Tehama
County
Biographies
WALTER C. SMITH
An
example of the development of fruit culture and poultry and egg production in
Tehama county is the success attained by Walter C.
Smith, whose beautiful ranch is situated on the Pacific highway three miles
from Corning, California. Mr. Smith is a
type of the intelligent, industrious and modern rancher who has made such great
strides in the live stock and fruit industries of Tehama county,
and who has brought this section into prominence on the entire western
coast. Not only in business pursuits has
Mr. Smith won recognition for he has also been active in affairs of his home
city and county, and has engaged actively in church work.
Walter
C. Smith was born at Cleveland, Ohio, January 29, 1886, a son of Ludwig and Ana
(Goertz) Smith, both of whom were born in Germany. The mother died in California, in 1924, but
Ludwig Smith resides at San Leandro, California where he is a machinist. They had five children: William, who lives at Newton Falls, Ohio;
Louis, a resident of San Diego, California; Walter C.; Grace, in the purchasing
department of the Montgomery, Ward & Company store at San Leandro, California;
and Lester R., who is teaching in the high school at Wasco, California.
Walter
C. Smith was educated in grade and high schools of Ohio, graduating from the
latter in 1903. In that year he came
directly to California, and settled on his present farm, in Tehama county. He now owns
forty acres and farms one hundred additional acres, on which he has peaches,
Queen olives, Imperial prunes and apricots.
He raises White Leghorn chickens for eggs and production, and turns out
over one hundred thousand chicks each year.
He has his own breeding stock and hatching eggs, and his chicks are of
the high-grade 3A variety. He has two
thousand hens to supply his incubators, and has a brooder capacity for four
thousand chicks, and other modern facilities.
Mr. Smith will make shipments to various places within a radius of sixty
hours from his ranch. He culls his flock
and adds fifteen hundred new hens each year, also engages in custom hatching of
turkey or any other eggs which are brought to him for this purpose. Mr. Smith is president and a director of the
Corning Fruit Company, which operates a modern dehydrating plant. The choice fruit is canned and the less
desirable fruit is dehydrated, thus giving the growers all possible profit on
their product. Mr. Smith is also a
director of the Maywood Packing Company.
In
1910 Mr. Smith married Miss Verne M. Nichols, of Kansas, a daughter of George
E. Nichols, formerly a printer of Corning, but now deceased. Mr. and Mrs. Smith are the parents of two
children, Shirley Fay and Mildred Mae, now attending the Corning high
school. Interested in the affairs of the
Corning Presbyterian Church, he is now superintendent of the Sunday school and
an elder in the church. His wife teaches
a class in the Sunday school, and takes a part in all the church
activities. In politics, Mr. Smith is a
Republican, and he is now serving as president of the high school board of
Corning. He is a member of the Rotary
Club, the Woodmen of the World, and the Modern Woodmen of America.
Transcribed by
Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
Wooldridge, J.W.Major History of Sacramento Valley
California, Vol. 3 Pages 260-261. Pioneer Historical
Publishing Co. Chicago 1931.
© 2010
Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden
Nugget Library's Tehama County Biographies