LOUIS E. HALVERSON

Sacramento County

Biographies

LOUIS E. HALVERSON

LOUIS E. HALVERSON.--A decidedly practical family, of wide and valuable experience, has been that of the late Louis E. Halverson, who was a native of Christiania, Norway, where he was born on the day before Christmas, 1854, the son and second child of Halver Pederson, and grew up to be a carpenter by trade, and to own a small farm near Christiania. He attended the good schools of Norway, and, as was the habit with so many boys in that country, famed for its sea-faring men, spent three years of his youth on a freight vessel, sailing around the world. He then came to the United States, and here followed the carpenter trade for a couple of years. Coming West to Wisconsin, Mr. Halverson located at Marinette, and for a few years engaged in building by contract. After that, he became foreman for a large planing mill, and continued in that capacity for twenty years. Wherever he went, or whatever he undertook to do, he demonstrated his exceptional fitness and his absolute dependability.

At Marinette, Wis., on October 8, 1882, he was married to Miss Agnes Miller, a native of Drummond, Norway, and the daughter of Jacob and Karu (Christopherson) Miller, her father being a moulder by trade. Eleven children made up the happy family, Agnes being the ninth, and she came with her parents, when nine years old, and her father settled at Marinette, and followed his trade until his death, at the age of seventy-one. Mrs. Miller lived to be ninety.

After their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Halverson moved to Grand Rapids, Wis., and there he started a planing-mill business of his own, which he conducted for four years, when he sold out and moved to Sacramento in 1911, bringing his wife and family along with him. He again resumed carpentering as a journeyman, and found plenty to do, an account of his superior skill, in Sacramento and vicinity. In October, 1920, the Halversons moved onto a forty acre ranch at Wilton, which he had previously purchased; and this ranch is now known as the Wilton Demonstration Farm, being equipped with the largest irrigation plant in that section of the country. There is a six-inch irrigation pump driven by a fifteen-horse-power electric motor; the well is 500 feet deep, and there is an abundant supply of water. The ranch has about twenty-five acres of fruit trees, and four acres of berries; while the balance of acreage is in grain; both horses and tractors are used for power. Mr. Halverson built modern, electric-lighted poultry houses, furnished with running water in each building, and put up all the buildings on the place, except the home, which was on the place, and in various ways made it a model farm. And there, where he had scored some of his greatest successes, he died, on December 30, 1922, and since that time the famous ranch has been managed by his son, George, with the help of the other five brothers.

There were eleven children in the Halverson family, and ten of them are sons, and they are all living. Charles is with Wood-Curtis Company of Sacramento; George started out for himself in a law office in Marinette, Wis., and became, in Sacramento, manager for the Jacobs Motor Company, and was with them for two years; William is a mechanic with that firm, in Sacramento; Edwin is on the ranch; Clarence is also on the home ranch, although he used to be a switchman on the Western Pacific Railroad; Ernest is a rancher at Elk Grove; Mabel is Mrs. Carl Morlath, of Sacramento; Elmer is an apprentice to the auto-painting trade, in Sacramento; Henry is learning the auto-mechanic trade in the same city; and Arnold and Alton are on the ranch. The family are all Republicans. Elmer has married Miss Christina McKinnon; and Ernest is the husband of Miss Nettie Ehrmann, by whom he has had three children, Fay, Richard and Betty.

Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.

Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With Biographical Sketches, Pages 713-714. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.