San
Joaquin County
Biographies
CHARLES F. RICH
Starting in life for himself at the
age of sixteen years, Charles F. Rich now occupies a position of leadership in
business circles in his community, being proprietor of the Stockton Tile
Company. He was born in San Francisco,
May 3, 1893, a son of Curtis W. and Mary (Wilcox) Rich, the former born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the latter in Lincoln, Nebraska, where her
father was one of the founders and the first peace officer. They were married at Lincoln and settled in
California in the late eighties. The
father died in 1897, but his widow is still living, the mother of two children,
Curtis W., of San Francisco, and Charles F., whose education was acquired in
the grammar schools of his native city and the high school at Redwood
City. When sixteen years
of age he became a wage earner as an employee of the wholesale dry goods house
of Moore & Watson of San Francisco.
He next entered the employ of the Lowry & Daley Company, contractors
and dealers in that city, and for six years continued in their service, during
which period he gained valuable experience in connection with the tile
business. He was employed on many large
contracts, doing the tiling in the San Francisco City and County Hospital, a
job which required twenty-two months to complete and which was the largest job
of the kind west of the Mississippi River; he also worked on a number of other
hospital jobs; installed the tiling and the Turkish baths in the St. Francis
Hotel; in the Morsehead Apartments he installed the
tiling in the swimming pool, roof garden and billiard rooms; and the mantel in
the Washington Dodge residence in San Francisco, a very beautiful and artistic
piece of work, an inscription in the Morse Code reading “Welcome to Our Home”
being set in the tiling with abalone shells.
Mr. Rich also worked on many beautiful homes in Burlingame and San
Mateo, California, and became recognized as an expert craftsman.
In March, 1916, he came to Stockton
and established the Stockton Tile Company, which has since enjoyed a prosperous
existence. He specializes in exterior
tile decorations and did the work on the Dawson fireproof storage warehouse on
North California Street, the tiling being all made by hand. He also placed all of the new tiling in the
Frederick Rindge residence in Stockton, one of the finest homes in the county,
and executed the exterior tile decorations on the building housing the Stockton
Mineral Baths, a very beautiful piece of work, which attracted much favorable
attention. He put in the first exterior
tile decorations in Stockton, these being on the Brueck
Block on East Market Street; and he was the first man in the city to install
tile sinks in residences, having done much of this work. He has laid the tiling and marble work in the
Masonic Building and tiling in the Merced Theatre at Merced; in a theatre at
Pittsburg, Contra Costa County; and in the Lodi Theatre. He has placed the tiling in a number of
vaults and mausoleums in cemeteries in San Joaquin County and has also
installed a large amount of magnesite flooring, a
material that hardens, becoming like wood, and having none of the coldness of
stone or cement. He has installed this
class of work in the halls, bathrooms and kitchens in the Tretheway Apartments,
and in apartments and residences throughout the county, the United States
Government School at Rough and Ready Island, and the City and County Hospital
at Modesto. This material is rapidly
gaining in popularity, and during September and October, 1920, Mr. Rich laid
16,000 square feet of magnesite in Stockton. He also placed the tiling in the mantel,
veranda, stairway and bathrooms of the home of J. Brichetto at Banta, in San
Joaquin County. In 1922 he opened a
branch business in Modesto.
Mr. Rich married Miss Louise Phoedovius, a native of San Francisco and a daughter of
William P. Phoedovius, a California pioneer now
living retired in that city. He was for
twenty-seven years connected with the San Francisco Customs House, while he
also established weather and telegraph stations for the Government in
California, Arizona and at Pike Peak, Colorado.
He is a veteran of the Indian and Civil wars and was in charge of a
recruiting station at Stockton after the close of the Civil War. As an infant his wife crossed the plains to
California in an emigrant train as one of the Oatman
party, which was attacked by Indians, and she was one of the few members of the
party to escape with her life. Mrs. Rich
was chosen the Queen’s Herald of the Portola celebration, held in San Francisco
in 1910 and 1912, and she is a past president of Darina
Parlor of the Native Daughters of the Golden West; also past chief of the
Pythian Sisters and past Pocahontas of the Daughters of Pocahontas at San
Francisco.
Mr. and Mrs. Rich reside on a
five-acre almond ranch on Linden Road, a mile east of Stockton. Fraternally he is identified with the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows, belonging to Apollo Lodge, No. 123, of San
Francisco. A self-made man, Stockton has
greatly benefited through his labors, which have contributed to the adornment
and improvement of the city and to its industrial expansion.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1591-1592. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Biographies
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Genealogy
Databases