Tulare County
Biographies
L. W. BARDSLEY
This native of Missouri was brought to California by his parents when he was seven years old, when the family of Lafayette and Mary Bardsley, after a short stop in Sonoma county and another in San Diego, located in Poway valley. There young Bardsley grew to manhood and obtained an education in the public schools. He labored there principally at farming until he was twenty-five years old, when he rented a ranch near Santa Ana, Orange county, which he developed and operated with profit in connection with several pieces of land which he had rented, raising alfalfa and conducting a dairy until December, 1904, when he came to the neighborhood of Tulare. He bought eighty acres of the E. DeWitt ranch, on which he put all improvements including a residence, farm buildings and fences and made of it a fine dairy on which he keeps about twenty-five cows and raises and handles calves and horses for the market, incidentally keeping about twenty hogs; he is well known for his fine Holstein cattle. Sixty acres of his land is in alfalfa and he has a two-acre peach orchard, and the remainder is devoted to his stock. He was one of the organizers and is now one of the directors of the Dairymen's Cooperative Creamery company of Tulare and is a stockholder in the Tulare Rochdale association. Besides having achieved success as farmer and dairyman, considerable notice is given to his fine Percheron horses, which he is breeding more and more extensively each year.
In 1895 Mr. Bardsley married Miss Maude E. Hartzell, a native of Iowa, daughter of the late Capt. T. B. Hartzell of San Diego, and who had become a resident in the Poway valley. They have a daughter, Zoe L. Bardsley. Fraternally Mr. Bardsley associates with the Red Men, the Woodmen of the World, the Eagles, and with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in which last order he holds membership in lodge and encampment and with the Rebekahs. As a citizen he is helpfully public-spirited.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 662
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
WILLIAM B. WEST
The late William B. West, of Tulare county, Cal., was born in Henry county, Mo., in September, 1837, and died at his home in Porterville, October 13, 1903. He was reared in his native state and remained there until 1875, devoting himself to farming. His parents were natives of Kentucky, representatives of that old Southern stock that has done so much honor to American citizenship in successive generations. His wife, Ellen M. Gordon, also of Kentucky ancestry, was born in November, 1841, in Johnson county, Mo., a daughter of Dr. Presley and Margaret (Wingfield) Gordon, and their union dated from March, 1857. She bore him five children, of whom only one is living. Rowena married William Moore and died in Tulare county; Thomas G. died at Visalia; William P. died in Tulare county as the result of a railroad accident, and Eunice also passed away in Tulare county. Nancy E. married Elias McDarment and is living near the Indian agency in Tulare county.
Mr. West and family settled near Porterville in 1875 and remained here up to the time of his death. He owned forty acres of land on Deer Creek, remained there six years, then moved to Portervile, which remained their home until he located on eighty acres in the Poplar district. He also invested in business and residence property in town. Mrs. West managed the ranch after her husband's death until September, 1912, when she sold out and moved to Porterville. When she and her husband came to California, in 1875, the country round about Porterville was very thinly settled and improvements in that part of the county were very few. Together they watched and assisted in the wonderful development that transformed Central California from raw territory to a vast garden of almost incalculable riches. She has seen the price of land in her vicinity advance from $20 an acre to $200 an acre and she owns town property at Porterville worth now more than $10,000, for which her husband paid $450 in the latter part of the '80s. Mr. West was highly respected by the many who came to know him and won an enviable reputation as a man of public spirit who was ready at any time to do anything within his ability for the uplift and development of his community. He was road overseer and helped build the roads in his locality. His widow is maintaining his enlightened and liberal policies.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 662-663
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler