USA > California > Tulare County > History of Tulare County, California with biographical sketches > Part 38
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In 1878, their 1,100 acres of wheat yielded them 33,000 bushels of the very best grain. Their average yield for the ten years is not far from 30 bushels per acre, ranging in different years from 25 to 50 bushels on various fields, accord- ing to season.
His land, which was carefully selected by him, is sonie of the best of the now justly noted Mussel Slough lands-a dark sandy loam, comparatively free from salt grass, and alkali spots. He now has a thrifty young orchard and vineyard, producing annually, in great abundance and of finest quality, peaches, apples, pears, plums, apricots, almonds, grapes, and blackberries.
In stock, he has raised mainly what is needed for home use, except hogs, of which he has in some years sent to market as many as 200 head.
In 1881-82, he invested about $15,000 in property in Los Angeles County, twelve miles southeast of the city of Los Angeles, where he proposes to establish a dairy ranch.
Mr. Robinson has seven children living, four sons and three daughters, two of the latter married, Mary E. to John Malcom, and Martha E. to F. M. Parrish, who are farming near Han- ford. His oldest son, John Wesley Robinson, is farming near his father's home place. Mr. Robinson's entire family are at present farming 1,342 acres, in the Mussel Slough country and in Los Angeles County. Miss Emma, his youngest daughter, is attending the University of Southern California, at Los Angeles, as are his second and third sons, Frank E., and Edwin S. Robinson. His youngest son, Chester, now seven years old, is at home with his parents.
Mr. Robinson is well known throughout Tulare County as a type of one of its most successful farmers.
H. P. GRAY furnishes us with the following interesting autobiography of his life, which we give in full :-
"I was born in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, in April, 1841; moved to Rock County, Wisconsin. This I believe was in 1847. Then the Indian trails were quite fresh in that county. After a stay of about six years, we emigrated to the then Territory of Minnesota. On our settlement there we found the Indians and trappers our only neighbors. Our stay in that State lasted for about seven years, at the end of which time, at the age of about eighteen, with my father, A. W. Gray, now of
Lemoore, and two brothers, I started for Pike's Peak. After wending our way for many hundred miles in that direction, meeting many returning teams whose men were often hollow- eyed and hungry-looking, we turned our course towards the sunny land of California. Made the journey in three months with an ox-team, after being menaced by Indians and Mormons more than once. Arriving at Placerville, or old Hangtown, my father left my next older brother and myself after handing us $20.00 and assuring us that we had a splendid prospect before us, and while in tears on his part, he mounted the stage for Sacramento, to be off on the next steamer for San Francisco, thence home, we loaded our backs with blankets, flour, bacon, sugar, and other eatables, as also frying-pan, coffee-pot, together with other things necessary for the support of life, and with the "splendid prospect" before us, we hied away to the hills- away in pursuit of the nugget and gold-dust.
"But our nugget was small, and the gold-dust scarce, and after sufficient stay in the mountains, now in the shaft, now over the sluice boxes, we settled with our good station merchant 'by giving over what cash and personal effects we possessed for the supplies we had received, and abandoned the log cabin in the gulch forever, and turned our face toward the valley, without acquaintances or friends, sometimes with money, but oftener without, taking long stretches across the State in pur- suit of this or that and always something better. But let it be understood not as a tramp, for every man in those days would scorn to take anything though he were hungry that he could not pay for. And with my experience on the farm, in the lumber woods, on the river drive, in the army under the good flag of the Union, as a freight teamster to the mountains, or whatever betided me, I learned to paddle my own canoe.
" In the fall of 1869, I thought to seek for a location, where the best opportunities for securing a home had not already passed away as in my then present locality, San Joaquin County. And when on my journey southward I broke through the Kingston timber, and looked upon the plain of the 'Mussel Slough ' country, with its rich alluvial soil covered with filaree and clover upon which countless numbers of cattle, sheep, and horses were subsisting, with its surrounding belts of timber and King's River skirting the western side, I proclaimed the prospects good and located upon the homestead here shown, and taking up adjoining lands, we, that is my brother Reuben and myself as partners, prepared for farming on quite a large scale. The stock men who were then kings and princes in this section, called by more than once and insinuated that it never rained in this county.
" We supposed that if they knew that our errand here was to make two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, that we were the ones to be benefited, and with this consider- ation we let the matter drop out of mind. However, during the next two years few drops of rain fell, and so little grass or grain grew that more than one set of settlers abandoned this
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FARM & RESIDENCE OF F. G. JEFFERDS, NEAR FARMERSVILLE, TULARE CO.CAL. ELLIOTTUTH.MONT. SI
ELLIOTT.LITH +21 MONT ST.
"PLANO ORANGE GROVE" RESIDENCE OF DEMING GIBBONS, PLANO, TULARE CO. CAL.
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locality during that time, and the bleaching bones of the once beautiful herds of stock were visible everywhere. Those who had withstood this trying ordeal, began to realize that irriga- tion was necessary, and that with it, this locality could be made to blossom as the rose.
" Then every man except those who never do their part under such circumstances, gathered to the banks of King's River, with fat teams and poor teams, and some with none. Some with grain feed and some without save the grass on the banks of the river. Commodious ditches were built near or quite across the plains of Tulare Lake at an enormous expense. The result was that mortgages fell thick and heavy upon the homesteads of the settlers, falling so heavy on many that it wrested the homes from those whose ambition and energy had made the country. Your humble contributor was not exempt from some of this experience which, when combined with other evils that overtook him, brought somewhat of distress upon his affairs. The question now arose concerning the repeal of the old fence law. Our own interest caused us to take something of an active part in this agitation.
" Hon. Lipton Lindsy, of Visalia, was our man and we worked in and out of convention for his election to the State Senate. This was a time when even Democrats forgot party fealty, and voted independent for local interest. After this election, we in common with all farmers rejoiced in the repeal of the fence law. This was a severe shock to the finances of the stock interest, but the county soon more than regained its wonted prosperity under the careful hand of the husbandman. But what of our experience with farming with irrigation ?
" In 1875 I sowed 320 acres of alfalfa, then probably the largest field in the county. Our farming at this time aside from alfalfa consisted in wheat culture together with adjoining pastoral lands, altogether about 2,000 acres. In the winter of 1877, we wintered about 1,200 sheep, mostly fat wethers, upon the farm here shown, which was the alfalfa farm. Sustained that winter in our stock interest a loss of $10,000, owing to a crash in the sheep interest. This severe loss, with others previous, involved us to the amount of $23,000. Calling our creditors together and showing them the situation, they signed a contract giving us further time for payment with- out molestation. But afterwards our lands were all sold out by the Sheriff under a foreclosed mortgage, but were all redeemed at the last moment of time.
" In the summer of 1877, upon this farm, was raised alfalfa seed, hay, and grazing to the value of $14,790, after giving one-fourth beside this for the harvesting and tending of the same. This was a welcome income considering our many losses. About this time my brother and myself dissolved partnership, except in our unsettled liabilities. And with the natural pro- ductiveness of the soil and the benefit of irrigation, we have been enabled to overcome the financial difficulties that once surrounded us.
" In 1881 I sold all the land except this farin of 330 odd acres shown in the sketch. It is located from railroad depot three miles; from school, two and one-quarter; church, three; post-office, three. About one-fourth of the farm is devoted to vineyard and orchard of pears, prunes, apricots, peaches, and apples. The grapes consist wholly of the best kind of raisin grapes.
"In 1878 married Miss Emma C. Hurd, a native of Jersey County, Illinois, and a teacher by profession. Two boys enliven our household, Douly Clifford and Dallas Hurd. And now in conclusion of these lines I will say that after all the changing experience of my previous life upon this homestead, with her who is the brighest and best, with our children ever near, busy with the affairs that concern mne, with the Bible as the guide of life, I willingly bide my time till the Lifegiver come, or I be called to rest."
THOMAS JEFFERSON MCQUIDDY was born in Wood- ford County, Kentucky, on the 6th of March, 1828. His father was of Scotch descent; his mother belonged to an old family of the State of Virginia. When he was twelve years old, his parents removed to Bedford County, Tennessee, where he received a useful English education at Bexed Academy, a school under the control of the Campbellite, or Christian Church, of which he became a member when thirteen years of age, and he has ever since continued to be actively interested in its operation. Eight years afterwards, or at the age of twenty- one, Mr. McQuiddy married Miss Jane M. Ruth. Ten children were the fruit of this union, of whom six are living.
Soon after their marriage the young conple removed to north- western Missouri, where, in 1859, Mr. McQuiddy was elected Sheriff of Nodaway County, on the Democratic ticket. At the outbreak of the war, after having first opposed secession, he joined the Confederate cause, and served as Major of cav- alry. In the winter of 1863, he was arrested in Tennessee, while on secret service, but managed to escape. His wife died soon afterwards, and in 1864, Major McQuiddy left the army to look after his children, who were with his father in Ten- nessee. In 1866, he was married to Miss Mary J. Hoffman, his present wife, a native of Tennessee, of German descent.
For the next six years he remained in charge of his father's farm until he removed to California by the overland railroad in 1874.
He settled on railroad land, in the Mussel Slough District of Tulare County, and during the past nine years has assisted his fellow settlers in the attempt to secure their homes and his own, on the basis of their occupants being actual settlers. Failing to accomplish this by negotiations with the railroad company, he has led in a systematic and determined opposition to the company's claims by all legal means.
In 1880, this led to his indictment, in company with eight others, for their alleged resistance to United States Marshal
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Poole. Major MeQuiddy took measures to escape arrest. Five of his comrades, who surrendered themselves to the authorities, underwent trial in the United States District Court at San Francisco, and were imprisoned for eight months in the San Jose jail.
Major MeQuiddy succeeded in evading arrest for two years, and in the campaign of 1882, he was made the candidate of the Greenback Labor Party of California, for Governor, by a unanimous vote, being their first candidate in California for that position.
When returning from the State Convention in San Fran- eiseo, where he had remained openly for some days unmolested, he was arrested at Gilroy by a Deputy Marshal, on the old indietment upon which he had previously eseaped arrest. His trial before the United States Court at San Francisco, was set for November 27, 1882, but went over to the January term, and has since been indefinitely postponed.
It is a fact worthy of record that when Marshal Poole, Dep- uty Dunlap, and their assistants, visited Major MeQuiddy's ranch near Hanford in May, 1881, to dispossess him and place a railroad representative in charge of the land, Major Mc- Quiddy and his family were absent, but on the back of a pamphlet placed at the gate these words were found written :---
"When eourts are so corrupt that I have to leave my home to ex-conviets to satisfy the greed of a thieving corporation, then I bid adieu to this Government, and take my ehanees with those who know nothing of civilization.
(Signed) T. J. MeQuiddy."
It is also worthy of note, that Mr. O. C. Jackson of Saera- mento, who was formally placed in possession of Major Me- Quiddy's ranch, immediately left the place and the county with the Marshal's party, and has never returned. Meanwhile, Major MeQuiddy and his wife, when they returned home that evening from a visit to a neighbors, found everything in the house about as they left it, a large party of men with their wagons and teams having returned whatever had been removed, soon after the Marshal's party left, and he has remained in undisputed possession ever sinee, that is, for more than two years.
When, in 1882, he became the Greenback candidate for Governor, the usual flood-gates of political abuse were opened upon him, and his motives were impugned. Even the prepos- terous and utterly groundless eharge was brought against him, that he had compromised with the railroad company and bought his land of them; and that too, although it was well known that the railroad managers had positively refused to sell to him or any one else, the elaims of himself and several other leaders in this determined resistance to what they deemed to be rail- road aggression, and wrong. Following is an extract from his published answer to some of these aspersions, and they indicate the spirit which has animated him :-
"I will give some reasons why I am a candidate: I am a
native born American eitizen, and have a perfeet right to hold office, if this is a free republic. And I had the manhood to stand by my home which I had made comfortable with years of toil and privations. I refused to surrender it, and, as earlier in life, when ealled upon by the Governor of the State in which I lived, I did not hesitate to step forward to defend what I believed to be right, so now I do not hesitate to defend what I think is right. The National Greenback Labor Party is a party with both National and State organization, and with a platform of sound principles that I indorse in full. They had a right to hold a convention and make nominations, without any collusion with any party or persons, which they did. They gave to me without my solieitation, the nomination for Governor, with the prison bars before me, and emissaries in both the old parties opposing me and impugning my motives. They did this believing that I had the manhood to stand by and vindieate the principles of the party; and this I shall do, God being my help. I do not hesitate to vindicate what I be- lieve to be right, and to show the corruption of party leaders."
Major MeQuiddy's most intimate friends and all fair minded men who know the faets in his ease, are sure that no man has ever been truer to any eause than he has always been, and continues to be, to the interests of his fellow settlers in their heroie struggle to secure their homes on an equitable basis.
JOHN W. LOYD is in the mercantile business in Porterville in connection with J. F. Field. He was born in Arkansas and eame to California when a boy with his step-father and family, and settled near Napa. He came to Tulare County in 1866, and has lived there ever sinee.
He served as a private in the United States Army during the War of the Rebellion, and was stationed at Visalia and afterwards was in Inyo County to quell Indian disturbances. He relates a case of Indian character when one was captured by them, and who would refuse to answer questions even when threatened with shooting, and a gun eocked in his face he failed to flinch, but when his own bow and arrows were brought to bear on him he yielded.
After this Mr. Loyd engaged in the sheep business but failed to make it a sueeess. He then run a stage line with the mails from Glenville, Kern County, to Visalia for about four years, from 1878 to 1882.
He has thirty aeres of land, of a sandy loam well adapted to fruit, corn, or grain of any kind. It lies at soutli end of Tule Bridge at what was the old town of Vandalia.
He married Miss Jennie Campbell in 1869, who was a native of Santa Clara County. They have six children, named: Ozro, Thomas, Mimi, Edgar, Webster, and Babe Loyd. The family live at the farm.
In 1882 he was nominated for Sheriff of the county by the Republican Party, was indorsed by the M. E. Church, Good Templars, Working Men's Order, Christian Alliance, etc. His
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chances looked good for election, but he was quite badly beaten by Mr. Martin, of Mussel Slough, the Democratic nominee. He has sinee that engaged in mereantile business as first re- lated.
JOHN H. SHORE came from Washington, Missouri, where he was born, September 6, 1841, and resided there until 1852, when he came across the plains to the land of gold and settled in Santa Clara County. He went to Oregon and Washington Territory in 1862, and to Sinaloa, Mexieo, in 1863-64. Came to Fresno County in 1864, where he resided ten years. He moved to Tulare County, in 1874, where he at present is located, and is engaged in the business of stock-raising and general farming. He owns 500 acres of land, and raises hogs princi- pally, generally having 200 or 300 at a time.
Mr. Shore was one of the Board of Supervisors of Tulare County in 1880 and 1881.
He married Miss Susan Haun in 1867, also from Missouri. He has seven children, named Emma Eugenia, born March 23, 1868; Elton Eugene, December 6, 1869; Isabella Jennie, June 21, 1872; Louis Henry, June 24, 1874; John Elias, August 5, 1876; Ellen Susan, August 17, 1878; Seth Clarenee, December 16, 1880.
JAMES WILLIAM ABERT WRIGHT was born in Colum- bus, Lowndes County, Mississippi, July 28, 1834. His father was Rev. David Wright, of the Presbyterian Church, a native of Massachusetts, who at an early age went to the wilds of Mississippi about the year 1820, as a missionary to the Choc- taw Indians, at Mayhew Station. His mother's maiden name was Eliza Abert. She was born at Shepherdstown, Virginia, and had accompanied her brother, afterwards Col. Charles H. Abert, to Columbus, among its earliest settlers. In 1840 his father died, and having the misfortune to lose all his property, including several valuable slaves, by the erash of the " Wild Cat" Banks in 1837-38, he left his widow penniless to provide for herself and their only surviving ehild as best she could. For fourteen years, till 1854, she gave musie lessons in Piekens County, Alabama, and in Columbus, thereby seeuring a sup- port and a comfortable home in the latter place, and, with some aid from friends, she laid the foundation of a good classical education for her son. She sought constantly to instill into him habits of industry, having him do oceasional farm work, and when fifteen years old, he spent his summer vaea- tion of three months at work in a cabinet shop, the vaeation of the next year being occupied by writing in the Chancery Clerk's office, while his muscles were farther exercised by garden work, and by chopping all the wood for home use.
In January, 1853, he was sent, by assistance of relatives, to the noted high school of Prof. Henry Tutwiler, at Greene Springs, Alabama. He became assistant teacher there from October, 1854, to July, 1855, thus earning most of the means necessary to complete a college course. In August, 1855, he
entered the Junior Class at Princeton, New Jersey, and gradu- ated in the elass of '57-sixty members-as valedietorian. That fall he returned to Alabama, and having ehosen teaching above all other professions, he assisted Professor Tutwiler con- tinuously in liis sehool, until the second year of the war. In August, 1859, he married the Professor's oldest daughter, Miss Margaret Tutwiler The fruit of this union is four chil- dren living, a daughter and three sons.
Although in the beginning of our fieree civil conflict, he voted with a majority of the voters of Alabama against seees- sion, when the inevitable war eame and had lasted for a year, and when it was ineumbent on every able-bodied man on both sides to take up arms, he raised a company in the spring of '62, under a commission from Jeff. Davis. He was eleeted Captain, having prepared himself for a soldier's duties by becoming a cadet at the University of Alabama, in Tusea- loosa, and sharing their camp life in the summer of '61.
Becoming Company H of the Thirty-sixth Alabama Infan- try, his command took an active part, until its surrender, May 4, 1865, when only six men were left in his company, under Generals Buekner, Bragg, Joe Johnston, Hood, and Dick Tay- lor, in their rough campaigns and numerous battles in Tennes- see, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. Being severely wounded in the right hip, at the battle of Missionary Ridge, November 25, 1863, Captain Wright was a prisoner of war in the hospitals at Chattanooga, the State's Prison at Nashville, and Camp Chase, near Columbus, Ohio, until he effeeted his escape from the cars near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, March 27, 1864, while en route with several hundred fellow-prisoners to Fort Delaware, near Philadelphia. Making his way to friends in the latter city, he hastened by train, through New York and Vermont, to Canada; thenee down the St. Lawrenee River and by sea to the Bermuda Islands; and thenee on the blockade-runner Lilian, under Capt. John Newlen Maffit, to Wilmington, North Carolina, returning to Dixie June 4, 1864. Reporting for duty at Richmond, he was ordered to rejoin his regiment at Atlanta, which he did, after forty-five days' leave with his family in Alabama.
For the last nine months of service, he aeted as field-officer, often having command of his regiment, and near the elose of the war was made Major, in the regular order of promotion.
The war ended, he declined an exeellent offer to begin the practice of law, and in preferenee, returned to his old post, where he continued to assist Professor Tutwiler in his Greene Springs Sehool until the spring of 1868. Wishing then to seek a more active life and a home for his family and friends in the "far West," he came to California, by way of New York and the Panama route, on the steamers Guiding Star and Nevada, landing in San Francisco June 13, 1868. Com- ing at once to Stoekton and joining Southern friends who had preceded him, their party, with whom were Judge S. A. Holmes and Mr. L. A. Sledge, now. of Fresno County, came at
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once by private conveyances over the then wild plains to Fresno County, and located the lands which afterwards formed the Alabama Settlement. Purchasing lands for Professor Tutwiler and himself here, and also in Stanislaus County, near where Turlock now is, he began farming that fall in Stanis- laus, and continued farming there for six years, as those lands were then most convenient to market. Sowing to wheat and barley the first winter 780 acres, he increased his acreage each year, mostly on rented land and borrowed capital, until, for the crops of 1873 and 1874, he had in 4,000 acres of grain in Stanislaus and Merced Counties.
When the Grange-tide began to sweep over California in 1873, Captain Wright was made Master of Turlock Grange at its organization in June, and on the 15th of July following he was elected Master of the State Grange of California, when it was organized at Napa City. He served in this position and as State Lecturer until October, 1876, when he resigned his official duties, as the private interests of his business and his family required his undivided attention. As a State Grange official, he attended four successive sessions of the National Grange; in 1874, at St. Louis, where he became the author of their " Declaration of Purposes;" in 1875, at Charleston, South Carolina, and at Louisville, Kentucky; and in 1876 in Chicago, being sent between the last two sessions on important busi- ness to Germany, England, and Scotland, as Commissioner of the National Grange to Europe.
On account of a succession of unfavorable seasons, coupled witli low prices for wheat, high rates of interest, and high prices for everything which farmers had to buy, Captain Wright became financially embarrassed, by his farming opera- tions on the dry sand-plains of Stanislaus, as did hundreds of other grain farmers of San Joaquin Valley at that date. With a prospect for irrigation on his Fresno land, which a sad experience of six years had convinced him was absolutely nec- essary for permanent success in farming in any part of the great valley where he had cast his lot, he removed all his farm- ing interests to Fresno County, ucar Borden, in December, 1874. Here he put in three more crops on 960 aeres of his own land, renting his ranch in the winter of 1876-77, but to no purpose, for neither crop paid expenses. His hope for the indispensable irrigation was disappointed, except for 100 acres the first season. The reason for this was that the canal fron the Fresno River, on which his land depended for water, was owned by a corporation that was unfriendly to Captain Wright, on account of his Grange record and other anti-mo- nopoly work, and which at best was inclined to allow few lands except their own to be irrigated. The result of his nine years' struggle for success in farming on the arid plains of San Joaquin Valley was, that all his property was swept from him in 1877, under mortgages, leaving burdensome debts be- sides; and he was compelled to "begin life anew," from "bed- rock," as our California parlance has it.
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