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A.H. Sweet: Profile of a High-Minded Gentleman "IT has been said that he could have had no motive for killing that poor woman who was alone and defenseless in the little tent-no motive for taking her life as she stood with hands upraised. No motive which would cause him to sever the tie which bound her to this life. No motive for his hellish deed! Can you read the motive on his face? Look in his treacherous eyes and on his brow, which bears the curse of his maker as plainly as it was ever borne by Cain!" With this dramatic passage and other comments in his closing argument nearly a century ago, San Diego County District Attorney A.H. Sweet helped convince a jury that the suspect was guilty of first-degree murder. All evidence had been circumstantial. But Sweet's magnificent Victorian spiel and other facets of his presentation won the case for him.1 Still, public office displeased A.H. Sweet, and when his term ended he never sought it again. Instead, he turned to corporation law and the laws of water and real estate. Now, almost sixty years after his death, it can still be said that few lawyers have earned the stature-the esteem, the affection, the renown-of Adelbert Hiram Sweet. By the time he died, Sweet had participated in most of the important litigations of the county during the previous quarter century and was, according to a tribute from his peers, "easily the leader of the bar." Law historian Leland G. Stanford wrote that Sweet was "the community's outstanding lawyer for various public utilities."2 Samuel F. Black in his history of San Diego County wrote of A.H. Sweet: "He is a strong and forceful advocate well versed in the underlying principles of his profession and with a broad general knowledge which forms an excellent foundation for his legal reading."3 Sweet enjoyed warm friendships and prosperous working relationships with men of both major political attitudes-he was a Democrat for a while, later a Republican leader-and his corporate clients included Union Title, Santa Fe Railroad, San Diego Savings Bank, Consolidated Gas and Electric Company, of which he was a vice president, and A.G. Spalding, the sporting goods manufacturer who also developed the Loma Portal and Sunset Cliffs sectors of Point Loma.4 However, his term as district attorney also stands out, for his successful prosecutions as well as for the rare fight in order to be seated. Martin Luther Ward5 was completing a four-year term as district attorney when, on November 6, 1894, William Darby was elected to succeed him. Darby's term would commence on January 7, 1895, when Ward's expired and when a new county board of supervisors also was to be seated. But on December 15, 1894, Darby hanged himself.6 The supervisors reasoned that because Darby had filed his bond for office, he had become an incumbent. Therefore his death created a vacancy. Ward filed for the position, turning in a petition with the required thirty names of qualified voters. On January 2, 1895, the board heard several petitions opposing the appointment of a district attorney before the term was to start. One opinion, prepared at the request of the Populist County Central Committee, was from attorney Harry S. Utley. It said ". . . how can (Mr. Darby) be officially dead before his term commences?"7 Another petition noted that Ward's present term was still in effect and quoted "lawyers" as saying: "No valid appointment can be made to an office in possession of an incumbent whose term has not yet expired." Despite these arguments, the board named Ward by a 3-2 vote to succeed himself. Five days later, however, John Griffin and William Justice replaced two outgoing board members. Griffin promptly presented a petition pointing out that William Darby had been elected district attorney but had died and that a vacancy existed. Griffin called on the board to appoint someone to replace Darby. A.G. Nason seconded Griffin's motion. Then: "He quickly withdrew his second, appearing to have forgotten that he was mainly responsible for the election of Mr. Ward to the same position last week. His mistake caused a laugh."8 Someone else seconded Griffin's motion. The chairman called for reading petitions of those seeking the appointment. They were from Sweet, from Ward, from Lenden L. Boone,9 and Christopher F. Holland.10 On the first ballot, Sweet, who was U.S. commissioner, won the required three votes. Boone and Holland drew one vote each. Ward was without support.11 But he would not step aside. Sweet wrote Ward a polite letter demanding control of the office. Ward replied in writing, also polite, that he was district attorney "and cannot lawfully abdicate said office in favor of any person whomsoever." So, Sweet filed a complaint with the state attorney general's office, calling for Ward's ouster. The case was assigned to Department 1 of the Superior Court in San Diego, and presiding there was Elisha Swift Torrance.12 Ward and Torrance were Republicans. Sweet was a Democrat that year.13 But Torrance ruled for Sweet, and the California Supreme Court, also Republican, sustained him. The Sun wrote: "The Sun presents its compliments . . . He has the brains, courage, and resolution to so administer the functions of his important office as to honor his county, himself, and the Democratic party."14 The Union commented: ". . . The contention that a Vacancy' could be filled by the appointment of the 'incumbent' was too paradoxical to go down even in San Diego. Considered as a mere party matter, it is unfortunate that the office of district attorney is not to be filled by a Republican, but it is much more important that the office be filled in a strictly legal manner than that any party's interests should be fostered. Mr. Sweet will give a good administration to the county. His ability is unquestioned, and his integrity as well."15 San Diego County when Sweet became its prosecutor had 35,000 inhabitants, the city 17,000. William H. Carlson16 was mayor, James H. Budd, a Democrat, was governor, and Grover Cleveland was serving his second term as president. Times were tough economically. The city was not growing much except for the arrival of health-seekers. But of course there was crime. One of Sweet's first foes in a major case was Martin Luther Ward. Ward was defending a man from the West Indies, Joseph Japhet Ebanks, that suspect with the brow "that bears the curse of his maker," Ebanks was charged in the murder of Mrs. Harriet Stiles and her father, John Borden. They were killed September 10, 1895, at the mussel beds north of Oceanside, near Las Flores, while her husband, Leroy, and a friend fished nearby.17 When it was over, one newspaper account said: " . . . Certainly the most interesting part of the argument was made yesterday, District Attorney Sweet eclipsing the efforts of all his colleagues . . . the spectators were spellbound as they listened to the magnificent plea for justice, and a recital of the facts connected with the double tragedy . . . "In word-pictures of rare distinctness he endeavored to show how the prisoner had found his way down into the ravine and skulked down to the tent and, baffled in his fiendish designs by the arrival of old Mr. Borden, had taken sudden and awful revenge by killing both of his victims in the twinkling of an eye. "The horrible atrocity of the deed, the cold malignant cunning of the West Indian in his escape, and his defiant manner after capture were all brought vividly to the mind of the jury . . ."18 The trial lasted twenty-two days and cost $2,500. The jury deliberated for three hours before handing Sweet another victory over Ward-and condemning Ebanks to the gallows. The Sun said Sweet's closing argument was a "masterly effort" and added: "The argument throughout was one of the ablest and most powerful addresses ever heard in Judge Pierce's19 courtroom."20 Of the battles between Sweet and Ward, Leland Stanford wrote: "Each man emerged with a nobility reminiscent of Lincoln and Lee."21 Charles H. Forward, who followed Sweet as attorney for Union Title, commented in an interview a few years ago: "Mr. Sweet . . . was rather the aggressive type, and a very vigorous man. When he was in the district attorney's office he was a vigorous prosecutor. In those days they hanged criminals, and he saw to it that two or three who killed people hanged. They were Indians. Murderers."22 Leland Stanford's research showed that Sweet, before becoming district attorney, teamed with attorneys Lewis H. Kirby, A.C. Younkin, and William A. Sloane,23 apparently at various times. This would have been between 1885 and 1895. Around the turn of the century, back in private practice, Sweet had an office in the Sefton Building, on the north side of C Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets, now Avenues. Then, for about ten years, he teamed with Frederic W. Stearns.24 In this period Sweet served as president of the San Diego County bar, 1904-05, one term. He was the bar's third president.25 On January 1, 1915, announcements were distributed telling of a new co-partnership of lawyers, Sweet, Stearns, and Forward.26 Along the way, Sweet helped to found the Congregational Church.27 He was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and belonged to, in addition to the requisite bar associations: Masons, Odd Fellows, Elks, Woodmen of the World,28 University Club, San Diego Country Club, Scholia Club, and the Tuesday Club.29 Elaine Sweet,30 only offspring of A.H. and Amy Sweet, can tell about the Tuesday Club, which met one Tuesday each month at a member's home for an ad lib talk or a reading and discussion. Miss Sweet, eighty-seven years old, presently lives in the old family home in South Mission Hills. In several interviews she has told of the activities and genealogy of her parents, still enjoys telling about the Tuesday Club, its physicians, lawyers, and other professional people and civic leaders: Julius Wangenheim,31 John H. McCorkle,32 Dr. Edward L. Hardy,33 George W. Marston,34 Moses Luce,35 Rev. Charles L. Barnes,36 Lyman J. Gage,37 Judge Alfred Haines,38 "Of course they met here once in a while, and I helped wait on table often. They were all very pleasant people, and their discussions were pleasant too, although they often disagreed. I remember when Mr. Marston and Mr. Hardy were the last surviving members. Mr. Marston called Mr. Hardy and said it would be good to have a meeting . . ." Elaine Sweet was born in a home at Date Street and First Street, now Avenue, a structure razed for a downtown section of Interstate 5.39 She said, "I was born on the spot of the underpass."40 She attended public and private schools in San Diego, including the normal school, and graduated from Stanford University in 1919.41 For the San Diego County Law Library she wrote: "My father was born August 22, 1857, on a farm at North Fairfield, Huron County, Ohio, to Charles and Betsy Sweet, who had come there from Skaneateles, New York. At the time they acquired the land it was virgin forest and in locating it Charles Sweet was lost twice, finding that he had gone around in a circle. They first lived in a log cabin, and it was there my father was born. A little later they moved to a frame house they built on the same land. "The young man interrupted his education to teach for a year to help pay for his college expenses, and he worked during vacations. He attended Baldwin University (now called Baldwin-Wallace College) in Berea, Ohio, from 1880 to 1883 and after graduating in 1883 studied law at the University of Michigan for a year . . ."42 At Baldwin he met Leona Davis, two years younger than he, a teacher of drawing and painting. They married on July 16, 1884, in Topeka and lived for a while in Wellington, Kansas, where Sweet continued to study law and where he was admitted to the bar in 1884. The young Mrs. Sweet suffered from tuberculosis. In July 1885 they moved to San Diego, to the Old Town sector, in the hope that her health would improve. But Leona Davis Sweet died on March 10, 1886, at the age of twenty-six, and is buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery. There were no children.43 When "Dell" and Leona Sweet had arrived in San Diego he was twenty-seven, she twenty-five. The city had 5,000 residents. Cleveland was serving his first term as president, the transcontinental railroad reached San Diego,44 the San Diego Flume Company was organized to help alleviate the water shortage,45 and E.S. Babcock and H.L. Story purchased Coronado.46 Construction of their hotel would start in the following year. Instead of a mayor, a board of trustees ran the town. The governor was George Stoneman, a Democrat. The young woman Sweet would marry eight years after his first wife's death and who became Elaine Sweet's mother was possibly already in San Diego, but Miss Sweet does not recall having been told how or when they met. She was Amy Whatmore, born at Dunedin, on the South Island of New Zealand. Miss Sweet said: "Her mother, Marian, was English, from London. My mother's father died when she was in her teens, and she and her mother moved to San Francisco. In New Zealand they had met some San Francisco people who were California boosters, so they thought they'd see what it was like. My mother entered Miss Posten's Female Academy at Oakland, then went to a normal school in Santa Clara. She taught for several years, including some time at New Almaden, a mining town for quick silver . . . She heard of the need for teachers in San Diego, where more schools were being built, so she and her mother moved here." Amy Whatmore at first taught the second grade, then became principal at Little Sherman (so-called to distinguish it from Sherman Heights School), which later was known as Lowell School. She and A.H. Sweet married on January 4, 1894, in San Diego. "When they got married she quit work," Miss Sweet said. "Times were hard. But she didn't worry. She knew she could return to teaching. But it turned out that she didn't have to. Women weren't out for liberation so much then." At first they lived in the house at First and Date. Next they lived in Golden Hill at Twenty-Second and C Streets. The giant wood-and-stone structure on West Spruce was constructed "during all of 1914" Miss Sweet said, and was created by workers hired from one day to the next. "The contractors were afraid to bid on it," she said, "because nothing similar had ever been constructed. So we used day labor, and the architects, Meade and Requa, supervised."47 The house has four bedrooms and two sleeping porches ("It wasn't healthy to sleep indoors in those days"), two bathrooms, a sewing room, and-since Miss Sweet began using a cane in recent years-elevator chairs for the two long interior stairways. "The piano was my mother's before she was married," Miss Sweet said. "Over there where the television is we had a Victor talking machine. In the library I have a lot of my father's books. His favorite form of relaxation was reading, particularly in the fields of history, biography, some science, some philosophy. Mostly American history. And poetry.48 At home, she said, her father seldom discussed his work. He handled extensive litigation concerning water, mainly in his later years. "Early in his career he handled a lot of work concerning sale of property. He didn't like criminal cases, and he didn't take them or divorces if he could avoid them."49 Once Amy Sweet returned home to mention that a woman they knew was obtaining a divorce. "I know," Sweet said. "I'm handling it for her." "Why didn't you tell me?" Mrs. Sweet asked. "That's my business," he told her. Elaine Sweet said, "My mother wasn't a gossip. It was just the principle of the thing."50 Miss Sweet remembers visiting her father at his office in the Sefton Building, especially to watch circus parades from his window. "They would pull the animals past in wagons, with the ladies sitting on top. Then there'd be the elephants, and a calliope at the end. Then he'd take me to lunch. He liked circuses too, so I always got to go." And she remembers going to La Jolla and Tent City, and her father swimming at both places. "Tent City was marvelous. Often we'd spend two months there in the summer. For the first two years we had our own tent and stayed for three months. The men who worked in town got up early, swam, and ran three miles. You had to watch out for the stingrays in those days. They'd throw dynamite into the ocean to kill them." At the hotel they enjoyed the bathhouse and the swimming pool, plus the monkeys in a pit. They went to the bathhouses and hot baths at Los Baños, near where the San Diego Gas and Electric Company power plant is at the foot of Broad-way, and at Kahle's, at the foot of Fifth Avenue. The bathhouses offered relaxation and swimming in large pools of salt water. The hot baths also were of salt. "He also used to take us to the Mission Cliff Gardens, at the north end of Park Blvd. They were beautiful, maintained by the streetcar people. And we enjoyed the ostrich farm next door."51 She recalls lean economic times. Many lawyers moved to Los Angeles and became prominent. "A friend, a businessman who dealt in real estate, said if Father wanted to come up he'd give him quite a lot of business, but my father had quite a lot of affection for San Diego and stayed." She also remembers a time of low water supply, probably around 1900. The city would turn the water off during the day. Homes had storage tanks in the attics. At midnight the city turned the water on, and residents were supposed to fill their tanks and make the supply last until the next night. She said her father often had to carry a bucket to a neighbor's for water.52 And she remembers Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink, the Austriaborn contralto who had a home in the area and frequently performed in San Diego. "She appreciated what he had done for her, . . . a little beyond the call of duty and as a lawyer. You know, as a friend too . . . Her son was having a little legal difficulty-I don't know what it was, but my father took over and handled it for him and also gave a little fatherly advice." So when Madame Schumann-Heink needed an attorney in San Diego, she called on A.H. Sweet. Once she asked if she could sing at the Sweet home. "So she came one evening and sang and brought her son, another son." During World War I, when Madame Schumann-Heink had sons in the British as well as the German army, she feared her German grandchildren might not be obtaining proper food. She asked Sweet if he could do anything. "He said he would inquire, which he did, which got him on the black list-suspect because he was inquiring about sending food to Germany." When Sweet fell seriously ill, Madame Schumann-Heink visited, and she told him she arose at 5:30 a.m. daily to pray for him. "She told him, You've got to get well.' But he didn't and so she sang for his funeral. She stood out in the balcony. The funeral was out in the patio . . . It was very stirring, but they were very good friends."54 Sweet suffered cancer in his right ear. He underwent surgery on April 25, 1924, and died at home on July 17, 1924, one month before his 67th birthday. The Union reported his death the following day with a photograph and lengthy article which called him prominent and brilliant and said he had "a reputation for square shooting."55 "As a boy," Elaine Sweet said, "he had a fever that broke the ear drum. Ever since, he had a little trouble with it occasionally."56 After the operation, Sweet could not close his right eye or move the right side of his face.The operation was unusual, and he had been urged to have it done in New York. But he preferred a local physician.57 Charles Forward commented: "I felt there were possible grounds for a malpractice suit. But I don't believe in malpractice suits growing out of deaths. Mrs. Sweet58 didn't either."59 The patio, in the south part of the old house, was jammed for the funeral on Saturday, July 19,1924. The Rev. Charles Barnes of St. Paul's Episcopal Church officiated beside the casket near the fountain of blue and white tiles to the south. Madame Schumann-Heink, on the balcony behind the crowd, sang "O, Rest in the Lord" and "Silent Night, Holy Night." An organist accompanied her. The Union said: "Like a benediction, the power of the great singer and her song rested upon the assembly . . ." Pallbearers were banker Joseph Sefton Jr.;60 Dr. Hardy; John F. Forward Sr.;61 James D. MacMullen,62 editor of the Union; law partner Frederic Stearns; and John McCorkle.63 Two months later the bar association met before Superior Court Judge Spencer M. Marsh64 to spread, on the minutes of the court, resolutions of praise. The tribute called Sweet a lawyer of unusual ability, one who possessed a keen analytical mind, who was a student and a thinker. It said he was tolerant, kind, modest, considerate, and charitable, that he was the peer of any lawyer, and that he enjoyed the respect and admiration of all who knew him. A.H. Sweet was, the tribute said: " . . . an ideal citizen, a high-minded gentleman . . . who measured up to the highest and best standards of American manhood."65 NOTES 1. San Diego Union, January 23, 1896. 2. Stanford, Leland G., San Diego's LL.B. Legal Lore & the Bar (San Diego: San Diego County Bar Association, 1968). 3. Black, Samuel F., San Diego County California (Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1913), Vol. II, pp. 221-222. 4. On July 1, 1974, free-lance writer Syd Love interviewed Elaine Sweet, daughter of A.H. Sweet, at her San Diego home. This note pertains to unpublished papers of that session. A.H. Sweet set up the legal machinery that permitted the Spalding developments. Spalding was active in the city, especially in road expansions. On January 28, 1983, Love interviewed Miss Sweet a second time. Hereafter those sessions will be referred to as Sweet interview 1974, Love, and Sweet interview 1983, Love. See also: Love, Syd, San Diego: Portrait of a Spectacular City (San Diego: San Diego Magazine Publishing Co., 1969), p 44. 5. Martin Luther Ward Sr. was county district attorney 1892-94 and a state senator 1903-06, participating in drafting and adoption of emergency legislation inspired by the 1906 earthquake. He died in 1930. Stanford, San Diego's LL.B. 6. The San Diegan-Sun, December 17, 1894. Darby was forty-two, a Kentucky native in San Diego eight years. He enjoyed a good lunch with his physician, seemed happy, but had periods of alcohol addiction. Left a wife and four children. "The chief cause is believed to be the incrasing pressure of responsibility as district attorney." 7. San Diego Union, January 3, 1895. See also: Stanford, Footprints of Justice (San Diego: San Diego County Law Library, 1960). Utley was in what Stanford called the third generation of lawyers to reach San Diego, served as district attorney until ousted in voting led by WCTU members. 8. Ibid. 9. Boone was another of the third generation, arriving in 1886 or 1887. Stanford, Footprints of Justice. 10. Ibid. Holland followed on Boone's heels in 1888. 11. San Diego Union, January 8, 1895. 12. Leland Stanford was told, "Torrance is a better judge drunk than most of them are sober." Born in Pennsylvania, Torrance arrived in San Diego in 1887, served eighteen years on the Superior Court bench and died in San Diego in 1926. Stanford, San Diego's LL.B. 13. Sweet interview 1974, Love. 14. San Diegan-Sun, undated clipping Elaine Sweet scrapbook. 15. San Diego Union, undated clipping Elaine Sweet scrapbook. 16. Carlson built the rail line between Roseville and Ocean Beach, helped develop Ocean Beach, was elected mayor in 1893. Pourade, Richard F., The Glory Years(San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing Co., 1964). 17. San Diego Union, September 11, 1895. 18. San Diego Union, January 23, 1896. 19. William L. Pierce, born in New York in 1849, served eight years on the Superior Court bench in San Diego starting in 1889. He was a soldier of fortune, fighting Indians, renegades, and-in the Zapata country of Mexico-bandits at his banana plantation. He died at Ventura in 1934 at the age of eighty-five. Stanford, San Diego's LL.B. 20. San Diegan-Sun, January 22, 1896. See also: San Diego Union May 28, 1898, reporting on the murderer's execution by hanging at San Quentin on the previous day after numerous appeals and gaining religion. San Diego Sheriff Jennings and the press received written invitations. 21. Stanford, San Diego's LL.B. 22. In 1974, Syd Love interviewed Charles H. Forward at length. This note pertains to tapes and unpublished papers of those talks. Hereafter they will be referred to as Forward interview, Love. 23. Sloane was a Rockford, Illinois, native born in 1854. He was appointed to the Superior Court bench in San Diego in 1911, serving until his death in 1930. Stanford, Footprints of Justice. 24. Stearns, born in Chicago on December 6, 1867, began practicing law in San Diego in 1893. McGrew, Clarence Alan, City of San Diego and San Diego County, Vol. II (Chicago and New York: The American Historical Society, 1922), pp. 58-60. 25. Stanford, San Diego's LL.B. 26. Ibid. 27. Sweet interview 1974, Love. 28. Black, San Diego County California. 29. San Diego Union, September 20, 1924. 30. Miss Sweet was born October 7, 1895. She never married, she is well, has a good memory, although she says her eyesight is poor. And she feels more secure walking with a cane. 31. Early merchant Julius Wangenheim was a longtime civic leader, was on the finance committee of the second exposition in Balboa Park. Pourade, The Rising Tide (San Diego: Union-Tribune Publishing Co., 1967). 32. McCorkle was a good friend of Sweet, was bar association president when Sweet died. Stanford, San Diego's LL.B. 33. Hardy in 1910 became the second president of the state normal school, which has become San Diego State University. It was in University Heights where the Education Center now stands. Hardy succeeded Samuel T. Black. Love, San Diego: Portrait of a Spectacular City. 34. Marston arrived in San Diego from his native Wisconsin in 1870, started clerking in the Horton House, went into merchandising and founded a fine department store, was a civic leader in many categories, died in 1946. Engstrand, Iris, H.W., San Diego, California's Cornerstone. (Tulsa: Continental Heritage Press, Inc., 1980). 35. Moses A. Luce was an Illinois native who attended the Lincoln nominating convention in 1860, won the Medal of Honor on a Civil War battlefield, came to San Diego in 1873, dying here on April 23, 1933, a venerated pioneer lawyer and Superior Court judge, three weeks before his 91st birthday. He was the grandfather of present-day attorney Edgar Luce and of businessman Gordon Luce, was the father of Judge Edgar Luce. San Diego Union, April 24, 1933. 36. Barnes was a friend of Sweet, was pastor of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Sweet interview 1974, Love. 37. Ibid. Gage had been Secretary of the Treasury before moving to San Diego. 38. Alfred Haines, born in Pennsylvania in 1845, was a Civil War veteran, father of Charles Haines. They practiced together and both became Superior Court judges. Alfred Haines died October 15, 1934. He was the second bar president (1902-04). Stanford, San Diego's LL.B. 39. Sweet interview 1974, Love. 40. Bob Wright, an interviewer for the San Diego Historical Society, talked with Elaine Sweet at length in her home on June 17, 1973. This note refers to the transcript of that session, which hereafter will be known as Sweet interview, Wright. 41. Sweet interview 1974, Love. 42. Stanford, San Diego's LL.B. 43. Sweet interview 1983, Love. 44. Pourade, The Glory Years. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Sweet interview 1974, Love. 48. Sweet interview 1983, Love. 49. Sweet interview 1974, Love. 50. Sweet interview 1983, Love. 51. Sweet interview 1974, Love. 52. Sweet interview, Wright. 53. Engstrand, San Diego, California's Cornerstone. When the Panama-California Exposition closed at midnight on December 31, 1916, Madame Schumann-Heink sang "Auld Lang Syne." 54. Sweet interview, Wright. 55. San Diego Union, July 18, 1924. 56. Sweet interview 1974, Love. 57. Sweet interview 1983, Love. 58. Seven years later, on August 21, 1931, Amy Whatmore Sweet died after suffering phlebitis for several months. She was 67. A.H. and Amy Sweet were cremated and are buried together at Mt. Hope Cemetery. Amy Sweet's mother, Marian, who also lived in the Spruce Street home, died early in 1932 at the age of eighty-eight. She also is buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery. Sweet interview 1974, Love. 59. Forward interview, Love. 60. Joseph Sefton Jr. was the son of Joseph W. Sefton, who founded San Diego Savings Bank-now San Diego Trust & Savings-in 1889. Pourade, The Glory Years and The Rising Tide. 61. John F. Forward Sr. organized Union Title, was San Diego mayor from 1907 to 1909, father of Charles Forward. Forward interview, Love. 62. James MacMullen's son, Jerry, said his father lacked a middle name. But his own newspaper gave him an initial at least. A native of County Cana, Ireland, James MacMullen settled in New Jersey, came to San Francisco for his health in 1888 and became a newspaper reporter. After several top jobs he moved to San Diego in 1899 to be editor of the Union. When he died in 1933 at the age of seventy-four he was editor and manager of the Union and of the Tribune. Trudie Casper, "Jerry MacMullen: An Uncommon Man," The Journal of San Diego History, XXVII (Fall, 1981). 63. San Diego Union, July 20, 1924. 64. Marsh became district attorney in 1915 when the county supervisors, under WCTU pressure, replaced D.V. Mahoney, who had defeated Harry Utley at the polls. Marsh was named to the Superior Court bench in 1917, resigned with poor health in 1930, dying in October 1932. He was a Wisconsin native, moving to San Diego in 1914, was sixty-eight when he died. Stanford, San Diego's LL.B. 65. San Diego Union, September 20, 1924. See also: Stanford, San Diego's LL.B. Eugene Daney, first president of the San Diego bar (three terms starting in 1899); McCorkle; and Martin Luther Ward, that early foe, signed the tribute. |
