Sacramento County
Biographies
LEWIS D. HOPFIELD
LEWIS D. HOPFIELD--Whoever happens to fall in with Lewis D. Hopfield, the affable manager of the gold dredge department of the Natomas Company, will not fail to find the gentleman exceptionally interesting, with whom a chat, however brief, will prove peculiarly profitable. He was born on a farm in Wisconsin, on April 24, 1869, the son of John and Sarah (Clow) Hopfield, who moved to Oregon, where Mr. Hopfield farmed all the rest of his life, rounding out a well-directed and honorable career. The father is now dead, but Mrs. Hopfield is living at McMinnville, Ore., at the age of seventy-five years.
What Lewis Hopfield did not get from his teachers in the public schools, he made up through studies by correspondence, and in the great school of practical experience; and until he was fifteen years old, he worked on the farm with his father. After that he tried various occupations, such as work in a lumber camp, in Washington, and then he took up the work of the mechanical millwright, and followed it with the railroad company for eight years. Later he went into shipbuilding at Portland, continuing in that field for five years, and in the autumn of 1903, he came to California, where he was engaged by the Ashburton Company to help construct a dredge at Fair Oaks. Then he was with the Folsom Development Company on the construction of dredges; and afterward with the Boston Machine Shop Company, at Oroville, on construction, spending four months as assistant foreman and two years as foreman. The Yuba Consolidated Gold Field then secured his services as superintendent of dredges, and after two successful years there he became superintendent of construction with the Yuba Construction Company. In 1912, he was transferred to Natoma, first as assistant superintendent, under Mason Derby; and on the latter's resignation, nine and a half years ago, he became superintendent.
Politically, Mr. Hopfield is a Republican. Fraternally, he is an Odd Fellow; a Mason of the thirty-second degree, belonging to the Scottish Rite and the Shrine; and a member of the Modern Woodmen of America, the Elks, and the Sutter Club. He is fond of hunting and fishing; and in social life as well as business, in sport as well as in labor, he is "a jolly good fellow," and as such is welcomed everywhere.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Reed, G.
Walter, History of Sacramento County,
California With Biographical Sketches, Page 690. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA.
1923.
© 2007 Jeanne Taylor.