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Mendel Wilber Ledington was my grandfather, pictured here on the right with his grandmother, Laura Tope Brown Johnston and cousin, Carrol Herbert Horton, on the left. I am grateful to cousin Carrol for keeping his mother's family bible until his death and having it mailed to me thereafter. What history there is on the Tope/Brown family lines has come from this bible.
- Please see the Ancestor Tree Section for more about Laura Tope Brown Johnston and Carrol Herbert Horton
The History of Mendel Wilber Ledington
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Helen Ledington Dec. 1944 |
Mendel Wilber Ledington: Born December 26, 1904 in Omaha, Nebraska, he was the first child of James Harvey Ledington and Jennie Mae Brown. He had two siblings born in Nebraska, one sister, Laura Marie Ledington, born August 28, 1907 and one brother, Harvey James Ledington, born October 20, 1910. Mendel's name comes from a character in a book his mother enjoyed and Wilber is a name that occasionally appears in her families back ground. This is the earliest photograph I have of Mendel.
Mendel lived with his family in Nebraska and attending grade school there. He recalled going to school with Jessie James. It turns out that his family was related to the James family! Mendel did some silly stuff as a kid, he told me a funny story about getting in trouble for climbing up onto the roof of their home, and once said he mistakenly shot his mother in the foot while cleaning a gun, not so funny. From that day on he never had a gun around his home or family, and his feeling kept him off of several jury selections too!
James Harvey Ledington and Jennie Mae Brown moved to Los Angeles, California sometime around 1910. Their youngest child, "Harry", died of whooping cough, December 13, 1911 and is buried at the Odd Fellow Cemetery in Los Angeles,Ca. Mendel and Laura lived most of their lives in Southern California in a suburban area called Belevedere Gardens in East Los Angeles, near present day Whittier. James worked as an insurance salesman and Jennie as a seamstress at Robinson's Department store making women's suits.
Mendel married Helen Kinney, and Laura married Robert Hines.
More History
Known as "Cook" by his childhood friends - because he was such a coo-kee guy as a young man, riding a bicycle and working as a delivery boy and Soda Jerk in the local drug store. He soon took to delivering newspapers, and told me that his mother would let him, at age 10-13, sleep out on the streets of Los Angeles, on Saturday night, to wait for the Sunday paper delivery. The reason being that the load of papers might be stolen by the competition. He developed a crew of delivery boys and learned the art of management at a young age. He later took up motorcycle riding. He had a group of guys he hung out with, they all took to drinking liquor, but not Cook, he go sick the first time and that was all it took. But he did smoke cigarettes, later only cigars and a pipe.
| Standard Welding Mfg. Co. Los Angeles, CA. (approx 1948 ) Mendel W. Ledington & J.A. Kischell |
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Cook
(now called "Cook" - like a Chef), worked in lath and plaster, and recalls how
he wore down most of his lower teeth holding nails in his mouth. He said, "you'd
have to be able to spit the nails out two at a time, so they'd be crossed and
ready to nail, and I wore my teeth down holding them." Later he said he watched
a man working a drill press through the chain links of a fence into the window
of a machine shop. He said, "I watched that fella and said, 'I can do that', so
I went in and asked for that job, and got it."
This began his life long occupation of being a machinist. He eventually joined the Union and was listed as a Master Machinist, - being able to run any machine existing in a machine shop at that time. He worked for Standard Welding.
During the War, he work at Terminal Island, working nights as foreman,then swing and days as the war and the work demands for machined parts slowed down. He opened his own machine shop, "Cook's Machine Works" on Telegraph Road in Los Angeles, and it is still there to date owned by Michael McCastlin, whom Cook taught to machine. He maintained his own shop in both of his homes, one in Los Angeles and the other in San Bernardino mountain resort town of Lake Arrowhead, Calif.
He had a love for motorcycles, race cars and racing. He built his own racing automobile out of salvage metal he got from the city dump, pictured, pretty nice! He told me the exhaust pipes are from a brass bed frame.