Tulare County
Biographies
CHARLES E. BIGHAM
For nearly twenty years Charles E. Bigham, superintendent of the grammar schools department of the Porterville city schools, has been a member of the county board of education in Tulare county, now the senior member of that body, and the impress of his vigorous personality is thus indelibly fixed upon its excellent school system. No less firmly fixed is the influence of his intelligent efforts in this behalf, that influence every having been exerted in the extension of the county’s educational facilities, so that the future historian in making up a roster of those who have done much for the social and cultural development of the county certainly will find the name of Charles E. Bigham very near the top of that illustrious roll.
Charles E. Bigham is a native son of Tulare county and his interests ever have centered here. He was born on a farm in the Woodville neighborhood, July 31, 1880, and is a son of J. C. and Elizabeth Jane (Wesse) Bigham, the latter of whom is still living, now making her home at Pasadena. She came to California in 1873 to make her home with an uncle, who was one of the early settlers in the Woodville settlement. The late J. C. Bigham, who in his generation was one of the useful and influential factors in the development of the Woodville section of Tulare county, came to California in 1857, crossing the plains by ox team, and his first location was at San Diego. Later he went to San Francisco and from there went to Nevada, where he engaged in gold mining, but California was his first choice and he not long afterward returned to this state and in 1874, following his marriage, established his home on a farm in the vicinity of Woodville, Tulare county, where he developed a good property and where he spent the remained of his life, his death occurring there in 1903, and at his passing he left a good memory.
Reared on the home farm near Woodville, Charles E. Bigham received his initial schooling in that village and early became a school teacher, his first labors in this exacting profession having been performed in the Salem district. Later he attended school in Los Angeles and supplemented this by a course in the normal school at San Diego, from which institution he was graduated in 1903. Subsequently he was graduated from the University of California. For two years Mr. Bigham was employed as a teacher in the Harmony school district and then was made principal of the Orosi schools, a position he occupied for three years. In 1909 he was made principal of the schools of Porterville and three years later, in 1912, was promoted to the position of superintendent of the grammar schools of that city, a position of responsibility he ever since has occupied and in the performance of its duties he has done much to advance the general interests of the schools. At that time Mr. Bigham had under his jurisdiction an aggregate of four hundred and sixty-five pupils in the grammar schools of Porterville, with one eight-room building and two two-room buildings. Today the admirable school plant of the city has seven up-to-date school buildings and the enrollment in the grammar grades aggregates fifteen hundred. As noted above, Mr. Bigham has been for nearly twenty years a member of the county board of education, for ten years and more the president of that body, and during that long period of useful public service has proved an invaluable personal factor in the extension of the interests of the county’s schools. He is a veteran member of the California State Teachers Association and in the deliberations and activities of that body has for years taken an active and helpful interest.
Mr. Bigham married Miss Violet G. Milligan, who has been a valuable helpmate to him in the labors of his profession. She was born in the state of Nebraska but was reared in California. Mr. and Mrs. Bigham are members of the local chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star and he is the present worthy patron of that organization. He is a member of the local Rotary Club, is a Mason and is also affiliated with the Knights of Pythias and with the Woodmen of the World. He and Mrs. Bigham are democrats and take a proper interest in the general civic affairs of the community.
History of Tulare County and Kings County, California – Kathleen Edwards Small & J. Larry Smith, Vol. I, Chicago, The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1926, Page 499
Transcribed by Jeannie Miyama