Tulare County
Biographies
ALEXANDER M. BEST
In the state of Iowa Alexander M. Best, of Tulare county, Cal., was born April 23, 1867. He passed his boyhood and youth on a farm there and was educated in a public school near by. In April, 1888, when he was about twenty-one years old, he arrived in California and located on a ranch in Poway valley, twenty miles northeast of San Diego, where his father took up government land. For seven years he lived and farmed in San Diego county, then located in Orange county and lived at Santa Ana, and he also bought land at Newport. He farmed in that vicinity five years, on the San Joaquin three years, and at La Habra one year, and in October, 1901, came to Tulare county and bought the Jones ranch of one hundred and twenty acres, twelve miles east and two miles south of Tulare. After raising grain there four years, he sold the property and bought eighty acres a mile and a half west of town, a homestead of forty acres with forty acres adjoining it at one corner, on which he put all improvements, including house, outbuildings, fences and roads. Until February, 1911, he conducted a dairy, but he then sold his cows, retaining his stock and horses, for the excellence of which his place is well known. He also gives attention to hogs and poultry. Thirty-five acres of his land is in alfalfa.
December 3, 1894, Mr. Best married Susan Columbia Bardsley of Poway valley, Cal., and they have a son named Edwin Bardsley Best. Fraternally Mr. Best is identified with the Woodmen of the World lodge of Tulare. Politically he has well defined ideas about all public questions and does his full duty as a citizen, but he has no liking for professional politics and has never sought any elective or appointive office. He has at heart the welfare of the community and is generous in his encouragement of movements for the general good.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 621
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler
J. L. TAYLOR
The prosperous farmer and fruit grower of Three Rivers, Tulare county, Cal., whose career it is intended here briefly to refer to, is a native of Fallbrook, Tenn., born in 1846. In 1866, when he was twenty years old, he came to California and settled near Three Rivers and Lemon Cove and, having faith in the future of the state, he resolved to grow up with it, deserving his share in its prosperity.
It was at ranch work for others that J. L. Taylor was employed until 1893. He became known as a hard and steady worker and as a man who saved his money, and in the year mentioned he was able to buy one hundred and sixty-five acres of land, on which he has been successful with fruit and grain. It was in the year 1893, the year in which he started for himself, that he married Miss Louise Elizabeth Myrten, a .native daughter of California, who in 1904 bore him a son, Edward, who is engaged with his father in conducting the ranch and developing the fruit and nursery business. Mr. Taylor has always been too busy to take much practical part in political work, but as a citizen he has performed his duties with the ballot, voting always for such men and measures as in his opinion promised most and best for the general good. He has never petitioned for nor accepted public office. Fraternally he affiliates with the Lemon Cove organization of Woodmen of the World. His father is living, retired from the activities that once made him a factor in the uplift and advancement of the community.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 622
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler