San
Joaquin County
Biographies
CHARLES EDWARD DOAN
Among
the substantial business men of San Joaquin County, Charles Edward Doan
occupies a foremost position as official court reporter of the Superior
Court. A native of El Dorado County, California,
he was born near Alta on June 21, 1865, a son of Lattimer E. Doan, a native of
Kalamazoo, Michigan, who crossed the plains with his parents in an ox-team
train in the early ‘50s. Grandfather
Elisha Doan was a lumberman in Michigan, so Lattimer E. naturally learned the
lumber business. He built and owned a
toll road out of Placerville to a point in the mountains, then engaged in the
lumber business in El Dorado and Nevada counties, building a sawmill at Canon
Creek near Alta, and then at Boca. With
W. E. Terry and Capt. John Friend as partners Lattimer E. Doan established the
Boca Mill & Ice Company and was its president. The mill and ice houses were established and
built at the junction of the Big and Little Truckee rivers, where he got out millions
of ties and lumber for the Central Pacific Railroad Company, which was then
building its line through to the Pacific Coast, and he also manufactured lumber
and shipped it by rail for many years to different points in Nevada and
California. He was actively engaged in
business until his death, though the last three years of his life were spent in
Sacramento, his death occurring there in February, 1881.
Lattimer E. Doan had married Mary
Elizabeth Logan, who was born in Kentucky and crossed the vast plains with her
parents in an ox-team train, locating at Michigan Bar, where Grandfather Logan
was a miner and owned the toll bridge.
Mrs. Lattimer E. Doan survived her husband many years, passing away in
Stockton in November, 1919, aged eighty years.
The family comprised six children, four of whom grew up and are
living: Hattie A., living in Stockton;
L. E., an oil operator in San Francisco; Charles E., of this sketch, and Mary
Elizabeth of Stockton.
Charles Edward Doan attended the
Sacramento public schools and for a time was in the employ of the Continental
Oil Company of that city. In 1881 he and
his brother, L. E. Doan, located in Stockton, where the latter became the agent
for Schofield & Tevis, and also for the
Continental Oil Company, and Charles E. was associated with him in these
enterprises. Later the brothers took
charge of the Stockton Furniture Company, owned by his mother, Mrs. Mary E.
Doan, and her brother, J. V. Logan, then located on the site of the Hotel
Sutter on East Main Street, and here they engaged in the manufacture and sale
of furniture. L. E. Doan has since
become one of the leading oil men of California and with others is now
operating the Doan Oil Company at Shreveport, Louisiana, with headquarters in
that city, Charles E. Doan being one of the stockholders. When a young man Mr. Doan had become very
proficient in shorthand and in 1891 he took it up as a profession in Seattle
where he became a reporter in the U. S. Land Office and for the U. S. Courts of
Washington. Returning to Stockton in
1893, he established the Gas City Business College, which he successfully
conducted until September, 1901, when he disposed of it to J. H. Humphreys and
T. F. Wolfenbarger.
It is now the Stockton College of Commerce. Meanwhile, Mr. Doan had become a court
reporter in the Superior Court of San Joaquin County under E. E. Hood, and upon
the latter’s death in 1901, Mr. Doan was unanimously appointed to take his
place as official court reporter, a position he has since held to the entire
satisfaction of the court. About
seventeen years ago Mr. Doan became interested in viticulture and purchased
fifty-two acres of raw land four miles southeast of Lodi, set it to vineyard
and now has a full-bearing vineyard of table grapes. With his family he resides in the comfortable
home which he erected at Rose and Monroe streets, Stockton.
In Portland, Oregon, Mr. Doan was
married to Miss Catherine Maurer, a native of Stockton; her father, Peter
Maurer, was a pioneer farmer of San Joaquin County. Mr. and Mrs. Doan are the parents of two
children: Roland E. is the proprietor of
the R. E. Doan Sporting Goods House of Stockton, among the largest and best
equipped houses in this line on the Coast.
Alma Irma is the wife of E. C. Parks, of San Francisco. Fraternally Mr. Doan is a member of Charity
Lodge, No. 6, I. O. O. F., of Stockton.
He also belongs to the California Shorthand Reporters’ Association and
the National Shorthand Reporters’ Association.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1391. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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