Fresno County Biographies

B. R. Phillips

Submitted by Sally Kaleta, June, 2007

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


	B. R. Phillips, proprietor of the Fresno Transfer  Company, 
Fresno, was born in Yazoo County, Mississippi, January 12, 1857. His father, S. 
M. Phillips, a veteran of the Mexican War, was a practitioner of the law at 
Jackson, Mississippi. His death  occurred in Yazoo City in 1861. In 1866 the 
family moved to Canton, same State, where B. R. Phillips received his education 
in the public schools, and in 1872 they came to California  and settled at 
Centerville. The following year Mr. Phillips planted the first crop of cotton 
grown in the county, planting forty acres on the bottom lands of King's River, 
and raising as fine a crop as was ever grown on the uplands in Mississippi, the 
product being 450 pounds to the acre. Machinery, however, was very expensive, 
and Liverpool the nearest market; so the crop was not a profitable one. In 1874 
he put in an experimental crop on the uplands  for G. H. Eggers, but it failed, 
owing to the abscence of water. Mr. Phillips then  came to Fresno and was 
employed as clerk in the store of Kutner & Goldstein, remaining with them more 
than two years. Feeling the need of further education, he went to San Francisco 
and took a course of study in Heald's Business College. In 1880 Mr. Phillips was 
married, in Hanford, to Miss Sarah Rogers, daughter of John E. Rogers, a pioneer 
of the Mussel Slough country and a raiser of fine work-horses. He was then 
engaged in farming near Hanford until 1883, when he went to Oregon and 
Washington Territory, and worked for the  Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, 
returning to Tulare County in 1885, and continuing  farming. In 1887 Mr. 
Phillips engaged in the lumber business at Selma, as manager  for D. B. Stevens, 
and in 1888 he secured a position in the United States Internal Revenue 
Department, as ganger and storekeeper, from Los Angeles to San  Francisco, 
holding this position until 1890. In that year he bought the business of the 
Fresno Transfer Company from Bradshaw & Dodge, the interests of which he is 
still pursuing. This is the only organized company in the city, with 
representative messengers on incoming trains.  

Source: "The Memorial and Biographical History of the County of Fresno, Tulare, 
and Kern, California," Lewis Publ. Co., 1892, p. 468.