Sacramento County
Biographies
JOHN A. McGRATH
JOHN A McGRATH.--A young man who is a
successful farmer of Andrus Island is John A. McGrath, who
with his brother Eugene farms the 112-acre
fruit and asparagus farm belonging to their mother. He was born in Sacramento City on June 12,
1901, a son of Patrick Henry and Mary Jane (Foster) McGrath, both natives of
New York State. When Patrick Henry
McGrath was fifteen years of age, he came to California and worked in San
Francisco. He married Miss Mary Jane
Foster in Sacramento. He became
identified with the prison board; and later, when he removed to San Francisco,
he was secretary for many years of the Bear Gulch Water Company. When John A. was a baby of nine months, his
parents removed to Berkeley, Cal., where they resided for nine years. They then removed to San Francisco and there made their
home for the following ten years.
Patrick Henry McGrath passed away in San Francisco, April 4, 1922, aged
sixty-two. The mother of our subject
makes her home in San Francisco.
Grandfather
James Foster came to California in an early day and
settled on Andrus Island, where he purchased 112
acres of land. There he resided to the
time of his death, when he willed the place to his daughter, the mother of our
subject. Besides the 112 acres north of
Marysville which has a twenty-acre vineyard on it, the balance being used for
general farming purposes.
John
A. McGrath is the youngest of a family of six children, the others being: James
Foster; Walter, deceased; Frank, deceased; Gertrude, now Mrs. A. J. Reed,
residing in San
Francisco;
and Eugene. Mr. McGrath was educated in the grammar
school in Berkeley, and attended Star of the Sea Business College in San
Francisco. He spent his summer vacations
on the ranch on Andrus Island where he learned fruit-growing. The ranch is irrigated by an electric
pumping-plant, and the crops raised are beans, asparagus and fruit. He also operates his mother’s ranch at
Marysville. Mr. McGrath is Republican in
politics. Fraternally, he is a member of
Courtland Parlor No. 106, N. S. G. W.
Transcribed by Donna L. Becker.
Source:
Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With
Biographical Sketches, Page 735.
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.
©
2007 Donna L. Becker.