EDWARDS, NELSON THOMAS -- A representative Californian, although a native of Illinois, having been born near Galena, Derinda Township, Jo Daviess County, on September 19, 1872, Nelson Thomas Edwards, supervisor of the Fourth District in Orange County, has been privileged, beyond the good fortune of the average citizen to participate in public, commercial, financial and social affairs, and so to help guide the destiny of Southern California. His parents were Samson and Diana (Rogers) Edwards, highly esteemed pioneers of Orange County and residents of Westminster and Santa Ana for close to a half century, a sketch of their lives being given elsewhere in this work.
The youngest son of the Edwards family, Nelson Thomas, through whose business integrity the community of Orange has profited since his advent in the middle nineties, was graduated from the grammar school at Westminster in 1887 and from the Orange Business College in 1890. His first experience in business was as an employee of his brother John, who had succeeded Samson Edwards and was proprietor of a meat market in Westminster and, as a driver of one of his brother's wagons, he got his first insight into a field into which in time he ventured on his own account. He then built up a fine wagon trade in and around Santa Ana, which he continued until he came to Orange in 1894. For a time thereafter he was employed by the Santa Ana Meat Company, but subsequently he bought out the stock and good will of the proprietor and ran the business for himself. Later he took into partnership J. E. Mechan, this continuing for six years, and during this time they made the Plaza market the finest establishment of the kind in Orange or vicinity. The meat market, however, is not all that has come to command the attention of Mr. Edwards. Besides owning several orange groves in Orange County, an interest in business blocks at Orange, the townsite of Gadsden, Ariz., acreage at Yuma and stock in the Olive Milling Company of Olive and the National Bank of Orange, Mr. Edwards is a director in the Olive Milling Company and also in the National Bank of Orange and the Santa Ana Canyon Oil Company of Santa Ana.
A Republican in matters of national political moment, he has served his fellow citizens as city trustee of Orange, postmaster at Orange, from June 11, 1906, to April, 1915, a member of the Orange County Highway Commission, from September, 1917, to January, 1919, was appointed county clerk to fill a vacancy and served a little over a year, and he is now one of the Orange County supervisors. He belongs to the Orange Commercial Club at Orange and the Yuma County Commercial Club at Yuma, Ariz.
At Olive, on December 31, 1896, Mr. Edwards was married to Miss May Tetzlaff, a native of Bloomington, Ill., where she was born on Christmas Day, 1877, and the daughter of Mrs. Susie Tetzlaff, of Olive. Two children have blessed this union, a son, Roy Edwards, and a daughter, Maybelle. Mr. Edwards is a member of Orange Grove Lodge No. 293, F. & A. M., of which he is past master. He also belongs to Orange Chapter No. 73, R. A. M., the Santa Ana Commandery No. 36, K. T., and Al Malaikah Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S., of Los Angeles, and he belongs to and is a past grand of Orange Lodge No. 225, Independent Order Odd Fellows.
