Butte County
Biographies
HENRY E. WICKMAN
HENRY E. WICKMAN.—A self-made man
who is very properly proud of his success, and who, after years of hard labor
and self-denial, was able, at last, to return to his native land beyond the
ocean for an enjoyable visit, taking with him his wife and family, is
Henry E. Wickman, a native of the German
Fatherland, now a loyal and public-spirited citizen of the United States. He
was born on a farm near Hanover, Germany, on January 8, 1868, and
worked on a farm as a boy. At the end of eight years of such experience, he
came to the United States.
On May 13, 1891, he arrived at Gridley and
went to work at once for his uncle, George Wickman,
remaining on the latter’s ranch, seven years. He then revisited his old home in
Germany and brought back with him the lady who has proven his devoted wife. She
was Dorris Annie Schierholtz,
before her marriage, in 1898, and she also was born in Hanover, Germany. Taking
up his residence again in Gridley, Mr. Wickman once
more worked for his uncle. Then he rented the Little Ranch of three hundred
sixty acres, five miles west of Gridley, and there he farmed for three years.
Still later, he rented his uncle’s ranch of fourteen hundred acres and farmed
the same to grain, getting, as was usual with him, all that the soil would
yield.
In 1906, he bought his present fine ranch
of forty acres in Gridley Colony, six miles southeast of Gridley, where he has
since resided. This he has developed into a most desirable farm; a solitary
tree, an oak, grew on the place when he took it, but he soon planted a row of
black walnuts on the southern side of his house, and later grafted them to
English walnuts. He also planted a ten-acre orchard, setting out five acres of
Muir, Lovell, Phillips and Tuscan peaches, and five acres to French and sugar
prunes. As a leading horticulturist, he is a member of the California Prune
Grower’s Association. Mr. Wickman also has
twenty-two acres of alfalfa, and a dairy with fifteen cows of the Holstein
breed, and a fine silo with a capacity of sixty-five tons.
Three children share the social life
enjoyed by Mr. and Mrs. Wickman: Martha, Frederick,
and Mary, the two first mentioned having accompanied their parents to Germany
in the winter of 1913-1914, when for six months the worthy couple renewed their
associations with the land of their birth and the friends of their childhood.
Fraternally, Mr. Wickman is a member of North Butte
Lodge, No. 230, F. & A. M., at Gridley, and is also a
member of Gridley Camp, Modern Woodmen of America. With his wife, he is a
member of Vernon Chapter, No. 35, O. E. S., at Gridley. Mrs. Wickman is also a member of Royal Neighbors of America.
Transcribed by Marie Hassard
29 October 2009.
Source:
"History of Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages
1280-1281, Historic
Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Marie Hassard.
Golden Nugget Library's
Butte County Biographies