Kings County Biographies


This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


JOHN WHITTAKER BAIRSTOW
 
Numbered conspicuously among the successful fruit-growers of Hanford and 
vicinity is John Whittaker Bairstow, who was born in England, May 23, 1859. He 
was reared in England and there educated and taught the secrets of the 
nurseryman, and it was as a nurseryman that he was employed in his native land 
till he was thirty years old. Leaving his wife and three children behind him in 
England he came to California about the first of July, 1889, crossing the 
continent by rail from New York city. He sought work in vain at different 
nurseries in Oakland and Alameda and was finally compelled to take employment in 
the planing mill of George C. Pape at East Oakland, where he worked about 
eighteen months. Meanwhile he made the acquaintance of J. C. Kimball, the 
well-known prune grower of Kings county, and went with him to Hanford in 1891, 
remaining in his employ till the fall of that year. During this time he was 
engaged in setting out a prune orchard for Mr. Kimball and the latter's brother 
and some of their relatives, handling all the trees and distributing them to 
different ranches until five hundred and four acres had been put under that 
fruit. For six months he helped to bud nursery stock in the Lucerne vineyard.
Mr. Bairstow later brought his family over from England and set up his home near 
Hanford, renting twenty acres of vineyard of N. M. Newell. After the first 
season, he pulled up the vines and for six years he farmed the land, working out 
whenever he could spare time from the place. His next venture was as a 
nursery‑man, raising his own stock.  In 1896 he bought twenty acres of the J. C. 
Courtner ranch, and ten years later an adjoining twenty, of the Lucerne 
vineyard. He set seven acres of vineyard on the original twenty, an acre of 
apricots and a small family orchard, but at this time he uses all the land for 
nursery stock. In 1902 he established a nursery yard at Hanford, where he 
carries Early May, Elberta, Lovell, Muir, Admiral Dewey, Wheatland and late and 
early Crawford free-stone peaches and Heath, Sullivan, Orange, Phillips and 
Lemon cling-stone peaches; Early Royal, Routier Peach, Tilton and St. Ambrose 
apricots; Ben Davis, White Winter Pearmain, Red June and Red Astrakhan apples ; 
Bartlett and Winter Nellis pears; French, Robe de Sargent and Tradegey prunes; 
Prunes Simona and English Dawson plums ; Muscat and Thompson seedless grapes; 
nectarines, and sycamore, maple, California walnut, poplar, Texas umbrella and 
other shade and ornamental trees. He was the first nurseryman to put on sale the 
Tilton apricot, exhibiting it at the State Fruit Growers' convention in 
Sacramento in 1902 and taking a first grade diploma for choicest dried fruit in 
competition with all the fruit produced in the state. This apricot originated 
here in Kings county with J. E. Tilton, and Mr. Bairstow handles it in his 
trade.
In March, 1877, Mr. Bairstow married Miss Louisa Williams, a native and then a 
resident of England, and she has borne him five children, of whom two, Lott and 
Samuel, survive; Rosson, their eldest, died at Hanford; Ethelbert died in 
infancy in England, and another, born in California, died in infancy. Mr. 
Bairstow is an American in everything except actual birth that the name can 
imply. His interest in the community with which he has, cast his lot is such as 
to make him a citizen of much public spirit, and no call for aid toward the 
betterment of the condition of any considerable number of his fellow citizens 
fails to receive his prompt and generous response.
 
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - 
Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 602-603
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler