Tulare County
Biographies
HART, CHARLES W.
A native Californian, Charles W. Hart, farmer, stock-raiser and dairyman, three miles southeast of Farmersville, Tulare county, was born at Gilroy, Santa Clara county, June 30, 1860. His father Charles C. Hart, born in Litchfield county, Conn., in 1826, represented old New England families. He married in his native state and came to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama about 1857. His brother John had come by way of Cape Horn in 1849 and had settled at Gilroy as a dairyman, and later he moved to Tulare county and thence to Kings county, dying at Hanford. Charles C. joined his brother in Gilroy and was a dairyman there until 1861, when he bought a farm of one hundred and twenty acres three miles south of Visalia and went into ranching and stock-raising. In 1865 he pre-empted one hundred and sixty acres, now the homestead of his widow, which he improved and put under cultivation. Later, with Charles W. Hart, his son, he bought six hundred and forty acres half a mile from his home and eighty acres of land under timber. They farmed together until he died, July 18, 1891. He married Miss Helen Payne, a native of New York, who survives him, and they had five children: Fred Miles, of Kings county, Cal., Charles Weston; John H., a farmer near the Hart homestead; Carrie Ellen, wife of H. T. Anderson, and Kittie A., who married J. L. Tuohy, and died in 1904. The mother of these children is a consistent member of the Baptist church. The father was a man of strong principles, an advocate of progress and reform and a stanch Republican who took an active interest in all movements for the benefit of his community or his country.
Only six months of his life had been passed when Charles Weston Hart was brought from Santa Clara county to Tulare county. He was educated in the public schools in the district and received valuable early training from his father. At fourteen he was an active farmer on his father’s ranch, operating with remarkable ability and judgment. At twenty-one he was made his father’s partner in the business of grain production and hog raising. After his father’s death, Mr. Hart bought the farm outfit and stock and continued the enterprise renting from time to time one thousand to twenty-five hundred acres of land for the purposes of his business, and he now owns six thousand acres. He has a herd of six hundred cattle of the Durham and the Aberdeen Polled Angus breeds, five hundred Poland-China hogs, one hundred and fifty horses and mules and a dairy of ninety cows.
The woman who became the wife of Mr. Hart was Miss Lila Conlee, who was born in Morro, San Luis Obispo county, Cal., a daughter of Frank Conlee, who was a native of Illinois and a settler in California in 1870. Mr. and Mrs. Hart became parents of children as follows: Weston C., Helen, Hazel Irene, Ethel C., Forest F. and Verna. Her father became a lumber manufacturer at Creston and in Tulare county, and he is now farming and growing fruit at Springville. Ella Robinson, who became his wife and the mother of Mrs. Hart, was born in Canada. Mrs. Hart is the third in their family of nine children, all of whom were early instructed in the faith of the Methodist Episcopal church, of which both Mr. and Mrs. Hart are also members. In his political convictions Mr. Hart is both liberal and conservative, preferring to reserve the right always to cast his ballot for the man who he regards the best fitted for a specific office.
SOURCE: History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913 Pp 458, 461
Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn
BALLOU, GEORGE A.
It is said ”the prophet is not without honor except in his own country.” The pioneer is a prophet who is honored in his own country as nowhere else; that is, after his prophecies have come true. His faith in the country where he elects to establish his home is a prophecy, and the development of the community to numbers and to wealth is the fulfillment of his prophecy. Everywhere the pioneer is respected, and thoughtful men and women grieve because, like veterans of the Civil war, our pioneers are passing away. Soon they will be seen no more. But the good they have done will live after them. The making of the Tulare county of today came largely through the long-distance foresight and the humble trust and work of its pioneers. All such who could be reached have been given place in these pages. Indirectly many readers of this owe much to George A. Ballou, who has earned the rest from activity and from material cares which follows honest and patriotic endeavor.
The Ballous of America are of French extraction. Bravely have they borne their part in the successive wars through which we have come to our national greatness. Many of the early Ballous were weavers, and it was but natural that in the infancy of our cotton industry they became connected with it in one way or another. Ballou’s cottons, manufactured at Woonsocket, R. I., by Oliver Ballou, became known round the world. Harvey Ballou, Oliver’s son, of Rhode Island birth and rearing, was a farmer and a bricklayer and plasterer. He married Ruth Gould, born at Cape Cod, Mass., and they both died in Rhode Island, he in 1854. Of their three sons and three daughters, George A. was next to the last born. September 26, 1832, was the time of his birth, and Cumberland, R. I., was the place. He gained a common school and academic education and received full instruction from his father in the secrets of the plasterer and bricklayer.
In 1850 Mr. Ballou came to California, with other gold seekers, by way of Panama, and stopped eighteen months at San Diego, whence he went to Los Angeles. His mining was more remunerative than was that of others whom he remembers, and after a stay of eight months in Los Angeles, a shorter one at San Francisco and a period of working at his trade in Stockton, he resumed it for a time in Mariposa county. From there he went, eventually, back to Los Angeles, and in 1860 he became a pioneer at Visalia. Here, after working as a plasterer and bricklayer several years, he began contracting in his line, and many of the early buildings of the town were erected under his superintendency. He continued his business actively till 1899, when he retired, the better to give attention to his property in town and his large holdings, of more than a thousand acres, in Tulare and two other counties. His lands were bought when he could buy them cheaply, and he has wisely held them till they have participated in the rise in values which marks the difference between the California of the last half century and the California of today. When he invested in them he very practically prophesied that they would be worth much more in his time than they were worth then, and he has been spared to know that his prophecy was not idly made. His sympathies with humanity, of high and low and intermediate degrees, made him a Republican in the days when men of his intellectual type cast their influence for the elimination of slavery from the United States, and through all its history, through all its changing issues, he as acted with that party ever since. All about him are evidences of his public spirit. Everywhere he goes he is greeted as a father and as a friend. He has been useful and in his declining years he is honored and happy and unfaltering in his faith in things to come.
SOURCE: History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913 Pp 464, 467
Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn