Tulare County
Biographies
JAMES ALLEN BACON
In St. Louis county, Mo., James Allen Bacon was born November 19, 1838, the eldest of the eight children of William Bacon, six of whom survive. The father was born in Kentucky in January, 1800, a son of Nathaniel Bacon, who located in St. Louis county, Mo., after the war of 1812. There William lived until 1849, when he started with his family to Texas. In Crawford county, Ark., they were detained by illness and there he bought a farm on which he lived until 1859, when he set out for California with his wife, four daughters and three sons. They came by El Paso and stopped for a while at Tucson, Ariz. Later they completed the journey to California by way of Yuma to Los Angeles and the Tejon Pass to Tulare county. They crossed the Colorado river at Ft. Fillmore and soon met Indians who ran off their cattle; but followed two of them who had the cattle in charge and rescued the animals. Ten miles northeast of Visalia on the Kaweah, Mr. Bacon bought a farm, and in 1868 he took up one hundred and sixty acres, now the site of Orosi, where he was a pioneer settler. James A. Bacon hauled lumber from the mountains and with help of hired men built the first house there, which is yet standing. The family afterward removed to Visalia, where the father died, aged eighty-one years. The mother, Mrs. Permelia Bacon, a native of St. Louis county, Mo., died in Fresno county in her seventy-ninth year. The sons of the family are James Allen; Thomas, of Fresno; Charles F., of Hollister; and William, of Phoenix, Ariz. The daughters are Missouri A. Kirkland, of Arizona ; Elizabeth Campbell, of Sultana ; Mary Smoot, of Cochran; and Martha Morris, of Orroyo Grande.
When he was ten years old James Allen Bacon accompanied his parents to Arkansas, where he was educated in a log school house. He drove a team to Tucson, Ariz., and remained there a year, driving a stage for Butterfield over a route east from Tucson some eighty miles, changing horses every ten hours at stations twenty miles apart. While thus employed he was twice attacked by Indians, but was saved by his swift horses. One of the red-skinned parties was in war paint. At another time his presence of mind enabled him to save his own life and that of his passengers as well. When he made his last trip as stage driver, Indians formed in line across the road and demanded whisky and tobacco. The passengers handed out their bottles, and while the Indians were drinking Mr. Bacon put whip to the horses and soon had the whole party out of danger.
Mr. Bacon's observations and experience would be interesting could they be given in full. He told of having seen a monument on the east border of Tulare county which was erected by General Scott in the early '50s. He was acquainted with the Dalton brothers, with Sontag and Evans and with James McKinney, and saw James McCreary hanged at Visalia. He said the condemned man had said he would never die with his boots on and pulled them off before going to the gallows. Mr. Bacon built a dwelling in the Orosi district, between Centerville and Visalia. He rode back and forth in all directions over this country before there was any fruit or grain raised here. He homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres of land east of Visalia and bought some railroad land. After he had gone into the sheep business, he met a man from Visalia to whom he traded for a horse a claim to one hundred and sixty acres of land where Orosi now stands, which is worth now $500 an acre. In the period 1860 to 1870 he saw thousands of antelope and wild horses and many Indians, and on Fish slough and other swamps saw many elk. Bear were plentiful on the plains and many of them were killed for meat. Mr. Bacon himself killed fifty bears and was in many a desperate bear fight.
The Bacon family came on to California in 1859 and for a time James was employed by his uncle, James Fielding Bacon, in the stock business. In that same year he went to the mines at Princeton, in Mariposa county. After having been employed five years there, at Marysville and elsewhere, he went to Orosi and built his father's house. Later he again helped his uncle for many years in hog and stock-raising. He also found lucrative employment in driving stock to the southern mines. After the organization of the California Raisin Growers' Association he was active in its development.
On October 17, 1880, in Tulare county, Mr. Bacon married Sarah Edmiston, a native of Calaveras county, and a daughter of N. B. Edmiston. The family home was at Orosi after January, 1889. Mr. Bacon died July 3, 1912, in Fresno. His wife passed away, in her forty-seventh year, March 17, 1901. She was a member of the Methodist Episcopal church. Following are the names of five children who survive : Alice Maud, married William Mackersie, of Dinuba, and has two sons, Gerald Edward and William Kenneth; Thomas Allen, of Dinuba, married Cora Tracy and has one son, James Emerson; Edith Theodate married R. J. Reed and has one son, John Allen; Jessie Ethel is the wife of Jesse Furtney; and Elsie Viola. In his political affiliations Mr. Bacon was a Democrat, and was a member of the county central committee and was also elected and served two terms as a school trustee. As a man of public spirit lie always took a helpful interest in the community.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
Pp 830-832
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
GEORGE EDWARD ALLEN
Near Lena, in Stephenson county, Ill., George Edward Allen was born January 27, 1850, a son of James Allen, who was born in Canada and died in Illinois in 1855. The widow remarried two years later and died in Illinois also. For a short time George E. Allen attended the common school and when about twelve years old became self-supporting. In 1869 he went to Knox county, Ill., and there followed coal mining for five years, at that time moving to Iowa and farming in Polk and Jasper counties. From there he went to Turner county, S. Dak., in 1883, and in July, that year, the crops were destroyed by a hail storm. After four years in Dakota, some of which were not as strenuous as the first one, Mr. Allen came to Tulare county, Cal., settling on White river, and for eighteen years harvested crops of wheat that ranged from one-half a sack to six sacks an acre and sold at sixty-eight cents to $1.47 a hundred pounds. He located on his present homestead in 1906, when he bought forty acres of unimproved land, four acres of which are now in Marshall strawberries and two acres in orange nursery trees of one season's growth. His strawberry plants are bearing fairly well and in a recent season he sold eleven thousand baskets at an average price of seven cents a basket. His Muscat grapes are just beginning to bear. He bas fourteen acres of them, intends soon to set eleven acres to orange trees, and now has eight acres in peach trees just bearing.
Mr. Allen married in 1870 Margaret Morgan, in Knox county, Ill., and has two children living, Mabel B. and William M. One daughter, Jennie, died in childhood in Dakota. Mabel B. married Henry Ward, of Tulare county, and they have a son named Allen Ward. In political affiliations Mr. Allen is Republican, thoroughly devoted to the principles of his party, and as a citizen he is public-spirited to a degree that insures his usefulness to the community.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
Pp 832-833
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler