San
Joaquin County
Biographies
ALFRED C. COWELL
Prominent among the representatives
of the bar in California is Alfred L. Cowell, the attorney-at-law and
irrigation expert of Stockton, who was born at Woodland, Yolo County,
California, on March 17, 1870, the son of Alfred H. and Emeline
(Hubbard) Cowell, both natives of Ohio. Mr. Cowell crossed the great plains in 1858,
riding a mule, while Mrs. Cowell came out to California when only ten years old, by way of the
Isthmus, so that they were married in the Golden state. In 1885 Mr. Cowell removed from Woodland and
located at Woodbridge, in San Joaquin County, where he kept a general store
Alfred Cowell attended the San
Joaquin Valley College at Woodbridge from which he was graduated in 1892, when
he went east and became a student at the Union Biblical Seminary, Dayton, Ohio,
after which he returned to Woodbridge and became president of the San Joaquin
Valley College, which responsible office he held from 1895 through 1897. For the next year he was principal of the
Lodi high school, and from 1898 to 1899 he was principal of the Siskiyou County
high school at Yreka. In July, 1899, he
became reporter for the Mail newspaper at Stockton, and later, until 1911, he
was editor of that influential journal, and then, going to Modesto, he bought
an interest in the Modesto News. While
there, he became particularly interested in irrigation, and he was appointed
secretary of the California Irrigation District Association, and since that
time he has been active in behalf of irrigation projects in the San Joaquin
Valley. During the session of the
California Legislature in 1913, he represented the association at Sacramento in
securing important amendments to the irrigation district laws of the state.
From 1914 to 1916, Mr. Cowell was
assistant director of congresses at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, held in San
Francisco in 1915, working under Director J. A. Barr, of Stockton; and he also
taught in the Stockton high school for a year.
Then he studied law, and in 1918 was admitted to the bar. Since then, making irrigation matters a
specialty, he has taken part in the organization of some of the largest
irrigation districts in the San Joaquin Valley and devotes nearly all his time
to district affairs.
When Mr. Cowell married, at
Woodbridge, in 1896, he chose for his life-companion Miss Alice Gingrich, a
native of Pennsylvania. He is a member
of Charity Lodge No. 6, I. O. O. F. at Stockton.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
391-392. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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