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 33
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 33
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the direction of W. B. Carr, making during that time $15 a day over and above the support of his family. From there he came to Tulare county and in 1886-87 bought land at the mouth of Cross creek, twelve miles south of Hanford. One section, which he bought of O. E. Mil- ler, at $2.75 an aere, is still owned in his family and is now worth over $150 an aere. Another section, which he bought of Bird & Smith and which is now valuable, cost him $7.50 an acre. He bought in all about two thousand acres. He and his sons engaged in stoek- raising and he and his brother built a levee and reclaimed thousands of acres of land from the Cross ereek overflow for settlers in that vicinity. Mr. McCord farmed there and raised horses and stock on a large scale, putting in more than one thousand aeres of alfalfa on his own land, and maintained his home in Hanford while operating there. The family now owns eight hundred acres of that property.
In 1874 Mr. McCord and his son Dallas opened a buteher shop at Bakersfield. The latter conducted it many years and at the age of twenty-nine was elected sheriff of Kern county, and was the young- est sheriff in the state at that time, 1887. After filling the office one term he joined his father on the ranch. The latter retired from farming in 1908 and sold all his remaining land. He made a specialty of selling Arizona horses in San Francisco and attained prominence as an, auctioneer at Bakersfield and San Francisco. In his younger years he was an athlete and won honors at Vacaville and Suisun and later at Bakersfield and was first president of the Bakersfield Ath- letie elub. For a long period he was renowned as a boxer, and when he was sixty-five years old he won in a wrestling match with an opponent of twenty-eight. He drove his own teams through Tulare county from Tipton to Bakersfield before the advent of the railroad and he and George McCord and Bill Woswick interested Clans Spreckels to construct the Santa Fe railroad through this section. Spreckels was later president of the Valley road, which was even- tually absorbed by the Santa Fe system. Mr. MeCord early became expert in the handling of horses and was champion of all horse trainers round San Francisco and Bakersfield for some years.
In February, 1850, Mr. McCord married Lois Sophia Crippen, a native of Ohio, and they had five children, two of whom are living. Alice, deceased, was the wife of James McCaffery, of Hanford; Dallas, who was successful in business with his father, died in 1891; Douglas lives in San Francisco; Burnside is a citizen of San Jose; Margery died at the age of three years. The mother of these children passed away at Hanford in April, 1911, and was buried by the order of Eastern Star. Mr. McCord has long been widely known as a Mason.
When county division was talked of he was a strong advocate and supporter of the movement, and for every other npbuilding ageney of the state and county. He has never aspired to any office,
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though solicited to become a candidate many times, and once was forced to accept the office of justice of the peace at Bakersfield, win- ning over his opponent five to one in a Democratic stronghold.
ALFRED PETERSON
A native of Sweden, Alfred Peterson is descended from old fami- lies of that country. He was born August 23, 1869, near Oskar- shamn, Smoland, a son of Peter and Christine (Johnson) Carlson. His father was a sexton, in charge of the local church and cemetery, and his grandfather, a Swedish cavalry soldier, did gallant service in the Napoleonic wars 1812-15. Alfred and his sister, Mrs. Selma Pospeshek, of Tulare county, are the only living children of the father's family. In 1884, when he was between fourteen and fifteen years old, Alfred Peterson came to America with his brother Oskar and found employment on a farm near Long Point, Livingston county, Ill. From there he went to Marshall county in the same state, and in 1889 came to Los Angeles, near which city he worked two years in an orange grove for Abbott Kinney. Then he went to Antelope Valley, intending to locate land there, but did not like the prospect in that vicinity and proceeded to Formosa, where he and his team were employed for two months in construction work, and after that he teamed four months at Fresno. In 1891 he came to Tulare, where he was variously employed until the spring of 1893, when, with Wil- liam Kerr as a partner, he went into the threshing business, buying an engine of twenty-four horse power. At the expiration of two years he took over the business, which he continued until in the fall of 1901, when he retired in order to devote himself almost exclusively to stockraising. In 1893 he had farmed at the Oaks, north of town, on one hundred and sixty acres of land leased for one season. In the spring of 1894 he rented twenty acres, three and one-fourth miles east of Tulare on the Lindsay road, where he now lives. In the following fall he bought that property and in the spring of 1895 he bought twenty acres more. In the fall of 1897 he bought forty acres adjoining on the east and in the spring of 1900 two hundred and sixty-five acres adjoining on the north. In the winter of 1905 he bonght one hundred acres known as Bliss field, across the road, south of the other property. He has introduced many improvements and his land is all fenced in. He has about one hundred acres of alfalfa, twenty-five acres under orchard trees, farms two hundred. acres to grain and devotes the remainder of his land to pasturage.
The marriage of Mr. Peterson, in Chicago, in the spring of the year 1904, united him with Miss Ililda Anderson, who was born near
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Westervik, Smoland, Sweden, and they have children named Carl, George and Helen, the first of whom is in school. While maintaining a deep affection for the land of his birth, Mr. Peterson is loyal to America, especially to California. He has long been an advocate of irrigation, realizing that the lack of water here is the only drawback to the achievement of satisfactory results in agriculture. He was for a time a director in the Farmers' Ditch Company, from the im- provements of which his own land was irrigated, and he has in other ways promoted the irrigation facilities of his part of the county and has not been less helpful in a public spirited way to other movements for the benefit of the people among whom he has cast his lot. He is a stockholder in the Bank of Tulare and in the Rochdale store. During the entire period of his residence in Tulare county he has affiliated fraternally with the lodge, encampment and Rebekah organization of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. During recent years he has devoted much of his time to travel and in 1902 he journeyed thirty thousand miles by railroad and steamer. Nine times he has crossed our own continent and twice has he re- turned to his old home to renew the associations of his youth, the first time in 1902, when he enjoyed a visit with his father in Oskar- shamn and with other relatives and friends from whom he had long been separated. In the spring of 1908 he went back again for five months, accompanied by his family. Since the establishment of the reformation by Martin Luther, the successive generations of the fan- ily have been of the Lutheran faith and Alfred was reared in its doc- trine, but since he came to America he has affiliated with the Metho- (list Episcopal church, of which his wife is also a member.
ALFRED C. FULMER
The grandson of a gallant soldier, Alfred C. Fulmer, of Orosi, Tulare county, Cal., was born in Crete, Nebr., on Independence Day, 1890, son of William and Amelia (Wilkie) Fulmer. The former is deceased and the latter is now the wife of W. F. McCormick. He attended public schools and graduated from the grammar school when he was fourteen years old. In 1909 he came to Tulare county, where for a time he worked for wages during the summer months, attending winter terms of school. Following a post-graduate course at Orosi he began working at ranching and planned and strove for such successes as he might win by industrious application of the business . ability which he certainly possessed. In the course of events he paid $3,500 for fifteen acres of land. He has three and a half acres of Thompson grapes, which brought him $1,100 in 1911, ten acres bearing vines of Museat and Malaga grapes and two acres
I. d. Wright
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of pasture land. Though young in years he is succeeding along lines that mark him as a scientific cultivator in his chosen field, and there are those who predict for him great achievements in the years that are to come. As a citizen he is publie spiritedly helpful to all worthy local interests.
ISAAC N. WRIGHT
One of the oldest residents of Tulare county, reckoning from the days of his pioneering, was the venerable and respected Isaac N. Wright, a man of industry, thrift and sound judgment, who succeeded for himself and was active in every movement for the advancement of the industrial and agricultural advancement of the county, his death occurring at his home at Tnlare, Cal., February 17, 1910. Of English stock, he was born near Mount Vernon, Knox county, Ohio, October 13, 1823, son of William Wright, who was born, reared and educated in England; he was a pioneer in Knox county, and began his life there in a log cabin which he erected in a small opening in the forest, improving a farm and prospering there until he removed to Iowa, where he passed away. His mother, Elizabeth Newton, also a native of England, died in Omaha, Nebr. Mr. and Mrs. Wright had eleven children, four of whom survive. One of the children, George, who came to California in 1850, died in Tuolumne county; James came with Isaac N. in 1851 and died in San Diego; a daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Smith, resides at Long Beach, Cal .; and another daughter, Mary, resides in Montana.
Under the tutelage of his mother, a woman of refinement and edneation, Isaac N. Wright gained his elementary knowledge of the contents of school books. Brought up on a woodland farm he became an expert chopper, and when he was sixteen years old helped to build a log schoolhouse near his home and was chosen to cut the saddles and notches for one corner of the building, and in that ernde struc- ture he attended school five years. Soon after he was twenty-one years old he entered upon an apprenticeship to the miller's trade and later he was the lessee and operator of a grist and sawmill on Owl creek, at Mount Vernon, for two years. In November, 1851, he sailed from New York on the steamer Georgia for Aspinwall, and from there he went by rail to Gorgona, whence he was taken by steamer to the head of navigation. The remainder of the trip across the isthmus of Panama, about twenty-five miles, he made on foot. From Panama he came to San Francisco on the steamer Northerner, arriving in December, 1851, and for two years he and his brothers did placer mining at Jamestown, Tuolumne county, and met with 20
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some success. In 1854 he and his brother George leased a sawmill which was operated four years. Then he went back to Ohio for his family, arriving at his old home February, 1856, and in April that year he left for California with his wife and child, by the Isthmus route, and was in Panama April 15, the date of the historic riots there. His wife and child were safe in the American hotel, near the Plaza, but he armed himself with an old American flint-lock musket and participated in the affair. They made a good passage to San Francisco on the steamer John L. Stevens and he located at Sonora and was successful several years as a quartz miner and as a miller. In 1869 he moved his family to San Jose and prospected through the coast counties into the San Joaquin valley and might have embarked in stock-raising if the season had not been too dry. In 1870 he pre-empted one hundred and sixty acres of land now within the municipal limits of Tulare which in 1872 he traded to the railroad company for his present home- stead on which he located that year. He set about improving his prop- erty and placing it under irrigation, and ahnost immediately he was achieving success as a farmer and stockman; much of his land was in alfalfa. He has raised many high-grade cattle and hogs and has a large dairy. His publie spirit prompted him in actively promoting the growth and development of the city of Tulare; he was one of the promoters of the Kaweah Canal & Irrigating Co., was one of its direc- tors from the first and later was elected its president. During his ten years' service as school trustee, he had charge of the erection of the brick schoolhouse in Tulare. A Republican in national polities, in local affairs he always advocated the election of the best man for the place withont regard to party affiliations.
At Mount Vernon, Ohio, January 14, 1851, Mr. Wright married Charlotte A. Phillips and they had four children, as follows: Victoria is Mrs. A. D. Neff of Oakland, Cal .; George W., born in Tuohmmmne county and now living at Tuolumne, is a locomotive engineer, and in that capacity ran the first passenger train into Sonora; Alice L .; Hattie M. is Mrs. W. J. Iligdon of Tulare. The mother was born November 28, 1830, fourth of the six children of Charles and Addie (Foster) Phillips, her mother having been a native of England. She is the only survivor of the family and is still living on the Wright home at Tulare, California.
SAMUEL EDWARD COURTNEY
This well-known nurseryman, who is agent for the Capital City Nursery and whose residence is in Emma Lee Colony, northwest of the limits of Hanford, is a native of County Antrim, Ireland, and
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was born in 1862. The Courtney progenitors came from Holland with Prince William and fought in the religious wars. On the maternal line Mr. Courtney is of Scotch and Danish extraction. He was about eighteen years old when he came across the ocean to Ontario, Canada, and he lived at Oshawa for some time thereafter. In 1885 he volunteered for service in the suppression of the insur- rection known as the Northwest rebellion. After his discharge he lived for two years at Fort William, with his brother, and they were employed in the construction of a large elevator, quartering opposite the historic battleground at Quaminisque; and they endured many hardships in that new country, the temperature often registering as low as sixty degrees below zero. They bought property in that vicinity, but eventually went to Halifax, N. S., where Mr. Courtney married and was engaged in farming and as a builder until 1892. Then he sold out and went to Boston, where he worked six months as a carpenter. During his stay in Boston he heard much of Cali- fornia and the wonderful opportunities it held out to the horticulturist, and coming out in 1893 and locating at Ilanford, he found employ- ment at his trade, and later as a contractor, built many residences there and throughout the country round about. In 1902 he became a salesman for the Capital City Nursery Co., of Salem, Ore., and during his second year of work in that capacity sold $16,000 worth of peach and apricot trees (most of the peach trees being Albertas), all of which were planted in Kings county. He has handled the line ever since, adding to it local and home grown stock, and his yearly sales during the last few years have averaged $6,000. In 1903 he bought five acres of land for a home at the northwest corner of the city, paying $100 an acre for it; it is now worth $1,000 an acre. He has built on it a fine house and other necessary buildings and has set it out to fruit trees. Ile is also the owner of twenty-two and a half acres in the Crowell addition, a good portion of which he has set out to fruit. Another tract which he owns is one of sixty acres, three and a half miles east of Hanford, which he intends to put in vines and trees, and he intends to improve this property still further. Having a liking for horses and cattle, he has devoted some attention to raising both and intends to go into the business more extensively. In 1911-12 he bought out four small nurseries and has disposed of their stock, his nursery business being one of the most comprehensive in this part of the state. Its numerous offerings include twelve varieties of peaches, seven of plums, ten of such apples as do well in the San Joaquin valley country, three of prunes, three of apricots. seven of table grapes, Franquette walnuts, olives, phuns, eucalyptus trees, shade trees, palms and roses.
The place on which Mr. Courtney lives was formerly owned by one Kundson, who was shot at the time of the Mussel Slough trouble;
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brought home, he died under an old walnut tree which is still standing in the nursery yard. In 1887 Mr. Courtney married at Halifax, N. S., Miss Annie Roper, a native of Nova Scotia, and they have had children as follows: James; Hugh, deceased; Millicent M .; Blanche M .; and Samuel Ernest. Three of these are living. Millicent M. is the wife of Charles Fellows of Modesto, who is also in the nursery business.
Mr. Courtney was converted in the Presbyterian church in the north of Ireland, when a boy. His father, James Courtney, of French IInguenot stock, was an evangelist in his home locality. He was connected with the Salvation Army of Hanford from the start and has always been in the fight for the right and advocates and supports all worthy movements. He is a National Prohibitionist, secretary and treasurer of the Kings county delegation, and took a leading part in the fight to eliminate the liquor traffic from his home city.
E. G. MELIDONIAN
It was on the second day of July, 1867, that the well-known citi- zen of California whose name is above was born at Zetoon, Armenia. He was duly graduated from a missionary school in 1886, with a competent knowledge of the English language and many who knew him and appreciated his fine abilities urged him to become a minister of the gospel. He was twenty years old in 1887 when he came to the United States, and for two years he lived in Paterson, N. J., and for twenty-one years he was actively employed as a weaver of silk ribbon. It was in New Jersey that he married Miss Mary Kahacharian, also a native of Armenia and a graduate of a missionary school at Marash, where she received a diploma in 1885. She taught school for two years and her husband was likewise employed for one year. She has horne him six children, whom they named as follows in the order of their nativity: Mary, Anna, Victoria, Elizabeth, Dove and Martha. Mary married James Erganian, who was graduated from the same missionary school in Armenia in which his father-in-law was edu- cated. After coming to the United States he took up work as a but- ler in Boston and Charlestown, Mass. Four years later he came to California and hought twenty acres of land, which he has improved with vineyards and orchards. Anna married Peter Besoyan and they have a son named Sergius and live at Yettem. Victoria graduated from the grammar school and is the wife of Fred Sahroian. Elizabeth has finished the grammar school and Dove and Martha are in school.
On coming to California in 1908 the subject of this notice bought fifty acres of land at $50 an acre at Yettem. He has thirty acres of
Sauds Baker
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vines, a small orchard, and ten acres of pasture, and intends to take up the cultivation of oranges and peaches on the other ten acres. Although he purchased the land but four years ago, it is now worth about $300 an acre. He has built a good house on the property and keeps enough stock and horses for his own use. Mr. Melidonian is a Republican, a Presbyterian, a member of the Royal Arcanum and a progressive citizen of much publie spirit.
SANDS BAKER
It was in the lovely country along the Hudson river, in the state of New York, that Sands Baker, of Dunlap, Fresno county, Cal., was born December 19, 1837. His parents were George and Martha N. (Bentley) Baker, of English ancestry, who had emigrated to New York state from Massachusetts. His father died when the boy was yet very young, and at fifteen years old Sands Baker was taken to Oconto county, Wis., by an unele who was in the lumber business there. He early obtained a good knowledge of that industry, for which, however, he had no liking, his inclinations being for the acquisition of an education. He managed to attend a public school and then entered a seminary near Albany, N. Y., where one thousand students were being prepared for professional careers. From there he went to Madison, Wis., where he entered the high school, giving particular attention to the English course until, because of failing eye- sight, he was obliged for a time to give up study. However, he soon found a field of usefulness at Green Bay, Wis., where he taught three years in the public school, and he was the author of several innovations the wisdom of which was soon evident to the school offi- cials and the public generally. One of these was the closing of the doors of the school house at nine a.m., thus enforcing punctuality or absence. Then came a period of travel for health and recreation. He wandered through Minnesota and Iowa and down to St. Joseph, Mo., where he met men who so vividly pictured the beauties and opportunities of California that he quickly decided to seek fortune here, and accordingly he left St. Joseph in the spring of 1860 with a party which made the journey with American horses and Califor- nia mustangs, by way of Salt Lake. Finding feed scarce they aban- doned their original course and came through Salt Lake valley. Indians were menacing hut wrought them no harm and they arrived in Los Angeles in September. From Los Angeles Mr. Baker came on to Visalia. At Rockyford, while he was helping to bale one hundred tons of hay, he met a county superintendent of schools who wanted to employ a teacher. There were at that time only two puh-
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lie schools in the county and Mr. Baker established a private school which he taught two years. After this he went north to investigate the mines of eastern California and was soon employed as principal of the public school at Downieville, Sierra county. He closed the schools daily at one p.m., and spent the afternoons in the mines. hut careful study of conditions and results convinced him that there was nothing in mining for gold without the investment of considerable capital. So successful was he there as a teacher that he was given an increase of salary of $40 a month to continue his work. Return- ing to Visalia, he taught a private school for about six months. For some time he filled the offices of revenue assessor, gauger of liquors and inspector of tobacco with increasing responsibility and emol- ment, meanwhile serving four years on the board of education of Visalia. He acted one year as deputy county assessor and soon be- eame known as an expert mathematician and was often called on to figure interest on notes and accounts and to straighten out tangled bookkeeping, for which services he was well paid. This work he con- tinued until his health began to fail.
In October, 1872, Mr. Baker married Sarah Josephine Drake, a native of Ohio, whose parents came to California in 1870, settling near Tulare lake and later at Squaw valley. On her mother's side she was descended from Virginian ancestry. Seven children were born to them: Martha A., Royal R., Chauncey M., Lulu M., Blanche C., Pearl A., and Elsie F .; and Mrs. Baker and her husband adopted a boy, who became known as William M. Baker. Martha A. married L. B. King and bore him four children. Royal R. married Nellie J. Hodges and they live at Farmersville, and have a son and a daughter. Chauncey M. married Olive E. Hargraves of Mendocino county, who taught school at Dunlap. Lulu M. married J. A. Mitchell, postmaster at Dunlap, and they have a son and a daughter. Blanche C. mar- ried Charles F. Hubbard, of Stockton. Elsie F. married James R. Hinds. Pearl A. is teaching in the Merriman school at Exeter. Wil- liam M. is ranching near Exeter. Most of Mr. Baker's chiklren have attended the high school at Visalia. Blanche C. was graduated from a business college at Stockton in 1902 and is a competent stenographer and bookkeeper.
From Visalia Mr. Baker removed to Shipes valley, now pop- nlarly known as the Foot of Baker mountain. Ile took up a squat- ter's claim and pre-empted and homesteaded land and has added to his holdings from time to time until he has a fine stock ranch of two thousand acres, much of it well improved, some of it under valuable timber. He has one hundred and twenty acres of valley land de- voted to fruit and alfalfa. He could very easily farm five hundred arres, but he gives attention principally to stock. He has on his prop- erty fully five thousand cords of wood and individual oak trees which
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