Tulare County Biographies

CHAUNCEY M. BAKER

Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn

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

     It was in Mill Creek valley that Chauncey M. Baker, one of the well-to-do 
farmers in the vicinity of Dunlap, was born July 3, 1877, and there he has spent 
his life to the present time. He attended the Mill Creek school and was 
initiated into the mysteries of farming under his father�s instruction. 
 
     At San Rafael in 1905, Mr. Baker married Olive Hargrave, a native of 
Mendocino county, whose father, Charles M. Hargrave, crossed the plains in the 
pioneer days and was an early settler on Cache creek, Yolo county, whence he 
moved to Mendocino county. For several years prior to her marriage, Mrs. Baker 
taught school in Mendocino and Fresno counties.
 
     Mr. Baker homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres of land and January 10, 
1908, received his patent from the government. That same year he bought four 
hundred and eighty acres, known as the old Turner place; in 1910 he added two 
hundred and forty acres known as the Wilson place and one hundred and sixty 
acres of railroad land, and he is now the owner of one thousand and forty acres. 
He cultivates two hundred and fifty acres, and on fifty-five acres he raised one 
hundred and eighty tons of hay in 1910, and from some of his valley land he 
cleared $10 an acre in 1909. He has about three thousand cords of marketable 
wood on his place. He has given some attention to breeding fine stock and has on 
hand an average of forty to fifty head. He has lived here long enough to have 
witnessed the development of the district from a mountain country to productive 
ranches and remembers when there were but half a dozen houses between the hills 
and Visalia, a section now dotted with modern California farms. As a citizen he 
is generously public spirited. Politically he is a Republican and fraternally he 
affiliates with the Modern Woodmen of America. 
 
SOURCE:  History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical 
Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913, Pp 496