Santa Clara County
Biographies
CHARLES S RICHEY
One of the most successful and promising fruit industries in the Evergreen district is that of Richey & Scott, conducted on the twelve-acre ranch of Charles S. Richey on McLaughlin avenue, three and a half miles southeast of San Jose. Started in 1890 in a small way, the business of packing and drying, of which the firm makes a specialty, has been brought to an art, and has increased as the demand for its goods was created in the popular mind. With the exception of two acres used for drying purposes, the entire ranch is under prunes, but disposition is made of peaches, apricots and tomatoes of other ranchers, and the brand of Evergreen has come to be associated with all that is excellent in the dried or packed fruit line. Arrangements are being made at present for a canning factory with a capacity of three hundred thousand cans per year, in connection with which the finest and most improved machinery will be used, and no expense spared to make the concern representative of its class in the state. At the present time the ranch furnishes employment to a hundred people during the busy season.
Charles S. Richey, the senior member of the firm, is a pioneer of 1854, and one of the energetic and progressive men of his neighborhood. He was born in Tompkins county, N. Y., February 26, 1836, a son of Isaac and Aseneth (Carpenter) Richey, natives of New York and Connecticut respectively. His paternal grandfather, John Richey, was born, lived and died in New York state, enlisting in a New York regiment for service in the war of 1812. Isaac Richey moved to Sandusky county, Ohio, in 1837, and in 1862 settled on a farm in Branch county, Mich., where he spent the balance of his life. He was a man of strong convictions, an ardent Republican, and an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. His wife died in Michigan in 1867, leaving two sons and four daughters, of whom Charles S. is the third. The latter, like his brothers and sisters, was educated in the early subscription schools of Ohio, to which his parents removed when he was scarcely a year old. He remained on the home place until 1854, and during the summer of that year crossed the plains in an ox train, spending the first two years in the mines around Downieville, Sierra county. From 1856 to 1858 he mined with fair success in Eldorado county, and for the next two years worked on the farm of a friend near Marysville. Returning in 1860 to Michigan, whither his family had in the meantime removed from Ohio, he enlisted in 1863 in Company I, Fifteenth Michigan Infantry, serving two years as a private. He participated among others in the battles of Five Forks, Newbern, Goldsboro and Raleigh, N. C., receiving his discharge in Little Rock and being mustered out of the service in Detroit, Mich. Thereafter he returned to the home farm near Kinderhook, Branch county, achieving fair financial results from management of the property.
In 1886 Mr. Richey went overland to Nevada and found employment in a silver mill on Twin river, in 1888 removing to the mines in the San Joaquin valley, Fresno county, Cal. In 1890 he came to San Jose, was much pleased with this part of the state, and the same year returned and brought his family back with him from Michigan. Locating on his present ranch, he soon afterward became interested in fruit culture, and in partnership with Charles E. Scott built up his present flourishing fruit industry. In Ohio he was united in marriage with Abigail Nichols, a native of the Buckeye state. To Mr. and Mrs. Richey have been born six children, the order of their birth being as follows: Emma, the wife of Albert Doers of Michigan; Minnie, Mrs. J. O. Pratt of Portland; Bertha, the wife of Philip Crater of Michigan; Nellie, Mrs. C. E. Hudson of San Francisco; Mabel, Mrs. Scott; and Jay Richey. Mr. Richey is a Republican in politics, and is an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He is popular in his neighborhood, and his efforts to maintain and improve upon its horticultural standard are fortunately appreciated. It has always been his policy to press forward, and to do in a thorough manner any task which he sets for himself. This being the case, a material increase in the packing and drying business is a reasonable prediction for the near future.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
ญญญญSource: History
of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Pages 1105-1106. The Chapman
Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
ฉ 2016 Joyce Rugeroni.