San
Joaquin County
Biographies
ROBERT FRANKLIN GREEN
A venerable pioneer of San Joaquin
County is found in Robert Franklin Green, who has been a continuous resident of
the county for fifty-nine years, his father settled on the ranch where your
subject now resides. He was born in
Allen County, Kansas, on August 9, 1861, a son of Jasper W. and Sarah E.
(Carlisle) Green, born respectively in Alabama and Missouri. Grandfather Jesse Green was a Methodist
minister. In 1860, with his wife and some
of his children, he crossed the plains to California and located on a farm
three and one-half miles northeast of what is now Lodi. On a part of this ranch the town of Victor is
now located. Rev. Jesse Green was a
pioneer minister in the San Joaquin Valley, who with true religious zeal did
much to establish early churches and raise the standard of morals in those
early days. He passed away at the age of
eighty-four years. Jasper W. Green
removed from Alabama to Arkansas and engaged in the mercantile business. The war coming on, his business was ruined
and he moved to Kansas, where he carried on farming. In 1864 he brought his family to California,
making the journey across the plains in a prairie schooner drawn by oxen, and
taking six months on the way to a day.
Arriving at his father Jesse Green’s place in San Joaquin County, he
purchased 160 acres nearby and engaged in grain farming until the time of his
death in 1887 aged fifty-seven years.
The mother survived until she was sixty-two years old. They were the parents of four children: Mrs. Mary Snyder, of Oakland; Robert
Franklin, the subject of this review; Newton, deceased; and Mrs. Lochie Ellis, of Lodi.
Frank Green, as he is familiarly
called by his many friends, made the overland journey with his parents when he
was in this third year, so that his first recollections are of San Joaquin
County. Here he was reared on the farm,
enjoying the great out-of-doors, and thus grew to be a very large and athletic
man; and he still retains the vigor and strength with which nature so liberally
endowed him. He received a good
education at the Alpine school, and at the same time made himself useful as his
father’s right-hand man. After his
father’s death he continued to run the home place, and in addition purchased
400 acres nearby, which afterward became known as the Green Colony, and which
he later subdivided and sold in small acreages.
Mr. Green received fifty acres as his share of his father’s estate, of
which he planted thirty-five acres in vineyard and fifteen acres in
alfalfa. His irrigating system consists
of a five-inch pump driven by a fifteen-horsepower motor.
During his long residence in San
Joaquin County Mr. Green has become widely known, and his many excellent traits
of character have gained him the friendship and warm regard of many with whom
he has come in contact. In national
politics he is a Republican, and fraternally he is a member of the Lodi Lodge
of Odd Fellows, of which he is a Past Grand and has been a delegate to the
Grand Lodge. He is also a member of the
Harmony Encampment of Odd Fellows; of Ridgely Canton,
Stockton; and of Lodi Rebekah Lodge. He
is interested in the growth and development of this county and is an original
stockholder in the National Products’ Association of Lodi.
During Mr. Green’s long residence in
the county he has witnessed the marvelous growth and development of not only
the Victor section but all of the county. Though very young in years when arriving in
the county he remembers helping his father clear the land of brush and heavy
timber; and when he reached young manhood he took advantage of the natural
resources the section afforded and has met with gratifying success.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
694-697. 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