Gilbert, Nathan D.

Nathan D. Gilbert, born in Illinois in 1847, served in the Union Army during the Civil War before migrating to California in 1870. After helping to build the early settlement of Merced, he relocated to Fresno in 1874 when it was a sparse, burgeoning plain. As the town’s second professional painter and pioneer painting contractor, Gilbert established a highly reliable business and famously painted Fresno’s very first schoolhouse.

His early years in the region were marked by colorful historic experiences, including narrow escapes from the notorious Vasquez outlaw gang. A bedrock of early civic life, he played in Fresno’s first brass band and served in the original volunteer fire department’s hook-and-ladder company. Thrice a father to surviving children through his marriages to Phoebe Welsh and Augusta Steinberger, he remains an esteemed, self-made pioneer.