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 II, Part 123

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1424

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 II > Part 123

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He was united in marriage with Miss Lillie W. Jamison, a native of Steelville, Mo., January 31, 1877, and in the fall of 1882 came to Fresno, where he continued the practice of his profession, and where, four years later, his wife died. Following her death Judge Webb returned to Missouri to reside, and was associated with Judge A. Seay at Union, Mo., for one and one-half years. In 1888 he returned to Fresno and in 1893 was appointed to the posi- tion of Superior Judge of Fresno County by Governor Markham. After com- pleting the term of two years he was elected to the bench and served for eight years, retiring from office January 1. 1901. He then moved to San Francisco, where he continued the practice of his profession until the sum- mer following the big fire of April, 1906, when his valuable law library was completely destroyed. Returning to Fresno he again resumed active practice of the law, which he continued up to the time of his death, on July 29, 1916.

Judge Webb was married a second time, on December 31, 1900, to Miss Mary Imogene Anderson, who at the time of her marriage was engaged in educational work in Fresno, and who, since the Judge's death, has resumed teaching in the city schools. Mrs. Webb is an active member of the First Presbyterian Church and an ex-president of the Wednesday Club, the oldest study club in the valley.

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MRS. SARAH C. BYRD .- The revered memory of an extensive pioneer rancher. the late John H. Byrd, long a prosperous and highly-respected cit- izen, is revived in a study of the life of his esteemed widow, Mrs. Sarah C. Byrd, who resides in her beautiful home at 632 North Van Ness Avenue, Fresno, after a life of strenuous, hard work on their farm of 5,000 acres in Clark's Valley, the home ranch, conducted in connection with some 3,000 acres of excellent, subirrigated land east of Sanger in the Kings River Valley. Mr. Byrd was born at Canton, Cherokee County, Ga., on May 8. 1837, and came of a family prominent for generations in Southern history. He was the grandson of Thomas Byrd, a native of Virginia, who took up farming in Cherokee County, and became a leading planter of tobacco. As an expert millwright, he constructed several mills for water power throughout the state, and with his land holdings became very influential in that part of the country. A son Nathan, also a native of Virginia and reared in the Old Do- minion and Georgia, became the father of John H. Byrd. He, too, raised tobacco in Georgia, but in 1847 he removed to Arkansas, and until his death he conducted a cotton plantation seventeen miles south of Little Rock. He married Miss Eliza Jones, a native of South Carolina, and a daughter of Caleb Jones, a Spartansburg planter, who later moved to Canton, Ga., and became an extensive agriculturist. Mrs. Byrd, a devout Baptist, passed away in Arkansas in 1901, the mother of eight children, the eldest of which was John.

Having begun his schooling in the primitive schools of Georgia, John Byrd was taken as a lad of ten to Arkansas and there resumed his education in an even more primitive log school. In 1857. he went on horseback to Texas, and remained at Sherman until the following April, when he joined the Keener ox train for California. They took the southern route by way of Las Cruces, N. M., passed by Fort Yuma, and finally reached Los Angeles. On October 24, 1858. Mr. Byrd arrived at Visalia, and the day before Christ- mas he went to work for Francis Jordan on his ranch. After two years, he bought 160 acres on the Kings River bottom, and there began to raise hogs.

He was so successful that in 1870 he bought land in Clark's Valley and commenced general farming and stockraising. He raised sheep for a time, but sold out to embark in raising high-grade Herefords and shorthorns; and from a capital of twenty dollars in gold when he arrived at Visalia, he stead- ily accumulated, by his own efforts, a handsome competency. In 1896 he located at Fresno, and there bought an elegant residence at the corner of O and Tulare streets.

At Kings River, in 1870, Mr. Byrd was married to Miss Sarah C. Rob- inson, who was born in Boone County. Mo., on August 29, 1854. the daughter of John Robinson, a native of Lexington, Ky., who had married Miss Harriet Phillips, a native of St. Charles County, Mo. In that county they were united in wedlock, and then they moved to Boone County, where Mr. Robinson farmed. They had two children, Sarah Catherine and Virginia Ann, now the widow of J. B. Cravens, a pioneer of Sanger, still living at that place. With their two children, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson came across the plains, driving their stock, in a train of ox and mule wagons. They started from Boone County, and were six months on the way, and reached Carson City, Nev., in September, 1859. Going to the Sacramento Valley, they raised stock; but at the outbreak of the Civil War, Mr. Robinson returned to Missouri and enlisted as a Confederate soldier, and served throughout the War. He re- turned to California in 1865, and then the family came to Fresno County and settled on the Kings River; and there, after years of success as a farmer and stockraiser, he died, on August 10, 1902, and was interred in the Kings River Cemetery beside his good wife, who had died two years before.

After their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Byrd went to live in Clark's Valley, Fresno County, where their twelve children were born. Harriet Eliza is the

الفلسفة.

Sarah to Byrd

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wife of Alonzo Stewart, a rancher residing in Colusa County ; and they have two children, Byrd and Ellen, both of whom are married and have offspring. Ellen Virginia is the wife of Charles Doyle, a dealer in monuments, marble and granite work, and resides at Fresno. They have four children-John H., Marian Gertrude, Francis, James. Charles H. Byrd is treated in detail in another sketch in this historical work. Catherine died when thirteen years old, and two infants also died. John Walter, in business in Fresno, married Beryl Corlew; they reside in Fresno and have two children-Floris and Loraine. Lucy A. is the wife of Lee Sims, a rancher at Kerman, and the mother of six children-Leota, William, Walter, Lee, Mattie and John. Thomas R., a rancher of 1425 College Avenue, Fresno, married Viola Burk, by whom he has had two children-Walter and Richard. The ninth in the order of birth was an infant, who died, and then came Marie, now the wife of Frank McCarthy, who has just returned from the War, where he was in the motor transport service. They own a ranch on Kings River, a part of the old Byrd estate, and they have two children-Newton and Lloyd Byrd. Another child died in infancy, while the twelfth and youngest was Newton P. Byrd, whose life is also reviewed in this work. Mrs. Sarah C. Byrd has thus lived to see twenty-three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

On the death of Mr. Byrd, on October 5, 1913, Mrs. Byrd became the administratrix of his estate. At the distribution of the property, three of the heirs, Newton, Walter and Thomas took their respective shares in the land ; but Mrs. Byrd and the other children still own 4,800 acres in Clark's Valley and the 1,700 acres in Kings River Valley, under the management of the oldest son, Charles H. In time, Mrs. Byrd bought her home on Van Ness Avenue, and there the old-time Byrd hospitality continues to be dispensed. She was brought up in the Christian Church, but now belongs to the Presby- terian Church.

SOREN PAULSEN .- A member of an old Danish family that has be- come transplanted to California, and an American by adoption who may proudly boast of being the brother of probably the first soldier from Fresno County to make the supreme sacrifice in the late war, is Soren Paulsen, the well-known farmer who owns a fruit ranch of twenty acres two and a half miles west of Parlier. He was born at Ribe, Denmark, on November 5, 1881, the son of Paul Paulsen who was a farmer in Denmark, and also a musician. He died in his native country, in 1903, fifty-three years old, lingering long enough to permit our subject, who was then a journeyman cabinet maker at work in Germany, to return home and reach his bedside. Mrs. Meta Marie Paulsen, the mother, is still living at Ribe.

Eleven children were born to these worthy parents, and of that number six are residing near Parlier, one in San Francisco, one is in Denmark and two are deceased. Marten, the rancher near Parlier, and Clause, a farmer in Denmark, are twins, and Anna, the oldest daughter, is the wife of Jess An- dersen, a rancher near Parlier. Inger is now Mrs. Ben Tobiasen, the wife of another rancher in the Parlier district, while the fifth in the order of birth is Soren, our subject, Maren died when she was two years old in Denmark, and Niels M. is a rancher near Reedley. Marius is a carpenter and builder at Del Rey; Kristine is the wife of W. Kallerup, the restaurateur of San Francisco: Knud E. has been a corporal at Camp Stewart, U. S. A., in Vir- ginia ; while the youngest was Hans H. Paulsen.

He was born in Denmark and came to Parlier only three years ago. He was single and made his home with Soren Paulsen. Anxious to do his bit in the great war, he entered the service as machine gunner and went to France in 1917. There he had an extensive experience in actual service, and in time was transferred to the celebrated "Rainbow Division." On July 27 he was struck by a high explosive shell and instantly killed-the first soldier from Fresno County to fall, so far as is known, in actual battle.

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A touching incident relative to the death of the young hero, Hans H. Paulsen, may here be narrated. Besides some other means of his own, he carried $10,000 worth of insurance on his life, and had made our subject his trustee. The last wishes of the deceased are now being carried out, and the money is being remitted to the aged mother, still living in Denmark, to whom, in her sixty-seventh year, it will prove a God-send in lieu of the affectionate son lost.

Soren grew up on the home farm in Denmark, and when fourteen years of age was confirmed in the Lutheran Church. He was apprenticed at Ribe to the cabinet makers' trade, and served from 1896 to 1900, working for his room and board. Becoming a journeyman cabinet maker, he worked at Fyen and Langland, in Denmark, and at Hamburg, Hanover and other places in Germany, and at the end of two years, came home at the time of his father's deatlı.

Naturally athletic from the time when he was a boy, Soren Paulsen be- came a master coach or trainer at the gymnasium at Ribe, and when he traveled in Germany, he took a deep interest in German athletics. On his return to Denmark in 1906, he attended the athletic training school, the high school Ryslinge, and entering the Danish Army in 1904, served there for eight months.

In 1907 he sailed from Copenhagen on the steamship, Oscar the Second of the Scandinavian-American line, and landed at New York on May 1, leaving almost immediately for the West and Parlier. He and his brother Marius worked as carpenters, but he had to borrow money to buy tools. He also learned the English language, and he can read, write and speak the Danish, English and German tongues. He has done much reading in general, and is well-informed. He continued to work at his trade until 1912.

In the meantime he and his brother had bought this place of twenty acres, in 1909, but after his marriage, in 1912, he bought out his brother's interest. He has fifteen acres in Muscats and the rest in seedless grapes and alfalfa, and has erected a dwelling house. He is a member of the California Raisin Growers Association.

When Mr. Paulsen was married, he chose for his bride Miss Christine Andersen, a native of Pierce County, Wis., and a daughter of John and Anna (Pilegaard) Andersen, both of whom were born in Schleswig-Holstein. After marrying in Denmark, Mr. and Mrs. Andersen came to America and settled in Wisconsin. There they farmed and reared a family of six children, of whom Mrs. Paulsen is the fourth child in the order of birth. In 1906 they came to California and settled south of Parlier, where the parents are still living. Mrs. Paulsen was thirteen when she came to the Pacific Coast. Two children have been granted Mr. and Mrs. Paulsen: Ellen Marie and Evelyn Irene. Mr. Paulsen is a member of the Danish Brotherhood, of which he is a past president, and both he and his wife belong to and attend the Lutheran Church. He is a naturalized American citizen, and a Wilson Democrat.

JOHN D. MORGAN, JR., M. D .- If there is one institution of Fresno County in which the public has a solicitous and abiding interest it is the County Hospital, under the immediate charge of Dr. John D. Morgan, the medical director and superintendent. A native, not only of California, but of Fresno, where he was born on October 16, 1889, Dr. Morgan was the son of John D. and Mary L. (Hartsough) Morgan, natives of Georgia and California, respectively, both of whom are still living. His father settled here over forty years ago, followed a business career, and later was both constable and chief of police.

John D., Jr., was educated in the grammar and high schools of the city, and after graduation from Fresno High, 1909, he then entered the department of medicine of Vanderbilt University, from which he was graduated in 1913,

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with the degree of M. D. He then went to San Diego where he practiced for a year.

On July 24, 1912, in Fresno, Dr. Morgan was married to Miss Hazel E. Beall, daughter of George Beall, and one child-J. D. Morgan, 3rd, has blessed the union. Dr. and Mrs. Morgan by religious faith are protestants. He belongs to the Masons and the Eagles.

A year after he had returned to his home town, Dr. Morgan, who is a Democrat, believing in devotion especially to the place of one's residence, was appointed, in January, 1915, to his present position ; and since then he has been reappointed. He is a member of the University Club ; and he belongs to the County, State and American Medical Association, being Vice-president of County Medical Society at present time. He is also a member of the Gamma Eta Kappa high school fraternity of Fresno, the Phi Chi Medical Fraternity and Phi Kappa Sigma Literary Fraternity, his membership in the two latter being in the chapters at Vanderbilt University.

THOMAS HANSEN .- Highly respected as an industrious, generous citizen with a wide reputation as a pioneer horticulturist and viticulturist, is Thomas Hansen, the retired rancher who is now quietly enjoying life at 3006 South Harvard Boulevard, Los Angeles, whither he removed February, 1918. His father, Hans Nilsen-for in Denmark the son takes the father's first name, adding "sen", meaning son-was a small land owner and carpenter, who lived and died in that country. His mother, who had been Katrine Petersen, also lived and died in Denmark.

Born in the village of Tvilde, on the peninsula of Jylland, Denmark, on May 7, 1847, the fifth child in a family of nine, four of whom were girls, Thomas grew up in the parish of Aastrup, where he worked by the year for farmers. There he was educated, being early confirmed in the Lutheran Church. He steadily advanced in the mastery of his work, and in his twenty- fourth year he went to Schleswig, where he engaged as a farm hand at Bolderslev ; here he continued for six years.

Mr. Hansen then entered the Government Forest Service, planting sandy heathers in Denmark to forest trees, and giving them scientific care. After a while he was made superintendent of a private company, backed by the Danish Government, holding that position a year. Then he went back to Bolderslev and reengaged at farm work for his former employer.

A year there sufficed him, however, and he set sail from Hamburg, for America, landing at New York in November, 1878, and going on to Portland, Maine, having friends and relatives there. The following February he came to St. Helena, Napa County, Cal., where he worked on farms for a year and ten months.

The large Danish colony at Fresno soon attracted him, and there he se- cured a position as superintendent of the first vineyard in Fresno County to produce Muscat grapes. This was owned by four ladies, the Misses Austen of San Francisco, where they were public school teachers. Each had twenty acres, located side by side three miles south of Fresno; and the combined acreage was called the Hedge Row Vineyard. This was the first raisin vine- yard managed on a commercial scale. Mr. Hansen remained there as direc- tor for a year, and then he bought twenty acres of ground for himself that he immediately planted to grapes and alfalfa, at the same time that he set out an orchard.

In 1883, Mr. Hansen disposed of his California holdings and recrossed the continent and the ocean to visit relatives and friends in Schleswig and Jylland. Happily, both parents were still living. It was during this visit that he met his future wife, Katrina Callesen, of Schleswig, the daughter of Danish parents. Miss Callesen and seven others eventually came to America, reach- ing Fresno on September 10, 1883; and on November 25, of the same year, she was married at Fresno to Mr. Hansen.

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Buying another twenty acres of raw land, Mr. Hansen made a fresh start. He planted and improved the acreage, and he also built for himself a comfortable house ; and there his four eldest children were born. They were Eli, Walter, Petra, who died at the age of seven, and John C. Selling this homestead, Mr. Hansen bought a place of fifty-two acres six miles west of Selma, near Monmouth, which he so well improved that on January 22, 1918, he sold it for $23,000. There two more children were born-Oscar, who died when he was fourteen months old, and Elva, now nineteen, who lives at home. Mr. Hansen then built a bungalow in Selma, living there several years. Eli went to pay his parents in Los Angeles a visit prior to his departing for the war. He was taken ill with the "flu" and died October 12, 1918. Walter, married Miss Ada Mason of Fresno County. They have one child, Walter Oscar; John C. married Miss Mable Schultz of Selma, and a detailed sketch of their lives is elsewhere in this work.

As soon as the law permitted, Mr. Hansen was naturalized, and ever since then he has been a loyal citizen of the United States. Not the least of his services has been in conscientious attendance as a trial juror in both civil and criminal cases. A Progressive Republican, he is a strong advocate of tem- perance. He is also a steadfast patron of education, and for seven years he served on the School Board at Monmouth, in the Monroe School District, during which time, for a year, he acted as Clerk of the Board.

Mr. Hansen helped to build the Danish Lutheran Church in Selma. He helped to organize the first Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in Fresno County and also the first Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in California -the Easton church near where Mr. and Mrs. Hansen made their first home. In the succeeding years, Mr. Hansen has helped to build eleven other churches of the same denomination, which is known as the United Danish Evangelical Lutheran Churches in California and includes some twelve congregations. Mrs. Hansen has been equally active in church work.

As might be expected of two such worthy citizens inspired both with re- ligious and patriotic sentiments, Mr. and Mrs. Hansen heartily support the Red Cross movement.

ANTHONY P. CAZEMIRO .- Among the Californians by adoption who are contributing to the development of the Golden State, and who well deserve the prosperity that is theirs as a reward for years of hard labor and. self-denial, is Anthony Cazemiro, who owns forty acres, six miles southeast of Riverdale. He bought this property in December, 1917, from William H. Whitlow.

He was born in the island of Pico, in the balmy Azores, on June 22, 1882, the son of Manuelo P. Cazemiro, a plasterer by trade, who owned some dwelling houses on the Island. He had married in the Azores Catharine Neves, a native of Pico, and they had twelve children, nine of whom grew to maturity. Among these Anthony was the eleventh child, and he grew up on the island where he was born. He was educated in the public schools and worked for the most part on farms, and sometimes as a fishmonger, but by the time that he had reached his nineteenth year, he had begun to direct his thoughts toward the New World.

Four sisters and three brothers had already come to America, so young Cazemiro left his native shores and landed at Brooklyn on April 3, 1901. He came on to California and he arrived on April 17, at Goshen Junction, Tulare County. He went to work for his brother-in-law, Joe V. Garcia, as a milker, continuing with him for ten years and being paid from twenty-five to forty dollars a month.

In 1911 Mr. Cazemiro went to Hanford and bought a ranch of eighty acres, which he improved. At Hanford, on February 15, 1915, he married Miss Mary Madruga, the oldest daughter of Manuel V. and Mary (Neves)

Joseph maurer

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Madruga, natives, respectively, of the Island of Pico, in the Azores, and the State of Massachusetts. The mother was brought up in Boston and was educated in the grammar schools there; and she was married at Visalia.

Manuel Madruga, a real California pioneer, when only twenty years of age came directly from the island of Pico to what was then Tulare County, and herded sheep in what is now Kings County, and camped with his sheep in the middle of what is now the city of Hanford, and once when he and his wife started to come back to their place near that town, they were met by Vasques, the bandit, and his band, the day after the robbery at Kingston. During many years he worked up a band of 3,000 sheep that he owned with a partner, and in the dry year of 1894 they drove them up to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and there the animals froze to death. This heavy loss of nearly all of the sheep, and the then prevailing low prices of wool and mutton, broke him up, and he had to begin all over again, working for others on their ranches. He is now well-to-do, and lives on a ranch of eighty acres three miles northeast of Hanford. He also owns an orchard of forty acres at Armona, and operates a large dairy ranch with 100 head of cattle three miles east of Hanford, having for a partner in the dairy enterprise his oldest son, Manuel Neves Madruga. One of his sons, John A., served his country at Camp Lewis until his discharge.

The second child in the family, and the oldest girl, Mrs. Cazemiro, was brought up on a Kings County ranch. After their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Cazemiro continued on his eighty-acre ranch near Hanford, and in June, 1917, sold it; and the following December, he bought his present place. In 1910, Mr. Cazemiro's parents joined them in Kings County ; but they did not like it here, and they returned to the island of Pico, where they eventually died. Mr. and Mrs. Cazemiro are members of the Roman Catholic Church at Han- ford. Mr. and Mrs. Cazemiro are the parents of two boys: Cyril Anthony, and Joseph.

JOSEPH MOUREN .- A resident of California since March, 1869, now the oldest settler of Huron, is Joseph Mouren, a native of France, having been born at St. Bonnet, near Gap, Hautes-Alpes, February 11, 1849. His father, Pierre Mouren, was a farmer and stockman in that country where he married Rose Julian, but both are now deceased.

Joseph was the youngest of their five children and is the only one now living. He received a good education in the schools of his native land. In March, 1869, he came to San Francisco and entered the employ of Eugene Havey, becoming a stock-buyer and traveling all over the state buying sheep for him. He was in Los Angeles in 1872, when it was but a small town, with a few adobe houses ; that same year he was in Fresno when the railroad had just reached there and Fresno had only a few buildings. After traveling over the state he selected Huron as a desirable place for a location as it was the shipping point for a large territory. Mr. Mouren bought an hotel and livery stable and he and his wife have made a success of the business. He has also been engaged in sheep growing, as well as being engaged in the mercantile business. For over twenty years he engaged in sheep growing until 1918, when he sold his last band of sheep. Believing there is a great future for California lands he has added to his original holdings until he has about 4,000 acres of land in the Valley which he devotes to raising grain, cattle and horses. The soil in the valley is very rich and, when it is a seasonable year, he raises large quantities of grain. For this purpose he employs a Best seventy-five horse-power caterpillar, as well as a combined harvester.

In San Francisco, February 3, 1889, Mr. Mouren was united in marriage with Miss Angela Pelleisson, a native of St. Bonnet, Hautes-Alpes, France. She is the sixth oldest of eight children born to Jean and Madeline (Erro) Pelleisson, who were farmer folk. Mrs. Mouren received a thorough educa- tion in the public school in France. Becoming interested in the land of sun- shine and flowers on the Pacific Coast, she decided to come hither, and on

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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 II, Part 123

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858- Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company Number of Pages: 1424

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1424