Frank and Marguerite Hall

Frank was born in Alameda, CA in 1880.  Marguerite was from upstate New York.
Prior to purchasing the ranch, Frank was in the oil business in Santa Maria, CA.  Very successful for the first few years with great wells, a small refinery and the first gas station in town.  His search for more oil yielded a number of dry wells and with production from his good wells slowing down, a farm sounded like it would keep four growing boys fed, and busy.   From then on he limited his oil activities to a sideline of buying and selling oil leases.
Frank and Marguerite had four sons, they were ages 3-10 when they bought Leona in 1913.  The boys all had fond memories of growing up on the Ranch and wouldn't trade their life there for anything.
He built up the dairy operation on the ranch which required quite an outlay for equipment.  The dairy by 1921 had 50 cows and 37 calves to expand the herd.   The dairy was shutdown in 1924 when the family moved to LA for better schools for the youngest two boys.  When the older of those two graduated high school in 1926, I believe the dairy operation was restarted and ran until 1930 when the depression ended hope of making the dairy succeed.   From family letters the Ranch also had a cattle operation while Frank ran it.

The subdivision of the ranch was started in 1922 and he was still selling lots in the 1950's.  He worked with different real estate companies, formed his own, and tried different promotions.  The Great Depression when land was not selling, also brought lawsuits from banks over title of land.  With court cost and loans to pay, Frank among other odd jobs to raise cash, would scour the desert around Palmdale for shotgun shells then sell the brass to scrapyards.  He also would make huge batches of tamales and sell them to the Van de Kamps restaurant on San Fernando Rd in Los Angeles, think he was living in Glendale at the time.  His signature feature was a whole large olive in the middle of the tamale.

Marguerite and Frank having been separated for some time divorced in the 1940's, she went to live with the youngest son Clifford.

During Would War II, Frank started building furniture from wood scraps.  The largest pieces were 1x3 inches by a few feet long, but the majority were smaller than 1x1 inch and up to 4 feet long.  The wood was the scrap pieces left over from making packing crates used by Lockheed in Burbank, CA to ship war equipment.  He would laminate the pieces together to make dressers, tables and chairs.  He must have built a 100 of each.  After the war he moved to Ripon, CA and married Alice J Howell.  They built the Ripon Motel single handed and furnished it with his furniture.  He lived there until he passed on in 1958.

Frank and Marguerite Hall - circa 1912