Los Angeles County
Biographies
HERBERT J. VATCHER, JR.
VATCHER, HERBERT J., Jr., Investment Broker, Los Angeles, Cal., was born at Surrey, Eng., Sept. 15, 1884, the son of Herbert J. and Mary Vatcher. He married Lillian C. Craig, at Los Angeles, February 28, 1911.
The family moved in his early childhood to Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, but when he was nine years old they made another move to Los Angeles. He was taught in the Canadian and Pasadena, California, public schools and then attended the high school of the latter city.
During his vacations, and after his school hours, Mr. Vatcher worked at the Cawston Ostrich Farm of South Pasadena, and continued in various capacities until he was twenty years old, when he went into the Bank of South Pasadena, which Mr. Cawston and others organized. After a years he was advanced to the position of assistant cashier, and he held that post until 1909.
When only twenty-five years old, Mr. Vatcher had a good all-around business training and was familiar with the handling of finances. He had accumulated some capital and was well acquainted with the men of affairs in Southern California, so decided to resign his position to take up an independent enterprise; to that end he opened offices in Los Angeles as an investment broker in 1909.
The Cawston Ostrich Farm was organized into a corporation in the year 1896, and in recognition of his long years of intelligent service, he was made a director and secretary. Since his election to that post, the affairs of the company have grown until it is reckoned the largest in the United States. It is an institution of great magnitude, the first to proved that the South African ostrich could be successful acclimated in California, and the owner of several thousand head of ostriches, each of which would command a very high figure if offered for sale. The enterprise first was started to entertain the traveling public as a curiosity, but later it was found that the ostrich appears here in its best plumage, and today the show end is merely incidental. The farm produces an enormous value in fine plumes, which are marketed all over the world by the company, which employs scores of girls in its plume establishment, in the coloring of the fine feathers and in the making of “Willow” plumes.
He recently promoted the re-capitalization, for $1,200,000, of the Cawston Ostrich Farm, and its sale to a company of bankers. He was elected secretary and managing director of the new concern, and acquired a considerable amount of its stock.
His investment brokerage business has been uniformly successful. He continued as fiduciary agent to Mr. Cawston, who had returned to England, and effected several large deals in this capacity. He prospered so that from one room his business came to occupy a suite of seven rooms in the Los Angeles Trust and Savings building. He has been actively instrumental in organizing and financing several companies. He organized, in 1908, the Investors’ Land and Water Company of Ontario, California, for the handling of water rights and orange lands in the vicinity of Ontario, and served as one of its officers. He was a moving spirit in the incorporation of the Cement Products and Construction Company, the product of which plant is so conspicuously represented in the art stone of Central Park and the Auditorium Hotel building.
He is one of the youngest successful business men in Southern California, and owes his success almost solely to his industry, ambition and the intelligence with which he mastered the details of business.
He is a York Rite and Scottish Rite Mason.
He belongs to the Union League Club, the Rotary Club, the San Gabriel Valley Country Club and the Elks. He is a member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
Transcribed by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 829,
International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2012 Joyce Rugeroni.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPIES