Santa Clara County
Biographies
JOHN WESLEY REIFF
Preceded by years of useful effort as a tinsmith and hardware merchant in various cities of the middle west, John Wesley Reiff came to San Jose in 1900, and has since occupied his thrifty little ranch of fifteen acres on the corner of Moorpark and Infirmary road. Under his careful management the property has been converted into a paying fruit investment, devoted principally to prunes and with two acres of apricots. His painstaking methods and knowledge of horticulture are apparent to all who visit his delightful home. He was reared to farming in Richland county Ohio, and was born near Mansfield, December 23, 1845, his parents, Christian and Maria (Eby) Reiff, having settled there upon leaving Pennsylvania, their native state. John W. is next to the youngest of four sons and four daughters, and was educated in the public schools, at an early age apprenticing to the tinsmith and cornice maker at Burbank, Wayne county, Ohio. In 1867 he located at Montgomery City, Montgomery county, Mo., where he worked at his trade and conducted a hardware business for a couple of years, afterward removing to Middletown, the same state, where he lived twenty years and became one of the foremost men in the community. In the meantime he continued to take an interest in horses, as he had in the east, only in place of the trotters which he drove at state and county fairs, he devoted his attention to the breaking of wild mustangs, in which Missouri abounded. He has always had great success in training horses, and invariably succeeds, no matter how obdurate or unmanageable his charge. His methods are those of kindness rather than harsh treatment, for he well understands the noble nature underlying even the most discouraging antics of man’s best friend in the animal world.
From Middletown Mr. Reiff went to Wichita, Kans., where he worked up a large business as a tinsmith and cornice maker, remaining there for eight years. In 1896 he became identified as agent with the Genesee Oil Company, at Findlay, Ohio, disposing of their crude oil products, and in 1900, as before stated, took up his residence on his present ranch. He married, in Wayne county, Ohio, Elizabeth Wandel, a native of Ohio, who became the mother of seven children, three of whom are deceased. In the order of their birth the children are: Almer Adolphus a member of the Union Live Stock Commission Company, of Wichita, Kans., Myrtle D., who died at the age of two years; Ora Adelide, who died at the age of eighteen months; Lester B., who inherits his father’s liking for horses and has become one of the world’s most famous jockeys; Delbert Lee, who is a trainer of race horses, and is now with his brother in France; Mamie Blanch, who died in Findlay, Ohio, January 27, 1904; and John, who is also a famous horse enthusiast, and as a jockey has ridden the national circuit in England, Belgium, Austria and wherever the circuit is recognized. Mr. Reiff is Republican in politics, and is an enterprising, energetic man, taking a keen interest in his adopted state, and watching with pride the careers of the sons who are emulating his success in their respective occupations. While residing in Wichita, Kans., he became identified with the Modern Woodman of America.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: History
of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Page 928. The Chapman Publishing
Co., Chicago, 1904.
© 2016 Joyce Rugeroni.