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 148

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 148

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An important epoch, in the life of this successful citizen of Selma, be- gan upon September 11, 1889, when he was united in marriage with Isabelle Bowen, a native of Missouri. She arrived in Fresno County on Christmas Day, 1885. Mrs. Vanderburgh is a daughter of Levi Bowen, a native of New Jersey. Her mother in maidenhood was Maria Zuck, a native of Pennsyl- vania. Mrs. Vanderburgh's maternal great-great-grandfather, Abraham Mor- ris, was a lineal descendant of Robert Morris, the American patriot who used his personal funds to purchase supplies for the American army, during the Revolutionary War.

Abraham Bowen, the grandfather of Mrs. Vanderburgh, married a grand- daughter of John Marshall, the ex-chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Levi Bowen, the father of Mrs. Vanderburgh, was a successful pioneer farmer in Schuyler County, Mo. Her mother passed away only a year ago at the advanced age of ninety-six and one-half years. Mrs. John J. Vanderburgh was the twelfth child of a family of thirteen. She received her education in Missouri, at the Kirksville Normal School. For three years prior to her coming to California she was engaged in teaching. At present she is ably assisting her husband in editorial and office work on the Irrigator. They have had three children: Zoe, a graduate of the Selma High School and the Normal School at Fresno, taught in the Selma grammar school for three

Frank lease

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years, and is now married to Clarke W. Crocker, graduate of Stanford Uni- versity ; Isabelle, is a third-year student at the Selma High School ; the other child, a son, died in infancy.

Fraternally, J. J. Vanderburgh is a Mason, being Past Master of Selma Lodge, F. & A. M. He is also a member of the local lodge of Odd Fellows and has passed all the chairs; and is affiliated with the Benevolent and Pro- tective Order of Elks and Woodmen of the World. His public-spiritedness and keen interest in civic affairs, was duly recognized by the community in his selection as a member of the city board of trustees. He is a member of both the Raisin Growers and Peach Growers associations, also of the Cham- ber of Commerce. Mrs. Vanderburgh is interested in both the Red Cross and Belgian Relief work.

FRANK CASS .- One of the most enterprising and active citizens of Fresno County is Frank Cass who, from the time that he was first able to start out for himself, has been doing things with a view to improvement and expansion. He was born in Connecticut, in August, 1863, and was reared and educated among the down-east Yankees who had something more to their credit than wooden nutmegs. His father was Nicholas Cass, born in Ireland, Queens County, who came to Connecticut with his mother and there he was educated and married Catherine Clansey, a Canadian.

Nicholas Cass was well versed in both tempering and sharpening metal, and so came to be a skilled tool-maker. This business brought him out to the Golden State in 1850, and here he followed his trade, attaining rapidly a popularity with miners, whom he supplied with what they then so much needed-tools that would do the work. He stayed in California a few years and then returned to the East ; and on the breaking out of the Civil War, he joined a Connecticut regiment and served the cause of the Union until the close of the great struggle, after which he followed farming until his death. Eight children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Cass, but only two of them are now living. These are Frank, our subject, and his brother, A. J. Cass, now a vineyardist in Enterprise Colony.

Frank Cass spent his childhood on the farm in Connecticut, receiving a good education in the public schools. In 1883, when the nation needed men to protect the pioneers in the West, who were the advance-guard of civilization, from Indian interference, he gave five years of service in the regular army, enlisting June 1, 1883, in Troop B, Seventh United States Cavalry, and being sent to Fort Meade as his headquarters, and from there he served in different parts of the West. In one campaign of seventeen months, his detachment brought old Sitting Bull back from Canada, and in the spring following this he was in a party that prevented the half-breed chieftain Reel from crossing into the United States from Canada, on his expedition of depredations. After five years' service Mr. Cass was honor- ably discharged in June, 1888, at Fort Sill, I. T.

From a boy, Mr. Cass had been greatly interested in the stories his father told of the wonders of California, the land of gold and sunshine, and he early decided that as soon as opportunity afforded he would locate on the Pacific Coast. As soon as he was discharged from the army he imme- diately came to California, first locating in San Luis Obispo County, but attractive as he found that region, in 1890 he came down to Fresno and the following year bought his first farm of twenty acres. This was some of the choice land in Enterprise Colony, and Mr. Cass and his brother were among the first to make a beginning in the colony. He was pleased with Clovis and retained the tract as long as he could ; but he was finally obliged to abandon it on account of the hard times of 1893-94. In 1897, trusting that conditions had improved, he bought the place back again and improved it further but in 1906 he sold it once more at a good profit, and fortunately moved nearer to his ultimate goal.

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He then came to Sanger and purchased 100 acres on Kings River, which he still owns. It is bottom land and produces an abundance of grass. For some years he engaged in dairying but gradually drifted into cattle-raising, in which he has been very successful, it being demonstrated that his meadow will keep two animals to the acre. He also purchased a ranch of 320 acres lying eight miles northeast of Academy, which he uses for winter range. He he has also built a residence, and suitable farm buildings, and has utilized a mountain spring for irrigating his field of alfalfa, making a splendid stock ranch. He also owns a 120-acre ranch on Pine Ridge where there is an apple orchard that produces very fine fruit. Taking it all in all, Mr. Cass is a very successful and enterprising man, who has established an enviable record.

In 1898, Mr. Cass was married to Miss Nalilla A. Turman, a native daughter from El Dorado, Cal., whose people were among the early settlers at Coloma, having come to the Golden State not later than 1850. Thus in the lives of both Mr. and Mrs. Cass are elements connecting them with the history of the Pacific Slope and enrolling them with those who have paved the way, for thousands, to a glorious future.

JAMES G. FRIKKA .- Prominent among the men of affairs in Fresno County, and especially well-known among the leaders of Clovis and closely identified with its wonderful development, is James G. Frikka, who first came to California in the early seventies. He is a native of Dalby, Jutland, Denmark, where he was born on October 18, 1848. When he was a little boy, his father died; and his mother having remarried, the lad was raised in Dalby and there attended the public school until he was fourteen. He learned farming, and when he had grown to manhood he married there Miss Anna K. Petersen. He continued to follow agriculture for a livelihood until, hear- ing of the wonderful opportunities in California, he concluded to leave Den- mark and to try his fortunes in the New World.

In 1872 he crossed the ocean to New York and made for New Jersey, where he found employment for a year in an iron mine. Having kept the goal toward which he started ever before him, however, in 1873, he pushed on west, and at length reached Solano County, near the Montezuma Hills. He · was in the employ of Mr. McDonald for a year, and then went to the Redding- ton mine in Napa County, for another year. After that he came to Greenville, Plumas County, where he worked in the Green Mountain Mine and the National Mine, as a miner, until 1879; and in April of that year, passing through Fresno, he came to Tombstone, Ariz., where he was employed as a miner, and especially later as a shift boss, at the Top Knot Mine for the Tombstone Mining and Milling Company. His work there lasted five years.

In 1885, however, when a strike caused the closing down of the works, Mr. Frikka went back to Denmark, to his wife, whom he had left there with a baby; and he remained there from June of that year until April, 1886. He had a little property in Denmark, and as his wife did not like to leave there, he bought some more at auction. Meantime some property in Tombstone had called him back to America, the trip being necessary properly to guard his interests; and not long after, the auction property in Denmark was knocked down to him and he had to cross the ocean again to take charge of that. On his return to his native land, he undertook the management of a farm and hotel ; and at this he continued for eighteen years. His family mean- while increased. The oldest child, Marie, had migrated to Fresno County, Cal., and his son Hans had come out to Fresno when fifteen; and as Mr. Frikka always liked California and still longed to return here, and the mother finally showed a desire to come, Mr. Frikka sold out and prepared to move to America, once and for all.

The family arrived in Fresno in 1902, and joined the son and daughter already here. Mr. Frikka engaged in grain farming on the Sample ranch,

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and ran three, ten and sometimes twelve mule teams, tilling about 3,000 acres. A dry year, with rust, coming upon him, he was nearly ruined ; how- ever, he kept on for eight years more, but in 1910 sold his outfit and bought his present place. He obtained forty acres of stubble land in the Fincher Colony, and there he set out a vineyard and a peach orchard and planted some of the land to alfalfa. This choice property is under the Gould Ditch, and he has a fine pumping plant. With his sons, Hans and Andrew, he has also bought twenty of the adjoining acres, and these he has set out to vines. He has built a fine residence, with an avenue of fig trees. There are twenty acres of alfalfa and fifteen acres of raisin and muscat grapes, and the bal- ance of the land is given up to peaches. He is an active member of the Cali- fornia Peach Growers, Inc., and of the California Associated Raisin Company.

Mr. and Mrs. Frikka have five children. Marie, Mrs. J. C. Thomsen, lives in the Enterprise Colony ; Carrie is Mrs. Jensen, of the Grau Colony; Hans and Andrew are in the United States Army, Hans in the Thirty-first Infantry, serving in Siberia, and Andrew in the Three Hundred Sixty-fourth Regiment, Ninety-first Division, United States Expeditionary Forces in France, with which he served in the Battle of the Argonne Forest and at Ypres, Belgium ; and Josie lives at Fresno. The family attend the Lutheran Church and encourage and support every worthy movement for the uplift of the community. Mr. Frikka is a member of the Odd Fellows, having joined in Tombstone, Ariz., but is now a member of the Kolding Lodge in Denmark. In national politics a Democrat, he enthusiastically supports all local move- ments without regard to party lines.

MRS. MARGARET MULLIGAN .- A native daughter, the widow of a genuine '49er and one of Sonoma's famous pioneers, who is generous-hearted and liberal to a fault. and in her old-time hospitality recalls the brilliant days of early California, when no stranger was turned away uncared for and with- out cheer. is Mrs. Margaret Mulligan, whose husband passed away in 1914, mourned by many friends. Born in St. Louis, Mo., from which city came so many of the best pioneers of the new commonwealth destined to be formed this side of the Rockies, William Mulligan came to California by way of the Isthmus in 1849, and settled at Healdsburg, and in 1868, in Alexander Valley, Sonoma County, he married the lady who now so well honors his name. Before her marriage she was Margaret Alexander, the daughter of Cyrus and Rufina (Lucero) Alexander, her father coming from Pennsylvania, while her mother was a native daughter proud enough of her origin. He was one of the early settlers in Sonoma County, and was a member of the Bear Flag party that played such an historic role in the annals of the Golden State. Having come to that section early, he acquired a vast stretch of territory ; and this was called Alexander Valley. Twelve children were born to this couple, only five of whom grew up ; three are still living, a fourth having passed away recently : Margaret, the subject of our very interesting sketch, is the eldest of the four; Joseph, who was a large ranch-owner at Santa Rosa, died at that place, in April, 1918; Thomas resides in Alexander Valley, and George lives at Healdsburg.

Margaret attended the public schools in Alexander Valley and the Young Ladies' Seminary at Healdsburg, and in 1868 she was married to William Mulligan. They at once began to farm in Alexander Valley and in time Mr. Mulligan had a ranch of 500 acres of vineyard. This involved much responsi- bility, expense and labor; and when the panic came, due to low prices, he found that he had so over-reached himself that he was all but ruined.

With characteristic and commendable courage, however, Mr. and Mrs. Mulligan started all over again by coming to Selma, in January, 1894, and purchasing thirty-five acres, which they improved in various ways. In 1914 they built a large and attractive bungalow as their country residence, but in June of that same year Mr. Mulligan died. Mrs. Mulligan still lives on the

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home place, a devout member of the Roman Catholic Church at Selma, while in politics she is a supporter of the Progressive party.

Mr. and Mrs. Mulligan had ten children, most of whom growing up, have become hard-working, progressive and highly respected citizens. Their children are: William A., a railroad man who married Edith Gross and has one child, Genevieve, and resides in Los Angeles; Leo Vincent, single, is a rancher near Selma ; Inez, single, lives at home; Julian, who married Mae Felters, by whom he has had one child, George William, is a bee man and lives five miles to the north; Francis M., who married Alameda Cunningham, has one child, Jack, and works at the fruit company's packing house at Selma ; Teresa, single, a graduate of the University of California, is a teacher in the Haywood High School; Lewis, a rancher living five miles to the north, is single; Fred, who married Emma Metzler, owns a twenty-acre ranch five miles south of Selma and also rents the old home ranch here; Margaret Ce- cilia, who died on July 4, 1895; and Genevieve, who died on November 14, 1916.

For many, many years two of the most honored names in California pioneer history will be those of the path-breakers and empire-builders, Cyrus Alexander and William Mulligan, recalling their heroic work and that of their devoted wives and families.

JOHN DUNKEL .- A kind and helpful early settler in the Kutner dis- trict, who is well liked and who, with his brother George, also an early set- tler in these parts, did much toward the wonderful development of Central California, is John Dunkel, the well-known vineyardist, who hails from the picturesque republic of Switzerland. He was born at Schaffhausen, Switzer- land, on March 12, 1859, the third oldest of six children, and the son of George Dunkel, who was a clever cooper. He was educated in the excellent public schools of Switzerland, and when eighteen was apprenticed to a brewer in Canton Zurich. Here he remained three years, and then, according to the custom of his country and his time, he went as a journeyman brewer to Ger- many, Belgium, and France, working from place to place and gathering a wider experience than would have been possible had he remained in Switzer- land : and he visited Paris in particular. Returning to his native country, he entered the Swiss army when he was twenty-one, and served the required time as a soldier in Division Six of the Sixty-first Regiment ; and finally re- ceived the coveted honorable discharge.

In 1882, Mr. Dunkel came to America, landing in New York City, and soon found employment on the upper Hudson, near Albany, with a farmer. He began to find the winters, however, too cold, and hearing of the wonder- ful climate of California he determined to push further west and see for him- self what the Pacific Slope had to offer. In December, 1883, John Dunkel landed in San Francisco, and after taking a good look at the western metrop- olis he went to Napa, where he found employment on a ranch at Yountville. He liked his surroundings, and he remained for four years ; and then coming to Sonoma County he secured good employment on a ranch near Sonoma, where he remained until 1890.

In that year he returned to his old home across the ocean on a visit, and while there was married to Miss Christene Wilmer, a native of Germany, and one who was well fitted by experience and temperament to be his help- mate. After nine months in his native land he entered the Swiss army again for eighteen days, as he had taken out only his first papers leading to Amer- ican citizenship ; but in 1891 he returned to California and located in Sonoma, where he once more engaged in ranch work.

In 1904, Mr. Dunkel fortunately turned to Fresno County, and here en- tered the employ of his brother George, who had a vineyard in the Kutner district, and was a very successful viticulturist. He worked for him for four years, and during this time bought thirty acres adjoining his brother's place,

John Dunkel

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which he also set out as a vineyard. In 1908, he bought forty acres of his brother, and continued as a viticulturist for himself, his two sons being as- sociated with him in ranching. Finding that they had somewhat more land than they needed, they sold twenty acres of the ranch in January, 1918, and now have a fine tract of fifty acres, thirty of which are devoted to malaga ship- ping grapes and twenty acres to muscat raisin grapes. They are also leasing forty-five acres adjacent devoted to malagas and muscats. Mr. Dunkel has built a handsome residence, and made many needed improvements, and as a member of the California Associated Raisin Company is justly proud of his estate. He has an electrical pumping-plant for irrigation, and this furnishes him also with electric lights for his place.

The two sons, who further honor John Dunkel's namc are: Frank, farm- ing with his father ; and Herman, who served in the Three Hundred Sixty-first Regiment, Ninety-first Division, U. S. A., overseas, for nine months, taking part in the battles of the Argonne and Odenard, Belgium ; he was honorably discharged, May 5, 1919, and is now engaged in ranching with his father and brother. The Dunkels are greatly interested in every civic movement for the bettering of the State and the community, support the best men and measures in local affairs, and do their part in national politics in the ranks of the Republican party.

LEWIS JACOBSEN .- A veteran sower in the wide fields of spiritual endeavor, who has also reaped. and abundantly, in the harvests of succes- sively fruitful years, is Lewis Jacobsen, the rancher who owns forty acres on the Canal School Road and there lives retired as a Danish Baptist preacher. He was born on March 8. 1842, at Jutland, near Aaalborg, in Denmark, and was brought up in that country. He early joined the Baptist Church there, and at the age of twenty-two entered the Baptist College at Hamburg, where he studied theology. On his return to Denmark, he was ordained as a Baptist minister, and for ten years he traveled in Denmark as a general missionary of the Baptist Conference.

In 1874 he came to the United States and Minnesota, and for four years was a missionary in the Danish Baptist Church in this country, and did mis- sionary work in Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, when he was regularly ordained as a minister. Thousands owe to this good and untir- ing expounder of the Gospel, who brought to them the Bread of Life, their encouragement to endure in the hard struggle against the forces of sin, and their ability to find the paths that led to green meadows and pleasant waters.

At Clarks Grove, in Freeborn County, Minn., the Reverend Jacobsen was married on July 18, 1878, to Elizabeth Matilda Jensen, who was born at Tisdad in Jutland, Denmark, on September 27. 1850. Her father was Jens Jensen, who married Annie Nelson, and he was a well-known storekeeper in the section in which he lived. She was an only child, and her mother died when she was nineteen. Her father married again, and he very much desired her to accompany him to America. At that time, having visited England and learned English there, she had an excellent position as ladies' maid to the Countess Gravenkoep Castenskold, but she yielded to her father's request, and accompanied him and her step-mother to America, and arrived in Chicago in 1873. There she was converted and became a Christian, and joined the Baptist Church ; and it was thus that she came to meet her husband, who was doing missionary work there.

Seeing that the hard work of his ministry was telling on his health, Mr. Jacobsen was persuaded to resign from the pulpit, whereupon his parishioners and friends purchased for him a farm in Minnesota, which he improved and sold. The new income gave him the means and opportunity to visit Cali- fornia, and leaving Clarks Grove, he and his good wife settled about one and a half miles east of Selma. Here they have worked hard and long and have prospered. They have never lost sight of the spiritual and religious

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life so necessary to be eternally happy, and have sacrificed in order properly to bring up and educate their children, of whom they have had eight: Jacob, the first-born, died when he was three years old; Albert, whose birth occurred in Iowa on February 2, 1882, is a well-known rancher, living single, near Selma; Noah, who was born on March 9, 1884, in Iowa, married Martha M. Christensen, by whom he has had three children, and they are ranchers at Kingsburg; Jacob, the fourth-born, also died in infancy; David, who was born on June 6, 1886, in Wisconsin, died when six weeks old; Lewis, who was born on September 23, 1888, and who is pastor of the Baptist Church at Man- hattan, Kans., graduated from the William Jewell College in Missouri and from the Rochester (N. Y.) Baptist Theological Seminary, and married Jo- hanna Sorensen, who was formerly assistant postmaster at Selma; Emanuel, who was born on May 5, 1891, is a student at Redlands University, is single, and is licensed as a Baptist minister, and has just returned from France ; and Arthur D., who graduated in 1917 from Redlands University and won a Har- vard scholarship, and is now a student at Harvard.

This shepherd of the sheep, many will be sorry enough to learn, is now suffering from a stroke of paralysis, an affliction not so surprising perhaps, when one remembers that he has reached his seventy-seventh year and has so long been such a hard worker; but this physical burden has not in the least dimmed his faith, nor saddened his spirit.

ROBERT J. COOPER .- A well known and highly respected pioneer resident of the Selma section of Fresno County is Robert Jinkens Cooper, popularly known as "Bob" Cooper. He came to this locality in November, 1875, when the land was little more than a desert waste, and with his own hands and team he assisted in digging the Centerville and Kingsburg ditch, more as an experiment, but which later proved the making of this section of the county. It is to such men that the county owes a debt of gratitude for making it "blossom as the rose."

Bob Cooper was born in Calaveras County, March 8, 1858, a son of Robert Bruce Cooper, born in Mississippi in 1822, who when he was eighteen went to Texas and farmed in Harrison County several seasons, after which he came to California in 1850 and followed mining for a few years. He took up a homestead near 'Milton, Calaveras County, and lived there until 1889, when he moved to Fresno County and lived with his children until he moved to Santa Cruz. He married Miss Alta Zara Lewis, also born in Mississippi but reared in Arkansas. They had five children: Samuel B., a rancher near Del Rey ; Joseph H., a rancher at Selma ; Mary, married Frank Cleary who died at Lindsay ; Robert J., of this review ; and Henry E., residing in Academy district. Mrs. Cooper died in 1872, in Calaveras County. Mr. Cooper spent his last days at Lindsay, dying at the age of ninety-one, in 1915. They were a fine pioneer couple and endured the privations of the early settlers. Mr. Cooper came from Texas, with saddle and pack mules, as far as Mazatlan, thence by boat to San Francisco, while Mrs. Cooper spent six months on the plains, making the journey from Mississippi with ox teams over the Santa Fe trail.

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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 148

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