Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 4 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 30

Prominent among the interesting men of Fresno County whose acknowledged ability in their chosen fields makes it perfectly natural that they should be entrusted with important affairs and attain to a leadership meaning much to themselves and the community in which they reside, is L. S. Shannon, one of the owners and the superintendent of the famous Shannon Estate vineyard, a son of the late J. M. Shannon, long the well-known townsite agent of the Pacific Improvement Company, and grandson of Hon. Gillum Baley, a distinguished pioneer. Few men had greater foresight, or a higher sense of honor combined with aggressive, executive power, than J. M. Shannon, who was an acting director under A. N. Towne, president of the Pacific Improvement Company — the holding company for the Southern Pacific — and had such influence with Messrs. Stanford, Huntington, Crocker and Hopkins, that he secured the valuable donation of several blocks in Fresno for the site of the Court House and Court House Park. Judge Baley was the presiding judge when the county seat was removed from Millerton, and was widely esteemed as a man both of native ability and great brain power. Elsewhere in this work the lives of these historical personages are very properly presented in detail.

L. S. Shannon was born at Millerton, at that time the county seat of Fresno County, on Independence Day, 1871; but since he was only three and a half years old when his parents moved to Fresno, he has only faint recollections of his birth-place. His father, as the student of local history may recall, had served as undersheriff; and when the county seat was moved, in 1874, he brought his family with him to Fresno where our subject grew up and attended the public schools. When a mere lad, in the middle of his teens, he knew every business man and every prominent farmer in the city and the county; for he was entrusted with the delivery of telegrams, and this service for the Western Union Telegraph Company compelled him to move about with his eyes and ears wide open.

Having finished his course of study at the White School, where the late D. S. Snodgrass, afterward the banker at Selma, was his last teacher, young Shannon attended the Alameda high school, and then went to a business college at Oakland. About the same time he became chairman for a party of surveyors employed by the Pacific Improvement Company, and his ability coming to the attention of his superiors, he was taken into the company's main office at San Francisco, where he remained for eight years. Next he accepted a responsible position with the Oakland Gas Light & Heat Company, and he was with that concern for six years.

On August 2, 1903, Mr. Shannon was married at Alameda to Miss Jane Lawrence, a native of Napa and the daughter of Charles and Ann (Willis) Lawrence, natives of Stockholm, Sweden, and England, respectively. Mr. Lawrence came to San Francisco as a cabin boy on a ship and in the Bay City became a ship carpenter. Mrs. Lawrence came to California an orphan, and was brought up by an older sister, with whom she remained until she married at San Francisco, in 1868. The other children in the Lawrence family were Catherine, Willis and Mary. Mrs. Shannon was reared at Alameda and was graduated from the Alameda high school, in the Class of '94; after which she attended the San Jose Normal School, graduating with the Class of '98; and teaching in the city schools of Alameda until she was married. Mr. and Mrs. Shannon have two children, Milam Jefferson and Lawrence Dudley.

Mr. Shannon's particular responsibility, in helping to manage the Shannon Estate owned by the several brothers, is for the most part the raising of table grapes and in this field he has been signally successful. Through many years of work and study he has become a specialist in both the growing and marketing of table grapes, and at present has ninety acres in malagas. Their products are packed and shipped from Miley, on the Santa Fe, and are marketed under the label of the "Shannon Estate Brand," and they command high prices, and find a ready market in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia. There are also eight acres in emperors, a table grape maturing very late in the season, and eighteen acres of muscats and sultanas. He has thirty-five acres in peaches, while the balance of the land is in alfalfa and pasture. The Shannon Estate Vineyard us.es eight horses and employs live men all the year around, and as many as twenty-five men during the harvesting season.

Although a Republican, and one with live ideas as to national political reform and progress, Mr. Shannon has loyally supported the administration in its difficult war work. For six years he served as trustee of the Walnut school district, while he lived in that section, and he has maintained a live interest in popular education ever since. He is a member of Halcyon Parlor of the Native Sons of the Golden West at Alameda, and he also belongs to Fresno Lodge, No. 439, B. P. O. Elks.