Madera County Biographies

W. H. WERFIELD

Transcribed by Craig A Hahn

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

     The subject of this sketch stands prominently forth among the active young 
men of Madera, and through his colony system he is doing much towards developing 
that part of the valley. He was born in Shamokin, Northumberland County, 
Pennsylvania, in 1856. His father, Henry Werfield, was a well-known mining 
expert of that locality, and after forty-five years of anthracite coal mining, 
he came to California in 1890 and is now settled upon a forty-acre ranch, 
southwest of Madera, which he is improving in vines and trees. 
     After a common school education, young Werfield took up the study of 
mechanical engineering, in which he became very proficient and which he followed 
very successfully in the mining districts of Pennsylvania until 1881. With a 
desire for travel and a broader development, he then visited the Western States 
and located in Denver, Colorado, and engaged in the real estate business. In 
1885 he returned to Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, where he accepted the position of 
general time keeper with the Susquehanna Coal Co., a position of great 
responsibility, as the list of laborers numbered 4,500 hands. After four years 
of faithful service he resigned his position for the purpose of coming to 
California and entering into the colonization business at Madera, as president 
of the first colony organized in that locality, which was incorporated in 
September, 1889. The colony was a success from its inception, which was largely 
due to the extensive business acquaintances and executive ability of its able 
president. On October 10, 1890, Mr. Werfield resigned his position, and then 
organized the Border Farm Colony, to which he   now gives his undivided 
attention. This colony land consists of 640 acres, and is considered of the 
finest land in Fresno County. It has been subdivided in blocks of five acres and 
upwards, and according to the system, the purchaser can pay for setting and 
cultivation of vines and allow the fruit to pay for the land; or he can pay for 
the land, receive deed, and direct his own improvements. Mr. Werfield began his 
improvements on January 15, 1891, and on March 21, 1891, he completed the 
planting of 420 acres, a large portion of which was already sold to colonists, 
the balance of land to be set in the spring of 1892. Mr. Werfield will continue 
a general colonization and real estate business in both ranch and city property. 
He was married, in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1882, to Miss Janet S. Nesbit, 
a native of Pennsylvania, but of Scotch descent.  
     Mr. Werfield is an energetic, progressive and careful business man. He 
enjoys the respect and confidence of all who know him, and he has proved himself 
an enterprising and valuable citizen. 
 
Memorial and Biographical History of the counties of Fresno, Tulare and Kern, 
California Chicago, The Lewis Publishing Company, 1892, p. 748-749