Tulare County Biographies

THOMAS WARREN HOWELL

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        Biography, after all, is the only true history. It is in the narratives 
of the lives and careers of the men who may be regarded as the community 
builders that the student of history finds the really illuminating points that 
embellish the annals of any locality. The files of the newspapers in this 
section of California carry many such narratives of the interesting careers of 
the men who came in here in pioneer days and "blazed the ways" for successive 
generations, sturdy, determined men who faced the day's job as a thing to be 
done regardless of apparent difficulties and whose labors thus prevailed in the 
creation of conditions that make the ways of living immeasurably easier for 
those: who now are enjoying the fruits of those laborious strivings in behalf of 
posterity. One such narrative is that relating to the life and to the services 
to the community of the late Thomas Warren Howell, who at the time of his 
passing in the fall of 1920 left a memory hereabout that will long be kept 
green. That narrative carried in one of the local newspapers following Mr. 
Howell's death is so peculiarly illuminative of the conditions which faced the 
pioneers of this section of California that it is regarded as wholly fitting and 
proper to include it here in these definite annals of Tulare county.
        In its obituary reference to Mr. Howell this newspaper pointed out that 
the life history of that pioneer is one of more than ordinary interest, even as 
is the history of the lives of all those brave men and women who endured the 
hardships and dangers of an overland trip to this fair state by wagon train in 
the early days in the vanguard of western civilization. It then was pointed out 
that Mr. Howell was the eldest of a family of seven children, four sons and 
three daughters. At the time he started west his parents lived in Warrenton, 
Missouri, about sixty miles from St. Louis. The Civil war was then in progress 
and, although young in years, he belonged to the Fifty-ninth Missouri Regiment, 
but had seen no service except in the home militia. Not being very strong 
physically he persuaded his parents to allow him to accompany his uncle and 
family, who were coming by wagon train to California. They left Warrenton in the 
spring of 1864 and arrived in California (Red Bluff being their destination) 
just six months lacking one week from the time they started.
        Mr. Howell drove a four-horse team attached to the wagon bearing his 
uncle's luggage, etc. At that time the road along the Platte river was literally 
alive with prairie schooners lumbering along at differing speed, depending upon 
whether horses or oxen were furnishing the motive power, but all having the 
"Golden state" as their ultimate goal. A good deal of forethought and figuring 
had to be exercised in providing provisions by those planning an overland trip 
to California in those days when it required as many months as it now requires 
days to make the trip. Often travelers ran out of provisions of one kind or 
another, which were sometimes almost impossible to secure at any price. Think of 
paying forty dollars for a hundred-pound sack of flour ! That is what a sack of 
flour cost Mr. Howell's uncle at Salt Lake City. In Nevada fifty cents was paid 
for a white onion raised in California and brought there for sale. Fresh 
vegetables were the greatest of luxuries, as few were to be had. Members of his 
uncle's party stopped overnight in Salt Lake City. They attended a performance 
that night at Brigham Young's theater, the nature of which Mr. Howell could not 
recall, but he did long recall with clearness their interest in seeing Brigham 
Young himself.
        No trouble with Indians was experienced by the train of which Mr. Howell 
was a member, but he recalled vividly being a witness to a bit of trouble which 
a party some distance ahead of them on the trail had with Indians who had stolen 
some of their cattle.  Somewhere alongside the wagon trail leading to California 
is a. lonely grave wherein is buried the remains of the only member of their 
party who succumbed on the trip. This was a young girl aged fifteen years, a 
cousin of Mr. Howell. She could not withstand the ravages of the "mountain 
fever", which malady claimed not a few of the westward-bound travelers in those 
days. The train halted for a day while members went to the nearest stage station 
for lumber out of which a coffin was fashioned. A preacher in the train, whose 
provisions were growing low, did not stop with the rest but pushed on, fearing 
to lose even one day's time. Later they learned the preacher lost his wife and 
two children before he reached California.
        Mr. Howell and his relatives reached Red Bluff in the early part of the 
fall of 1864. Mr. Howell found work on a ranch as a veterinary until summer, 
when he went to the San Jose district, where he stayed until that fall. In the 
meantime his parents had been writing and begging him to come home, so he 
decided to go. He made the trip by water, sailing from San Francisco on the 
steamer America which on that trip carried fourteen hundred passengers. The trip 
to New York required something more than a month and was marked by several 
exciting experiences which to one of a more sensitive nature than Mr. Howell's 
would have seemed the work of fate, but to him only served to break the monotony 
of a long trip. In the spring of 1874 he returned to California, accompanied by 
his parents, who settled southwest of Porterville, where the large eucalyptus 
grove in the Poplar district is located.
In the fall of that year Mr. Howell went back to Missouri to dispose of their 
property interests there, returning here in the spring of 1875. He pre-empted on 
a quarter of a section of land in the Poplar district and later took up a 
homestead. Government land sold for two dollars and fifty cents in that locality 
in those days. At the time of his death his property holdings in the Poplar 
district comprised two hundred and forty acres, which with that of his son is 
leased for cultivation. Mr. Howell made his home on this property until 1902, 
when he moved into Porterville to property located at No. 109 C street, where he 
spent the remainder of his life, his death occurring in a sanitarium at 
Stockton, on October 30, 1920. He was born in Warrenton, Missouri, May 12, 1842, 
and was thus past seventy-eight years of age at the time of his death.
        In 1906 Mr. Howell was elected to the city board of trustees for a term 
of four years. This office he filled in a most conscientious manner. No little 
credit is due him personally in helping to banish the saloons from the city. 
Other progressive measures were fostered by Mr. Howell during the time he served 
the city as a public servant. Kindly in disposition, considerate of the rights 
of others and imbued with the spirit of service and lofty ideals, truly may it 
be said of Mr. Howell that he lived long and well. His memory will live forever 
in the hearts of those related to him through kinship and in the hearts of hosts 
of friends who respected and esteemed him for his integrity and kindly 
character. Mr. Howell was survived by his widow, Mrs. Rhoda Howell, to whom he 
had been wedded more than fifty years, and by six sons : Coleman C., Edwin, 
Wilburn, Alvin, Everett and Olin Howell; and by two daughters : Mrs. J. W. 
Graham of San Francisco and Mrs. John Connelly of San Bruno. Mr. Howell 
accumulated an estate of approximately a hundred thousand dollars. He was a 
democrat in politics and religiously affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal 
church, South. He erected some substantial buildings in Porterville.
 
Source:  History of Tulare County and Kings County, California � Kathleen 
Edwards Small & J. Larry Smith, Vol. II, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke Publishing 
Company, 1926., p. 228