San
Joaquin County
Biographies
ANDRO RUSTAN
Through industry and great native
ability as a mechanic, Andro Rustan
has won an enviable place in the country of his adoption.
He was born in far-off Dalmatia,
then a part of Austria, August 15, 1863, being the eldest child of a family of
six children, consisting of two sons and four daughters. His parents were John and Louisa (Buskovich) Rustan. They were in comfortable circumstances, the
father being a farmer who owned about 160 acres of land and in addition was a
blacksmith, carpenter and builder, and an all around mechanic. Schools were few and far between in his
native country when young Andro Rustan
grew up, but he was reared in the Catholic faith and learned to work while a
mere lad, assisting on his father’s farm and especially in his father’s shop,
where he learned blacksmithing and carpenter work.
Arriving at military age he was
pressed into the Austrian army, serving two years, and in 1881 went through the
war with the Balkan states as a corporal in the 37th Regiment, being
wounded in action near Crevochia. He had heard much of free America and Golden
California, and on February 3, 1887, he went to Havre, France, where he embarked
for New York; and he landed at Castle Garden on March 12, 1887, arriving in San
Francisco about a week or ten days later.
He did not stop long in San Francisco, however, but soon made his way to
Stockton, where he went to work with a bridge gang as a carpenter for the
Southern Pacific Railway Company. Being
apt with tools and having natural ability as a builder, he rose very rapidly
and after two years was made foreman of a bridge gang, and for the next three
years he built depots, warehouses, tanks and bridges for said company at
different places in the San Joaquin Valley.
Seeing the great advantages of an education, he attended night schools
after coming to Stockton, and by diligent application he soon had gained the
rudiments of an English common school education, so as to be able to read,
write and figure. He remained in the
employ of the Southern Pacific Company for a period of five years. He had made up his mind to visit his native
land after five years, but at that time his father died in Dalmatia, and he
thereupon determined to have his mother, brother and three sisters join him in
California, so he sent them money for their passage, and bought out the stock,
machinery, horses, mules and complete equipment of an Island farmer and rented
2,600 acres on Union Island, in San
Joaquin County, and was soon among the large grain farmers of the Valley and
helped his family to get started in California.
Only one of the family, a sister, remains in Dalmatia, and she there
keeps up and farms the old Rustan home place of 160
acres and also a 160-acre farm which Mr. Rustan
bought from an uncle, and which he still owns.
As a farmer on Union Island, Mr. Rustan was
very successful. In 1901 Mr. Rustan was married to Mary Deranjia,
born in Dalmatia, who was 17 years old when she came to America.
In 1906 he rented another large
piece of land of 1,200 acres near Banta, California, and farmed there until
1914, when he came to this place. Here
he lives upon and farms the 1,400-acre ranch belonging to Mrs. Anna Fabian, and
at the same time operates his own mountain and foothill grazing ranch of 1,200
acres, 14 miles distant, which he runs to horses, cattle and mules. He maintains a blacksmith shop and a machine
shop on his ranch, shoes his own horses, repairs his farm
machinery, autos and tractors. He is
also an excellent horseman and can handle 18 horses with ease. Patriotic and public-spirited, he was
naturalized in 1891, and has ever since taken an active interest in the common
welfare. In politics he is a Progressive
Republican and a warm personal friend of Senator Hiram W. Johnson.
Mr. and Mrs. Rustan
have three children: Louise is a
graduate of the Stockton High School and Heald’s Business College; Annie
Pauline is in the Tracy High School; John A. is also in the Tracy High
School. Mr. and Mrs. Rustan
and family are members of the Catholic Church, while Mr. Rustan
is active in the Farm Bureau of Tracy, Sumner Lodge of Odd Fellows and the
Knights of Pythias.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1143-1144. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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