San
Joaquin County
Biographies
CHARLES R. DUSTIN
A
very successful rancher, who follows vineyarding according to the
most-approved, scientific and practical methods, is Charles R. Dustin, who was
born in Utah on April 12, 1851, while his parents, Fornatus
and Rosaline (Call) Dustin, were on their way from Illinois to California. He is the third child and son of a family of
eight children. His father, who was a
native of the Prairie State, first settled in San Bernardino County,
California, where he farmed until 1858.
On his way to California he saw a place in Utah which he thought would
make a great emigrant supply station and in 1858 he went back to the locality
and established a station there. The
great massacre of 1859, however, turned the tide of emigration to another
route, and so the station was not the success he had believed it would be. In 1859, therefore, he abandoned the
enterprise, and returned to California.
In 1861 he settled in Stockton and engaged in teaming, part of the time
to Stockton, and part to Sacramento; and so it happened that our subject went
to the schools of both cities. In 1867
Mr. Dustin settled on the place now occupied by Charles R. Dustin, buying from
the United States Government a squatter’s title to 160 acres; but afterwards he
lost his title to the railroad company, they having won in the courts in a
claim to the land. He then paid for the
land a second time, giving the railroad company $12.50 an acre. After that, he cleared up the land, and
hauled wood to the market and our subject recalls that he has seen as many as
4,000 cords of wood taken from each quarter-section.
Charles Dustin remained on the home
ranch as long as his father lived, and then continued there with his
mother. The title to the land, however,
was not perfected until after his father’s death, and then it was put in his
mother’s name. Afterwards she gave him
one-half of the quarter section, or eighty acres, which he now owns. It was a joy to him that his mother lived to
be nearly eighty years of age.
In 1880 Mr. Dustin was married on
the old home ranch to Miss Eliza Driscoll, who was born in Iowa and was only
two years old when she came across the plains with her parents, John and Sarah
Ann (Allen) Driscoll. Her father, John
Driscoll, was a farmer, and Mrs. Dustin was reared and educated in the vicinity
of her father’s farm house in San Joaquin County, California. The mother died when Mrs. Dustin was sixteen
years old. The father continued to live
on his 400-acre farm on Cherokee Lane until his death at an age of
seventy-one. Her parents had eight
children: George, a rancher near
Wallace, in Calaveras County; Allen, who died unmarried; El Dorado, born in El
Dorado County and residing in Shasta County, single; William, residing in San
Francisco, married and the father of eight children; Eliza, wife of the subject
of this sketch; Mary, now the wife of M. A. Sparks of Galt, California, where
he has served as deputy assessor for many years; Rachel T., the widow of S. H.
Holman, residing in San Joaquin County, near the Calaveras County line; and John
L., a plumber in Stockton. Of Mr.
Dustin’s brothers and sisters, Andrew and Oscar, elder brothers, are deceased,
as is also Nora, a younger sister. Calista, Mrs. Wilkinson, is a widow and lives at Lodi. Fanny, the widow of Dave Thompson, lived in
Utah and died on March 13, 1923. May and
Arthur, the next in order of birth, and Lilly, the youngest, are also deceased,
Arthur having died on April 5, 1923.
Thus only two are left living: Calista and our subject.
Mr. and Mrs. Dustin have had four children. Ora and Mabel are
the two eldest, and the youngest is Rena.
Elmer, the third-born, met death by a sad accident four years ago. Mr. Dustin, who is a Republican, served on
the school board of the Houston district for one term. He is a member of the Masonic Lodge of
Lodi. He has forty acres of vineyard
set to Zinfandel and Tokay grapes, and the balance of his fine ranch is devoted
to the growing of grain. Such leaders in
agricultural industry as the Dustin’s are the foundation of a commonwealth; and
San Joaquin County is well satisfied that Mr. and Mrs. Dustin cast their lot
here.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1120-1123. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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