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 47
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As bride and groom, Mr. and Mrs. Lockie came here right after their marriage and made their first purchase of twenty acres, upon which he built his residence and home. The second twenty acres they bought in 1906. By hard, intelligent work Mr. Lockie has added the necessary barns and other
Erik. adolfsa mas & adolfson
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outbuildings and has planted to trees and vines; and their union has been blessed with the birth of four children : Clarence Franklin, a freshman in the Fowler high school; Elsie May, attending the grammar school; and William Melbourne and Edith Lucile They are members of the Baptist Church in Fowler, of which Mr. Lockie is a trustee, while Mrs. Lockie is a teacher in the Sunday School. He is a Republican, of the broad and thoroughly patriotic sort ; he loyally supported the administration of President Wilson, and both he and his good wife were patrons of the Red Cross and participants in other war work.
Mrs. Lydia A. Hearte, Mrs. Lockie's mother, passed away at the Lockie home on April 23, 1918, aged seventy-nine, having celebrated her last birth- day only on the fifteenth of the preceding month. She was an honorary mem- ber of the Missionary Society of the Baptist Church at Fowler, and was a woman of exemplary Christian character. By unanimous vote, the members of that church resolved to observe Saturday, March 15, 1919, the anniver- sary of her birth, in commemorating her life, and on that sacred occasion they met together and decorated her grave with flowers, thus bearing testimony to their love for her and their esteem for her noble character.
Mrs. Lockie is recognized as a woman of the same Christian attributes. As the baby of the family, she was never separated from her mother, during all the long life of the latter, for more than seven and a half months. Thus her recollections of the departed are delightful and inspiring.
ERIK ADOLFSON .- There must be an affinity between the Swedish and Fresno County, for all who have located here have given a good account of themselves, and one of the notable examples is Erik Adolfson. He was born in Narke, Oerebrolan, Sweden, September 11, 1857. His father, Adolf Anderson, was a farmer in his native country, and came to America, in 1883, with his family and settled in Red River Valley, Minn., where he im- proved a farm, and still resides, now over ninety years of age. His mother, who was Maria Johnson, was also born in Sweden and is yet living, at the age of over ninety-two years. There were eight children in the family, seven of whom are living, and Erik is the second oldest.
Erik Adolfson remained in Sweden until he was twenty years old, was educated in the public schools and in the meantime learned farming. In 1877 he came to join a sister who had come to America in 1876, and located in ·Ishpeming, Mich., a great iron-mining community. Here he was em- ployed in the iron mines for five years, and became a contractor to get out ore. In 1881 he went to Minnesota and located a homestead in Red Lake County, and the next year moved on it, improved it, proved up on it, and made it his home for twenty-six years, where he was engaged in grain and stock-raising.
In 1904, Mr. Adolfson made a trip to California, bought seventy acres in Vinland Colony, and two years later located on it. He built a residence and began to improve his place and takes great pride in the fact that he has planted all the vines and trees that now adorn his home place. He first set out an orchard, planted a vineyard and sowed alfalfa. He now has seven acres in Thompson seedless, an orchard of twenty acres of peaches and apricots, and the balance in pasture and alfalfa. When he first settled on this place it was a grain field, but he plowed, checked and leveled it himself, and has seen the development into a very valuable piece of property, a satisfac- tion that only those can appreciate who, like him, love to produce from the soil. He has a small dairy and it, like everything else on his place, is up-to- date. When the Skaggs bridge was built across the San Joaquin River, Mr. Adolfson helped to build it, working as a foreman from the start until it was completed. He also furnished the gravel for the bridge. About the time the bridge was commenced he sold his farm in Minnesota, thereby sever- ing all ties with that state.
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Mr. Adolfson was married in Michigan to Miss Johanna Soderman, also a native of Sweden. They have eight children: Hada Alida, now Mrs. Jerry Long, of Kerman; Ellen Thyresa, at home; August Selim, an assistant of his father; Martin, who served in Battery B, Sixty-second Division, Heavy Artillery, as a musician, sixteen months, part of the time overseas; Edith; Henning and Levinus, both farmers in the home vicinity; and Titus, in Ker- man High.
While in Minnesota, Mr. Adolfson was a school trustee and clerk of the board, and he is now a member of the Union High School Board at Kerman. He is a member of the Lutheran Church in Vinland, is a trustee and chairman of the board, and he helped to organize the church. He has a musical temperament and plays both the organ and piano. In Minnesota he was the church organist, and for ten years has occupied that position in the local church. His children inherit his musical taste and lend their aid in song in their community. He is a member of the California Associated Raisin Company, a stockholder in the Kerman Creamery, and helped in the initial steps of the Kerman Telephone Company. Mr. Adolfson is a valuable man in his section, kind and liberal, progressive in every particular, and with his family, enjoys the esteem and good will of the community.
ROBERT C. BROWN .- Among the representatives of American man- hood who are filling meritorions position with, and are well rewarded by the Standard Oil Company, none is more justly popular with the workmen whose interests he so conscientiously studies than Robert C. Brown, the effi- cient foreman of the Mendota Pumping Station. He was born in Fort Lara- mie, Wyo., on February 12, 1878, the son of Dr. T. V. Brown, a native of Marbach, Wurtemberg, Germany. The grandfather was a physician and sur- geon, and as ship-surgeon sailed in the Transatlantic trade. He traveled be- tween Hamburg and New York, and died aboard ship when T. V. was only a lad of fourteen. The boy landed in New York and for a time lived with a French family. He found that he had a cousin named Eminger, who was an assistant to the Secretary of War; and having sought him out and enlisted his sympathetic cooperation, he received a good education and in time be- came a graduate in medicine with the degree of M. D.
When the Civil War broke out, Eminger joined the Southern Confed- eracy, but Dr. T. V. Brown remained true to the cause of the Union. He served in the hospital department during the entire war, and it was his privilege to have been with President Lincoln on some of his visits to the front, and he became a great admirer of the heroic President. He continued in the army and in 1890 came to the Presidio in San Francisco, where he lived for four years, until he was retired. Then he was made superintendent of the German Hospital in San Francisco, and.remained there another four years, when he resigned.
It had been Dr. Brown's hobby to engage in the poultry business, so he started a poultry ranch at San Leandro, which he ran for a time, or until his extravagance in the menu he provided for his fowls compelled him to quit. Then he engaged in the drug business in Saratoga, Santa Clara County, for a time ; but selling out, he purchased the Red Cross Pharmacy in San Jose, and there he did so well that he continued until his death on February 12, 1914. He was a well-read man, had a retentive memory, and was a good con- versationalist; and possessing a fine personality, he was often sought as a speaker for special occasions in societies, clubs and schools.
By the marriage of Dr. Brown and Mrs. Pauline Lauk, a native of Stutt- gart, Germany, five children were born: Gertrude, in San Jose; Robert C., of this review; Eddie, deceased; Eleanor, an employe of the San Francisco branch of the United States Pension Bureau until it was abolished, and now bookkeeper and assistant superintendent of Fabiola Hospital, Oakland; and Theodore V., a prominent pharmacist in San Jose, and a member of the state
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legislature during the session of 1917, and served in the assembly. By a former marriage of Dr. Brown he was the father of a daughter, Margaret, now Mrs. William Minck, and the mother of one son, William B., who served over-seas in the 363d Infantry, and who there met death bravely in the great cause for which the United States and her Allies warred ; while on guard duty in the trenches, on October 4, 1918, he was shot through the head and killed.
When only twelve years of age Robert Brown came to San Francisco from Fort Bayard, N. M., and since then he has become a typical western man. He was educated in the public schools of the Bay City, and at the San Francisco Polytechnic, and later followed various lines of work, including apprentice to surgical instrument manufacturer, electrical business, and the sale of general merchandise, and manufacturing. Then he came to Turlock during the building of the Turlock Ditch, on which he was employed, and so had something to do with the development of that part of the State.
In 1902, Mr. Brown began his service for the Standard Oil Company on the construction of the pipe-line from Bakersfield to the Bay ; and when, in 1903, the line was completed, he worked as fireman. Then, in 1905, he was made engineer, later assistant chief engineer, and then chief engineer. In 1907 he came to the Mendota Pumping Station as Assistant Engineer, and in 1911 he was appointed Chief Engineer and is serving as Station Foreman. For some years, therefore, Mr. Brown has been in charge of the building up of this place, and there one finds a well-housed group of employes for whose personal comfort and welfare he is ever solicitous. The station is one of the largest on the line, because it gets oil from Coalinga as well as from Bakers- field ; and along the pipe-line Mr. Brown is the oldest official in years as well as in service on the line.
On March 23, 1914, Mr. Brown was married at Fresno to Miss Leveian Eleanor Moore, a native of Portland, Ore., and the daughter of Samuel and Caroline (Howard) Moore, natives of Ohio and Oregon respectively. Grand- father Moore is now the oldest pioneer living in Lane County, Ore., and Mrs. Brown's parents both reside in Oregon. Mrs. Brown is a member of the Pythian Sisters and the L. O. T. M. Mr. and Mrs. Brown had a son, Robert V., who died in infancy.
Mr. and Mrs. Brown own a ranch of forty acres seven miles south of Mendota Pumping Station, and they also own land at Bloomfield, Cal., and 160 acres nine miles west of the pumping-station. This place Mrs. Brown homesteaded, and they now hold a Government deed to the land. Mr. Brown, who is a Republican, is a delegate to the Pine Flat Irrigation project, and is also interested in oil development in other fields, and is a stockholder in the Midway Visalia Oil Company. He is a trustee of the Tranquillity Union High School Board, and is clerk of the board. Like his good wife, he is pub- lic-spirited and endeavors to advance the interests of Fresno County.
JOHN W. SMITH .- An enterprising and progressive California mer- chant, who had the honor of having erected the first store-building at Biola, and whose wife was the first postmaster in that place and served with excep- tional ability and to everybody's satisfaction until the office was discontinued, was John W. Smith, who first came to California in the early nineties. He was born at Danville, in the good old state of Virginia, on April 5,1868, the son of Levi W. Smith, a native of Maryland. Josiah Smith, the grandfather, was a Marylander, but he removed to Virginia with his family and there became a planter. Levi W. Smith was a wheelwright, and he ran a carriage and wagon factory ; he was also an undertaker and made coffins. He served in the Civil War and he continued business at Danville. He married Martha Coan, also born in Virginia. These good parents had three boys, and John W. was second in order of birth.
John W. Smith attended the public schools and when fourteen began to paddle his own canoe. He went to North Carolina with an uncle, Thomas Smith, a farmer, and for two years was a guard in the State Prison at Raleigh.
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He resigned, and became a salesman for a wholesale tobacco house, for which he traveled through North Carolina. Railroads were few, and the salesman was expected to make the deliveries, usually by teams. At the end of two years, in 1892, he came to Minnesota ; then in a few months to Missouri; and in 1893 to California.
Having spent the summer at Bakersfield, with Miller & Lux, Mr. Smith came in the fall to Fresno and here at once engaged in farming on the West Side. In partnership with Walter Caruthers, he leased the Jeff James place and ran 2,000 acres, using several teams, large out-headers and threshers; but the dry years and poor crops set them back in what otherwise would have been a very successful venture, and after two years, they dissolved the partnership. Mr. Smith then went to Paso de Robles and farmed on the Estrella Plains, raising grain ; and he engaged in cattle-growing at Parkfield, on the county line, running from three to four hundred head. When he sold out, he remov- ed to San Joaquin County and at Escalon bought a ranch, engaging in dairy- ing, and raising stock and alfalfa. In December, 1913, he sold out and located at Biola, when the railroad had just been completed. He built the first store there, which was the first structure except a small cottage and real estate office ; and he put in a stock of general merchandise, and here he continued in business up to the time of his recent accidental death.
At Paso de Robles, in 1902, Mr. Smith was married to Mrs. Mary (Freeman) Fanset, a native of that beautiful town and the daughter of J. L. Freeman, a pioneer there. By her first marriage she had four children : Elmer ; Carl, a partner in the business with his mother; Annie, deceased ; and Belle. Mr. and Mrs. Smith had two children: Allan, who is a graduate of the Ker- man High School, and assists his mother; and Coan.
Mr. Smith was always a public-spirited man, and in San Joaquin County he served for years as a school trustee. Mr. Smith passed away on January 26, 1919, meeting death in an automobile accident, since which time Mrs. Smith and her son, Carl Fanset, conduct the business.
ANTON NIELSEN .- A worthy and prosperous rancher, Anton Nielsen has been a resident of Fresno County since January 6, 1890, and during twenty years out of the twenty-nine he has resided in the vicinity of Reedley. He is a native of Denmark, where he was born in Jaaland, June 18, 1870, a son of Niels and Dorthe Nielsen, who were the parents of six children, An- ton, the subject of this sketch, being the youngest and the only one of the family residing in the United States.
On January 6, 1890, Anton Nielsen became a resident of Fresno County. As soon as he was able to do so, he became a property owner, realizing he had found an ideal spot for a home and to become independent. His ranch is only one-half mile from Reedley and is devoted to the production of raisin grapes (muscat and Thompson seedless), peaches, and some alfalfa. The ranch formerly consisted of eighty acres, forty of which were grain land, but set to muscats and Thompson seedless by Mr. Nielsen. He sold one-half and the portion he retained is highly improved and extremely productive, made so by good management and hard work. Mr. Nielsen is well known for his uprightness of character and honesty of purpose in all of his business relations with his fellow men. He believes in using up-to-date methods in the cultivation and propagation of his products and is regarded as a success- ful viticulturist. In 1919 he erected a modern home with all conveniences, at a cost of about $9,000.
On December 16, 1902, Anton Nielsen was united in marriage with Miss Augusta Rasmussen, who also is a native of Denmark, where she first saw the light of day in Jaaland on July 7, 1884. They became the parents of five children : Edith R., Anton M., Dorothy M., J. Verner and Clara M. Mr. and Mrs. Nielsen are highly respected in the community where they reside. Mr. Nielsen's successful career as a rancher, which has been attained by
augusta C. Nielsen
Nielsen. Anton
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persistent effort and strict economy, and in which he has been ably assisted by his good wife, is worthy of emulation by the younger generation. Mr. Nielsen has been a strong advocate of cooperation among the fruit-growers and is a stockholder in the California Peach Growers, Inc., and the Cali- fornia Associated Raisin Company. In politics he is a Democrat in national affairs. The family attends the Danish Lutheran Church. After being in California eleven years, Mr. Nielsen went back to visit the scenes of his youth, but returned to the land of his adoption more than ever satisfied with his selection of a home.
BERTRAND W. GEARHART .- A native son of California, born in Fresno, May 31, 1890, Bertrand W. Gearhart is a son of J. W. and Mamie (Johnson) Gearhart, of whom mention is made on another page of this his- tory. B. W. Gearhart was educated in the grammar and high schools of his native city, after which he attended the University of Southern California Law School, from which institution he was graduated in June, 1914, receiv- ing the degree of LL.B. He had matriculated at the University in September, 1910, and pursued the regularly prescribed law course, but contrary to the usual ways of the university law students, he won his admission to the bar of the state one year before his graduation. He took and successfully passed the regular bar examination and was admitted to practice July 21, 1913. After his graduation from the university he became associated with Short and Sutherland, of Fresno, in the practice of his profession and con- tinued with that firm until he received the appointment as a deputy in the office of the district attorney of Fresno County.
When the call came for volunteers in the great World War, just ended, Mr. Gearhart gave up his duties and entered the Second Officer's Training Camp at the Presidio, in San Francisco and on November 27, 1917. he re- ceived his commission as a lieutenant. He served through his enlistment with distinction and honor and for six months saw active service in France as the commanding officer of the Six Hundred Ninth Aero Squadron. He was in the army eighteen months in all. He sailed from Bordeaux, France, January 28, 1919, and was honorably discharged at Garden City, N. Y., on March 4, of that year, and arrived home on the ninth of that month. He found his position awaiting his arrival and he immediately doffed his uniform and went back to his desk and his books.
Mr. Gearhart is a Republican in politics. Fraternally he is a member of the Elks, Native Sons, and Woodmen of the World; he also belongs to the University Club and Sunnyside Country Club. He is deeply interested in the development and progress of Fresno County and his ability and forceful virility will no doubt be telling factors in its growth.
CLAYTON F. DRAPER .- As banker and justice of the peace of Kings- burg, Clayton F. Draper was born on the old Draper farm in the Franklin school district, and attended that district school, while he grew up on the farm. F. A. Draper, his father, was a large wheat raiser and the lad came to have a general grain-farmer's experience. His mother was, in maidenhood, Florence M. Livermore. As a high school boy, he rode his bicycle to the school at Selma, and being athletic, he became a bicycle racer. He carried off the cycling pennant, and was active in all kinds of athletics. He played on the football team as quarter-back, and helped for several years to win the pennant in a chain including Fresno, Bakersfield and other towns in the Val- ley. Finally he was graduated from the Selma Union High School with the Class of '01, popularly known as "The Naughty Ones."
An uncle, John W. Livermore, was a pioneer rancher and wheat grower near Kingsburg, and during vacations, Clayton kept busy with him driving a number of his father's horses. Later he engaged with A. M. Mckean at threshing, and his next venture was at the Coalinga oil fields, where he was a tool dresser.
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While he was still in the high school, Mr. Draper was asked by D. S. Snodgrass, now deceased, to accept a clerkship in the First National Bank of Selma, of which he was president, but he was then working with Mr. Mc- Kean's threshing crew under an arrangement whereby he was to receive seventy-five cents per day extra if he would stay to the end of the season. Mr. Snodgrass, learning of this, allowed him to stay out his entire time, and then he began as a clerk in the First National Bank at Selma until the First National Bank of Kingsburg was organized, and he opened the first set of books there. Mr. Draper and A. T. Lindgren, the present cashier worked there together in 1904. After continuing for some time with the latter organi- zation, Mr. Draper came to the Kingsburg Commercial and Savings Bank on August 15, 1915, as assistant cashier. He served as treasurer of the Red Cross on the various drives for war purposes, also had charge of the issuing of li- censes for the sale of explosives. He was a member of the County Council of Defense and the Exemption Board in Fresno County.
Mr. Draper is a member of the Republican State Central Committee, is a personal friend of Senator Hiram Johnson, and served on the entertainment committee when, as governor, Mr. Johnson visited Kingsburg. He was ap- pointed Justice of the Peace to fill a vacancy in August, 1915; and in 1918 he was elected to the same post. He is a notary public, and has been city treas- urer ever since Kingsburg was incorporated.
In August, 1907, at Fowler, Cal., Mr. Draper was married to Miss Blanche Bonoeil, a daughter of T. B. Bonoeil, a pioneer rancher, and they have one daughter. Pauline F. Mr. Draper is Past Master of Traver Lodge, No. 294, F. & A. M., at Kingsburg, and also belongs to the Eastern Star of which he is Past Patron : also belongs to the Woodmen of the World and the Inde- pendent Order of Foresters.
It was in 1904 that a well-printed, but modest little value, "An Auto- biography of Elias Johnson Draper. A Pioneer of California, containing some thrilling incidents relative to crossing the plains by ox-team, and some very interesting particulars of life in California in the early davs," was issued from the office of the Fresno Evening Democrat, and placed on sale. In giving these chatty reminiscences to the public. Mr. Draper performed a truly pa- triotic service.
He tells of his boyhood days in Indiana, back in the thirties, and of his growing up there and beginning as a carpenter, when wages were thirty-seven and a half cents a dav. No wonder, then, that the return of early gold-miners and others from California began to convince Elias that he was making scant progress, and that if he, too, wished to get rich quickly, he would better hie himself to this Coast. His young wife, despite her parents' misgivings, agreed to accompany him to the Promised Land, and having disposed of their little property, the young couple started off on horseback, with their infant boy in arms, on the first stretch of the journey. Elias was instructed to inquire for letters at St. Louis telling him of the location of a brother ; Elias traveled by sleds, railroad and inland streams to St. Louis, then on to Louisville and, get- ting no mail. finally had to continue to Lexington, when the desired-for mes- sage was received, saying that Brother George was still 200 miles away, and to leave his wife, buy a horse and come to him!
In this way Draper continues his narrative of sickness by the way, with no place to lay one's head-partly due to the sparse population, partly to fear by the few settlers of the honesty of strangers or the possible malignant character of their maladies ; and he tells of danger from highway robbers, sharpers willing to fleece those fitting out and then disposed to try bulldozing tactics, and the picturesque role of the Freemason, who bobs up at the right moment to aid the unfortunates recognized as fellow-Masons. He was enter- tained by a slaveholder, and was astonished to hear him say grace at table and thus give evidence that he was a Christian. He had to ford streams, at great risk to himself and his cattle, and they encountered such a cloudburst,
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with thunder and lightning, that the hail almost stunned the pilot boy, and cattle and wagons were soon swimming about. Hard drinking and other fruits of the unbridled saloon was the order of the day, and crime followed in its wake and made still more unsafe such a journey. Exorbitant rates were charged for ferrying cattle and wagons across the streams, and one had to submit, even almost to bankruptcy, or travel for miles to another ford, or pat- ronize less dependable transports. Thieving, drunken and quarrelsome In- dians also menaced their paths and required sharp turning, and wild prairie fires, the result of carelessness in dropping fire on the grass, was one of the risks for which they themselves were responsible. Buffalo, too, shaking the earth with their heavy tread, and stirring up clouds of dust hiding them eventually from view, added to the excitement of the hour. Sometimes the problem of helping themselves across a turbulent stream, whose depth was un- known, was so serious that nothing was to be done but to remove the body of a wagon from the axle and wheels, and caulk it so as to make a kind of scow in which to float across, and even then they would be carried far down the river.
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