San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JOSEPH C. KENNISON
Among the fruit men of San Joaquin
County who are interested in all departments of that greatest of California
industries, is Joseph C. Kennison, a native of the state, born at Jenny Lind, Calaveras
County, on May 8, 1866. He is a son of
Joseph L. and Miranda (Cutts) Kennison,
both descendants of old New England families.
Great-grandfather David Kennison was a member of the Boston Tea Party
and also served in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. He lived to be 115 years of age.
Joseph L. Kennison came via Cape
Horn to California in 1849 and engaged in mining in Calaveras County; later he
went into business at Jenny Lind. When
their son Joseph C. was a child of two years the family removed to Stockton,
where the father followed his trade of brick mason and also did considerable
contracting; many of the early brick buildings in Stockton attest the kind of
work he did. Joseph C. is the youngest child
in a family of three, the others being J. F., residing in Oakland, and May, a
resident of Los Angeles.
Joseph C. received his education in
the Stockton and Oakland public schools; then took a course in the Stockton
Commercial Business College; when he was fifteen years old he became a clerk
for the Hartford Fire Insurance Company in San Francisco, and remained with
them for four years. He then gave up
inside work and went to San Ramon near Danville, where he worked for wages on
the James Boone ranch; then he removed to his native county and worked in the
olive grove H. H. Moore near Jenny Lind.
In 1894 he bought ten acres of the tract he now owns and from time to
time added more land, until he now has forty acres; this was unimproved land on
the Mokelumne River about two miles northwest of Lodi; he set out a vineyard to
Tokay grapes and an orchard of peaches, also built a house and farm
buildings. His ranch now has a peach
orchard containing twelve acres, an apricot orchard of three acres, and the balance
of twenty-five acres is in a fine, full-bearing vineyard. In politics he is a Republican and
fraternally is affiliated with the Charity Lodge of the I. O. O. F. of
Stockton.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1480. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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