San Joaquin County
Biographies
GEORGE ALLEN CONRAD
GEORGE ALLEN CONRAD, a
rancher of Douglass Township, was born in New Jersey, January 17, 1828, a son
of John and Eliza (Pearson) Conrad. The father, born in New Jersey in 1802, was
a carpenter by trade, and lived to be eighty-four years old. The mother, also
born in New Jersey in 1804, died in 1876. Grandfather Robert Pearson, a native
of New Jersey, was a soldier of the Revolution and rose to the rank of Colonel.
He lived to the age of eighty-six. Grandfather Conrad, also a native of New
Jersey, was over eighty when he died. The Conrads are of German and the
Pearsons of English extraction. G. A. Conrad received a fair education, picked
up his father’s trade and worked in that line before coming to California. He
left New York September 13, and arrived in San Francisco October 29, 1851. He
proceeded to the mines, where he remained until 1855. In 1856 he erected a
bridge across the south fork of the Mokelumne and kept it as a toll-bridge
twenty-one months, when he sold it and went into the business of building
flumes and ditches in Amador County, for miners’ use. Of the firm of Holt &
Conrad, in 1859, they erected a flume 260 feet high at Big Oak Flat, completed
in December of that year, at a cost of $80,000. In 1862 he bought a water ditch
at Jenny Lind, and remained there fifteen years selling water. January 10,
1877, he bought 800 acres, where he now lives, two miles east of Bellota. This
he has since increased to 1,120, the last piece being purchased January 16,
1889. He has 300 acres of bottom land, devoted to raising alfalfa, and on the
highland he pastures cattle, usually keeping about 400 head. He also raises a
few horses for the market.
Mr. Conrad was married in San Francisco,
in 1868, to Miss Mary P. Bachelder, born in Illinois in 1843, a daughter of
John W. and Mary (Carpenter) Bachelder, both living in 1889. The father was born
in Maine in 1813, the mother in Massachusetts in 1820. Mr. Bachelder came to
California first in 1856, again in 1860, and brought his family to this State
in 1864. His father, Dodge Bachelder, was a lieutenant in the Mexican war, and
died of fever at Pueblo. Mrs. Conrad’s great-grandfather, Ezekiel Bachelder,
died in Maine at the age of ninety-three. The original location of the
Bachelders was near Cape Cod. Grandfather Nathaniel Carpenter died in Illinois,
aged eighty-four. He was a son of Major Nathaniel Carpenter of the Revolution,
who held a commission under George III., which he threw up to share the
fortunes of the patriots. He shared in many hard-fought battles, and at the
close of the struggle was in command at West Point. He was a native probably of
Connecticut, but the family removed to what is now Berkshire County,
Massachusetts, in 1787. Major Carpenter lived to be about eighty. Mr. and Mrs.
Conrad are the parents of one daughter, Annie, who has been educated at Mill’s
Seminary, near Oakland.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County,
California, Pages 255-256. Lewis Pub.
Co. Chicago, Illinois 1890.
© 2008 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
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