History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 105

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362

USA > California > Fresno County > History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I > Part 105

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Calwa, which he improved by cultivation and the planting of an orchard and vineyard, but his high hopes of a promising enterprise were soon blasted, for the following year this section of the county was visited with the grasshopper pest and his orchard and vineyard were both ruined. With the characteristic spirit of the pioneer he was undaunted and determined to succeed as a viti- culturist, so in company with his brother, Samuel R., he purchased 160 acres of raw land at Malaga, which they improved. At first they planted a portion of the land to grapes and later began raising alfalfa.

The old adage, "If at first you don't succeed try, try again," was heeded by Mr. La Rue and his second venture in viticulture was a splendid success and he believes in using the latest methods in the cultivation of his land. By close attention to details and excellent business management he has be- come one of the most successful raisin growers in the valley.

In 1916, H. W. La Rue was united in marriage with Emma Hall. a native of Missouri. Fraternally, Mr. La Rue is a member of the Knights of Pythias, in which circle he is very popular and has passed through all of the chairs of the lodge.

HUGH KNEPPER .- A self-made man who has been privileged to be- come one of the real builders of Fresno County and has been rewarded with a large measure of prosperity, is Hugh Knepper, now living retired at 357 Glenn Avenue. Fresno. He was born in Somerset County, Pa., on January 16, 1837, one of a family of fifteen children, only three of whom are now living. He comes from a pioneer Dutch family, his ancestors having been pioneer settlers in Pennsylvania. While he was still a young man, the family moved to Missouri.

In 1853 he crossed the great plains with a small party in three wagons, and landed at Hangtown ; and later he mined at Forbestown, in Butte County. In 1861, however, stirred by the call of the Union, he enlisted at San Fran- cisco with the Second California Cavalry, and so long as his services were needed he did faithful and expert scout and patrol duty in both California and Arizona. He passed through Fresno County in 1863, and the same year was sent to Utah for patrol duty there: and at Camp Douglass, Salt Lake, he was mustered out in 1864.

Free again to pursue the avocations of a peaceful life, Mr. Knepper started back to his home in Missouri by the overland route, driving a team of horses. He was exposed to terrible storms, being three times snowed in, and altogether he suffered many privations. For eight years he farmed in Mis- souri, and for another eight years he followed agriculture in Nebraska.

In November, 1881, Mr. Knepper arrived in Fresno County, to remain for the rest of his life. He bought ten acres east of the town on Tulare Street, and greatly improved the property ; and when, after residing there for four years, he sold out, he located in the foothills on 160 acres in Section 11. Township 12, Range 23. This was along the headwaters of Fancher Creek, and was so favorably situated that he kept adding to his holdings until he owned 1.300 acres,-800 in Watts Valley and 550 on the headwaters of Fancher Creek. There Mr. Knepper lived for thirty years, engaged in stock-raising, with cattle, horses and mules, steadily increasing his reputation as a scientific and progressive farmer. During these years he owned the Copper King Mine, at the head of Dog Creek, which he sold to an English syndicate. On his mountain ranch he had six acres of apple trees, and these produced an average of seven tons of fruit a year. He had one lemon tree which pro- duced 200 dozen of lemons yearly, and one season it yielded as many as 220 dozen. He was particularly able in the cultivation of large fruit, and fre- quently made displays in Fresno that attracted wide attention. In his latter days Mr. Knepper owned a vineyard of forty acres near Fowler, and this he rented for a number of years, finally selling it for $15.000, in 1917. He has parted with all his ranch acreage, and now lives retired.

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Mr. Knepper married Emily Short, a native of Ohio, a widow and the mother of Frank and John W. Short, of Fresno; and of this fortunate union one son was born-Charles Knepper, who died in 1916. Mrs. Knepper died nine years previously. She was a noble woman active in many charities.

Mr. Knepper is a charter member of Atlanta Post, No. 92., of the G. A. R. of Fresno, and also a charter member of the First Methodist Church of that city, with which organization he has always been identified in good works and every movement for the improvement of public morals and the elevation of good citizenship. He has been a strong and effective advocate of prohibition, and the happiest birthday he ever celebrated was his eighty-second, in 1919, when the constitutional amendment became an assured fact through the ratifi- cation of the prohibition clause. With his devoted wife he conducted a Methodist Sunday School for twenty years at the foot of the hill ranch; and he was a school trustee for many years in the Hawkins school district. All in all, Mr. Knepper has had an enviable career, highly profitable both to himself and to many others, and he will be long and agreeably remembered as a pioneer of the sterling order. (Since the above was written, Mr. Knepper passed away at the home of his sister, 357 Glenn Avenue, on March 26, 1919.)

JOHN FELIX HILL .- A ranchman who, by up-to-date methods, steady and hard labor, has made a success of his later agricultural undertaking, is Tohn Felix Hill, of the Sanger district. He was born in Bosque County. Texas, March 24, 1854, a son of Harrison Hill, a soldier who died while serving in the Civil War, and of Mattie Moss Hill, who like her husband was a native of Arkansas. They had six sons and one daughter: Warren, who died at Bakersfield, was a former constable of Sanger and had had a bout with the famous Sontag and Evans gang during their depredations in this county ; William D., of Fresno; John Felix; Thomas, of Phoenix, Ariz., formerly a hotelkeeper at Dinuba: Mrs. Mandeville Williams, who went to Phoenix in 1872; Preston, of Phoenix: Harrison, a miner in Nevada. A second marriage united Mrs. Hill with Samuel Stroud, father of J. A. Stroud. and by that union she had three children: Mattie Keeler, of San Diego: Laura, Mrs. George Dameron, of Selma ; and Ira, a cattle-buyer of Fresno.

John Felix Hill came to California with his step-father and the family, reaching the Sample ranch at Academy, on October 17. 1869, and there in the Dry Creek district he went to school for a short time, having for his teacher the late J. D. Collins. When he began to work for others he took up the sheep-shearing business and the driving of ox teams, putting in ten years on the old Armstrong ranch. The days were weary enough and the labor was hard, and the modern citizen will never know the price paid by our forefathers that we might enjoy the more comfortable things of an advanced civilization. His first business venture was a partnership with W. D. Hill, when they carried on a hog-raising business at King's River ; after two years they divided their interests and John began raising grain in the vicinity of what is now Sanger. This he continued till he went broke and he next went into the dairy business, about 1900, and delivered milk to customers in Sanger until 1906. He profited by all that could be learned about the enter- prise, but he was not a man to rest there. He made his own experiments, installed the latest and best of apparatus, devised several things which seemed to him superior to what one could buy, and soon had a dairy of which one might well be proud, since there was not only every convenience, but all the operations were carried on in the most practical, as well as the most rational and safe way. Mr. Hill has always believed that one could not afford to spare either pains or expense to get the very best results in the production and the handling of such an important commodity as milk, and it is pleasant to know that his many patrons appreciated all he sought to do for them.

Receiving an offer from W. W. Phillips to improve some eighty acres of land for him, he undertook the contract, the agreement being that he was to be given half of the vineyard in return after leveling, irrigating and work-

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ing it three years. This fine stretch of land, including forty very choice acres, and one of the most valuable in the section, he at present owns, and where he has made all improvements and makes his home. Mr. Hill also has twenty acres of land set out to orange trees; and in addition he holds 175 acres not yet improved and only awaiting the most favorable time and conditions to be made equal to the best in a high state of culture.

On September 20, 1877, Mr. Hill was united in marriage with Alice N. Fink, oldest daughter of Mrs. Peter W. Fink, the oldest living woman settler on the Upper Kings River, whose sketch is given on another page of this work. The following children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Hill: William P., a molder by trade, residing in Oakland, who married Althea Crosswaith and has three children; John Felix, Jr., who married Mrs. Edith Markle, and who is constable at Sanger; Allen H., ranching at Round Mountain, married Nellie Giffen and has one daughter; and Eliza May, who is Mrs. Herman Hanke of Sanger and has a son.

Mr. Hill has worked on nearly every irrigation ditch in this part of Fresno County ; has built many miles of roads; and there are many tracts of land he has leveled, plowed, planted and cared for on contract, in fact the best money he has made since he quit grain-farming was in this kind of work, until he made a success of his own fruit and grape-growing. He has helped to organize schools and served as a trustee for years. A Democrat in national politics, Mr. Hill has always placed patriotism and devotion to local interests above party matters, and is ready at all times to do his full duty as a loyal citizen.

ALEXANDER TAYLOR .- A venerable pioneer in the great San Joa- quin Valley who has long been a successful grain-grower, ranking among the best farmers in the State, is Alexander Taylor, who lives ten miles northwest of Lanare and two miles northwest of Wheatville, where he is ably assisted by his youngest son, who lives with him. In addition to the large holdings of the subject, they farm two sections of rented land ; and being scientific, prac- tical farmers, competent machinists and able business men, they enjoy their full share of prosperity.

Mr. Taylor was born in Nova Scotia on February 15, 1839, the son of John Taylor, who was also born in Nova Scotia where he was married to Sophia McCoy, a native of the same district. Grandfather Taylor was a sailor who came from Scotland to Nova Scotia when a young man, while Grandfather (Alexander) McCoy was born in the highlands of Scotland. He was called the "faithful Alex," as he would act as a guide for the early settlers of Nova Scotia, and especially the early Presbyterian missionaries in their hard and dangerous work there.

John Taylor died when Alexander was a boy, leaving to his widow, be- sides the enviable reputation of an industrious, honest farmer, five children : William, Ann. Alexander, Thomas Trotter, and Hannah Bell. The mother died in Nova Scotia when she was seventy years old, bequeathing a blessed memory, and our subject is the only one of the five children now living. He was brought up in Nova Scotia, and when seventeen went to learn the black- smith trade at South River, Antigonish, N. S., where he served the full four years' apprenticeship. From his tenth year he had lived with an uncle, Mag- nus Taylor at Pictou, in Pictou County, N. S., and there he had worked on a farm, enjoying but limited advantages of schooling. Having learned the trade of blacksmith and horseshoer, he started out as a journeyman.

His older brother, William, was then located in Marin County, and he wrote to Alexander to come out to the Pacific Coast. So he bade good-bye to his mother and home, took the train to New York City, and from there the steamship to Aspinwall, and crossed the Panama Railway to Panama, from which port he proceeded by steamship to San Francisco, where he landed in May, 1862. He then went on to Marin County and there joined his brother William.

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For two years Mr. Taylor worked at teaming, drawing wood from Mt. Tamalpais in the service of an employer, and then for two or three years he ran a team of his own. After that he accepted a post at the Schaeffer saw mill in Marin County ; then he went to Stockton ; and next he rented land at Plains- burg, in Merced County, continuing there for three years.

In the year of the Philadelphia Centennial, Mr. Taylor came to Hanford and pioneered in Kings County. He bought a farm three miles east of Han- ford and improved it ; and while there he was married to Miss Fannie Smith, a native of Missouri. She died in 1912, the beloved mother of four children : John Ernest; Arthur, who died when he was ten years old; Chalmers Alex- ander, who died of influenza in December, 1918; and Orvie Ruskin. The two last-named helped to run the 160 acres owned by Mr. Taylor and planted to grain, and the 320 acres on the plains, twelve miles to the southwest. Chal- mers was single, but Orvie Ruskin married Levira Haskell of Fresno, by whom he has had one child, Orvie Earl. All reside with Mr. Taylor. Their farm and home are seven miles southeast of Helm and about four miles west of Burrel.

Mr. Taylor has continued in grain-farming and is one of the really success- ful grain-farmers of Kings and Fresno counties. He has a Best combined har- vester and thresher, and a large Best tractor. They plow, harrow, seed, har- vest and thresh by means of these wonderful machines, and lead the way, in their advanced methods, for others. As a pioneer of Kings County, he farmed in the vicinity of Hanford when that country was a part of Tulare. County, and he cut and threshed grain where Hanford now stands, and before that town was started.

Although a Republican in national politics, Mr. Taylor is a supporter of President Wilson. He is a member of the Presbyterian Church at Hanford, and is a strong advocate of temperance, and he was superintendent of a Sun- day School held in the Eureka schoolhouse at Hanford. He served in that capacity for three years, and also helped create an interest in the big camp- meeting held there in 1876. He assisted in the building of the imposing church structure at Hanford. Mr. Taylor finds himself at eighty, hale, hearty and happy. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor and her mother were all admirers of John Rus- kin, the great English author, and Mr. Taylor's youngest son was named after that celebrity. In his home library may be found many rare and valuable books by English and American authors, reflecting the literary taste of the family circle.

MATHIAS ASMUSSEN .- A most estimable and highly-respected pioneer, who for years has given his best energy and unabated enthusiasm to the upbuilding of Fresno County, is Mathias' Asmussen, one of the oldest settlers of Rolinda. He came to California in 1882, and a year later was for- tunate in beginning to lay the foundation of his prosperity in this most fay- ored portion of Central California. He was born at Christiansfeld, near Hadersleben, Schleswig, Denmark, on November 27, 1854, the son of Jens Asmussen, a farmer there, owner of the same farm that his father before him had owned. He had married Annie Marie Johansen, and they both died there, the mother passing away in 1912 at the age of eighty-nine, and the father in 1898 at the age of seventy-two. They had four children, and Mathias was the third oldest.

Mathias was brought up on a farm, attended the local public schools, and when seventeen years of age concluded to come to the United States. He spent a year at St. Louis, and then moved farther west to Cedar Falls, Black Hawk County, Iowa, where he worked on farms and continued his schooling for a winter, studying English. In 1881 he made his first trip back to Den- mark, to see his parents and friends ; and after such a good time there as one would expect who knows Danish life, he returned to Iowa in 1882, and came to San Francisco, where he worked on the street-car line, acting as both driver and conductor on the South San Francisco line from Fourth 43

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and Townsend Streets. It was one of the old horse-car lines. After that he came on to Salinas for the summer, and then, in the fall of 1883, to Fresno.

Mr. Asmussen had worked for Alexander Smith in Salinas Valley and drove a team for him to Fresno County, when Mr. Smith moved from Salinas to Fresno; and he worked for him for three years on a farm that is now the American Colony. Then he bought eighty acres of land east of Fowler, at what was known as Clifton, that is now Del Rey, and after running the same for two years, sold it at a profit. Then he came to Houghton district, to his present place, now called Rolinda, before the railroad was put through or there was a station by that name; and in 1888 he began with his original purchase of forty acres here. It was raw land, but he leveled and checked it and planted it to alfalfa and vines, setting out muscats. He soon found, however, that they were not good bearers; so later he set out Thompson seedless, for which he finds the soil well adapted, so that he has good crops. He also engaged in dairying, and later bought twenty acres two miles west of, and twenty acres on the corner of his place, on Coalinga Avenue.

He improved these to alfalfa and vines, and still later bought forty acres half a mile north of Rolinda. After that he disposed of the three pieces at various times at a good profit. In March, 1919, he bought eighty acres of raw land on McKinley and Coalinga Avenues, which he intends to develop in alfalfa and vines. He retains the old forty-acre place where he had made splendid improvements, and has a fine vineyard and good alfalfa. Mr. As- mussen was one of the organizers of the Danish Creamery Association, and is still interested in it. He also belongs to the California Associated Raisin Company, and was in all the raisin associations from the start.

Mr. Asmussen was married at Rolinda to Miss Meta Enemark, a native of Schleswig and a member of an old Danish family : and two children have added to the life and joy of the Asmussen home. They are Annie and Arthur, and both live at home. The family attends the Lutheran Church. Mr. Asmus- sen follows the lead of the Republican party in matters of national politics. In 1892 he made his second trip to Denmark, and was more than compen- sated in finding his mother still living.

B. D. MAXSON .- An honest, thoroughly reliable, kind-hearted and public-spirited gentleman, who has the distinction of having been one of the rig-builders in the Coalinga field ever since the start of the oil-development there in 1896, is B. D. Maxson, who first came to Fresno in the great boom year of 1887. He was born in Richburg. Allegany County, N. Y., on Sep- tember 18, 1847, the son of David Maxson, who was born in Rhode Island of Scotch descent. He was a farmer in Allegany County, who worked hard, accomplished much, but he died soon after oil was discovered on his farm, about 1873 or 1874. He had married Jane Coon, also a native of that county, although she came of old New England ancestry ; and she died in New York. Both were members of the Seventh Day Baptist Church. They had seven children, three of whom are still living; and the subject of our story was the fifth eldest in the order of birth. A brother of B. D. Maxson, Cassius, was in the One Hundred Sixtieth New York Regiment serving in the Civil War, and was killed in the fighting before Petersburg.

B. D. Maxson was brought up on a farm in New York, and there attended the common and the Alfred high schools. When twenty-one he began to work at the carpenter's trade, and for some years worked as a contractor and builder. This led him naturally into the enterprise of rig-building in the Bradford oil field in Pennsylvania, and later he built rigs in Allegany County, so that when their old farm was leased for oil, he built the first rigs erected there.

In the late eighties he came to Fresno, drawn here by the residence at the corner of N and Mariposa Streets of his brother, Dr. Willis H. Maxson, who had arrived in 1885 and had opened a sanitarium. He worked here as a contracting carpenter and builder, helped put up the Adventist Church

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and many of the most substantial and ornate of the early buildings, and thus contributed to laying the foundations of the great city that was to be. About 1889 he bought his present place of twenty acres on California Avenue, three miles west of Fresno, and two years later moved onto it. He im -. mediately improved it with a muscat vineyard; and when he decided to live here, he pulled up some of the vines, built a residence and planted orna- mental trees. One of the fine features of the place that his wisdom and taste brought into existence at that time was a long, beautiful fig-arbor, or fig drive, of white Adriatic figs.

In 1896, at the beginning of the oil development at Coalinga, he went there and constructed rigs for the Home, the Phoenix, the Crescent, the Coalinga & Mohawk and other oil companies; and having successfully fin- ished the first work there, he proceeded to Bakersfield and to Kern River, where he made the rigs for the Independent and other oil companies. He continued this difficult, and more or less pioneer work. all along the Coast, and put up rigs for test wells in Monterey County, as well as in Contra Costa County, near Mt. Diablo. He put up rigs for two test wells near Herndon, and one near Lane's Bridge, as well as a rig at Silver Creek, north of Mendota. As one result of this work for oil companies, Mr. Maxson has from time to time become interested in oil-well projects, but his investments have never brought him the returns hoped for, or that they ought to have yielded.

It is as a vineyardist that Mr. Maxson has had his greatest success in California ; for he has improved several vineyards in Fowler and West Park, selling them at a fair and just profit. He was a member of the California Fig Growers Association from its start, and of all the raisin associations, and is now a member of the California Associated Raisin Company.

While in Allegany County, N. Y., Mr. Maxson was married to Miss Vina Mix, a native of that section, by whom he has had three children: Bertrand resides in Fresno and is a carpenter: Genevieve, educated at the Fresno High School and the Pacific Union College at St. Helena, is now at home ; and Louise, also a graduate of the Fresno High and the Pacific Union Col- lege, is teaching school in Kings County. Mr. Maxson used to be a member of the Seventh Day Baptist Church at Richburg, but was transferred as a member to the Church at Riverside, Cal. Wherever Mr. and Mrs. Maxson and their attractive family are known, there they have friends, the truest evidence of their value as citizens in the community, the county, and the great nation whose welfare they have so much at heart.

LEE A. BLASINGAME .- The history of the pioneers of California, who laid the foundations of our social conditions and contributed to what they themselves could not enter into and enjoy, is the history of men who tried first one thing and then another, sometimes shifting through necessity, and sometimes changing because they did not at first find that which was best suited to them; and their history is often repeated in the lives of their de- scendants, who, in making their destiny a part of the common weal, have had to experiment in order to discover in which field they could be most useful and attain the most of real success.

This is well illustrated in the life-story of Lee A. Blasingame, for some time one of the well-known young financiers here, but more recently active, with exceptional rewards for his labors, in various departments of agriculture. As a native son, he was born on Big Dry Creek in Fresno County, and at Academy he attended the public school. Ambitious for higher learning, the young man entered the Methodist College at Santa Rosa, where he continued his studies over two years. Still desiring a more definitely practical training, he took a course at Heald's Business College in San Francisco, and when he had accomplished all that was there expected of him, he pushed out into the business world.

He began his business experience in Fresno, where he became a book- keeper for the First National Bank; and proving his fitness thoroughly, he

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was made cashier. That responsible post he held for five years, drawing much patronage to the bank which has so long been rated as one of the best bul- warks of Central California, and himself making many warm personal friends ; . and only when he felt the call to an altogether new field, did he resign from an activity always congenial to him.

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History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 105

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858- Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company Number of Pages: 1362

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362