Tulare County Biographies

SWAIN THORWALDSON

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        On an orange ranch of thirty-four acres, one mile east of Exeter, 
California, lives Swain Thorwaldson, a native of Iceland, where he was born on 
May 25, 1875, of Old Norse stock. In 1881 his people came to the United States 
and settled on a farm in what is now the state of North Dakota. There he 
received a common school education and afterward became prominent in the 
agricultural, mercantile and political affairs of Pembina county.
        In 1908 Mr. Thorwaldson organized the Mountain State Bank, of Mountain, 
North Dakota, of which he was a director and cashier until 1917. In 1907 and 
part of 1908 he was engaged in business as a merchant, and from 1898 to 1907 he 
was auditor and deputy auditor of Pembina county. Upon retiring from the banking 
business in 1917 he took over a farm which he conducted until 1920, when he sold 
out and came to California. For a little while he lived in Fresno, but in June, 
1920, he bought the place where he now resides and returned to North Dakota for 
his family. Since then he has brought his land to a high state of cultivation 
and raises a fine quality of oranges. He also has a small vineyard with which he 
has been quite successful.
        Mr. Thorwaldson is a director of the Mayflower Fruit Association of 
Exeter, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Tulare County Farm Bureau and 
the Modern Woodmen of America. In North Dakota he married Miss Kristbjorg 
Johnson, a native of Iceland, and they have six children : Waldimar S., now 
assistant cashier of the First National Bank of Porterville ; Nicoline, at home 
; Alice V., a clerk in the First National Bank of Exeter ; Hilda, a student in 
the Exeter high school, and Pauline and Annie, attending grammar school.
 
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. 468