San
Joaquin County
Biographies
OTTO DIETZ
Twenty-seven years ago Otto Dietz
purchased his present ranch of twenty-six acres located one mile northwest of
Thornton, which he has developed into one of the finest alfalfa ranches in the
vicinity. He was born at Steinheim, near Geissen, in
Hessen Darmstadt, Germany, July 15, 1869, a son of Kaspar
and Elizabeth (Eickle) Dietz. His father was a brick mason by trade, and
lived to be eighty-five years old; the mother still lives in the old country at
the age of eighty-eight. Otto is the
youngest of a family of four children:
William is deceased, and the other two are Bertha and Henry.
Otto Dietz was educated in the
public school and the business college of his native country, and was reared to
help on his father’s farm. At twenty-one
years of age he learned the brick mason’s trade, which he followed until 1892,
when he came to the United States and direct to California, settling at
Tracy. He found work on a ranch for a
year and a half, and then removed to the New Hope section, where he has since
remained. When he purchased his ranch of
twenty-six acres in 1896 it was covered with the natural growth of brush and
tules, which Mr. Dietz cleared away, and leveled and planted the land to
alfalfa; and today this ranch is classed among the most productive in that
section. Besides erecting a good,
comfortable house and other necessary buildings, he has installed a six-inch
pump equipped with a ten-horse-power motor and has piped the place with
twelve-inch concrete pipes for irrigation.
On this ranch he runs a dairy of twenty-five Holstein cows.
On April 26, 1891, in Germany, Mr.
Dietz was married to Miss Bertha Kroell, also a
native of Steinheim, Germany, a daughter of George
and Margaret (Mumbir) Kroell. Her parents were farmers, and reared a family
of eight children: George, Ferdinand,
Elizabeth, Anna, Gustave, Grace, Eliza and Bertha, now Mrs. Dietz. Mr. and Mrs. Dietz are the parents of two
children: Laura, Mrs. Doty of Elk Grove;
and Alma, employed in Stockton. There
are two grandchildren, Margaret and Wilbur Doty. Mr. Dietz is a staunch American citizen, and
he and his wife are members of the Lutheran Church at Lodi.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1586. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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