California Biographies

Source: History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of 
the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with 
its growth and development from the early days to the present (1919)

History By Paul E. Vandor 
Illustrated, Complete In Two Volumes 
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1919
 
Notes: Missing+page1185-1186

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

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


HANS C. HANSEN. � An energetic builder of Central California who 
has seen not only Fresno but Fresno County develop and expand almost 
beyond belief, is H. C. Hansen, the vineyardist on Belmont Avenue about 
two miles west of Fresno, who came to California in 1883 and the next year 
decided that Fresno County looked better to him than any other place on the 
Pacific Slope. He was born in Bornholm, Denmark, on July 23, 1862, the son 
of Lars Hansen, a farmer there, and so was reared on a farm, while he 
attended the public schools. His father died when he was about fifteen, and 
at sixteen he was apprenticed to learn the shoemaking trade. He made shoes 
until he was twenty-one and then he took the great step of crossing the 
ocean to America. 

At first he settled for a while in Merced, Cal., where he worked for William 
Applegarth on his large grain ranch, but in 1884 he came to Fresno County, 
following grain-farming for the Applegarth interests here. He worked at 
grading on land before it was improved, and managed sixteen horses on a 
V-ditcher. Then he himself bought an outfit, leased land at Centerville for 
a year, and next, for two years, raised grain seven miles west of Fresno. He 
then bought a vineyard set out to Malagas, but found that he could not make 
a success of it because of alkali. So he lost what he had saved and was com- 
pelled to start all over again. 

Mr. Hansen then rented a vineyard west of Fresno and made such a 
stake that he was able to buy a fine vineyard of twenty acres on Kearney 
Avenue where he raised Muscats for nearly twenty years. Selling that, he 
bought his present place of twenty acres in Muscats. Later he bought twenty 
acres of raw land on California Avenue, five miles west of Fresno, which he 
checked and planted to alfalfa, raising hay. He belongs to the California 
Associated Raisin Company, and has been a member of all the cooperative 
associations from the beginning. 

At Fresno, Mr. Hansen was married to Miss Stella Welch, a native of 
Iowa, by whom he has had three children; Clara, who is Mrs. H. H. Jorgen- 
sen, and lives near Fresno ; Frank, who was educated in the public school and 
Fresno Business College, entered the United States service, went overseas 
with the Rainbow Division, later transferred to another division, was dis- 
charged after seventeen months service in France, and returned home in 
July, 1919; and Mabel, who is Mrs. C. C. Brockman, of Madera. 

Mr. Hansen is a Republican in national politics, and in religion he 
adheres to the tenets of the Methodist Church. He served as school trustee 
for six years in the Madison School district, acting as clerk of the board for 
two years. He belongs to the Odd Fellows in Fresno, Lodge No. 186, and 
to the 'Woodmen of the World ; and he and his wife are members of the 
Rebekahs.