Freelands from Auchinleck to Fresno over 40 years

by Kay McMeekin

Many of the descendants of Irish-born Auchinleck resident William Freeland and his wife Jane Sillars emigrated and prospered in California.

First to go was son David Freeland 1862 -1935 in the 1880s. In the 1881 UK census he was a 19 year old mason. He married Jeannie Ryce in Salinas, California in 1889. Once in California he was a farmer in Madera in the 1910 census and in 1920 still in Madera he was a livery man at a livery stable. In 1930 census he was in Novato and a farmer.

In 1909 widowed daughter Jane/Jenny Murray emigrated with her children first to Madera, then Long Beach California

His older brother James Freeland followed quite a lot later with his with Mary Ann Cunningham. They arrived in Selma, Fresno California in 1894 with children William C and Marion. Son William Cunningham Freeland 1877- 1952 prospered:-

The cashier of the allied banks, the First National Bank and the Selma Savings Bank, of Selma, William C. Freeland, is known among his associates as a financier of ability and a man of unimpeachable integrity, possessed of force of character and good executive ability. Self-made, he has worked his way up from a clerkship to the highest place in the active operation of Selma's foremost financial institution.

While Selma claims him as one of her boys, he was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, March 28, 1877, and came to America with his parents, James and Mary A. (Cunningham) Freeland, when he was a lad ten years of age. His father, a blacksmith by trade, lived in Soquel, Santa Cruz County, from 1887 to 1890, and in the latter year came to Selma, where he died, in 1895. His mother is living in Selma and became the wife of the late John G. S. Arrants, of Selma.

William C. Freeland received his primary education in the schools of Scotland, completing it in the public schools of Santa Cruz County and Selma, graduating from the Selma high school with the class of 1895. He acquired bookkeeping in the high school and was afterwards with the Selma branch of the Kutner-Goldstein Company in the capacity of bookkeeper for a year and a half. A vacancy occurring in the clerkship of the First National Bank in 1897, he took the position and gradually worked himself up until in 1905 he became cashier. Of excellent judgment, and unusually swift and accurate as a cashier, he has held the position up to the present time with credit to himself and the bank.

In 1902, Mr. Freeland was united in marriage with Miss Joanna Heaton, daughter of Joseph and Margaret A. Heaton of Selma. He is the owner of one hundred acres two miles east of Selma which is planted to peaches, apricots, and Muscat and Thompson seedless grapes. A Presbyterian in his religious convictions, he is a member and chairman of the board of trustees of the church of that denomination at Selma. Fraternally he is prominent in Masonic circles. He is a member of the Blue Lodge Chapter in Selma and of the Commandery at Fresno. He is a Scottish Rite and Thirty-second Degree Mason, and a member of Islam Temple at San Francisco. He is also a member of the Selma Lodge of W. O. W., the largest lodge in Selma. For eight years Mr. Freeland was a member of the Board of Trustees of the City of Selma and for four years of that time was chairman of the board. For the past five years he has been City Treasurer. He and his good wife are highly respected in business, social and church circles in Selma.

In 1912  18 year old nephew William Sillars Freeland, son of Charles Freeland, sailed on the Lusitania to go to his uncle David in Madera.

In 1920 William 's sister Barbara 24, a stenographer,  came out on the Columbia.

In 1927 William's father Charles Freeland 63 his wife Margaret and other son John Morrison Freeland sailed to San Francisco from Manchester on the Pacific Reliance going to W S Freeland Bank of Italy Buildings Fresno They left behind a son Charles in Tassie Street, Shawlands.