San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JOHN B. SEELMEIER
A merchant whose progressive ideals
and enterprising moves make him well deserve the success attending his various
undertakings is John B. Seelmeier, the proprietor of
the Brandt Ferry Store on Roberts Island, and owner of five choice acres not
far away. He was born in Holstein,
Germany, on September 22, 1846, and in 1869 came out to America, sailing from
Hamburg on the steamer Broser, arriving in New York
City after twenty-one days on the Atlantic on the fourteenth of March. For awhile he worked in the coalfields of New
Jersey, and then he went to Kansas and took up farm labor at one dollar per
day. In 1884 he arrived in San
Francisco, where he worked in the construction of the great sea-wall, laboring
at that job for a couple of years. His
brother-in-law, Captain Tanck, owned two bay
schooners, and used them for hauling freight, and joining him in the business,
he was in that field of activity for the next six years.
In 1890 he came to Roberts Island
and bought five acres at Brandt’s Ferry, on the San Joaquin River, and entered
the employ of C. H. W. Brandt as ferryman, and for ten years he managed the
ferry at the point; and when the bridge was completed in 1900, he bought the
store and lumber business at the present site, and as a proprietor enjoying the
good-will of everyone, he has continued to live there and prosper ever
since. He was made a citizen of the
United States by Judge Budd at Stockton.
At Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1871, Mr.
Seelmeier was married to Miss Augusta Brandt, a
native of Germany, where she was born in 1849, and who had come to America in
1870; and this good woman passed away at her home on March 26, 1919, leaving
behind an enviable name for cooperation in whatever was worthy of support.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1496. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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