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 52
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 52
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Malinda J. Pemberton, a native of Missouri and a daughter of the llon. James E. Pemberton. With his brother as a partner Mr. Pemberton conducted the first general store in Visalia. He was elected to the state legislature for the session of 1865-66 and served with much ability. Later he was elected treasurer of Kern county on the Democratic ticket and re-elected on the same ticket with the Republican indorsement. He was elected for a third term and died in office. A man of much business ability, he became one of the leading cattlemen of the county. Mrs. Gough has borne her hus- band four children, Ruby A., Anna P., Elmo and Leroy. Ruby A. married R. E. Montague and lives at Orosi. Elmo, who is a grad- uate of the public schools, married Beulah Howard and they live on the Robert place; they have three children, Howardine, Eugene and an infant. Leroy took for his wife Ethel Tellyer and lives on Sand creek, Squaw valley.
When Mr. Gough came to this spot little or no farming had been done in the vicinity and cattle were fed on the plains, over which deer and antelope roamed almost unmolested. In the swamp were many elk and the bear was a pest to all who tried to raise hogs. He has participated in and aided to the extent of his ability the development of the community from that time to the present, and as a Republican has been influential in local affairs.
GEORGE ALEXANDER ROBISON
An identification with Tulare county interests for more than a quarter of a century, during which time he has been almost a con- tinnous resident in the county, has placed George Alexander Robison among the best known citizens here. He is a native of Linneus, Linn county, Mo., born April 27, 1851, son of Andrew and Eliza (Mar- low) Robison, who took their son when a babe in arms to Perry county, Ill. In that county he was reared and educated, living there until 1874, when he went to Indiana, his father at that time coming to California. It was in November, 1875, that George A. came to California to join his parents, and two years thereafter was located in Tulare county. From there he moved to near Santa Rosa, Sonoma county. During these travels he had been working for wages in the intervals of farming rented land. Returning to Tulare county he farmed three-quarters of a section, which was part of the present site of Orosi. In Sonoma county he worked land north of Santa Rosa near Fulton. He remembers 1877 as a dry year in Tulare county; wheat growing and stockraising failed, horses died, and young sheep were killed in order to save the old ones.
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In 1880, in Sonoma county, Mr. Robison married Mary Russell, a native of Sonoma county, Cal., and a daughter of High and Sarah Russell. She has horne him five children: Minnie, Lawrence, Dora and Nora (twins), and Pearlie. Minnie married Lee Finley, of Tulare county, and they have two sons and a daughter. Lawrence married Martha Griggs. The three others are members of their parents' household.
After his marriage Mr. Robison came back to Tulare connty and bought twenty acres of land near Orosi at $75 an acre, his present home, which was part of a grain ranch. He has fourteen and a half acres under vines, his leading grapes being Mnscats and Sultanas. An orchard of four hundred young peach trees is a feature of his farm. It includes three and a half acres and in 1912 brought him $152. While Mr. Robison regards 1911 as having been a poor crop year, he states that in that year he sold eighteen tons of raisins. A comparison of these figures with those of 1893, his first crop, when he shipped his crop to New York and cleared $50 on it, is not at all discouraging, and his many years' residence in this vicinity, while it has not been without its disappointments, has nevertheless on the whole brought him substantial prosperity. Pre-eminently a self- made man, he has succeeded because he is a good farmer and a good citizen. Politically he affiliates with the Democratic party.
MOSES S. JENANYAN
One of the most prosperous fruit growers in Tulare county is Moses S. Jenanyan, who was born April 22, 1864, in Armenia and there made his home until in 1893, when he came to Chicago, bring- ing with him an exhibit of goods from his native land. In 1894 he hronght the exhibit to San Francisco and then returned to the east. He came to Tulare county January 4, 1904, and bought ninety acres of land, bare and uncultivated, which he has developed into a fine fruit farm, having now ten acres of Emperor and sixty acres of Muscat grapes, also ten acres of oranges and ten acres of peaches. In the season of 1910 he soll forty-five tons of Muscats, his Emperors not being in full bearing, and his peach crop brought him $1000. He is improving his place with a modern cement residence and has built a barn and made other improvements on the place.
One hundred and thirty-two acres of fruit land in this vicinity is owned by Ilelena R. JJenanyan, a native of New York, who lives in Philadelphia. She has ten acres in Emperors, thirty in Muscats, thirty-five in Thompsons and ten in Malagas, and has an orange grove of fifteen acres. She sold in 1910 fifty-five tons of Emperors, thirty five of Muscats, thirty of Thompsons and thirty-five of
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Malagas. Her orange crop in 1911 brought about $1500.
The Rev. H. S. Jenanyan bought about fifteen hundred acres of land in association with his brother, Moses S., and they brought twenty-five families to a colony which they have established on this land on Rural Free Delivery Route No. 1, four miles southeast of Mr. Jenanyan's homestead. This has increased to abont sixty fam- ilies in 1913. They employ about thirty workmen and at bleaching time hire about forty people. Most of their fruit they ship direct to eastern markets.
In Philadelphia, in 1899, Mr. Jenanyan was married to Miss Mande P. Pulsifer, a native of Canada, and they are the parents of four children, viz .: Gladys and Clarence, who were born in Bos- ton, and Vincent and Alden, natives of California.
The ranch of Mr. Jenanyan, of ninety acres, which had been a wheat field before he bought it, has been improved by an irriga- tion system and transformed. into a fine orange and grape farm. Mr. Jenanyan is as enterprising toward the public welfare as he is where his own personal interests are involved. As a Republican he has been elected to the office of school trustee of the Churchill district. In religion he affiliates with the Presbyterian church.
DANIEL MURPHY
A career of usefulness and unceasing labor has been that of Daniel Murphy, who has figured prominently in the development of Dinuba and Orosi for many years. He was born February 1, 1828, in Antigonish (Indian name for River of Fish), Nova Scotia, and there his life was spent until he reached the age of about sixty- five years. He made a marked success of his life as a farmer and manufacturer, devoting himself principally to milling and to woolen mannfacture. He built up the business from a small beginning, in partnership with Robert Trotter, combining gristmilling and woolen manufacturing of tweeds and yarns as well as blankets and flannels, and so extensive did the enterprise become that he long employed a hundred or more skilled workmen, Later he built a small steam mill, and this he sold for $7,000, in order to come to California, and in November, 1892, he became one of the pioneers of this section of the county, buying forty acres of land, twenty of which he later sold. His land was all wheatfield and there were no graded roads. Ile acquired other property and had two stores and seven saloons in Dinnba, and two houses and one store in Orosi. Mr. Murphy planted six acres to grapes, seven acres to peaches and in 1909 replaced the peach orchard with an eight-acre tract of oranges.
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So well equipped is his place in the matter of water supply that he could irrigate it more cheaply with his own plant than from the ditch. Nevertheless his public spirit impels him to patronize the latter. His well is eighty feet deep, with eleven-inch casings and a five-horsepower engine for pumping. All his operations are car- ried on by the latest and most scientific methods.
In Nova Scotia, Mr. Murphy married Miss Ann MacDonald, who has borne him children as follows: Bessie (Mrs. Sydney Holland), who has a son, Perey; William, who married Rose Phelps and lives in St. Paul, Minn .; Tina, who married Wesley Ferguson and has four children, they residing in Minneapolis; Huntley, who married Abbie Wheelock, and is an employe of the Southern Pacific Railroad com- pany, living in Oakland; Grace, who became the wife of J. H. Me- Crackin, druggist, at Dinuba. Four children died in Nova Scotia. Mrs. Murphy passed away June 18, 1902.
In politics Mr. Murphy is a stanch Republican and in religion a communicant of the Presbyterian church. As a citizen he is public- spiritedly helpful to all worthy interests of the community.
ELIZABETH NAVARRE
It was in Monroe, Mich., that Elizabeth Navarre was born in 1842 and lived until 1881, when she accompanied her husband, Sam- uel Navarre, to ('alifornia, where he bought one hundred and sixty acres of land in Tulare county, the site of her present home. They were married in Michigan in 1868 and had three children, Bert, Dot and Lillie. Bert passed away in 1901, aged thirty-one years. Dot and Lillie are married. Mrs. Navarre's parents were natives of Ireland, who sought and found their fortunes in America and have gone to their reward. Mr. Navarre was born in Michigan and was a man of winning personality, who was beloved by all who knew him. He died at his home in Tulare county in 1897, aged fifty-six years. Their children were all born in Monroe, Mich.
Since the death of her husband Mrs. Navarre has sold a part of the old farm, but retains what she has always called her home place. When she came to the county, settlement was so sparse that many miles intervened between the houses. The country was wild, lonely and unproductive, and her husband had no diffienlty in buying good land at $2.50 an acre. Most of her land is planted to grain, and along this line she is farming very successfully. A woman of the highest character and genial and affable, she has made and kept many friends in the community in which she has cast her lot, and in a public-spirited way she has done whatever was possible for the
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promotion of the general interest. Her late husband is remembered as having been a friend of education and a promoter of progress and prosperity.
LEWIS A. SICKLES
In Lewis county, northeast Missouri, Lewis A. Sickles was born, in 1874, and there made his home until he was about twenty-five years old, when he went to Kansas City, Mo., where he lived until 1904. Then he came to Porterville, Tulare county, and after living there two years he removed to Springville, Cal. Two years later he bought the Springville hotel, which he still owns, and which has been written up in the Visalia Morning Delta, published December 21, 1912, as follows :
There is no class of institutions throughout the whole category of business concerns which exercise so wide an influence or have so important a bearing upon the general character of a city as its lead- ing and most representative hotels. These establishments have an individuality which becomes impressed and engrafted upon the character of the community, and to the vast majority of the trans- ient traveling fraternity a city is just what its hotels make it; for it is here that the visitor receives his first and his last distinct im- pressions, and accordingly as he is favorably or unfavorably inclined toward the hostelry of his temporary abiding place, in just that measure is he pleased or displeased with the community in which it is located.
Springville has every reason to be proud of the Springville hotel; it has thirty-two large airy rooms, all comfortably furnished, and the dining room has a seating capacity of seventy-two.
Mayor L. A. Sickles bought this hotel six years ago, and then it was not the hotel that it is today, for it was only one-third of its present size. Mr. Sickles is commonly referred to as the Mayor of Springville, for it was to him that the honor fell to drive the last spike in the completion of the railroad. Mayor Sickles is a genial host, ever looking after the comforts of his guests, and he leaves no stone unturned to impress upon all of his patrons the wonderful resources of this chosen spot.
In 1906 Mr. Sickles married Anna Akin, a native of Shelby county, Ohio. In 1895 his father and mother came to this state and his father, B. T. Sickles, is living in Porterville. Mr. Sickles is one of the directors of the Chamber of Commerce of Springville and was so important a factor in securing the construction of the rail-
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road to that city that on the completion of the line he was tendered the honor mentioned.
This progressive man was educated in his native Missouri and has always been connected with enterprises of importance. For four years before he came to California he was a foreman in the packing house of Schwarzschild & Sulzberger at Kansas City. After com- ing to California he became proprietor of the hotel as stated. This is the only hotel in the town and he manages it with much ability, catering successfully to both transient and commercial trade.
It is as a self-made man that Mr. Sickles should appeal most strongly to those who come to know him. Starting out in life with nothing, he has made a success in every way creditable, and such . of this world's goods as he possesses he has won by his own unaided ability and industry. Wherever he has lived his public spirit has never been found wanting. He is deservedly popular in business circles and in a fraternal way he affiliates with the Modern Wood- men.
WILLIAM H. MILLINGHAUSEN
Of German-American lineage, William H. Millinghausen was born at Lincoln, Neb., in 1877. His father was a native of Germany and his mother made her advent into this world in Michigan; they are now living in retirement from the active labors that commanded their devotion through all their earlier years. They gave their son such advantages for education as were possible, and under his father's instruction he learned the practical side of lumbering and farming. When he was two years old they moved, taking him from Nebraska to Oregon, and two years later the family came to Tulare county, and it was in the Mountain View school that he fitted him- self for business life.
Practically all of his life Mr. Millinghausen has spent in Tulare county, and practically all of it has been given to two interests, lumbering and farming, and in the latter avocation he has given particular attention to. stockraising. As a Inmberman and an owner of stock, he naturally engaged in the hauling of lumber, and from that work a graduation to miscellaneous freighting was natural, and as a freighter he has also busied himself profitably from time to time.
The father of William HI. is August Millinghansen, who is a man of strong character; his mother is such a woman as gives her- self heart and soul to the moral instruction of her children; and consequently Mr. Millinghausen in his youth did not lack the ethical
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and patriotic instruction which is essential to good citizenship. Those who know him recognize in him a fellow-townsman of public spirit, who does all that can be expected of him in the encouragement of measures directed to the general good. While he is not an active politician, he is well informed on all public questions and votes for the men who will, in his judgment, do the best for the community. He has always been liberal in support of the church and of public education.
ULYSSES GRANT PARSONS
A self-made man who in spite of many vicissitudes and hard- ships has succeeded and is now prospering as a farmer in Tulare county is Ulysses Grant Parsons, a native of Meigs county, Ohio. Named in honor of General Grant it appears that he has taken as his motto Grant's dogged declaration, "We will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."
It was in July, 1866, that Mr. Parsons was born. In 1884, when he was eighteen years old, he turned his back on his Ohio home and went west as far as Nebraska, with a few dollars in his pocket over and above the sum absolutely necessary for traveling expenses. He worked there on farms until in 1890, when he went to Portland, Ore., and found employment on a ranch at thirty dollars a month. From Oregon he came to California, arriving in Tulare county, February 22, 1891, and here for a time he was variously employed, sometimes working for wages and sometimes cutting wood and selling it in town, just as General Grant had done at St. Louis many years before. But all the time he was saving all the money he could possibly put aside until at length he was able to buy a team with which he returned to Oregon, seeking better opportunities. Nevertheless he found conditions there so bad that he made his way back to Nebraska and put in one hundred acres of corn, which failed because of lack of rain. He then found work in the hay fields at one dollar a day and board. Returning to California by way of Nevada he left his wife and children there and came on to Tulare, arriving with twenty-five cents in his pockets and owing the railroad company $1.80 baggage charges. He borrowed the latter amount from a friend, securing his seant personal property, and then looked around for work. Bound to get a start in some way, he worked at odd jobs in Tulare and Fresno counties, being at one time obliged to work for only sixty cents a day. By working and serimping and persevering he at length managed to save enough money to enable him to rent a farm of forty acres near Visalia.
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Later he bought the place, paying fifty dollars down, improved it and then sold it at a profit of six hundred dollars. He next, in 1903, purchased the one hundred and forty acre farm northwest of Tulare which has since been his home, and at this time he owes not a dollar in the world and owns one of the most productive ranches of its size in the county. He has twenty acres of Egyptian corn and fifty acres of alfalfa, raises grain and sells fifty to one hundred and fifty tons of hay each year. One of the paying features of his enterprise is a dairy of fifteen cows.
In 1889 Mr. Parsons married Miss Annie McConnanghay, who has borne him children as follows: Gertrude, Maud, Edna, Inez, Frank, Fred and Fay (twins), and George. Mrs. Parsons has always been a true helpmate to her husband and during the earlier years of their married life encouraged and assisted him so effectively that he readily accedes to her the credit for more than half of his success.
FRANK P. ROBERTSON
At Willamette Valley, Ore., Frank P. Robertson, now one of Tulare county's best known farmers and dairymen, was born February 18, 1855, son of William J. and Mary (Matthews) Robertson, the former a native of New Jersey, the latter of Missouri. William J. Robertson was the captain in command of the troops which fought for law, order and civilization in the Rogue River war in Oregon, and years afterward he ably filled the office of justice of the peace at Tulare. Cal., where his son has come to the front as a splendid citizen and a first-class man of affairs.
When he was but sixteen years old, Frank P. Robertson left Oregon, and, making his way to California, settled in Tehama county, where he farmed till he moved on to Modoe county to take charge of a sawmill. He came to Tulare county in 1885 and found employment on the old J. B. Zumwalt ranch, where he set out many of the trees which, developed to largeness, now adorn the place. For some years past he has been the owner of ranch interests more or less extensive, mostly within the limits of Tulare county, and at one time owned a ranch three miles south of Visalia. He first occupied the ranch which is now his home by lease, and in 1906 acquired it by purchase. Formerly he farmed it to grain, but for ten years has been operating it as a dairy plant. having now about twenty-five cows. Fifty-five acres of the place he devotes to alfalfa and pasture, and recently he has grown Egyptian corn with much success.
The Independent Order of Odd Fellows, lodge and encampment.
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inelndes Mr. Robertson in its membership, and he affiliates also with the Woodmen of the World and with the Circle of Woodcraft. He has a wide acquaintance throughont the county and is esteemed as a high-minded, publie-spirited citizen who has the welfare of his com- munity very much at heart. He married, in 1888, Josephine Siddall, who died in 1896, leaving three children, Nellie, wife of James Tingley, of Visalia; Charles, and Elmer.
WILLIAM C. RHODES
The death of William C. Rhodes, which occurred in 1888 on the frontier between Texas and Mexico, removed from his vicinity one of the oldest and most honored pioneers of California. He was born in March, 1817, in Knox county, east Tennessee. From his native state he went to Texas in 1847, and in 1857 made his way overland to California by the southern route, starting with a band of cattle which were eventually run off by Indians. At the Platte river it was necessary to block up the beds in the wagons to keep them out of the water in crossing, and a box floated off with three children and their mother in it. About this time Mr. Rhodes saw a Mexican amputate an arm of a man whose life was thought to be in danger from a gunshot wound, he having been accidentally shot while unload- ing bedding from his wagon. Mr. Rhodes made his home in San Bernardino three years, returning to Tennessee at the end of the first year via the Isthmus to bring back more stock. At Carson City he left his stock for the winter in care of the Houston brothers, but the animals all died before spring. For a time after his arrival in 1860 at Tnlare county he engaged in farming and later was in the sheep business on land where he had settled east of Visalia, and which was his home for years. Subsequently he moved south of Por- terville and remained there until some time before his death. His widow, who before her marriage was Sarah Rebecca Donglas, sur- vives at the present age of eighty-four. They were the parents of twelve children; Nancy, now deceased; Thomas; John; Harriet, Mrs. J. L. Johnson; Julia, Mrs. A. Sernggs; Ann Hazleton, Mrs. C. Har- per; William R .: Tennessee B., Mrs. S. Fay; Martha E., Mrs. E. Halbert; Samuel S .; Hngh, deceased; and Ora, Mrs. G. Robbins. Thomas married Sarah Fly and they have several children. John married Mrs. Mary Tewksberry and they have five children. Harriet married J. L. Johnson and has three children. Julia became the wife of Thomas Turner and they had one child; by her marriage with Alba Scruggs she had nine children. Ann Hazleton married Charles Harper and bore him eight children. William R. married Miss Lon
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Mefford and has six living children. Tennessee B. became Mrs. Spencer Fay and has two children. Martha E. married Edward Halbert and they have four children. Samuel S. married Mary A. Garrison. Ora is Mrs. George Robbins.
As a pioneer Mr. Rhodes won great honor. Fraternally he affiliated with the Masonic order. In his politics he was a Democrat and as a citizen he was helpfully interested.
WILLIAM UNGER
In Petaluma, Sonoma county, a place made famous by General Vallejo, whose old adobe will live long in history, William Unger, who now lives near Orosi in Stokes valley, was born January 3, 1869. a son of Frederick and Dora (Jantzen) Unger. His parents, natives of Germany, came to New York City and from there sailed for Cali- fornia by way of Panama in 1849. Arrived within the present terri- tory of the Golden State, they lived in Sonoma, Santa Clara and Solano counties successively. In 1880 they settled at Selma, Fresno county, and that remained the family home thereafter. For a time Mr. Unger mined and later he worked for the United States govern- ment at $4 a day. In the old mining days he one day picked up a gold nugget which was of considerable value. He died in 1902, his wife in 1904.
It is now thirty-three years since William Unger came to Fresno county, where he remained until 1904, buying and improving three fine homes, one after the other. From there he came to Stokes valley, where he bought one hundred acres of land. He has sixty-five thou- sand citrus trees and is building up a nursery business and improv- ing his land. His place is well improved and is well provided with modern irrigation facilities, having a pumping capacity of five inches. He was the first to put in a well and pumping plant here, and has over thirty inches of water from the plant installed in 1912. His twelve acres of nursery stock has attracted much attention and he intends soon to plant one hundred acres of oranges and limes. His farm has been made entirely from raw land and as now advanced is one of the best in the vicinity. Since Mr. Unger came to the valley many colonists have followed him and $600,000 worth of land has been sold there, all of which amply demonstrates the wisdom of his choice, as he has shown the possibilities of this section of the country for growing citrus fruit.
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