San
Joaquin County
Biographies
CHARLES C. GARNER
A man of good business ability,
Charles C. Garner holds a place of prominence among the leading and influential
residents of San Joaquin County and has for the past eighteen years been
actively identified with the development of the county. He was born at Chinese Camp, Tuolumne County,
California, on March 11, 1855, a son of Jonathan and Willmouth
(Stanburry) Garner, the former a native of Kentucky
and the latter of Indiana. His father
followed lead mining at Galena, Illinois, until 1853. During that year he removed to California and
engaged in mining in Tuolumne County until 1864, when he removed to San Joaquin
County and settled on the Benedict ranch near Lodi. He cleared the land of brush and stumps and
farmed it to grain, which yielded him a handsome income. In 1869 he sold this place and purchased the Murphy
ranch nearby and farmed there until 1878, when he removed to Washington,
settling near Colfax, where he farmed until 1881; then he farmed in Shasta
County until 1886, when he returned to San Joaquin County and located near
Acampo, where he farmed until his death.
He was the first man to plant Tokay grapes in the county, the now famous
product of the Lodi district.
Charles C. was educated in the
common schools of San Joaquin County and later graduated from the Pacific
Business College of San Francisco. His
first experience in land ownership and farming was in Whitman County,
Washington, in 1878, on a 240-acre ranch, but at the end of two years sold it
and returned to San Joaquin County, where he bought a ranch near Acampo, where
he raised grain, fruit and grapes; this he disposed of in 1904 and purchased a
twenty-acre vineyard of eleven-year-old vines well developed, in the vicinity
of Lodi. It was in 1904 that he entered
the real estate business in Lodi, taking the agency for the Knights ranch of over
200 acres. This he sold in small tracts
from $85 to $100 per acre unimproved.
This same land now set to vines brings as high as $1500 per acre. Mr. Garner as a boy helped his father clear
the land and has passed through all the stages of land development up to the
present era of prosperity and he has enthusiastically aided in the development
of Lodi.
Mr. Garner’s marriage united him
with Miss Martha M. Blodgett, a native of Missouri, who came to California with
her parents when a child of six years.
They are the parents of four children:
Edith J.; Floyd E., a buyer for the Earl Fruit Company of Lodi; Clyde E.
is associated with his father in the real estate business; the youngest is a
daughter, Mrs. Gladys I. Jacobson. Mr.
Garner became a member of the Christian Church at the age of fourteen and is
now a member of the board of elders in the Lodi church. As a representative of one of the old pioneer
families of this section of the state, Mr. Garner has been a witness to
practically its entire development, while in the work of progress and
improvement he has ever fully borne his part.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
739-740. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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