San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JESSE STEWART LEWIS
&
LUDWIK S. PAZNESKI
For the past twenty-eight years
Ludwik S. Pazneski has been a resident of San Joaquin County where he first
worked as a well-borer, following this line of work for three years when he
began farming on the Lewis ranch which has since occupied him. He was born in Poland, about seventy-five
miles north of Warsaw, in the state of Plosck, July
22, 1872, a son of John and Elizabeth (Jesineska) Pazneski. He was
reared and schooled in his native land until his nineteenth year, when he came
to the United States and found employment on a farm near Paterson, New Jersey;
then he worked in the iron foundries of that city until his removal to
Stockton, California, in 1894. Ludwik S.
is the eldest of a family of four, the others residents of Poland.
On December 1, 1897, in San
Francisco, Mr. Pazneski was married to Miss Caroline Lewis, born on her
father’s ranch six miles from Stockton on the Waterloo Road, the present home
place of Mr. and Mrs. Pazneski. Caroline
Lewis is a daughter of Jesse Stewart and Mary Ann (Hobbs) Lewis, natives of
Missouri and Indiana, respectively, of Scotch and English ancestry. Jesse Stewart Lewis was a great-great-nephew
of Daniel Boone, his great-grandmother being Hannah Boone, whose sister, Anna
Boone, was the grandmother of Abraham Lincoln.
The mother of Jesse Stewart Lewis was a sister of Major Archibald Sloan,
of the American Revolution. Mary Ann
Lewis was the niece of Ben Kelsey for whom Kelseyville, California, was named,
and he married Nancy Roberts, the first white woman to come to California. Jesse Stewart Lewis was a farmer by
occupation in Missouri, and in 1853 crossed the plains to California with his
wife and family in an ox-team train and prairie schooners, the journey taking
about six months. Upon arriving at
Stockton Mr. Lewis engaged in freighting to the mining camps, making his
headquarters on the ranch he had bought in 1853, soon after his arrival, and
where Mr. and Mrs. Pazneski now reside.
He first bought 120 acres, but when the Upper Sacramento Road was put
through the property was resurveyed and it left 110 acres in the home place; he
also owned 120-1/2 acres, known as the Sam Clark ranch, later owned by Cy
Moreing. In 1866, when the Waterloo Road
was put through, Mr. Lewis fenced off four and one-half acres, erected a small
house in which relatives lived for about seven years, then he arranged to move
the Greenwood school house, which is now located on the northwest corner of
that small tract. With Cy Moreing and his partner, he owned the old Harvey and
Graham ranches and a half section of land at Bellota. Besides his own holdings he leased
considerable land on Roberts Island on all of which he raised grain
extensively.
\ There were eight children born to Mr.
and Mrs. Lewis: J. K. P. Lewis, of
Ashland, Oregon, is the eldest; Arrena J. became the
wife of Cyrus Moreing and died in 1884; Flora Ellen was the wife of Joseph
Parrish and is deceased; Lydia died at the age of eighteen; Thomas H. died when
he was thirty-three years of age; Mary E. is the widow of C. Franklin of
Stockton; William died at the age of twenty-six; Caroline is the wife of L. Pazneski. She began her education in the Greenwood
school, then spent two years in high school; took a business course in a
commercial school in Stockton, at the same that she pursued her musical studies
under Mrs. Van Vlear-Ladd and other instructors. She has lived on the old Lewis ranch all her
life, remaining with her parents while they lived. Her father died at the age of seventy-eight
years and eight months, in 1899, her mother surviving until 1910, when she had
reached the fine old age of eighty-nine years and eleven months. When her mother died, Mrs. Pazneski received
fifty acres of the home place and a strip of land two rods wide and extending
from the home place to the Waterloo Road, lying on the west side of Harrelson’s
and the Greenwood school lot and comprising about two acres, as her portion of
the estate; later thirty-one acres were purchased and this acreage constitutes
the home place of Mr. and Mrs. Pazneski.
Here Mr. Pazneski has set out a vineyard and orchard and farmed to grain
with considerable success. On this place
stands one of the largest mission fig trees in the state, measuring over
fourteen feet in circumference at the base and the shaded area is over 300 feet
in circumference. It was planted by Mr.
Lewis in 1856 and people from all parts of the country come to see it. Mr. Lewis was a trustee of the Greenwood
school for many years, was a Democrat in politics and always ready and willing
to do his share to make the county a better place in which to live and always
extended the old California hospitality to all who visited their ranch
home. This spirit is being kept alive by
his daughter who is following in his footsteps and takes a great interest in
community affairs as well as politics.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
400. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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