Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 3 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 8

A perfect type of the attractive American, sturdy of body and a giant in intellect, and with little wonder, when one learns of his relation by blood to the family of Rowells, so eminently connected with the development and history of Fresno County, is Andrew Abbott, who owns a finely-improved ranch of eighty acres, on Adams Avenue, two and a half miles south of Del Rey. He came to California on January 18, 1879, and landed at Fresno with just eighteen dollars and twenty-five cents in his pocket. Since then he has faced such hard times, together with thousands of others caught in the vortex, that he was compelled to part with his farm-lands; but by a brilliant stroke he was successful in buying the property back, and in making of it what no one in the beginning thought it would ever prove to be.

He was born in the White Oak country, seven miles northwest of Bloomington, Ill., on his father's farm, for he was the son of Milo J. Abbott, who descended from English stock that traces its ancestry back to the Mayflower, and came from New Hampshire. He is a cousin of the late A. A. Rowell and also Dr. Rowell, whose lives are sketched elsewhere in this work, and a second cousin of Chester H. Rowell, the distinguished journalist and scholar. Having first seen the light on January 12, 1854, he was educated in the public schools of McLean County, Ill., and at the business college in Bloomington; and then he worked at home on the farm until he was twenty-one. Frank Rowell, his cousin, at that time offered him work on his farm; and he accepted, and he continued five years.

California made its irresistible appeal about that period, and on the sixth of January, 1879, he took the train for the far West. Twelve days later he walked about Fresno, or what there was of it then, for the town had scarcely begun to grow. He lost no time in finding something to do; and again he entered the service of a relative. His cousin, George B. Rowell, wanted him in the sheep business; and to sheep-raising he turned, getting more than a start, for, as was customary with him in all that he did, he learned the business thoroughly.

In 1883, Mr. Abbott was married to Miss Addie Barnes, a native of Chico, and a daughter of G. W. Barnes, and after the ceremony, he went with his bride to the Washington Colony, where he had acquired, the year before, a twenty-acre tract of land. It was at best a humble home: but assisted by his good wife, he planted it to vines and trees, and made there a domicile in which they were happy.

After a while, however, he sold that place and then bought the forty acres where he makes his present home, afterwards adding forty acres immediately adjoining on the west. All of this choice land he long since leveled and otherwise improved, and planted; and there he built, in 1908, a beautiful one-story cement bungalow, 33 by 60 feet in size. He is a member of the California Associated Raisin Company, and cooperates enthusiastically in its work for the advancement of California vineyarding.

Mrs. Abbott passed away on September 8, 1917, at the age of fifty-three, and to the sorrow of many. She left a daughter, Georgia, who is the wife of Anderson R. Miner, and lives in Fowler with her five children — George A., James H., Eleanor, Anderson R., Jr., and Mary. Mr. Abbott attends the First Presbyterian Church at Fowler, and for twenty years he has been a Knight of Pythias — first at Fowler, then at Selma. He still endeavors to practice the Golden. Rule; and perhaps this is why Fate has so happily smiled upon him that the ranch he lost in the early nineties, and was enabled a few months afterward to buy back, he has been asked to part with for almost $100,000.