Henry T. Oxnard

Henry T. Oxnard was an American entrepreneur who gave his name to the City of Oxnard. Mr. Oxnard was president of both the American Beet Sugar Company (which later changed its name to American Crystal Sugar Company) and the American Beet Sugar Association, which represents all the beet sugar factories In the United States. He controlled with his brothers five sugar factories in the United States.

Ancestry

With a French and English ancestry, Henry T. Oxnard was born in its June 23, 1861 during the residence of his parents abroad at Marseilles, France.^[1] Henry T. Oxnard's ancestor came to America in 1740 and settled in Boston, having been sent by Lord Montague, the father of Freemasonry in the New World, to further the establishment of that order in its new home as the provincial master of all America. Since then the Oxnard family has been prominent in New England Americans of the most progressive type.

The mother of Henry T. Oxnard came from an old French family of Louisiana, ancestors that where dating back to the Capetian dynasty.

Henry T. Oxnard's father sold his sugar cane plantations and refinery in Louisiana back in 1860, and by doing so was able to escape the dangers of the Civil War by traveling away.

Youth

Henry T. Oxnard grew up in a house in Massachusetts. This countryside life gave him a special affection for the out-door life style and gave him the idea to start his first business in raising chickens on an extensive scale.

Adulthood

In 1889, Oxnard and his associates established a sugar refinery at Grand Island, Nebraska,^[2] this is when he created the soon to be famous Oxnard Beet Sugar Company.

Interview

On July 10, 1904, The San Francisco Sunday Call publishes an article dedicated to Henry T. Oxnard, this is what was said by the Interviewer about Mr.Oxnard :

I wanted to see Henry Thomas Oxnard, one of the manipulators and dictators of beet sugar businesses and policies in the wide United States, to draw my own conclusions as to the personality of a man who had long occupied so prominent a place in the public eye. I had some difficulty in setting track of him. I missed him at the home of a relative, In the city, who rang the keynote of the man's life story and character when she said: "You have to get up early to catch him. He's small, I know, but he has always been full of purpose." When you know Henry T. Oxnard you realize that pugnacious tenacity of purpose is the dominant trait in his character. When you simply meet him his nose and chin cry out this fact at you. His grayish eyes, set well apart In a clear complexion, express the kindliness which Is part of him. Under the aggressive mustache the straight lips are those of a man who can say "no" if need be. The forehead, broad and deep, which meets a somewhat sparse covering of slightly sandy hair, betokens brains of the solid, practical, achieving sort. His round head is well set above good shoulders and a stout,comfortable looking body of medium height. Not a brilliant outward makeup, but keen, wideawake and business-like.^[3]

References