San Joaquin County Biographies
Ref: Page 648-653
Transcribed by: Linda Diane Jackson 1/6/2010
ALOIS GAUL
A representative California rancher whose enterprise is born of a progressive spirit and ambition, and whose foresight is the result of profitable experience, is Alois Gaul, the Delta farmer, who resides upon the old Captain Frewert homestead, nine miles southwest of Stockton on Upper Roberts Island. He was born in Bavaria on January 3, 1861, and when twenty years of age left home for America, and after an adventurous voyage of sixteen days, reached New York in 1881 and there he spent a year with relatives.
In 1882 he arrived in California, and for ten years he remained in San Francisco, for eight years being with the late John Wieland. Then he bought a forty-acre tract of land in Placer County, and having cleared it of brush, etc., he set out an orchard and a vineyard. This property so increased in value that by the time it was in bearing he was able to sell it at a good profit, enabling him, in 1900, to remove to the Delta district in San Joaquin County, where he took up his residence at the old home of Captain Frewert, a pioneer of this county. At San Francisco he received his citizenship in 1887 and soon identified himself with the Republican party, but in local matters he casts partisanship to the winds and goes in for the best man and the best measures.
At Stockton, January 14, 1897, Mr. Gaul was married to Miss Bertha A. Frewert, a daughter of the highly honored Captain Frewert already referred to, and a gifted lady who was born on the Frewert place, Roberts Island. Three children were born to this fortunate union. Herman is a Delta rancher closely associated with his parents in business affairs; Emma has become the wife of Peter Claussen, and the mother of two children, Marjorie and Bobbie; and Vera is a student in Stockton high school. Mrs. Gaul has served for two years as an efficient and popular member of the board of trustees of the Garden school district.
Since coming to San Joaquin County, Mr. Gaul has made an enviable reputation as a farmer and stock breeder, for sheep raising in the Delta has proven very profitable and so has been the raising of shorthorn Durham cattle, horses and mules, and registered Friesian-Holstein dairy cattle. His livestock has been shipped into the range and cattle country of New Mexico, Arizona and throughout California. He owns an imported Percheron stallion, and was the proud possesor of a purebred Belgian horse. Fortunately for him, the transportation facilities here-abouts could hardly be improved upon, both by trucks and by river boats, and in 1906 he constructed a warehouse with 1,000-ton capacity of hay on the levee landing by his farm, and there the river boats can tie up for the loading and unloading of produce.
Mr. Gaul had a younger brother, K.G. Gaul, a prominent stockman of the Salinas Valley, but he passed away in 1919. His sisters, Mrs Erhardt and Mrs. Julia Kilian, both reside in Brooklyn, N.Y. Two other members of the family—a sister, Mrs. Teresa Rupert of Minneapolis, and an elder brother Henry, have long since closed their eyes to the scenes of this world. Mr. Gaul has three Delta farms. The home ranch embraces 266 acres; then there is a stockraising ranch of 92 acres in the old Shippee tract on French Camp Road, and there are some 334 acres near Old River on Upper Roberts Island also belonging to him. He is widely known as an authority on livestock and he has served for many years as a trustee of Reclamation District No. 544 and for the past eleven years has been chairman of the board of trustees. In this connection it may be well to note that during the past nine years the affairs of this district have been so efficiently conducted that it has been necessary on only two or three occasions to levy assessments, and in both cases these assessments were not over twenty-five cents per acre. In fact, this remarkable administration of the levees in this district, and the solution of the many problems concerning their upkeep have attracted attention from other reclamation districts—clearly an emphatic compliment to Mr. Gaul and those associated with him in this work.
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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