Tulare County Biographies

Enoch Work

Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn

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

 
     It was on Cache creek, Yolo county, that Enoch Work was born November 8, 
1851, a son of Hopkins and Martha (Parker) Work, natives respectively of 
Tennessee and Kentucky. They came across the plains with ox-teams from the 
latter state in 1849, stopping at Hangtown and later at Georgetown and 
eventually moved to Yolo county, whence they came in 1959 to Tulare county and 
settled near Kaweah. The elder Work engaged in farming and stock-raising in that 
neighborhood and prospered there until 1873, when he homesteaded land on Mill 
Creek, Fresno county, but soon relinquished the title which was taken and 
perfected by his son Enoch. He bought an additional one hundred and sixty acres, 
increasing his holding to three hundred and twenty acres. This property they 
improved and it has been the family home to this time. When they came, only the 
Baker and Turner families lived in the neighborhood and there was no settlement 
at Dunlap. Cattle and horses roamed everywhere at will, there was an abundance 
of wild game and bear were so plentiful that Mr. Work lassoed one in the road 
and led him home, a feat which his cousin soon duplicated. These animals were 
made food for hogs. The early settlers killed many deer. 
 
     One hundred acres of Mr. Work�s land is devoted to farming, nine acres to 
orchard, peaches, pears and apples being the principal fruit, the remainder 
being under timber and pasture grass. He keeps thirty head of horses and cattle 
and one hundred and fifty hogs. 
 
     In politics Mr. Work is non-partisan. As a citizen he is public-spirited 
and helpful and he was for some time school trustee in the Mill Creek district. 
He married, in Drum valley, Miss Anna Fenwick, a native of Illinois. They have 
ten children: Angeline, Polly, Sarah Nettie, Thomas, Nicholas, Leora, Alma, 
Daisy, Orville and June. Angeline married Frank Hutchinson and bore him a son 
and a daughter; J. W. Howell is her present husband. Polly married W. L. McElroy 
and has two children. Sarah Nettie is the wife of C. H. McElroy and has one son. 
Thomas married Alma B. Howell and they have one child. Leora is the wife of 
Frank McHaley. Two of the younger children of Mr. Work are attending school. 
 
SOURCE:  History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical 
Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913, Pp 507, 508