George Harper, the superintendent and secretary of the Monterey Canning- Company, of Monterey is an experienced, progressive and thoroughly wide-awake executive. He was born in the Shetland islands, off the coast of Scotland, June 7, 1870, the son of Lawrence and Elizabeth (Ellison) Harper, worthy folks now long deceased.
Having to make his own way in the world rather earlier than most boys, George Harper was trained for the most part in the school of experience. He was reared on a farm and after the manner of the Shetland Islanders, devoted not a little of his time as a boy to fishing. At length he determined to come to the new world and in 1886, at the age of sixteen he migrated to California. Locating in Monterey, he followed farming and various occupations for a number of years, and for sixteen years he took care of a large estate. In 1916 he again engaged in fishing and on abandoning that field, joined Mr. Allen in organizing the Monterey Canning Company. The business has steadily increased, and at times employment has been given to as many as two hundred and fifty people. Their produces are shipped to nearly all parts of the world, and the business is steadily growing. They have one of the most complete plants here and they manufacture a fish meal from the by-products of oil. This is used as a chicken feed, and the wide demand for other food-stuffs for calves, pigs and cows, and for fertilizer, has helped to carry the fame of Monterey around the globe. Mr. Harper was with the Del Monte Hotel, as a young man, and the value of this early association is apparent in all the later work so successfully undertaken by him.
At the age of twenty-one in the city of Monterey, Mr. Harper was married to Miss Alice M. Pate, whose parents, Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Pate, crossed the great plains in 1850, coming from Indiana, and settled near Stockton. Beth are now deceased. Mr. and Mrs. Harper have a daughter, Gladys V., now the wife of M. R. Fluse, office manager Monterey Canning Company. Mr. Harper is a republican, supporting those measures which he believes work for increased business and prosperity throughout the country.
Source: History of Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties, California : cradle of California’s history and romance : dating from the planting of the cross of Christendom upon the shores of Monterey Bay by Fr. Junipero Serra, and those intrepid adventurers who accompanied him, down to the present day. Chicago: S.J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1925.