Biographies
WILLIAM KLEINSORGE
WILLIAM
KLEINSORGE.---A sturdy, successful pioneer whose name
men still love to repeat, and in whose life-story there is no end of interest
and inspiration, was the late William Kleinsorge, one
of the earliest merchants in the Sacramento Valley. He was born in Germany, and came to America
when he was six and one-half years old.
He was reared and educated in St. Louis, and from Missouri he came to
California in 1862, traveling by way of the Isthmus of Panama. He located at Sacramento, and became a member
of the well-known firm of Milliken Bros., wholesale grocers. Later, he became a member of the firm of
Lindley & Company, wholesalers, and owned a fourth interest in the
business. He was a successful business
man, and his early demise at the age of thirty-nine was widely lamented. He belonged to the Odd Fellows, and there was
no more popular member in that fraternal order.
In 1865 Mr. Kleinsorge
married Miss Emma Stose, the daughter of Clemens Stose, the California pioneer, a native of Wurttemberg,
Germany, who also came to America when he was a little boy. He grew up in Columbia, Pa., and later became
a pioneer resident of Chicago. In
October, 1852, he came out to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama. He had been a blacksmith by trade, but in
California he engaged in the mercantile trade in San Francisco for a time, and
then came to Sacramento and conducted a ranch about nine miles from the city
until he was driven out by the flood.
Then he returned to San Francisco, where he passed the rest of his life,
dying at the
ripe old age of eighty-two. His good
wife was Margaret Bauder before her marriage, and she
lived to see her eighty-fifth year. Mrs.
Kleinsorge is now the only living child; and she has
two children, William E., and Mary L., who is the wife of Dr. C. A. Haines of
Sacramento. Mr. Kleinsorge
died December 7, 1880.
Transcribed by Suzanne Wood.
Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With
Biographical Sketches, Page 375. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA.
1923.
© 2007 Suzanne Wood.