San
Joaquin County
Biographies
ROBERT BLACKSTONE FORSYTH
A native son of California, who from
early manhood has been active in the reclamation and protection districts of
the county, is Robert Blackstone Forsyth, born at New Hope, San Joaquin County,
August 3, 1875, the eldest son of a family of three children born to Robert
Blackstone and Julia (Posey) Forsyth. A
brother, Daniel Forsyth, resides at Thornton; and a sister, Carrie Bell, is
Mrs. Ray, of Sonora. The father, Robert
Blackstone Forsyth, came to California from Illinois in 1868 via Panama and
settled on a ranch in the Ray School District.
He lived to be seventy-nine years old, but the mother passed away at the
age of twenty-eight years, when Robert was a small boy of six summers.
Robert Blackstone Forsyth received
his education at the Ray District School and was engaged in general farming
pursuits until he was twenty-four years old, when he and his brother Daniel
started in the dredging business, constructing a dredger, and helping to build
levees in the reclamation district of the county. They worked along the Stockton levees in the
Victoria, Staten and Lisbon districts as chief engineers; and later they built
a dredger at Yuma, Arizona, for the California Development Company and ran it,
helping in the canal work on the Colorado River irrigation district through the
Imperial Valley, which has become one of the most productive districts of
California. The brothers continued in
partnership in the dredging business until 1906, when Robert Forsyth sold his
interest to his brother and settled on a forty-acre ranch a quarter of a mile
south of the old Ray district schoolhouse.
Most of the forty acres was unimproved land, which Mr. Forsyth set to a
vineyard of Zinfandel and Tokay grapes.
This vineyard is now a fine, productive one, irrigated by a six-inch
pump driven by a fifteen-horsepower motor.
On August 6, 1908, in Los Angeles,
Mr. Forsyth was married to Miss Hazel Hack, born in Freeport, Sacramento
County, on the Sacramento River, a daughter of Nathan D. and Lavina (Kirtland)
Hack, both natives of California. The
father was a rancher at Freeport. His
father, George Hack, a native of England, crossed the plains to California from
Wisconsin in the fifties. At Freeport,
on January 3, 1881, Nathan D. Hack was married to Miss Lavina Kirtland, the eldest
daughter of Thomas and Narcissus (Tucker) Kirtland. Great-grandfather Kirtland was a native of
England who settled in Ohio at an early date and came to California in the
pioneer days. Thomas Kirtland, the
grandfather of Mrs. Forsyth, was a blacksmith at Jenny Lind, California, and
later moved to Freeport, where he had a blacksmith shop. George Hack owned a 300-acre farm at
Freeport, and there he resided until his death.
N. D. Hack, the father of Mrs. Forsyth, owned 100 acres of land at
Freeport, on which he reared his family of five children: Hazel, Mrs. Forsyth; Pearl Irene, Mrs. York
of Sacramento; Nathan D., at Live Oak; Blanche, Mrs. Stokes of Stockton; and
Mabel, Mrs. Crawford of Freeport. For
four years after Mr. and Mrs. Forsyth were married, they lived on the dredger
in Merritt Island District. In 1912 he
built a comfortable residence on his forty-acre ranch, which has since been
their home. They are the parents of one
daughter, Bernice, attending the Ray School.
For many years Mr. Forsyth has been a trustee of the Ray School
District. In politics he is a Democrat,
but independent in local matters; and fraternally he is affiliated with the
Knights of Pythias of Lodi.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
912-915. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Biographies
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Genealogy
Databases