Tulare County Biographies

George W. Wyllie

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

 
Immediately adjoining Dinuba on the southwest lies Karnak, the home of Mr. 
Wyllie and declared by competent judges to be as fine a vineyard as California 
may boast.  With the exception of five acres devoted to buildings, lawns and 
gardens, the entire tract of one hundred and sixty acres is under cultivation to 
grapes, fifty-five acres being in Muscats, twenty-five in the seedless variety, 
twenty-five acres in Malaga table grapes and fifty in Emperor table grapes.  To 
facilitate the work he erected a large and well-equipped packing house, where 
shipments are prepared for the eastern markets.  Although the place has been in 
its present owner�s possession for a few years only, such has been the energy 
and judgment with which he has superintended the vines that in the third year he 
shipped fifteen carloads and in the fourth year shipped more than forty cars, 
when under ordinary circumstances few or no shipments would have been possible.  
One of the improvements on the place, and which shows him to be an excellent 
carpenter and mason, is a stone bridge across the canal flanked with substantial 
stone piers and finished with a solid wall each way.
The Wyllie family came from Scotland.  John Wyllie, who was a native of 
Edinburgh, became a pioneer farmer of Lee County Iowa, where he improved a tract 
of three hundred and twenty acres until it was considered the best farm in the 
entire county.  On that place he remained until his death in 1872.  After coming 
to America he married Sarah Best, who was born in Illinois, of an old 
Pennsylvania family, and now makes her home in Los Bans, Merced County, 
California.  They were the parents of three sons and three daughters, of whom 
two daughters are deceased.  Of the sons Frank makes his home in Riverdale, 
Cal., James M. lives near Gilroy, and George W. resides near Dinuba.  
The last-named, who was second among the children, was born near Keokuk, Lee 
County, Iowa, February 12, 1856, and as a boy lived with his parents in a log 
cabin, meanwhile attending common schools and the Denmark Academy.  When 
twenty-one years of age he came to California and for three years taught school 
in Sutter County, then was similarly employed in Colfax, Cal., and later went to 
Santa Rosa, where he bought a fruit farm.  The climate did not prove 
satisfactory, but the soil was excellent.  At the time of the New Orleans 
exposition he sent there a pumpkin, weighing two hundred and twelve pounds, and 
so large that he could not reach around it so as to lift it from the ground.  
The pumpkin contained a statement that it was raised on his farm.  A visitor at 
the exposition noticed and admired the pumpkin and on coming to California later 
visited the farm and bought it from Mr. Wyllie.
In 1884, after selling, Mr. Wyllie moved to Fresno County and bought one hundred 
and sixty acres three and one-half miles southeast of Fresno, which he improved, 
at the same time for a year acting as vice-principal of the Fresno school, and 
for one year being principal of the Washington Colony.  The place cost him 
$4,000 and two years later, after he had set out a vineyard and sown a large 
acreage of alfalfa, he sold it for $14,000.  
His next location was near Fresno, where he bought forty acres at $250 per acre. 
 The land was wholly destitute of improvements.  Soon he had forty acres in 
Muscat grapes, which he carefully cultivated until it brought him large crops 
year after year and enabled him to sell raisins profitably during all the hard 
times.  In 1899 he sold the place for $14,000 cash, god, which was the largest 
price ever paid up to that time for a forty-acre vineyard.  Afterward for four 
years he rented the place of the new owner, whom he paid ten per cent on $14,000 
per year as rental.  
Meanwhile, in 1900, he bought three hundred and twenty acres on section 18 
southwest of Dinuba, and here he erected a house in 1903 and brought his family. 
 Since coming to this place he has sold a quarter section in twenty-acre colony 
lots and the balance of the acreage, with the except of five acres, is under 
grape culture.  Ever since the organization of the Raisin Growers� Association, 
in which he was warmly interested, he has been active in its work, as indeed in 
all movements allied with the industry to which he devotes his attention.  In 
religion he is of the United Presbyterian faith and in politics he favors 
Prohibition principles.  
In Salinas, Cal., he married Miss Emma E. Nichols, who was born at Dutch Flat, 
Placer County, Cal., her father, George, having been miner in early days and 
later a merchant.  The children of their union are Roy (a student in the 
University of California,) Eva M., Minnie L., Mable, Carrie Irene, Kirby Ray and 
Corinne[2], who are with the parents on the Dinuba homestead.[3]
 
Additional Notes on G. W. Wyllie
Compiled by his granddaughter, Suzanne Bell Bolton, from newspaper articles and 
his obituary.
 
            The Wyllie Mansion, as it is still known in Dinuba, was named Karnak 
Vineyard.  (Picture attached).  At the time of his death on April 2, 1942, the 
estate was owned by the Alta Post of the American Legion.  The Legion Bowl was 
situated on part of the former Karnak Vineyard.  Wyllie also built the Karnak 
Block at the corner of L and Tulare Streets in Dinuba which housed the United 
States National Bank, of which he was a large stockholder and president for many 
years.  The Bank of America later occupied the site.  Mr. and Mrs. Wyllie 
occupied Karnak Vineyard until 1927.  Mrs. Wyllie died in 1933.
            George W. Wyllie was elected to the California state legislature in 
1908.  He served two terms during which he became widely known as the father of 
the Wyllie Act, a local option law which bore his name.  
            On Monday, March 29, 1915, Wyllie suffered near fatal injuries as a 
result of a premature explosion of a dynamite cap while he was inspecting his 
orange grove at Orange Cove.  Many of the area newspapers as well as San 
Francisco papers reported the accident.  Initial reports indicated that Wyllie 
might die.  �His injuries include a fractured ankle, the nose blown from the 
face, severe lacerations of the head, shoulders and arms, and a badly wrenched 
back.  Mr. Wyllie, with his workmen on the ranch, were blasting holes for orange 
trees on the former assemblyman�s Orange Cove ranch.  While tamping in a charge 
of dynamite in one hole, Mr. Wyllie received the full force of the explosion 
that cam prematurely.� [Visalia Delta, Tuesday, March 30, 1915]  Wyllie suffered 
permanent damage to his eyes and was blind for the remainder of his life.  
 
[1]       Guinn, James Miller.  History of the State of California and 
Biographical Record of the San Joaquin Valley, California: An Historical Story 
of the State�s Marvelous Growth from its Earliest Settlement to the Present 
Time.  The Chapman Publishing Co. (1905). p. 1371-1372.
 [2]       Corinne Wyllie died around the age of two and is buried with her 
parents in the family plot in the Washington Colony Cemetery near Fresno.  Her 
gravestone is marked �Infant Wyllie.�
 [3]       In 1903, following the compilation of the Guinn book, G.W. and Emma 
Wyllie had another daughter, Dorothy Vernon Wyllie.  Dorothy married Robert 
Cleland Cochran and remained in Dinuba until her death in 1989.
  
Biography, notes, and photos submitted by Suzanne Bolton, �2006.