Butte County
Biographies
HERBERT LOSEE
In the fore rank of successful almond-growers in Butte County is Herbert Losee, probably the first to demonstrate the success of the smudging enterprise. Mr. Losee was born near Schenectady, N. Y., in 1854. His father was John Losee, a farmer and one of the pioneers of Marshall County, Ill. Two of his sons served in the Civil War, one in the Sixty-ninth New York Regiment and one in the Navy. The mother was Harriette Grawburgh, born in New York.
Herbert Losee, the second youngest child in the family, was fourteen years old when his father emigrated to Illinois. He began to work on the farm when very young and had a limited education in the public schools of New York and Illinois. His first trip to California was in 1872, when he came to Butte County, and was employed in the building of the Bank of Chico, the old Methodist Episcopal Church, Water and Gas Works and other constructions. Mr. Losee was a charter member of the Chico Fire Department in the days of the old hand engine, and also a member of the Coast Artillery. Mr. Losee then leased land belonging to the Pratt Grant and engaged in the raising of grain. After having lived seven years in California, he returned to the East, filed on a homestead in Valley County, Nebraska, proved up, and was engaged for the next twenty years in the raising of grain and stock. Mr. Losee believes that his greatest mistake was the taking of this claim, as it was always an expense and never yielded returns as land worth an investment would have done.
In 1901 he sold his land and, the lure of the West still with him, he came to Chico and bought thirty acres of stubble field on the Bidwell tract. Here he set out twenty acres in Nonpareil, Drakes, and Peerless almonds, and ten acres in peaches and apricots, later replanting the ten acres to almonds. He has installed an electric pumping plant of sufficient capacity to irrigate his orchards. Other smaller orchards of from two to ten acres were purchased by Mr. Losee, kept a few yeas and sold at a profit. He has selected places for his children and his keen business judgment has been a valuable asset.
The installation of a smudging system, placing thirty-five hundred smudge pots, burning crude oil, at various intervals throughout the orchard, was an experiment that proved to be a success and is now generally used. Concrete tanks, with a capacity of fourteen thousand gallons, are built for the storage of the oil used in smudging. Mr. Losee also has a blower spray outfit and is able to use his own at about one half the cost of hiring it done. He has built a comfortable residence and otherwise improved his ranch with facilities for doing the work.
Mr. Losee was married in Valley County, Neb., to Miss Sadie Smith, born in Venango County, Pa. She was a graduate of the Franklin (Pa.) high school and was a teacher until her marriage. Her father was John Smith and her mother, Elize (Uskey) Smith, both born in Center County, Pa. Mrs. Losee came to Nebraska in 1882 to take up a homestead and it was there she met Mr. Losee and was married. Four children were born to them: Harriet, a graduate of the Chico high school and the Chico State Normal, is now a teacher in the Chico Vecino school; Talmage is a horticulturist and has a forty-acre ranch at East Biggs, ten acres of which is in almonds and the balance planted in alfalfa; Alfred is assisting his father; Mary is a graduate of the high school and the State Normal, and is engaged in teaching.
Mr. Losee is interested in the horticultural progress of the county, in which he takes an active part. He is a Republican.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1299-1300, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Joyce Rugeroni.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County
Biographies