Tulare County Biographies

Perry Dorman Fowler

Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn

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

     As horticultural commissioner for Tulare county, Perry Dorman Fowler is 
proving excellent ability. His splendid life dates from March 1, 1851, when he 
was born in the state of Missouri, a son of Benjamin and Mary Ann (Thompson) 
Fowler, natives respectively of Indiana and of Missouri. In 1854, when he was 
about three years old, his parents accompanied an ox-team immigration party to 
California, bringing their family, and the father mined for a time near 
Oroville, but moved from there to San Ramon valley and farmed there until the 
fall of 1858. From that time until 1868 he farmed near Woodland, Yolo county, 
and there Perry D. attended the public schools and was a student in the 
Hesperian College. The next home of the family was near the present site of 
Newman in Stanislaus county, where the elder Fowler bought three thousand acres 
of land, raised stock and grew grain until in 1874. After that he herded sheep 
and farmed in the Deer Creek region of Tulare county until February 20, 1876, 
when he passed away. The son settled the family estate and in the fall of that 
year Mrs. Fowler moved to Tulare, which was her home as long as she lived, her 
death, however, occurring in Los Angeles in September, 1895. 
 
     Until 1881 Perry Dorman Fowler farmed and raised sheep. Then he began 
buying grain for G. W. McNear and selling farm machinery for Baker & Hamilton of 
San Francisco. In the period 1887-1900 he operated the Fowler farm. In 1900 he 
was appointed horticultural commissioner for Tulare county and to the work of 
that office he has since devoted himself. He has a farm of seventy-one acres, 
five miles from Tulare, which is leased by his son-in-law. Thirty acres of it is 
in orchard and thirty acres in alfalfa. 
 
     On September 9, 1879, Mr. Fowler married Jeanette Josephine Hawkins, who 
was born at Suisun, Solano county, Cal., February 1, 1857, and died May 12, 
1910.  She was a daughter of Vardiman Hawkins, of Elmira, Solano county, a 
pioneer in that part of the state. She bore her husband two children, Jeanette 
May, December 10, 1880, and J. Benjamin, July 19, 1882. The daughter is the wife 
of J. B. Southwell of Tulare county. The son, who is farming on the Lindsay 
road, seven miles east of Tulare, married Mrs. Annie Smith, and they have two 
sons, Roy Benjamin and Perry Daniel Fowler. 
 
     By the board of directors of the Tulare irrigation district, Mr. Fowler was 
appointed to assess property to raise revenue with which to pay off the bonded 
indebtedness of the district to settlers, as provided in the compromise with the 
bondholders in 1883. He is a member of the Mutual Farmer�s Insurance Company, 
and being a man of much public spirit has been identified from time to time with 
other interests of importance to the community. He is a member of the First 
Christian church of Tulare. 
 
SOURCE:  History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical 
Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913  Pp 397, 398