Sutter County Biographies

CARL P. CARLSON

Horticulture has found a stalwart exponent in Carl P. Carlson, whose progressive spirit and determination have been manifested in all that he has undertaken, and who has gained a position among the most successful orchardists of the Oswald district of Sutter County. Since 1909 he has resided on his home place of twenty acres, which he has brought to a high state of profitable cultivation. His birth occurred at Balman Lake, in Smaland, Sweden, March 22, 1857; and he was the second of eight children born to John P. and Johanna (Soderlund) Carlson, both natives of Sweden. At the age of thirteen, Carl P. Carlson accompanied his parents to America. Ten months were spent in Chicago, and the family came to California, locating at Marysville in March, 1871. John P. Carlson was a farmer, blacksmith, and cabinet-maker, and was employed with his brother-in-law, John Soderlund, in Sutter County, where they ran a blacksmith shop and a farm. In 1875, John P. Carlson bought 320 acres southeast of Sutter Station, which he successfully farmed to wheat and barley. The mother passed away on December 25, 1899, and the father on February 26, 1912.

Carl P. Carlson followed farming with his father until 1887, when he began grain-farming for himself at Tudor, at which he continued for five years. Then he ran the Starr ranch for fifteen years; and at the end of that period he purchased his present ranch of twenty acres, in 1908. This place he improved with residence and suitable farm buildings, and set out an orchard of cling peaches, now in full bearing. During a part of this time, he had the care of the C. M. Peterson peach orchard; and in that orchard he found a seedling that bore a fine fruit, a relatively new variety and different from the Phillips. His cousin, J. S. Johnson, was a nurseryman; and Mr. Carlson turned it over to him to propagate, and it was named the Johnson Cling Peach.

On September 24,1897, in Tudor, Mr. Carlson was married to Miss Hilda G. Solomonson, a native of Sweden, and a daughter of John and Eva (Anderstad) Solomonson, farmer folk in Smaland. John Solomonson has passed away, but the mother is still living in Sweden, in her eighty-third year. Mrs. Carlson made a visit to her old home in Sweden in 1921, and spent six months very enjoyably. Mr. and Mrs. Carlson adopted a little girl of five years, Sadie Trafton, who is now the wife of Fred Johnson, a prosperous orchardist at Tudor. Mr. and Mrs. Carlson are active members of the Barry Methodist Episcopal Church, of which Mr. Carlson is a steward, and for which he deeded the site where the church building was erected. Mrs. Carlson is a past president of the Ladies’ Aid Society of the church. Mr. Carlson at one time served as levee director for Sutter County. In politics he is a Republican.

History of Yuba and Sutter Counties, Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, 1924

p 819

CLARENCE WILMOT JENKINS

Clarence Wilmot Jenkins is a pioneer irrigation-orchardist of Live Oak, Sutter County. His ranch of fifty acres of orchard is situated three miles southeast of Live Oak, between the State highway and Feather River and one mile north of Lomo. The ranch-house is a large stucco bungalow with a magnificent live oak at each side of the front entrance to the grounds. One of these grand old oaks is the largest in all the country about, and is probably 150 years old. The ranch produces cling peaches, prunes, raisins, dried peaches, apricots and English walnuts. All these products are marketed through the various cooperative associations of which Mr. Jenkins is a member.

While he was yet a child, Mr. Jenkins’ parents moved from their home in Chemung County, N.Y., to the frontier of central Kansas soon after the retreat of the Indians and buffalo, and there he grew up on a farm, taught school, attended the State Agricultural School at Manhattan, and later the University of New Mexico. He entered the Indian Service of the Department of the Interior as expert farmer, and was two years at the Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico and five years at the Fort Mojave Indian School in Arizona. For two years of this time he did special work for the Reclamation Service of the Geological Survey in measuring the flow of the Colorado River at that point.

At the Fort Mojave school Mr. Jenkins met Miss Minnie Galt Braithwaite; and in 1906 they were married, left the Indian Service, and settled in Richmond, Cal. For four years Mr. Jenkins was successively editor of the Richmond Daily Record, superintendent of the Contra Costa County Hospital at Martinez, and assistant postmaster at Richmond. He decided to return to ranching and, after considerable investigation of different sections of the State, purchased his home in Sutter County.

Both Mr. Jenkins and his wife are of old American stock. The ancestors of each, paternal and maternal, were Revolutionary patriots, Mr. Jenkins’ being Puritan and Mrs. Jenkins’ Cavalier. One, Lieutenant John Jenkins, served on the staff of General Washington at the siege of Yorktown and the surrender of Cornwallis; and another, William Henry Braithwaite, was first colonial Governor of Maryland. Mr. Jenkins’ father was in the Federal army during the Civil War, and Mrs. Jenkins’ father was a lieutenant in Pickett’s Division of the Confederate army.

Mrs. Jenkins was born in Williamsburg, Va. A petition of hers to the board of trustees of the College of William and Mary, to be allowed to attend the lectures at the college, was refused, although ably supported by the president, Lyon G. Tyler, and Prof. Hugh Bird. The college is now coeducational. Miss Braithwaite was teaching in Virginia when she was interested in work among the Indians by a missionary friend. Entering the Indian Service as a teacher, she was sent to the Navajo Indian School and later to the Fort Mojave Indian School, where she met Mr. Jenkins. Since her marriage she has been active in club work in Richmond, donating space in the newspaper office for the free library started by the Woman’s Club, and acting as librarian. In Martinez she was president of the local Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and State superintendent of the anti-narcotic work of that organization.

Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins are members of the Episcopal Church, which they attend with their three children, Bruce Talman, Raymond Braithwaite, and Dorothy Ballard.