A very successful fruit grower who has well demonstrated that to make a success as a rancher in California, one must not only be a good student of agriculture in general, but must thoroughly understand California conditions, is Ernest Brooks, vice-president of the El Camino Citrus Association. He was born at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, on January 14, 1864, and is the fifth oldest in a family of seven children born to Thomas Robert and Margaret Harper (Simmonds) Brooks, who were also born on Prince Edward Island, of English parents. Thomas R. Brooks was a college man and was an educator until he retired to Attleboro, Mass., where he and his wife passed the remainder of their days.
Ernest Brooks was educated in the schools of Charlottetown. When he was sixteen he came to Boston and there began paddling his own canoe. Becoming interested in the great West, he came to the Rocky Mountain region in 1884. Arriving in Denver he was steadily employed until he was twenty-one years of age. In 1886, having a desire to own a farm, he homesteaded 160 acres near Cherry Creek, ten miles south of Denver, and he also took up a timber claim of 160 acres. It was raw land, there was no doubt of that; but he set to work resolutely and won for himself the honorable distinction of pioneer by improving the holding and bringing it to a good state of cultivation, and made a success of stock raising and dairying.
After sixteen years in Colorado, Mr. Brooks came to Pomona Valley in the spring of 1900, and here he has been an orange grower ever since. He has owned several groves in the Valley and developed them. Before coming here he passed a short time in the northern part of the state and visited many localities, but found no such ideal spot as his present home site on East Cucamonga Avenue, where he has eighteen acres in one of the best groves in the Valley. So productive is his holding that in 1912 he took 10,000 boxes of oranges from his trees.
Mr. Brooks has been particularly successful in buying, improving and selling orange groves; and he and others have developed a good well, with a first-class pumping plant on Harrison Avenue, which they use for irrigation purposes. His own grove is under the Loop and Meserve irrigation system. Prominent in all the affairs of the community, Mr. Brooks now occupies the important post of vice-president of the El Camino Citrus Association. He is also a director of the First National Bank of Claremont, and before the consolidation of the two Claremont banks was one of the organizers and directors of the Claremont National Bank.
At Claremont on September 19, 1905, occurred Mr. Brooks' marriage. His wife was in maidenhood Miss Helen Tuttle, who was born at Alpena, Mich., the daughter of Judge Jonathan B. and Sarah (Ross) Tuttle. Judge Tuttle was a captain in the One Hundred Second United States Colored Volunteer Regiment in the Civil War. After the war he was a practicing attorney, serving ten years on the bench, after which he practiced law in Detroit until he retired, spending his last years in California. His widow survives him and makes her home in Claremont. The Tuttle family traces its ancestry back to Wiltshire, England, to William Tuttle, who migrated to Connecticut in 1635, of whom Mrs. Brooks is a lineal descendant, as well as of Jotham Tuttle, who served in the Revolutionary War. Mrs. Brooks received her education in the public schools of Alpena, Mich., and at the University of Michigan. Coming to Los Angeles County in 1894, she met Mr. Brooks, the acquaintance resulting in their marriage.
Mr. and Mrs. Brooks are the parents of two children, Ernest A. and Kenneth, and the family attend the Congregational Church in Claremont. Fraternally, Mr. Brooks is a member of the Fraternal Aid and the Woodmen of the World.
History of Pomona Valley, California, with Biographical Sketches
of The Leading Men and Women of the Valley Who Have Been
Identified With Its Growth and Development from the Early Days
to the Present
Published in Los Angeles, Cal., by the Historic Record Company
1920
Transcribed by Linda Jackson 10/05/08, Pages 499-500
Los Angeles County Biographies ~ Archive Biography Index ~ Archive Index
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