ALEXANDER BARQUIST

Sacramento County

Biographies

ALEXANDER BARQUIST

ALEXANDER BARQUIST.--A rancher thoroughly familiar with California conditions, who has attained an enviable success, is Alexander Barquist, who resides about a mile north of Galt, on a ranch of fifteen acres. He was born in Vermland, Sweden, on December 12, 1861, the son of Niels and Keis (Johnson) Larsen, his present name having been given to him when he enlisted in the Swedish Army. There were ten children in the family; and the father, who was a shoemaker, died when our subject was only eleven years of age, honored for his honesty and for his good workmanship. Mrs. Larsen lived to see her seventy-fifth year.

Alexander Barquist went to school in Sweden, but from the date of his father’s death, he had to work and neglect further study. When he was eighteen years old he entered the Swedish Army, where he served three years; and after receiving his honorable discharge, he came to the United States and stopped at Chicago, working there for three months. He then worked in a sawmill on the Menominee River, until 1904, and in October of that year he came west to Fresno, and spent a winter, when he went to Sanger, in Fresno County, and secured employment in the Bennett Lumber Yards, where he stayed for fifteen years; and during that time he purchased ten acres of raw land, which he set out to Lovell and Susquehanna peaches; but when the fruit got to bearing, in the first year, peaches were not worth marketing, a bitter disappointment, for our subject had worked many night by lantern light cultivating and improving this place, and after many years of hard labor had brought it into bearing, only to find that his crop had no market value, there being that year such a glut and surplus of fruit. So he became discouraged, and left Fresno County, and in the winter of 1918 he came to Galt, and bought thirty acres of Tokay vineyard, two and one-half miles east of Galt. He then sold this, and purchased a tract of fifteen acres on the highway, one mile north of Galt, known as the Demonstration Farm, through its use by the large company who were colonizing this district to show the crop possibilities of Galt land. The front part of this ranch was in oranges when Mr. Barquist bought it, but finding that these had no commercial value, he has grubbed them out, and is setting the land out to pears and a vineyard of Mission and Zinfandel grapes. There is a four-inch pump on the ranch driven by a motor of seven and one-half horse-power; and there is a modern dwelling, built in 1911.

On December 7, 1893, Mr. Barquist was married at Marinette, Wis., to Miss Lena Borman, a native of Norland, Sweden, that is, really of Sundsval, and the daughter of August Gustave and Olive (Osland) Borman, the former a carpenter of Sweden. When Lena was five years of age, her parents came out to the United States and to Oconto, Wis., where her father bought eighty acres of land, which he farmed until his death, in 1900, at the age of sixty-two. Mrs. Borman made her home in Oakland, Cal., the center of many devoted friends, until her death in 1923, about seventy-nine years of age. They had seven children, and all were given such educational advantages as could be commanded; and Lena Borman went to school at Marinette, Wis., there getting a good start in preparation for her life duties. Three children have come to bless this happy union. Ruby is Mrs. Joseph Hall, of Stockton; Ray is with his father; and Lucille is a pupil of the high school at Galt. Mr. Barquist belongs to the Brotherhood of American Yeomen.

Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.

Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With Biographical Sketches, Pages 914-915. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.