Kings County
Biographies
JOHN V. CLEMENTE
It was across the ocean on the other continent at Pico, in the Azores islands, that John V. Clemente was born, May 6, 1864, and he now lives a mile north of Hanford, Kings county, Cal., and is a successful dairyman and fruit grower. He is a true citizen of America, devoted to the best interests of his adopted country and especially to those of the community with which he has cast his lot. He remained on his native isle in a far-away sea until he was eighteen years old, then came to the United States, and direct to California, locating at Pescadero, San Mateo county, where for four years he was employed at ranch work. For the five years thereafter he worked on ranches in San Luis Obispo county. In 1891 he came to Kings county, bought a band of sheep and went into the sheep business, to which he devoted himself nine years, having at one time a flock of twenty-five hundred.
In 1901 Mr. Clemente bought one hundred and sixty acres of unimproved land, on which he has put fences and buildings and which he is now cultivating with success. He has ten acres of vines, two acres of orchard and thirty acres of alfalfa, the remainder of his tract being given over to pasturage. In connection with this business he manages a small dairy. With three associates, he bought four hundred and eighty acres of land north of Lemoore, his interest in which he sold in 1910. He is a stockholder in the Hanford Mercantile company and affiliates fraternally with the U. P. E. C. and the I. D. E. S. As a citizen he is public-spirited to a degree that makes him helpful to every worthy local interest.
In June, 1903, Mr. Clemente married Maria. Garcia; and they have three children: Leonard, Elvira and Maria.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 593-594
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
JOHN WHITTAKER BAIRSTOW
Numbered conspicuously among the successful fruit-growers of Hanford and vicinity is John Whittaker Bairstow, who was born in England, May 23, 1859. He was reared in England and there educated and taught the secrets of the nurseryman, and it was as a nurseryman that he was employed in his native land till he was thirty years old. Leaving his wife and three children behind him in England he came to California about the first of July, 1889, crossing the continent by rail from New York city. He sought work in vain at different nurseries in Oakland and Alameda and was finally compelled to take employment in the planing mill of George C. Pape at East Oakland, where he worked about eighteen months. Meanwhile he made the acquaintance of J. C. Kimball, the well-known prune grower of Kings county, and went with him to Hanford in 1891, remaining in his employ till the fall of that year. During this time he was engaged in setting out a prune orchard for Mr. Kimball and the latter's brother and some of their relatives, handling all the trees and distributing them to different ranches until five hundred and four acres had been put under that fruit. For six months he helped to bud nursery stock in the Lucerne vineyard.
Mr. Bairstow later brought his family over from England and set up his home near Hanford, renting twenty acres of vineyard of N. M. Newell. After the first season, he pulled up the vines and for six years he farmed the land, working out whenever he could spare time from the place. His next venture was as a nursery‑man, raising his own stock. In 1896 he bought twenty acres of the J. C. Courtner ranch, and ten years later an adjoining twenty, of the Lucerne vineyard. He set seven acres of vineyard on the original twenty, an acre of apricots and a small family orchard, but at this time he uses all the land for nursery stock. In 1902 he established a nursery yard at Hanford, where he carries Early May, Elberta, Lovell, Muir, Admiral Dewey, Wheatland and late and early Crawford free-stone peaches and Heath, Sullivan, Orange, Phillips and Lemon cling-stone peaches; Early Royal, Routier Peach, Tilton and St. Ambrose apricots; Ben Davis, White Winter Pearmain, Red June and Red Astrakhan apples ; Bartlett and Winter Nellis pears; French, Robe de Sargent and Tradegey prunes; Prunes Simona and English Dawson plums ; Muscat and Thompson seedless grapes; nectarines, and sycamore, maple, California walnut, poplar, Texas umbrella and other shade and ornamental trees. He was the first nurseryman to put on sale the Tilton apricot, exhibiting it at the State Fruit Growers' convention in Sacramento in 1902 and taking a first grade diploma for choicest dried fruit in competition with all the fruit produced in the state. This apricot originated here in Kings county with J. E. Tilton, and Mr. Bairstow handles it in his trade.
In March, 1877, Mr. Bairstow married Miss Louisa Williams, a native and then a resident of England, and she has borne him five children, of whom two, Lott and Samuel, survive; Rosson, their eldest, died at Hanford; Ethelbert died in infancy in England, and another, born in California, died in infancy. Mr. Bairstow is an American in everything except actual birth that the name can imply. His interest in the community with which he has, cast his lot is such as to make him a citizen of much public spirit, and no call for aid toward the betterment of the condition of any considerable number of his fellow citizens fails to receive his prompt and generous response.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 602-603
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler