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 83
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 83
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and remained in active practice and official life until his death, October 13, 1912. His interest in his profession was deep and sincere and he kept in touch with the progress which medical science is constantly making. Fraternally he affiliated with Hanford Lodge No. 279. F. & 1. M., and the Woodmen of the World. Fraternal Order of Eagles and the Knights of Pythias.
WILLIAM P. RATLIFF
W. P. Ratliff has been postmaster at Tulare since May 1, 1902. having received his original appointment under President Roosevelt in the preceding April. He has been a local leader in the Republican party, has served on state and county central committees, has been city assessor and city treasurer of Tulare and president and secretary of the Board of Trade. Fraternally he affiliates with Olive Branch Lodge No. 269, F. & A. M., in which he was made a Mason and in which he is past master; with Tulare Chapter No. 71, R. A. M., in which he is past high priest ; with the Ancient Order of United Work- men, and with the Woodmen of the World. With the members of these orders he is no more popular than in the business and social cireles of the city and county.
In Oskaloosa, Iowa, Mr. Ratliff was born October 12, 1859, a son of John and Elizabeth (Madden) Ratliff. John Ratliff was a son of William Ratliff, whose father, a native of the Isle of Man, settled in Pennsylvania. William moved from Pennsylvania to Indiana and later pushed on to Iowa. When his parents left Pennsylvania John was but a small boy. In his early manhood he settled on a farm in lowa, but the stories of gold in California which came to him in the late '40s awoke within him a spirit of adventure. He crossed the plains in 1850 and prospected and mined for eight years, then went back to lowa by way of the Isthmus of Panama and New York. He made a brief stop in New York City and there married Elizabeth Madden, a native of Dublin, Ireland, whose brother Michael had shared the ups and downs of mining with him in California. At the beginning of 1860, when their son William P. was about three months old, John Ratliff, who had stopped in lowa to settle up some business prepara- tory to his intended return to California, was killed by being thrown from a horse. His widow brought their child to California before the close of that year and found a home in Plumas county, where she later married E. IL. Holthouse, to whom she bore four sons and a daughter. who live in Santa Clara county. The family moved to a farm near Lawrence Station, not far from San Jose, in 1870. There Mrs. Holt- house died as the result of an accidental fall in 1902, when she was in
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her sixty-ninth year. Her son, William P. Ratliff, supplemented a common school education by a three years' conrse in Santa Clara Col- lege, then became a clerk in the employ of T. W. Spring. In 1882 he came to Tulare and became a brakeman in the employ of the South- ern Pacific Railroad company. In a year he was made conductor of a train running between Tulare and Huron. In 1888 he identified himself with the business of Braly & Blythe, real estate agents and representatives of the Wells-Fargo Express Company. He withdrew from that connection in 1892 to become cashier of the Tulare County Bank and the Tulare Savings Bank. In August, 1896, he resigned to accept the assistant cashiership of the Bank of Tulare, which he held until February, 1901, when he removed to Kern county as superintend- ent of two oil companies operating in the Kern River oil field. There he fell a victim to typhoid fever, which held him to his bed for five months. Meanwhile he was taken to San Francisco, where better at- tention and care were possible than he was receiving in Kern county. He came back to Tulare in November, 1901, and a few months later accepted the cashiership of the Bank of Tulare, which he held until his appointment as postmaster.
June 5, 1888, Mr. Ratliff married Alice Harter, a native of Stock- ton and a daughter of Isaac and Matilda (Parker) Harter, pioneers in California. Their wedding was celebrated in Tulare and there their son ('linton P. was born.
H. P. BROWN
This leading lawyer and man of affairs of Kings county, Cal., whose offices are in the Farmers and Mechanics Bank building at Hanford, is a native son of Tulare county and was born two miles west of Grangeville July 17, 1873. Primarily educated in the pioneer district schools near there, he later attended Hanford high school. from which he graduated in 1896. In 1899 he graduated from the Hastings Law College and in May of that year was admitted to prac- tice in the Supreme Court of California. Immediately thereafter he opened an office in Hanford, and here he has made his business and pro- fessional headquarters ever since. As a lawyer he has given his atten- tion largely to special interests, but notwithstanding that fact he has achieved a notable snecess in general practice. He is deeply interested in agriculture, horticulture and stockraising, and in irrigation as a factor essential to success in those fields of endeavor under the pe- enliarities of local environment. Ile is the owner of six hundred and forty acres of land, half of which is devoted to farming, forty acres to fruit growing and the remainder to alfalfa, grain and stock grazing:
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He owns a one-third interest in the reclamation company whose activi- ties center on Empire ranch and is one of its directors. It irrigates a district extending twelve miles southwest from the river, a large part of the land having been reclaimed from the lake. He is a stock- holder and director also in the New Deal Ditch Company of Hanford ( whose ditch extends from a point southeast of John Sigler's ranch), a director in the Lone Oak Canal Company (whose ditch runs south of the old Lost Chance ditch), is attorney for the Wilber reclamation district (which includes thirty thousand acres of land under reclama- tion on the southeast border of Tulare lake), and attorney for the Fresno & Hanford Railroad Company. Ile was one of the organizers of and is a director in the New Kings County Chamber of Commerce and helped to organize the King's County Dairyman's Association, of which he is a director, and organized the Lampenhein Creamery of Hardwick, in the company controlling which he is a director. There is no movement for the public good in which he is not interested directly or indirectly. Fraternally he affiliates with the Masonic lodge at Han- ford. with Scottish Rite Masons and with the Shrine of Islam at San Francisco and with the Eastern Star, besides which he is identified with the Knights of Pythias, the Woodmen of the World, the Im- proved Order of Red Men and the Native Sons of the Golden West. In 1902 he married Metta Robinson, a daughter of the late W. W. Robinson.
M. J. FONTANA
In all of our industries, from the railroad builder to the bank president. the foreign-horn citizen has always displayed excellent qualities, this being especially true of some of the sons of Italy who have located here. Among these none has made a more striking record in California than M. J. Fontana, general superintendent of the California Fruit Canners' Association. He came to America when he was quite a young man, determined to make a home and fortune for himself in the New World. Having worked in the fruit business in New York, this interest was continued in California, whither he came in 1868, arriving in San Francisco with very limited means. Today, measure him as you will, he is one of the big men of the state, for he has made a success in every sense of the word. For a time he worked at anything that his hands found to do, but later he managed to form an alliance with fruit men which was the beginning of his upward progress. In 1870 he started in the fruit and produce husi- ness in San Francisco, and afterward engaged in the canning business in the same city, also starting branches at Healdsburg and Hanford.
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Finally in 1898 he sold out to the California Fruit Canners' Associa- tion, an organization in which he still holds an interest, being a direc- tor and a member of the executive board. His Hanford plant was the pioneer fruit canning and packing establishment in Kings county and was built in 1895. This plant has packed a yearly average of three hundred thousand cases of peaches and dried fruits for the past fifteen years, and also handles dried prunes, raisins and apricots.
Mr. Fontana has been a large developer in the fields of horticul- ture and viticulture in California for many years. He has large wine interests in the state, being president of the Italian-Swiss Wine Col- ony Association and director of the California Wine Association and is general superintendent of the California Canners Association, a director in the Italian-American Bank of San Francisco and is a direc- tor of the E. B. & A. L. Stone Co., a large contracting concern which did the construction work on the Western Pacific Railroad from San Francisco to Oroville, Cal. For two years he held the office of trus- tee of the city of San Francisco.
In 1877 Mr. Fontana was married to Nellie Jones of San Leandro, Cal., and they have three sons and one daughter, all of whom are married and connected with the California Fruit Canners' Associa- tion.
IVER KNUTSON
A native of Norway, Iver Knutson received a good education in that far northern country and served an apprenticeship at the car- penter's trade. When abont seventeen years old he came to the United States and made his way overland to California, where he was a miner in the early '50s. Eventually he went to Santa Rosa, Sonoma county. and from there to Gilroy, Santa Clara county, and in the latter place plied his trade of carpenter, and several buildings which he built or helped to build are still standing. Hearing of the rich lands in the Mussel Slough section of Tulare county, he moved there in 1872 and took up a claim, which he began to improve. In the history of this part of the state it is recorded how he was killed in the famous Mussel Slongh fight of 1880. He married, at Santa Rosa, Miss Cyn- thia ('lawson, a native of Wisconsin, who was brought across the plains when a small child by her father, coming overland to Cali- fornia soon after 1850. She bore her husband seven children and survived him until 1894, when she passed away. Their children were: Charles, deceased ; William O .; Joseph F., deceased; James E .; Mrs. William (. Clarkson, of Lemon Cove, Cal .; Henry E., who lives in Exeter; and Albert E., deceased.
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On October 8, 1868, William O. Knutson was born at Old Gilroy, ('al. He divided his time between the public school and work on his father's ranch, and his first venture on his own account was as a farmer in Kaweah swamp. For the past nine years he has been in the dairy business on the Exeter road near Farmersville, in the region known as the Visalia district, and at this time he is renting sixty acres, on which he maintains a dairy of twenty cows.
In 1896 Mr. Knutson married Miss Nellie E. Gray, a native of Iowa, and they have two children, Esther N. and Thelma L. In a fraternal way he affiliates with the Modern Woodmen, the Royal Neighbors and the Fraternal Brotherhood. Without being an active politician, he takes an intelligent interest in all questions of public significance and is prompt and generous in response to all demands toward the advance of the community.
N. B. BOWKER
Prominent in the mercantile circles and well known throughout C'entral California, N. B. Bowker, of Corcoran, is recognized as one of the leading citizens of Kings county, Cal., where he has lived since 1908. He was born in Defiance, Ohio, in 1884, and just missed being a Christmas present by making his advent in the home of his parents on December 26. As soon as he was old enough he was sent to the public school, and after he completed the course of study laid down for its students he took a thorough commercial course in an efficient business college. Ile was employed in his native state as a clerk until 1901, when he came to California. After employment about six years as an electrician, he located in Corcoran and not long after- ward engaged in business for himself as proprietor of a men's fur- nishings goods store, and has won one of the conspicuous commer- cial successes which has brought Corcoran to the attention of an extensive tributary territory.
October 15, 1907, Mr. Bowker married Miss E. E. Doughtery. who was born in Iowa March 6, 1886, and they have two daughters, Mildred and Margaret. Mr. and Mrs. Bowker have won the friend- ship of a large circle of acquaintances and their geniality and sin- cere interest in all with whom they come in contact make them wel- come everywhere. Mr. Bowker has achieved popularity in business eireles by doing business on strict business principles, while always showing a disposition to give the other man a chance. Customers once attracted to his store continue their patronage and bring their friends to take advantage of the bargains that he offers from time to time. With so satisfacory a past, so prosperous a present, his
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future is full of promise, and the time is not far distant when he will take his place among the foremost merchants in his part of the state.
JESSE B. AGNEW
An identification with Tulare county's industrial affairs since 1883 has made Jesse B. AAgnew well known throughout that vicinity, and although his present business takes him from the neighborhood on many occasions he holds his residence in Visalia at the old Young homestead, No. 600 Sonth East street, where the family of his esti- mable wife had lived for many years. Mr. Agnew is a successful seed grower, with offices at No. 110 Market street, San Francisco, and he is also manager of the Pacific Seed Growers' Company. His father came to the west in 1846, locating in Oregon, and then returned east for a short time. He made in all seven trips to California be- fore there was a railroad, and his experiences and knowledge on the traveling situation in those days is a most interesting narrative. A blacksmith by trade, he condneted a shop at the early mining camps and later removed to Santa Clara county, Cal., about 1873. and it was at this time that he purchased the old Agnew homestead.
Jesse B. Agnew was born at Eddyville, Iowa, September 15, 1863, and when nine years old was brought to Santa Clara county, where he was reared until 1883, at which time he moved to Tulare county. He was in the railroad land office of the Sonthern Pacific Railroad for a time. He married Miss Ida Young, daughter of Newton and Mary (Price) Young, who were among the earliest pioneers of Visalia. The Price family were natives of Wales, who came to America with the well-known Evans family.
TILLMAN B. PHARISS
Among the well-known and progressive cattlemen of his vicinity is numbered conspicuously Tillman B. Phariss, whose well-equipped ranch and fine range of cattle evidence his unusual ability in his chosen calling. His father was F. W. Phariss, who made the over- land journey across the plains and mountains to California with ox- team in 1852, and he experienced much of the hardship and danger of those early times. He later returned to the east, but in 1871 he again came to California, bringing his family with him.
Born in Dallas county, Mo., in 1871, Tillman B. Phariss was but five months old when his father came the second time to Cali-
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fornia, and he is therefore practically a native son. Settling in Sonoma county, the family remained in that vicinity for about six years and then removed to the Tule river country, in Tulare county, and here Mr. Phariss made his home and grew to manhood. Follow- ing in the footsteps of his father, who became an extensive cattle ranger in the county, Mr. Phariss familiarized himself with all the details of stockraising and the handling of cattle, and he now has a ranch of twenty acres on which he raises a high grade of stock for the market.
In 1899 Mr. Phariss was married to Evea Grider, who is a native daughter of California. Four children have been born of this union: Elvin C., Walter S., and two who are deceased. Mr. and Mrs. Phariss are popular citizens in their community and hold the respect and esteem of all who know them.
FRANK P. HAYES
This capitalist and man of affairs of Tulare, Tulare county, was born in Wayne county, Pa., in April, 1863, and was brought to Cali- fornia when he was five years old by his parents, who located at Oakland. Here he lived until 1885, in that year coming to Tulare county and renting twelve hundred and eighty acres of land, fonr miles west of Visalia. After raising grain there for three years he leased the Lindsay Land Company's land near Lindsay, a tract of six thousand acres, on which he began as a grower of grain and later embarked in the raising of cattle, combining the two interests until in the fall of 1910, when he bought nine hundred acres adjoining the Lindsay land and went into the cattle business exclusively. Abont this time he also bought thirty-two hundred acres on the lake, near Angiola, and fifteen acres on the Lindsay road. He sold out the last of his holdings in November, 1911. The records of the Dairymen's Co-operative Creamery Company show that he helped to organize that corporation and served a year as its president. He is a director of the First National Bank of Tulare and has from time to time been connected with other important business interests, though he con- siders that his principal business has been as a stockraiser. As a citizen he has evidenced a commendable public spirit which has made him always quick to respond to any appeal on behalf of movements for the general good. Fraternally he affiliates with the Masons, being a member of Tulare Lodge, F. & A. M., and having received the chapter and commandery degrees. He holds membership also in the local organization of the Woodmen of the World.
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In 1889 Mr. Hayes married Miss Fannie Fielding, of Marysville, C'al., and they have four children, Mayo, Marlo, Carroll and Austin, all students in the public schools.
EDWARD E. BUSH
A pioneer and leader in many fields of industry in King's county, and one who has won for himself an enviable record for industry and integrity here, is Edward E. Bush, who was born at Waukon, Allamakee county, Iowa, Jime 25, 1859, son of Moses D. Bush, whose name is associated with the history of pioneer industries in this region.
Moses D. Bush was born on a farm beside the Hudson river in the state of New York. When but nine years of age he was or- phaned and became self-supporting, working on a farm, where he grew up, and experiencing many hardships which fitted him for his subsequent career as a pioneer. While yet young he went to the village of Chicago and conducted a boarding house, becoming the owner of a tract of a hundred and sixty acres upon which the house stood. Disposing of that interest he returned to New York and was married to Emily E. Randall, with whom he went to Allamakee county, Iowa, where he engaged in farming and practiced surveying, assisting in running the boundary line between Minnesota and Jowa. In 1864 he brought his family to California by the overland route, and, locating at San Jose, operated a small foundry there for about three years. He then sold it and later came to Kings connty, where he took up land that is now a part of the site of Lemoore. This was a quarter-section, and when he settled here there was but one house between his and Visalia. He later sold the ranch to Lee Moore, for whom the town was named.
When Moses D. Bush came to King's county it was sparsely set- tled, there being only abont twenty-five people living there, among them being Unele Dan Rhoades, Justin and Jonathan Esrey, who were following stockraising. In the train were Samnel Wright and II. F. Bicknell and their families, who settled on government land and started to make homes; they suffered many trials, being com- pelled to go to Gilroy and hanl their provisions, as the stockraisers were opposed to them and refused to sell them meat or food of any kind. He was most optimistic as to the country's future and induced many friends to settle in what is now Kings county, giving them shelter and food and dividing his provisions with them. Geese and ducks were plentiful, and at one time Mr. Bush and his son were able to take eighteen hundred pounds to Gilroy, where they sold
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them at $1.25 per pound. They also operated a ferry boat across the lake, a distance of seven miles. Ile and a few others originated the first ditch hereabouts, taking water from Kings river, and he was one of the promoters of the Lower Kings River Ditch Co. and helped to dig its diteh with his own hands, taking in payment for his labor stock in that public utility. In 1879 he moved to a tract of four hundred acres, four miles south of Ilanford, thus becoming a pioneer farmer and dairyman in the Lakeside district. In 1884 he sold his farm and took up his residence in Hanford, where he died November 16, 1898, aged seventy-six. He was a Democrat and held several public offices, and those still surviving who knew him are ever ready to praise his business acumen, his honesty and his generosity. His widow is passing her declining days with her son, Edward E. She and her husband were members of the Ad- ventist church.
Edward E. Bush was a young boy when brought to Kings county and had had meager educational advantages. He was obliged to walk five miles to school, through herds of cattle, and he aided materially in the improvement of the home place. While still quite young he and his brother worked for Mr. Atwell on a small steam- boat, hanling hogs from Atwell's Island, now Alpaugh, across where Corcoran now stands, and landing at Buzzards Roost, now Wankena. In 1881, when twenty-two, he became an independent farmer, but the next year ran a small livery business in Hanford, and by 1890 the enterprise was increased to such an extent that he sold at a gratify ing profit; since then he has devoted his energies almost entirely to real estate. He has been materially helpful in many directions toward forwarding movements for the prosperity of Hanford, and was in- strumental in procuring the extension of the Santa Fe railroad from Fresno to the Kern county line. In 1889 he started the Del Monte Vineyard Co., which put one hundred and sixty acres under vines and trees, and the next year the Banner Vineyard Co., which, to- gether with the former vineyard, made a tract of three hundred and twenty acres, and this he soll within a few months. Soon after he bought the Grangeville vineyard of a hundred and sixty acres. planted it to vines and sold it in the second year. Meantime he bought a section of land of Foster Brothers, half of which he put to vines and sold to P. MeRae, planting the other half in 1891, and this he sold to the Armona Orchard & Vineyard Co. In the fall of the latter year he organized the Silver Bow Vineyard Co. at Butte, Mont., and sold two hundred and forty acres of it to residents of Butte, Mont .. the follow- ing spring selling to other residents there a half section which he had set to prunes and peaches and which is known as the Montana Orchard. In 1890 he bought and platted the Reddington Addition of forty lots in Hanford, and a little later bought twenty acres more
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in the northern section of the town and platted half of that; since then he has observed these purchases develop into the city's most exelnsive residence district. About the same time he bonght another twenty acres of land in Hanford, which he sold in one body.
As Mr. Bush was a pioneer in fruits and vines, so was he also a pioneer in the oil industry. Soon after 1890 his attention was directed to oil possibilities, and in 1896 he organized the Consolidated Oil & Development Co., capitalized at $50,000, which sunk a well in the Kroyenhagen district and found oil, but not in paying quantities. Next he organized the Caribon Oil Co. in the Coalinga district with a like capital, became its superintendent and manager, and with C. (". and W. A. Spinks bought a section of land, a part of which was sold to the Peerless Oil Co., eighty acres to the Merced Oil Co., and eighty to the Great Northern Oil Co. Five wells on land still owned by the original company yield a good annnal income. In the Kern river country he organized the Provident Oil Co., capitalized at $200,- 000, developed sixty acres in oil and suspended operations owing to cheap oil. He organized also the McFadden Oil & Mining Co., with a capital stock of $100,000, and sunk a well which, thongh operations were suspended, is still the property of the company. In both of these companies Mr. Bush owns a large block of stock. A larger enterprise of Mr. Bush's was the Del Rey Oil Co. Its capital was $1,000,000; of its four hundred acres, forty are in the heart of the Kern river field, seven producing wells being sunk under the super- intendence and management of Mr. Bush, who still owns stock in the company, as well as two hundred and forty acres of undeveloped lands in that district. In 1898 he organized the Del Monte Coal Co., which developed coal lands in this part of the county, hnt suspended operations because of exorbitant shipping charges.
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