California Biographies Transcribed by Peggy Hooper This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm Source: 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. Prof. James Miller Guinn , A. M. The Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago 1905 Notes: Missing Page: 865-866,983-984,1175-1176 WILLIAM JACKSON BERRY. Noteworthy among the substantial residents of Fresno county is William Jackson Berry, one of the leading business men of Selma. He has been actively identi- fied with the development and promotion of the oil interests of this section of the state, and it is largely owing to his energy and practical judgment that this industry has been so suc- cessfully launched and maintained. The agricultural prosperity of the locality is likewise partly due to his efforts in establishing irrigation and assisting in cutting ditches. A son of Hugh C. Berry, he was born June 14, 1840, in Washington county, Mo. Hugh C. Berry was a man of education and culture, and a noted mathematician. During his early manhood he was a teacher in Washington county, Mo., and had among his pupils the young lady that subsequently married Mr. Apperson, and became the mother of Mrs. Phoebe Hearst. Moving to Texas after the close of the Civil war, he located on Fall river, near Gran- bury, and there, with his son Hugh, spent his remaining days, dying at an advanced age. He married Harriet A. Johnson, who was born in North Carolina, and moved with her parents to Washington county, Mo., when a child. She bore her husband nine sons and three daughters. of whom William Jackson was the third child. Reared to manhood in his native state, William Jackson Berry acquired a practical common- school education. In 1861, with the bravery and ambition born of a daring spirit, he joined the party commanded by Captain Brawley, and came with ox-teams across the plains, following the wagon trail through Utah and Nevada. Stopping at Carson City, he secured a position as driver for the remaining distance, thus paying his way along. At Sportsman's Hall he was snowed in for a while, and chopped wood for his board. After a journey of five months he arrived in California, and the two following winters was employed in mining at Nigger flat and Smith's flat, Eldorado county. In the spring of 1862 he bought four yoke of oxen, the price being $1,034. Giving $180 in cash, he paid the balance on the installment plan, and embarked in teaming and freighting. In 1864 he located in Mendocino county, and on the completion of the railway sold his oxen and bought a tract of land in Little Lake valley. In 1874, with two companions, he drove to the present site of the city of Selma, and helped survey this part of Fresno county. In 1875 he also surveyed Mendocino school district, which he named for the county, and there took up at first one-half section of government land, and subsequently obtained possession of a whole section of railroad land. This party of surveyors in Fresno county located a stake in Kings river, and by measuring a wagon wheel, and locating a point, drove twelve miles, not missing the line a hundred yards, the accuracy of their survey being afterward tested and proved. When Mr. Berry settled in Fresno county he bought three hundred and twenty acres of land lying three miles east, and two miles north, of Selma, and subsequently purchased a tract equally as large adjoining his original purchase, and began his career as a general farmer. At that time, in 1875, water being very scarce, he became one of twenty-four men to contract with the Fresno Canal and Irrigation Company for water rights for each individual member for cutting a ditch through the Long Cut, two and one-half miles above Centreville. When completed, the ditch was twelve hundred and forty yards long, thirteen feet deep, sixty feet on the bottom, and let water into Fancher creek channel, and from that into Lone Tree channel. In 1878 Mr. Berry helped cut the Centerville and Kingsburg canal, which still supplies that part of the county with water for irrigating purposes, and in 1883 was one of the promoters of the Fowler Switch canal. Taking up his residence in the city of Selma in 1888, Mr. Berry built up a good business as a real estate agent, continuing it a number of years. Going with his sons to Alaska in 1898, he assisted them in locating and buying claims, being successful in his operations. On his re- turn to Selma, in the fall of that year, he became identified with the development of the oil in- dustry, becoming one of its organizers, and the president, of the Eldorado Oil Company, which leases four hundred and eighty acres of land from the Kern Valley Bank, and one hundred and sixty acres to the Kern River Oil Company, and to fifteen other companies. Mr. Berry is also actively identified with the management of several other leading oil companies, being a director in Our Own Oil Company ; the Berry Oil & Development Company, which owns three sections of oil land in Kern county, and in the Washington City Oil Company. In 1863, in California, Mr. Berry married Anna Coates, a daughter of George I. Coates, who came to California in 1862, and they have six children, namely: H. F., of Alaska; Clarence J., a sketch of whose life may be found on another page of this work ; Henry, of Los Angeles ; Frederick, living near Selma ; Cora, wife of R. J. Skilton, of Selma ; and Nellie, wife of Harry Smith, of Burlingame. Politically Mr. Berry was formerly an adherent of the Demo- cratic party, but is now a strong Republican. He is very prominent in fraternal circles, being a charter member of three lodges, namely : Vineland Lodge, No. 66, K. P., of Fresno; Kings- burg Lodge, No. 7, K.P., which he has represented in the Grand Lodge ; and Selma Lodge, No. 155, K. P. He belongs to Fresno Lodge No. 439, B. P. O. E., and also the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Elks.