San
Joaquin County
Biographies
ALOIS GAUL
A representative California rancher
whose enterprise is born of a progressive spirit and ambition, and whose
foresight is the result of profitable experience, is Alois
Gaul, the Delta farmer, who resides upon the old Captain Frewert homestead,
nine miles southwest of Stockton on Upper Roberts Island. He was born in Bavaria on January 3, 1861,
and when twenty years of age left home for America, and after an adventurous voyage
of sixteen days, reached New York in 1881 and there he spent a year with
relatives.
In 1882 he arrived in California,
and for ten years he remained in San Francisco, for eight years being with the
late John Wieland. Then he bought a
forty-acre tract of land in Placer County, and having cleared it of brush,
etc., he set out an orchard and a vineyard.
This property so increased in value that by the time it was in bearing
he was able to sell it at a good profit, enabling him in 1900 to remove to the Delta
district in San Joaquin County, where he took up his residence at the old home
of Captain Frewert, a pioneer of this county.
At San Francisco he received his citizenship in 1887 and soon identified
himself with the Republican Party, but in local matters he casts partisanship
to the winds and goes in for the best man and the best measures.
At Stockton, January 14, 1897, Mr.
Gaul was married to Miss Bertha A. Frewert, a daughter of the highly honored
Captain Frewert already referred to, and a gifted lady who was born on the
Frewert place, Roberts Island. Three
children were born to this fortunate union.
Herman is a Delta rancher closely associated with his parents in
business affairs; Emma has become the wife of Peter Claussen,
and the mother of two children, Marjorie and Bobbie; and Vera is a student in
the Stockton high school. Mrs. Gaul has
served for two years as an efficient and popular member of the board of
trustees of the Garden School District.
Since coming to San Joaquin County,
Mr. Gaul has made an enviable reputation as a farmer and stock breeder, for
sheepraising in the Delta has proven very profitable and so has been the
raising of shorthorn Durham cattle, horses and mules, and registered
Friesian-Holstein dairy cattle. His
livestock has been shipped into the range and cattle country of New Mexico,
Arizona, and throughout California. He
owns an imported Percheron stallion, and was the proud possessor of a purebred
Belgian horse. Fortunately for him, the
transportation facilities hereabouts could hardly be improved upon, both by
trucks and by river boats, and in 1906 he constructed a warehouse with
1,000-ton capacity of hay on the levee landing by his farm, and there the river
boats can tie up for the loading and unloading of produce.
Mr. Gaul had a younger brother, K.
G. Gaul, a prominent stockman of the Salinas Valley, but he passed away in
1919. His sisters, Mrs. Erhardt and Mrs. Julia Kilian,
both reside in Brooklyn, New York. Two
other members of the family, a sister, Mrs. Teresa Rupert of Minneapolis, and
an elder brother Henry, have long since closed their eyes to the scenes of this
world. Mr. Gaul has three Delta
farms. The home ranch embraces 266
acres; then there is a stock-raising ranch of 92 acres in the old Shippee tract on French Camp Road, and there are some 334 acres
near Old River on Upper Roberts Island also belonging to him. He is widely known as an authority on
livestock and he has served for many years as a trustee of Reclamation District
No. 544 and for the past eleven years has been chairman of the board of
trustees. In this connection it may be
well to note that during the past nine years the affairs of this district have
been so efficiently conducted that it has been necessary only on two or three
occasions to levy assessments, and in both cases these assessments were not
over twenty-five cents per acre. In
fact, this remarkable administration of the levees in this district, and the
solution of the many problems concerning their upkeep have attracted attention
from other reclamation districts,
clearly an emphatic compliment to Mr. Gaul and those associated with him
in this work.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
648-653. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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