San
Joaquin County
Biographies
FRED F. WALL
A
thoroughly progressive vineyardist, who has something to show for his
wide-awake enterprise and untiring industry, is Fred F. Wall, who lives one
mile and a half due east of Acampo. He
was born in Hutchinson County, South Dakota, on May 29, 1878, the son of Fred
and Magdalina Wall, the former a native of Russia, who died in that
country. Directly after his death, Mrs.
Wall left Russia for America; and coming out to South Dakota, she settled in
Hutchinson County, where he married Henry Becthold,
an industrious and thrifty farmer who did what he could to help develop that
part of the country. He took up
three-fourths of a section of government land, and such were the pioneer
conditions, and the demands imposed by them, that our subject received little
chance for an education.
When Fred was a young man, his
stepfather died, and he then went to Wells County, and worked by the month on
ranches. After that he rented farm land
until 1905, when he came out to California and bought the old Smart place, a
vineyard of forty acres, which he soon sold again. Then he purchased a thirty-acre ranch, which
he improved for four years and then sold.
Then he leased a ranch for a year, and after that bought the forty acres
upon which he now lives. Thirty acres
are in vineyard, and seven acres in alfalfa.
He has twenty-five acres of wine-grapes, and five acres of Tokays. He himself built all the structures improving
the place, including a fine dwelling-house and necessary farm buildings; and he
developed water by sinking a good well, so that with a five-inch pump and a
motor of fifteen-horse power, and a complete system of concrete pipes, he can
command adequate irrigation.
At Fessenden, Wells County, North
Dakota, Mr. Wall was married on April 4, 1900, to Miss Elizabeth Schmidt, a
native of Russia and the daughter of Phillip Schmidt, a farmer, and his good
wife, Katherine. Six children blessed
this union: Isaac, Ida, Edna, Clara,
Lillian and Laura. A second time Mr.
Wall married on January 26, 1916, at Lodi, choosing for his wife Miss Ella Weishauer, a native of Kansas and the daughter of Herman Weishauer; and one son has been born to them, Edwin
Fred. Mr. Wall is a stockholder in the
Farmers & Merchants Bank at Lodi, of which he was formerly a director. He is interested in town property in Lodi.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1384. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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