Sacramento County
Biographies
OLE O. GOODRICH
OLE O. GOODRICH.–
Few residents of Sacramento County
can recall the reminiscences of the early days as vividly as Ole O. Goodrich,
one of the county’s honored pioneers, and the sole survivor of those who
engaged in the nursery business here over fifty years ago. Born in Norway,
February 22,1838, Mr. Goodrich was the son of Ole and
Ida Goodrich, who brought their family to the United States
in 1852, settling in Wisconsin. The father became one of the pioneer farmers
of Dane County,
and passed away there in 1854, Mrs. Goodrich surviving him until 1859.
The youngest of a
family of four sons and four daughters, Mr. Goodrich is now the only one
living. Reared to young manhood on the
home farm in Wisconsin, he later
took up the profession of photography, and was thus engaged during the early
days of the Civil War, when in the camps he often made as much as fifty dollars
a day. In December, 1863, he started
from New York to Panama, coming on the steamer “Ariel” to Aspinwall
and on the “St. Louis” to San Francisco. For a time he
worked in the bay region, and then spent several months traveling in the mining
region as a professional photographer, receiving handsome returns for his
work. An interesting souvenir of these
days is some mining stock which he received in payment for his services.
Mr. Goodrich then
took up ranch work, becoming foreman of the Flint and
Olsen hop yards near Sacramento,
and remained with them for five years.
This was at the time that hop-growing was first introduced into California,
and Mr. Goodrich was among the first men to plant this crop on a commercial
scale. Entering into a partnership with
J. S. Harbeson, he established a nursery business,
their association continuing for eleven years, and during this time they
encountered heavy losses on account of the breaking of levees and the flooding
of their fields by the Sacramento River. In 1883 Mr. Goodrich purchased thirty-four
acres of J. Burke, on which he developed a pear orchard, and in 1888 he
purchased an additional seventeen acres from D. Rocca;
this place was three miles south of Sacramento
and east of the old site of Sutterville, of gold-day
fame. For many years Mr. Goodrich
devoted his time to his nursery; and among other valuable contributions he made
to horticulture may be named two excellent varieties of peaches, the Goodrich
and the Sacramento, which are still very popular, the first a very early peach
and the latter a late variety which bears after most of the other peaches are
gone. An energetic man and a hard worker, Mr. Goodrich made a good success in
the nursery business and built up a reputation for reliability and honest
dealing which proved a great asset in all his undertakings.
On January 1,
1876, Mr. Goodrich was married to Miss Mary A. Grundon,
who was born in England in 1850 and
came to America
when fifteen years old. Her uncle, John Grundon, was a well-known pioneer rancher and capitalist of
Sacramento. Three children were born to Mr. And Mrs.
Goodrich: John William, who is in the employ of the State Forestry Commission
in Sacramento County, resides at home; Ida Elizabeth married Frank I. Milne, a
civil engineer of Sacramento, and they have one son, Frank G.; Minerva is the
wife of Charles S. Cowgill of North Sacramento, and
they have a son, Raymond Ole. Mrs.
Goodrich passed away on January 11, 1919, leaving an irreplaceable void in the
family circle.
In 1912 Mr.
Goodrich sold his ranch near Sutterville, and later
invested in the newly subdivided tract now known as North Sacramento;
here he built a modern home on El Camino Avenue,
and it was one of the first houses completed there. He has other real estate interests there;
and, hale and hearty at the age of eighty-five, he continues to take an active
interest in his business affairs. Mr.
Goodrich has been a Republican from the time of Lincoln,
and one of his cherished possessions is a copy of a New
York paper in which is a speech delivered by
President Lincoln at Cooper Institute in 1860.
Transcribed 1-30-07
Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: Reed, G.
Walter, History of Sacramento County,
California With Biographical Sketches, Page 365. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.
© 2007 Marilyn R. Pankey.