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…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. I’ve been looking at microfilm of the Fullerton Tribune newspaper from the years 1893-1894. Fullerton was a small but growing community at this time, inhabited mainly by farmers and merchants. The local paper, edited by…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. “Eternal vigilance is said to be the price of liberty, and with equal truthfulness it may be said to be the price of water in Southern California.” —from  The Fullerton Tribune (1905) A few summers…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. Pierre Nicolas was born in the French Alps, date uncertain. Upon migrating to the United States, he first settled in Northern California before settling in Whittier, where he raised cattle and sheep.  He married Hypolite…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. In a previous post, I began a research/writing project called Fullerton Water Wars, in which I started going through the Fullerton Tribune newspaper microfilm archives in the local history room of the Fullerton public library,…

The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon. One of the real goldmines of local historical information is the microfilm archive of the Fullerton Tribune, the town’s first newspaper, which was created in 1893 by a Mr. Edgar Johnson. At first, looking at…