CLARENCE B. WISNER

Los Angeles County

Biographies

CLARENCE B. WISNER

WISNER, CLARENCE B., Oil Operator, Los Angeles, California, was born at Friendship, New York, August 15, 1867, the son of James E. and Laura Newman (Bell) Wisner. He married Gertrude Dixon at Fargo, North Dakota, November 10, 1886.

Mr. Wisner was educated at the Friendship Academy and at Hamline University and under private tutors. He removed to Lisbon, Dakota Territory, in 1881, with his parents.

He went to work in a bank, and in 1886, was cashier of the Bank of Lisbon. He retained the place for two years.

In the following year he was called upon to draft the Dakota State Bank Law, in spite of his youth, and he is its author as it stands today in the statutes of North Dakota. He next assisted in organizing the first bank under the law.

Mr. Wisner was the manager of the World’s Fair branch of the American Trust & Savings Bank, Chicago, in 1893. The following year he organized the West Pullman Bank, private, and this was later reorganized as the State Bank of West Pullman. He was its first Cashier and afterwards Vice President and President.

In the year 1900 he went to New York as the general manager of the Sills Eddy Mica Company, one of the big concerns in the mica business. Two years later he organized and financed the Dubois Electric & Traction Company, of Dubois, Pennsylvania, consolidating the street railway and electric companies.

The next work of importance in which he was engaged was in 1907, when he went to London, England, and organized the British Consolidated Oil Corporation, Limited, which took over valuable producing properties in the Coalinga district. In 1909 he was made general manager of the company, and went to California and took active charge in the field. Immediately on his arrival in the oil fields he began to branch out, taking hold of one opportunity after another. He bought, in 1910, the New Era and P. M. D. O., freehold properties, for the company, and they proved among the most productive in the Coalinga field. He also bought the Gypsy and Mountain Girl leases, 240 acres in the Midway field, which he afterwards sold to the Petroleum Properties Syndicate, Limited.

Mr. Wisner was one of the first to realize the importance of electricity in the oil industry, and gave the first big order for pumping motors, which are now coming into general use owing to economy and utility. Later in the year he bought the Guiberson ranch, at Fillmore, of 880 acres, 780 acres of which he later sold to the Calumet Oil Company.

He resigned as General Manager of the English group of interests March 1, 1911. Since then he has been devoting his entire time to his private interests, which have grown to be quite extensive.

In September, 1911, he purchased 7500 acres of foothill fruit land at Snelling, Merced County, which he has subdivided into twenty and forty acre farms under the name of the Figmond Tract. The project met with immediate success and a large number of sales have already been made to high-class American people of means, who will form one of the ideal colonies of California.

Mr. Wilmer has continued to keep in touch with the banking business, in which he first gained distinction. Since going to Los Angeles, he has been quietly and judiciously investing in real estate.

Although not long in Los Angeles he has joined into its social life, and is a member of the Sierra Madre Club and others. He also belongs to the Union League Club of San Francisco, a city to which his business often takes him.

Transcribed by Bill Simpkins.

Source: Press Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 800, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta. 1913.

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