FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Lifelong Tiller Has Roots in Talbert Days

Hazel L. Courreges wouldn’t be at home if she didn’t live in Fountain Valley.

Courreges, 68, was born and raised in Talbert, the name for the farming community that is now part of Fountain Valley.

Her parents settled in Talbert in 1918.

Courreges’ mother, Elva Titus Doyle, now 87, was a native of Idaho, still lives in Fountain Valley. Her father, Lawrence Doyle, now deceased, was born in Ontario and moved to Talbert as a teen-ager.

“We were way out in the country. There were not many houses and there was a small school,” Courreges recalled.

“If we wanted to go to the library, we had to go to Huntington Beach.”

Courreges married into another pioneer family that came to Talbert in 1878.

In 1941, Courreges married Joseph J. Courreges, whose grandfather, Roch Courreges, once raised 8,500 head of sheep on the local 80-acre farm he bought in 1896.

The couple made their home in a guest house on the ranch.

Courreges’ husband of 46 years, who served on the City Council, Planning Commission and as city treasurer, died in 1987.

Roch Courreges was 16 when he left France and arrived in San Francisco in 1867.

He had hoped to strike it rich in gold mines, but instead worked as a cook in a boarding house and at a hotel.

In 1914, Roch Courreges built the wood-frame farmhouse still standing on Talbert Avenue, between Newland and Magnolia streets.

Hazel Courreges has lived in the home since 1945.

“It’s home. I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Hazel Courreges said of the four-bedroom house with a big living room and dining room.

Hazel Courreges said her husband’s grandfather, who married Magdalena Mogart in 1880, later started growing a number of crops on the Talbert farm, including potatoes, corn, sugar beets, pumpkins and lima beans.

Roch Courreges was a farmer and was involved in area businesses.

Roch Courreges, who has a local school named after him in Fountain Valley, encouraged the establishment of the Holly Sugar Co., was a founder of First National Bank in Huntington Beach and was involved in developing the area’s first telephone company, the Smeltzer Telephone Co.

After he died in 1922, the farmland was divided among his children. Hazel Courreges’ husband’s parents, Joseph J. Courreges Sr. and wife Maria, took over 10 acres of the family farm.

In the 1930s, a vegetable stand was built in front of the family house to sell the harvest.

“We grew a variety of vegetables. It made us a living. We didn’t get wealthy on it. And, it was many hours of hard work,” said Hazel Courreges.

She and her husband continued farming until 1986 when he became ill and could no longer work.

Today, Courreges said, there are two acres left of the farm where she grows a small family garden of squash, tomatoes, green beans, bell peppers and turnips.

“We enjoy the freshness of the vegetables,” she said.

Besides, it’s part of her life to continue to toil the soil, she said.

Hazel Courreges, a mother of four children, nine grandchildren and one great-granddaughter, said she doesn’t plan to move from Fountain Valley.

“This is where my roots are at for sure,” she said. “We’re not people who move around. When you get settled, you stay. That’s what Joe’s folks did, and what my folks did.

“It’s very comfortable in this town. I have no desire to move.”