California Biographies Source: History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California by: C M Gidney - Santa Barbara. Benjamin Brooks - San Luis Obispo. Edwin M Sheridan - Ventura Volumes II - Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL., 1917 This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm WILLIAM H. MARTIN of Santa Barbara, is not only a veteran Californian, but a man whose long life has been spent in a practical and constructive service to the state. He is one of that small coterie of men who knew California as the land of gold in the exciting years of the decade of the '50$. He early became identified with the colonization work, and that has been the current of his large and varied achievements. As his experiences and activities since he first came to California in 1849 are a Part of the intimate history of the entire state, only a few of the more important points can be considered, since a full history of his life would be a subject for a volume at least, and if written would doubtless be as illustrative of California's changing history as that of any individual career. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, March 2, 1831, and comes of old American stock. His people were Quakers. His father, Dr. Samuel B. Martin, was also a native of Baltimore, and had finished his medical education early enough so that he served as a surgeon in the American Army during the latter part of the Revolutionary war. For twenty years he held the office of port surgeon at Baltimore. He had a long and honorable career, and died at the age of ninety-three. It seems probable that his son William H. will live as long, since the latter has already passed his eighty-fifth birthday and is still hale and vigorous and looking after his business responsibilities every day. When William H. Martin was a boy he entered the original Adams Express Company, in the years when the express service was just being developed and when all its equipment and facilities were extremely crude. It was in the capacity of company messenger that William H. Martin first came to California via Panama, in December, 1849. It illustrates the small volume of the company's business at that time, when it is stated that Mr. Martin had under his supervision only twenty trunks of express matter and letters. He represented this company as messenger until 1855. In that year he was elected clerk of Placer County, and filled that office until 1857. He was next employed as messenger by the Wells, Fargo & Co., and all told made about twenty-five trips from New York via Panama to San Francisco, and two trips via Cape Horn. It was his thorough knowledge of California conditions, his experience gained in the transportation service, and his influential connections both East and West, that led Mr. Martin, in 1868, to engage in the colonizing business, a work which has employed his best talents and energies now for nearly half a century. Mr. Martin is now land commissioner of the Pan-American Colonizing Company, which was formerly the California Emigrant Union. This is undoubtedly one of the largest organizations of its kind in America, and has a capital stock of $1,000,000. Its representative and branch offices are found in all the leading cities of California and also in New York. Years ago in a circular sent out to correspondents in the eastern states Mr. Martin alluded to his individual connection with the colonizing company, and gave some facts of history which are deserving of permanent record. The circular mentioned reads in part as follows: We have been engaged in the work of giving reliable information about the Pacific coast and colonizing large tracts of land since 1868, and have always been successful in obtaining desirable settlers. In 1868, at the suggestion of Hon. Leland Stanford, President of the Central Pacific Railroad at that time; Hon. Oliver Ames, first President of the Union Pacific Railroad; Major Richard P. Hammond, Irving M. Scott, builder of the U. S. S. Oregon ; H. J. Booth, William T. Coleman, Alexander Weill, of Lazard Freres ; Jesse and Abraham Seligman, Governor Henry H. Haight, W. W. Montague, Henry L. Davis, Professor George Davidson, Henry M. Newhall, Horace Davis, Captain N. T. Smith and others, all members of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce; we established the International Emigrant Union in* the City of Baltimore, Maryland, for the purpose of encouraging a good class of foreigners from Europe, Canada and the eastern United States to California. We selected the City of Baltimore as our eastern headquarters, as the North German Lloyd had just made its steamship landing there, and that in connection with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad offered superior advantages to those who desired the Pacific coast. The Baltimore office was managed by Hon. Oden Bowie, Governor of Maryland, president; Captain George A. Coleman, vice president; Richard Colvin, secretary and treasurer; W. E. Banks, mayor of Baltimore, W. H. Small, J. P. Amidon, Bernard Gilpin, W. H. Baltzell, M. D., Lewis M. Cole, G. W. P. Coates and others. This organization, after five years of good work, was made a state institution by the legislature of Maryland. Early in 1869 the California Emigrant Union was incorporated in San Francisco by members of the Chamber of Commerce, headed by William T. Coleman, W. C. Ralston, C. T. Hopkins, Major Richard P. Hammond, Abraham Seligman, Henry M. Newhall, A. N. Towne, Milton S. Latham, M'. S. Severence, H. P. Bowie, John J. Valentine, Hon. John Bidwell, Hon. George C. Perkins, A. D. Sharon, Jotham Bixby, Hon. George Stoneman and others. " This corporation was without capital stock but had a list of subscribers, members of the Chamber of Commerce, bankers, merchants, railroad companies, steamship companies and others, creating a fund of $36,000 a year to and including 1899, when its charter expired. It was then succeeded by the International Colonizing Company, a California corporation with a capital of $500,000 - 50,000 shares at ten dollars each. "The principal object of this company is to take charge of large estates, subdivide them into small farms, and dispose of them to settlers at reasonable prices and upon easy terms. In locating settlers upon our lands we follow a long existing rule not to encourage any intending settlers to locate on any tract of land in our state unless he can have at his disposal one thousand dollars. We do this because so many have come to California with only a few hundred dollars, made failures and returned to their old homes denouncing the country, climate, etc." The last paragraph quoted deserves special emphasis. Undoubtedly the principle of confining the feelings of this company with prospective settlers who had the generally accepted minimum of capital necessary for success, is largely responsible for the uniform prosperity of the many colonies that have been established under these offices and the high standard which the name of the company has maintained in this state and elsewhere. To recount all of Mr. Martin's experiences as a colonizer would be to give the history of a large number of California's best known cities and communities. In a series of interesting reminiscences which were published several years ago by Harry Ellington Brook in the Los Angeles Review, the author refers to several of the notable enterprises undertaken by the California Emigrant Union as now the International Colonizing Company. Mr. Brook had come to California in 1876, and he became financially interested in one of two important colonies then being promoted by the California Emigrant Union. One of these was the Fresno Colony and the other was the Indiana Colony, as it was then known. The Indiana Colony is now the City of Pasadena. He states that the land in the Indiana Colony was then listed at $50 an acre, and after forty years it could hardly be bought for $1,000 a front foot. As special interest to this publication is the following paragraphs from Mr. Brook's reminiscences: "In March, 1874, the California Emigrant Union, assisted by General J. H. Shields, of Illinois, Frederic Adams, of Santa Cruz, California, O. L. Abbott, Jacob Parsons, of Santa Barbara, W. H. Martin, of San Francisco, formed a company known as the Lompoc Valley Land Company, and purchased the Lompoc Rancho in the northern part of Santa Barbara county (46,000 acres) from Colonel W. W. Hollister, of Santa Barbara, at $10 per acre. It was immediately surveyed, and on November 9 an auction sale took place in charge of Henry M. Newhall & Company, auctioneers of San Francisco. This continued for one week, the 20, 40 and 80 acre tracts selling from fifteen to twenty dollars per acre. During the evening the town lots of Lompoc City, about 1,200 acres, sold from fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars per lot and upwards 50x150 in size. During 1874 and 1876 sufficient land was sold to pay off the entire amount due Colonel Hollister. To-day (1916) land at Lompoc ranges from one to one hundred and fifty dollars per acre. Lompoc from the beginning was a strict Prohibition settlement." At the present time Mr. Martin is engaged in colonizing Santa Margarita in Sari Luis Obispo County. This is a tract of 20,000 acres, twenty miles south of Paso Robles, Hot Springs, and was originally a large and well improved ranch which has been subdivided so as to constitute a number of small tracts for individual home owners. It is in both the fruit and grain region of Southern California, and is one of the few sections where irrigation is not practiced and is not required for the production of fruit and grain. The same restriction as to the capital required for initial investment has been pursued in this colony, and since it was put on the market Santa Margarita has been the home of many prosperous and progressive citizens, constituting an important contribution to San Luis Obispo County. About a year ago the honorable president of Peru, knowing of this company's work in California, requested its land commissioner to undertake colonizing the lands of Peru. Mr. W. H. Martin, the company's land commissioner, having visited Peru often, visited Peru again and in making subsequent arrangements for said work, induced the directors to change the company title to the "Pan American Colonizing Company" in order to properly handle land in any foreign country. In Peru the new company has a concession of 1,600,000 acres, an old Spanish grant, which is offered at 30 cents per acre, and payable only as sold to settlers. It also has offered several other Spanish grants of 150,000, 80,000 and 50,000 acres, in good locations on the coast of Peru. During last August the Hon. Frederico A. Pezet, minister from the Republic of Peru to the United States, visited the Potter Hotel in Santa Barbara for several days and consulted daily with officers of the company and it has been determined that in all the colonizing work to be done in the Republic of Peru in the future his experience and advice will be gladly accepted. Our colonizing work in Peru will commence in 1917. In accepting the proposition to assist the Republic of Peru, South America, the company will not relax its work in California, as shown by the fact that' it is at present contemplating colonizing a 20,000-acre tract in the Cuyama Valley, Santa Barbara County, belonging to Hon. George C. Perkins, of Oakland, California, who has been United States senator for more than thirty years, and was one of the directors of the California Emigrant Union when it was incorporated. Mr. Martin is a republican in politics, and was able to vote in the first campaign of that party in 1856. In 1854 he became a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and is now one of the oldest members of that order in California. He was married in 1854, and is the father of four children, three daughters and one son. His only son was in the United States Navy and was on his way to Manila with Admiral Dewey at the outbreak of the Spanish-American war, when he died at Yokohama of fever.