Tulare County Biographies

James Milton Setliff

Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn

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


     On North E street in Tulare lives James Milton Setliff, who is well and 
favorably known throughout Tulare county, as a progressive and successful farmer 
and stockraiser. Mr. Setliff was born in Tennessee March 8, 1864, and was reared 
on a farm and educated in the public schools there. When he was twenty-one years 
old he came to California, locating in Tulare, where he was employed for three 
years at carpentering and doing farm work. He then began farming on rented land, 
taking a tract of two hundred acres a mile out of town and one hundred and sixty 
acres six miles southwest. On both of these properties he raised grain. In the 
following spring in partnership with two others, he rented four hundred acres 
four miles west of Pixley and raised grain with good success. Next year he 
farmed that land and six hundred and forty acres a mile south of it, which 
proved a splendid undertaking. The following season was dry, and he lost 
everything, and the next spring found him working for wages in an effort to 
recover. The year after, with a partner, he farmed seven hundred acres west of 
Waukena, near the Artesia school house, and was able to market nothing but ten 
tons of hay. During the succeeding year he devoted himself to teaming. The 
following spring he seeded and planted forty acres near Paige, and in the fall 
he harvest fifteen tons of hay and four hundred and sixty-four sacks of grain. 
The subsequent year, with O. W. Griffith as a partner, he farmed seven hundred 
acres five miles south of Tulare and eighty acres of the Huff place near Paige. 
His next experience as a renter was on two hundred and forty acres of the Huff 
place and seven hundred and sixty acres in the section adjoining it on the west, 
but he did not receive a great gain from this, and since 1906 he has farmed one 
hundred and ninety-five Huff acres and conducted a dairy on eighty acres of his 
own land, milking thirty cows. Seventy acres of this tract, which he bought in 
1896, are under alfalfa. In 1903 he bought sixty-four acres adjoining the Huff 
ranch, on which he keeps about two hundred and fifty hogs and breeds draft and 
driving horses. He has put eighty acres of the Huff land under alfalfa with a 
view to the establishment of a dairying enterprise. He owns an interest in a 
thoroughbred Percheron stallion that cost $2,800 and has a good residence 
property in Tulare, to which city he moved in order to better educate his 
children. 
 
     In 1891 Mr. Setliff married Miss Nannie Gully, a daughter of Bryant Gully, 
who lives eight miles south of Tulare, and she died in 1898, having borne him 
three children, Russell, Guy and Nannie. Russell has passed away. In 1901 he 
married Miss Lydia Garrett, a native of Mississippi, and to this union was born 
a son, Roland. Mr. Setliff was married a third time. On August 2, 1910, Mrs. 
Azaela Nicholson, of Tulare, became his wife. She is a daughter of Silas R. 
Gully, of Tulare. As a citizen Mr. Setliff takes a public-spirited interest in 
the community and in a fraternal way he affiliates with the Odd Fellows, the 
Elks and the Woodmen of the World. 
 
SOURCE:  History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical 
Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913  Pp 469, 470