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


  
CHARLES H. WILLARD.  This is the name of a Ventura County pioneer, one who was worthily 
and successfully identified with the ranching and civic interests in and around Santa Paula for 
nearly half a century.
Born in Illinois March 7, 1842, he had his first training in the public schools of his native state, 
and at the age of nineteen years in 1851 came across the plains with his parents, who settled 
as farmers in Napa County, California. There he grew to manhood, and in 1866 he came to 
Southern California and located on a 160 acres of Government land in Ventura County. While 
bringing this land into a state of cultivation he engaged in freighting business between Los 
Angeles and Ventura County. This old homestead is situated four miles east of the present City 
of Santa Paula and in the Santa Clara Valley. He did his part in reclaiming a part of that 
beautiful and fertile valley to the uses of civilization and modern agriculture, and was a 
general farmer there for a great many years. In 1901 he bought 150 acres adjoining his 
homestead, and in 1902 acquired twelve acres of timber land also adjoining. Of the old 
homestead thirty acres was planted in fruit trees, and the rest was devoted to the culture of 
beans, grain, hay and pasture. This land has suffered considerable damage by floods.
 
In 1912 Charles H. Willard having then attained the age of seventy retired from active farming 
and lived in Santa Paula until his death on March 24, 1916. He was a member of the 
Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a republican, and belonged to the Universalist faith.
 
In Ventura on August 3, 1863, he married Harriet Atwood. Mr. Willard, a native of Carroll 
County, Missouri, is the daughter of another California pioneer, William Turner. He was born 
in Carroll County, Missouri, January 1, 1819, two years before Missouri became a state, and 
his parents were thus in the vanguard of pioneers who pushed forward across the Mississippi 
Valley during the early part of the nineteenth century. Reared and educated in Missouri, 
William Turner was a farmer there until 1850, when he joined in the great exodus to the gold 
fields of California, crossed the plains, locating in Placer County was an active farmer in that 
district until 1866. In that year he removed to Mendocino County, where he continued 
farming, and subsequently came to Santa Barbara County. He lived there until the early '80s 
and then removed to Santa Paula, where he was connected with various business concerns 
until his death in 1901, when past eighty years of age.