Barnett, William F.

William F. Barnett, born in Georgia in 1860, was a skilled dairyman who became a significant agricultural pioneer in Fresno County, California. The son of Rial Barnett and Nancy Patterson, he grew up on a farm in Tennessee before relocating to Indiana at age seventeen to work as a farm laborer. He later engaged in agriculture on his own account in Kansas, where he accumulated 480 acres, and subsequently moved to Oregon to construct railroad bridges and run a dairy farm on the Nehalem River. In 1896, he arrived in Fresno County and permanently settled there two years later after selling his Oregon holdings.

Upon locating at Centerville in a partnership with his aunt, Mrs. Darius Reese, Barnett achieved local distinction by sowing the very first alfalfa grown in that area. He established a highly successful dairy with ninety cows, built the first local creamery, and served as the first president of the Sanger Creamery, which he helped organize. Over the following years, he operated a plumbing business called Barnett, Rock and Co., managed the Fresno Cooperative Stock and Dairy Company, and eventually bought a thirty-two and a half acre farm near the Barstow schoolhouse. Married to Cora Moorhead since February 22, 1887, and father to a daughter named Bessie, his diverse accomplishments and leadership in local dairy associations left a lasting mark on the region.