The Gaines and Brown Families of Carbon Canyon, Part Three

Here are some more great photos, courtesy of Joyce Harrington, of members of the Gaines and Brown families, who lived in the Carbon Canyon area for decades during the 20th century.

Ed and Fanny Gaines were owners of the Flying Cow Ranch, which is where the Olinda Village community is located, and their home sat where the Hollydale mobile home park is.  Argus and Margaret Brown resided in the Olinda oil fields area where the Olinda Ranch subdivision is now, and Angus was a longtime employee on the Santa Fe lease.

This 1911 photo shows Argus Brown, right, and Emil Haskel, left, who were neighbors and carpenters on the Santa Fe lease at Olinda posed with their handiwork at an oil well.  The photos are courtesy of Joyce Harrington, a descendant of the Brown and Gaines families.

The first photo shows Brown and Emil Haskel in 1911 at work on the construction of an oil well at Olinda.  The two men, who were neighbors as shown in the federal census of the preceding year, were carpenters and the image was obviously taken to show their handiwork in the building of the apparatus of the well.

Brown, a native of Missouri who also lived in Iowa and worked as a farmer, migrated to California in the first decade of the century and found a job at Olinda in September 1907.  He later was a pumper on the lease and remained working in the area for several decades.  He and Margaret stayed in the area until she passed away in 1935 and he died about a decade later in 1946.

The 1910 federal census listed the Argus and Margaret Brown family just below Emil and Minnie Haskel at Olinda.  From Ancestry.com

Joyce Harrington provided some reminiscences from her great-aunt, Nora Brown, daughter of Argus and Margaret, and these will be shared in future posts.

Edward Gaines and his wife Fannie Atwater married on Christmas Eve 1889 and farmed in Clearwater, later Paramount, in southeastern Los Angeles County, as well as had the Flying Cow Ranch in Carbon Canyon, to which they later moved.

Fannie Atwater (1861-1947) and Edward F. Gaines (1868-1956), owners of the Flying Cow Ranch, at what is now the Olinda Village area, ca. 1900s.

The couple not only had the ranch, but were also involved in the early use of the La Vida Mineral Springs just east of their home.  Ed Gaines was well-known for his breeding of foxhounds and hunting, as well as for his ownership of a rare original stagecoach which he rode at parades and other functions.

Fannie Gaines died in early 1947 and her husband passed on just under a decade later in April 1956.  Eight years later, in 1964, the Gaines Ranch became the site of the new subdivision of Olinda Village and the construction of the Hollydale mobile home park and an adjacent church removed the Craftsman-style residence the family used for many decades.

Ed Gaines with one his cows (though it doesn't appear to be the breed that could fly) on the ranch, ca. 1940s.

Again, more history of the Gaines family, much of which has been presented in this blog in the past, will be shown through photos.