History of Fresno County, Vol. 5. Paul E. Vandor

      JOSEPH P. BERNHARD.

      The accomplishments of the legal profession in California are exemplified in the person of Joseph P. Bernhard, the well-known attorney of Fresno. A native son, he was born in Mariposa County on November 19, 1873, the son of George Bernhard, one of the Argonauts who reached California in 1849 by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and who having come to seek the elusive gold so recently discovered, immediately began mining and the next year was among the first prospectors and miners in Mariposa County. He continued to dig gold there for many years and experienced both the successes and the failures encountered by thousands of others. When the town of Fresno was started on the new line of the Southern Pacific Railroad running through the valley, however, Mr. Bernhard, in 1874, located there and engaged in mercantile pursuits; and these he followed until his death in 1888, eight years after his wife, Barbara, also a Forty-niner, had preceded him to the other world. She was the mother of seven children, five of whom are still living, the subject of our sketch being the next to the youngest.

      Coming to Fresno with his parents the first year of his existence, Joseph Bernhard grew up in the town, which gradually assumed the proportions and character of a city; and there, in its well-conducted schools he received the foundation of his education. On graduating from the Fresno High School in 1892, he entered Leland Stanford, Jr., University, from which he was graduated in 1896, with the degree of A. B. He then matriculated at the New York Law School, and in 1898 was graduated with honors (cum laude), receiving the degree of LL.B. He was admitted to the bar of California in the same year, after which he spent two years in San Francisco as associate editor of Rose's U. S. Notes.

      In 1900 Mr. Bernhard opened, a law office in his home city, Fresno, where his natural and developed ability, his conscientiousness, and his conservative counsel have brought him well-merited success and won for him a large clientele among the city's best citizens. He is the attorney for the Bank of Italy, as well as a member of their local advisory board. Always an ardent Republican, he was accorded the chairmanship of the Republican County Central Committee in 1907 and again in 1911.

      Mr. Bernhard is a member of the college fraternity Chi Psi, at Stanford, and of the Sunnyside Country Club of Fresno. A prominent Mason, he is a Knight Templar and Shriner, and is chairman of the Committee on Appeals of the Grand Lodge of California, and an honorary thirty-third of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

      W. W. COATES.

      What a man can do when he is really up against it and must either hustle or be trodden under foot by the unfeeling world, is well shown in the interesting story of Deputy Sheriff Coates' career, from precarious boyhood to his present state of assured success. On the fourteenth of August, in the historic Centennial year, he was born near Selma, Fresno County, the son of James B. Coates, who settled here in 1850, when he first came to California by way of the Isthmus, and who having taken up farming at that early date, was always afterward regarded as one of the fir.st settlers of Fresno County. In the beginning, he pitched -his tent near Selma with W. J. Berry. Afterwards he went to Alaska with Clarence Berry, the "Klondike King," and together they shared both risks and results. His wife was Luzeta Fanning before her marriage. She accepted pot-luck with her husband in his rough, pioneer life, and passed away in 1882, one of the favored early pioneer women of the Golden State. James B. Coates is still living in Selma, and both fondly and sadly looks back to "the good old days" that will never come again.

      The next to the youngest in the family, W. W. Coates was but six years old when his mother died. For a while he went to the public school, but he was early thrown on his own resources, and from that time has had to make his own way. He has done so in a manner creditable to himself, and is truly a self-made man. He soon engaged in business in Fresno, and for eleven years he and his establishment were pleasantly familiar to the people of the town and vicinity. In 1912 he was appointed a deputy sheriff under W. S. McSwain. He was reappointed by Thorwaldson, and again by Sheriff Jones, and is now the oldest deputy in office.

      In 1889 Mr. Coates was married to a most attractive lady, Miss Rose Harman, and three children — Jesse, Evalyn and Wesley — have come to bless their home. In 1917 Mr. Coates purchased a beautiful five-acre tract located on Chance Avenue in East Fresno, near the fairgrounds, where he resides with his family. Here he finds diversion from his official duties in caring for and growing flowers, berries and vegetables, as well as fancy poultry; and here he and his estimable wife entertain their large circle of friends. Mr. Coates belongs to the Eagles. The family attend the Baptist Church.