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Frank F. Latta
Frank Forrest Latta (September 18, 1892 - May 8, 1983), California oral historian and ethnographer of the Yokut people and historian of the early settlement of the San Joaquin Valley.
Born in Stan...view moreFrank Forrest Latta (September 18, 1892 - May 8, 1983), California oral historian and ethnographer of the Yokut people and historian of the early settlement of the San Joaquin Valley.
Born in Stanislaus County, near Orestimba Creek, the son of Presbyterian minister Eli C. Latta and teacher Harmonia Campbell, Latta lived most of his life in the San Joaquin Valley. As a young boy he worked on several ranches and became interested in the stories of the early pioneers. In 1906 he began interviewing people and gathering research regarding early life and early farming in California. Latta also spent much time researching the Miller & Lux farming corporation and its founders Henry Miller and Charles Lux.
To support himself Frank F. Latta became a teacher, teaching drafting and carpentry at high schools in Gustine, Porterville, Shafter and Bakersfield, California from 1915-1945. In 1919, he married Jeanette Allen and they had four children. When not teaching, Latta was traveling the San Joaquin Valley, interviewing pioneers and Native Americans, including surviving Yokuts and settlers acquainted with them, gathering artifacts articles or writing at home. He published a large number of articles in San Joaquin Valley newspapers during the 1920s and 1930s.
Latta helped found the Kern County Museum in Bakersfield in 1941 where he worked both as a curator and as its director from 1945-1956. Latta also continued his research into the Yokuts. From this information, gathered for more than a half-century, interviewing over 200 elderly Yokuts and a number of settlers, Latta compiled and published the Handbook of Yokuts Indians, in 1949.
In 1956 Latta moved to Santa Cruz, purchasing the Gazos Ranch in southern San Mateo County, formerly the Steele Ranch, south of Pescadero, California near Gazos Creek, and published a series of books. He died in Santa Cruz in 1983, aged 90.view less