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CHARLES ELLET
BIO- Sawyers
SURNAMES:
A rising young financier of Santa Clara County, whose influence is
being felt more and more in laying broad and deep the foundations of
the great California commonwealth, is Charles Ellet, the efficient and
popular cashier of The Stanford Bank at Palo Alto and Mayfield. He was
born at the historic Ellet homestead at Bunker Hill, Macoupin County,
Ill., and reared at Eldorado, Kans., being a son of Edward Carpenter
Ellet, the patriot, banker and politician, who built up and owned one
of the first banks in Butler County, Kans., in the county seat town of
Eldorado, in the early '70s, and later established several other banks
in Kansas, and in 1908 came to California, purchasing the controlling
interest in the old Mayfield Bank, the predecessor of The Stanford
Bank, and whose inspiring life story is elsewhere given in this volume,
as is also the history of several of the other distinguished forebears
and relatives of our subject, who have conferred undying glory in the
service of their country. Edward C. Ellet married Miss Frances Webster
Van Dorn, also a native of Bunker Hill, Ill., and it is pleasant to
relate that both she and her honored husband are still living, highly
esteemed residents of Mayfield. Her family history is no less
interesting than that of her husband. The daughter of a California
Argonaut, Thomas Jefferson Van Dorn, who crossed the plains in '49, she
is a near relative of the famous Confederate cavalry general, Earl Van
Dorn, and a direct descendant of the historic Pilgrim father, Governor
Bradford, of Massachusetts, likewise a relative of Washington Irving,
the celebrated author, as well as the great orator and statesman,
Daniel Webster. Charles Ellet was reared at Eldorado, Kans., and there
he remained until he was twenty years of age. He pursued the public
school courses and then profited by a course at the University of
Washington, at Seattle, to which city he removed in 1904. Three years
later, in April, he was married to Miss Edna Anna Dodge, only daughter
of Mr. and Mrs. Frank R. Dodge, of the Farmers and Merchants National
Bank of Eldorado, Kans.. and a year thereafter he came south to
Mayfield. His father, a banker of over thirty years' experience, had
sold out his banking interest in Kansas, and desiring to come West, he
accepted an appointment as special agent of the U. S. General Land
Office, with headquarters at Seattle, in 1903, a position which he
resigned in 1908, when he came down to Mayfield and bought out the
Mayfield Bank and Trust Company, which later became known as The
Mayfield Bank. Edward C. Ellet resigned as its president in 1918,
turning the institution over to his son Charles, who at once completely
reorganized and enlarged it. Charles Ellet then sent East for his
brother, Alfred W. Ellet, deputy bank commissioner of the State of
Kansas, who came to Palo Alto in 1918 and became vice-president of The
Stanford Bank. Mr. Ellet's first wife died at Mayfield, Oct. 5, 1909,
and left two children; Zelda, who is a student at the College of Sacred
Heart at Menlo Park, and Edward Carpenter, who attends the William
Warren School for Boys in the same place. On marrying a second time,
Mr. Ellet chose for his wife Miss Martha H. Blois, their wedding
occuring on April 27, 1916. They have become the parents of five
children, four of whom are living; Charles Ellet, Jr., now five years
old, was a twin brother of Thomas Van Dorn, who died at birth; Martha
Jane was the next to enter the family, followed later by Elizabeth and
Frances, twin daughters. Charles El-let is also president of the
Stanford Realty Company and is personally a large property owner at
Mayfield, where he resides, and at Palo Alto. He was twice elected town
treasurer of Mayfield, and is a power politically in the northern end
of the county. He is especially interested in good roads and he has had
much to do with the rebuilding of the State Highway at Mayfield,
declared by State Engineer Freeman to be one of the best built public
highways in the whole United States. Mayfield is at the very gate of
Stanford University, and how could it fail of being one of the most
promising communities in the Golden State, when, as Mr. El-let says:
"Mayfield is by choice as well as by law, a dry town, where no saloons
can ever again exist, with her former cesspool nuisance cured by a
modern sewer system, costing $35,000; with an inexhaustible supply of
artesian water so pure that the Southern Pacific Railroad Company,
after a chemical analysis, selected this site on which to erect their
60,000 gallon water-tank for through trains, with Mayfield's dream of
an Interurban Electric Railway doubly realized by the Blossom Route to
San Jose, and the Waverly Avenue Extension from Palo Alto; with the
opening of the Santa Cruz.branch from the main line of the Southern
Pacific making Mayfield an important junction point; with the very
exceptional train service of over sixty steam trains a day during
summer months to and from San Francisco, with a municipal water plant
valued at $35,000, being run on a paying basis; with miles of cement
sidewalks, curbing and paving; with the completion of the great State
Highway through the town; with the Leland Stanford Jr. University, one
of the richest endowed institutions of higher learning in the United
States, next door, and San Francisco only thirty miles away, the Garden
City, San Jose, only fifteen miles distant, and with the famous
California Redwood Park, the Wonderland of the West, just about twice
as far away." Who can doubt the wisdom of Mr. Ellet in pinning his
faith to the new old town and the wisdom of The Stanford Bank in
encouraging to its legal limit all rational enterprises here promising
a reasonable degree of success.
The new home of The Stanford Bank in Palo Alto which has just been
completed, is described elsewhere in this volume. It had a brilliant
opening on June 2, 1922. Assets have already passed the half
million mark. True to its name and environment, it carries out
the Romanesque style of architecture with its stately pillars and
arches in keeping with the dream of Leland Stanford, when he first
conceived the idea of building a great university. This banking house
has been remodeled after plans of Mr. A. F. Roller, of the firm of M.
G. West & Co., the celebrated bank architects and specialists, of
San Francisco. Mr. Ellet is a hard and conscientious worker, who
realizes that the success of his career as a banker of necessity rests
upon the general welfare of the community. He belongs to that class of
financiers who understand that service is the cornerstone of all truly
worth-while business. Having an accurate knowledge of business and
financial conditions at Mayfield and Palo Alto, he finds his greatest
satisfaction in advising and helping his patrons on to the sure road of
prosperity.
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