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 144

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 144

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Ray W. Baker received his education in the grammar and high schools of Fresno, but did not quite complete the high school course for he found an opportunity to enter upon the career of a journalist, an ambition he had nourished for some years. He entered the office of the Fresno Democrat and during the nine years he was with that paper he served in all departments. Later he was a member of the staff of the Fresno Republican. He is still a member of the Typographical Union.

At a public meeting of citizens of Fresno, Mr. Baker was chosen a member of a committee to select men for public offices of the city. For eight years he held the office, by appointment, of deputy county recorder of the county. In 1914 he was a candidate for the office of tax collector of the county, was elected and installed into the office on January 1, 1915, which office he now fills with credit to himself and to his constituents, having been

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reelected without opposition in 1918, when he received the highest number of votes of any candidate for public office in the county at that election. In 1916 Mr. Baker was chosen for the office of secretary of the California Tax Collectors' Association and held the position three years. He was then elected vice-president and now fills that office in the Association.

On November 14, 1910, Ray W. Baker was united in marriage with Miss Belle Drew, of Selma and they have had two children, Ramona and Elaine. Politically Mr. Baker was a prominent worker in Republican ranks and wielded a strong influence in the county as secretary of the County Cen- tral Committee, serving for six years. He was president of the City Library Board at the time the city and county libraries were consolidated into one system, and he has been president of the Fresno Labor Council two terms. He is a thirty-second degree Mason and a Shriner, and has served as secretary of Las Palmas Lodge, No. 343, F. & A. M., for ten years ; he is a member of the Fraternal Brotherhood and of Fresno Parlor, No. 25, N. S. G. W. In all progressive movements for the upbuilding of the county or the advance- ment of the people's interest, he is always found among the leaders and wherever he is known he is highly respected.

FRANK B. HARRIS .- Undaunted in the midst of failures that were enough to put out of business one less fitted for big things, Frank B. Harris has come up through them all with great credit to himself and those con- nected with him. He was born in Sioux City. Iowa, October 26, 1861. His parents went to Kansas and it was in Lawrence that he grew up, and attended the public schools. This was just at the time of the border troubles at the close of the Civil War.

His father, Amos Harris, was a pioneer of 1850 in California, coming via Panama and engaging in mining in Nevada County very successfully. He returned to his eastern home after eight years and there married. While living at Lawrence, Kans., he was in the dairy business. During his sojourn in the East he had a longing to get back to California but it was not until the year 1874 that his wish was gratified. Once more in California, he spent four years looking over the state for a location. the family meanwhile remain- ing in Lawrence. In 1878 they joined him at Turlock, Cal., where he farmed three years. The mother was Nettie P. Pelham before her marriage ; and she had two sons, Frank B. Harris and Howard A. Harris, of Fowler. Both par- ents are dead. They were people of force in the community in which they lived, having pioneered from the early days in that part of the state. The mother was a woman of especially high character, and was widely known and loved for her admirable life.

The Harris family first settled at Turlock, but came to Fowler in 1881. and bought some Southern Pacific land. Frank Harris worked with his father on this place, and also worked out and assisted his father in paying for it. He became an expert sheep-shearer and followed this business for sev- eral years. He also rented land and leveled it, and was a contractor for ditching and leveling. He leveled and prepared for planting several sections of land in the vicinity of Fowler, and also made ditches for irrigation at Fowler and Kerman, and later at Hanford. In 1890 he farmed wheat and barley in the vicinity of Fowler, and it was in this year that he married Miss Ella McDowell, of Fowler, daughter of Calhoun and Mary (Martin) McDowell, both born and married in Evansville, Ind., who came to Califor- nia in 1882, settling first at Colusa. There the father died as the result of blood-poisoning, and in 1885 the mother, who had married Wm. Westcott, came with her two children to Fowler. These were: Ella McDowell, born in Posey County, Ind., and Edgar, rancher and vineyardist on the McCall Road, who owns a forty-acre vineyard in partnership with his brother-in-law. No children of the second marriage are living. The mother died at Fowler at the age of sixty-three years.

Frank 3/ Farris

Ella n. Harris_

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After marriage Mr. and Mrs. Harris rented the Harris home place where they lived, and he continued to farm hundreds of acres of wheat. While living at Fowler, their only child, Ella Belle, now the wife of Floyd Pendergrass, a mechanic in the garage at Fowler, was born. She occupies a responsible position in the First National Bank of Fowler. Mr. Harris went onto the Burrell estate in the Wheatville section, rented 5,000 acres of land, and sowed 3,500 acres to wheat. He bought one of the first big tractors that was ever used in Fresno County for plowing, harvesting and threshing wheat. For this tractor he contracted to pay $10,000. Unfortu- nately this was at the time of the panic during Cleveland's administration, and he met with great financial reverses. About 1891 he went to the West Side and operated 5,000 acres of the Burrell Estate, remaining there from 1893 to 1905. This did not prove a success, for it was too dry.

In the meantime Mr. Harris became acquainted with Hector Burness, of Fresno, superintendent of the Balfour-Guthrie interests, an English syndi- cate which at one time owned 3,500 acres; and of this property Mr. Harris became foreman in 1907. Since that time the land has been divided into twenty-, forty-, and eighty-acre tracts, and sold to prospective fritit-growers. it having been demonstrated that the land is particularly fitted for raising table grapes and olives. There are now but 400 acres of the original holdings, and the place is called Waverly Ranch, of which Mr. Harris is the foreman.

Mr. Harris has raised a great deal of grain during his life, and it was his reputation as a farmer that secured him the position he now occupies. Through all the vicissitudes of his life, Mrs. Harris has been found ready to uphold his hands and encourage when days were dark and dreary.

HENRY HAWSON .- Widely known in professional and civic circles, is Henry Hawson, a native of England and the youngest son of James and Susannah (Craddock) Hawson. His grandfather was Thomas Hawson, a farmer of the Southwest Riding in Yorkshire, and the descendant of an old family of yeomen. His mother was a member of a Leicestershire family ; and such was the character of these worthy parents that the boy started well- equipped, in many ways, for the race in life.

Born at Sheffield, the famous industrial center, Henry at first received home training, later attending one of Sheffield's well-known parochial schools; after which, when less than twelve years of age, he commenced to work for a living. He also attended night school and, like so many Britishers, learned short-hand. He was employed as errand boy in a lawyer's office, and later as stenographer in a manufacturing establishment. There he served an ap- prenticeship to the Sheffield cutlery trade, and then, until he was twenty-two years of age, as a salesman, traveled England, Scotland and Ireland.

Coming to America, he joined two brothers already established in business in Oregon, and soon was doing newspaper work there and on Puget Sound. His fitness for the new field soon made him known in British Columbia, where he became City Editor of the Victoria Times. Moving south to Cali- fornia in 1900, Mr. Hawson continued his journalistic activity on the San Francisco papers, after which he was on the Redding Searchlight, in Shasta County. He remained there until 1901, when he came to Fresno, and served on the staff of the Democrat until 1903, and on the Republican until 1907.

At Berkeley, in 1904, Mr. Hawson and Elsie May Tade, adopted daughter of the Reverend Dr. E. O. Tade, a pioneer minister of the Congregational Church in the West, were joined in matrimony.

Taking up the study of law, Mr. Hawson passed the State Bar examina- tion in 1907, and at once began private practice. In September of that year District Attorney Denver S. Church appointed him Deputy District Attorney of Fresno County, from which office he resigned in August, 1910. He re- turned to private practice and so continued until he was again appointed, this time Assistant, by District Attorney McCormick, in May, 1915. 58

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Elected Assemblyman from the Fifty-first district in November, 1914, and reelected in November, 1916, each time with the backing of the Democratic party, whose platform he espoused, Mr. Hawson was nominated for Congress from the Seventh district in 1910, but withdrew, and in 1918 he was a candi- date for that office. He has been a delegate to every state convention of the Democratic party since 1906, served as chairman of the County Committee from 1908 to 1912, and as vice-president of the Woodrow Wilson League of Northern California 1911 and 1912. He also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Fresno County Chamber of Commerce during 1911 and 1912, and since 1910 as chairman of the Joint Committee on Improvement of the San Joaquin River for Navigation.

Mr. Hawson is a member of Manzanita Camp, Fresno, Woodmen of the World, with which he has been identified since 1903, and was Consul Com- mander of that camp for two terms. He was a delegate to the Triennial Head Camp Session, at Portland, in 1910. He also belongs to Fresno Lodge, No. 186, I. O. O. F., and is a member of the Commercial Club of Fresno.

CHARLES PLUNNEKE .- The romantic linking of two lives and their combined contribution, as developers of California, to help make this glorious commonwealth still more attractive and desirable as an abiding place. is nar- rated in the story of Charles and Katherine Plunneke. Mr. Plunneke was born in Hanover, Germany, and reared to the life of a farmer, and received the best common-school education, so that he was well equipped when he came to America. He spent some time in the East, and might easily have been persuaded to settle there, had it not been that he was happily attracted to California. He came west to see for himself, and he had no sooner gazed upon Fresno County, than he decided to remain. This was over thirty years ago, and Mr. Plunneke was one of the first to improve his immediate environ- ment ; he made viticulture a special study, and worked hard in the Barton vineyard, making good and lasting friends.

Mr. Plunneke first purchased twenty acres of the present place of forty acres in Temperance Colony and set it out to muscatel grapes. He afterwards bought forty acres more in the same section which he devoted to a vineyard which later was sold at a good profit. A fine residence was built and other improvements were made on the original place which increased its value and attractiveness. Mr. Plunneke was an influential member of the Odd Fellows, and a very patriotic citizen and was held in high esteem. He passed away October 2, 1913.

Mrs. Plunneke is a native of Vienna, Austria. Both her grandfather and her father were portrait and landscape painters, but her father died early in life, before he had an opportunity to distinguish himself by his unquestioned talent, and his widow, still a resident of Vienna, was left with the respon- sibility of educating her family. Mrs. Plunneke attended the Vienna Lyceum, where she graduated with honors, and when she had put aside her books, she accepted employment as a stenographer and bookkeeper. Owing to the failure of her health, however, she was advised to go south, so she embarked for Egypt, and remained in Cairo eleven years. Her health improved, and she returned to her mother, but soon the climate caused the same old trouble, and she was advised to try California. In 1906, she came to Fresno, and here she first met Mr. Plunneke, their acquaintance eventually resulting in mar- riage. Being possessed of a commercial education, as well as much native ability, and business acumen, she immediately entered heartily into her husband's enterprises for the developing and improving of their lands. Having traveled much, Mrs. Plunneke realized the great possibilities of Fresno County lands under intensive farming. Thus she was well qualified, when her husband died, to take up the responsibilities of the affairs and in- terests left her, so she continued viticulture, and firmly believes that it has great possibilities. Mrs. Plunneke has purchased the Beall vineyard, adjoin- ing her place, and now has sixty acres in a body. This tract is devoted to the

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raising of emperor and malaga grapes, and muscatel and Thompson seedless raisins. By her careful oversight, she has brought her ranch to a high state of cultivation, as well as making of it a profitable investment. But this is not the limit of Mrs. Plunneke's ambition or activity, and her recent enterprise gives great promise for the future. In 1917, she purchased a ranch of 160 acres near Kerman, and she is planning to improve this property with vines, orchards and alfalfa. Rather naturally, she is an enthusiastic member of the California Associated Raisin Company. A cultured and refined woman, of an artistic temperament and high ideals, Mrs. Plunneke is intensely interested in every movement for improving the social, religious and economic con- ditions of the community, and is generous toward those less fortunate. Fra- ternally, Mrs. Plunneke finds recreation with the Rebekah Lodge of Fresno.

ALBERT HAMLET SWEENEY, M. D .- Enjoying not only a lucrative practice, but an enviable reputation for scientific ability and the most pains- taking conscientiousness in the treatment of every patient committing his life and comfort to him, Dr. Albert Hamlet Sweeney easily occupies a fore- most position among the medical fraternity of Fresno County. His father, James Sweeney, was a native of Canada, and came to California by way of the Horn, sailing from Maine for the Golden Gate. In time, he became a real estate agent at Truckee, where he built the Sweeney Block. He conducted a hotel, was pleasantly acquainted with thousands and passed away in 1895. His mother, a native of Ohio, had been Anna Oboy, before her marriage, and she came west by crossing the plains. She also is dead, having passed away in 1894.

Born at Truckee on December 23, 1869, Albert H. Sweeney was educated in the grammar and high schools of that enterprising town, and in time entered the Cooper Medical College, from which he was graduated in 1896. Since that time, he has done post-graduate work, in several successive years, in New York, eager to get the latest and the best that the metropolis had to offer for his patients, and sparing neither expense, time or trouble in their behalf.

He first practiced as a police surgeon at San Francisco, for a couple of years, then went as government surgeon for six years to the Pyramid Lake, Indian Reservation, in Nevada, and then came back to California and to Sanger, where he was surgeon for the Hume-Bennett Lumber Co .. which had a hospital of nineteen beds. At the end of five years, or in 1905, Dr. Sweeney took up medical practice at Fresno, which he has always considered his home. Untiring in research and reform, Dr. Sweeney has long been active in the national, state and county medical societies.

In July, 1901, occurred the wedding of Dr. Sweeney and Miss Clara May Lindsey, of Sanger, a marriage blessed with their two children, Ethel A. and Irma May Sweeney. The family attend the Methodist Church.

A Republican in matters of national politics, Dr. Sweeney is prominent in the Commercial and the Riverside Country Clubs. He also belongs to the Masons and the Knights Templar, the Odd Fellows, the Elks, the Woodmen of the World, the Eagles and Stags.

ABSALOM WELLS .- Southeast of Del Rey lies the highly improved fifty-three-and-one-quarter-acre ranch owned in partnership by the brothers Absalom and G. C. Wells, who came to this section of the country before the Santa Fe was built through Parlier and before the Southern Pacific was built through Sanger and Reedley.

Absalom Wells was born in Tyler County, W. Va., August 29, 1862, and is the son of Benjamin and Jerusha (Headley) Wells. The father was a miller by trade and an old steamboat man on the Ohio River. He served for a while in the Civil War. In 1880 hecame to California. His brother Caleb Wells, who preceded him to the West in the early days crossed the plains with horses in the days when prairie schooners were the popular vehi-

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cles for transportation across the trackless wastes of the western plains, and when men enjoyed life roughly, but heartily and vigorously. He became a large wheat rancher in Solano County.

Benjamin Wells was the father of eight children, six boys and two girls. A. J. Wells, his eldest child, was born August 3, 1853, near Wheeling, W. Va., and was married at the age of twenty-eight in his native state, sixty miles north of Wheeling, near the Ohio River, to Miss Elizabeth Underwood, a native of West Virginia. They became the parents of five children, namely : Florence Etta, who married A. A. Channell, a rancher, and became the mother of nine children; E. A., a carpenter at Del Rey : Bessie Ruffner, who married Bernel Hopper, a rancher and large landowner residing in Fresno, and is the mother of three boys; Frank Russell who trained at Camp Lewis for service in the World War; and Theresa, who died as an infant. A. J. Wells resides on his well-improved eighty-acre ranch near Del Rey, which he purchased of his father. Benjamin Wells' second child, Alfred, is a merchant at Joseph's Mills, W. Va .; Emery E. is a hardware merchant at Pensboro, W. Va .: Absalom is the fourth child; Flora Lola is the wife of R. E. Nash, a rancher near Del Rey: Frank died in California, single; Narcissus also died in California, single; Gilbert C. is the youngest of the family, and was six years old when his parents came to California. Benjamin Wells lived to the mature age of eighty, and his good wife attained the age of seventy-five. Both died in California. The father owned 160 acres and deeded eighty acres to his son A. J. Wells before his death. After his death the other eighty acres went to his wife.

Absalom Wells in earlier years worked as fireman on a portable steam engine with a threshing machine. He has experienced the privations incident to a pioneer's life, planting and waiting for vines and trees to come into bear- ing. He is an intelligent man as well as very industrious, and is a most ex- cellent business man. A worthy descendant of an old and honored family, he is held in high respect in the neighborhood in which he lives.

The two brothers are bachelors, and their fifty-three and one quarter acres represent their joint inheritance. A Republican in politics, Absalom Wells is loyal to the administration and to the flag.

HANS A. UHD .- An enterprising and progressive early settler in the vicinity of Rolinda, whose hard, incessant work with the aid of his good wife has not only acquired a comfortable competency but has contributed to the betterment of the community, is Hans A. Uhd, the owner of a trim dairy farm of forty acres of well-improved land and a nice herd of milch cows. He came to Fresno County in 1890 and has ever since been counted among the most desirable of Central Californians.

He was born at Varda in Jylland. Denmark, on November 25, 1863. the son of Anton Uhd, also a native of that section, and Johanna (Knudsen) Uhd who, like her husband, died there. There were three children in the family, and Hans was the oldest. He was brought up on a farm and was educated in the public schools of his native place. His father died when he was eighteen years of age, and very early he assisted his mother to run the home place. When he grew up, he served the regularly prescribed time in the Danish Army, and was messenger on the staff of the commander.

In 1890 Mr. Uhd came to California and settled in Fresno County, where he was early employed on various ranches, his first engagement being in the Washington Colony. Then he worked for the Butler Company, in Sackett's Vineyard and other vineyards, and then he came to Kearney Park. He hauled the cuttings to the different places and helped level the land.

In the Spring of 1891, Mr. Uhd was married to Miss Mary Jacobsen, who was born in Denmark near Esbjerg. Jylland; and then he rented land near Rolinda and began in the dairy and poultry business. He worked out and for three years rented more land until. in 1898. he was able to purchase twenty acres of his present place.

kinderland.

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It was then mere stubble-field, but he leveled it, put in alfalfa and some orchard, and continued dairying. Later he bought forty acres beyond Rolinda, which he afterwards sold, and bought twenty acres more adjoining his original twenty, so that he now has forty acres in a body. This he has fully improved with the sowing of alfalfa, so that he is dairying with great success.

He has an exceptionally attractive herd of about twenty-five Holstein milch cows, and he also raises cattle, leasing land from the Kearney estate. He sells his milk to the Jersey Farm Dairy through the San Joaquin Valley Milk Producers Association, of which he is a stockholder. He is a stock- holder in the Danish Creamery Association and is a member of the California Peach Growers, Inc.

Three children have blessed the union of Mr. and Mrs. Uhd and added to their popularity socially : Clara is Mrs. John Peelman and resides on Fill- more Avenue, where Mr. Peelman is a successful dairyman ; and Agnes and Axel are both at home, assisting their parents. Mr. Uhd is a welcome member of the Danish Brotherhood.

AL E. SUNDERLAND .- A prominent, many-sided business man who has dedicated his talents, time, energies and capital to one of the most im- portant of California's fruit industries, is Al Sunderland, the secretary and treasurer of the California Peach Growers, Inc. He was born at Pavilion, N. Y., on October 5, 1866, the son of E. R. and Mercy (Cronkhite) Sunder- land, the former of an old New York State family, the latter a descendant of the Cronkhites of Mayflower fame, who later migrated from Massachusetts to Connecticut and then to New York, and who boasted the most active and honorable participation (as indeed did the Sunderlands) in both the Colonial and Revolutionary Wars. E. R. Sunderland was a New York farmer who removed to Kansas City, where he resided for a few years; then he went to Tacoma ; and after his son Al came to Fresno County, he also came here and was in business for some time in Clovis, becoming well and favorably known. His good wife, a devout member of the Baptist Church, passed away in 1907. and he died in 1915. They had two children, our subject being the only son.

Al E. was educated at the public schools in Pavilion, but when fourteen years old he came to Kansas City, Mo., and soon after worked as billing clerk for the Armour Packing Company. Then he became manager of the Kansas City Towel Supply Company for two years, and during that period, in 1888, he was married to Miss Lillian Gilliam, a native of Missouri and the daughter of Robert and Elizabeth Gilliam, the former a Civil War veteran who was a farmer in Kansas and was marshal of Kansas City, Kans., and who came west to Fresno in 1886 and still resides there.

In 1889 Mr. and Mrs. Al Sunderland came to Fresno County, and he engaged in viticulture in Kutner Colony. Then he moved into Clovis, when that town started, and entered the employ of the Fresno Flume and Irriga- tion Company, soon after it was established there, and ran the big planes in the mill for three years; however, he met with an accident which caused the loss of his left eye, and he then came to Fresno and associated himself with the Home Packing Company, as secretary and office manager, in which position he was kept increasingly busy for twelve years. Next he engaged in the drug trade, buying out George Monroe's interest in Webster Bros. and continuing under that firm name on Mariposa and K Streets, until the organi- zation of the California Peach Growers, Inc., in which he took a prominent part. In January, 1916, he was elected secretary, whereupon he sold his in- terest in Webster Bros., that he might give all of his time to the secretary- ship. As secretary and office manager, Mr. Sunderland meets heavy responsi- bilities, for the Peach Growers, Inc., disburses from seven to eight million dollars each year to growers. Mr. Sunderland is a member of the Commercial Club, the Rotary Club, and the Chamber of Commerce; in national politics

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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 144

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