San Joaquin County Biographies
Ref: Page 755
Transcribed by: Linda Diane Jackson 9/27/2009
MELBOURNE E. ANGIER
A splendid example of what an industrious, enterprising and optimistic man may accomplish, with the cooperation of his gifted wife, is afforded in the sterling lives and substantial accomplishments of Mr. and Mrs. Melbourne E. Angier, whose handsome homeplace, about four miles southeast of Lodi, is one of the famous showplaces of the San Joaquin Valley. Mr. Angier was born at Troy, Orleans County, Vt., on March 1, 1863, the son of Silas and Alvira (Conner) Angier, both natives of Connecticut; and he grew up with one brother, Oscar, and a sister, Alberta. Up to his thirteenth year, he attended school six months in the year, and after that three months a year, until he was seventeen, living at home on his father's farm of 100 acres in Vermont.
In March, 1884, he left home for far-off California, but first went on to British Columbia, where he worked in a saw-mill for a season. He then came to San Francisco, and from there he went into the foothills, where he chopped wood, for firing the locomotives on the Placerville branch. He then drove a scraper team on Andros Island, and in February, 1885, he started working for C.W. Norton on his ranch adjoining the place he now owns. He labored there until 1890, and then rented forty acres of land from Judge Norton—the tract being vineyard, which he helped set out in 1888 and was one of the first commercial vineyards of this locality.
The first ranch Mr. Angier bought was comprised of twenty acres, in the Live Oaks school district of San Joaquin County, open land, which he commenced to improve. He added to his holdings from time to time, until now he owns about 530 acres of the finest land in San Joaquin County. This includes 140 acres between Manteca and Ripon, in which he has a valuable equity. That is one of the finest vineyards for bearing Tokay grapes, and is amply supplied with water from the South San Joaquin Irrigation district ditch. The balance, 390 acres is in the Live Oak section, 280 acres still unimproved open land. He has 160 acres planted to shipping plums of different varieties, forty acres in Alicante Bouchet. He has on his home ranch two pumping plants, and he cultivates his ranch with both tractor and horsepower. He is a member of the Masonic Lodge of Lodi, and belongs to the Royal Arch Chapter and Commandery at Stockton, the Ben Ali Temple at San Francisco, Sacramento, and Stockton Lodge of Elks. In national politics he is a Republican.
At Lodi, on August 8, 1901, Mr. Angier was married to Miss Antoinette Hale, a native of St. John's, Clinton County, Mich.; and the daughter of John R. and Dora (Miles) Hale. When she was eight and one-half years old, her father migrated to California with his family, and settled at Lodi, and he became an extensive fruit grower, located three miles southeast of Lockeford, where he lived for about three years. There she attended the Lockeford school; but her father moved to Lodi and went into the fruit trade, and so she attended the Salem school, and rounded out her studies at the Stockton Business College. Her father lived to be ninety years old, and her mother attained the fine age of seventy, and they both died in Lodi. She was one of a family of three children, and she also had a half-brother and a half or step-sister, as follows: John R. Hale, Bessie, (who died at the age of five,) and Frank Orland and his sister, Emma. Six children have blessed this happy union: Harold, taking an agricultural course at U.C. in Berkeley, Addine, Ellsworth, Newell, Antoniette and Lemoise. Mr. Angier very willingly accords to his able and devoted wife much of the credit for their common success and progress, by which they have become among the most useful, influential and representative people in the Valley; for in the course of their ranch-development, there were times when his wife had to cook for as many as fifty farmhands, and that, too, while they were living in a small home. Prior to her marriage, Mrs. Angier was a gifted woman in dramatic expression, and for years conducted a class in that difficult subject. It is pleasant to learn, therefore, that this hard-working and very deserving couple, who so long bore the burden and the heat of the day, erected at a cost of some $30,000, one of the very finest country residences in all the San Joaquin Valley, and which is furnished with the delicate taste for which Mrs. Angier has long been known.
History of
SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY
CALIFORNIA
With A
Biographical Review
of
The Leading Men and Women of the County Who Have Been
Identified with Its Growth and Development
from the Early Days to the Present
HISTORY BY
George H. Tinkham
HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
1923
San Joaquin County Biographies ~ Archive Biography Index ~ Archive Index
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