Butte County
Biographies
HALLIE K. SEARS
H. K. SEARS.—A man of both native and developed worth, who is more and more taking a prominent and guiding part in business affairs in Butte County, is H. K. Sears, who was born in the bustling city of Grand Rapids, Mich. He is the son of H. A. Sears, a native of Albany, N. Y., who served in the Civil War as a volunteer, in the Twenty-first Regiment, Michigan Volunteer Infantry, and as a prisoner saw the inside of Libby Prison. After the war he followed the work of a high-class undertaker. He died in May, 1916. Mrs. Sears was Miss Nettie Willyard. She was born in Ohio, and is still living at Grand Rapids, the mother of four children, of whom the subject was the oldest, and the only one to come to California.
Born on February 19, 1870, H. K. Sears attended the grammar and high schools, graduating from the latter, and thereafter remained at home until he was twenty years of age. Then he went to Chicago, where he engaged in railroad work, and for nine years was with the Chicago and Northern Pacific Railroad, becoming their special agent. While there, he started a mail-order business, and incorporated the same as the Chicago Specialty Company. From 1895 he was busily engaged in building up a growing business, but in 1903 he sold his interests and came to California.
In March, 1895, Mr. Sears arrived in Chico and purchased a ranch near the town, which he conducted for a year, and then started in the real estate business. He put on the market several subdivisions, selling out the Barnard tract and handling the Paradise Orchard tract of nearly four hundred acres, a hundred forty-six acres of which had been set out to Bartlett pears before it was disposed of. He was also interested in disposing of the Richvale colony, of thirteen thousand acres, now rice lands, all of which were successfully negotiated. A number of small subdivisions, such as Fruitvale Addition, Nos. 1 and 2, were next taken up and sold with profit. He also does a large business in fire, life and accident insurance, and conveyancing, and is a notary public.
Mr. Sears is vice-president of Sacramento Valley Hospital Association, and was one of those who organized the hospital at Eighth and Chestnut Streets seven years ago. He is secretary and treasurer of the Big Butte Drift Placer Mines, located twenty-two miles out, on the west bank of Butte Creek; and for the last eight or nine years he has been a director of the Business Men’s Association. In national politics he is a Republican.
In 1891, Mr. Sears was married in Grand Rapids to Miss Augusta M. Edwards, a native of Boston. He was made a Mason in Chico Lodge, No. 111, F. & A. M., in 1907. Mrs. Sears is a member of the Baptist Church.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1328-1329, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2010 Sharon Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies