Biographies
CHARLES A. LUDLOW
CHARLES A. LUDLOW.--A scientifically and practically trained agriculturist
who has made a pronounced success of his life-work in the careful study of one
particular corner of husbandry, is Charles A. Ludlow, the founder and
proprietor of the North Sacramento Nurseries out on the Marysville Road. He was
born at Geneva, N. Y., on January 31, 1858, and learned the nursery business in
a nursery at Geneva, his home-town. After an apprenticeship of seven years, he
came out to California in 1883, and pitched his tent at Sacramento, where he
entered the employ of W. R. Strong & Company, owners of the Capital
Nursery, a firm that also bought and shipped fruit. Later, he traveled on the
road for the firm, buying fruit, and then he became a partner in the firm of Pattee & Lett, of Riverside,
fruit shippers, but with offices in various cities in the state. After a while,
he himself was an independent fruit-shipper, both in Sacramento and northern
California, and he helped to load some of the earliest shipments of both citrus
and deciduous fruit sent from the Golden State to the Eastern markets. Some twelve years ago, Mr. Ludlow returned
to Sacramento and founded the North Sacramento Nurseries, commencing in a small
way, and being glad to do $1,900 worth of trade the first year. Since then, he
has doubled the volume of his business each year, and now he is the largest
retail dealer in this section, doing as much business as all the others put
together, and enjoying the enviable reputation of an authority on fruit-growing
and nursery stock. He raises his stock in Rocklin, Placer County, and
specializes in peaches, pears, plums, cherries, and apricots, and all varieties
of grape-vines. In 1923, he will have his stock planted on a twenty-acre tract
south of Sacramento, for he never uses the same ground twice for the growing of
his stock, which, except peaches, comes originally from France, where it is
started from seed. He has long supplied the state, and superintended the
planting of many orchards in this vicinity. For the past five years, he has
supplied the Natomas Land Company with many thousands
of trees, and also James Mathena, a large
fruit-grower on the river. In 1923, he supplied Green & Huntoon
with 10,000 trees for planting on the Holland Tract along the river, and the
same year he also shipped 4,500 trees to Marysville, and he has made
interesting shipments to smaller ranches.
Mr. Ludlow is the father of three
children, Cecil Clay, who served in the World War in the United States Navy,
and Florence and Thelma. He is a member of the California Association of
Nurserymen and of the Fraternal Brotherhood.
Transcribed by Sally Kaleta.
Source: Reed, G.
Walter, History of Sacramento County,
California With Biographical Sketches, Page 285. Historic Record Company,
© 2006 Sally Kaleta.