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George and Serena's
second child was George Harms Wilson who was born 1867/68 in Santa Rosa, Ca. He
changed his middle name to Ralph, and at an early age showed himself to be very
independant, and self-reliant. Because his young mother was unable to care for
her little family, he was apprenticed to a farmer. He soon found that the
disliked the farmer and at the age of nine, he ran away. He walked south to
Southern California working on the ranchos along the way. He learned Spanish,
and years later some of the old Dons became his friends. When I knew him in the
1920s he looked like one with his white mustache and goatee. He told about
herding cattle on Figueroa Street in what is now the City of Los Angeles.
George R. Wilson became a very wealthy rancher. He
owned ranches in the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys, and had Mexican
villages, his workers, located on some of them. Wilson Road runs through waht
was his dairy near El Monte, California. Flower seed companies rented some of
his land and the color in the spring was unforgetable, and he delighted in the
beauty. He loved Southern California with a passion -- its great valleys,
mountains ranges, and brown rolling hills contrasted by the dark green of the
Coast Live Oak trees. He had a home in Hollywood, and one down the beach at
Venice, which was "ruined" by oil wells coming in, but his favorite place was
his Las Lomas Rancho, 1300 acres in the Chino Hills. From this home he could
look over the great valley to the mountain range beyond, and until he was an
old man, he rode his horse every day over his hills.
George R. Wilson married Mrs. Grace Dutro, a widow
with two sons. George died in 1934, a few years after his wife, and they were
both buried in the Wilson Lot at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale,
California. |
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