was present.
In
1908, on March 29, a particularly rainy day, Orville S. Spear was married to
the former Miss Agnes Langdon at the home of the bride’s mother in Cottage Grove,
Oregon. Mrs. Spear is the daughter of
James Phillip Langdon, a farmer, and Alice A. (Shortridge)
Langdon, who was born in Kelso, Washington, on May 19, 1888. She is, like her husband, a graduate of
Cottage Grove High School.
Mrs.
Spear’s grandfather, William Thompson Langdon, was born in 1828 in Ireland of
English parents, and died in 1905 in Osceola, Missouri. He was married to the former Miss Luiza Cooley.
Fighting for three years with the Union Army in the Civil War, he spent
eighteen months in notorious Andersonville Prison in the South as a prisoner of
war. On Mrs. Spear’s mother’s side of
the family, the first Shortridge came to America with
the first settlers of Virginia and was private secretary to Lord Dunmore. Another early ancestor was a lieutenant
colonel under Daniel Boone in the Revolutionary War, and was in charge of the
Tennessee riflemen. Mrs. Spear’s
great-great-great-grandfather, Abran Adams, was a
colonel in North Carolina during the Revolutionary War.
Since
1918 Mr. and Mrs. Spear have been members of the First Christian Church of
Alhambra.
Mr.
Spear began working in the oil fields in the Montebello hills in 1918 and in
1921 went to work as a driller for George Getty in the oil fields until the
“crash” of 1929. Two years after the
“crash”, Mr. Spear began contracting in a small way, leasing equipment at
first; his business went well after the first ten years, and Mr. Spear remained
in the oil business until his retirement in 1958.
Mr.
and Mrs. Spear are the parents of three children: Mrs. Thomas J. (Frances June) George, born on
June 29, 1914, who lives in San Gabriel; Robert Langdon Spear, born on August
21, 1918, who enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps as a cadet pilot in
1939, and who was killed in an air crash in the Swiss Alps in 1952 while serving
as a lieutenant colonel; and Donna Marie Spear, who was born on March 18, 1923,
and who spent three years in the United States Navy as a member of the Women’s
Auxiliary Volunteer Enlistment, and who now lives in San Gabriel.
Transcribed
by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Historical Volume & Reference Works
Including Alhambra, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel & Temple City, by
Robert P. Studer, Pages
478-479, Historical Publ., Los Angeles,
California. 1962.
© 2013 V. Gerald
Iaquinta.
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NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPHIES