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 62
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1885
HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
one and a half acres near the old home; Mrs. Sadie Pyle; and Fay, the youngest child, is also at home.
Mr. Miller is a member of the Church of Christ and was one of the organizers of the congregation at Tranquillity. While living in Kansas he showed his interest in educational matters by serving as a school trustees. Mr. and Mrs. Miller and their family are highly esteemed in the community at Tranquillity, where they have a large circle of friends.
ALLIE T. LEWIS .- A native son who, as a successful ranchman, stock- man, dairyman and breeder of registered Poland-China swine, has done much to advance the best interests of California agriculture, is Allie T. Lewis, who has twenty-four registered brood sows and one of the best Poland-China boars ever brought to California. It is from the celebrated prize-taking Po- land-China boar, "Iowa Wonder," which is everywhere recognized among Poland-China breeders as a world-champion.
Born on October 14, 1888, near where Riverdale now stands, Mr. Lewis is the only son of John B. Lewis, an esteemed resident of Fresno who was once well-known as a pioneer in the Riverdale sector and an extensive rancher and breeder of thoroughbred cattle and hogs. He was born in Bond County, Ill., in 1862, the son of Alfred and Rhoda (Powell) Lewis, who early came from North Carolina. In Illinois he engaged in agriculture until his death in 1879 at the age of forty-five. Mrs. Lewis, who was the mother of nine chil- dren, lived for a while in Selma. John B. Lewis, after availing himself of a limited common school education, remained at home until the beginning of the eighties, when he came west to California, accompanied by his mother. In the course of six years he was able to set himself up in the stock business in the Riverdale district, and there he lived until he purchased forty acres, nine miles west of Laton. Later he acquired for grazing 700 acres. With a dairy of forty cows, he became one of the leading dairymen of the county. While at Gilroy, he was married to Miss Nannie A. Turner, a native of Mon- terey County and a daughter of James H. Turner, who crossed the great plains to California in 1849 and again in 1852. He was a stock-raiser in Mon- terey County, but when he moved to Santa Clara County, he followed general farming. In 1883 she came to Fresno County to teach, taught three years in the Riverdale district, and also a year each in Santa Clara and Butte Counties. Mr. Lewis was one of the stockholders and first promoters of the Farmers' telephone line. Mrs. R. M. Cushman is the only sister of Allie T. Lewis and she lives on the old J. B. Lewis place adjoining the Alfred Lewis ranch on the east.
Alfred, or Allie Lewis attended the public schools of his locality, and at twenty-one he was married to Miss Ruby Pritchard, of Riverdale, by whom he has had three children: Vivian, Alyne and Johnny.
Mr. Lewis' ranch consists of 220 acres, and he milks thirty milch cows, and usually raises at least 600 head of hogs a year. He takes naturally to the work of the cow-boy, whose dress he often adopts; and he spends a good deal of time in the saddle. Mrs. Lewis shares his interest in the prob- lems of the day and contributes what she can of time and effort to help along all worthy movements for the betterment of the neighborhood.
A. D. McKEAN .- A strictly self-made man is A. D. McKean, cashier of the First National Bank of Riverdale, and easily the first citizen of that enter- prising town. He began his struggle with the world under the great disad- vantage of poverty, and his schooling was very meager. His book-education was acquired for the most part after he came to California and after he was twenty years of age; and then, for several terms, he attended the public school and also took a course in a business college. When he thus turned aside to acquire his schooling, his time was worth five dollars per day, but although he fully realized the cost of the effort, he was resolved to get the rudiments of an education, at least, and a good foundation for business. Mr.
1886
HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
McKean is a good machinist, blacksmith, mason, carpenter, farmer and lum- berman, and besides having worked at many different occupations, he has become an experienced and representative banker as well.
Mr. McKean's history is the history of real progress of Riverdale. He helped build the lumber yard and the cooperative creamery; the bank, the school, the public library, and he is active in circles of the Christian Science Church .. As Riverdale's foremost citizen, he has been prominent in every good work, evidencing a public-spirited interest in every progressive move- ment. He has been called upon to lead in getting up "big things" for River- dale, and so was one of the original promoters of the barbecue to celebrate the completion of the railway to the town. He was a leader also in arranging for the celebration at Riverdale, on November 11, 1918, when the armistice was signed and the town lined up with all the rest of the world in its declara- tion of unceasing opposition to autocracy.
Mr. Mckean was born in Ontario, Canada, at Collingwood, on the Geor- gian Bay, Lake Superior, the son of Archibald McKean, a Scotchman, who was a saw-mill man operating in the maples and hard-wood lumber. He had married Ellen Stoutenburg, a native of Ontario, who came of a good old family which once owned 120 acres in the heart of New Amsterdam, later New York. Her maternal grandmother, however, was born in England. The parents were married in Canada, and while there reared five boys and five girls, among whom our subject, born on June 21, 1872, is the fourth son and fifth child. Grandfather McKean was a weaver who came to Canada when past middle life and for a living cut hardwood at twenty-five cents a cord. He died of sunstroke, being unused to the work and heat, the first year there.
A. D. McKean's early life was passed in the lumberwoods of Canada, and he remembers once having sold a number one matched seasoned maple flooring and hauled it twelve miles over mountain roads for twelve dollars.
He had almost no schooling in Canada, for he had to work very hard in the woods; and one winter in Michigan, when he was about seventeen, a heavy, hardwood log, two feet in diameter, rolled over him and almost killed him. Fortunately, the ground where his head struck was a mud- puddle, and that circumstance saved his life. He worked about at different places in Michigan and at Windsor, Canada, for a few months, and then went back to Ontario for a year, next removing to North Dakota, where he worked for a year carpentering at Edgeley.
In 1893, Mr. McKean came to Tulare, Cal., but after a couple of weeks, he removed to Visalia, where he worked in a machine shop. Then he went to Hanford and ran a portable thrasher. It was at Hanford that he turned aside for additional schooling. He attended the high school for two terms, and for six months went to Chestnutwood's Business College at Santa Cruz. From time to time he ran a thrasher, and for ten or twelve years farmed in Kings and Fresno Counties.
In the fall of 1904, Mr. McKean came onto the Laguna de Tache Grant, settling on the grant fourteen miles northwest of Hanford, then in Fresno County, but since the division of the County-for which he canvassed in 1905-06-in Kings County. He bought 140 acres on the grant, improved it, and lived there with his family. He went in for dairying, and in one year sold products to the value of $7,300.
When the time was ripe for action, Mr. McKean helped get the right of way for the Hanford & Summit Lake Railway. He organized a company to put in lumber yards at Hardwick, Riverdale and Tranquillity, after the road had been built, and one of these yards was the yard at Riverdale. This was owned at first by the Hardwick Lumber Company, now known as the Summit Lake Lumber Company, and which was, in between, called the Deacon Lumber Company. He also dealt in real estate in Riverdale for a year. Now he owns a ranch of eighty acres adjoining Riverdale, and a ranch
Alice J. Jedicker
David & Zadiker.
1889
HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
of 640 acres twelve miles to the west. He also owns an apartment house of ten rooms at Point Richmond, which he built. He lived on his Riverdale ranch until February, 1917, when he was burned out. He still maintains his active support of agricultural interests, and has stock in the Cooperative Creamery. Mr. McKean joined the Odd Fellows at Laton, but was transferred to River- dale.
In June, 1913, he became cashier of the First National Bank and has been connected with the institution as a director and stockholder, from the start. The bank opened its doors as a state bank on December 1, 1911, with a capital of $25,000, and with the following officers: John B. Lewis, Presi- dent; Louis E. Gobby, Vice-President; Homer J. Hoyt, Cashier; together with these directors: John B. Lewis, Riverdale; Louis E. Gobby, Riverdale; George C. Aydelott, Hanford; A. D. McKean, Riverdale, and Homer J. Hoyt, Riverdale.
On May 8, 1912, the bank was nationalized and it is also a member of the United States Bank Federal Reserve. Its present officers are: John B. Lewis, President; Louis E. Gobby, Vice-President ; A. D. Mckean, Cashier ; and William Becker, Assistant Cashier. Its board of directors are: John B. Lewis, President ; Louis E. Gobby, Vice-President ; and A. D. McKean, River- dale ; George C. Aydelott, Hanford; and C. A. Smith, Laton. The institution has a beautiful bank building of brick, two stories in height, which was erected in 1916, on the principal corner of the town, and in which the appointments are designed for both the convenience and the pleasure of the bank's patrons. It pays four per cent. interest on term deposits, and has a fire and burglar- proof vault and a manganese steel safe. Its first great aim is to cooperate with and help its depositors and customers, and this fact is fully appreciated by the community.
DAVID S. ZEDIKER .- A man who represents the best element of citizenship in his section of Fresno County and has always worked for the advancement of the general welfare, is D. S. Zediker, the leading apiarist and orchardist in the Parlier district. He was born in Iowa, April 28, 1861, the son of David and Eliza (Robbins) Zediker, parents of eleven children, nine of whom reached maturity. They are: Mrs. Sadie Marsh; John W .; Mrs. Carrie Foster; Mrs. Laura Aull; David S .; Mrs. Susan Woodward; Myrtle, married Lee Burton and is deceased ; George; Ulysses G .; and Mrs. Emma Stump, all living in Fresno County. The father died in Iowa and the mother later came to California, arriving in 1888, induced by the glowing accounts sent back to her by her two sons, John W. and David S., who had come here in 1886. They came at the instigation of a sister, Mrs. Marsh, who had preceded them a short time. Mrs. Zediker bought eighty acres of railroad land, paying five dollars per acre ; it was improved by her sons into very valuable property. She died in 1909 and her property was divided among her children.
David S. resided in Iowa and worked at farming until he came to Cali- fornia on a tour of investigation in 1886. He worked hard and induced his mother to migrate to the coast. It might be mentioned that, during his earlier years here, he returned to Iowa on three different occasions, but the lure of California was too strong and he returned, finally to make his home per- manently. When he received his ten acres from his mother it was a barren parcel of ground, but he set to work with a will and today he has one of the best small ranches in the entire Parlier section of the county. He set out every tree, vine and shrub seen there today, erected all the buildings, leveled and ditched the land, and now has peaches, alfalfa, and a family orchard and vineyard. He has 125 colonies of bees and the annual yield of honey is about three tons. He is known over a wide area as a successful apiarist, as well as horticulturist. He is a member of the California Peach Growers, Inc., and supports all measures for the upbuilding of county and state.
1890
HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
On February 28, 1917, Mr. Zediker was united in marriage with Mrs. Alice Loveless, a native daughter, born in Lake County, November 23, 1874. Her father was James H. Robbe, and her mother, Lavina Donahoo Robbe, a sister of John and Jefferson Donahoo, the latter one of the founders of the Fresno Republican, also the organizer of the sawmill at Shaver. The two brothers came across the plains with ox teams in the early days of the mining era in California and became closely associated with the life of the pioneer in Fresno County. Lavina Donahoo was married twice, first to James Henry Robbe, by whom she had three children: Harry, in Fresno County ; Jeffer- son, in San Francisco; and Mrs. Zediker. Her second husband was a Mr. Bolinger, and two children were the fruit of that union: Hattie Pearl; and Willie, who is deceased. Mr. and Mrs. Robbe came from Iowa to California, and lived in Lake County at the time their daughter was born. After the second marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Bolinger went to Millerton, Fresno County, where they lived, the daughter remaining with them until she was eight years old, when she was taken by her grandmother Donahoo to Fresno, where she was reared and educated. She was married, first to John Bolinger, by whom she had a daughter, Nora A., now Mrs. Blakeley, of Fresno. Her second union was with John Loveless, and she became the mother of a son, Roy J. Loveless, who was educated in the Fresno schools and was employed there until he enlisted for service during the World War, on June 13, 1916, being assigned to Company B, Fifteenth Regiment, U. S. Infantry. He has been doing duty in China for three years and is still in service.
After their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Zediker immediately took up their home on his ranch near Parlier, where they have entered into the social life of the community. Mrs. Zediker enters heartily into ranch life and is an able helpmate to her husband, and together they do all in their power to aid all worthy movements for the betterment of conditions generally in their section of Fresno County.
REV. SANFORD E. SETTY,-A man of splendid thought and attain- ments, who has given largely of himself in the most unselfish manner for his fellow-men, is the Rev. Sanford E. Setty, minister of the Church of the Brethren at Fresno, who farms for a living and preaches and ministers to the sick and the comfortless gratis. His life is noble, and his kindheartedness is fully appreciated by all who know him. As the first settlers on this section of land, the Reverend Setty and his gifted wife turned the wilderness into a flowering garden.
He was born near Sinking Springs, Highland County, Ohio, August 4, 1848, the son of Christopher Setty, who was a native of Adams County, Ohio, and was a farmer near Sinking Springs, dying there at the age of eighty-one. He had married Mary Schoemaker, who was born in Highland County, the daughter of John Schoemaker, originally a planter in Virginia who freed all his slaves and came to Ohio. He was a farmer in Highland County. The mother died at the age of eighty-two, having had fourteen children, among whom Sanford E. was the youngest. His oldest brother, Levi, is still living in Ohio at the age of eighty-seven. Two other brothers still living, who served in the Civil War, are seventy-four and seventy-six years of age.
Brought up on a farm, and educated at the public schools, Sanford studied much by himself and is, in a sense, self-educated. He early set to work on his father's farm, and he married in Highland County, Hester A. Leatherwood, who was born there. He engaged in farming in that vicinity, and during this time, in 1885, was ordained to the ministry of the Church of the Brethren, and began to preach.
In 1897 he removed to North Dakota, and settled near Devil Lake City, Ramsay County, where he homesteaded 160 acres and improved the same, erecting the necessary buildings; and he raised wheat and other grains for eleven years. He was a minister to the church there, and a liberal contributor to its church-building fund.
1891
HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
He moved west to and located in California in 1909 and bought a tract of twenty acres where a contract was made for one section for the Church of the Brethren by J. W. Brooks; and he was the first to put in a well and to set out trees and build a house. The other members of the Brethren did not come, but Reverend Setty stayed just the same and began to grow up with the country. He planted alfalfa and went in for dairying; and he joined the California Associated Raisin Company.
Reverend Mr. Setty was the minister of the Brethren at Kerman until it was discontinued, and since then he has attended the church at Fresno. He is a member of the District of Northern California of the Church of the Brethren.
Four children have blessed the union of this couple. J. E. Setty is with the Southern Pacific Railroad and resides at Fresno; George O. is in Le- moore ; W. R. manages an elevator in Erie, N. D .; and Estella G. has become Mrs. Furlong, of Kerman.
SAMUEL C. SAMPLE .- A very energetic and progressive ranchman, who is engaged in grain-farming, is Samuel Sample, a Mississippian who is making good in the Golden State. He was born at Richmond, in Holmes County, fifteen miles south of Lexington on Cypress Creek, on October 17, 1877, the son of Alexander Dulaney Sample, who resides at Burrel. His parents, Samuel, and his sister, Annie, now the wife of H. B. Collins of Lone Star, Fresno County, came from Mississippi here in 1907, Samuel stepping off the train on the first of July ; and the father, with the balance of the family, later. His brother, however, came to California only about two years ago. Samuel had attended Millsap's College at Jackson, for two years, while he grew up on his father's plantation in Mississippi. The mother died at Ro- linda in 1914, sixty-four years of age.
Mr. Sample was married at Fresno to Miss Leora Schaeffer, a native ot Fresno County, on October 23, 1916, and she died in December, 1917, mourned by all who had come to appreciate her sterling qualities.
In 1917 Mr. Sample bouht 240 acres in the Helm district, about three and a half miles southwest of that town; and besides operating this land, he rents three sections. For the season of 1919, he has 1,000 acres of wheat and 100 acres of barley ; and he summer-fallowed 800 acres.
His first experience in California farming lands and farming was at Ro- linda. He has bought, improved and sold several different tracts, and he still owns forty acres there, half in alfalfa, half in fruit. He owns a seventy-five horse-power Holt tractor and a twenty-foot Holt combined harvester and thresher. A Democrat in national politics, Mr. Sample has found pleasure in supporting local uplift movements. Fresno County is to be congratulated on such enterprising and worthy citizens, intent not only on their own prosper- ity, but that of the community and the commonwealth in which they reside.
ALAN D. MILNES .- A Welshman from the county of David Lloyd George, who has made good in southern Fresno County, is Alan Downes Milnes, who now owns and runs a ranch of 100 acres devoted to dairy stock and registered Poland-China hogs, and he is one of the biggest buyers and shippers of hogs in his section of the State.
He was born at Kerry, Montgomery, Wales, on February 28, 1881, the son of James Mayall Milnes, who had married Agnes Mary Downes. He was a teacher in the parochial schools in Wales, and the parents are still living at the old home place there. They have had eleven children, and one daughter is deceased ; nine are living in Wales, and Alan D. is the only one in America.
He received a good education and was brought up in the Church of England. Then he began clerking in a hardware-store or ironmonger's shop at Newton, Wales, and sold farm machinery-Massey Harris, McCormick, and the output of Walter A. Woods. Perhaps because of his association with
1892
HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
certain American products, he had a great desire to see America, and in 1899 he determined to take the step which must separate him, for the time at last, from his home and kin.
On June 1, he sailed on the Allan State Line, and eleven days later landed at Quebec from the ship "Tasmania." Havre, Mont., was the place of his destination, and for a while he worked there for Harding & Neill. They were cattle men, and he was out on the range in the Milk River Valley in Montana. Later he engaged with Senator Clark, and continued in the cattle business until 1902.
In that year he came to Laton, and three years later, on April 30, he was married in that place to Miss Lelah Lewis, daughter of Edgar G. Lewis, a native of Michigan, who had married, in Nebraska, Amy Hamilton of Illi- nois. The parents came to California in 1880 from Nebraska, and settled in the Red Banks district near Clovis. Now the father has retired and they live at Fresno.
Mr. and Mrs. Milnes resided at Laton until 1908, when they came to their present ranch ; and nine years ago Mr. Milnes started buying and ship- ping hogs. He is an excellent judge of hogs and beef cattle, but it is as a hog buyer and shipper, that he is best known. He consigns direct to the leading packers at San Francisco and Los Angeles, and ships, sometimes by the Santa Fe, but mostly by the Southern Pacific, despatching from Riverdale, Burrel, Helm, San Joaquin, Tranquillity, Selma, Fresno, Madera, Caruthers, and other points. He is also a stockholder and vigorous supporter of the Riverdale Cooperative Creamery.
Seven children blessed this union of Mr. and Mrs. Milnes: Alan Lewis; William Everett; Charles Howard; Dorothy May ; Agnes Lelah ; James Earl, and Lloyd George. In 1918 the Milnes built their bungalow home. Mr. Milnes belongs to the Odd Fellows, of which he is a past grand.
EDWIN L. ARNOLD .- A native of Missouri, Mr. Arnold was born on a farm in Boone County, April 15, 1868. His father, George Arnold, was born in Ripley County, Ind., on February 23, 1831, the son of John and Jane Ann (Stackhouse) Arnold, born in Charlotte County, Va., and Preble County, Ohio, respectively. The Stackhouse family is of English descent, tracing back to the Mayflower in Massachusetts. George Arnold ran a flat-boat on the Ohio and Mississippi. In the fifties he removed to Illinois where they spent one year and then located in Boone County, Mo., where he was a farmer and stockman, until he died on August 25, 1913, aged eighty-two years. He had married in Indiana to Samantha I. Manaugh, born in Clark County, Ind., on June 5, 1834. Her father came from Ireland, when four years of age, with his parents, to Pennsylvania. His maternal great-grand- father, James Hutchinson, who was born in Pennsylvania, was too young to enter the regular military service, but drove a team for the Colonial Army in the Revolutionary War. Mrs. Samantha Arnold died while on a visit to Washington, on October 11, 1915, aged eighty-one years. She was the mother of hfteen children, of whom E. L. is the eleventh in order of birth.
Edwin L. attended the country schools in his youth, and worked on the farm. In 1885 he came with his brother, George A., to California, and for seven years worked on ranches in Merced and Stanislaus Counties. In 1888 he came to the Huron section of Fresno County to build a cabin for his brother, who had homesteaded 160 acres six miles south of Huron. His brother located in Huron in 1892, where he ran a store, was justice of the peace, and postmaster. In 1898 the brother sold out his interest and moved to Vacaville, Solano County. Our subject located at Huron with his brother in 1892, assisting in the Huron Cash Store and in the care of the ranch. In the fall of 1898 he bought a part interest in the Kreyenhagen Ditch and rented a section of land on the Polvadero Rancho, where he had a half sec- tion in grain and a half section in grazing lands, and this he farmed for three years. For the next five years he engaged in cattle-raising in the mountains.
E. L. arnold.
1895
HISTORY OF FRESNO COUNTY
In 1906, Mr. Arnold was elected constable in a three-cornered fight, and reelected in 1910 by a three-to-one vote, and reelected again in 1914. He refused to run again for office as he wanted to give his time to farming. For three years he conducted a harness shop on Fifth Street, Coalinga, and after disposing of this, he again engaged in the cattle business with Paul Brix as a partner. Mr. Arnold has been deputy sheriff for twenty years, under four different sheriffs, and also has served as deputy tax-collector for the county for two terms. In 1906 he succeeded J. M. Atkisson as constable. Mr. Arnold has made a fine record as an officer. Fearless and brave, he has captured a number of noted criminals. He brought to book the notorious horsethief, Peter Tosta, who had escaped from the Mariposa jail, was sen- tenced to San Quentin, escaped from there and is still at large. He was also connected with the other ferrets in the Indart murder case, near Huron. He found the body in the creek bottoms after it had been buried for seven weeks. He has a number of other captures to his credit.
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