Tulare County
Biographies
BAKER, CHAUNCEY M.
It was in Mill Creek valley that Chauncey M. Baker, one of the well-to-do farmers in the vicinity of Dunlap, was born July 3, 1877, and there he has spent his life to the present time. He attended the Mill Creek school and was initiated into the mysteries of farming under his father’s instruction.
At San Rafael in 1905, Mr. Baker married Olive Hargrave, a native of Mendocino county, whose father, Charles M. Hargrave, crossed the plains in the pioneer days and was an early settler on Cache creek, Yolo county, whence he moved to Mendocino county. For several years prior to her marriage, Mrs. Baker taught school in Mendocino and Fresno counties.
Mr. Baker homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres of land and January 10, 1908, received his patent from the government. That same year he bought four hundred and eighty acres, known as the old Turner place; in 1910 he added two hundred and forty acres known as the Wilson place and one hundred and sixty acres of railroad land, and he is now the owner of one thousand and forty acres. He cultivates two hundred and fifty acres, and on fifty-five acres he raised one hundred and eighty tons of hay in 1910, and from some of his valley land he cleared $10 an acre in 1909. He has about three thousand cords of marketable wood on his place. He has given some attention to breeding fine stock and has on hand an average of forty to fifty head. He has lived here long enough to have witnessed the development of the district from a mountain country to productive ranches and remembers when there were but half a dozen houses between the hills and Visalia, a section now dotted with modern California farms. As a citizen he is generously public spirited. Politically he is a Republican and fraternally he affiliates with the Modern Woodmen of America.
SOURCE: History of
Tulare and Kings Counties,
California
with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles,
Calif.,
Historic Record Company, 1913
Pp 496
Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn
KAEHLER, MRS. IDA MARGARET
The highly esteemed woman whose name is above lives at No. 107 Hockett street, Porterville, Tulare county, Cal., and is a representative of an old German family. Ferdinand Rodler, her father, a native of the Fatherland, was born May 24, 1823, married in 1857 and came to the United States and devoted himself to the blacksmith trade. He was a fine mechanic, and being also a good business man, he prospered. He died at his home in Davenport, Iowa, March 10, 1904, and his widow, formerly Johanna Louisa Paschke, is living there at the age of eighty-five years, having been born in March, 1828. Their daughter, Ida Margaret, was born in Davenport June 20, 1860, and when she became of school age entered the public schools of that city, in which she was a pupil until she was thirteen years old, when she was sent to Berlin, Germany, to finish her education. Returning to Iowa when she was sixteen years old, in 1878 she married N. M. Kaehler, and they had three children. Walter, the eldest, died young. Alfred, the second son, is living at Hobart, Ind., with his wife and two children. Ferdinand is a machinist at Porterville.
In 1884 Mr. and Mrs. Kaehler came to California and settled on White river, in Tulare county, where she lived six years. In 1890 she moved to Plano and in 1902 from Plano to Porterville, which at that time was not a very promising village, having no railway facilities and few stores, its scanty population trading for the most part at Visalia. She now has a valuable and very attractive property, having built the house she occupies, and is concentrating her holdings in Porterville and vicinity, having sold her real estate at Plano. What she owns she has earned herself, owning unimproved property and an interest in the gas plant. Brought up in the Christian faith of her fathers, Mrs. Kaehler is devoutly religious, with faith in God and in her fellow men. She is firm in the belief that all people may become much better if they will learn the right and try to do it.
SOURCE: History of
Tulare and Kings Counties,
California
with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles,
Calif.,
Historic Record Company, 1913
Pp 496, 497
Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn