Los Angeles County
Biographies
ROY BRADLEY WHEELER
WHEELER, ROY BRADLEY, Bonds, Los Angeles, California, was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, September 27, 1882, the son of Nathaniel Milliman Wheeler and Clara (Bradley) Wheeler. He married Helen Angeline Stoughton at Pasadena, California, November 1, 1911. He is of New England ancestry, the early members of his family having settled in Connecticut in 1646. They were farmers and later, when the family scattered to New York, this still formed the chief pursuit of the men. Various members of the Wheeler family served in the Revolutionary War in Connecticut and New York companies.
Mr. Wheeler was taken to Los Angeles by his parents when he was a child three years of age and the greater part of his life has been spent in that city. He attended the public schools of Los Angeles and Pasadena until his twelfth year, then became a student in Belmont School at Belmont, California, graduating in the class of 1900. For a year following he traveled in Europe, but returning to the United States in 1901 he entered Harvard University and was graduated in 1905 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts.
At the conclusion of his college career, Mr. Wheeler made a second trip to Europe and spent the Summer of 1905 in travel. Returning to Los Angeles, he entered the newspaper business as a reporter on the Los Angeles Times. With his splendid education and experience gained by travel added to a natural talent for the work he became a proficient newspaper man and was promoted to various editorships within a comparatively brief period. At one time he held the desk of Automobile Editor and later was Literary Editor of the Times.
Mr. Wheeler was in the employ of the Times for about three years, but he found editorial work too confining, and took a trip to the Hawaiian Islands for a stay of several months in Honolulu and other parts of the Islands.
Instead of returning to the newspaper business, however, he decided to go into the financial field and his judgment has been more than verified by the success he has attained within a few years in that line of activity. He began on January 1, 1909, by entering the firm of James H. Adams & Company, one of the leading stock and bond banking houses of the West, and fourteen months later became a member of the company. Upon a change in the organization of the company in December, 1911, he was made Assistant Secretary. In July, 1912, Mr. Adams retired from business and the old firm was succeeded by the new house of Torrance, Marshall & Company, of which Mr. Wheeler became Secretary and Treasurer.
In this company Mr. Wheeler is associated with some of the most powerful financiers of the West and with them is engaged in various development projects. As large operators in bonds, the company has financed a vast number of corporations and Mr. Wheeler is either a Director or Secretary in a great many of them. He is Secretary of the Dominguez Land Company, Southern Extension Company, Western Fireproof Building Company, Merchants’ Fireproof Building Company, South Park Land Company, Ventura County Power Company, San Miguel Company, Whittier Extension Company, Fontana Water Company, Fontana Land & Water Company, Grand Canyon cattle Company and the Nadeau Extension Company.
Besides holding these offices, he is a Director of the following: Mercantile Fireproof Building Company, Western Extension Company, Standard Fireproof Building Company, Traders’ Fireproof Building Company, Fontana Company, Interurban Land Company, Fontana Development Company, Southern Counties Gas Company of California and the Fontana Union Water Company. He is also President of the Rialto Domestic Water Company and Tract 349 Mutual Water Company.
Practically all of the business enterprises with which Mr. Wheeler is identified are ones that have a substantial bearing upon the development of the Southwest. The land and water companies are in reality, the backbone of progress in Southern California and wonderful strides are being made through the agency of such companies as those with which Mr. Wheeler is identified. The great majority of these companies are in active operation.
Mr. Wheeler finds time to take an interest in other works, being a member of the American Economic Assn. and the National Geographic Society.
He is a member of the University Club, Annandale Country Club and Los Angeles Country Club.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 526,
International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2010 Joyce
Rugeroni.
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