Sacramento County
Biographies
HENRY FREY
HENRY FREY was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1839, his parents being Abel and Gesene or Gescha (Bluhm) Frey. The father died in 1879, and the mother in 1881, both having reached just about the allotted three score years and ten. Grandmother Antji Frey also lived to a good old age, having survived her husband, Henry, many years. The subject of this sketch went to school until fourteen, under the law of compulsory education, and afterward worked on his father’s farm, and for others also after he was twenty-one. He came to California by way of New York and the Pacific Railroad in 1870, settling in Sacramento County. For three years he worked on a ranch about four miles south of his place, and in 1875 he rented 540 acres on the Mokelumne. He bought forty cows, did a dairy business, raised barley, wheat, and some cattle, continuing in that place five years. In 1880 he bought his present place, 260 acres, about one mile west of Franklin, on the road to the Sacramento River; and in 1889, 300 acres one mile farther towards the river. He has 100 acres sown to wheat, which is his chief crop, and to which he is inclined to give almost undivided attention in the future, as a staple and reliable industry. He has several acres in vineyard, but has found the results more uncertain. Mr. Frey was married in 1868 to Miss Bertha Sprock, who died four days after the birth of her child —Bertha, born April 5, 1869. Her maternal grandparents, Johannes and Anna (Johanni) Sprock, are living in this township, hale and hearty at the advanced age of eighty-three, the latter having been born March 9, and the former March 15, 1806. In 1875 Mr. Frey was married in Sacramento to Miss Elizabeth Herzog, a native of Germany, a daughter of Johann and Julia (Swartz) Herzog, both now deceased. Mr. And Mrs. Frey are the parents of six children: Henry Abel, born October 16, 1878; Frederick John, August 15, 1880; Julia, July 31, 1882; Elizabeth Gesene, September 18, 1884; John, July 25, 1886; Gesene, March 25, 1888.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of
Sacramento County, California. Page 680. Lewis
Publishing Company. 1890.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.