Sutter County
Biographies
J. D. FIPPINS
It is probable that few of the orchardists of Northern California have gained a more substantial success than that which has rewarded the judicious industry of J. D. Fippins, familiarly known as “Doc” Fippins, an appellation he acquired at the age of fourteen years. He is the owner and proprietor of three ranches, all highly developed cling-peach orchards, the trees being twenty, six, and two years old; and thirty acres of his property are within the city limits of Yuba City. Here he located twenty years ago. His birth occurred at Martinsville, Ind., on January 13, 1860, when he became the third of ten children of William Wheeler and Ella Melvina (Duckworth) Fippins. William W. Fippins was born in West Virginia in 1833, and there learned the cabinet-maker’s trade. At the age of fourteen, he accompanied his parents to Indiana, where he was later married; and in 1875 he came to California with his family. He became a prominent well-to-do fruit- and stock-raiser in Placer and Sutter Counties, and owned a ranch at Penryn, where he served as justice of the peace for thirty years, his kindness and justice gaining for him a reputation as a most humane judge. He fitted up a hobo’s retreat in a grove of large oak trees near his office, where he kept newspapers, magazines, and other reading matter for the benefit of the wanderers found walking the railroad tracks. His Sutter County ranch consisted of 219 acres five miles to the south of Nicolaus on the Feather River. Mr. Fippins passed away at Penryn on February 16, 1912; and his wife passed away at the Penryn home in 1903, aged sixty-six years. He was one of the oldest, most honored members of the Masonic order.
Doc Fippins attended school in the Worthington district until he was fifteen years old, when he accompanied his parents to California and here attended school at Penryn. He also assisted his father in the development of the home ranch there, until he purchased his own property in Sutter County, in 1903, where he has since resided and met with success. He uses the most improved modern methods of fruit-raising, and recently installed a complete irrigating system, in which four motors drive the deep-well pumps supplying water to his orchards. In 1903 Mr. Fippins paid $180 an acre for the land now included in his home ranch; and in February, 1919, he purchased thirty-one acres just across the road from his present place, which he is developing into a splendid property. In 1923, also, he purchased ten acres of young peach orchard, for which he paid $1500 an acre.
The marriage of Mr. Fippins took place at Penryn on November 20, 1893, uniting him with Miss Lillie Mae Kaiser, a daughter of John R. and Sena M. (Hubert) Kaiser, natives respectively of Ohio and St. Louis, Mo. Her father came across the great plains with his parents to Auburn in an ox-team train, in the early gold days, while her mother came across the continent to Placer County with her parents in one of the early emigrant trains; and here they became successful fruit-growers. Lillie had attended the Placer County public schools, and she was also a student at the Bainbridge College at Sacramento. Two sons were born to Mr. and Mrs. Fippins: Harold, who is associated with his father in the fruit trade, and who married Miss Marie Ochiltree, a native of Pennington, Sutter County; and Leonard, who died at Yuba City in 1919 at the age of sixteen years. Mr. Fippins is a progressive and enterprising man, and is very optimistic, seeing great possibilities for this favored region with its wonderful soil and climate. He is a Democrat in politics, but favors a liberal policy. Mrs. Fippins is a cultured and refined woman with tastes for the beautiful; and she presides gracefully over their home. Well and favorably known, she is active in civic and social circles, being a member of the Bogue Wednesday Club, the Marysville Art Club, and the Yuba City Women’s Club. Kind-hearted and liberal, Mr. and Mrs. Fippins have a host of friends.
History of Yuba and Sutter Counties, Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, 1924
p. 507