Tulare County Biographies

LEN EUGENE HAYES

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        For thirty years Len Eugene Hayes, vice president and general manager of 
the S. P. Brick Company, Incorporated, of Exeter, has been connected with the 
brick and tile industry in California and is now regarded as one of the veterans 
in that line in this section. He came to California as a young man and became 
employed in the brick industry in Visalia, a line which ever since has held him, 
and he thus early became familiar with the details of the manufacture and 
distribution of brick and tile, gradually going on up in business until he came 
into his present responsible administrative position, one of the experts in this 
line of production in California. He is a native of the old Buckeye state but 
has been a resident of California since the days of his boyhood. He was born in 
the city of Zanesville, the county seat of Muskingum county, September 12, 1870, 
a son of John and Susan (Francis) Hayes, the former of whom also was born in 
Zanesville, a son of Edwin Hayes, who was killed while serving as a soldier in 
General Scott's army during the time of the Mexican war. Edwin Hayes was a son 
of Peter Holmes Hayes, who was a soldier of the Patriot army during the time of 
the War of the Revolution and who became one of the pioneers of the Zanesville 
settlement, moving over there from Virginia, where the Hayes family has been 
represented since early colonial times. John Hayes was a merchant in Zanesville 
and also had an interest in the great pottery and clay products industry there. 
He was an amateur chemist and in his experiments along that line worked out a 
process in the early '80s that led to a complete revolution in the practical 
manufacture of glazed brick and tile, thus becoming a figure in that industry 
whose name will ever stand high in the history of its development, for it was 
due to his researches and patient practical experiments that the way was opened 
for the gradual perfection of the processes which have made the glazed brick 
industry what it is today.
        Reared in Zanesville, Len Eugene Hayes attended the schools of that city 
and as a boy became familiar with brick kiln operations there. When seventeen 
years of age, in 1890, he came to California and in Visalia became employed in a 
brick yard, thus becoming connected with the brick and tile industry in this 
state, a line which ever since has occupied his attention. He later was employed 
in this industry in San Francisco and from there went to Richmond, Contra Costa 
county, and then, in 1908, became located in the brick industry in Exeter, where 
he ever since has made his home, now the general manager of what is recognized 
as the biggest and best plant for the manufacture and distribution of brick in 
the San Joaquin valley. The S. P. Brick Company, Incorporated, of Exeter, is a 
branch of the S. P. Brick & Tile Company, Incorporated, of Fresno and is a 
widely recognized leader in its line. W. D. Trewhitt of Hanford is the president 
of the Exeter company, Harry Shields of Fresno is the secretary and treasurer 
and Mr. Hayes is the vice president and general manager. This company has a 
twenty-acre tract in Exeter, on which there are apparently inexhaustible 
supplies of choice brick clay. Its plant is a thoroughly modern one, equipped 
with the latest devices for the most efficient production, including a heating 
oven for winter uses, and represents an investment in excess of one hundred 
thousand dollars. The excellence of the products of this plant long has 
recommended them to discriminating builders and a wide market has been created 
for the brick turned out in Exeter. The company also manufactures tile and these 
latter products also are in wide demand. Mr. Hayes and two others, own and 
operate three eighty-acre ranches�one of grapes, one fruit, deciduous, and one 
alfalfa.
        On August 11, 1915, in Exeter, Mr. Hayes was united in marriage to Miss 
Ella Jackson, who also is a native of Ohio, born in Decatur, Brown county, in 
the old Buckeye state, daughter of Winfield Jackson. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes have one 
child : A son, Len Eugene Hayes, born in 1917. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes have a 
pleasant home in Exeter and take an interested and helpful part in the 
community's general social activities. Mrs. Hayes is a member of the locally 
influential Woman's Club of Exeter and she and Mr. Hayes are active members of 
the local chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, of which Mr. Hayes is a past 
patron. He also is a past worshipful master of the local lodge of the Masonic 
order and in that order has attained to the highest degrees available to the 
inquirer, up through the Scottish Rite to the thirty-second degree and including 
also the Royal Arch and Knights Templar (York Rite) degrees ; present scribe of 
the Royal Arch Masons ; and also a Noble of the Mystic Shrine. He likewise is 
affiliated with the local lodge of the Knights of Pythias, and with the Exeter 
Kiwanis Club.
 
Source:  History of Tulare County and Kings County, California � Kathleen 
Edwards Small & J. Larry Smith, Vol. II, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke Publishing 
Company, 1926., p. 394