USA > California > Kings County > History of Tulare and Kings counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 29
USA > California > Tulare County > History of Tulare and Kings counties, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the counties who have been identified with their growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 29
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It is to surgery that Dr. Rosson has given special attention and it is as a surgeon that he has developed an ability and won a suc- cess that have made him known throughout a wide territory sur- rounding Hanford. An idea of his progressiveness and of his ini- tiative in his chosen field may be conveyed by the statement that he was one of the first to perform laparotomy in Kings county. Until 1911 he was for some years surgeon in Central California for the Santa Fe Railway system and he is now Southern Pacific Railroad surgeon and physician. He is a member of the San Joaquin Medi- cal Society, the Fresno County Medical Society. the California State Medical Society and the American Medical Association, and is presi- dent of the Hanford Sanitorium, Inc. Though he is in constant de- mand as a family physician, he is in still wider demand as a sur-
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geon and does a large share of the capital surgery in the county; his work in this line is gradually extending to neighboring counties.
In 1901 Dr. Rosson married Miss Burnett of Tulare, who has borne him three sons, John, Charles and Robert. Socially he affili- ates with the Improved Order of Red Men and with Hanford Lodge No. 1259, B. P. O. E. Politically he is patriotically interested, and as a citizen he gives his aid to the development of Hanford and its interests and to the uplift of its people of all classes.
S. C. STOKES
It was in Decatur county, Iowa, that S. C. Stokes was born, November 15, 1845, and one of his early recollections is of fishing in the Platte when he got on his hook a large catfish which might have pulled him into the river if his mother had not come to his rescue and helped him land it. He was then nearly five years old. His parents were Yancy B. and Elizabeth (Moore) Stokes, the father and mother both horn in Kentucky in 1814. In 1850 they started overland to California, bringing their children; their youngest, a daughter, was born later in Carson valley, Nev. They were six months in making the journey and their adventures were many. In parties before and behind them numerous men and women died of cholera; Mrs. Stokes was attacked by that dread disease, but was saved by the prompt administration of burned brandy. At Rocky Ford there was an Indian attack and a Frenchman was chased into camp, barely escaping with his life. After mining for a time at Hangtown, Mr. Stokes returned to Iowa with $6,000 in gold slugs of the value of $50 each, arriving in 1852. Returning to California by way of the isthmus of Panama he secured fifty head of Spanish heifers in Mexico, which he drove to his destination. His activities were then centered in Cottonwood and Grapevine, and he bought three hundred and twenty acres of railroad land at $5 an acre. improving it with a house and other buildings and appartenances; and he entered upon a career of measurable success.
In 1866 S. C. Stokes married Sarah J. Lytle, a native of Mis- souri, who was brought across the plains by her parents in the early '50s, and she bore him these children: Mary, Charles, William, John, Robert, Prentice and Corinthia (twins), and Harry. Mary became the wife of Nathan Bristol, a Civil war veteran, and has borne him a son and a daughter. Charles married Mary Johnson and has chil- dren named Erma, Ella, Iva and Florence; his home is near Visalia. William married Charlotte Vasques and they live in Cottonwood valley; their children are Stokley, Ruby, George, Gladys, Odetta,
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Shirley, Lottie, Neavie and Rachel. John married Clara Enorgan and lives at Portland, Ore. Robert married Rebecca Mankins and lives in Fresno county, where he deals in horses. They have a son named Rucen. Prentice, who lives in Goshen, married Hazel Stearns. Corinthia married Wallace Evans and has a son named Marshall, their home being at Cottonwood; they have two children. Harry married Nellie Adams.
Pioneers and men of prominence in earlier days, of every char- acter, were well-known to Mr. Stokes. He relates that Sontag and Evans, who won historie distinction as stage robbers, lived in the mountains near him for four years. He has from young manhood been prominent in public affairs, has been active as a Republican and has for a number of years held the office of school trustee. Ile tells that in 1856-57 antelope were as numerous in Stokes valley as rab- bits and grizzly bear were plentiful in the woods all round about. Once, when he was fishing, he came upon a female bear with cubs. She chased him for some distance. He threw his hat in her face and she tore it to pieces while he made good his escape. In his younger days he killed many elk, which he took home in his big wagon. There is a tree standing on Stokes mountain in the shade of which he rested when he was only thirteen years old. Ile and others went to Mexico and bought a lot of Spanish cows, which they bred to American cattle until they had a herd of three thousand. In 1857 a bear killed several hogs in the neighborhood and John Mc- Hnam, Y. B. Stokes, three of the Halsteads and Jolm Stokes went after him and found him, much to their own discomforture; for he killed several dogs, treed the men and gave them a fight which lasted nearly all day, then escaped from them and killed nine sows that cost $50 per head. Mr. Stokes's mother killed many antelope with her grandfather's gun, the barrel of which is a valuable family possession at this time. He remembers that in 1862, just after the big flood, a party of hunters chased a band of antelope twenty miles without getting an animal. Mr. Stokes remembers when a neighbor, Cook Everton, set a spring gun in his apple orchard for bear and was himself accidentally shot by it. Y. B. Stokes served in the Indian war of 1856, and he was one of the original locators of the Mineral King mine.
WOOSTER B. CARTMILL
The Tulare County Co-operative Creamery AAssociation, the larg- est institution of the kind in the country, was organized in 1903 and has branches at Visalia and at Corcoran. Its officers are: S. B. An-
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derson, president; P. E. Reinhart, vice-president; M. G. Cottle, secre- tary; the above mentioned and William Small and Charles Meador, directors; Wooster B. Cartmill, manager. The main station, at Tu- lare, occupies a modern brick building, which is equipped with up-to- date machinery and appliances of all kinds necessary to its successful operation. Its output of two tons of butter daily is sold in bulk to the Los Angeles Creamery. The milk consumed, that of four thousand cows, is supplied by dairymen in the vicinity of Tulare.
As stated above, the active and practical management of this great industry is in the hands of Wooster B. Cartmill. This gentleman, well known personally or by reputation in dairy circles throughout the San Joaquin Valley, is a native son of California. He was born in Amador county, Cal., in 1857, a son of Dr. W. F. and Sophia (Barnes) Cartmill. His father was a native of Ohio; his mother was born in Missouri. In 1861, when the immediate subject of this notice was four years old, his family moved to Tulare county. There he was reared and educated and there he obtained a practical knowledge of Cali- fornia farming, under his father's thorough instruction. For years he assisted the elder Cartmill on the family's big ranch of twelve hun- dred acres, and later he took charge of it and managed it successfully until about 1898. It included eighty acres of prunes, peaches and grapes, a hundred and sixty acres of alfalfa and a fine dairy. His father upon coming to Tulare county made his beginning as a dairy- man, by running a farm dairy from 1862 to 1870. He made butter which he sold at the mines in Tulare and Inyo counties in the early and interesting days, and became one of the leaders in the industry. Naturally, the younger Cartmill early in life acquired a practical knowledge of dairying. He operated the old D. K. Zumwalt creamery from 1889 to 1900, and in the latter year established a skimming sta- tion of his own at Tulare, which was really the beginning of the his- tory of the Tulare Co-operative Creamery Association, as the company took over that enterprise and its visible property in October, 1903. Mr. Cartmill was one of the original directors of the Tulare Irrigation Ditch District. He was one of its most enthusiastic and efficient pro- moters and was personally active four years in its establishment and maintenance. He is the owner of a two hunderd and forty-acre tract near Tulare, which he rents out. In all the interests of the city and county he takes a public-spirited interest. He is a Mason and as such is identified with local organizations of the order, and he also affiliates with the order of Woodmen of the World.
Twice has Mr. Cartmill married, the first time, in 1883, to Miss Hatch, and she bore him a daughter, who is Mrs. W. C. Eldridge. Ilis present wife, whom he married in 1894, was Mrs. Jane Henry. They have three children-May, Eva, and William G. Cartmill.
Mrs. Cartmill's maiden name was Jane Gilmer. She is the dangh-
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ter of Rufus Gilmer, of Visalia. By her first husband, Albert Henry, who died in 1891, she had two children. Rufus and Albert are farm- ers, operating the old Henry farm near Porterville.
CASSIUS M. BLOWERS
This pioneer farmer and business man, whose ranch is three miles northwest of Hanford, Kings county, Cal., has come to his present prominence only after a struggle in which he wrung success ont of situations that to many another man would have spelled ruin. When he first saw Kings county, in 1874, it was a desert, sandy and prac- tically worthless, but irrigation, which he long advocated, has resulted in its reclamation. The land, then worth next to nothing, is now valned at $250 an aere and upward.
To the student of history genealogy is a fascinating pursuit and it is to be regretted that the lack of printing in the earlier ages rendered an interesting work so difficult. Cassius M. Blowers is de- seended from an Englishman, John O. Blowers, his grandfather, who early settled in Crawford county, Ohio, where he pre-empted govern- ment land on which he died in his eighty-fifth year. Not only was he a pioneer farmer, but he was a pioneer preacher of the Methodist faith, who often discoursed to the people of Bucyrus. His son, Lemuel Lane Blowers, born on the pioneer's Ohio farm, came to California in 1850, making the trip overland. For a time he mined on the American river, but in 1854 he took up land in Yolo county, where he died in 1855. He had married Caroline Foster, of Ohio birth, and she had died in 1849, leaving five children, of whom Cassins M., born December 20, 1845, was the fourth. The boy was ahont four years old when his mother died and between nine and ten years old when his father passed away, aged thirty-eight years.
When Mr. Blowers was ten years old he was brought to Califor- nia by his uncle, R. B. Blowers, who became a pioneer fruit grower in this state and grew the first California raisins. The boy lived on his uncle's ranch near Woodland, Yolo county, then began business for himself, teaming to Nevada and the mountain district when he was but fifteen years old.
His next venture was as a farmer in Yolo county, but in 1874 he transferred his interests to Kings county, where he has since lived. He bought a railroad land claim for $600, but the land was a waste of desert sand, unfit for cultivation. In so doing he was planning for the future and he soon became one of the promoters of the Lower Kings river, Last Chance and People's irrigation ditches, which were completed in 1877. Then Mr. Blowers sowed his land to
Com. Blaners
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wheat and the next year he set out a few vines. In 1883 he shipped the first raisins which were boxed in Tulare county, which then in- cluded the present Kings county, and he originated the system of employing fruit cutters at piece prices instead of on salary. At that time there were but three canneries in the state, San Jose, San Francisco and Sacramento. All had been paying day wages for em- ployees, and Chinese and white workers were intermingled in one large room. In 1886 Mr. Blowers went to Sacramento and induced the management of the cannery there to try piece work, which was done. The orientals were separated from the whites and so snc- cessful was this method that it has been generally adopted by all fruit growers throughout the state.
In his home ranch Mr. Blowers has two hundred and forty acres, forty acres devoted to vines, seventy to peaches, apricots and other fruit, the remainder to grain and alfalfa. He owns also a stock and alfalfa ranch of two hundred and fifty acres in Kings connty, formerly in Fresno county prior to the annexation, and a fruit, vine and alfalfa farm of eighty acres near Lemoore.
The marriage of Mr. Blowers, January 19, 1875, united him with Miss Susie MeLaughlin, and their eight children were born on the home ranch in Kings county. Hubert Lane is operating a ranch of thirty acres not far from his father's. Russell M. is farming and growing fruit on thirty acres of land given him by Mr. Blowers. Olive G. married George Blowers, who is the proprietor of a machine shop in San Francisco. Francis is ranching on fifty acres of land given him by his father. Bessie, who died in 1905, was the wife of Fred Arthur, who is farming in Kings county. Mary, Ralph and Viola Susan are members of their parents' household. Mr. Blowers has long taken an active part in the affairs of the Raisin Growers' association and has been for abont a quarter of a century president of the Last Chance Ditch corporation. Politically he is a Republican. His interest in school affairs impelled him to fill the duties of school trustee about twenty years, and his public spirit, many times tried, has not been found wanting.
CAPT. HARRISON WHITE
The name of White has long been associated with affairs in the United States, dating in fact from the historic Mayflower, when Peregrine White came to these shores and endured the hardships and trials which are woven in the history-making of the Atlantic coast. From this intrepid pioneer have descended men of valor in war and painstaking industry in times of peace. During the Revolutionary
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war Silas White, a native of New York state, enlisted in a company from that state, and as captain of the company, led his men into the thickest of many a struggle with the opposing Tory forces. No less valiant was a son and namesake of this Revolutionary captain, who left his native state, New York, and in 1842 settled on the Fox river in Illinois, becoming a pioneer farmer of La Salle county. He did not long survive his immigration to the then frontier, for he passed away six years after locating upon his farm. He was a man whose life had been uniformly upright, with character unstained, and it was this heritage that he left to his widow, who long survived him. In maidenhood she was Maria MacClave. The MacClave family came from Scotland to America in an early day and settled in New York, and it was in Albany, that state, that Maria MacClave was born. She lived to attain the venerable age of ninety-eight years, dying in Illinois. Of the ten children who attained mature years three are now living, one of whom, Selem, is a resident of Coal City, Grundy county, Ill. He served thronghont the entire period of the Civil war, holding the rank of captain of a company in the Fifty-third Illinois Infantry. Mrs. Cyrus W. Cook, a daughter, is residing at Sandwich, Illinois.
Harrison White was born in Syracuse, N. Y., June 28, 1836. At the age of six years he accompanied his parents to Illinois, there obtaining a primary education in the public schools, after which he alternated teaching school with attendance at Wheaton ('ollege. The breaking out of the Civil war at this time was destined to add an important chapter to his interesting life. He responded to the call of President Lincoln for three-months men and in April, 1861, he became a member of Company F, Eleventh Illinois Infantry. When his three-months term had expired and he was honorably discharged from the service, he determined to enlist in the cavalry branch of the army, and accordingly he assisted in the organization of Company B, Fourth Illinois Cavalry, which was mustered into service at Ottawa in August of 1861, and from there made its way to Cairo. Among the engagements in which he participated were those at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth and Vicksburg. It was in the siege of the last mentioned city that his company was detailed as an escort to General Grant, continuing as such until the latter was ordered east as commander-in-chief. Soon afterward Captain White was placed on detached service and for a short time was assistant quar- termaster at Vicksburg, after which he joined his regiment and aided General Custer in Louisiana during the reconstruction period. In Memphis, Tenn., January 26, 1866, he was honorably discharged with the rank of Captain, having been promoted to that office as a reward for meritorious service at Vicksburg. Previous to this he had served as an orderly sergeant. Notwithstanding the fact that he was often
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in the midst of fierce struggles, and witnessed the wounding and death of comrades on every hand, he escaped without injury until the battle of Shiloh, where a piece of shell killed his horse and knocked him senseless. Soon recovering, however, he joined his comrades.
Following his retirement from the army Captain White made his home on a rented plantation at Yazoo Pass, Miss., but both climate and occupation proved unsuited to his health and it was on this account that he returned to Illinois. For several months he con- ducted a mercantile establishment at Sandwich, Ill., but in the fall of 1868 he sold the business and left Illinois. Traveling up the Missouri he reached Fort Benton, and from there went to Helena, Mont., where he engaged in merchandising, and subsequently he carried on a store in a mining camp. The fall of 1869 found him in Illinois on a visit to friends and relatives, and in the spring of the following year he came to California, settlement being made in Porterville, Tulare county. For the first two years of his residence there he was interested in the sheep business, having also purchased a ranch, but five years later he again became interested in the mercantile business, conducting a general store in connection with Porter Putnam. His identification with Visalia dates from the year 1877. Three years after making this city his home he was appointed deputy to the internal revenue collector, William Iligby, whose dis- triet embraced Kern, Tulare, Fresno, Merced and Stanislaus counties, with headquarters in Visalia. Captain White retained the office of deputy until 1889, during which time he also continued his ranch and sheep interests and still owns a ranch of two hundred and forty acres on the Tule river, the property now being leased to a tenant. The land is partially under irrigation, water being provided by means of a pumping plant connected with wells. His holdings also include grazing lands. It was during 1891 that Captain White was appointed under-sheriff to Sheriff Overall, an office which he held for eighteen months. Subsequently, from 1893 to 1895, he served by appointment as United States ganger. It was in 1898 that he was appointed to the position which he held until retiring in 1911,-that of supervisor of the southern district of the Sierra Forest reserve, comprising more than two million acres in Kern, Fresno, Tulare and Invo counties, with headquarters in Visalia. It goes without saying that the position entailed many responsibilities, but he has proved amply qualified to discharge every duty with a master hand, his long experience in many avenues of activity having equipped him with a breadth of knowledge and extent of information both rare and valuable.
It was after coming to Visalia that Captain White formed domestic ties by his marriage with Miss Hattie Pauline Anthony, a native of Watertown, N. Y. By right of his service in the Civil war
i
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Captain White is associated with the Grand Army of the Republic, twice serving as commander of Gen. George Wright Post No. 111. Under appointment by Governor Waterman he held the position of major and quartermaster on the staff of General Budd, of the California National Guard. A leader in the ranks of the Republican party, for twelve years or more he was secretary of the Republican county central committee and for two terms officiated as its chairman. He took an active part in the councils of that body, as he did suhse- quently as a member of the congressional committee. It is unneces- sary to state that a man of his breadth of character should be loved. and respected by all, irrespective of party affiliation, for the position which he holds represents the possession of ability of high order. sterling qualities and a breadth of patriotism that knows no party distinction.
WILLIAM J. HIGDON
A native son of California, William J. Higdon was born in Nevada county, in 1876. When he was seven years old his parents moved to the Capay valley, in Yolo county, where he was educated in the public schools and acquired some knowledge of farming. In 1898, when he was about twenty-two years old, he followed the lure of the gold-seeker to Alaska, where he remained a year and a half and in 1901 he came to Tulare county and for three years was in the livery business, first as proprietor of the Dexter stables then of the Grand stables, and finally of the City stables. After a year and a half spent in Tulare following his retirement from this business, he moved on to the I. N. Wright ranch of two hundred and fifty-four aeres, one hundred and seventy-four acres of which was within the city limits, and there engaged in farming, stock-raising and dairying, milking fifty to eighty cows. He owns two hundred and forty aeres of other land, eighty acres of which is half a mile southeast and one hundred and sixty acres three miles southwest of his homestead. The larger tract is used for farming and grazing and the smaller one is rented and devoted to the production of corn and other grain. One hundred and sixty acres of the home ranch is in alfalfa. Mr. Higdon keeps an average of about two hundred and fifty hogs and one hundred head of stock besides his mileh cows. He is a stockholder in and a director of the Dairymen's Co-operative Creamery Co., and the Rochdale Store Co. of Tulare, and is a stockholder in the New Power Co. Ile has also been secretary of the Tulare County Dairy- men's association since its organization.
Fraternally Mr. Higdon affiliates with the Independent Order
Fred aWody
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of Odd Fellows. His public spirit has led him to identify himself with many movements for the general benefit. On November 23, 1904, he married Miss Hattie M. Wright, a native of Tulare and a daughter of Isaac N. Wright, who was instrumental in securing the location of the city of Tulare where it has been built, and who is mentioned fully elsewhere in this publication. Its boundaries include the old home place where his daughter was born. Mr. and Mrs. Higdon have a son and a daughter, Alice Charlotte and Newton Elliott, who are now (1913) aged respectively seven and four years. Mrs. Higdon, a graduate of the State Normal school at San Jose, was for ten years a teacher in the public school at Tulare.
FRED A. DODGE
A native of Illinois, Mr. Dodge was born December 2, 1858, on the farm where his parents settled in 1839, in Dunham township, McHenry county. His parents, Elisha and Susan Dodge, were pio- neers of that part of the west, coming from New York state to Illinois. They were of New England stock, Elisha being a native of Vermont, and his wife, who was Susan Smith, a native of New York state.
The subject of this sketch was the eighth living child of their union, and was reared on the farm. His mother died in 1863 and his father subsequently married Mrs. Abigail Harkness. After the farm was sold they established a residence at Harvard, Ill., where Fred entered the public school, and remained in that city until he completed the branches taught there at that time. His father died in Feb- rmary, 1878, and in the following summer he drove by team west to Parkersburg, Iowa, where his older brother, Frank L. Dodge, was engaged in the publication of a weekly newspaper called the Eclipse. There he entered the printing office and learned the printer's trade. In 1880 he purchased an interest in the Eclipse, and subsequently, with his brother, established the Allison Tribune, a weekly news- paper at Allison, the county seat of Butler county, Iowa. The two brothers conducted these papers for a number of years, but finally dissolved partnership, Fred becoming sole proprietor of the Par- kersburg paper, which he edited and published until Angust, 1887. when he sold it.
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