Butte County
Biographies
CHARLES C. BRUCE
CHARLES C. BRUCE.—For a number of years past the attention of many of the enterprising citizens of Chico and vicinity has turned more particularly to horticulture, as it became more generally known that this section was especially well adapted to the growing of peaches, prunes, etc. Charles C. Bruce is one of the many well known and successful horticulturists of Chico. He was born in 1862, on Edgar Slough, one and one half miles from Chico. John Bruce, his father, came across the plains to California. (See his brother W. H. Bruce’s sketch.)
Charles C. Bruce was the fifth youngest of eleven children, ten of whom are living. He was brought up on a ranch and received his education in the public schools in Chico and at Woodman’s Academy. He remained at home until he was twenty-three years old. On September 21, 1884, at Davis Creek, Modoc County, he was married to Miss Josephine Austin, who was born at Slate Creek, near Quincy, Plumas County, Cal. Her father, J. T. Austin, was born December 9, 1837, in Jackson County, Mo. He removed from Missouri to Kansas, where he married Mrs. Rebecca (Smith) Leonard, who was born in Illinois. Her father served a short time in the Civil War and participated in the raid against General Price. In 1864, Mr. Austin came to Plumas County, Cal., via Panama, where he engaged in mining, remaining there until 1883, when he removed to Modoc County and purchased three hundred twenty acres of land. In that same year grandfather Robert Austin came to California, making his home with his son till his death, at the advanced age of ninety-five. In 1909, J. T. Austin sold his ranch and located at Chico Vecion, where he and his wife now reside, aged eighty-three and eighty-five respectively. Mrs. Bruce’s mother in early life taught school in Missouri. Her first husband was Dr. Leonard, and she studied medicine under his tutelage and was of great assistance to the pioneer settlers, as there was no physician nearer than Fort Bidwell or Alturas. She was frequently called to attend the sick and relieve the suffering. She was one of California’s first botanists, and wrote many articles on the flora and fauna of California. She was a great student and had hundreds of plants from all over the world. Mrs. Austin was associated with all the prominent botanists of the Old as well as the New World, in correspondence, and she also enjoyed a personal acquaintance with many of them. She knew Prof. Asa Gray, Sir J. D. Hooker, B. S. Jones, and Mrs. Brandegee. She had one child by her first union, Mary, Mrs. Hail, of Quincy. By her second marriage there were two children: Mrs. Bruce and James Oliver, who died in 1898.
Mrs. Charles Bruce taught school till her marriage. She devote much time to gathering specimens for the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, D. C., collecting and mounting seventeen hundred specimens in one year, but finally discontinued the work on account of her health. After his marriage, Mr. Bruce followed ranching for a time at Chico, and then moved to Goose Lake Valley, Modoc County, where he continued ranching for five years. Meantime he had purchased one hundred sixty acres near Lakeview, which he later sold, and then returned to Chico, where he resumed ranching. In 1906, he bought his present home place of ten acres on Eighth Avenue, set to prunes and peaches; he also bought sixteen acres on Oakway and set it to prunes and peaches. This he afterward sold, and bought sixty-five acres, fifty-three acres of which they set to prunes and almonds.
Mr. Bruce and his good wife find the business of horticulture both interesting and profitable. They have four children: Chester A., in Washington; Mildred, who is a graduate of Chico State Normal and Santa Barbara Normal, and who was a teacher of Domestic Science at Palo Alto High School for four years, and is now the wife of Prof. F. A. Scofield, of Palo Alto; Charles Oliver, who is a graduate of Chico State Normal, and who was a teacher in Berkeley; and Carlton J., a student in Chico High School.
Mr. Bruce was formerly school trustee of Little Chico School District and also of Davis Creek School District, Modoc County. He is a member of the California Prune and Apricot Grower’s Association. Mr. and Mrs. Bruce are active members of the Presbyterian Church.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1157-1158, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Sharon
Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies