Tulare County Biographies

FRANK P. CUNNINGHAM

Transcribed by Jeannie Miyama

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

 
Frank P. Cunningham, supervisor of the operations in connection with the 
government national forest in the Porterville district and one of the veterans 
of the forest service, for more than twenty years thus connected, is a native 
son of California and has lived in this state all his life, a resident of this 
section for the past ten years and more.  He was born on a pioneer farm in 
Shasta county, March 30, 1879, and is a son of James M. and Phoebe (Lowder) 
Cunningham, the latter a native of the state of Iowa and the former a native of 
Missouri, and both are still living in Shasta county, where they have resided 
for nearly a half century.  James M. Cunningham came to California as a young 
man in 1876 and found things here so much to his liking that he made 
arrangements for establishing himself here and then returned east and was 
married, returning to California with his bride in 1878 and establishing his 
home in Shasta county, where he developed a good piece of property and where he 
was long engaged in farming and stock raising.  He also carried on sawmilling 
operations and took a good citizen�s part in the local civic affairs, for twelve 
years serving as justice of the peace in his community.
 
Reared on the home farm in Shasta county, Frank P. Cunningham received his 
public schooling in that neighborhood and supplemented this by a course in 
Atkinson�s Business College in Sacramento.  From the days of his boyhood he was 
attentive to the labors of the home farm, helpful in the development of his 
father�s interests there, and he remained on the home place in Shasta county 
until he was twenty-six years of age, when, in 1907, he entered the service of 
the government�s department of forest preserves, his initial connection with the 
forest service having been rendered in Trinity county.  In September, 1907, he 
was transferred to the force of forest rangers in Siskiyou county and was sent 
to the service in Scott valley, whence in 1913 he was transferred to the 
Bakersfield station, and was there in supervisory charge of the forest service 
in the Hot Springs district in Tulare county and of the forest in Kern county 
until his transfer in 1918 to the Porterville district, and he since has been 
thus engaged, as supervisor, with present offices in the Home Bank building in 
Porterville, one of the best known men in the forest service in California.
 
On February 17, 1904, in Balls Ferry, California, Frank P. Cunningham was untied 
in marriage to Miss Della Schooling, who also was born in Shasta county, 
daughter of Irvin S. Schooling.  Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham have two children:  A 
daughter, Lola, and a son, Fred Cunningham.  Mr. Cunningham is a member of the 
local lodge of the Knights of Pythias and is also affiliated with 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 
329