Laura's Genealogy
Written by Jerry Crowley
What I learned for the first time was why my mom Harriett was born in Imperial Valley. Clarence had taken his wife Ella (Freeman) and daughter Thelma to an area near Calexico to raise cantaloupes in 1907! They traveled across the mountains in a horse-drawn wagon. After a railroad boycott the ready to ship melons perished and the four of them (Clarence, Ella, Thelma and Harriett) moved back to their Chula Vista original home on Fourth Avenue and I Street.