The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.
Andrew Rorden was born on the Island of Fohr in the former duchy of Schleswig-Holstein, now a part of Germany.
In 1872 he immigrated to America and worked for three years for William McFadden in Placentia.
He then worked in Anaheim, learning the wagonmaker’s trade.
In 1879, financial hard times led him to make a trip back back to Germany; and after a year there with his friends, he returned to America.
He worked for three years in quartz mills in Arizona, where he earned enough money to make an initial payment on the ranch of thirty acres on East Chapman Avenue, at Fullerton.
He planted a vineyard, but the blight killed it; and then, in 1886, he began to plant walnuts–an experiment at that time here. By 1921, he had a 14-acre walnut orchard.
His land would eventually become the site of Fullerton College.
He is shown here inspecting the site in a photo taken in the 1880s. Photo courtesy of the Local History Room of the Fullerton Public Library.
He was one of the charter members of the Fullerton-Placentia Walnut Growers Association, and a member of the Placentia Orange Growers Association, and also a shareholder in the Anaheim Union Water Company.
Perhaps because Rorden was German, and during World War I, there was fear/prejudice against German Americans, biographer Samuel Armor felt the need to write, “He has the esteem of all who know him as an honest man, and the good will of all who have followed his patriotic course during the trying days of the World War…he has been loyal to the country, state and county.”
Rorden was married twice. His first wife was Rebecca, who died in Los Angeles in 1912. For his second wife, he married Marie (Togel) Klement of Anaheim, the mother of one daughter, Pauline.
Fullerton History 