Tulare County Biographies

ALEXANDER M. BEST

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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


In the state of Iowa Alexander M. Best, of Tulare county, Cal., was born April 
23, 1867. He passed his boyhood and youth on a farm there and was educated in a 
public school near by. In April, 1888, when he was about twenty-one years old, 
he arrived in California and located on a ranch in Poway valley, twenty miles 
northeast of San Diego, where his father took up government land. For seven 
years he lived and farmed in San Diego county, then located in Orange county and 
lived at Santa Ana, and he also bought land at Newport. He farmed in that 
vicinity five years, on the San Joaquin three years, and at La Habra one year, 
and in October, 1901, came to Tulare county and bought the Jones ranch of one 
hundred and twenty acres, twelve miles east and two miles south of Tulare. After 
raising grain there four years, he sold the property and bought eighty acres a 
mile and a half west of town, a homestead of forty acres with forty acres 
adjoining it at one corner, on which he put all improvements, including house, 
outbuildings, fences and roads. Until February, 1911, he conducted a dairy, but 
he then sold his cows, retaining his stock and horses, for the excellence of 
which his place is well known. He also gives attention to hogs and poultry. 
Thirty-five acres of his land is in alfalfa.
December 3, 1894, Mr. Best married Susan Columbia Bardsley of Poway valley, 
Cal., and they have a son named Edwin Bardsley Best. Fraternally Mr. Best is 
identified with the Woodmen of the World lodge of Tulare. Politically he has 
well defined ideas about all public questions and does his full duty as a 
citizen, but he has no liking for professional politics and has never sought any 
elective or appointive office. He has at heart the welfare of the community and 
is generous in his encouragement of movements for the general good.
 
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - 
Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913, pp. 621