Tulare County
Biographies
KING, LOWERY B.
Among the progressive and prosperous Missourians who are making a record of success in Central California is L. B. King of Tulare county, whose ranch is on rural free delivery route No. 1, out of Visalia. Mr. King was born in Buchanan county in the state mentioned, March 5, 1865, a son of James W. and Elizabeth J. (Jones) King. He was reared and educated and taught farming in his native state as it was practiced there, and in 1886, when he was twenty-one years old, he came to California and settled near Visalia and for five years leased and operated a ranch belonging to Sands Baker.
Later Mr. King farmed land in the Kaweah Swamp district for several years raising potatoes and other crops which yielded good returns. Then, responding to the call of the east, he went to Oklahoma and Missouri and tried to farm there, but was driven back to California by destructive droughts; and here he has been content to remain ever since; here he firmly believes he will live out his allotted days on earth. For a time after his return he was foreman on the Kane ranch in Tulare county. Since January, 1907, he has farmed a one hundred and twenty acre ranch owned by Sands Baker, his father-in-law, which includes a profitable dairy of thirty-five cows. He gives attention to the breeding of horses and has several good brood mares which invariably raise fine colts. Hogs and chickens are a source of revenue to him; he has forty acres of alfalfa and a garden. All in all he is one of the really successful farmers of his part of the county. As a citizen he is public–spiritedly helpful. Fraternally he affiliates with the Woodmen of the World and the Modern Woodmen of America. While he has never been particularly active in political work, he is alert and patriotic in the performance of his duties as a voter and has ably filled the office of clerk of the school board of the Union district and the office of school trustee.
In 1892 Mr. King married Miss Mattie Baker, a native of Fresno county, and they have four children, Ethel F., Lauris M., Sands E. and Helen B. Lauris M. was graduated at fourteen from the Union High School, took a course at a boarding school in Los Angeles, and is now attending the Visalia high school.
SOURCE: History of
Tulare and Kings Counties,
California
with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles,
Calif.,
Historic Record Company, 1913
Pp 480, 481
Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn
An up-to-date and prominent dairyman of Tulare is Henry Bertch, who was born November 11, 1857, in Erie county, N. Y., twelve miles from Buffalo. There he followed the life of a farmer’s general boy, gaining an education in the public schools, and he remained there until 1884, when he was twenty-seven years old. Coming then to Tulare county, Cal., he readily found farm work. He homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres and in 1885 bought one hundred and sixty acres more near Delano, in Kern county. These tracts he farmed six years without any adequate returns, suffering losses because of dry seasons. Later until 1895 he worked a rented farm in Tulare county, and then leased an adjoining farm and controlled an aggregate of three hundred and twenty acres, which he operated until 1898. In that year he bought one hundred and sixty acres eight miles west of Tulare, on which he made improvements, enclosing five fields with hog-tight fences. He planted three acres to orchard and gave fifty acres to alfalfa. He now has a dairy of twelve cows and devotes sixty-five acres of his land to grain and the balance to pasture. He has put down a well one hundred and seven feet deep for irrigation, which is fitted with a six-inch pump, the motor power of which is a fifteen horse-power, gasoline engine, and a seventy-foot well for domestic uses. Dairying is perhaps his chief business aside from farming, and he is a stockholder in the Dairymen’s Co-operative Creamery at Tulare.
In 1903 Mr. Bertch married Harriet Hoffman. Socially he affiliates with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, being a member of the Tulare lodge. As a farmer he is well informed on all subjects pertaining to that vocation, being considered an authority. His public spirit is of a quality that makes him a most useful citizen.
SOURCE: History of
Tulare and Kings Counties,
California
with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles,
Calif.,
Historic Record Company, 1913
Pp 482, 483
Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn