LUDWIG GREGOR

Sacramento County

Biographies

LUDWIG GREGOR

LUDWIG GREGOR.--Representing the contribution of chemistry to the oil industry, Ludwig Gregor, well-known chemist of Sacramento, has eighteen acres of land on which he has been prospecting and drilling for oil, near Clay, Cal., with every indication that his experimental work will become a demonstrated reality. He was born in Czecho-Slovakia, on January 28, 1865. His father was John Gregor, a hotel man, at Butschowitz; and although he eventually died as the result of accident, he lived to be about sixty years of age. He had married Miss Anna Wittek, and she was permitted to see the Biblical three score and ten years. They were the parents of seven children, who bore the names of Ludwig, Edmund, Sophie, John, Karl, Conrad and Frank.

Ludwig Gregor attended first the public schools, then college and finally the University of Vienna, and in the latter famous institution of higher learning he specialized in chemistry. He commenced to work in laboratories, passed his examination as a pharmacist, and then worked in pharmacies; and he was a chemist in a cane-sugar factory, in Queensland, Australia, for five years. He was next in the appraisers division of the United States Customs at Manila, in the Philippine Islands, for two years; but having returned to his native land, he leased a pharmacy and became the manufacturer of pharmaceutical products. When this lease had expired, he came to the United States, in 1906, and for a while lived in San Francisco, reaching California by way of India and Australia; and he arrived at the Golden Gate, six days before the San Francisco earthquake. He then went on to New York, and remained in the metropolis from 1906 to 1912, where he worked as a professional chemist in laboratories. In 1912, he came West again, to San Francisco, where he stayed for a short time, when he came on to Sacramento, and he was four years with Helke's Pioneer Pharmacy. Then he came to Clay and purchased eighteen acres of land, and started to prospect for oil. He drilled to the depth of 1,357 feet; but lacking funds, he suspended operations and then took up work at the Grey pharmacy and other pharmacies in Sacramento. Mr. Gregor is about to form a new oil company, to resume the drilling on his land. He is a member of the Pharmacist Association of America, and is a stanch Republican in favor of a high-wall tariff.

While at Brunn, in Moravia, Czecho-Slovakia, on November 17, 1890, Mr. Gregor was married to Miss Anna Chytil, a native of that district, and the daughter of Dr. Joseph Chytil, and his good wife, who was Miss Marie Malish before her marriage. Her father was the chief justice of the province of Moravia in Czecho-Slovakia, and he died at the age of sixty-seven, while his wife, who passed away only a short time ago, attained to her seventy-eighth year. There was one other daughter in the family besides Mrs. Gregor, and her name was Mary Chytil. One son has blessed the union of Mr. and Mrs. Gregor, and they have called him Otakar; and he is now living at Elliott, on a ranch in Christian Colony, where a Lodi company is now drilling for oil. The Gregors have built a good residence on their tract of eighteen acres, and there they maintain a cultured home and dispense a true Czecho-Slovakian hospitality.

Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.

Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With Biographical Sketches, Page 748. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.