California Biographies Source: History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present (1919) History By Paul E. Vandor Illustrated, Complete In Two Volumes Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1919 Notes: Missing+page1185-1186 Transcribed by Peggy Hooper This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm SAMUEL B. WILLIAMS. � A prominent man in both religious and political councils, as much of a giant intellectually and morally as he is physically � for he stands six feet two inches high, and weighs 215 pounds, a superb specimen of real manhood � is Samuel B. Williams, once widely known as deputy sheriff, and now very successful as a rancher, road super- visor and director-at-large of the Fresno County Farm Bureau. He was born in Bedford County, Tenn., seven miles northwest of Shelbyville, and his earliest recollections revert to Fall Creek, where as a boy he enjoyed with his father his favorite pastime of fishing. In Bedford County he first saw the light on August 25, 1872, and growing up in the Volunteer State, he mi- grated to California alone, bidding adieu, in his twentieth year, to father and home, on July 28. 1892. He was practically only a boy when he left the parental roof, with his through railway fare, a present from his father, and five dollars sewed into a coonskin bag secured around his body. The blessings of his mother, and two quilts worked by her, also accompanied him. Thus equipped, he stepped upon the stage of life's actual work at Tipton, Cal., where he arrived on August 3, 1892. He worked for forty-two days there, and then he left tor Fresno City. At Fresno he entered the employ of old Dr. W. J. Prather, and ran the yard and stables of the vineyard for six months. The job was hard, long and exacting, and the pay was exceptionally small, and what he received was given him on worse than the installment plan. He took it out, in fact, in dentistry and an old shot-gun ; for he received no money for all that he had done. It is needless to say that it was only a matter of time and he left the old doctor's employ. On March 2, 1893, he came over to the West Side and entered the employ of William Wilkinson, with whom he remained for six months ; and there he learned to drive the harvester. Finishing Wilkinson's harvest, on September 3, he went to Olney Whiteside's ranch and worked for him until after the harvest in 1895. He then began to work for Samuel B. Williams, and he never expects to be employed again for anybody else. He "bached" for four years, prepared and ate his own cooking, and still survived. On November 9, 1899, however, he was married to Miss Lena E. Whiteside, and since then he has had a very good boarding-house and a comfortable stopping-place. He made his first purchase, a tract of eighty acres, in 1895, and rented besides. He started with a six-horse team � six young horses which he had purchased for ninety dollars� paying also $110 for collars and harness to go with them. That was in the blessed days of the Grover Cleveland admin- istration, but he stayed with the job and won out. He rented 600 acres be- sides his own eighty. Then he sold the eighty and bought 130 on the West Side, and afterwards sold that. Still later he purchased, in 1905, the 240 acres where his house now stands. This was then all raw land � not a stroke of improvement on the acreage. He built his house, a fine large two-story frame, hard-plastered structure, well furnished with modern conveniences, putting it up in 1906 at a cost of $4,000. He built two barns and an Indiana silo, forty feet high, with a capac- ity of 105 tons. In 1917, also, he put down an artesian well, sinking it to the second water-level at 1,040 feet, so that he has a flow of 125 gallons per minute. He has a fifteen-horsepower R. & V. distillate engine which pumps the water into tanks, and thence it passes by means of the gravity system, into the house, barns and troughs, and for irrigation. Besides his home ranch, he operates about 700 acres which he rents. His largest crop for any year was 9,000 sacks of wheat, or eighteen sacks to an acre, harvested in 1901, but the financial returns were not as great, as in other years, since he was able to sell it for only eighty-five cents a hundred-weight. Perhaps 1917 was his most prosperous year, for he then made $30,000. His parents both died in Tennessee; his father died where he was born, on the old Williams place, in 1900, aged seventy-two years, and the mother in 1903, in her sixty-eighth year. They had fifteen children, of whom four- teen grew up, among whom there are two ministers in the Missionary Bap- tist Church. Grandfather Williams was born in North Carolina, and Grand- father Tune, the progenitor of Mrs. Williams, was born in Halifax County. Ya. His mother was Sarah Ann Tune before her marriage, and she was a native of Tennessee. Both these families reach back in an interesting way in Ameri- can history. The Williamses are of an old Colonial-American family, and figured in the Revolutionary War and in the formative period of the nation ; while Grandfather Tune was a soldier in the Mexican War. Samuel B. Wil- liams is the twelfth child, and the baby of the family is Jarmon W. Williams, a vineyardist near Clovis. He and Samuel are the only ones in Fresno County. Samuel attended the public schools of Tennessee, where he received a fair educational drill, the many benefits of which are seen in his subsequent prosperity. He owns and uses two autos, and he owns and runs one com- bined Holt harvester and thresher, a thirty-two-horsepower machine. He has recently purchased a twenty-five-horsepower Yuba tractor to pull it. and he also hires a tractor at times to plow. He has thirty brood mares, and breeds and raises mules, and he has three Spanish jacks, and he has thirty- five head of colts, mules and work-horses. He boasts a big team of eight draft horses, and hires out horses and mules, and he has received $8,000 in rentals from the said eight-horse team inside of three years. He is also en- gaged in breeding registered prize-taking Hampshire hogs. Mr. Williams has served as road supervisor in the Helm road section of the Fourth Supervisorial District for the past sixteen years, and he is still on the job there also. He has served as deputy state warden. He is also on the school board and the ditch board. He has just been appointed director- at-large of the Fresno County Farm Bureau. A Democrat in national poli- tics, Mr. Williams works without partisanship in any good cause designed to benefit the community. He is the presiding officer of the San Joaquin Valley Baptist Association, and is on the board of directors of the Northern Cali- fornia Baptist Association. He has been a Sunday school superintendent for a quarter of a century. He has also been a generous supporter of Indian missions in California, under the Baptist Church. In matters political as in religious. Mr. Williams contends strongly for what is right and just, or what he thinks may be so, and when land specu- lators sought to charge the lands of private individuals in this section with a tax of approximately seventeen dollars per acre for alleged reclamation bene- fits, Mr. Williams was the leader to take the side of the smaller landowners, organized the defense, and won out, and thereby won the gratitude of his friends and neighbors. Mr. Williams was brought up a strict Baptist in Tennessee, by Christian parents, and he contributes liberally of his means to the work of that denom- ination, in which he has become a pillar of strength. He is a man of clean and correct habits, and neither drinks, smokes nor chews, and, with a rare spiritual vision, seems to get on the right side of every moral and political question, and then he has the courage of his convictions. His strong execu- tive force has called him to leadership in church and state, and he gave $2,000 to the Baptist Indian Missions of California. He is on the board of the Nipinimuwsa Mission in Mariposa County, and he has been furnishing the money to build the mission. The Indians call him Big Chief, and clap him on the back, for all that he does for them. An Indian girl of the Mono tribe, named Miss Mattie Jackson, has been taken into the family of Mr. Williams. and attends the New Hope School, where he is a trustee. At the thirty-eighth annual session of the San Joaquin Valley Baptist Association, held in the Fowler Baptist Church, from April 30 to May 3, 1918, Mr. Williams delivered a stirring address. Another key-note address was delivered by Mr. Williams at Tulare, on the occasion of the Thirty-ninth Session, April 15, 1919, and his words are truly prophetic of that better day which Christian people have looked forward to ever since the days of Christ � a kingdom of love and right- eousness, which is surely dawning.