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 116

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 116

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Sewall Gower was a mere child when he came to Iowa. He was one of the early graduates of Knox College, in Illinois. While still in Iowa he was married to Miss Cornelia E. De Voe, a native of Auburn, N. Y., and a mem- ber of an old New York State family, among whom was Thomas Farrington

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De Voe, the author. In 1860 he and his young wife started with a mule team to cross the great plains from Iowa City. They stopped for a while at Gold Hill, Nevada Territory, and there the subject of our sketch was born. During the delay, Sewall Gower prospected, and it was he who brought in the first gold ever found at Gold Hill. That fall he moved on to California and pulled rein at Stockton, where he taught school for two years, settling on a farm, which he later bought, in the San Joaquin Valley. He had been admitted to the bar at Iowa City, but had never practiced the legal profession.

From Stockton Mr. and Mrs. Sewall Gower moved to Santa Cruz, and there they passed the last ten years of their lives. They had four children, and Edwin, of whom we write, was the eldest. Mary became the wife of A. C. Blayney, the rancher living south of Fowler, and she died and left three children. Rosamond is the wife of Jeremiah Turner, now retired and living at Santa Cruz. Bordell, who married Cyrus Bolly, resides at Oakland.

Edwin Gower grew up at Stockton until his fourteenth year, when he went back to Cedar County, Iowa, where he remained until he was nineteen. He grew up on farms, and his father gave him the older Gower homestead with Gower's Ferry. In his nineteenth year he returned to Stockton, but after two more years in California he went back again to Cedar County. There he married his sweetheart, Miss Cora C. Perkins, and for a couple of years thereafter stayed in the vicinity of her home. Then he sold the Gower ranch and once more came West to Stockton. In 1887 he moved south to Fresno County and bought his place of 160 acres, and since that time much of his increasing prosperity has been coincidental with the development of the county in which he has become such an active and important leader.

Mr. Gower has specialized in olives, walnuts, almonds, nectarines, and Zante Corinth grapes, having eight acres of the latter. He got his first cut- tings from the United States Government, and now (1919) he has the largest producing Zante Corinth grape (commonly called the Zante currant) vine- yard in Fresno County. Since taking up this choice edible from the Ionian island of Zante, he has cooperated with the Government and has been instru- mental in introducing many novelties such as pistachio nuts from Turkey, queen olives, fifteen varieties of walnuts, and twenty different varieties of grapes. Among these are the Marville de Malaga, probably the best shipping grapes, and heavy producers of good quality ; of these he has ten acres of four-year-old vines. Of the queen olive (Sevillians, as they are ordinarily known) he has in bearing ten acres of trees thirty years old. He has dis- covered and grown the Gower Nectarine, one of the earliest shipping varieties. In order to test out a theory, Mr. Gower began girdling some of his grape- vines. This has resulted in a better and earlier grade of fruit. His example has been followed by many others, even by the United States Government experts.

For some years Mr. Gower was a partner with George C. Roeding, the president and manager of the Fancher Creek Nurseries in Fresno, whose in- teresting life-review is elsewhere printed in this volume under the title of Roeding & Gower, the pioneer olive-packing firm. Mr. Gower is now the owner and proprietor of the "Bois d'Arc" nursery, which is on a part of his 160-acre farm and includes ten acres of his ranch. In his walnut culture, Mr. Gower has specialized in Franquettes, which he introduced into Fresno County. He was the first to encourage the ranchers of the San Joaquin Valley to plant the seed of the California black walnuts, and to graft the Franquettes on their stocks.

In national politics Mr. Gower is a consistent Democrat, and has been an active member of the Democratic Central Committee. He has cast parti- sanship to the winds, however, in deciding local civic questions. Especially active in promoting popular education, he is a trustee of the high school board at Fowler, helped to organize the school, and has served in its interests con- tinuously since the establishment of that well-conducted institution. He now

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proposes a new high school building, to cost $150,000. He belongs to the Magnolia Grammar School district, and has been a member of the board for the past twenty-five years.

Mr. and Mrs. Gower are the parents of nine children. Cornelia E., now deceased, married Frank F. Freman and left a son, Giles Freman : Emma, un- married, resides at Oakland; Violet married Clark Hastie, a prosperous rancher who lives at Fowler ; Rosamond is the wife of William Coleburg, who is a river transportation man at Stockton: Millicent is the wife of John H. Graff : Sewall is a druggist, who has just returned from the army, and who married Miss Ruth James, of Fowler, and resides at that place ; Edwin, Jr., owns an adjoining ranch of 160 acres and married Grace Raphendahl, of Fowler : Gertrude lives at Oakland ; and Cora N. is also in that city, where she is head nurse at the Merritt Hospital.

Mr. Gower is powerful physically. Good-natured, generous-hearted, and gifted with an extensive knowledge of horticulture and the nursery, he is at all times interesting as a conversationalist. He is a member and Past Noble Grand of the Odd Fellows Lodge at Fowler, and member of the Grand Lodge.

LAWRENCE VOUGHT .- California, in the earlier days, appealed most to the young men, those who were not afraid of hardships nor unwilling to work, and these have made the State what it is today. Among those who have thus stamped themselves a part of this great commonwealth, is Lawrence Vought, who, though encountering hardships, has courageously overcome them, and today he enjoys the fruits of his labor.

Mr. Vought was born in Decatur, Van Buren County, Mich., June 5, 1865. His father, Samuel, was born in Michigan, and was a farmer. During the Civil War he served his country in a Michigan Regiment, having six brothers also in the war, all but one of whom returned. He died in Michigan at the age of sixty-five years. His mother was Phoebe Goble, born in Indiana. Her family was from Kentucky. There were five children, three girls and two boys, of whom Lawrence was the oldest. The mother died in Michigan.

Mr. Vought was reared on a farm, and early laid the foundation for that industry and knowledge which have enabled him to achieve the success he has gained. He received his education in the public schools, assisting his father on the farm until the spring of 1888, when he came to the Coast, going first to Washington, and later in the same year to Visalia, Cal., where he engaged in farm work for two years. In 1890 he came to Fresno. This was comparatively a small place in that day. He went to work and saved his money, which enabled him to lease some land on Fish Slough, where he fol- lowed farming for twelve years. But prices were low when he got a crop. and this, with the dry years and the floods, made it impossible to get ahead,. so at the end of this time he quit there, coming out about even. He then made a trip to Michigan but returned to California and was employed as a driver for a harvester that fall.

In 1903. Mr. Vought bought forty-five acres on Mckinley and Rolinda Avenues, which he improved and planted to alfalfa, remaining there until 1907, when he sold to Mr. Houghton. He then purchased his present place of sixty acres on Rolinda Boulevard, Mckinley and Belmont, ten and a half miles west of Fresno. He set out twenty acres to wine grapes and the balance he sowed to alfalfa. The grapes were a failure, so he dug them all up, putting the whole ranch in alfalfa. He then engaged in dairying, and now has twenty- five of the finest Holstein milkers in that region; there is a sanitary dairy barn and the milkhouse has a cooling arrangement : he also has two pumping plants with two twelve-horsepower engines with four- and six-inch pumps.

In September, 1907, Mr. Vought was married in Hanford, Cal., to Mrs. Renvig (Bryan) Glass, who was born in Florida. She was the daughter of H. P. and Rebecca (Myers) Bryan. She was orphaned at six years of age, and there were six brothers and sisters besides herself. She came to California with two brothers and three sisters, having been sent for by her grandparents,

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Mr. and Mrs. Darius Myers, and lived at Malaga, where she was reared and educated. She was married first to Jeff Glass, a blacksmith who died in Ma- dera. To this union there were two children, Francis H. and Ione R. Mr. and Mrs. Vought are the parents of one child, Samuel.

In politics Mr. Vought is a Republican, and takes great interest in public affairs. He is a member of the San Joaquin Valley Milk Producers Associa- tion, and is a stockholder in the Danish Creamery. He is one of the old- timers in this section, and he and his wife are well known for their liberality and kindness.

DUNCAN WALLACE, A.B., B.D., A.M .- What California owes to the scholarly and conscientious members of the clerical profession who have helped evolve the crude commonwealth into the great Golden State, is well illustrated in the life and work of the Reverend Duncan Wallace, who came to California nearly two decades ago and has since then shown himself to be, in his interest in varied human affairs. and in his sensible enjoyment of the present life, both a man of and above the world. He was born in Six Mile, Bibb County, Ala., on January 20, 1868. the son of John Lee Wallace, a native of the highlands of Scotland. His grandfather, Duncan Wallace, brought his family to Gallatin, Tenn., when John Lee was eight years old; and there he busied himself as a farmer. Later, the family located on Cahaba River, in Bibb County : and there, prominent as a planter, the senior Wallace lived and died, mourned especially by the members of the Presbyterian com- munion, to which he belonged. John Lee Wallace served in the Civil War in the Sixth Alabama Cavalry, being a sergeant under General Bedford Forrest; and he was afterwards a farmer and a planter, making a specialty of cotton, and raising grain and stock. He married Mary Elizabeth Pratt, who had been born in that vicinity, and the daughter of Hopkins Pratt, a native of Georgia who was later a planter in Alabama. Both Mr. and Mrs. Wallace are now dead. He was twice married. By the first marriage. he had one son: and by the second, two daughters and four sons, all of whom are still living.

Duncan Wallace was the oldest child of the second union, and was edu- cated at the public schools, and at Six Mile Academy, whose course he com- pleted in 1888. He then entered Cumberland University, from which he was graduated in 1892 with the degree of A. B. From the undergraduate depart- ment he went into the theological at Cumberland, and at Lebanon, Tenn., in 1894, was graduated with the degree of B. D. He then entered the Union Theological Seminary in New York where he remained for a year, and from which he was graduated in 1895. After that he took a postgraduate course, first in Columbia University and then in the University of the City of New York, and he received from the latter institution the coveted degree of A. M.

By 1888, Mr. Wallace had joined the Alabama Presbytery and was re- ceived as a candidate for the ministry ; and in 1892 he was licensed to preach. In August, 1895, he was ordained at Oak Grove, Ala., and then he came di- rectly north to Walla Walla, Wash., as a pastor of the First Presbyterian Church there. He continued in that field five years and a month; and having a desire to come to California, he accepted a call to Fresno and resigned his Washington pastorate. On October 1, 1900, therefore, the Reverend Wallace became pastor of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church at the corner of N and Tulare Streets, at that time housed in a small frame building. In 1905 the congregation built the large brick church on the same location at a cost of $18,000.

After a most successful pastorate of fourteen years, the Reverend Wal- lace resigned and accepted a call to become the pastor of the Belmont Avenue Presbyterian Church, but at the end of two years and three months he re- signed to take the pastorate, in 1917, of the United Presbyterian Church in the Barstow Colony, where his ministrations met, under God's blessing, with the same satisfactory results.

Gemme Montgomery y Montyoming

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Meantime, Mr. Wallace had become interested in both viticulture and horticulture, and for the purpose of experimenting, he bought ten acres on Tulare Avenue, east of Fresno. Soon after the introduction of the street- car to that neighborhood increased his land-values, and he also found it too small; so he sold the holding at a good profit, and then bought his present ranch of eighty acres on McKinley Avenue, twelve miles northwest of Fresno. He releveled it, improved the ranch with a residence and other buildings, set out thirty acres of Thompson seedless grapes, and planted the rest to alfalfa and grain. As a ranchman interested in the development of Central Cali- fornia's resources and industries, Mr. Wallace is a member of the California Associated Raisin Company and of the California Alfalfa Growers Association.

In October, 1900, the Reverend Wallace was married at Portland, Ore., to Miss Eva Westfall, a native of Echo, Ore., and the daughter of a well- known Oregon pioneer. Her grandfather was also a pioneer in Oregon. Five children blessed the union, all of whom are at home: Westfall, Duncan, Nor- man, and the twins, Hugh and Beryl.

When active in the work of the ministry, Reverend Wallace was Moder- ator of the Presbytery and for five years the Presbytery's Stated Clerk, an office from which he eventually resigned, but not before he saw the San Joa- quin Valley Presbytery grow from twelve to sixty-five members. He was made a Mason in Walla Walla Lodge No. 7. F. & A. M., and he is now a mem- ber of the Las Palmas Lodge No. 247, F. & A. M., Fresno. As a sportsman, Mr. Wallace is fond of both hunting and fishing. He has killed many deer and even brown bear (in Granite Canyon) together with four other Coast bears, and when he takes his rod and reel he is fairly sure of a catch.

LITCHFIELD Y. MONTGOMERY .- A rancher who has been very successful in breeding full-blooded cattle and hogs, coming to own a couple of valuable farm properties, and yet a citizen who has found time to serve his fellow men in the responsible office of supervisor, is Litchfield Y. Mont- gomery, who resides in the Alta Vista restricted district in the city of Fresno, and is also the proprietor of 240 acres two and a half miles from Riverdale and a forty-acre fruit ranch near Hanford. He was born eleven miles west of Maryville, Blount County, Tenn., on May 17, 1857, the son of a farmer who owned 444 acres and followed general farming. It is said that his .paternal grandfather, W. G. Montgomery, built the first brick house in Blount County -a pioneer farmer of Irish-Presbyterian stock. Litchfield's mother had been Mary Jane Burton before her marriage, born in Virginia, and when a babe she was taken to Tennessee by her parents. The parents of both Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery, as well as his grandparents, died in Tennessee.

Eleven children made up the family, and eight are still living, three having died in childhood. Of the eight, four are in California. Litchfield, of this review; John, a stockman and a farmer near Hanford; Margaret, the wife of J. W. Goodnight, a carpenter and a rancher who resides in Fresno; and Elbert R., a rancher near Hanford. Of the other four, Samuel C., who was the oldest, is a rancher in the northeastern part of Texas ; while William G., a clothing salesman, resides at Knoxville, Tenn .; Miss Elizabeth M. Montgomery lives at Greenback, Tenn .; and George W. is a farmer on the old Montgomery place. The latter's son and a grandson reside on a part of the place that his Grandfather Montgomery entered from the government, making five generations of Montgomerys on the same land since the title was held by Uncle Sam.

Litchfield grew up on his father's farm, attended the schools in Eastern Tennessee, and for a term and a half studied at Maryville College. He has faint recollections of the Civil War and heard the windows shake from the concussions of the cannon at the Battle of Concord, eighteen miles from his home. When twenty-one, he went to Louisiana and spent two years on cot- ton, rice and sugar plantations. And from there, in January, 1881, he came to California.

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He first settled at Grangeville, then in Tulare and now in Kings County, and worked out for wages. At Grangeville he was married to Miss Jennie G. Latham, daughter of Charles and Frances (Wemple) Latham, the former a native of the region near Ottawa, LaSalle County, Ill., and the latter from the vicinity of Lakewood, N. Y. Her. parents were married in Sutter County, Cal., in 1868, six years after Mr. Latham crossed the great plains with wagons and horses, and seven years after Miss Wemple came across the prairies with her parents. After their marriage, they settled in Sutter County and there farmed, and then they moved to the vicinity of Grangeville, where the father died aged seventy-four years. The widow is still living, at the age of sixty- five, the mother of six children, all of whom are also living: Jennie, who is Mrs. Montgomery : George E., a rancher at Lemoore; Charles F., a farmer near Hanford; Mollie, the wife of O. W. Railsback, a farmer near Grange- ville : Grace, the wife of Leonard Cardwell. a clerk in a store in Hanford ; and Harold, a farmer at Grangeville. Mrs. Montgomery grew up in Colusa County, where her father lived and farmed five years before coming here.

After they were married, Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery came to the vicinity of Riverdale, and for five years farmed there. Then Mr. Montgomery bought eighty acres of land north of Hanford, of which he still retains forty acres. But prior to that he purchased 140 acres, the first part of the ranch of 240 acres two and a half miles southeast of Riverdale, which his sons Cloyd and Russell are now renting. There he breeds full-blooded Poland-China hogs and Holstein cattle.

Mr. Montgomery served as supervisor of Kings County, and during his incumbency the old Fair Grounds at Hanford was purchased and a county hospital erected on a part of the grounds, and the County Fair also was permanently established. Mr. Montgomery is still a director of the Kings County Fair Association. He is also a director of the Riverside Ditch Com- pany, and is president of the Western Water Users Company, which he helped to organize in 1914 and has defended valiantly in court, winning out for the rights of the water-users. The valuable water-rights of the residents on the Laguna de Tache Grant were being encroached upon by the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company, and through Mr. Montgomery's plucky fight, he obtained a ruling that was satisfactory to himself and co-plaintiffs. He made complaint before the Railroad Commission; the case was hotly con- tested, but the subject and his company won out.

In the fall of 1917, Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery moved up to Fresno, and now they are enjoying life in their beautiful two-story stucco residence in the Alta Vista district. They have three children: Cloyd B., who married Mary Shellaberger of Hanford, and who by her had one child, Leland Niles, who took the first prize at the "Better Babies" exhibit at the Kings County Fair in 1916 and also in 1917, and the grand sweepstakes over all the Better Babies at the Kings County Fair at Hanford. Russell L., who enlisted in 1917 in the One Hundred Forty-third United States Field Artillery at San Francisco, signing up on December 14, and was honorably discharged in the same city on January 5, 1919, after training at Camp Kearney at San Diego, from there being sent to New York, and in August, 1918, sailing for Europe, and after being in England three months he crossed the English Channel on the old S. S. Harvard and was landed in France on September 1st and was standing guard near Bordeaux, when on November 11, 1918, he personally received the telegram announcing the signing of the armistice, bringing the same to his commanding officer. Creed L. Montgomery, who is a graduate from the Fresno High School. Class of 1919.

Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery are members of the Kings River Methodist Episcopal Church, situated near their ranch of 240 acres, which they helped to organize and build. He is a trustee in the California Peach Growers, Inc., and also a stockholder in the California Associated Raisin Company.

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MRS. DOTTIE ALICE BROWN .- Since the death of her husband, the late Charles J. Brown, who was one of the largest and most successful ranchers in his section of Fresno County, Mrs. Dottie A. Brown, has had the manage- ment of the large estate, and by her wise and capable operation of her large ranches, with the aid of her sons, she has proved herself to be an excellent business woman and efficient manager.

Mrs. Dottie A. Brown is a native daughter of California, having been born near Modesto, Stanislaus County, a daughter of Jacob W. and Rebecca E. (Weaver) Browne. Her father, Jacob W. Browne, is one of the oldest settlers of the San Joaquin Valley, and a native of Philadelphia, Pa., where he was born on April 7, 1851, a son of Isaac E. Browne, who was a native of New York. but later took up his residence in the Quaker City, where he worked at the trade of a machinist. Grandfather Isaac Browne migrated with his family to Illinois, settling at Winchester, Scott County, and after remain- ing there for seven years moved to Benton County, Mo., locating near Ver- sailles, where he engaged in farming and in which place he passed away.

Jacob W. Browne, the father of the subject of this sketch, was reared in Illinois and Missouri and at the age of nineteen he took up his residence with an uncle, Dr. Horace A. Browne, who lived in Mercer County, Mo., and who, in addition to practicing medicine, conducted a drug store. Jacob Browne was employed in this store for two years, and about this time, 1871, he was united in marriage at Princeton, Mo., with Rebecca E. Weaver, a native of Clark County, Mo. Soon after his marriage, Mr. Browne migrated westward. stopping first in Wyoming and in 1873 settling in California, his first home being located near Modesto, Stanislaus County, where he engaged in grain- raising. In 1878, on account of his father's health, he returned to Missouri to visit him, and was persuaded by him to buy a farm and remain. He stayed for five years, during which time his father died. and afterwards he returned to California, locating in Fresno, in 1884. He purchased 340 acres of land in the Garfield district and engaged in raising grain, in which business he was very successful and continued in it until he retired. Jacob WV. Browne and his estimable wife are still living, surrounded by the comforts of life, in their splendid home place on Clay Avenue, Fresno. Seven of their children grew to maturity: Dottie A., Mrs. Charles J. Brown ; Daisy, the wife of Ray G. Johnson, of Fresno; R. Lee, who owns a part of the old home place where he raises figs ; Ella, Mrs. G. T. Ellithorpe, of Fresno ; V. E., residing in Fresno ; J. Wise, a viticulturist, who owns a portion of the old home place ; Amanda, the wife of Rufus Jones, of Selma.

Mrs. Dottie A. Brown received her early education in the public schools of Missouri, and after her father returned to California, she attended the pub- lic school of Garfield district, Fresno County. On May 22, 1895, she was united in marriage with Charles J. Brown, who was a native son of California, having been born near Millerton, Fresno County, on May.21, 1870, a son of Samuel Brown, a native of Maine. When a young man Samuel Brown came to San Francisco by the way of Cape Horn and after his arrival he located in Contra Costa County where he engaged in the stock business, later settling on Little Dry Creek, Fresno County, where he engaged in the sheep business and afterwards in the cattle business, but was engaged in farming at the time of his death, in 1895.

Charles J. Brown made his own way in the world after reaching his six- teenth year, and was very successful; although still a young man when he passed away, he had accumulated a large estate and was considered one of the leading agriculturists of the county. He operated at one time 2,500 acres of the Helm ranch and was so successful in his business ventures that he bought 175 acres of the Helm ranch and also purchased 1,125 acres of the old Birkhead ranch, situated in the Pollasky district on Little Dry Creek, but he made his home on his place in the Garfield district. The home place, which consists of 175 acres, is devoted principally to the culture of figs, of the Cali-

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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 116

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