California Biographies 

Source:
History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California
by: C M Gidney - Santa Barbara. Benjamin Brooks - San Luis Obispo. 
Edwin M Sheridan - Ventura
Volumes II - Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL., 1917

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


FRANK A. DUDLEY. The early life of Mr. Frank A. Dudley, of Ventura, was largely spent in the 
State of Wisconsin. He had a variety of experience there, as a farm worker, as a clerk, and as a 
manufacturer. When he arrived in Ventura in 1902 he spent one year working on a stock ranch. 
Buying an interest in the Ventura Grocery Company of Ventura, he gave five years of his time 
and experience to that business and made a success of it. His ambition all the while was to 
secure a place among the growers of the staple crops of this wonderful section of California. 
After selling his interest in the grocery store at Ventura he bought ten acres in the Mound 
District. In 1908 another purchase gave him twenty-two acres adjoining the first tract, and in 
1910 another adjoining ten acres. This now constitutes a splendid fruit farm, all of it being 
planted in walnuts and lima beans, with the exception of a few acres around his beautiful 
home, where he has a family orchard that produces a great variety of fruit.
Mr. Dudley has made himself a factor in the civic affairs of Ventura, and for a number of years 
was one of the board of directors of the Ventura Chautauqua Association. He did much to build 
up that organization and is still vitally interested in it. He is a republican and a Methodist.
He was born at Ladoga in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, May 21, 1872, a son of Charles R. and 
Lucy Jeanette (Hawkins) Dudley. He has three brothers living, as follows: William Herbert 
Dudley of Minneapolis, Minnesota, born October 18, 1863; Fred Harlan Dudley of Fond du Lac, 
Wisconsin, born March 26, 1866, and Elbert Werden Dudley of Mukwonago, Wisconsin, born 
October 17, 1868. In 1874, when he was two years of age, his parents moved out to Lee County, 
Iowa, but in 1878 went back to Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, and settled on a farm at 
Lamartine. It was there that Frank A. Dudley spent his early years. During the winter he 
attended public school and in the summer assisted his father on the home farm. That was his 
manner of life until he was thirteen, and he then began earning his own way and has been the 
architect of his destiny and quite successfully judged from the present results. Going to the City 
of Fond du Lac, he found employment there as a grocery clerk until 1894, and then entered the 
service of the Badger Sewing Company. This was a factory for the manufacture of overalls. The 
first two years he was their shipping clerk, and then took the management of one of the factory 
floors until 1902.
At Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, June 7, 1894, Mr. Dudley married Ruth S. Willis. Mrs. Dudley, who 
died in Ventura, was survived by one daughter, Lillian Mae, who is now nineteen years of age 
and is attending the State Normal School at San Jose. For his second wife Mr. Dudley was 
married in Ventura November 11, 1906, to Mrs. Etta Florence Goodyear. By her first marriage 
she has two children, Theodore Wright and Laurie Knox.