March 2026

By Dwight M Miller

Reuben Colburn Merryman was born in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, into a nation—and a family—on the rise. Named for his maternal grandfather, Reuben Colburn, a prosperous Maine ship captain, young Reuben inherited both maritime ambition and frontier nerve. His father, Andrew Curtis Merryman, was already a successful timber operator in Marinette, Wisconsin, when Reuben entered the world.

After his mother died when he was four, he was helped along by his aunt Carrie, his mother’s sister. He grew up in a large home overlooking the Menominee River, the watery boundary between Wisconsin and Michigan. From those windows he would have watched logs float downstream and trains roll westward. The 1870s and 1880s were the great railroad decades in America, and Reuben spent countless hours riding the rails across a rapidly expanding nation.

A Young Widower and a Life of Travel

Reuben married young. His first wife, Phoebe Woodhull, was the daughter of a minister and, according to newspaper accounts, a devoted adherent of Christian Science. The marriage was brief. She died in 1890 after six years together. The couple had no children.

A year later he married Agnes Hathaway, daughter of another prominent Marinette family. The newspapers of the 1890s read almost like a travelogue of their lives. Reuben appears again and again as a guest at social functions or as a traveler in distant cities—Florida, Louisiana, Arizona, Mexico, Oregon, California.

In 1891, at just twenty-eight years old, he took an extended southern tour with his younger brother Curtis and Curtis’s best friend, John Van Cleve—names that would later become deeply woven into Exeter’s story. They traveled in luxury, often in a private Pullman rail car, a rolling symbol of Gilded Age prosperity.

Meanwhile, business never paused. By the mid-1890s, Reuben was serving on the Marinette County board and on the Wisconsin Lumber Exchange. He and his father were buying vast tracts of timber in Oregon and northern Michigan, selling millions of board feet at a time. In one 1896 transaction alone, seven million board feet brought in $90,000—a staggering sum at the time.

But while Wisconsin timber remained foundational, California citrus began calling.

Bonnie Brae and the Vision on the Hill

In 1894, Reuben and his father partnered with George Frost and other investors to purchase what became the Bonnie Brae Ranch near Exeter. Tulare County agricultural land was selling for $25 to $50 per acre—far less than Southern California prices. The Merrymans saw opportunity.

Eventually they bought out the other investors and made Bonnie Brae their own. What followed was engineering ambition on a grand scale.

Under ranch manager J. Smith Dungan, massive pumping operations were installed to lift water nearly 600 feet up Badger Hill—reportedly the highest agricultural lift in California at the time. Two pairs of triple-plunger pumps, powered by 75 and 35 horsepower engines, pushed water to a reservoir so gravity could irrigate orchards cascading down the hillside.

In 1901, The Exeter Sun reported that Mr. Merryman placed a light atop a flagstaff on Badger Hill. It shone across the valley as a beacon, visible for miles and admired by all.

In 1902, the Merrymans paid to have the road to the top of Rocky Hill graded for public use. Their only request: that visitors refrain from killing wildlife. It was an early gesture of civic generosity—private development paired with public enjoyment.

Bonnie Brae oranges soon traveled the globe. By 1905, 125 railcars were shipped to Australia. Crates bore labels like the “Bonnie Brae Heart” and the “Merryman Highball.” President Woodrow Wilson himself received a box bearing the Bonnie Brae label as a gift; three-time Presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan received another.

Exeter citrus had gone international.

Community Builders

The Merryman influence reached beyond orchards.

The year after his father died in 1905, Reuben’s youngest sister, Louise, married John Van Cleve, her brother Curtis’ best friend. They settled northeast of Merryman Station. John and his brother Ralph began manufacturing concrete irrigation pipe—an enterprise that would support valley agriculture for decades.

That same year, 1906, Henry Borgman moved from Marinette to Exeter at Reuben’s encouragement. Borgman began as a drayman hauling freight and later built a trucking business that lasted generations.

In the spring of 1907, Reuben completed his winter residence at what became known as Merryman Station’s—“Greenacres.” The 12-room Swiss-style home stood as both seasonal retreat and headquarters of a growing citrus empire.

He also invested heavily in Visalia, serving as a bank director, acquiring Main Street property, and supporting civic institutions. He donated the YMCA building in Visalia and was active in Rotary. A church rose in the growing Merryman community in 1909.

The Merrymans were not merely landowners. They were institution builders.

Setbacks and Shifting Fortunes

Nature and geopolitics intervened.

The devastating freeze of 1913 damaged citrus throughout the valley. In 1914, Europe plunged into the Great War. In 1917, Reuben joined other investors in launching the Tulare County Country Club  (TCCC) atop Badger Hill, envisioning a world-class golf course, a large clubhouse, tennis courts, a pool, and more surrounded with sweeping valley, foothill and mountain views. The TCCC was incorporated in January. By April, the United States had entered World War I. Investment appetite dried up. The Badger golf course dream died.

By 1922, Reuben began selling off his Tulare County holdings—much of Bonnie Brae to J. Smith Dungan, and Badger and Rocky Hills to Fred and Will Gill. That February, Mrs. Merryman was guest of honor at an Exeter Chamber of Commerce dinner shortly before the couple made their permanent move to Pasadena.

Their Exeter chapter was closing.

Pasadena and Legacy

In Pasadena, Reuben continued investing, acquiring significant commercial real estate in Los Angeles County and serving on several bank boards, while still holding the Wisconsin and other properties around the nation. He had transitioned from citrus to urban property with the adaptability of a man shaped by railroads and expansion.

In 1932, after an evening out with friends, Reuben Colburn Merryman died of a heart attack. He was sixty-nine.

He and Agnes had no children. His estate was divided between his wife and his ten nieces and nephews. When Agnes died a decade later, the remainder of the Merryman holdings passed to that same extended family.

Yet the deeper inheritance lies elsewhere.

• The graded road up Rocky Hill.
• The light on Badger Hill.
• The irrigation systems that made orchards possible.
• The global citrus shipments that put Exeter on the map.
• The businesses and families he encouraged to move west.

Reuben C. Merryman was not a front-page firebrand. He was something quieter and perhaps more enduring—a builder who saw opportunity in hillsides and believed prosperity could be engineered upward, even 600 feet at a time.