San
Joaquin County
Biographies
RICHARD HAROLD DeVINNY
One of the great industries that
have grown up in San Joaquin County is the fruit packing and shipping business,
and as district manager of the Producers’ Fruit Company of California, R.
Harold DeVinny has a guiding hand in the policies of one of the largest
concerns operating in the San Joaquin Valley.
He was born at Rochester, New York, on June 8, 1880 the son of Dr. C. L.
and Hattie (Landon) DeVinny, natives of that state and both now deceased. The family took up their residence at
Stockton in 1884, and for twenty-five years Dr. DeVinny was a prominent
physician there, serving a number of terms on the San Joaquin County Board of
Health. There were two children in the
DeVinny family, R. Harold, of this sketch, and Mrs. Florence S. Seawright of Bakersfield, California.
Coming here when a small boy, R.
Harold DeVinny was reared at Stockton, attending the public schools there and
graduating from the Stockton high school in the class of 1898. For the next eight years he was bookkeeper
and cashier for the Stockton “Independent,” and in 1906 he came to Lodi where
he purchased a vineyard of twenty acres.
Since then he has increased his holdings until he now has sixty acres of
highly developed land, equipped with three pumping plants, the whole place
being cared for according to the most modern and approved scientific
methods. Twelve acres are in cherries,
peaches, plums and prunes, while his vineyard, which is twenty-two years old,
contains a variety of table grapes, Tokay, Cornichon,
Ferrera, Emperor and Morocco, all bringing the
highest prices in the eastern markets.
In 1920 the ranch produced 30,000 crates of fruit and grapes.
In 1909 Mr. DeVinny entered the
employ of the Earl Fruit Company at Lodi as field manager and his marked
ability has given him repeated promotions.
He is especially well qualified to fill his present position, having
made an exhaustive study of horticulture through reading and study,
supplemented with years of practical experience on his own properties. During the selling season of 1920 the Earl
Fruit Company sent him on a tour of all the eastern markets, thus familiarizing
him with all the problems of distribution at these points, and he has visited
all the fruit sections of California, getting much valuable information in this
way.
At Stockton on June 7, 1905 Mr.
DeVinny was married to Miss Frances L. Brown, a native of Canada, and they are
the parents of two children: E. Bruce
and Harriet Elizabeth.
Mr. DeVinny is a member of Charity
Lodge No. 6, I. O. O. F., of Stockton, and the Lodi Lodge No. 41, Knights of
Pythias, and is a prominent member and a director in the Lodi Lions Club. He is president of the Methodist Men’s Club
of Lodi, also a trustee of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Lodi, and was the
chairman of the building committee when in 1919 their large and beautiful
church edifice was built on the corner of Church and Oak streets in Lodi. Mrs. DeVinny is an active member of the
Methodist Church choir and is a prominent Sunday school worker. This church has the largest organ of any
church or theater in Lodi. The chimes in
this organ were donated by Mr. and Mrs. DeVinny in remembrance of Mr. DeVinny’s mother, the late Hattie E. DeVinny.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1363-1364. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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