California Biographies, Kern County
HARRY ROSCOE LUFKIN

History of Kern County, California, with biographical sketches 
of the leading men and women of the county who have been 
identified with its growth and development from the early days 
to the present.

Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company, 1914
History by Morgan, Wallace Melvin

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


HARRY ROSCOE LUFKIN.— The day of the office boy who enters a 
business establishment and soon works his way to a place of high responsi- 
bility is well nigh past. It may not be impossible for such a thing to occur 
under present conditions, but the likelihood of its occurring in the case of 
any specific office boy is very slight. To meet the strenuous economic condi- 
tions now existing young men and young women must be equipped with a 
business training thoroughly up-to-date, such as may be obtained at the 
Bakersfield Business college, of which Harry Roscoe Lufkin was the founder 
and of which he is the proprietor and manager. 

It was at Walnut Grove. Sacramento county. Cal., that Professor Lufkin 
was born June 3. 1880, a son of H. T. and Louisa J. (Wise) Lufkin. His 
father was born at Freeport, Cal., a son of David T. Lufkin, a native of Maine, 
who came to California in the early '50s and died in the East while absent 
from home on a business trip. Grandfather Lufkin farmed and mined in the 
Sacramento valley and was one of the early horticulturists in the vicinity of 
Freeport. His son, H. T. Lufkin, was in his early life a teacher and later a 
general merchant at Walnut Grove. Still later he engaged in horticulture on 
the old Lufkin homestead at Freeport, where he died in 1899. Louisa J. Wise, 
whom he married, was born at Walnut Grove, a daughter of Joseph Wise, a 
native of Missouri, who came across the plains with an ox-team train locat- 
ing in 1852 on a ranch at Walnut Grove, where he has prospered and where 
he is still living at the advanced age of eighty-four years. Mrs. Lufkin, who 
died at Freeport, bore her husband three children, of whom Harry Roscoe was 
the eldest. He lived at Walnut Grove until he was sixteen years old, attending 
public schools, then his activities were transferred for a time to Freeport. 
After having acquired a normal school education, he became a student at the 
Atkinson Business College in Sacramento, where he was graduated May 5, 
1902. He found employment as a bookkeeper in a commercial house in that 
city, but after five months was sent for by Professor Atkinson and offered a 
position as teacher in the commercial department of the Atkinson Business 
College, where he was in charge of actual business instruction for more than 
four years. He then went to Reno, Nev., to take the management of the 
Atkinson Business College in that city. After a year and a half he went back 
to Sacramento with a commercial house there, but at the solicitation of Pro- 
fessor Atkinson again took charge of the commercial department of the Atkin- 
son Business College in Sacramento. In 1907 he gave up his position there 
and came to Bakersfield and in September of that year opened the Bakersfield 
Business College in the Galtes building, where he conducted it until in Septem- 
ber, 1910. It having outgrown its quarters he removed it to its present loca- 
tion at No. 2020 I street. The institution was a success almost from the start. 
Beginning with five students it had twenty-three before thirty days had passed 
and has been growing ever since. This popular school is conducted on strict 
business lines and its rooms are especially arranged, well lighted and ventil- 
ated, and no expense has been spared to afford to the student every possible 
convenience. The work of imparting a business education is as systematic as 
if the institution were a real financial, commercial or industrial concern. In 
the stenographic department students work exactly as they would work in 
a business office and are instructed how to conduct themselves in a real office 
position. Shorthand, bookkeeping, typewriting and commercial law are taught 
and a high grade of scholarship is maintained. Graduates, now filling posi- 
tions in commercial and manufacturing, railroad, real estate and law ofifices are 
giving satisfaction and working their way to high places in the business world. 
In politics Mr. Lufkin is a Republican. He was made a Mason in Bakers- 
field Lodge No. 224, F. & A. M. He was married at Reno, Nev., to Miss 
Myrtle G. Reel, a native of Oregon, and they have a son, Harry Roscoe 
Lufkin, Jr.