San
Joaquin County
Biographies
GROVER C. IREY
For the past seven years Grover C.
Irey has been a resident of Lodi and since 1921 has been associated with Lyon
& Irey, sporting goods, auto accessories, etc., and brings to the firm a
thorough and practical knowledge of the business in every detail. He was born near Versailles, Missouri,
January 23, 1892, a son of William T. and Almira (Robertson) Irey, natives of Pennsylvania
and Missouri, respectively. There were
eight children in the family: Alfa, Mrs.
E. M. Paxson, resides in Fortuna, Missouri; Frank
resides at Lodi; Roy resides at Lodi; Maremma resides
in Lodi; Estella, deceased; J. Washington resides at Youngstown, California;
Grover C. is the subject of this sketch; and Cynthia. Grover C. received a grammar school education
in Akinsville, Missouri. When nineteen years old he was earning his
own way in the world and first worked at any job he could get to do to earn a
livelihood, working through the states of the Middle West, and spent a year and
a half at Delhi, Louisiana; he spent one season in the harvest field in
Arkansas. He then removed to Texas and
worked at harvesting; gradually working his way northward until in the fall he
was in North Dakota. Returning home he
took a course in the Kansas City Automobile Machine School. During 1915 he came to California and
directly to Lodi, where he worked as driver and mechanic for the City Transfer
Company. During the World War he was employed
at the Moore-Scott Shipyards in Oakland as a driller, where he remained for a
year and a half. After the war he
returned to Lodi, where he established an agency for Federal trucks, which
occupied him for one year. He then
turned his attention to viticulture and purchased twenty acres in vineyard,
three miles southwest of Lodi, but later sold it.
On September 5, 1917 Mr. Irey was
married to Miss Hazel R. Ham, born near Woodbridge, a daughter of W. J. and
Anna L. Ham, the former a native of Iowa and the latter of Pennsylvania. Her father, W. J. Ham, who was an attorney in
Des Moines, Iowa, first married Miss Ella Ventura, who passed away leaving one
child, Mathias Fenton Ham. After Mr.
Ham’s second marriage the family removed to California in 1891, and Mr. Ham was
one of the instructors in the San Joaquin Valley College at Woodbridge. He passed away at about sixty years of
age. Mr. and Mrs. Irey are the parents
of three children: William Harold,
Charles Grover, and Robert. Mr. Irey
purchased a home for Mrs. Ham in Lodi, where the family has resided since. Mr. Irey is a Democrat in politics, and
fraternally is a member of the Modern Woodmen, and with his family is a member
of the Methodist Church of Lodi.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1602. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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