Kings County
Biographies
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 practice in the Supreme Court of California. Immediately thereafter he opened an office in Hanford, and here he has made his business and professional headquarters ever since. As a lawyer he has given his attention largely to special interests, but notwithstanding that fact he has achieved a notable success in general practice. He is deeply interested in agriculture, horticulture and stock-raising, and in irrigation as a factor essential to success in those fields of endeavor under the peculiarities of local environment. He 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.
He owns a one-third interest in the reclamation company whose activities 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 stockholder 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 reclamation on the southeast border of Tulare lake), and attorney for the Fresno & Hanford Railroad Company. He was one of the organizers of and is a director in the New Kings County Chamber of Commerce and helped to organize the Kings 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 Hanford, 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 Improved 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.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 871-872
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
M. J. FONTANA
In all of our industries, from the railroad builder to the bank president, the foreign-born 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 business in San Francisco, and afterward engaged in the canning business in the same city, also starting branches at Healdsburg and Hanford.
Finally in 1898 he sold out to the California Fruit Canners' Association, an organization in which he still holds an interest, being a director 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 horticulture and viticulture in California for many years. He has large wine interests in the state, being president of the Italian-Swiss Wine Colony 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 director 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 trustee 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' Association.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 872-873
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler