sister, members of the Parsons family who by that time had purchased a ranch 

 only a few miles south in the valley. 136 



Baldwin took on a business partner in 1869: Swiss immigrant Giuseppe 

 Fiori. He agreed to sell the ranch for $20,000 in early 1870 to Fiori, but 

 continued to reside on the ranch until moving to Santa Cruz in 1872. In 

 partnership with fellow Olema rancher Delos D. Wilder, Baldwin started a large 

 dairy north of Santa Cruz, where he spent the remainder of his life. 137 



Giuseppe, or Joseph, Fiori hired a number of fellow Swiss to work on his 

 dairy. In 1870 they milked 99 cows and made 14,000 pounds of butter, being 

 the largest dairy at the time in the Olema Valley. In October of that year Fiori 

 sold his option on the ranch and the livestock and appurtenances to a fellow 

 Swiss immigrant (and probably relation) James Bloom. Included in the 

 transaction were 101 milk cows and 57 other cattle, four horses with saddles 

 and harness, 42 hogs, 50 fowl, three wagons, and dairy equipment. Bloom may 

 have been a son or other relative of Fiori; James Bloom and his brother Joseph 

 had changed their names from Fiori (Italian for flower) to an English 

 equivalent, Bloom, upon their arrival in the United States some years earlier. 

 James Bloom owned and occupied another dairy in Chileno Valley in northern 

 Marin County, and soon sold his brother Joseph a half-interest in the Olema 

 dairy ranch with the apparent intent that Joseph would operate it. 138 



Joseph Bloom left his birthplace of Canton Ticino, Switzerland in 1862 at 

 age 14 and immigrated to America. He leased a ranch from Felix Garcia at 

 Tocaloma (now the western part of Don Mclsaac's) in 1868 for $450 per year 

 before moving to his new ranch near Olema. In taking over the Baldwin ranch, 

 Bloom found himself in control of one of the largest and most respected dairies 



136 Population Schedules, 8th and 9th U. S. Censuses, 1860 and 1870; Marin County Journal. 

 March 2, 1867, October 29, 1870, and March 3, 1881. 



'"Deeds. Book H, p. 466, MCRO; Santa Cruz County, p. 333. The Wilder Ranch, located a 

 short distance north of Santa Cruz, is now a unit in the California State Parks system and is open 

 to the public. Baldwin and Wilder had divided their Santa Cruz lands some time after the move. 



'"Population and Agriculture Schedules, 9th U. S. Census, 1870; Deeds Book H, pp. 542 and 

 544, MCRO; interview with Louis Bloom and Fred Rodoni. Bloom family tradition has it that 

 Joseph Fiori and Joseph Bloom were the same person, but census records prove this incorrect, as 

 Fiori was 23 years older than Bloom in 1870; it is likely that they were father and son. 



248 



