San
Joaquin County
Biographies
FRANK E. LOWE
A well-known and representative
farmer of San Joaquin County is Frank E. Lowe, who is engaged in general
agricultural pursuits and the raising of grapes. He was born in Dane County, Wisconsin, on July
15, 1873, and is the ninth child in a family of twelve of Amos and Mary
(Barrows) Lowe, both parents being of English descent. The father, Amos Lowe, was a farmer. In 1886 he brought his family to California
and settled in San Luis Obispo County, seven miles east of Atascadero. Coming to California for his health, Amos
Lowe soon found that he had located in too high an altitude; so he removed to
Arroyo Grande on the coast, and there engaged in farming. For many years he was justice of the peace of
his township.
The education of Frank E. Lowe was
obtained in the grammar and high schools of San Luis Obispo, and he assisted
his father on his ranch until he was twenty-one years old. He then went to Hanford, California, where he
worked for wages. Next he rented a
vineyard of forty acres, where he remained for one year, and then returned to
the coast and took charge of his father’s sixty-acre ranch in the rich valley
of the Arroyo Grande, where crops are always assured on account of the dense
ocean fogs.
Mr. Lowe was married to Miss Rose
Hodges at Arroyo Grande, in August, 1899.
She was born near Arroyo Grande, and is the daughter of Thomas E. and
Sarah (Wineinger) Hodges. Her father was one of the first settlers on
the E. W. Steele tract in San Luis Obispo County, and was a successful rancher
of the Arroyo Grande section. The Steele
tract was originally an old Spanish grant.
Mrs. Lowe was educated in the Arroyo Grande grammar and high school, and
supplemented this with an attendance at Stanford University, after which she
taught school in San Luis Obispo County until her marriage to Mr. Lowe. After his marriage, Mr. Lowe purchased
nineteen acres near Arroyo Grande and engaged in a general truck-farming
business. Later he sold this property
and bought nineteen and a half acres of his wife’s father’s ranch, devoted to
walnuts and apricots. He farmed this
ranch for ten years and still owns it.
In November, 1912, he moved to San Joaquin County, where he purchased
sixty acres in vineyard and alfalfa on the Sargent-Lafayette Road, five miles
west of Lodi; this he farmed for four years and then sold it. While residing on this place Mrs. Lowe passed
away. Mr. Lowe next bought a thirty-acre
ranch on Kettleman Lane, one mile south of Lodi, twenty acres of which is in
grapes and the balance in alfalfa and cherry trees; the ranch is piped
throughout for irrigating, and there is a four-inch pump with a
seven-and-a-half horsepower motor on the place.
Mr. and Mrs. Lowe were the parents of three children: Alfrieda A.,
attending the University of California at Berkeley, where she is training to be
a teacher; Velma F., attending the University of Southern California; and Alvin
F., at home. In politics Mr. Lowe is a
Republican; and fraternally he is a member of the Masonic Lodge of Lodi. Recently Mr. Lowe purchased fifty and
one-half acres on the Kelly Road near Woodbridge, twenty acres of which is in
bearing vineyard and eighteen acres in young vineyard at this time, the balance
being unimproved land.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1139. 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