San Joaquin County
Biographies
FRED HOFF
An honored Californian who has made
agriculture his lifelong pursuit is Fred Hoff, who since 1917, has made his
home on his choice estate of 300 acres, about five and a half miles southwest
of Lodi on the Lincoln Highway. Mr. Hoff
is a man of great enterprise and industry and he has been engaged in steady and
worthy endeavor ever since boyhood. He
was born at Menno, South Dakota, October 25, 1883, a son of Jacob and Charlotte
Hoff, the former a farmer in South Dakota, who died three months before our
subject was born. There were two other
children in the family, Mary, deceased, and Eva, Mrs. Chris Suesse. Subsequently the mother married William Hieb and reared a large family.
Fred Hoff had little opportunity to
secure an education, for he was a lad of only eight years when he was obliged
to begin earning his own living, working for his board and clothes. In 1896 his stepfather brought the family to
California and Fred worked on a ranch about a mile and a half east of Lodi, but
this job was of short duration; he then worked three months for Mr. Hogan on
Cherokee Lane, receiving twenty dollars per month, then he went to Galt,
California, where he worked for Gallagher Bros. for two years, when he returned
to Lodi and was employed on the grain and stock ranch of John Emde, southwest of Lodi.
On January 1, 1905, in Lodi, Mr.
Hoff was married to Miss Bertha Schenkenberger, a
native of Scotland, South Dakota, a daughter of John and Louise (Barrett) Schenkenberger, both natives of
South Russia. John Schenkenberger
came to California in 1898 from Dakota and both parents are now living in
Lodi. They reared a family of eleven
children: Louise died at the age of
forty-two; Amelia, Mrs. Lange, resides in North Dakota; Lydia, Mrs. Stoddard,
resides in Fresno; Bertha, Mrs. Hoff; John and Henry reside in Lodi; Pauline,
Mrs. John A. Bender, resides in Lodi; Christine, Mrs. Hieb,
resides in Oakland; Jacob W. resides in Lodi; Sarah, Mrs. W. A. Moore, resides
in Lodi, and Samuel. Mr. Hoff’s first
purchase of land was a fourteen acre tract southeast of Lodi on Kettleman Lane; this he set to vineyard and in 1909 sold it
and bought forty acres in the Victor section, which he set to orchard and
vineyard, then sold it and moved to the Barnhart tract on Kettleman
Lane, where he leased a tract of land for a year; later he rented the McMurtry ranch of eighty acres and the Beatty and Earl
ranches of 100 acres each, and farmed them six years. In 1917 he purchased the Earl ranch and after
holding it for one year sold it. In 1920
he had 260 acres in tomatoes which made him a loss of $18,000. In 1921 he purchased 200 acres of the Mettler ranch, five and a half miles southwest of Lodi on
the Lincoln Highway, where he now resides.
He leveled the ranch for irrigation and put in three pumping plants, and
has set the entire 200 acres to Tokay and Zinfandel grapes. That same year he bought the Beatty ranch of
100 acres, leveled it and set it to Tokays.
Mr. Hoff has helped various farmers during harvest time for the past
twenty-five years and for the past four years has done contract harvesting with
a Holt twenty-foot harvester and a forty-five horsepower Holt caterpillar
engine. About 1904 he began operating a
hay-baler and still continues that work, working fifty head of mules and twenty
head of horses, besides tractors, and has as high as thirty men on his
payroll. For a number of years he was
among the largest vineyardists of this section,
controlling a large acreage. He has set
out about 1500 acres to vines and trees under contract in the last twenty
years. He has a lease on 500 acres of tule land which he farms to grain. On the 100-acre vineyard he had under lease
before the price of grapes went up, he pulled the vines out, much to his regret
and loss; recently he has reset these 100 acres to young vines. He markets his fruit through the Pacific
Fruit Exchange. Mr. and Mrs. Hoff are
the parents of seven children: Vera,
Henrietta, Viola, Earl, Walter, Edwin, and Donald. Fraternally he is a member of the Eagles of
Lodi and in politics is a Republican.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1549-1550. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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