Kings County
Biographies
ROSSON, CHARLES TILDEN (M. D.)
The profession of medicine and surgery is becoming more and more specialized as time passes, and its two principal branches are today more distinct and individual than they have ever been before. One of the medical profession in Kings county, Cal., who is becoming well known in central California through his successful devotion to surgery is Charles Tilden Rosson, M. D., of Hanford, who was born in Vergennes, Jackson county, Ill., in 1876, and was there educated in the public schools. In 1894, when he was about eighteen years old, he came to Tulare county, Cal. It was in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of San Francisco that he finished his professional education and was graduated with the M. D. degree in 1903, and in that and the following year he was house surgeon in the City and County Hospital at San Francisco. In 1904 he came to Hanford and for a time made the office of Dr. Holmes his headquarters, but it was not long before he established an independent office, which is now located in the Emporium building.
It is to surgery that Dr. Rosson has given special attention and it is as a surgeon that he has developed an ability and won a success that have made him known throughout a wide territory surrounding Hanford. An idea of his progressiveness and of his initiative in his chosen field may be conveyed by the statement that he was one of the first to perform laparotomy in Kings county. Until 1911 he was for some years surgeon in Central California for the Santa Fe Railway system and he is now Southern Pacific Railroad surgeon and physician. He is a member of the San Joaquin Medical Society, the Fresno County Medical Society, the California State Medical Society and the American Medical Association, and is president of the Hanford Sanitorium, Inc. Though he is in constant demand as a family physician, he is in still wider demand as a surgeon and does a large share of the capital surgery in the county; his work in this line is gradually extending to neighboring counties.
In 1901 Dr. Rosson married Miss Burnett of Tulare, who has borne him three sons, John, Charles and Robert. Socially he affiliates with the Improved Order of Red Men and with Hanford Lodge No. 1259, B. P. O. E. Politically he is patriotically interested, and as a citizen he gives his aid to the development of Hanford and its interests and to the uplift of its people of all classes.
SOURCE: History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913 Pp 290, 295
Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn
BLOWERS, CASSIUS M.
This pioneer farmer and business man, whose ranch is three miles northwest of Hanford, Kings county, Cal., has come to his present prominence only after a struggle in which he wrung success out of situations that to many another man would have spelled ruin. When he first saw Kings county, in 1874, it was a desert, sandy and practically worthless, but irrigation, which he long advocated, has resulted in its reclamation. The land, then worth next to nothing, is now valued at $250 an acre and upward.
To the student of history genealogy is a fascinating pursuit and it is to be regretted that the lack of printing in the earlier ages rendered an interesting work so difficult. Cassius M. Blowers is descended from an Englishman, John O. Blowers, his grandfather, who early settled Crawford county, Ohio, where he pre-empted government land on which he died in his eighty-fifth year. Not only was he a pioneer farmer, but he was a pioneer preacher of the Methodist faith, who often discoursed to the people of Bucyrus. His son, Lemuel Lane Blowers, born on the pioneer’s Ohio farm, came to California in 1850, making the trip overland. For a time he mined on the American river, but in 1854 he took up land in Yolo county, where he died in 1855. He had married Caroline Foster, of Ohio birth, and she had died in 1849, leaving five children, of whom Cassius M., born December 20, 1845, was the fourth. The boy was about four year old when his mother died and between nine and ten years old when his father passed away, aged thirty-eight years.
When Mr. Blowers was ten years old he was brought to California by his uncle, R. B. Blowers, who became a pioneer fruit grower in this state and grew the first California raisins. The boy lived on his uncle’s ranch near Woodland, Yolo county, then began business for himself, teaming to Nevada and the mountain district when he was but fifteen years old.
His next venture was as a farmer in Yolo county, but in 1874 he transferred his interests to Kings county, where he has since lived. He bought a railroad land claim for $600, but the land was a waste of desert sand, unfit for cultivation. In doing so he was planning for the future and he soon became one of the promoters of the Lower Kings river, Last Chance and People’s irrigation ditches, which were completed in 1877. Then Mr. Blowers sowed his land to wheat and the next year he set out a few vines. In 1883 he shipped the first raisins which were boxed in Tulare county, which then included the present Kings county, and he originated the system of employing fruit cutters at piece prices instead of on salary. At that time there were but three canneries in the state, San Jose, San Francisco, and Sacramento. All had been paying day wages for employees, and Chinese and white workers were intermingled in one large room. In 1886 Mr. Blowers went to Sacramento and induced the management of the cannery there to try piece work, which was done. The orientals were separated from the whites and so successful was this method that it has been generally adopted by all fruit growers throughout the state.
In his home ranch Mr. Blowers has two hundred and forty acres, forty acres devoted to vines, seventy to peaches, apricots and other fruit, the remainder to grain and alfalfa. He owns also a stock and alfalfa ranch of two hundred and fifty acres in Kings county, formerly in Fresno county prior to the annexation, and a fruit, vine and alfalfa farm of eighty acres near Lemoore.
The marriage of Mr. Blowers, January 19, 1875, united him with Miss Susie McLaughlin, and their eight children were born on the home ranch in Kings county. Hubert Lane is operating a ranch of thirty acres not far from his father’s. Russell M. is farming and growing fruit on thirty acres of land given to him by Mr. Blowers. Olive G. married George Blowers, who is the proprietor of a machine shop in San Francisco. Francis is ranching on fifty acres of land given him by his father. Bessie, who died in 1905, was the wife of Fred Arthur, who is farming in Kings county. Mary, Ralph and Viola Susan are members of their parents’ household. Mr. Blowers has long taken an active part in the affairs of the Raisin Growers’ association and has been for about a quarter of a century president of the Last Chance Ditch corporation. Politically he is a Republican. His interest in school affairs impelled him to fill the duties of school trustee about twenty years, and his public spirit, many times tried, has not been found wanting.
SOURCE: History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913 Pp 298-301
Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn