Billing, Frederick W.

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Frederick W. Billing, a native of Germany, was a businessman and talented amateur landscape painter who moved west from New York for his health. He had made a fortune in mining-related ventures in Utah before coming to California with his wife Wilhelmina in about 1885, establishing a winery in San Mateo County near today’s Woodside.

Billing's daughter Bertha married Englishman John F. Coope, and the newly-weds moved to Ben Lomond in ~1880, where Coope and his father-in-law established the Ben Lomond Wine Company. In 1899, Billing acquired the William Kerr ranch (today's Pasatiempo) and moved there. In the same year, the Ben Lomond Wine Company bought the Santa Cruz Mountain Wine Company, with its Santa Cruz winery. Unfortunately, Coope died suddenly in 1902, and the winery seems to have declined from that point.

Billing's business partner John Q. Packard also moved to the area, building a house just across the San Jose road (now Highway 17) from the Kerr house. Billing, Packard, and Coope were all members of the committee established in 1900 to launch efforts to create what is now Big Basin Redwoods State Park.