Tulare County
Biographies
JASPER N. BERGEN
April 19, 1862, Jasper N. Bergen was born in Minnesota. He is now a prosperous fruit grower, two miles and a half southeast of Lindsay, Tulare county, Cal. His parents, natives of Indiana, have passed away. His sister was the first of the family to come to California. When he was twenty-six years old, in 1888, Mr. Bergen came here to visit her, and during a seven months' stay made trips of observation to different parts of the state. He went back to his old home and remained there seven years, then came again to California and during the succeeding seven years was farming five miles north of Woodville. It was not until 1902 that he occupied his present ranch of twenty acres. Small farms are rapidly becoming a feature of Tulare county; many families are not only making a good living, but are each year banking money from returns of twenty-acre orchard, vineyard or alfalfa field. Such farmers are always located close to town and they have daily mails and telephone service that rob rural life of its isolation and make social conditions agreeable. The home built up by Mr. Bergen is one of the pleasantest in its vicinity. For the vacant land he paid $65 an acre, and planting seven acres of figs, he produced a good crop, packed it himself and sold it in the local market at fifteen cents a pound. Four years later he planted five acres of orange trees and two years ago he planted five acres more. His place is almost entirely devoted to figs and oranges.
In 1901 Mr. Bergen married Miss Sarah Etta Dunham, a native of Indiana and a daughter of parents born in that state. Socially he affiliates with the Lindsay organization of the order of Fraternal Aid, of which he was a charter member. While he is not an active politician, he takes an intelligent interest in all economic questions and is helpful to the uplift of the community in a public-spirited way. As a fruit grower he is progressive and resourceful and he is fast coming to the front as one of the leaders in that industry in his part of the county. With figs he has been' remarkably successful, and in 1911 he packed about forty-five hundred pounds gathered from four hundred and eight trees.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
Pp 858
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
WILLIAM SWAN
A son of Frederick and Sarah (Butler) Swan, William Swan was born in Kent, England, November 7, 1849, and was two years and a half old when he was brought to the United States by his mother, his father having preceded him in 1850. The family lived in Indiana until 1858, then settled in Decatur county, Iowa, where Frederick Swan bought one hundred and sixty acres of government land at $1.25 an acre, which he improved and on which he lived out his days, dying in 1893, aged eighty-four years. Mrs. Swan died in 1900.
In Iowa, William Swan learned farming and worked at it until 1875, when he came to Tulare county. He went up into the mountains in the neighborhood of Sequoia lake and worked in the timbers and later tended sheep for a while in Kings River at Reedley. Then he came to the valley. Those were pioneer days in a new, wild country, and he had often to cope with bears foraging for food and saw at different times as many as a thousand antelope. His first holding in the valley was two hundred and forty acres of railroad land. Later he bought six hundred and forty acres of other land and acquired a half interest in oak timber land in the mountains. He sold forty acres of land in small tracts, by judicious subdivision. He has now ten acres of fruit bearing land. Around his house are a number of large trees and he owns the biggest orange tree in Tulare county.
The woman who became Mr. Swan's wife was Mary Smith, a native of Kansas, who had taken up her residence in California. Their children who are living are: Bertha J.; Wesley W.; Gertrude; and Wilma E., at home. Bertha J. married J. W. Smith, a native son of California. The Swan family is a family of Democrats and Mr. Swan has served his fellow townsmen as school trustee, in which office his son-in-law, J. W. Smith, is serving at this time. Mr. Swan and Mr. Smith are enterprising and public spirited, ready at all times to do their utmost for the general good.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
Pp 859
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler