Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 3 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 14

Honored and conspicuous as one of Selma's oldest living pioneers, it is easy to comprehend why Major M. Sides has become Selma's foremost financier and equally distinguished as a highly representative citizen. He was born seven miles southeast of Perryville, Perry County, Mo., on January 27, 1838, and grew up on a farm in Missouri where his father, Elihu Sides, died when the lad was only six years old. The father had come to Missouri when he was a young man, a member of a family that came from England and was settled here before the .American Revolution. Elihu Sides was a native of North Carolina, and married Miss Daisy Welker. She died at the old homestead in Missouri, about 1875, aged seventy years or more, and her native state was Missouri. At the death of her husband, Mrs. Sides was left to provide for six children: Almina, the eldest, is the widow of Lawson Miller, and resides in Chicago. Marshall married and lived in Missouri, where he farmed the old Sides' place: he was taken with pneumonia and died, at the age of sixty, leaving a widow and a son. Marion, (christened Newton Marion Sides) is the subject of our review. Belfina became the wife of Frank Nance; she lived, married and died in Perry County, Mo., dwelling on a farm, and left two children. Veries, the fifth in order of birth, served in Company M of the Missouri State Militia for three years, and then reenlisted; he married in Missouri, and has four children, and he is now in the Soldiers' Home at Sawtelle. Harry is a farmer in Perry County. Mo., is married and has several children.

Growing up on the little sixty-acre farm that the father left, Marion had to live economically. He stayed at home until he was twenty-one, to help his mother, having in the meantime a chance to go to school for only three or four winters and for three or four months of each season, and hardly was he ready to push out for himself when the Civil War came on. He at once enlisted in Company M of the Missouri State Militia, where Captain Lee Whybark appointed him sergeant; and having served for three years, he entered Company D of the Forty-eighth Missouri Volunteer Infantry, and there arose to the position of Quartermaster of the regiment, was duly commissioned Major and has since borne that title. He was mustered out in Chicago, and honorably discharged in April, 1865, at the close of the war.

After the long, hard service in the field, Major Sides went home to Perry County, and there returned to the plow, farming in Missouri for ten years. He next moved to Dent County, and married the girl with whom he had become acquainted during the war, while he was encamped in that county. After their marriage they lived awhile in Missouri: and being taken up by his neighbors, Major Sides was elected to the legislature from Dent County, and reelected, serving two terms.

Stimulated by what he read in the newspapers as to the completion of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railways, and about the Golden State in general, Major Sides sold his farm and came to California with his wife and two children. He first went to Petaluma, Sonoma County, and from there came down to Ivingsburg, Fresno County, to look around; and so favorably was he impressed with the southern end of Fresno County that he wrote his wife to join him with the children. When he arrived in Fresno County, about December 20, 1875, there was no Selma, and even Fresno City had only about three hundred people, and there were scarcely fifteen to twenty families at Kingsburg. He therefore came up toward what is now Selma, and took up a soldier's homestead of 160 acres, two and a half miles north of the present town site. The Southern Pacific Railroad graded its lands at that time, and he bought a half section the second year, which later became the home of T. B. Mathews.

Major Sides was among the first to foresee the necessity for irrigation, and that the settlers must have water if they were to do much with their land. He accordingly helped to build the Centerville and Kingsburg Ditch. He took one share in the ditch and he worked off the payments with his span of horses, doing the excavating himself. Meanwhile, when he was gone all the week, and returned only Saturday nights, he left his wife and family in the little cabin on the homestead. But he was healthy, happy and hopeful, and little by little "grew up with the country." He saw the switch built at Selma, and he has seen every building go up in the town. He has also welcomed everybody and everything, including the packing houses of Libby, McNeill & Libby, and the organization of the raisin and other associations.

As is, elsewhere told in the more detailed story of the First National Bank of Selma. Major Sides helped organize the first bank here, namely a state bank called the Bank of Selma, which later became the First National Bank, and for some time he has been the head of the First National. Besides being a director in the Selma Savings Bank, he is also a stockholder in the First National Bank of Fresno; the First National Bank of Kingsburg; the First National Bank of Fowler; the First National Bank of Caruthers, and the First National Bank of Sanger. However, he has been mainly engaged in farming and horticulture. For eight or ten years he was a grain-farmer; and when the ditches were built, he became a pioneer horticulturist, having planted some of the first peaches as well as the first grapes. He has thus improved several ranches, bringing each to a high state of perfection, planting and cultivating in all over 500 acres.

Major Sides was twice married. His first wife was Miss Casander Mathews, a native of Dent County. Mo., the daughter of Mrs. Birchie Mathews, a widow, and the mother of T. B. Mathews, sketched elsewhere in this work. Mrs. Sides died in 1893, the mother of two children: Ira, who died when he was twenty-one years old; and Effie, who married C. F. Walker, and had one child, which also died. True to his first wife's dying request, he deeded 120 acres of land to her brothers and sisters, that they might be properly provided for. By his second marriage. Major Sides became the husband of Miss Ollie M. Davies, a native of Tennessee, in which state she was brought up, being educated at the Lebanon College for Girls. She came to Selma about twenty-five years ago, and the following year was married. Two sons blessed their union, the elder being Douglass R. Sides, a graduate of the Selma High School and the University of California, and the younger, Thomas Marion, who is a graduate of the Mt. Tamalpais Military Academy and will go to the State University in the fall of 1919. Douglass, who was in the base hospital service abroad for eighteen months, returned from France in May, 1919, safe and sound, and was honorably discharged.

Major Sides was brought up in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, but Mrs. Sides and her family were Presbyterians, and in that church she is a member of the Ladies' Aid Society, and also an active Red Cross worker. The Major helped to erect the first building occupied by the Presbyterian congregation of Selma, a small and unpretentious house of worship, in California style, on the site of the present magnificent brick edifice, costing $30,000, at the corner of Selma and Mill Streets, which is the third church home put up on that spot. He also helped to build the second church building, which was a good-sized frame structure, and for twenty years he has served on the board of trustees. He built his fine residence at 1333 East Street, Selma, in 1904, and there, roundabout, he has twenty acres, ten on each side of the road. A safe, conservative and excellent business man, and a most patriotic citizen. Major Sides has repeatedly been urged, since coming to California, to accept public office, and as repeatedly he has declined the honor: yet, in the light of his actual record as soldier and private citizen commissioned with important affairs, where could a Californian he found more imbued with the conviction that public office is a public trust, and that honor lies in service to fellowmen?