San
Joaquin County
Biographies
HOMER LOUIS GRAY
For the past twenty years Homer
Louis Gray has continuously resided in San Joaquin County, with the exception
of a year and a half spent in San Francisco in the manufacture of circular mailing
tubes, of which he was the patentee. He
was born in South Bend, Indiana, March 6, 1869 a son of William A. and Mary (Keasey) Gray, both natives of Indiana. His father was a harness-maker and a
leather-worker in Indiana, and reared a family of five children: Joseph C., a rancher near Woodbridge; William
Ned, in Colorado; Elizabeth, in San Joaquin County; Homer Louis, of this
sketch; and Porter S., also a rancher here.
The parents died in California in 1922 only two days apart.
On October 22, 1892 at Del Norte,
Colorado, Homer L. Gray was married to Miss Gertrude A. Verback,
a native of Janesville, Wisconsin, a daughter of George A. and Sarah V.
(Stafford) Verback, the former also a native of
Janesville, while the latter was of English birth. Her father owned a farm of a quarter-section
of land at Janesville, where he and his wife reared a family of six
children: John A., of Denver, Colorado;
Ernest, deceased at the age of seventeen; Martha, Mrs. Mercer, residing at
Stockton; Gertrude, Mrs. Gray; George, of Lodi; and Harry, accidentally drowned
at the age of twenty-one. When Mrs. Gray
was six years old, her parents removed to Nebraska and settled in Seward County
where they lived for four years. Then
they removed to Goodland, Kansas. The
father farmed and conducted a blacksmith shop here for five years, and then the
family removed to Mosca, Colorado. Since 1903 the family has resided in
Stockton. The father passed away at
Stockton in 1912, aged sixty-nine; the mother survived until 1917, dying at
seventy-five years of age.
Upon arriving in California in
November, 1903 Mr. Gray engaged in ranching near Stockton for three years. He then moved to San Francisco, where he
began the manufacture of his patented mailing tube. He continued its manufacture for a year and a
half and then sold the Coast right.
During this time the family resided in Alameda, but Mr. Gray’s factory
was in San Francisco. Mr. and Mrs. Gray
are the parents of three children:
Phyllis, deceased in 1910; Marion, now Mrs. M. T. Williams, who has one
daughter, Helen Lois Gertrude; and Helen Viola, Mrs. N. M. Bush. When Mr. Gray sold his business in San
Francisco, he settled in North San Joaquin County, where he bought forty-three
acres, a part of the old John Thompson ranch, located on the
Woodbridge-Thornton Road, five miles northwest of Woodbridge. At the time of purchase, twenty-five acres of
the ranch was in vineyard. Since then he
has planted the balance to vines, and the whole acreage is now set to a
vineyard of Mission, Tokay and Zinfandel grapes. Thirty acres of this vineyard is interset with walnut trees.
Fraternally Mr. Gray is a member of the Woodmen of the World. He and his family are members of the
Congregational Church.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1339-1340. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Biographies
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Genealogy
Databases