Tulare County Biographies

JAMES T. COMPTON

Transcribed by Jeannie Miyama

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

 
During the past twenty years there has been built up at Pixley an industry that 
has come to be recognized as one of the leading industrial enterprises in Tulare 
county and throughout this section of the valley.  When in 1908 James T. 
Compton, an experienced designer and worker in iron, with years of practical 
experience in the east behind him, came to California and settled at Pixley he 
set up there a smithy and began the manufacture of agricultural implement 
specialties.  The demand for these implements of his design and invention grew 
and he presently was compelled to increase his manufacturing facilities.  For 
some years his product was confined to devices for horse drawn implements and 
then, in 1917, he made a further extension to his plant and began the 
manufacture of implements for farm tractor use, particularly tractor scrapers.  
From 1917 to 1920 Mr. Compton manufactured and distributed more tractor scrapers 
than did all the other manufacturers in the United States, creating a wide 
marked for the sale of his Pixley product.  The business has been further 
extended and is now carried on under the name of the Compton Scraper Company, of 
which Mr. Compton is the president and general manager.  This concern, in 
addition to its widely distributed tractor scrapers, manufactures several other 
implements for Fordson and other tractors, plows, subsoilers and the like, and 
is doing a large and growing business.
 
Mr. Compton, head of this enterprise, invented and put on the market the first 
adjustable bit subsoiler manufactured in the United States.  He does his own 
designing and pattern making and as an inventor has quite a number of ingenious 
and useful farm implements to his credit.  One of the latest of these is his 
celebrated �heavy duty� scraper, recently put on the market, which attained an 
instant popularity and which is being widely distributed from the Pixley plant.  
This scraper is especially adapted for road work, has been adopted by the 
supervisors of the San Joaquin valley and is being used extensively for land 
leveling.  The scraper is built in sizes from four to ten feet and has a 
capacity of from three-fourths to seven yards of dirt at a load and a strength 
to stand the strain of the most powerful tractor built.  Mr. Compton has been 
the recipient of many flattering testimonials concerning the effectiveness of 
this new scraper, an example of which is one written from the Los Angeles 
Athletic Club by H. S. Birdsell, superintendent of the Los Angeles Athletic Club 
ranch at Conner Station, which points out that �the scraper is doing all you 
claimed for it.  I am moving between nine hundred and one thousand yards of dirt 
in nine hours at an estimated cost of three cents per yard.  I am hauling some 
of the dirt as far as five hundred feet and am loading just as I find it; that 
is, we are not plowing up loose dirt.  I consulted with my engineer tonight and 
he said the scraper was showing no wear after two weeks of continuous work.�  
One of the great advantages of this scraper is that it is operated from the seat 
of the tractor, making it a one-man tool.
 
James T. Compton is a native of the old Blue Grass state, born in historic Pike 
county on the eastern border of Kentucky June 20, 1874, and is a son of Isaac 
and Caroline (Robinson) Compton, both of whom were members of old families in 
that section.  Isaac Compton was a harness maker and general worker in leather 
and the son James grew up familiar with the use of tools, early becoming 
attracted to the mechanical trades, and presently entered the railway service.  
His capacity along this line led to rapid advancement and when but seventeen 
years of age he was made the conductor of a freight train on the Norfolk & 
Western railroad, running out of Kenova in Wayne county, West Virginia, a town 
whose name is composite of the abbreviated names of the states of Kentucky, Ohio 
and Virginia.  For two years he served as a conductor on this road and then 
transferred his services to the Chesapeake & Ohio road, with headquarters in 
Cincinnati, later going to Columbus (Ohio) and taking service with the C., S. & 
H. road.  Meantime the lure of the mechanical trades was calling him in another 
direction and after awhile he left the railroad and at Ironton, Ohio, became 
employed as a blacksmith, working for five years at that place and giving his 
earnest attention to the development of his skill in that useful craft.  He then 
became connected with the operations of the Spear Brothers carriage works at 
Marietta, Ohio; was later and for some time connected with the Parkersburg 
Transfer Company at Parkersburg, West Virginia, and then became the general 
manager of the plant of the Huff Carriage Works at Huntington, West Virginia, 
and was there thus engaged when in 1908 the state of his wife�s health demanded 
for her a change of climate.  It was then, very wisely, that the Comptons came 
to California and settled in Tulare county, with the gratifying result that Mrs. 
Compton was in due time completely restored to health.  As noted above, upon 
taking up his residence at Pixley Mr. Compton set himself in business there as a 
manufacturer and he ever since has been quite successfully engaged along that 
line, inventor and patentee of the various ingenious implements manufactured in 
his extensive plant.
 
It was on June 18, 1904, at Marietta, Ohio, that James T. Compton was united in 
marriage to Mrs. Mary Murphy, widow of Charles Murphy, and they have two 
daughters:  Caroline, wife of V. F. Nichols of Port Angeles, Washington; and 
Frances, wife of Dallas Highsmith of Bakersfield.  Mr. and Mrs. Compton have a 
pleasant home at Pixley and ever since taking up their residence there have been 
interested and helpful participants in the general social activities of the 
community.  In addition to his home place Mr. Compton owns several other 
residence properties in the town, a business building there, several vacant lots 
and a five-acre vineyard.  He has long been lookup upon as one of the leading 
men of affairs in Pixley and has been helpful in promoting the general interests 
of that place.  He is an active member of the local organization of the Modern 
Woodmen of America.
 
History of Tulare County and Kings County, California � Kathleen Edwards Small & 
J. Larry Smith, Vol. I, Chicago, The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1926, Page 
430