San
Joaquin County
Biographies
CHARLES RASCH
Among the prosperous and successful
vineyardists of the Lodi section is Charles Rasch, who has been a resident of
the county since 1903. He was born in
Metz, France, on September 27, 1861, a son of Peter and Tilly (Loup) Rasch, and
is the sixth in a family of thirteen children.
The father, Peter Rasch, expert machinist, lived to be seventy-eight
years old, and the mother lived to be seventy-seven.
Charles Rasch received a grammar
school education, and at the age of eighteen came to the United States, locating
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and there served an apprenticeship of three years
with the Baldwin Locomotive Works, and altogether worked about six years in
Pittsburgh. He then went to St. Louis
and worked in the railroad shops of the Chicago and Alton Railroad for one
year, when he went to Omaha, Nebraska, and there worked for a time for the
Union Pacific Railroad; he then removed to Cincinnati, and was employed by the
Burlington & Ohio Railroad for over a year.
Returning to Pittsburgh for a short visit he then went to Brainerd,
Minnesota, and went to work in the shops of the Northern Pacific, where he
remained for the next sixteen years; he was then transferred to Livingston,
Montana, where he worked for the same company, and again transferred to Tacoma,
Washington, where he spent one year. He
then quit the machinist’s trade and returned to Minnesota, where he bought
eighty acres near Deerwood. He cleared
the land and lived on it for the next five years, when he sold out and came to
California in the fall of 1903 and settled near Lodi. Here he purchased thirty acres of vineyard;
as it was maturing, he sought employment elsewhere. He went to New Mexico and worked for a time
in the Santa Fe shops at Albuquerque as a locomotive machinist. During the strike of 1905 he was thrown out
of employment and returned to California, going direct to Sacramento, where he
worked for about three years in the Southern Pacific shops. At this time he settled on his thirty-acre
vineyard and built a house and barn on it, where he lived for about twelve
years, when he sold it and bought a three-acre vineyard two and a half miles
southeast of Lodi on Harney Lane. He
built a residence and put in an irrigation system, and he and his family have
resided there ever since.
The marriage of Mr. Rasch occurred
in Minnesota in April, 1885, and united him with Miss Tilly
Hoving, a native of Sweden and a daughter of Andrew Hoving. Her father
came to the United States when she was a small child and settled in Michigan,
where he mined and later farmed a homestead, and there Mrs. Rasch received her
education. They were the parents of
three children: Arthur C. Rasch, a
merchant at Stockton, is married and has two children, Margery and Geraldine;
Violet, a twin of Arthur C., died at six months; and Geraldine died when about
ten years of age. In politics Mr. Rasch
is a strong Republican and during his residence in Deerwood served one term as
constable, and was also township assessor for one term.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George H., History of San
Joaquin County, California , Page
1564. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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