Tulare County Biographies

Charles W. Hart

Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn

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


     A native Californian, Charles W. Hart, farmer, stock-raiser and dairyman, 
three miles southeast of Farmersville, Tulare county, was born at Gilroy, Santa 
Clara county, June 30, 1860. His father Charles C. Hart, born in Litchfield 
county, Conn., in 1826, represented old New England families. He married in his 
native state and came to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama about 1857. 
His brother John had come by way of Cape Horn in 1849 and had settled at Gilroy 
as a dairyman, and later he moved to Tulare county and thence to Kings county, 
dying at Hanford. Charles C. joined his brother in Gilroy and was a dairyman 
there until 1861, when he bought a farm of one hundred and twenty acres three 
miles south of Visalia and went into ranching and stock-raising. In 1865 he 
pre-empted one hundred and sixty acres, now the homestead of his widow, which he 
improved and put under cultivation. Later, with Charles W. Hart, his son, he 
bought six hundred and forty acres half a mile from his home and eighty acres of 
land under timber. They farmed together until he died, July 18, 1891. He married 
Miss Helen Payne, a native of New York, who survives him, and they had five 
children: Fred Miles, of Kings county, Cal., Charles Weston; John H., a farmer 
near the Hart homestead; Carrie Ellen, wife of H. T. Anderson, and Kittie A., 
who married J. L. Tuohy, and died in 1904. The mother of these children is a 
consistent member of the Baptist church. The father was a man of strong 
principles, an advocate of progress and reform and a stanch Republican who took 
an active interest in all movements for the benefit of his community or his 
country. 
 
     Only six months of his life had been passed when Charles Weston Hart was 
brought from Santa Clara county to Tulare county. He was educated in the public 
schools in the district and received valuable early training from his father. At 
fourteen he was an active farmer on his father�s ranch, operating with 
remarkable ability and judgment. At twenty-one he was made his father�s partner 
in the business of grain production and hog raising. After his father�s death, 
Mr. Hart bought the farm outfit and stock and continued the enterprise renting 
from time to time one thousand to twenty-five hundred acres of land for the 
purposes of his business, and he now owns six thousand acres. He has a herd of 
six hundred cattle of the Durham and the Aberdeen Polled Angus breeds, five 
hundred Poland-China hogs, one hundred and fifty horses and mules and a dairy of 
ninety cows. 
 
     The woman who became the wife of Mr. Hart was Miss Lila Conlee, who was 
born in Morro, San Luis Obispo county, Cal., a daughter of Frank Conlee, who was 
a native of Illinois and a settler in California in 1870. Mr. and Mrs. Hart 
became parents of children as follows: Weston C., Helen, Hazel Irene, Ethel C., 
Forest F. and Verna. Her father became a lumber manufacturer at Creston and in 
Tulare county, and he is now farming and growing fruit at Springville. Ella 
Robinson, who became his wife and the mother of Mrs. Hart, was born in Canada. 
Mrs. Hart is the third in their family of nine children, all of whom were early 
instructed in the faith of the Methodist Episcopal church, of which both Mr. and 
Mrs. Hart are also members. In his political convictions Mr. Hart is both 
liberal and conservative, preferring to reserve the right always to cast his 
ballot for the man who he regards the best fitted for a specific office.  
 
SOURCE:  History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical 
Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913  Pp 458, 461