San
Joaquin County
Biographies
ARTHUR W. HEWITT
The farming interests of San Joaquin
County find a worthy representative in Arthur W. Hewitt, who makes his home on
the ranch where he was born, two miles west of Farmington. Hay and grain are his principal crops, which
he raises in abundance. His entire life
has been spent here; and he has been so thoroughly identified with the life and
progress of the community that few men are held in greater esteem, and he has
made a reputation as a man of integrity and utmost reliability in all business
and personal transactions. He was born
October 23, 1877, on the Hewitt Home place, two miles west of Farmington, the
eldest son of Martin L. and Florence N. (Harrold)
Hewitt, pioneers of this county. Martin
L. Hewitt was born in Ohio in 1844, and at the age of nine years crossed the
plains in 1853 with his parents, being the second eldest in a family of six
children. The mother was born in
Missouri and crossed the plains to California in 1851, and the family settled
near Oakdale. Her parents, Jacob and
Martha Harrold, were well-known pioneers of
California.
Arthur W. Hewitt spent his boyhood
days on the Hewitt ranch and attended the Shady Grove School. He then entered the Stockton high school, and
later took a business course at Heald’s Business College in Stockton. From 1895 to 1897 he attended the University
of California, taking a course in mining engineering, and on August 4, 1897, he
took passage on the steamship Noyo for Dyea, Alaska, then packed over Chilcoot Pass to Lake Linderman, built a boat and came down the Yukon to
Dawson. He spent two and a half years in
the Yukon country mining, storekeeping and trapping. He was at Dawson and Indian River, and afterwards
at Nome. After spending two and a half
years in the Northland, he returned to California via St. Michaels, arriving
again in Farmington November 3, 1899.
The marriage of Mr. Hewitt occurred
at Stockton, June 27, 1900, and united him with Miss Ida L. Church, a daughter
of M. M. Church, a pioneer of San Joaquin County, who is now a resident of
Stockton. She was born at Farmington and
they were schoolmates in district school and at Heald’s Business College. Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt became the parents of one
son, Milo Lester, a student in the Stockton High School, class of 1924. Mrs. Hewitt was a leader in civic and social
affairs in the community. A woman of
pleasing personality much loved and esteemed, she passed away on March 31,
1923.
In 1902 Mr. Hewitt purchased 400
acres of Lafayette Funck, fourteen miles southeast of
Stockton, where he raised great quantities of grain. He operated this ranch until 1904, when he
sold it and immediately bought 857 acres of the old Hewitt homestead on Littlejohn
Creek, where he had been born and reared.
Mr. Hewitt entered enthusiastically into grain raising and has operated
five different grain ranches, aggregating 5,000 acres. For many years he carried on his farming with
teams of horses and mules, but now his harvesting is done by the most improved
power machinery to be had. In 1911 Mr. Hewitt
started with twenty Blackhead sheep, and now he owns about 3,000 head, most of
which are of the Merino breed. Eleven
years ago he leased government land in the Kennedy Lake region in Tuolumne
County. This is used for summer
pasturage for his sheep, and the winter quarters are at Copperopolis. Mr. Hewitt is known, and rightfully so, as
the father of the horticultural industry at Farmington. For many years he had been experiencing heavy
losses in grain along the edges of the slough of Littlejohn Creek on account of
the high water. In 1912 he experimented
with the planting of cherry and plum trees, and the soil was found to be
adapted to these fruits; then he put on the market 260 acres, known as Hewitt
Tract No. 1, a subdivision of slough land on Littlejohn Creek, and has
experienced no difficulty is disposing of these lands, which have been planted
to orchards of cherries, prunes, plums, peaches, apricots and pears. Afterwards he put on the market Hewitt Tract
No. 2, consisting of 60 acres of choice land near the Sonora Highway, three
miles west of Farmington, and is selling it in small tracts to new settlers, and
their products find a ready market. In
his subdivisions he planted and took care of the orchards for the purchaser
until they were brought into bearing.
Mr. Hewitt realized when he began subdividing for orcharding
that he would have to sell the land at a price so low that prospective
purchasers could be induced to make the necessary improvements; therefore he
placed the tracts on the market at $75 an acre.
Now the orchards are valued at from $400 to $1,000 an acre. He is planning in the near future to set out
forty acres on his ranch to prunes, apricots and peaches. Mr. Hewitt has stood for the best interests
of the community at all times, and for two terms has served as trustee of the
Shady Grove School District. In political
life he is a Republican, and fraternally he is a member of Farmington Lodge No.
296, in which he is a past grand. He is
a member of the Rebekahs, and Mrs. Hewitt was also a member and a past noble
grand. Mr. Hewitt is a very successful
man, and the results of his past energy and diligence have placed him among the
leading men of affairs in this part of the state. He heartily favors and is willing to aid any
enterprise which promotes the general welfare, and he has cooperated and led in
the work of obtaining better roads for his locality. He donated the Hewitt Road from the highway
line to the Littlejohn Creek, a distance of three-fourths of a mile.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1028-1031. 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