San Joaquin County
Biographies
CHARLES KIMBALL BAILEY
CHARLES KIMBALL BAILEY, a
rancher of Douglass Township, was born in Andover, Massachusetts, June 9, 1830,
a son of Samuel and Prudence (Farmer) Bailey. The father, a Massachusetts
farmer, lived to be seventy-five, and the mother sixty-three years. Grandmother
Bailey was over eighty years old when she died, and her brother, Jesse Trull,
was eighty-five years old. Grandfather Bailey also died at an advanced age. The
Bailey, Farmer and Trull families are believed to be long settled in New
England.
C. K. Bailey went to School more or less
until the age of twenty years, but after he reached the age of fourteen he
drove a market wagon in spare hours, and when there was no school. His father
was a farmer and market gardener, and the son had early opportunity to learn
the business. In 1851 he went to work in a grocery store in Lowell, and in June
1853, he came to California by the Nicaragua route. After one month in San
Francisco he went to mining at Mokelumne Hill, and followed that business in
that section for nearly ten years. After six years’ mining he could have wound
up with about $8,000, but going into larger ventures the net result was about
one-quarter of that amount when he quit, January 1, 1863.
Mr. Bailey was married at Mokelumne Hill,
January 8, 1863, to Miss Mary E. Belknap, born in Missouri, March 4, 1846, a
daughter of James D. and Rachel (Rhoads) Belknap. They came to California in
1850. The mother, a native of Pennsylvania, is now living in Tulare City, aged
about seventy years, and grandmother Barbara Rhoads (?) is living in Kansas at
the age of nearly 100 years.
In 1863 Mr. Bailey bought 160 acres of
land in partnership with C. W. Carpenter, a comrade of six years’ standing, and
in 1865, 208 acres adjoining on the Calaveras, in Douglass Township. In 1871
and afterward they added 3,300 acres north of that river, and over 1,500 acres
in another county, for summer pasture. On the home place 368 acres are devoted
to grain and horse raising. Of these he there raises annually about thirty-five
head, besides a herd of 160 to 170 head elsewhere. Mr. Carpenter died in 1883,
aged fifty-seven years, and bequeathed his property to Mr. Bailey’s children,
but the will has been contested by his relatives.
Mr. and Mrs. C. K. Bailey are the parents
of five children, viz: Nettie Orilla, born July 28, 1866, now Mrs. L. M.
Walker, of Delano, Kern County, has two children--Gladdis Orilla and an unnamed
baby boy; Addie Mabel, born April 5, 1868, now Mrs. E. D. Middlekauff, of
Stockton; Hattie Maud, born December 25, 1869, Edward Franklin, October 18,
1873; and Mamie Ethel, November 30, 1881.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County, California,
Pages 628-629. Lewis Pub. Co. Chicago,
Illinois 1890.
© 2009 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County
Biographies
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County
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