Fowler, Edmund Wesley

Edmund Wesley Fowler was a resilient California pioneer and craftsman born in Indiana in 1854. Brought across the plains by ox team as an infant, he grew up traversing the undeveloped open ranges of Central California. Despite suffering near-total blindness by the age of thirty due to a childhood accident and receiving a limited formal education, Fowler performed rigorous daily manual labor from a young age alongside his family across Solano, Merced, and Kings counties.

In 1883, Fowler married Mattie Kirby in Hanford, where they farmed before establishing a homestead southeast of Bakersfield. Moving to Riverdale in 1911, he co-founded a highly successful plumbing and tinning business with his sons, Fred and Lloyd, maintaining an immaculate credit reputation until the firm’s retirement upon Fred’s enlistment in World War I. Renowned for his extraordinary physical stamina—working long, grueling stretches in the harvest fields well into his sixties—Fowler spent his later years in Riverdale as a deeply respected community pillar, devoted to a simple lifestyle and the faith known as “The Jesus’ Way.”