Where is Tom Coughran?

by Steve
Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Back in the old days of OCThen (Aug 2001), a guy named Tom Coughran sent us an e-mail about his father, Samuel Coughran, who owned the land that Knott's Berry Farm eventually occupied...

My father, Samuel (Sam) (Sammy) Coughran owned the property where Knott's Berry Farm (known then as Knott's Berry Place) is located. He sold the property to Walter and Cordellia Knott. Walter told Dad that he would pay him $1,500 for the land (I don't remember if that was per acre or for the whole parcel). Dad told him, "Walter, you know it isn't worth any more than $1,000." Walter told him he couldn't pay him cash, so Dad told him, "In that case, I guess it's worth $1,500." My Mom (Florence Margaret Inskeep) married my Dad in 1941. Dad still lived in the two story house that was later used by the Knotts as offices. The house is/was located just south of the Chicken Restaurant and north of the one stall firehouse. My Mom was a waitress at the Chicken Restaurant in its early days. On the East side of the property, along what is now Beach Blvd., where the original entrance was located, there is or at least was, a row of Eucalyptus trees. Dad planted those trees in 1918 or thererabouts. He told us that the first tree north of the entrance has an "unnatural" fork in it. He said he had been plowing the field and tied the plowhorse to the young tree while he ate his lunch. The horse must have been humgry as well as it ate the top out of the tree, thus, the fork. My Dad's sister, Alma, owned the property from the south side of Dad's property to the cross street to the south (Crescent?). I believe she owned it even before she married Elbert Carpenter, but not sure. She was three or four years older than Dad.

I posted the above e-mail on our original article, "Knott's Berry Farm" a couple of years ago.

Well, a lady named Elsie Coughran wrote an e-mail to me a couple of days ago asking me for Tom Coughran's e-mail address. She used to be married to James Eugene Coughran, the son of Samuel Coughran, and she also claims Sam is the previous owner of the land. She goes on to say that James told her many stories of growing up there, and befriending Walter Knott's son, Russell Knott.

However, no one ever mentioned a Tom Coughran. So, she wants to get a hold of him to explore that side of the family. She figures that Tom is a son of Sam Coughran's second wife.

The problem is that I can't find that e-mail anymore! I've gone through a couple of laptops since I posted that article a couple of years ago, and I think something got lost in transferring files. It was also a couple of years ago that I migrated from Outlook Express to Outlook 2003, after Outlook Express crashed on me, and I lost many old e-mails. That could be it.

Anyways, if anyone can hook up Elsie with Tom Coughran, or any of the Coughran descendants from that line, please click on "Post a Comment" below, OR, send me a personal e-mail, and I'll get it to Elsie.

You can also e-mail Elsie directly: eeidc @ socal . rr . com.

Labels: Knott's-Berry-Farm