Background
Rees was born on October 3, 1846, in Staffordshire, England, the son of William Rees and Jane Stanton.
Rees was born on October 3, 1846, in Staffordshire, England, the son of William Rees and Jane Stanton.
He received left school early in order to go to work, and at age 21 he emigrated to America. He died in Los Angeles on October 24, 1914, after an illness of "several months.. attributed to liver trouble."
Rees began work in America as a clerk for the Pennsylvania Railroad in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for seven years before settling in Los Angeles, where he was a bookkeeper for a firm of blacksmiths and wheelwrights. He then entered into business with Robert East. Wirsching: They did general blacksmithing and built wagons "in a large shop on Aliso Street." The firm sustained losses of $15,000 in the floods of 1864, but it rebounded and became successful, moving to larger quarters on Los Angeles Street, where it sold "modern agricultural implements."
He became prosperous by buying unimproved land "remote from the business and residential areas of the city," including 17 acres, at $20 an acre, in an area that later became Brooklyn Heights," where he built his home.
Rees was on both the Los Angeles City Council and the city Board of Public Works in 1891-1892.
While on those bodies, he was able to increase the size of Hollenbeck Park from the original 3.5-acre gift to about 30 acres. "A clever and caustic rhymester, with a flair for the caustic, Mr.
Reese is said to have enlivened numerous council and business meetings with verse about his associates and subjects before the board." He was the author of newspaper articles concerning the 1893 World"s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1909 he joined with others, including Griffith J. Griffith, to work within a Prison Reform League on behalf of a more humane treatment of prisoners, including the abolition of capital punishment.
He was a Republican, a Mason and a member of the Pioneer Society of Southern California.