JOEL
S. WHITEHURST
FRENCH PRUNE GROWER
BIO-Pen Pictures, page 244
SURNAMES: SHIPP, LOGAN, EASLY,
JOEL S. WHITEHURST was born in Lexington, Missouri, August 4, 1844,
being a son of William M. Whitehurst and Sarah (Shipp) Whitehurst, who
were both natives of Princess Ann County, Virginia, where they were
married in 1829. Their union was blessed with six children, who are:
Thomas W., a teacher by profession for the past twenty-five years, and
a resident of Saratoga, this county; Albert L., a lumber dealer,
residing in Gilroy; William H., living in Hickman County, Kentucky;
Edwin B., the proprietor of a hotel at Pierce's Mills, Santa Cruz
County; Henrietta, the only daughter, died at the age of four years, in
St. Louis, Missouri. Joel S. Whitehurst was married in 1869 to Miss
Fannie Logan, daughter of Alexander Logan and
Sarah (nee Easly) Logan.
They are the parents of six children, whose names are: Edith, George,
Susie, Estelle, Sadie, and Joel A. Mr. Whitehurst's father was an early
pioneer of St. Louis, Missouri, where he manufactured carriages and
plows, as he did both in Virginia and Lexington, being the first
manufacturer of plows in the latter place.
In 1849 he and two of his sons came to California where he worked in
the mines on the Feather River near Oroville, with varied success. In
1852 he returned to Lexington, where he remained until 1863, when he
again came to this State and made his home with his sons Joel S. and A.
L. until his death, which occurred on March 10, 1887, in the
eighty-second year of his age. Mr. Whitehurst's mother died when he was
an infant. He came to California in 1867, going first to Lexington and
then to Gilroy, where he had charge of a
mill. In 1878 he came to the
Willows and bought eight and one-fourth acres of land, paying $350 an
acre not including the improvements. His place is planted mostly to
French and silver prunes, the latter known as a seedling of the
California's Golden Drop variety. He has about 1,400 of these trees,
they being an experiment with him, Mr. Plummer, of Oregon, having
introduced them here. The firm of King, Moose & Co., of San
Francisco, paid two and one-half cents a pound for the fruit in 1887,
while the French prunes brought only from one and a half to two cents a
pound. A wholesale grocer from Chicago was greatly interested in these
prunes and anxious to handle them extensively. Those sold here in 1887
were dried and bleached and then sold at the drier for fifteen cents a
pount to a Chicago fruit dealer. Mr. Whitehurst has about six hundred
French prunes. All his trees are twelve feet apart, making nearly three
hundred trees to the acre. This thick growth of trees would not succeed
on any land less fertile than that at the Willows. He has not as yet
fertilized his land in any way.
SOURCE: Pen Pictures From
The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, Illustrated.
- Edited by H.S.
Foote.- Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888. page 604-605
Transcribed by Roena Wilson
SANTA CLARA COUNTY
BIOGRAPHIES
SANTA CLARA COUNTY HISTORY AND
GENEALOGY