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LANGFORD BROTHERS. - The ancient and potent laws of heredity, environment and training have made Thomas and
George Langford luminous exponents of the principles of integrity and honor and have emphasized the dignity of
labor, for these brothers, inheritors of the sturdy traits of the English race, as proprietors of the Eureka boiler
works, doing business under the corporate name of Langford Brothers, are very practical industrial workers who
learned boiler making as a trade and personally superintend the filling of every order received at their plant.
While giving due attention to the executive department of the business, with Thomas as president and George as
secretary of the corporation, they give so much of their time to personally superintending the manufacture of boilers
and tanks and to the filling of orders for sheet iron work that nothing leaves the plant until it has passed the
most searching inspection and is known to be sound. The product is the best that skilled labor, good material and
intelligent oversight can turn out. The reputation of the company for a high class of finished product has double
riveted their prosperity on Humboldt bay and has brought them no little outside business, the territory of their
orders extending from Portland, Ore., on the north to San Diego on the south.
Though born in Wales, Thomas Langford was the son of English parents, his birth occurring March 17, 1851, and his
education was received in Wales and England. He came to the United States in 1868, taking up the trade of a boiler
maker with the Dixon Manufacturing Company and continued with them five or six years. When he came to California
in 1874 he secured employment in the repair shops of the Central Pacific Railroad at Sacramento, from which city
the company transferred him to West Oakland, there to repair the ferry boats operated by the railroad. Later the
company sent him to Nevada and kept him for a time in the Wadsworth repair shops. On returning to Oakland he opened
a cigar store and conducted the business for three years, after which he had charge of the Heald boiler works at
Vallejo and also engaged in the manufacture of threshing machines. A later connection with the Baker & Hamilton
Company gave him the supervision of their boiler works at Benicia. During 1885 he came to Eureka with his brother
George, whose life history has been much the same as his own, except that he had remained longer with the Central
Pacific Railroad in Sacramento, coming direct from that city to Eureka and joining in the purchase of the Rose
boiler works at the foot of E street. Under their skilled oversight and personal direction of every job, the business
grew and expanded until larger quarters were needed. During 1903 they removed to the foot of T street on the bay
front, where they own a large fireproof corrugated iron building and give employment to fifteen or twenty men in
the manufacture of boilers and tanks and in similar lines of manufacture.
Personally the brothers stand high in the community as progressive, hardworking and capable business men, who take
a praiseworthy, but not obtrusive, interest in public affairs and in all that tends to promote the permanent welfare
of their city and county. Both are members of the Odd Fellows, Masons and Knight Templars. For some years George
has been a member of the board of directors of the First National Bank of Eureka. By his marriage to Mamie Harrington,
of Sacramento, he is the father of a daughter and son, namely: Mrs. Ethel Essig, of Berkeley; and George, Jr.,
a graduate of the State Agricultural College at Davis. Through his marriage to Susanna Jones, now deceased, Thomas
Langford is the father of one son, Leslie. The brothers are thoroughly awake to the civic needs of Eureka and lend
their aid to any enterprise tending toward the development of public interests.
From:
History of Humboldt County, California
With a Biographical Sketches
History by Leigh H. Irving
Historic Record Company
Los Angeles, California 1915
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