Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 6 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 15

A successful engineer widely experienced in the use of gas and steam engines and all kinds of pumps, who is highly esteemed as a citizen and neighbor, is Richard Beverly Condley, in charge of valuable properties for the Union Oil Company on the Clairmont, Ardell, Coalinga 8 and Security leases. He was born in Marshall, Saline County, Mo., on March 28, 1872, and came to California in the late nineties.

His father was David Mack Condley, a native of Arkansas who became a farmer in Saline County, Mo., moved to Napa, Cal., but returned to the Iron State, and finally died there at Marshall. His devoted wife, who was Martha Barnett before her marriage, had been born in Benton County and also died in .Missouri. Three girls and one boy were born of this union, and all are in California.

Richard, the oldest, was reared on a farm in Saline County and there educated at the public schools, remaining home until he was twenty-one. At Marshall, on March 28, 1893, he married Miss Ethel Hinton, a native of that place, and the daughter of David and Clara (Parks) Hinton, born respectively in Indiana and Pennsylvania. She came in her youth to Missouri with her parents and there married. Her father was a machinist and a stationary engineer, and was engaged in threshing, shelling corn, and manufacturing lumber for which work he ran a saw mill at Miami, on the Missouri River. Both father and mother are living at Marshall. Six children grew up, and two are in California; and Mrs. Condley is the second oldest of these.

From 1893 until 1897 Mr. Condley engaged in farming in Saline County, Mo., and then he came west to Hanford, Cal., where he entered the employ for a short time of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Then he put in four years with the winery of George West & Sons, at Hanford, and after that he removed to Bakersfield and took up work as a machinist helper for the Associated Oil Company in the Kern River Field. Continuing there, he also worked as a gas and steam engineer and a practical pump man, but after seven years, he resigned.

When the Lake View gusher No. 1 was struck, he went to Maricopa as a machinist for the Union Oil, and for several years he had charge of their machinery. In 1912 he was transferred in the same capacity to the Coalinga field, and here he has been ever since.

Four children have blessed the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Condley — each of whom has thus far done some good work to honor the family name: Charles is also with the Union Oil, assisting his father, and is married to Eva Urnburn; Lucy, now Mrs. G. C. Work, lives at Oilfields, and has one child, Robert Beverly; and Edna and David are in the Coalinga Union High School. Mr. Condley belongs to the Woodmen of the World at Bakersfield.