San
Joaquin County
Biographies
A successful vineyardist
is Arthur Emmett Gordon, a native of Wyandotte County, Kansas, now residing
about two miles north of Acampo. In the
historic Centennial Year of 1876, on December 28, he entered the family of M.
A. and Belle (Llyons) Gordon, the son of a stock and
cattle man, who was also a merchant and farmer.
The family removed to Kokomo, Colorado, where his father built the first
sawmill in that region. Later they
removed to Belleview, Idaho, in which locality his father engaged in stock
raising. He then moved northwest to
Portland, Oregon, and there the family lived between seven and eight years,
finally migrating south and landing at Woodbridge. Here the lad attended the Lodi high
school. Mr. Gordon lived to be
seventy-three years old, survived by his wife, who is still alive at the age of
sixty-five. Eight children made up the
family of this worthy couple. Bert, the
eldest, is deceased; Arthur Emmett was the second-born; and then came Harry,
Frank, Grace, Vera, Phillip and Ruth.
In 1895 Arthur Emmett Gordon began
to clerk for M. B. Henderson & Son, of Stockton; and later he was
bookkeeper for Messrs. Hammond and Yardley, also of that city, with whom he
remained seven years. He then bought an
interest in C. B. Thompson’s grocery, in Stockton, and after two years of
experience with it, purchased the entire business, and conducted it until 1917,
when he sold out.
Previous to selling his business, he
had purchased some thirty acres of open land two miles north of Acampo, where
he set out a vineyard, and in 1917 he traded his residence in Stockton for
fifteen acres of vineyard, adjoining his first place. One-quarter of this area he has devoted to orcharding,
and the entire tract is well irrigated.
He built a small home on his ranch into which he moved in 1917.
At Lodi on June 3, 1903, Mr. Gordon
married Miss Army Geffroy, a native of Lodi and the
daughter of Thomas and Hannah (Hammond) Geffroy. She attended the Lodi schools. Her father has passed away, but her mother is
still alive. Her father and mother, of good
Boston stock, came to California in early days, and her father raised sheep
near Lockeford, in San Joaquin County. Later he moved to Lodi, and there Miss Amy
was graduated with honors from the Lodi high school. Five children have blessed the union. Dorothy and Kenneth are students in the Lodi
high school; Neil and Joyce are pupils in the grammar school; and Barbara is
the youngest. Mr. Gordon is a
Republican, and a member of the Charity Lodge, I. O. O. F. in which he is a
past grand.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1529-1530. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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