SARAHAMOONEYMUSEUM.ORG - Key Persons

Aaron Sylvester Mooney was born on July 10, 1846 in New York state. He married Sarah Ann Buck on August 20, 1867 in Manistee, Manistee county, Michigan. Aaron, wife Sarah, and their three-year-old-daughter, Harriet, departed from Michigan, in 1876 to make a new home in California. Having heard of the opportunities in land ownership along the lower reaches of the Kings River in Tulare County, they arrived in the Lemoore area in 1876, where they decided to settle and engage in merchandising and farming. Mooney became the first funeral director in Lemoore. Aaron Mooney died on November 28, 1912. His wife Sarah died on October 8, 1925. Both Aaron and Sarah are buried in the Lemoore Cemetery

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board of Directors

Job Titles:

• Vice President of the Board of Directors

Job Titles:

• Historian
• Member of the Board of Directors

Job Titles:

• Member of the Associate Board

Byron K. Sweetland came to the Tulare county area in 1874. For 21 years he was a member of the firm of Fox & Sweetland, the principal merchandising firm of Lemoore at that time. The business was dissolved in 1901. He kept the business while Joel Fox kept the ranch east of Lemoore. He eventually sold his interests to William Scally and retired from active business life. He married Laura Ellen Moore, a daughter of Dr. Lovern Lee Moore, in Sturgis, St Joseph County, Michigan, on January 2 1871. She died on August 22, 1907 of pulmonary tuberculosis in Fresno, California. They had two daughters, Mabel Ellen and Eulavelle. Sweetland was a member of the Fox and Sweetland orchestra where he played the guitar. Other members included Lynn Fox, son of Julius and Emma Fox, violin; Edwin Pattee, coronet; and A. S. Mapes, guitar, among others. The orchestra played at many events throughout the county. Byron K. Sweetland, passed away at the home of his sister, Mrs. Orrie Wonder, in Pasadena, Friday, March 15, 1929. His death followed an illness of about a week's duration. He was 81 years of age. The remains of the pioneer was shipped to the Phipps Mortuary at Lemoore, where the funeral was held Tuesday afternoon March 19 at 2 o'clock. The services were officiated by the Welcome Lodge, No. 255, F. and A. M. of Lemoore, of which he a member. Cremation will follow. He is buried in the Lemoore Cemetery in Section 1, Block 9, Lot 3 - 4.

Job Titles:

• Treasurer of the Board of Directors

Job Titles:

• Member of the Associate Board

Dr. Benjamin Hamilin was born January 20, 1824 in Massachusetts. When he was seven years old his family moved to Lorain county, Ohio. He taught school to meet living expenses while under the preceptorship 1 of Dr. Hubbard, earning his M.D. degree in 1847 at Angola, Stuben county, Indiana, where he practiced medicine for 10 years.

Edward Erlanger was born in Marburg, Germany on June 15, 1852. His parents were Moritz and Roesgen Erlanger. Moritrz was a banker and merchant at Marburg. His father and ancestors were bankers. He was educated at Marburg University. In 1868 Edward was employed by the Vereins Bank at Frankfurt on Main. He remained in their employ until he was drafted into the army for the Franco-Prussian war where he served in the ambulance corps. After the war was over in 1870 Edward sailed to the United States arriving in New York in October. Then traveling by easy stages through the South, visiting Old and New Mexico, Erlanger arrived in San Francisco in 1871. Through letters of credit, he then visited the leading banking houses, with a view of studying the American banking system, to apply in his own country on his return. In February, 1872, Erlanger sailed to the Sandwich Islands, now known as the Hawaiian Islands, the beginning of a round the world tour, but was taken sick at Honolulu, and sailed back to San Francisco, where he lay in the German Hospital for many months. Erlanger sought the warm climate of the San Joaquin Valley for his convalescing. In Visalia, Erlanger met Louis Einstein, of Einstein & Jacobs, and was employed by them as bookkeeper at their store at Kingston, then a prominent trading point in the San Joaquin Valley. Erlanger remained in Kingston until 1877, when the town of Lemoore was organized after the railroad was completed. While in Kingston after Christmas in 1873, just after dark, the bandit gang of the notorious Tiburcio Vasquez left their horses, under guard, north of the river and crossed the bridge on foot. They tied up Erlanger and thirty seven other men and robbed them. The bandits made off with twenty five hundred dollars and they disappeared into the night. On November 6, 1877 he was appointed as postmaster of Kinston. He remained postmaster until March 19, 1878. At a certain age all the young men of Germany were obliged to enter the army, and upon his recovery Edward Erlanger discovered that it was too late for him to return, as he would be considered a deserter. At this time he began working toward becoming an American citizen, which would allow him to be enabled to return home at will. Erlanger attended the Lemoore auction sale in the spring, purchased property, and in the fall came to work as a bookkeeper for J. J. Mack & Co., General Merchandise. In 1878 he opened a general merchandise store and built the Park House Hotel. In the same year he built the first Masonic and Odd Fellows Hall - both of which were destroyed in the fire of 1882, except his stock of merchandise which had been moved to another locality. Although he did lose a valuable scientific library with a collection of curiosities which he had gathered in his travels in the fire. He resumed his business in Erlanger Hall, where the mercantile business was run in the front and a dance hall in the rear. Erlanger retired from mercantile life in 1884 with the intention of returning to Germany, but began studying law in the office of Judge Jacobs, where he stayed until Jacobs was elected Superior Court Judge. Erlanger then opened an office and conducted general law. Erlanger also handled real estate, insurance and was a notary. He also was associated in real estate with Otto Brandt. In 1891 Erlanger began his standard-bred 1 horse endeavour by buying twenty-six standard-bred broodmares. He called his farm the Royal Rose Breeding Farm. Erlanger's health began failing and from 1893 to 1895 he lost a great deal of his real estate holdings. He was able to able to have a fairly good law practice and keep his horses. For two years he was a deputy assessor under Granville Weston Follett. In 1895 Erlanger again branched out as a farmer and stock-raiser and bought considerable property in and around Lemoore. An outcome of his love for horses he raised Toggles, a trotting gelding, which for three years was the fastest horse in its class, taking all records in the state. In 1906 Erlanger was elected justice of the peace and was the city recorder. Erlanger surrounded himself with many pets. Besides the horses he had many dogs and birds. One of the birds "Old Abe was a full grown California bald eagle. Reportedly an agent from the Smithsonian Institution had a picture taken and sent to Washington where an artist created the design for the five and ten dollar gold pieces. On February 9, 1920 Edward Erlanger died. He is interred in the Lemoore Cemetery. His cousin, Fredrich Emil, Baron d'Erlanger, on October 3, 1864 married Marguerite Mathilde Slidell the daughter of John Slidell, the Ambassador of the Confederate States of America at the court of Emperor Napoleon III. Unlike other German and European banks Fredrich bet on the southern states during the American Civil War. In the late 1870s Fredrich invested in the British enterprise Alabama Great Southern Railway Company Limited which funded the takeover of Alabama Great Southern Railway and Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway (CNO&TP). This railroad net, also known as "Erlanger System", consisted of over 1,100 miles.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board of Directors
• Social Media

Granville Weston Follett was born at Madison, Lake County, Ohio, September 25th, 1834. In his early life he migrated to Fremont, Indiana, where he remained 12 years. While in Fremont he became a clerk in a store there. Eventually the store was bought by Dr. Lovern L. Moore, who admitted him to a partnership in the business. During this partnership, Granville was a boarder in More's home. The association continued until he sold out his interests in Indiana and went to Granville, Iowa. There he conducted a general merchandise business six years, and during that time he also was appointed to the office of Postmaster on October 15, 1867.

Joel Fox was born in Hadley, Hampshire county, Massachusetts, in 1819. In January 1845 he was married to Miss Sarah Barry of Vermont in Orland, Steuben county, Indiana. They had 4 children. Before the Civil War, Orland was know as an important stop on the underground railway. Family history says that Joel himself was a conductor. Joel crossed the continent by wagon in 1850 with the gold-seekers, staying in California for four years, when he returned to Indiana. In 1867 he and Sarah moved to Sturgis, Michigan, where he engaged in the merchandise business until 1875. He, at the age of 55, and Sarah, with their children, again came to California and became a partner with Byron Sweetland creating Fox and Sweetland. Along with purchasing property they became the principal merchandising business of Lemoore. They remained partners until 1901 when after 21 years the business was dissolved with Sweetland keeping the business and Fox keeping the ranch. The ranch was a quarter section located at the southeast corner of Bush Street and Lemoore Avenue, across from Moore's Addition. This became the location of the new Lemoore High School. While the Southern Pacific Railroad company held the rights to the odd-numbered sections about the time the Fox family arrived, they were not allowed to sell any of the sections until the tracks were laid in early 1877. The SPRR withdrew the property from the market, and according to his obituary in the Hanford Weekly Sentinel "in harmony with their ideas of justice", gave him the property his little home was built on. Joel was serving on the Tulare county Board of Supervisors in 1893 when Kings county was formed so he was appointed to the Kings county Board of Supervisors, as he was already serving on the Tulare county Board of Supervisors Joel Fox died at the the age of 85 on January 30, 1905. Sarah died shortly after on April 4, 1905. Each of their services where held from the home of their son Julius Fox. Both Joel and Sarah are buried in the Lemoore Cemetery.

John Leopold Kurtz was born on November 15, 1837 in Germany. He learned the shoemaker trade at a young age. He immigrated to America to Philadelphia in 1855 and worked as a shoemaker. Hearing about cheap land in 1858 he moved to Illinois and worked for wages. He left for California in 1861 driving a mule team for Eli Walker arriving at Sutterville in the Sacramento valley on November 10, 1861. Kurtz found work on a fruit ranch owned by a Mr. Rich where he worked for 6 years. In 1867 he married Mary Lucretia Wyman. In October of 1869 with his wife and baby, John Edward, they came to Tulare county and prempted 160 acres of land north of Lemoore with nothing more than $45 and a horse and wagon. This northeast quarter of section 26, Township 18 South, Range 20 East. Today this would be about half a mile north of Lacey Blvd. on the west side of 17th. They built a small house and cooked on an open fire. For his first wheat crop John had to go the 30 miles to Visalia for the seed. The area was subject to overflow and with Tulare lake being close he built a levee to keep the water from flooding his land in the spring. While he continued to farm wheat he purchase 320 acres of land north of his property. In 1878 they built their permanent home on the ranch. By 1886 the fruit industry had grown into prominence and so Kurtz, along with half a section under wheat, began growing pears, peaches, nectarines, apricots, and French prunes on thirty acres. Also on seventy acres he had a vineyard of raisin grapes. John became the president of the Lemoore Fruit Packing Company As their holding grew, so did the family. John and Mary had a total of 17 children. Besides John Edward, there were Frank Bernhard, Marguerite Ellen (Maggie), George Washington, Andrew Foster, William Wallace, Louisa Wilhelmina (Mene), Sarah Magdeline, Lena, Otto Leopold, Freddie Alvin, Lester Charles, Edwin Henry (Eddie), Olive Ambrose, Raymond Richard, Ida Lucretia, and Mary Athlone. Several of the children died at a young age. John died on July 9, 1913 and was interred in the Lemoore Cemetery. At the time of his death thirteen of his children were still alive.

Joseph Edward Meadows was born July 10, 1869 in Ontario, Canada. He arrived in California in November 1890 after a 14 day freight train trip with the family's household goods and livestock. His father and the rest of the family arrived a month later and they settled on the West Side, near the newly formed community of Huron. Mr. Meadows education prior to coming to California consisted of three years in public school and a brief course at a business college. In 1891 while working on the family farm he enrolled in the Lemoore Grammar school at the age of 21. In 1892 he entered business college and normal school at Stockton and at the end of the year was granted certificates to teach in San Joaquin, Tulare and Fresno counties. On June 26, 1893, Joseph Edward Meadows, was granted the first certificate issued in Kings County shortly after the county was formed in 1893. At that time the responsibility of teacher certification was the responsibility of the counties. Certificates were issued to graduates of colleges or normal schools or upon passing of tests in subject matter and teaching methods prepared by the County Superintendent of Schools. Mr. Meadows began his teaching career in the Zorro School on the West Side. In 1898 with his brother James Waldo Meadows moved to Sacramento to open a school supply store, eventually returning to Kings County. In Kings County he has been the principle of the Eureka, Kings River, Sunset, Empire and Lemoore Elementary school. He was district superintendent of the Hanford Elementary schools and Kings county superintendent of schools for three terms; from 1914 through 1918 and from 1934 through 1942. It was through his efforts that a law was passed authorizing the county superintendent to employ a school nurse.

Julius H. Fox was born in Steuben county, Indiana, on the 23d day of October, 1846, the son of Joel A. and Sarah G. (Barry) Fox, the former of whom was a native of Massachusetts and the latter of Vermont. He was reared and educated in his native county and at the age of eighteen years he enlisted in the Eleventh Regiment of Michigan Volunteer Infantry. This was near the close of the war, but he saw some active service in the south before the end of the struggle. In 1868 Mr. Fox was married, in Sturgis, Michigan, to Miss Emma Moore, the daughter of Dr. Lovern Lee Moore. Julius Fox took up a soldier's homestead and filed a preemption claim 1 on a piece of land between Traver and Dinuba, in Tulare county, and gave his attention to the farming of this land. Later the family moved to the spot where Lemoore now stands and in 1877, in connection with Dr. L. L. Moore, the father bought one hundred and sixty acres near by and Julius Fox's father in law, Dr. L. Lee Moore, bought one hundred and sixty acres on the present site of the city. Mr. Fox was the owner of two valuable and highly improved ranches, of eighty and one hundred and forty acres respectively. In 1924 he sold twenty one acres, the site of the new Lemoore Union high school, for twenty one thousand dollars. For twenty two years Mr. Fox was a member of the leading mercantile firm in Lemoore, he and B. K. Sweetland forming the well known firm of Fox & Sweetland. They sold their business in 1906. Mr. Fox has taken an active part in practically all local public movements and has been honored in various ways. He was an alternate delegate to the Republican National convention at Chicago which nominated Theodore Roosevelt for the presidency; was a member of the board of supervisors of Tulare county in 1890, and became chairman of the first board of supervisors of Kings county after the organization of the county in 1893; is a member of the board of directors of the First National Bank of Lemoore; and was formerly a director of the Kings River Ditch Company. He was a member of the school board of Lemoore at the time of the construction of the first modern school building erected here. Julius and Emma have a son, Lynn, who is an accomplished musician and successful violin teacher. Mrs. Lynn Fox is a popular teacher in the Lemoore schools. Mr. Fox was a charter member of the Lemoore Masonic lodge and there is but one other surviving charter member. He is a past master of his lodge. He is also a charter member of the Masonic Club of San Francisco. He was one of the founders of Union Post, Grand Army of the Republic, in Lemoore.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Associate Board

Lyman Follett was born in Iowa on August 21, 1869, a son of Granville ‘W. and Lucy (Abel) Follett. It was in July, 1875, that Lyman L. Follett came with his father to the site of Lemoore. He was then about six years old. He was reared at Lemoore and educated in a public school there and in the high school at San Francisco, then took up steam-engineering and ran engines twenty-two years in stationary work as well as in harvesting and similar operations. In 1909 he engaged in the insurance business at Lemoore in connection with real estate operations and since then has done much conveyancing and officiated as notary public. In November. 1911, he was appointed city clerk and sewer inspector of Lemoore. He served as deputy-assessor of Kings county under his father and was city assessor of Hanford in 1900. Mr. Follett was formerly a member of the Ancient Order of United Workmen, and his social affiliations now are with the Woodmen of the World, the Red Men and the Knights of Pythias. He died October 25, 1925 in Hanford. In 1894 Follett married Miss Sarah Lumire "Kate" Esery, a native of California, a daughter of Jonathan and Sarah A. Esery, and she died November 20, 1908, they had four children: Charles Granville, La Verne, Helen Eileen and Ernest.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board of Directors
• Corresponding Secretary

Job Titles:

• President of the Board of Directors

Moses David Bush was born on a farm beside the Hudson River in Ulster County, New York. When but nine years of age he was orphaned and became self-supporting, working on a farm, where he grew up, and experiencing many hardships which fitted him for his subsequent career as a pioneer. While young he went to the shores of Lake Michigan where Chicago and conducted a boarding house, becoming the owner of a tract of a hundred and sixty acres upon which the house stood. Bush was married to Emily E. Randall, March 7, 1843, in Boone county, Illinois. He went to Allamakee county, Iowa, where he engaged in farming and practiced surveying, assisting in running the boundary line between Minnesota and Iowa. In 1861 he brought his family to California by ox team on the overland route and, locating at San Jose, operated a small foundry there for about three years. He then sold it and later came to Kings county, around 1867, where he took up land that is now part of the site of Lemoore. This was a quarter-section, and when he settled here there was but one house between his and Visalia. He later sold the ranch to Dr. Lovern Lee Moore. When Bush came to Kings county it was sparsely settled, there being only about twenty-five people living there, among them being Daniel Rhoads, Justin and Jonathan Esrey, who were following stock raising. Geese and ducks were plentiful, and at one time he and his son were able to take eighteen hundred to Gilroy, where they sold at $1.15 per pound. They also operated a ferry boat across the lake, a distance of seven miles. He and a few others originated the first ditch hereabouts, taking water from Kings river, and he was one of the promoters of the Lower Kings River Ditch Co. and helped to dig its ditch with his own hands, taking in payment for his labor with stock in that public utility. In 1879 Bush moved to a tract of four hundred acres, four miles south of Hanford in the Lakeside District, thus becoming a pioneer farmer and dairyman in the Lakeside district. In 1884 he sold his farm and took up his residence in Hanford, where he died November 16, 1893, aged seventy-six. He is buried in the Hanford Cemetery.

Oscar Anderson Beaver was born in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California on March 23, 1857 to Henry Stephens Beaver and Lurana Elizabeth Cockrill. He married Jennie Armstrong on June 15, 1884 in what would become Kings County. He is unfortunately more well known for his death rather than his life, as his death was at the hands of two suspected train robbers, Christopher Evans and John Sontag. The exploits of those two individuals is well documented elsewhere. Beaver came to Tulare County sometime between 1871 and 1880 possibly at the same time as his parents and brother James. On the 1870 census he was living with his parents in Alisal Township, Monterey County with his parents at the age of 13. Oscar's oldest brother James was living next to them. On the 1880 census he was a boarder in the home of Charly G. Lamberson and was employed as a saloon keeper. Both his parents and brother James are also in the Lemoore area at this time as well. On March 22, 1889 a Patent #4306 is granted to Beaver for the south east quarter section at Township 13 South Range 28 East Section 25.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board of Directors
• Social Media

Job Titles:

• Member of the Associate Board

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board of Directors

Job Titles:

• Member of the Board of Directors
• Recording Secretary

Job Titles:

• Member of the Associate Board