Fresno County Biographies

Louis M. Cole

Submitted by Sally Kaleta, November, 2006

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


	Louis M. Cole is associated with E. E. Manheim, they being 
partners and managers of the firm of Kutner, Goldstein, & Co., general merchants 
at Hanford. The business was started in 1881, by Kutner, Goldstein & Co., with 
Mr. S.  Rehoefer as manager, in a store building 25 x 100 feet, located on Sixth 
Street. In 1886 Mr. Rehoefer sold his interest to Mr. Arthur Dinkelspiel, who 
then assumed the  management. This business having grown to such proportions 
that greater facilities were necessary, an addition of 25 x 100 feet was made, 
and the capacity of the store doubled. A warehouse, 50 x 50 feet, was also 
added. Business was then continued very successfully until September, 1880, when 
that portion of the town was swept away by fire, the store, and contents being 
entirely destroyed. Before the debris had ceased to smoke, operations to rebuild 
had commenced, and sixty days from the date of the fire their present handsome 
store, 50 x 150 feet, was ready for occupancy. On December 31, 1890, Kutner, 
Goldstein & Co., the universal providers, was incorporated. Mr. Dinkelspiel then 
went to Fresno to reside and Messrs. Cole and Manheim, former clerks, were 
placed in management of the Hanford branch of their extended business. The new 
store is very handsomely and completely fitted, and their extended stock is all 
graded in the several departments for convenience of handling. Louis M. Cole was 
born in Chicago, in 1870. His father, Samuel Cole, a practicing physician of 
that city, moved to Denver in 1871, practiced his profession there fourteen 
years and then returned to Chicago, where he still resides. Louis was educated 
in the Denver high school and took a course of study at the Bryant & Stratton 
Business College of Chicago. In 1887 he came to Hanford, and under the 
instruction of his uncle, Arthur Dinkelspiel, he learned the mercantile 
business. E. E. Manheim is a native of California, born in San Francisco in 
1868. His father, Isaac Manheim, came to California about 1852, followed 
mercantile life in Humboldt County until 1863, when he settled at San Francisco 
and continued the business there for many years. He is now an insurance and 
commission broker. E. E. Manheim was educated in the high school at San 
Francisco. Entering his father's office, he acquired a knowledge of bookkeeping 
and in 1889 came to Hanford, in the employ of Kutner, Goldstein & Co. A short 
time ago the Kutner-Goldstein Company purchased an additional 25 x 100 feet on 
the west side of the present site, and after the construction of their new store 
will have a larger amount of square feet than any other  store in the county. 
They also do an extensive grain business, handling two-thirds of the crop 
brought  to this market.
 
Source: "The Memorial and Biographical History of the Counties of Fresno, 
Tulare, and Kern, California," Lewis Publ. Co., 1892, pp. 299-300.