Sacramento County
Biographies
EDWARD M. THOMPSON
EDWARD M. THOMPSON.--One of the leading nurserymen of northern California, Edward M. Thompson was born in Fayette County, Iowa, May 11, 1861, on his father's farm, and there he was reared, attending the district schools. When a boy of fourteen he left home to make his own way in the world, and found work on a farm, receiving ten dollars a month for his first wages. In 1885, he came as far west as Grand Island, Nebr., and there became agent for the Adams Express Company, remaining with them ten years, when he went to Deadwood, S. D., and took the same post in the company's office at that place, until 1906. During the gold rush to Nevada he went to that state, where he was in the employ of Wells Fargo Express Company at Goldfield. Then he was transferred to Millers, Nev., where he was agent and later acted as agent at Alturas until 1911.
That year marks Mr. Thompson's arrival in Sacramento, with the determination to start in business for himself, if only in a small way, and with a small wagon and old bay horse he embarked in the nursery business as a salesman, covering later several counties in northern and central California. He is associated with the Silva-Bergtholdt Company and the Newcastle Plant Company, the largest growers of nursery stock in California, growing three million trees yearly of the deciduous and shade varieties, and their output is shipped throughout the country in motor power machines all through the East, as well as in California, using Ford, Studebaker, Lexington and Buick trucks.
Mr. Thompson also has nursery yards in Sacramento and he is the owner of a fifty-two acre fruit ranch which he has planted and developed, forty acres in peaches, ten in pears and two in cherries in the Natoma district. He has been very successful in fruit culture, both in his personal operations and in assisting others, and attributes his success to the fact that he has made a careful study of soils and irrigation, and he is recognized as an expert authority in his line, for ranchers are beginning to realize that it is knowledge which makes a piece of property a successful producer or a financial loss, and when they find a man who has learned from actual experience and experiments with trees and soils in different districts, his opinion is valued accordingly.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Reed, G.
Walter, History of Sacramento County,
California With Biographical Sketches, Pages 870-873. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA.
1923.
© 2007 Jeanne Taylor.