Santa Clara County
Biographies
FRED
MARTEN
To Fred Marten belongs the distinction of not only being the most extensive farmer around Evergreen, but of embodying to the fullest extent those stable and fundamental traits which are the heritage of the sons of Germany. In every department of his fine property one is impressed with the prevailing neatness and order, and with the fact that the land is used to the best possible advantage, aided by the most approved innovations and implements known to the present agricultural world. Mr. Marten has owned and occupied his present farm since 1880, but in addition to its two hundred and sixty acres he farms five hundred and twenty acres of rented land. He makes a specialty of grain and hay, and nowhere in the county can one see larger stretches of golden grain lazily waving in the summer sunshine. He is obliged to employ from eight to ten men in the harvest time, and his annual output is five hundred tons of hay, and three thousand sacks of grain, each containing two bushels. As will be seen, a master mind is necessary at the helm of this large enterprise, and it is said also that the owner and manager of the property is a man of large heart, winning excellent service from his men by the enlightened method of kindness and consideration, and be impressing them with the need of hearty co-operation, if good results would be obtained.
Should Mr. Marten ever desire to relinquish farming, he could command union wages as a master carpenter and ship builder, trades which he followed for some time in his youth. He was born in Holstein, in the southern province of Schleswig-Holstein, March 16, 1840, his parents, Frank and Mary (Peterson) Marten, being natives of the same province. The father was a blacksmith by trade, and with his wife came to America in 1873, thereafter making his home with his son Fred, where his death occurred in 1897, at the age of eighty, his wife having predeceased him in 1894, at the age of seventy-six. Of his two sons and five daughters, one son and three daughters came to America, Fred Martin being the second.
At the age of fourteen Mr. Marten apprenticed to a ship carpenter, and with his trade well in hand, went to sea in the brig Alva in 1861, from Hamburg, and bound for San Francisco. The vessel stopped at Rio de Janeiro, and other large South American cities, and was two and a half years in reaching its destination in California. Mr. Marten lived in Solano county for two years, and afterward worked in the mines at Virginia City until 1865. That summer he came to Santa Clara county and worked by the day for a year and a half, and then rented a place in Milpitas for sixteen years, or until purchasing his present farm near Evergreen. He married in 1866, Lizzie Arlton, born near Coblentz, Germany, and whose fine qualities as wife, and economist have materially added to the success of her husband. Fred F., the oldest son in the family, is his father’s right hand man in the management of the farm; Eliza is at home; Mary is the wife of Richard De Meza, an agriculturist near Evergreen; Helena is the wife of Rheinhard Kohler, of Tacoma, Wash.; and Henry is a resident and business man of San Francisco. Mr. Marten is a Republican in politics, and is fraternally connected with the Ancient Order of United Workmen. With his family he is a member of the German Lutheran Church of San Jose. He is one of the influential and prominent men of his neighborhood, and as a factor in its all-around upbuilding is deserving of unstinted praise and appreciation. Broad minded and liberal, he surrounds his family with those comforts and advantages which make country life not only tolerable but delightful, and which stamp him as a man of progressive thought and large heart.
Transcribed by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: History
of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Pages 1168-1171. The Chapman
Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
© 2016 Joyce Rugeroni.