YUBA COUNTY Biographies

CHARLES F. REDNALL

An orchardist of enviable experience is Charles F. Rednall, of Marysville, widely known and esteemed for his progressive methods and his high standards in the California agricultural field. He was born at Redding, Cal., on St. Valentine’s Day, in the year 1884, when he entered the family circle of Charles F. and Mary (Flanagan) Rednall, sturdy pioneers who helped materially to build the great Pacific commonwealth. The father passed away in San Francisco. The mother still makes her home in the metropolis of the Bay. They did their duty by their generation, and are remembered in pleasant recollections until this present day.

Charles Rednall went to St. Ignatius College, and then learned the jewelry business in San Francisco, following it for nine years, the last five of which were spent as a traveling salesman. During his residence in San Francisco he was a member of Company A., League of the Cross Cadets, in which he rose to the rank of second lieutenant.

Deciding that outdoor life would better agree with him, Mr. Rednall bought a fruit orchard of 150 acres in Sutter County, with which he has been most successful, converting it into a real show-place and developing it to its highest productivity. He is a member of the California Prune and Apricot Growers’ Association and of the California Canning Peach Growers, being a member of the advisory board. Public-spirited and deeply interested in this section of the North, Mr. Rednall takes an active interest in matters of public concern, in general supporting the platforms of the Republican party, as affording the greatest stimulation for the betterment of both industrial and trade conditions.

At San Francisco, in 1911, Mr. Rednall was married to Miss Genevieve M. Berg, a native daughter who was especially popular in Sutter County, where she was born; and five children have blessed their union, four of whom are living: Jane F., Charles F., Jr., Carol E., and Patricia A. Mr. Rednall is an Elk and a member of the Rotary Club.

History of Yuba and Sutter Counties, Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, 1924

p 611

CHARLES FREDERICK FARINGTON

Not every industrious, progressive rancher who has tried to operate according to the most approved and up-to-date methods can feel the quiet satisfaction as to the results obtained which rewards Charles Frederick Farington, the well-known farmer of Sutter City, who was born at Big Grove, Kendall County, Ill., on May 17, 1861, the son of Charles Wesley and Eunice Ellen (Barker) Farington, the former a native of Rochester, N.Y., while the latter was born in Illinois in 1839. Charles W. Farington came to Illinois in the late forties, and farmed there; and there the worthy couple were married. It thus happened that our subject went to school in the fourth ward school district in Kendall County. Charles Wesley Farington passed away in his thirty-third year, but his devoted wife lived to see her sixty-eighth year. Mr. and Mrs. Farington had five children, of whom Charles Frederick was the second. Ira E. was the first-born; and after Charles came Eloise, Herbert and Oscar.

Losing his father when he was eight years old, a good deal devolved on Charles Farington and his older brother; and instead of developing in robust fashion, Charles Farington in time began to feel the need of a change of climate. In 1886, or when the great “boom” was just starting in California, he came out to the Coast for his health, weighing at that time only 117 pounds, and for a year or so, while he lived with an aunt, Mrs. Harriet Griffith, at Sutter City, he took up odd jobs, and was glad to get anything to do that would afford him outside work and exercise. In December 1887, he went to work for J. M. Stevens, and he remained with him until March of the following year. He then worked for a couple of months for Mr. Haynes; and then, returning to his aunt’s, he stayed on her farm until the fall of 1888. He next worked on the Clements ranch until May, 1889, and then went back to Griffith’s and helped to gather in the hay. On July 12, 1889, he returned to Illinois; and there he farmed for a year. In October, 1890, he came back to California and settled again in Sutter City; although, having been mixed up in a railroad wreck in Kansas, where he suffered injuries, he came near to never seeing California again. John Stevens again furnished him employment; and in December, 1890, he went about four and one-half miles to the south of Sutter City and there for a year helped D. E. Knight with his ranch operations.

At Sutter, on December 9, 1891, Charles F. Farington was married to Miss Alice M. Haynes, a native of Chicago Junction, Ohio, who was brought out to California by her parents, James and Frances Haynes, when she was only a year old, the party traveling by way of the Isthmian route. James Haynes settled in Sutter County, south of the Buttes, in 1869, and became one of the most esteemed of the many fine old pioneers who helped to develop and build up that section of the Golden State.

After his marriage, Mr. Farington worked for D. E. Knight for eleven years, never losing a day; and then, in March, 1900, he rented the Knight ranch, and operated it for a couple of years. In the autumn of 1901 he came onto his present ranch. In January, 1898, he had bought 240 acres two miles to the northeast of Sutter for $12.50 an acre; and in October, 1901, he purchased ninety acres from E. S. Wright. These two tracts joined each other. Since then, he himself has installed all the improvements, including a comfortable, attractive dwelling, two barns, and a group of farm buildings. In 1905 he added 100 acres adjoining his land on the east, which he purchased from Elizabeth Epperson; in 1908 he bought another 150 acres on the south; and in 1914 he added to his possessions forty acres more, five miles to the south of his home. In 1918 he bought 480 acres of range land, in Butte County, near Bangor, and in 1919 he added eighty acres to that. In August, 1919, he also purchased thirty acres of the old Stevens grant, a quarter of a mile east of Sutter, where his son lives. Mr. Farington raises rice; and with his son, C. L. Farington, he runs 350 head of cattle in the mountains. Mr. Farrington is a Republican. He takes a deep interest in education, and has been for eight years a trustee of the Brittan district school.

Alice Haynes Farington died in November, 1906, beloved and esteemed by all who knew her; and that same year, the mother of our subject passed away through the same dread disease that had taken his wife–typhoid fever. Alice Haynes Farington was the mother of three children: Irwin Edson, who is on the ranch with his father; Charles Le Roy, who is running stock; and Ruth, who has become Mrs. Folsom, of Marysville. On January 4, 1908, at Los Gatos, Mr. Farington married a second time, being united with Miss Ruth Clayton, a charming lady who had come to California a short time before. She was born near Winona, Minn., a daughter of Samuel and Henrietta (Howes) Clayton, the former a native of Michigan, and the latter a native of New York. Samuel Clayton was a farmer, who left the plow when Lincoln called for volunteers, and served in the Civil War with a Minnesota regiment. Samuel Clayton lived to be sixty-nine years of age, and his good wife was seventy-two when she died. Ruth Clayton Farington attended a local Minnesota grammar school, and later graduated from the Winona Normal School. She taught a number of years in rural and city schools, and then joined the staff of the Indian Reservation at Pine Ridge, still later becoming one of the faculty at the Kiowa Reservation, in Oklahoma, and the Chippewa Reservation in Minnesota. She also taught in the schools at Wittenberg, Wis., and Pipe Stone, Minn., these also being Indian reservation schools. One child, Eunice was born of this second union.

Irwin Edson Farington has to his credit an enviable military record. On August 24, 1914, he entered the service of his country by joining the 3^rd Company, C.A.C. National Guards, and with his company was on duty, during the Mexican troubles, at Fort Scott, San Francisco, where he became a duty sergeant. He was transferred into the Federal service as a member of Park Battery C., Army Artillery Park, 1^st Army, A.E.F., and was over seas from September 1, 1918, until May 1, 1919, when he was discharged at the Presidio, in San Francisco. Before going abroad, he served as first sergeant at the Presidio, training troops for foreign service. He is at present serving as historian of Yuba-Sutter Post No. 42, American Legion, and holds a commission as lieutenant of Company H., 184^th Infantry, N.G.C. He was an active spirit in reorganizing the old Yuba-Sutter Rifle and Pistol Club in the spring of 1923; and its premises are now about to be taken over by the State of California as a battalion rifle range. It is located just south of South Butte in Sutter County. He was married at Oakland, November 4, 1917, to Miss Clara Orrina Webb, born at Meridian, Cal. He is a graduate of the Brittan Grammar School and the Sutter Union High School, class of 1913. For two years he pursued a special engineering course in the University of California, and was engaged in the Moore & Scott shipyards at Oakland for a year before the United States entered the World War.

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