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


JOHN LEMASTERS. The postmaster of Kern, Kern county, Cal., was born in Shelby 
countv, Ind., February 14, 1846, and lived in the Hoosier state until coming to California in 1890. 
His father, Henry Lemasters. was born in Ohio, and during his busy career illustrated the typical 
ambitious and successful middle west farmer. Left an orphan at an early age, he was taken to 
Indiana when six years old, and there was reared on a farm and educated in the early subscrip- 
tion schools. Embarking on an independent career, he gained in lands and influence, finally 
owning five hundred and forty acres of land, valued at $200 an acre. He lived to be seventy-two 
years old. 

The breaking out of the Civil war found John Lemasters busily engaged on his father's farm, 
but he did not enlist until 1864, when he became a soldier in Company E, One Hundred and Thir- 
ty-second Indiana Infantry. He saw little of actual warfare, however, for he was mustered out 
at the end of four months, and returned to the occupation for which he had a natural liking. At 
the age of twenty-one, in 1867, he married Belle Endecott, who was born in Kentucky and re- 
moved to Indiana with her parents when five years old. Settling on a farm of his own in 
Shelby county, he continued to farm and raise stock' successfully, and upon arriving in Cal- 
ifornia in the fall of 1890, purchased two acres of land in Rosedale, Kern county, and soon after- 
ward became identified with the Kern County Land Company as a fence-building contractor. 
After four years with the company he moved to Bakersfield 'and lived there for two years, com- 
ing then to Kern, where he speculated in mines until his appointment to the postmastership in 
March, 1898. Since then he has conscientiously and satisfactorily discharged the affairs of the 
office at this point, and has taken his place as a progressive and liberal-minded citizen. He has 
voted the Republican ticket since attaining his majority, and is a member of the Grand Army of 
the Republic. Mr. Lemaster's son, Roy, is a clerk in the postoffice, and his daughter, Mary, 
is the wife of John F. Parish, of Ogden, Utah. Mr. Lemasters is popular and genial, a well-in- 
formed and generous man.