San
Joaquin County
Biographies
LOUIS RANDOLPH BRANDT
An industrious progressive and
prosperous rancher is Louis R. Brandt, a native of Schaumburg-Lippe, Westphalia, Germany, where he was born on August 22,
1846, the son of Frederick and Phillipina (Schwertberger) Brandt, the former a schoolmaster, who
taught for nearly forty years in the excellent schools of his native land. The worthy couple had thirteen children,
among whom Louis was the eight in order of birth. Thos older than he were: Edward, Bertha, Henry, Otto, Charles, William
and Herman; and those younger were:
Julius, August, Matilda, Anna and Frederick.
Louis Brandt attended the grammar
schools in his native country, and then served a three-year apprenticeship at
the cabinet-making trade, after which he worked as a skilled journeyman at Burkeburg.
Afterwards he worked in Berlin for eighteen months, and then in Paris
for the same length of time. In 1867 he
came to Indianapolis, Indiana, where he remained from August to December of
that year, and then he removed to Washington County, Texas, intending to settle
and continue at his trade. There was so
little demand for cabinet work; however, the he took up carpentering instead.
In 1868 Mr. Brandt rode across the
plains on horseback, with thirty comrades, by way of Fort Scott, Fort Davis and
El Paso, bringing 2500 head of cattle, most of which they sold in El Paso. They then divided and Mr. Brandt and others
came on to California. Arriving in San
Diego, Mr. Brandt spent just one month in helping to erect the first house
built in what was called New San Diego.
After that he journeyed north to San Francisco for a visit to his
brother Charles, near French Camp, in the San Joaquin River, with whom he
formed a partnership for shipping fruit and vegetables, an enterprise in which
they continued for seven years. Then
Louis Brandt bought a grain ranch of 640 acres, near Clements, in 1877, which
he managed for twenty years and then sold.
He next bought the ranch of 480 acres that at present owns, two miles to
the northwest of Clements, where he engages in dairying. He has eighteen acres of alfalfa and plenty
of grain land, and thirty head of milch-cows; and all the improvements on the
place he himself has made during the past two decades.
On November 13, 1875, Mr. Brandt was
married at Stockton to Miss Anna Bowman, born near the foot of Mt. Diablo,
Contra Costa County, California, the daughter of John and Jennie Bowman. Her father was a sailor on a schooner plying
along the Pacific coast. He came via
Panama to California in very early days from Emden, Hanover, Germany. After continuing in coastwise traffic for
years, he took up agricultural pursuits near Farmington, in San Joaquin County,
and later cultivated land on Roberts Island.
Nine children have blessed the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Brandt, and they
also have thirteen grandchildren. Their
oldest daughter, Jennie, is Mrs. G. J. Christy, of Clements, and the mother of
two children, Carroll and Darrell; Phillipina is
dead; Anna is Mrs. H. J. Corell, of Acampo and has six children: Mildred Anita, Naomi Brandt, Calvin Harvey,
Florence Madeline, Louis William, and Helen Jane; Matilda is deceased; Rudolph,
who assists operating the home farm is married to Miss Dora Wilson and has one
child, Shirley Rudolph; Louis Jr., also a rancher near Clements, married Lena
Murdock, and they have four children:
Harold, Marrietta, Eugene and Louis; Emma
lives at home; Bernice is the wife of Jacob Wilson, an orchardist of Wheatland;
and George Albert has charge of the Brandt Dairy. Rudolph and Louis Brandt, Jr., are both
members of the Odd Fellow Lodge at Clements; and both have passed through all
the chairs, while Rudolph is also a district deputy grand. Mr. Brandt is a Democrat; but more than this,
he is an American, first, last and all the time, ever ready to help in all that
promotes the welfare of the section in which he lives.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
734-739. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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