Hansen, Andres C.

Born in Denmark in 1859, Andres C. Hansen trained as a blacksmith and farmed in Sweden before immigrating to Fresno County in 1890. After working as a ranch hand and foreman, he settled in the Empire district in 1893 and purchased a twenty-acre tract that would eventually grow into a prosperous ninety-acre ranch. Although he initially struggled with grain farming, Hansen successfully offset those losses through a thriving dairy operation alongside newly planted peach orchards and Thompson Seedless vineyards.

His wife, Anna Sorensen, was an internationally acclaimed, award-winning Danish buttermaker who leveraged her exceptional skills to establish the Kerman section’s very first cooperative creamery on their ranch in 1896. This pioneering enterprise, the Empire Creamery, grew rapidly under her management before closing in 1905, while the couple also raised two surviving children, Ernest and Mary. A progressive community leader, Hansen served as an Empire school trustee, helped finance the local telephone company, and actively supported regional agricultural marketing cooperatives.