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


WALTER W. VARNER.  Something more than the average ability and energy have 
characterized the career of Walter W. Varner. In 1897 he entered the service of the Limonera 
Company. He was assigned to duty as a lemon packer. He showed a capacity for responsibility, 
was efficient and intelligent in the handling of every task committed to him, and has been one 
of the vital factors in the success of that great organization which controls the largest lemon 
orchard in California. In 1910 he was promoted to foreman of the 412-acre lemon grove, and 
that position means one of the most important executive responsibilities in connection with the 
citrus fruit industry of Southern California. Mr. Varner is unmarried, has his home at the 
Limonera Ranch, and in politics is a republican.
 
He was born in Clearwater, Minnesota, May 5, 1865, but has lived in California over forty 
years. He attended school until he was seventeen, and then entered the service of the Santa 
Paula Flour Mill Company where he was employed under his father for two years. After that 
he worked on various farms in Ventura County until in 1897 he entered the service of the 
Limonera Company.
 
His father is Mr. Clark L. Varner, who was born in Harveysburg, Ohio, March 29, 1839. 
Educated in his native locality, he went out in 1854 to Jordan, Minnesota, where he was a 
pioneer in that northwestern territory. Learning the milling business, he followed it in various 
places in Minnesota, and coming out to California in 1874 accepted the position of miller with 
the Golden Gate Flour Mill Company at San Francisco. After two years he came into Southern 
California and for nine years was miller with the Santa Paula Flour Mill Company at Santa 
Paula. For a number of years he has lived retired on a ranch near Santa Paula. In 1863 at 
Farmington, Minnesota, Clark L. Varner married Miss Mattie Niskern, a native of New York 
State and a daughter of Martin Niskern. Walter W. Varner is their only child.