Tulare County
Biographies
MOORE, ORLANDO
Visalia has no more prominent citizen along industrial and agricultural lines than Orlando Moore. The son of Henry C. and Amelia (Renalds) Moore, he was born at Venice Hill, Tulare county, Cal., March 30, 1869. His father and mother were natives respectively of Missouri and Iowa.
Henry C. Moore came to California in the early ‘60s, taught school in Tulare county and raised sheep, and later he operated one of the pioneer sawmills in the mountains which was one of the first in this vicinity, but at length returned he to Missouri. Eight years later he came back to California with a carload of cattle and went into the cattle business on a section in the swamp lands of Tulare county with R. E. Hyde as a partner. Eventually, however, he sold out his interest to Mr. Hyde and went to Puget Sound, where he farmed and operated a saw and shingle mill seven years. He came again to Tulare county in 1900 and has since lived there.
In some of the ventures mentioned above, Orlando Moore was his father’s helper and after a time he engaged extensively in the cultivation of watermelons, in one season he receiving $2700 from the sales of melons; at the Fourth of July celebration at Visalia in 1903 he had seventeen horses and five wagons selling melons through the town, he and his brother Edward making a fine display of his product with five four-horse teams. Mr. Moore was the pioneer orange grower at Venice Cove. Buying twenty acres there, he raised the trees from seeds, brought fourteen acres of the fruit to bearing and sold out for $14,500. The nursery business also commanded the attention of Mr. Moore and his brother for a while. In 1910 he sold out his Venice Cove property and bought twenty acres near the west city limits of Visalia, which he has improved and put on the market in half-acre and quarter-acre lots. He owns also a mountain ranch of one hundred and sixty acres and one hundred and sixty acres near Spa on the Santa Fe, five miles northeast of Alpaugh. One of his possessions is a fine auto-truck with a capacity of fifty people, and with which he made an experimental run to San Francisco with fruit that he took through without bruising or otherwise injuring it. He contemplates a like trip with his auto-truck to Portland, Ore., with fruit from Tulare county, and it will doubtless attract much attention to this part of the state. The raising of tomatoes has been another experiment of Mr. Moore’s which has proved noteworthy. He set half an acre to fifteen hundred vines, and sold his product as high as ten cents a pound; for tomatoes grown on five acres in a single season he received $1750.
Mr. Moore’s latest venture has been in the field of invention. In the year 1912 he took out a patent upon a detachable tread for any sized double-tired auto-truck. This invention enables the truck to be changed into a tractor for field and farm purposes, and it bids fair to become an extremely useful and popular devise. Its advantages may be listed as follows: Protection to the rubber tire; increase of tractile power so that it can be used in a field for the purposes of plowing or discing and seeding summer fallowed or loose sandy land; prevention of slipping upon a muddy or sandy road; great strength and durability; inexpensive and capable of lasting a lifetime; and easily and quickly adjusted.
Socially Mr. Moore is identified with the Fraternal Brotherhood. He and Mrs. Moore are members of the Methodist Episcopal church at Visalia. He married, in 1903 Muriel Witherell, a native of Knoxville, Ill., and they have three children, Ramon, Ralph Spencer and Kathryn Moore.
SOURCE: History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913 Pp 379, 380
Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn
BAUMANN, GEORGE W.
In Iowa George W. Baumann lived until he was five years old, and after that he lived in Kansas until 1878, when he came to Visalia, Cal. He was born in the Hawkeye State March 10, 1859. February 9, 1890, he married Miss Martha A. Lathrop, daughter of Ezra Lathrop, a California pioneer, and she bore him two sons, Grover Cleveland and Ezra Gottfried Baumann. A separate biographical sketch of Ezra Lathrop appears elsewhere in these pages.
Soon after Mr. Baumann located at Visalia he began farming, but three years later returned to the East, to come back a few months later bringing his parents. The family located near Farmersville, where he operated rented land. Soon after his marriage he homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres near Lindsay, where Mr. and Mrs. Baumann settled, and at the same time engaged in the stock-raising business in the mountains. Later on he bought three hundred and twenty acres at Poplar, where they engaged in running a good-sized dairy in connection with the farming and stock business. In 1906 he rented his farm and moved to Lindsay, whence in the following year he moved to Tulare, which was his home as long as he lived. His death occurred January 16, 1909. A man of much public spirit, he was a helpful friend to every good movement for the benefit of the community. Fraternally he affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of America and the Ancient Order of United Workmen through their local organizations in Tulare.
Mrs. Baumann is identified with the order of Royal Neighbors, is a stockholder in the Tulare National Bank and is extensively engaged in stockraising on twenty-two hundred acres of land, carrying an average of three hundred to four hundred head of stock. She was one of the pioneers of Tulare City, coming here with her parents before either a schoolhouse or a church had been erected here, and later for eleven years she taught in the pubic schools of Tulare county and city. She has a distinct recollection of the digging of the first grave, so far as the white population is concerned, at Tulare, when her schoolteacher’s wife, Mrs. Haslip, was buried, she being the first white person who was laid to rest in the city of Tulare. She remembers when religious meetings were held in the waiting room of the depot and has a vivid recollection of a Christmas tree, gifts from which were distributed in that same room. A woman of forceful character and of winning personality, she does much good and has many friends.
SOURCE: History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913 Pp 380, 381
Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn