California Biographies, San Bernardino County and Riverside County

History of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties 
By: John Brown, Jr., Editor for San Bernardino County 
And James Boyd, Editor for Riverside County 
With selected biography of actors and witnesses of the period 
of growth and achievement.
Volume III, the Western Historical Association, 1922, 
The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL

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ALLEN J. DAVIS. 
 
            Allen J. Davis, vice-president of the Charters-Davis Company, is
one of the influential figures in connection with the great citrus fruit industry
in Riverside County. The Company of which he is vice-president initiated
business in 1909, under the title of the Call Lemon Association, and the 
present corporation received its charter in 1918, when it was incorporated
with a capital stock of $200,000; G. A. Charters, being its president; Allen J.
Davis, its vice-president, treasurer and general manager; and A. G. Ritter, its
secretary. The company has 212 acres devoted to citrus fruit and 108 acres
given to peaches, plums, and alfalfa. Under a lease for ten years the company
has also twenty-two acres of orange grove. Seventy-five employees are re-
tained, and the company conducts a large and substantial fruit-packing 
business, its well-equipped packing house two miles southeast of Corona, 
utilizing 24,000 square feet of floor space and an average of 100 carloads of
fruit being shipped annually. All of this fruit is raised by the company itself. Allen
J. Davis was born at Charlotte, North Carolina, April 19, 1877, and is a son
of Jesse Davis, who was for many years a leading merchant at Charlotte, where
he died in December, 1920, at the age of seventy-seven years. The mother of
Allen J. Davis was Arpie Jones, a native of North Carolina and a member of
an old family which originally came from Wales. She was a descendant of 
John Paul Jones, of historic fame. Her father was a major in the Confederate
Army in the Civil War. The public schools of his native city afforded Mr. Davis
his early education, and he continued his residence in North Carolina until
1900, when he came to California and found employment on a dairy farm 
near Corona. Later he became foreman of a fruit-packing house established
by Mr. Call, and he eventually became a stockholder and the general manager
of the Call Lemon Company, for which in 1913 was erected the present 
packing house of the Charters-Davis Company. Messrs. Charters and Davis
owned one-half of the stock of the Call Lemon Company, and in 1918 they
purchased the remaining stock and reorganized the business under the 
present title of the Charters-Davis Company. Mr. Davis is a director of each 
of the Temescal Water Company, the Corona Water Company, and the 
Corona National Bank. He has charge of the E. T. Earl estate, consisting of
900 acres in Temescal Canyon, 250 acres of which are planted in Valencia
Oranges and the remainder is grain, alfalfa, and grazing lands. He is a 
stalwart supporter of the cause of the republican party, has received the thirty-
second degree in the Scottish Rite of the Masonic fraternity, is a life member
of the Shrine, and he is a member of the Baptist Church in Charlotte, North
Carolina. His wife holds membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church at
Corona. January 7, 1896, recorded the marriage of Mr. Davis to Miss Ada
Shurbette, of Rockhill, South Carolina, and her death occurred in November,
1898. The only child of this union, Carl, is now a resident of Santa Catalina
Island, California. On the 7th of June, 1907, was solemnized the marriage of
Mr. Davis and Miss Gertrude Sargent, who was born in Missouri, near Pitts-
burg, Kansas, and was educated in the public schools of Corona, California.
She is a daughter of George Sargent, of Corona. No children have been
born of this marriage.
 
 
Pages 1110 to 1111.
 
Transcribed and submitted by Sally Kaleta, February 2010.