San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JOHN OLSON
Prominent among those Californians
who have not only been able to retire with a comfortable competence, but have
withdrawn from active participation in the affairs of life with the assurance
of good will from all to whom they are known, may be mentioned John Olson, of
229 North Grant Street, Stockton. He was
born in Colsum, Sweden, on the Baltic Sea, on June 17, 1838, and as a boy
followed the sea, becoming a ship-carpenter.
He left home when he was eighteen years of age, and sailed to England;
and from there he went out to Australia as second carpenter, in that way
following his father, who had mastered the same trade.
In Australia he ran away from his
ship, and not long after joined a vessel bound for San Francisco, arriving at
the Golden Gate in 1858. From the Bay
City he pushed on inland to Greenwood Valley, Placer County, where he took up a
mining claim, with a friend, and was fortunate in making money; and later he
went into Placer County, and there bought a claim for $1,400 at Todd’s Valley,
on the American River. He worked the
same, and soon took out enough to pay for it.
Then he sold out and went to Washoe, Nevada, during the excitement in
the Comstock Lode. He took up a claim
and also mined at Ophir Mill and Washoe Valley.
In 1865 he returned to the east on a
trip and while there married, in that year, Miss Charlotte Flower, a native of
Ohio. He resumed carpenter work in
Newcastle, Pennsylvania, and erected two blocks. These he sold, and came back to
California. He went to Dutch Flat, in
Placer County, and worked in the mines as a carpenter; and then he went on to
Gold Run, in Placer County, where he took up hydraulic mining and built a
sluiceway. He went to Alta, in the same
county, and helped to build a sawmill; and in Oakland
he worked again at his trade, removing in 1878 to Lodi, where he worked for
Comstock & Clapp, in building houses.
He was for three years in Red Bluff and built a flour mill.
Coming to Stockton, he bought ten
acres of land in the Parker Addition, south of Stockton, and this he farmed for
about twenty years, raising alfalfa, grapes, berries, etc. He paid seventy-five dollars per acre for five
acres, and eighty dollars per acre for the balance; and he sold this property,
some years ago, at a fair profit. While
he worked in Stockton, he was in the employ of Jerry Robinson, the contractor,
and he helped to erect many notable buildings, including the Yosemite Theater.
Mr. Olson has four daughters, Mrs.
Maggie Lenfister, Mrs. Gran Sharck,
Mrs. Mabel Matthews, and Mrs. Bessie Erickson, and there are nine grandchildren
and five great-grandchildren. Mr. and
Mrs. Olson also own a home on Clay Street, and they attend the Central
Methodist Church.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1623. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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