San
Joaquin County
Biographies
OTTO SPENKER
A prosperous agriculturist and
viticulturist of San Joaquin County, Otto Spenker belongs to one of the well-known old-time
Californian families who were early settlers of this locality. His home estate, situated three and a half
miles west of Lodi on the Kelly Road, consists of 640 acres. He was born on his father’s ranch, which he
now owns, June 22, 1871, his parents being Joseph and Anna (Schliemann) Spenker. The father
was born in the province of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany, in 1834. He grew to manhood in Germany, and at the age
of twenty, in 1854, took passage at Hamburg on a sailing vessel which twenty-eight
days later landed him in New York City.
During the several subsequent years he employed himself in several of
the southern and western states, and for two years was in Stephenson County,
Illinois. From Freeport, Illinois, in
1859 he started for California, joining a train consisting of eighteen wagons
and driving an ox-team across the plains.
They arrived in this state about the middle of September, and for a
short time after his arrival he was engaged in mining gold. Then for several years he was in the employ
of others in ranching in San Joaquin County, and in the fall of 1864 he began
business in that line for himself, locating on a place about eight miles north
of Stockton. He continued there until
the fall of 1872, when he settled on the ranch near Woodbridge where he carried
on his agricultural operations until his death.
In 1870 Mr. Spenker was married to Miss Anna
Schliemann, a native of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. By this union there were two children, Otto
and Jessie, the wife of Henry C. Beckman.
Both parents were members of the German Lutheran Church in Lodi. The father passed away in 1916 at the age of
eighty-three, and the mother resides on the old home place with her son, our
subject.
Otto Spenker
attended the grammar school at Woodbridge, finishing at the San Joaquin Valley
College at Woodbridge, taking a three years’ course and graduating in
1889. From youth up he was successfully
identified with his father in extensive farming pursuits. His father owned 1000 acres of land along the
Mokelumne River, a portion of which was heavily
timbered and much of this was cleared and put under cultivation. Mr. Spenker now
owns 640 acres, seventy of which is in vineyard, sixty acres in alfalfa and the
balance general farming land; the entire ranch is under the Stockton-Mokelumne Irrigation System. He is a director in the First National Bank
of Lodi and a stockholder in the Lodi Investment Company. In 1907 he erected a fine residence on his
property, where he now resides with his mother.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1545-1546. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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