Tulare County Biographies

E. K. WALLS

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        Among the successful ranchmen and packers of Tulare county, none 
occupies a higher place in the esteem of his fellowmen than E. K. Walls of 
Lindsay. He was born in Racine, Wisconsin, on the 19th day of August, 1878, and 
is of Scottish descent, his father, Thomas Walls, having been a native of that 
country, and from that country also came the ancestors of his mother, whose 
maiden name was Harriet McClellan. Thomas Walls was an iron-molder by trade and 
was an industrious and highly respected man.
        After E. K. Walls had completed his public school education, he served 
an apprenticeship to the moulder's trade, which vocation he followed a number of 
years in Racine, the New England states and San Francisco, coming to California 
in 1903. Quitting the iron business in San Francisco, he went to San Jose and 
engaged in the poultry business until 1909, when he came to Lindsay and until 
1912 was employed in local orchards. In 1912 he bought his first orchard, in 
which he was successful, and subsequently bought and sold a number of fruit 
ranches. He is now the owner of five orange groves, comprising sixty-eight 
acres, and also owns ten acres of plums. He has been particularly successful in 
raising and handling oranges. For a number of years he was a director and vice 
president of the Lindsay Packing Company, but is now the owner of a packing 
plant, which he bought in 1925 from Captain A. F. Hutchinson of Palo Alto. The 
capacity of the plant is six cars a day and all fruit will be shipped through 
the Lindsay Merryman Citrus Exchange. He intends to also do commercial packing 
of fruit. He owns 68 acres of oranges, and manages, including his own, five 
hundred and eighteen acres�three hundred and twenty acres of Rockford Lindsay as 
supervisor, mostly vineyard; the balance is all citrus.
        Mr. Walls was married in Lindsay to Miss Cora Maranville, who is a 
native of Iowa, born June 14, 1880, but was reared in Chicago. Mr. Walls belongs 
to the Masonic fraternity, in which he has taken all the degrees of the Yoke 
Rite, including that of Knights Templar, and he is past master of the blue lodge 
known as Lindsay Lodge No. 416. He also belongs to the Sciots, while he and his 
wife are members of the Order of the Eastern Star. They are also both active 
members of the Presbyterian church. Mr. Walls is a genial and accommodating man 
in his relations with his fellowmen, by whom he is held in the highest regard. 
He is public-spirited and takes an active part in advancing every movement for 
the betterment of the community and its development along all normal lines.
 
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. 154