Kittrell, Erroll C.

Born in Fresno, California, in 1889, Erroll C. Kittrell was the son of William J. Kittrell, a pioneer who served as manager of the Fresno Agricultural Works for two decades before entering the real estate trade. Kittrell attended Fresno public schools and graduated from the Kemper Military School in Boonville, Missouri, in 1909. Returning to California, he gained retail management experience in the hardware trade across Fresno and Lemoore, briefly operating his own hardware establishment in the Kittrell Building on Merced Street.

Transitioning to agriculture, Kittrell acquired an eighty-acre ranch in the Barstow Colony near Fresno, irrigating the tract via the Herndon Canal and an eighty-foot well. He developed the property into a flourishing farm featuring twenty-five acres of alfalfa, ten acres of Thompson Seedless grapes, and forty acres of Muir and Lovell peaches. Aligned with both the California Peach Growers, Inc., and the California Associated Raisin Company, Kittrell was a member of the Masonic fraternity (Fresno Lodge No. 247) and was married to Hazel Hague, with whom he had one son, William Madison Kittrell.