The mayor who took a stand against the Klan

 When Samuel Bowen decided to run for Huntington Beach board of trustees (city council) in 1928, there were a couple issues troubling local residents.  One was municipal restrictions about where oil drilling could occur and the encroachment of oil drilling in residential areas. With the discovery of oil in 1920, the booming proliferation of oil wells and sumps created a concern the residential areas would become blighted.

   Another growing issue was the presence of the Ku Klux Klan in Orange County. During the 1920s, the Klan made efforts to integrate into local government, churches and civic organizations.

LEFT: Samuel R. Bowen, prior to his stand against the Klan in 1925 and his run for city council in 1928. (Image, Huntington Beach News, April 27, 1923)  

   In August 1924, a couple weeks before the Klan organized a community "spectacle" in Huntington Beach, Reverend Horace Lackey, a lecturer for the Klan, stirred up a large crowd at the corner of 3rd and Birch streets in Santa Ana "from a truck which bore the fiery cross and the American flag" ("Thousands here listen as Klan called organization built up on Americanism", Santa Ana Register, August 12, 1924).  The City of Santa Ana had refused him a permit to speak in Birch Park.

   The Santa Ana Register reported Lackey's stated purpose was "to preserve the rights of the white race." Lackey critized newspapers as being owned by "Catholics and Jews and 'not a single line of news that reflects credit to the klan is ever sent over the wire.'" 

   Lackey credited the Klan for passage of recent immigration laws, which would have included the alien land laws prohibiting property ownership by Asian immigrants, but not immigrants from other countries. He stated the Klan was opposed to Catholic school teachers teaching in public schools "until after they made their first allegiance to the flag of the country." At the same time, Lackey stated "the klan was not fighting the newspapers, as they were not fighting the Catholics, Jews, or negroes."

   "The Ku Klux Klan is not in politics," Lackey continued, "and will resist every effort that is made to drag it into politics, but the 8,000,000 men and the 3,000,000 women who belong to the organization are in politics, and I want to say that no man opposed to the klan's ideals will ever be elected to office in Orange County, or in the United States."

BELOW RIGHT: A Klan meeting advertised in the Santa Ana Register, December 5, 1924.

   By January 1925, the Klan's efforts to take over local political offices had become the subject of an Orange County Grand Jury report. Local Klan leaders Reverend Leon Myers and William Starbuck had been instigating rumors about elected officials at public events. The Grand Jury released a special report "notable for its cool and dispassionate form of expression...that laxity charges made by klan leaders against public officials (were) wholly groundless and responsible for 'much injustice.'" 

   The 19-member Grand Jury unanimously agreed on the findings of their investigation that statements made by Klan leaders Myers and Starbuck at mass meetings were hearsay and "discounted to the vanishing point."

   Read more about Myers and Starbuck, and their efforts to slander local officials in Huntington Beach, "Prohibition and booze under the cornerstone" (January 8, 2018).

ABOVE: Samuel R. Bowen is responsible for hiring the City's first landscape architect to undertake a beautification program. The arches that once stood at the west end of Main Street at Pacific Coast Highway were installed at his direction. (Photo, City of Huntington Beach archives)

Taking a stand against the Klan

   Bowen's stand against the Klan became public in 1925, when he was president of the Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce. The Klan was thought to be behind a recall of elected city council members. Bowen called upon the Chamber to vote on a resolution opposing the Klan's involvement and affirm their confidence in the elected office holders.

   "The troubles that seem to assail us are traceable  to the door of the Invisible Empire, the Ku Klux Klan," stated Bowen ("Huntington Beach Chamber Flays Ku Klux Klan Recall Movement Against Trustees," Santa Ana Register, April 7, 1925). "Immediately after a recent election, pressure was brought to bear upon city officials to have certain appointed offices declared vacant and klansmen appointed."

Bowen continued, "The Ku Klux Klan would take away the rights of American citizenship, and substitute instead secret political plots and methods by dictating to their members what they shall do. We should set ourselves against being dominated by an organization governed by prejudice, hatred and intolerance." 

LEFT: The Chamber of Commerce stand against the Klan came about eight months after the Klan "spectacle" in Huntington Beach on Labor Day 1924. (Santa Ana Register, August 30, 1924) 

   The Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce unanimously adopted the resolution, which also was to be introduced for adoption by the Lions Club, Women's Club, Rotary Club and Realty Board. The Santa Ana Register characterized it as "taking a determined stand against the Ku Klux Klan" and "an active stand in the political fight which is looming in this city."

  Three years later, Bowen ran for city council in 1928 with a winning slate of three candidates--including former newspaper man Elson Conrad and pharmacist Bayard Butcher--all of whom were aligned on enacting oil drilling restrictions and anti Klan positions.  They were sworn into office on April 16, 1928.

A diverse community

   Bowen's mother, Emilia Miranda--married to newspaper man Nathan Streeter Bowen--was Mexican American, Bowen had been tutored by a Belgian priest, and his neighbors were from all over the world. Spanish was his first language.  His granddaughter, Beverly Bowen Moeller, recalled him meeting "with a small group of friends on Wednesday nights to read Don Quixote in the original 17th Century Spanish and laugh at the adventures of the hapless knight."

RIGHT: Beverly Bowen Moeller, daughter of Mayor Samuel R. Bowen, Huntington Beach Grammar School class photo, 1934. (City of Huntington Beach archives)

   Bowen Moeller fondly recalled in her 1984 hand-typed history, titled Fifty Years Ago in Huntington Beach held at the Orange County Archives, that Huntington Beach was a diverse and close community.

   "...I would walk along the high-crowned oil road past the chili pepper drying houses, past an old wooden derrick with the fields of the small farms belonging to German, Japanese and Italian neighbors," wrote Bowen Moeller. "Across the street from our house was my favorite place in my small world, the nearly self-sufficient farm of the Armenian neighbors...These memories are akin to the proverbial fly caught in amber, caught and preserved unchanged..."

Remembering Samuel Bowen

   Samuel Bowen created a successful business producing oil production fishing tool technologies in Huntington Beach, with the S.R. Bowen Company. His company later moved to Texas and exists today, as NOV - Bowen. Bowen's Huntington Beach manufacturing business was steps away from present-day Huntington Beach City Hall, at Yorktown and Lake streets. 

LEFT: The S.R. Bowen buildings that stood at Yorktown and Lake streets, near present-day Huntington Beach City Hall. The Bowen buildings were lost to a fire in 1989. To this day, locals question the nature of the fire, as preservationists had mobilized an effort to create an oil museum utilizing the historic structures. (Photo, courtesy of Dennis Masuda). © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

   Today, where the S.R. Bowen buildings once stood, is a little-noticed, small bronze plaque next to the sidewalk. People drive by it every day. The identity for who the plaque honors is only visible from a couple feet away.

Inscription on the plaque:
   Three industrial buildings were located at 1980 Lake Street and were operated by Samuel R. Bowen and his partner, Sisti Siracusa, as the S.R. Bowen Company and the Bowen Fishing Tool Company. 

   The S.R. Bowen Company was founded in 1920 and was credited with numerous developments of tools used in oil production in Southern California and worldwide. Some noteworthy tools produced included the Bowen L&L Spear (used to retrieve pipe from oil wells). 

   The S.R. Bowen Company remained in Huntington Beach until the mid 1950's when they moved to Santa Fe Springs, CA. 

RIGHT: The small bronze plaque at Yorktown and Lake streets across from Huntington Beach City Hall for former Mayor Samuel Redman Bowen, who took a public stand against the Ku Klux Klan in April 1925. (Photo, M. Urashima, August 16, 2013) © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The S.R. Bowen industrial buildings were locally significant because of the elaborate, interior exposed wood truss roof supports and corrugated metal ("Tin"), exterior siding and roofing. The buildings contained machine, welding and blacksmith shops, warehouse space and offices. The buildings were constructed in 1920-1928 and dismantled in July 1989.

Samuel Redman Bowen was born in Martinez, CA and spent his early life in the San Francisco area. he came to Huntington Beach from Coalinga, CA in 1920. In 1928 he was elected Mayor of the City and served one term. 

   He was a veteran of World War I and a member of the Huntington Beach American Legion Post. He was also a past president of both the Huntington Beach Rotary Club and Chamber of Commerce. Samuel Bowen died August 6, 1944.  

   Presented to the City of Huntington Beach by the Huntington Beach Company - 1989

What monuments say about us

   The small plaque at the corner of Yorktown and Lake streets holds a much bigger story about Huntington Beach, its oil history and the fight against the Klan in the 1920s.  Samuel Bowen took his fight against the Klan public in April 1925. In April 2021, Klan flyers were distributed around downtown doorsteps advertising a "white lives matter" rally.

   It's time to create a larger monument at the corner of Yorktown and Lake, as a more prominent reminder for today's and tomorrow's generations that Huntington Beach can, in the words of Samuel Bowen, "set ourselves against being dominated by an organization governed by prejudice, hatred and intolerance."

Read a related history on Orange County historian and archivist Chris Jepsen's blog, O.C. History Roundup, about The Pacific Beach Club.

© All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Huntington Beach blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.  

Fay and Ray, and Eugene, go joy riding in 1911

ABOVE: The men above want you to know they are not Fay and Ray. Or, Eugene.  This is the typical horse and buggy kit one would see in Huntington Beach in the early 1900s. These cigar-smoking men are on Ocean Avenue--now Pacific Coast Highway--near Main Street, circa 1905. Behind them to the left is the brick-and-mortar Ocean Wave Hotel.  Today, it is the El Don Liquor building at 416 Pacific Coast Highway, a few steps north of Main Street. We recommend walking behind the building to look at it from the alley to get a glimpse of its pioneer roots.  (Photo courtesy of City of Huntington Beach archives, 1905)

   Over a century ago, the Huntington Beach News and Santa Ana Register regularly reported horse thievery in the peatlands, a continual problem in rural Orange County.  On April 21, 1911, the culprits were a particularly rough lot, making it a tough case to prosecute.  They were children.

   Fay Miranville and Ray Talbert--both girls--spotted an opportunity on the dusty Main Street of Huntington Beach:  a horse and buggy, with the owner away.  Accomplice in the caper was Eugene Perry, a young man sufficiently overtaken by the charms of Fay and Ray that he joined the misdeed.  They were all under the age of ten.

RIGHT: The Kitchen Encylopedia was a 31-page booklet of recipes published by Swift & Company for Oleomargarine in 1911.

   Mrs. Lloyd Kelley had tied up her horse and buggy on Main Street and stepped into the Huntington Beach Meat Market to do some shopping for the evening meal.  She may have just gotten her 1911 copy of The Kitchen Encylopedia from Swift & Company Oleomargarine and wanted to try the Spanish Minced Beef in Meat Box recipe (hopefully, not the Boiled Beef recipe).  

   Mrs. Kelley did not lock her vehicle or set her alarm.  Big mistake, Mrs. Kelley.  To her credit though, no one else on Main Street would have suspected the grade-schoolers.   

LEFT: The McIntosh brothers' meat market, as seen circa 1927 inside the Standard Market on Main Street, was typical of the butcher counter of the early 1900s.  (Photo courtesy of Doug McIntosh) © All rights reserved.

   Fay and Ray, and Eugene, jumped in the buggy and high-tailed it inland through the countryside to Talbert (now, Fountain Valley).  With no paved roads, one can only imagine the bumpy ride and the trail of dust as they made their escape.  

   It was roughly a five to six mile trek as the crow flies from Main Street in Huntington Beach to the village center of Talbert.

   As they reached the outskirts of Talbert, they came across rancher J. B. McCowan and sized him up as an easy mark.  Fay and Ray, and Eugene, hit him up for 50 cents "to go to the show".  McCowan either thought the whole thing was normal or he was intimidated by the threatening nature of three nine-year-olds.  He gave them the money.  

RIGHT: Motion pictures were still transitioning from silent films to "talkies" and theater houses were few and far between in 1911. Vaudeville venues screened silent and talking pictures, along with their live vaudeville acts. The week of April 15, 1911--at the time of Fay and Ray, and Eugene's horse thievery--The Bell was featuring "4 big reels of the latest pictures", "5 big acts of latest vaudeville", "17 people...including musicians", and an assortment of "high class artists". (Santa Ana Register, September 30, 1911)

   Flush with coins, and despite the fact it was near dusk, the trio continued on toward the bustling metropolis of Santa Ana.  In 1911, it was the seat of Orange County government with a population of over 8,000.  Santa Ana had saloons, vaudeville, and other questionable entertainment. 
 

LEFT:  In July 1911, The Bell was advertising a show with "live trained wild lions" and soliciting for a couple who would be willing to get married in the lion's den, all expenses paid. What nine-year-old wouldn't want to see entertainment like this? Nuf ced. (Santa Ana Register, July 20, 1911)

   Santa Ana vaudeville house, The Bell, admitted children under the age of ten for a ticket price of five-cents each, leaving them with a balance of 35-cents.  Fay and Ray, and Eugene, planned ahead when strong-arming J.B. McCowan for 50 cents.  They had extra change left over for a second show and a few treats.

   On April 8, 1911, the silent animated short film, Little Nemo, was released.  The bandits being of youthful tendencies, we'd bet our 50 cents  they wanted to see the new cartoon.

RIGHT: Little Nemo and the princess ride away in the mouth of a dragon in the surreal 1911 silent short animation, Little Nemo, by Winsor McCay. In 1912, McCay--a cartoonist who created Little Nemo for the New York Herald--released his next animation, How a Mosquito Operates, which is described as having "a more coherent story". (Image source, WikiCommons)

   Downtown Santa Ana was another seven to eight miles journey on dirt roads from Talbert.  Most of the way was open countryside: ranches, farms, and irrigation ditches.  There wasn't an abundance of signage in the peatlands.  They had never actually driven to Santa Ana on their own before.  They were lost.  It was getting late in the day.

   It was then that Fay and Ray, and Eugene, came upon another rancher, Mr. Williams, and asked for directions.  Mr. Williams--being of sensible nature--told them he'd give them good directions if they came to his ranch house.  He probably used the ol' "how 'bout we get your horse some water and I'll get you directions" line.  It's possible the trio was beginning to have second thoughts about their plan for the day.  It also might have been the bandits thought they could talk Mr. Williams into giving them another coin or two.  After all, it worked on J.B. McCowan. 

LEFT: Thomas B. Talbert ran a general merchandise store in the village of Talbert, before moving to Huntington Beach to open a realty business. He was appointed to the Orange County board of supervisors in 1909, the year Huntington Beach incorporated (and two years before he was called upon to apprehend three nine-year-old horse thieves). (Photo, Santa Ana Register, September 25, 1928)

   Once at the ranch, Mr. Williams dialed telephone number 341 to talk with Thomas B. Talbert--an Orange County supervisor, Huntington Beach realtor, and the man for whom the village of Talbert was named--to let Tom know he had detained three children (one with the last name of Talbert), horse, and buggy.  

   Talbert had a new-fangled automobile and sped over country roads to the Williams ranch to return the horse thieves to their "anxious parents" in Huntington Beach.  
 

ABOVE: Thomas B. Talbert's advertisement from the Orange County Directory in 1911, the year of the great horse and buggy caper. (Fullerton Public Library)

  The Santa Ana Register reported it was after 8 p.m. by the time the hardened--or more likely sleepy and hungry--criminals returned home.

RIGHT: Also among the 1911 reports of horse thievery, H.W. Lewis' horse and buggy were stolen while hitched in front of the United Presbyterian Church, "buggy, bibles and mare", prompting the Santa Ana Register to ponder if the thief might read the part about "thou shalt not steal." (Santa Ana Register, September 11, 1911)

   There are some holes in the story of the April heist.  For instance, what happened to Mrs. Lloyd Kelley? However did she make it home without a horse and buggy?  And, what did she make for dinner (again, hopefully not the Boiled Beef)?

   Were Fay and Ray, and Eugene, charged with a speeding violation?  They had to have accelerated a tad over the speed limit as they made their way out of the Huntington Beach Township.

   Speeding was no joke in 1911, as horses, automobiles, and pedestrians were still adjusting to the clash of old and new transportation.  A spooked horse was dangerous.   Ordinance 70, passed by the Huntington Beach board of trustees in January 1911, made it unlawful to "ride or drive any horse or other animal...bicycle, tricycle, velocipede, motorcycle or automobile or other riding machine or horseless vehicle or any road vehicle whatsoever at a rate of speed greater than ten (10) miles per hour" on City streets and alleyways. 

   Violations of the speed limit set by Ordinance 70 were punishable by a fine of $100 and/or possible imprisonment not to exceed thirty days.  Were Fay and Ray, and Eugene, thrown into the brick hoosegow between Main and Fifth streets?  Perhaps their imprisonment was waived for bed with no supper and restitution of the fifty cents.

   There is no report of charges against J.B. McCowan, who aided and abetted--and indeed financed--Fay and Ray, and Eugene, on their slow-speed chase through the peatlands toward vaudeville heaven. It probably took a while before he lived that one down.

   And, finally, did Fay and Ray, and Eugene, ever get to "the show" to see Little Nemo?

BELOW: Main Street at Walnut Avenue, circa 1910s.  Unpaved, the streets were oiled to keep down the dust.  The young ladies in this photograph are unidentified.  We'll let the readers decide if that is Fay and Ray, on their way to find Eugene. (Photo, City of Huntington Beach archives) 

© All rights reserved.  No part of the Historic Huntington Beach blog may be reproduced or duplicated without prior written permission from the author and publisher, M. Adams Urashima.

Huntington Beach history! Saturday, January 23, at Orange County's Heritage Hill Historical Park in Lake Forest

   Learn more about Huntington Beach's unique pioneer history and about America's newest---and Orange County's first and only---National Treasure at this presentation and book signing.

   The presentation will feature rare photographs not included in the book and an update on the effort to preserve Historic Wintersburg in Huntington Beach.