Henry T. Oxnard

Henry Thomas Oxnard was born to Adeline (née Brown) and Thomas A. Oxnard. He had three brothers, Robert, Benjamin A. and James G. In 1860, Oxnard's French-born father sold his sugar cane plantations and refinery in Louisiana, and by doing so was able to escape the business risks of the American Civil War by returning to his native France, where Henry was born in Marseille the year before the Civil War started. The family returned to the United States, where Henry Oxnard grew up in Massachusetts and attended Harvard College.

In 1889, Oxnard and his associates established a beet sugar refinery in Grand Island, Nebraska. In 1891, two more plants were built in Chino, California, and Norfolk, Nebraska, and one in Rocky Ford, Colorado. In 1899, Oxnard opened a factory in Ventura County, California. The area around the plant later would become the town of Oxnard.

In July 1904 Oxnard was described by The San Francisco Sunday Call as "one of the manipulators and dictators of beet sugar businesses and policies" in America, small, pugnacious, energetic, and practical."

In 1900, Henry Oxnard married Marie Pichon with whom he had two daughters, Adeline (1901) who was named for her paternal grandmother, and Nadine (1903).