Tulare County Biographies

FRANK JOSEPH KLINDERA

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        For nearly fifteen years Frank Joseph Klindera has been postmaster of 
the pleasant village of Tipton and there is perhaps no man in that section of 
Tulare county who has a wider acquaintance than he or who is held in higher 
esteem. Though of European birth, Mr. Klindera has been a resident of this 
country since the days of his infancy and of California for more than twenty 
years. He was born in the province of Bohemia, in the dual kingdom of 
Austria-Hungary, December 16, 1870, and was but a babe in arms when a few months 
later his parents came to this country and by prior arrangement settled on a 
farm in the Prairie du Chien neighborhood in Crawford county, Wisconsin, where 
they remained for some time and then moved to Chicago, where they established 
their home. Mr. Klindera's grandfather, Joseph Frank Klindera, had come to this 
country years before the date here referred to and had become one of the 
pioneers of the Prairie du Chien settlement.
        Having been but a child when he moved with his parents from the prairie 
farm in Wisconsin to Chicago, Frank Joseph Klindera completed his schooling in 
that city and early became connected with the printing trades, particularly with 
reference to book publications, and was for twenty-five years thus employed in 
that city, connected at various times with the old book publishing house of 
Belford, Clarke & Company, with the continuing house of Rand McNally & Company, 
with the George M. Hill concern and with the Metropolitan and others, his 
services being rendered in various capacities but chiefly as an "outside man" in 
the distribution and collection departments, and thus he was long a familiar 
figure in publishing circles in that city, one of the best known men in that 
line there. For years during this period of his activities he was a member of 
the Chicago Athletic Club, took an interested part in Masonic affairs and was 
otherwise an active participant in the social and civic affairs of the city.
        In 1904, attracted by the climatic and other advantages of California as 
a place of residence, Mr. Klindera came to this state and bought a tract of land 
in the immediate vicinity of the promising village of Tipton, where he began to 
develop an orange grove and where he established his home. Stimulated by 
memories of his former and long connection with the printing trades, he started 
a weekly newspaper in Tipton, giving the name Enterprise to this ambitious 
publication, but after two or three years of ineffectual struggle against the 
handicap of a too limited field, abandoned the enterprise as well as the 
Enterprise and neither has since been revided. In 1912 Mr. Klindera was 
commissioned postmaster at Tipton and since has been serving in that important 
public capacity. He owns twenty acres in Orange county, near Santa Ana.
        In August, 1891, in Chicago, Frank J. Klindera was united in marriage to 
Miss Mamie Keifer of that city, who died in 1920, leaving three daughters : 
Georgiana, wife of W. G. Smith of Los Angeles ; Blanche, wife of Jack Ryon of 
Seal Beach ; and Isabella, wife of Major Joseph Dyer of Delano. Mr. Klindera is 
a member of many years standing of the Masonic fraternity and is also affiliated 
with the Knights of Pythias, the Woodmen of the World and with the local Grove 
of the United Ancient Order of Druids.
 
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. 414