S. J. Mathes

Mathes came to Los Angeles in 1875. "It was a little one-horse town in those days, but there were two or three newspapers," he recalled in a Times interview forty-six years later. I took a job as foreman of the old Herald and stayed there three or four years. Then Tom Caystile and Jesse Yarnell and I went into the printing business. We published the Mirror as a little house organ to advertise our business. It was always in my mind to start a daily paper. I suggested it several times to my partners, but they wouldn't hear of it. ==Personal life==

Mathes was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of a Presbyterian clergyman who was a firm believer in abolition. The father sold his slaves and moved to Sigourney, Iowa, where the younger Mathes received his education. An illness he contracted in 1900 remained with him until the day he died at age 78 in Los Angeles on January 28, 1927. He died at the home of Minnie Neighbors May, a former Sunday school pupil. Mathes was survived by two grandchildren, Ralph and Eleanor Bowdie, both of Long Beach, California. ==See also==