Tulare County
Biographies
ELMER A. BATCHELDER
It was in Plainfield, Vt., that Elmer A. Batchelder, a prominent fruit grower, living two and one-half miles east of Lindsay, Tulare county, Cal., was born in the year 1866. He was brought up and educated in his native place, and when he was seventeen years old came to California and was for a year and a half a resident in Nevada county. Then for a year he was in the Sacramento valley, whence he went into Humboldt county, where he passed the succeeding twelve months. During this time he had been employed at ranch work and had acquired an intimate knowledge of California farming in the best of all schools—the school of experience.
In 1887 Mr. Batchelder came to Tulare county and for a time worked rented land. In 1892 he homesteaded a quarter section in the district known as Round valley and made improvements on it—and devoted it to wheat growing till 1906, when he set out twenty acres of orange trees and fifteen acres of vines, including five acres of Valencia oranges. His orchard is so well advanced that the crop for 1912 from the twenty acres promises to reach the 1,000 box mark. By later purchase he has added to his land holdings until he now has one hundred and forty acres.
The parents of Mr. Batchelder, natives of Vermont, both have passed away. In 1893 he married Catharine Crook, a native daughter of California, and she has borne him two children: Harold, now eighteen years old, and Eunice E., now in her fourteenth year. They are attending school at Lindsay. Mrs. Batchelder's parents were early settlers in Tulare county. Mr. Batchelder has never aspired to public office, but because he was known to be a good roads man of advanced ideas he was three years ago given the oversight of the roads in his district, and so well has he discharged his trust that he is likely to be kept at the same task year after year. Public spirited in a generous degree, he is ever ready to respond to demands upon him for the good of the community. Fraternally he affiliates with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights of Pythias.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 617-618
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
ALBERT A. HALL
There are probably few men known more widely or more affectionately in Tulare county than Albert A. ("Dad") Hall, of Tulare. A native of Watertown, N. Y., he was born July 6, 1846. While he was yet quite young, his family moved to Baraboo, Wis., where he was brought up and educated so far as he could be before he went away to the war between the North and the South. That was in 1863, when he was but seventeen. He enlisted in Company. F, Third Wisconsin Cavalry, which regiment was under command of Colonel Barstow, and saw arduous service, principally in guerilla warfare in Missouri and Arkansas, till he was mustered out at Leavenworth, Kans., June 27, 1865. Returning to Wisconsin, he was interested in hop raising there two years, then went to Nebraska and took up some government land. The grasshoppers were so numerous, however, that after five years filled with attempts to save from them enough for his absolute personal needs, to say nothing of improving a farm, he gladly turned his face toward California. He arrived in February, 1877, and bought a hundred and sixty acres of land near Forestville, Sonoma county, which he cleared of trees and planted to a vineyard which yielded him grapes for seven years. In 1888 he came to Tulare county and, settling on forty acres north of Tulare city, engaged in the dairy business and sold milk in Tulare fifteen years. Two years during that period he fed cattle in the mountains. In 1904 he established at Tulare City an express and transfer business, which, under the half jocular title of Dad's Transfer Company, has come to be one of the popular institutions of the town. In this well established enterprise his son, Rozelle E. Hall, is his partner.
Naturally, Mr. Hall is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic. Thus he keeps alive memories of the days of the Civil war in which he was a faithful, if a very young, soldier. He is a Royal Arch Mason, a member also of Tulare Lodge No. 269, Free and Accepted Masons. With Forestville Lodge No. 320, Independent Order of Odd Fellows he affiliates also. He married Miss Adilla Plummer, a native of Wisconsin, in 1867, and they have children, Rozelle E., Carrie (wife of J. E. Robidoux, Eda (Mrs. F. A. Thomas, of Tulare), Beryl and Edna.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 618-619
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler