Wilson Island Stories of the early 1900s

The William W. and Bessie Parlier Home at

667 E. Home Avenue

Parlier, Reedley, Poso Creek and Fresno’s Wilson Island

Following the lives of early Wilson Island homeowners often reveals intriguing stories about life in and around Fresno when it was not much more than a speck on the sand dunes and dry plains of California’s San Joaquin Valley. William W. and Bessie N. Parlier bring another dimension to the saga.

William Parlier was born on March 19, 1875 in Illinois to a farming family that would soon travel west, motivated by the Homestead Act of 1862.

In about 1899, he would marry Bessie Neil, a local California woman born on June 21, 1877 to parents who had migrated here from Tennessee and Alabama. The Neils located their farm in Poso Creek, named for an 88 mile intermittent stream that originates at about 8,000 feet in the Sequoia National Forest. It winds across the San Joaquin Valley floor south of Fresno to a destination east of Delano. Perhaps it was through their families’ mutual farming activities that Bessie and William met

His home in Parlier wasn’t that far away from Poso Creek, though a far trek by horse and buggy. He grew up on a ranch in the town named for his father Isaac Newton Parlier. The second son among nine children, 4 boys and 5 girls, William eventually moved to the neighboring town of Reedley, home to his boyhood friend Edmund Rosco Reed. Edmund was the son of Thomas Law Reed for whom the town of Reedley is named. These two sons of valley pioneers eventually went into business together as Parlier & Reed Meats (likely wholesale) for almost a decade between about 1907 and 1915. The young men were two years apart in age and entrepreneurs in their own right. While in the meat business, William continued in the family tradition of farming and ranching.

For the rest of his life William reported his occupation as farmer, rancher, or vineyardist. The Parlier family was very involved in the raisin industry. But he almost lost everything during the Great Depression. He and Bessie had been living in their home in the Wilson Island since 1917 while retaining multiple farms in the Reedley area.

In November 1934, at the age of 59, William and 6 other San Joaquin Valley ranchers filed debtors’ extension petitions in the U.S. District Court at Los Angeles under the Frazier-Lemke Act. His liabilities were estimated at $24,801 and his assets at $13,910. Equivalent to about $480,000 and 268,000 respectively today.

The Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act, introduced by two North Dakota Congressmen in 1934, restricted the ability of banks to repossess farms. It delayed foreclosure for five years during which time the farmer paid rent. At the end, the farmer could buy back his land or continue as a tenant in possession of the farm. The Act was revised the following year to limit the moratorium to three years.

This was also the Prohibition era. Bessie was active in the Fresno County Christian Temperance Union. In 1933 she was elected correspondence secretary by the 25 members at their 48th annual convention in the First Christian Church. The group was urging a program of temperance among young people. That December Prohibition would officially end.

William Parlier and Edmund Reed, both sons of pioneers who located their homes in the barren, desolate San Joaquin Valley of the 1870s, shared similar family histories across two generations. The migration of families west in the mid-1800s is common knowledge. What makes the story of the Parlier and Reed families unique and relevant to the Wilson Island are the similarities in the trajectory of their paths. They were like two meteors starting far apart and landing in the same spot at the same moment, changing the landscape upon impact. At the outset, William and Edmund’s paternal grandparents were over 2,000 miles away from California, 400 miles apart in Illinois and Ohio respectively, separated by the state of Indiana.

William and Edmund’s grandfathers both died early in the 1840s leaving young families behind to fend for themselves. It fell to each of their sons, young boys – Isaac Newton Parlier, Jr (“I.N. Jr.”, born 1842) and Thomas Law Reed (“T.L.”, born 1847) - to do what they could to help their widowed mothers and siblings survive.

Both boys participated in the Civil War but under different circumstances. The Reeds were desperate for money so at the age of 16, T.L. agreed to be paid to take the place of a doctor’s son and served for 2 years. As soon as he got out, he married Amantha Ann Smith in 1865. I.N. Jr. married Mary Laird in 1863 before he registered and only served for the last 9 months of the war.

As young men with new families, both T.L. and I.N. Jr began moving west around 1874. Both made it to California by 1876. T.L. headed west alone taking work en route in Michigan at a cheese factory. By 1876 he reached the Sacramento Valley around Yolo County, California and sent for his family who arrived the following year. He was renting 400 acres to farm wheat and beginning to make a name for himself as one of the more successful producers. Within a few years he moved south to farm hundreds of acres of wheat in Fresno County.

I.N. Jr. and his family stopped along the way in Kansas before making it to California by 1876, landing first in Stanislaus County near Sacramento. At that point they were not far from where T.L. Reed had landed when he arrived here. Perhaps an artifact of the trails leading from Illinois and Ohio to California. Soon the Parliers also moved south to Fresno County where they homesteaded 160 acres northeast of Selma.

One of Parlier’s first acts was to plant a fig tree cutting in 1883 that became famous for its sprawling size. In its 57 year lifetime, the tree grew to be 85 feet tall with a spread of 100 feet (longer than a tennis court!) before it finally fell in 1940.

The year after he arrived, I. N. Jr. created the Kingsburg/Centerville Ditch Company, an irrigation canal that changed the agricultural potential for that portion of the San Joaquin Valley. Ultimately about 40 miles long, it began at the north bank of the Kings River.

Although he raised a lot of money for the project, it was not enough to fund the entire canal. So he proposed a unique option to landowners. In exchange for digging out their portion of the canal they would own that section of the ditch adjacent to their land and the water rights. It worked and in record time the irrigation ditch was completed. This allowed ranchers like Reed to convert land from wheat to vineyards and orchards.

Within a decade of each other, both created neighboring towns south of Fresno. In both cases their towns played pivotal roles in agricultural production. Around 1877, I.N. Jr. began the town of Parlier and by 1888 T.L. was selling the first lots in the town he named Reedley. Under T.L.’s leadership, Reedley would become known as the grain capital of the state and T.L. would be called the wheat baron of California, farming 29,000 acres in Fresno and Tulare Counties until that market slumped. Not one to linger, he turned his attention to Bakersfield oil. In the meantime, I.N. Jr. had expanded his ranch to include raisin vines and stock (perhaps a source for his son’s meat business with partner Edmund Reed).

Both Parlier and Reed contributed more than town names to Fresno County. They were community leaders. I.N. Parlier Jr would become the first postmaster of his town, and T.L. Reed would be the first President of the Reedley Chamber of Commerce. It’s no surprise that both men would have sons who went into a ranch-related business together in Reedley

It’s also no surprise that William and Bessie moved to the Wilson Island around the time their daughters were approaching high school age. It was common in that era for ranching families to move into town for better access to schools. Proximity to schools, especially Fresno High School, motivated other Wilson Island homeowners, such as the William Blasingames on East Carmen Avenue, to build their townhouse here in the 1920s. Access to schools may have been what motivated William and Bessie to move here as well. The home stayed in the Parlier family for close to 50 years, during which time one of their daughters and her family joined them. For the duration of the time William lived in the house on East Home Avenue he continued to report his occupation as vineyardist and owner of farms.

The similarities in how the Parliers and Reeds made it to California and what they began to develop soon after their arrival is but one example of the energy and vision that created the towns and farmlands around Fresno that we see today. From enhanced irrigation to extraordinary wheat production and diversified agricultural investments their arrival changed the landscape. Many of the early homeowners in the Wilson Island were sons and daughters of Fresno’s earliest movers and shakers. William and Bessie Parlier were one more link connected to that legacy.

Footnote: The house remains as it was when built in 1915 though the garage was moved in 1955 to make room for a larger structure.

Sources include public building and genealogy records, and newspaper articles of the period. Prepared by Jeannine Raymond, Ph.D. September 2019