In the early 20th century, the Hotpoint Company became one of the first companies to locate in Ontario, California, beginning its transformation from a purely agricultural town to a sizable Southern California city. Hotpoint, which later merged into General Electric, would remain a cornerstone of the Ontario economy for the next 80 years. The company was founded by Earl Richardson, a self-made electrical engineer who played a major role in the electrification and modernization of the valley, including the transformation of the mule-drawn Euclid Avenue trolley into the an electric streetcar.
The Hotpoint Iron
Earl H. Richardson, a native of Wisconsin, moved to Pomona in 1895 with his wife Mary who suffered from tuberculosis. Soon he was hired by Charles Frankish to manage the Stone Castle power house in San Antonio Canyon. He, Mary, and their daughter Ardis lived at the Stone Castle. To make their lives more comfortable, Richardson began building small household appliances, one of which was a flat iron. The devices were well received by his wife, except that she complained that the iron’s point did not get hot enough, and he worked on that for a bit. Because electricity was a new resource in those days, folks generally used it only to light their homes at night. So Richardson was asked to come up with ways to get folks in town to increase their power consumption during the day. He decided to employ his friend Harry Strunk and the two men began building more of Richardson’s small appliance inventions, which Richardson gave away to the locals. Upon receiving favorable feedback on his appliances, he determined that he could make a pretty good living by manufacturing and selling his own inventions. So 110 years ago, in May 1904, the
Pacific Electric Heating Company incorporated. Richardson soon developed a flat iron using nickel chromium alloy for its heating element which provided even heating throughout the sole plate – even to the iron’s point – and the Hotpoint iron was born. The Hotpoint iron would become the signature appliance of the Hotpoint factory, which grew over the years eventually merging with General Electric. The plant was in operation in Ontario until GE moved its flat iron manufacturing to Singapore in 1982.
City of Ontario Government, Facebook post, July 16, 2014
It is interesting to note that the brand name Hotpoint originated from Richardson’s work to ensure that the heat in early electric irons would be distributed to the front point of the iron.
Stories and legends of Earl Richardson abound in Ontario history, related by historians as well as our grandfather, Joe Sandford. Joe tells some of these in his Living History interviews…
Joe: Mr. Richardson, E.H. Richardson had come out here from the middle west, and his background was electrical engineering. And he was living way up on the heights, at the canyon there, there used to be an old power house—you may be familiar with it—and they had a little girl, a little daughter. And like all children, it was quite a chore for Mrs. Richardson to rock the little cradle, to put the little one to sleep. Mr. E.H. Richardson conceived the idea of using electricity to rock that cradle.
And so it was his privilege to have to do with developing electricity to take over the work that the mules had done with the old mule cars back there, and then later he founded the Hotpoint Electric Heating Company which is now the General Electric. A great man, Margaret knew him well, I knew him well, greatly admired, he came from the Scandinavian countries, long gone, and so forth.
Interviewer: Oh he moved here from…he wasn’t a native born American…?
Joe: Dearest, do you know what community they came from, the Richardsons?
Margaret: (inaudible)
Joe: A very fine, a very strong man…we could always get that….
Margaret: I didn’t think he was a foreigner.
Joe: Ah, his background was Scandinavian. He was a little stubborn, you know what I mean, he was….
…The Hotpoint Electric Heating Company was a splendid company, it grew. And they manufactured not only the irons or the Hotpoint, but they went into different phases, the stoves and what have you, and the heaters and what not.
Margaret’s folks were guinea pigs…and when he [Richardson] would develop a stove they would take one and prove it for him. But that’s history.
Joe Sandford from 1974 Living History Interview conducted by the Upland Public Library
So our Swan great grandparents were beta-testers of some of the original Hotpoint Company products!
Indeed, the Richardsons and the Swans were very close. Richardson was probably a business associate of Henry Swan ‘s bank. Margaret was good friends with Ardys Richardson (the girl rocked in the electric cradle as an infant in the legend) at least through high school. Her name comes up in some of Joe’s stories about how he met Margaret in 1917 and 1918.
Confirming this close relationship between the families is a photo found in the Ontario Model Colony History Room. It shows the Swans, the Richardsons and other acquaintances picnicking in the country, perhaps near the Stone Castle. The photo must have been taken around 1910, judging from the apparent ages of Margaret, Mabel, and Henry (in 1910 Margaret was 15, Mabel 44, and Henry 47).
This is certainly the most relaxed Henry Swan I’ve seen in any photo.
Bridging the Silences 
2 thoughts on “Close Ties with the Richardson Family of Ontario”