The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. “From 1882, when the first Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, until about 1930, the history of farm labor in California has revolved around the cleverly manipulated exploitation, by the large growers, of a number of…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. Charles E. Ruddock was born in New York 1864. When he was three years old, his parents moved to Wisconsin and bought a farm. In 1884, Charles married Lila L. Ruddock. They had two children: Ray and…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. Edward Atherton, farmer and owner of the Fullerton Ostrich Farm in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was born in Capetown, South Africa, in 1860.  In 1886 Atherton came to California to sell ostrich plumes, initially…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. Edward Kellogg (or E.K.) Benchley was born 1854 in San Francisco, California. He married Emma in 1877 in Ventura. They had two sons (William and Frank) and one daughter (Helen). Helen was born in 1878,…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. Alexander Gardiner was a native of Scotland who immigrated to Tennessee at age 18. He then migrated to California in 1868 with his wife Susan, eventually settling on a ranch in what was then known…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. Richard Spencer Gregory was born in Chesterfield County, Virginia in 1876. His father E. S. Gregory, a farmer and merchant, fought with the Confederate Army during the Civil War. In 1893, Richard moved to California,…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. William J. Wickersheim was born in Illinois in 1866. In 1894 he moved to California where he taught school and purchased two orange groves in Orange. He moved to Fullerton in 1902 and opened a bicycle,…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. Herbert A. Ford was born in Wright, Michigan in 1859. In 1884 he moved to Orange County, eventually settling in Fullerton in 1887, the year the town was founded, where he opened the first store…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. An important family that settled in the area that would become Fullerton was the Des Granges. In Fullerton, a Pictorial History, Bob Ziebell writes: “In 1873, Otto des Granges, a native of Prussia, Germany, the…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. An early doctor of Fullerton, William Freeman was born in Medina County, Ohio in 1841. In 1861, at age 20, he enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War. As a soldier in the…