Butte County
Biographies
JOHN WILLIAM KUHN
JOHN WILLIAM KUHN.—Among the best posted and most experienced stockmen in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys we find John William Kuhn, a native son of California, born at Felix, Calaveras County, on October 10, 1864. His father, Frank Kuhn, was born in Germany, on the River Rhine, and came to Wisconsin at the age of twenty-two years and followed farming near Milwaukee. In Chicago, he was united in marriage with Catherine Evans, who was born at Antwerp, and in the year 1853 they crossed the plains with wagons drawn by oxen to California. Soon after their arrival Mr. Kuhn went into the stock business at Felix, Calaveras County, raising sheep and cattle; he also bought large bands of sheep in the western states and sold them in the California markets. He purchased land, some three thousand acres near Felix, and improved a valuable stock ranch. He died in 1914, at the age of eighty-six years. The widow now makes her home with her son, John W., and at the age of eighty-two she is hale and hearty and enjoys life to its full.
John W. Kuhn was the youngest of five children and he attended the public schools of his locality. When he was but eleven years old he took charge of his father’s band of sheep, and soon began to buy and drive sheep to market, and thereby learned the business in all its details. He went into different states, Eastern Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada, where he purchased thousands of head of sheep, paying for some as low a price as one dollar a head. At one time he brought fourteen thousand four hundred head in one drive, but in three different bands, to the San Francisco market. In his early youth he gained a wide experience, and when he was eighteen he became a partner with his father in the sheep business, continuing with him until 1893, when on account of ill health he quit and devoted his time to the cattle business, raising stock on the home farm at Felix. When his father died he was made administrator of the estate.
Mr. Kuhn carried on the cattle business there until 1917, when he sold out and rented the ranch, which is still in possession of the family. Meantime he had made many trips through the Sacramento Valley and was much impressed with the Gridley section, even when it was raw and undeveloped land and covered with brush. In 1910, he purchased one hundred forty acres, three and one half miles southwest of Gridley, and began making improvements. He gave the right of way to the Sutter-Butte Canal, for the construction of a lateral through his ranch, this making every acre available to irrigation. The land was leveled and checked for alfalfa, and here he was engaged in raising sheep until 1917, when he sold them and bought cattle, and he now conducts a dairy of from thirty-five to fifty-five cows.
Mr. Kuhn was united in marriage, at Stockton, with Miss Gertrude Langmade, a native of Vermont, who with her husband shares the esteem of a wide circle of friends. Mr. Kuhn is a well-read and much traveled man and has a fund of information at his command. He is a stanch believer in the protective tariff and supports the candidates of the Republican party.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1164-1165, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Sharon
Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies