Sutter-Yuba County Biographies

WILLIAM KENT NORRIS

Transcribed by: Kathy Sedler

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


 
            A progressive, successful rancher whose capital has been his 
intelligent industry and optimism, and whose experience has proven of the 
greatest value to his fellow-farmers, is William Kent Norris, of Sutter City, a 
native of Tennessee.  He was born at Taylorville � later called Mountain City � 
on April 24, 1871; and his father and mother, Jacob H. and Loretta L. (Adams) 
Norris, were also natives of that Southern State.  Jacob Norris was a carpenter 
and a cabinet-maker; and when he died, at the age of fifty-three, those who knew 
him felt that the world had lost an honest man.  Mrs. Norris was equally 
esteemed and beloved, and she breathed her last at Stockton, in 1900.  Jacob 
Norris was a veteran of the Civil War, and served from September 24, 1863, to 
September 5, 1864, as a member of the 13th Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer 
Cavalry.
            At the age of sixteen, William Norris started out for himself, and 
went to Monroe County, Mo., where he remained for two years.  From there he came 
to California in 1889, making Marysville the last stopping-place of his journey; 
and he immediately went to work as a ranch-hand in Sutter County, finding 
employment with S. E. Wilson in the Tudor district.  Afterwards he worked as a 
fireman in Texas, on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad.  In 1894 he came 
back to Sutter County; and in 1898 he went north into Washington, locating in 
the Big Bend country, near Harrington.  He homesteaded eighty acres of 
government land, and later proved up; and then he bought an adjoining 480 acres 
of fine grain land.  He remained in Washington until 1907.  On his return south, 
he went to Durham, Butte County, where he developed twenty acres of almond 
orchard for the next seven years.  In 1914 he came to Sutter County, and soon 
purchased forty acres of the home place, and another forty acres of open land to 
the south of the railroad.  The former he developed to prunes and the latter to 
almonds, and after a while he sold his prune orchard.  Today, he has twenty 
acres in almonds.
            Near O�Banion Corners, in Sutter County, Mr. Norris was married, on 
February 17, 1895, to Miss Josephine Turnipseed, a native of Yuba City, where 
she was born in 1875, the daughter of Solomon and Sarah (Coates) Turnipseed, 
pioneers in California.  She attended the Gaither school; and her parents having 
died when she was very young, she was received into the family circle of Dexter 
Tuttle, of Colusa County.  One son, Ivan, has blessed this union.  Mr. Norris 
belongs to both the Masonic order and the Knights of Pythias, at Harrington, 
Wash.
 
History of Yuba and Sutter Counties, Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, 1924
p . 1313