San
Joaquin County
Biographies
FRED A. WEST
A well-known citizen and
representative agriculturist of San Joaquin County, Fred A. West, who is also
chief engineer of the city pumping plant, was born near Mark West Hot Springs,
California, on March 14, 1880, so called in honor of the founder, Mark West,
the grandfather of our subject. At the
age of fourteen he was a printer’s devil on the Sonoma Democrat at Santa Rosa
and while there read the Stockton Mail and became greatly interested in
Stockton on account of the manufactories.
Being mechanically inclined and having had some experience in a machine
shop, when he was eighteen years old he decided to go to Stockton, so he
borrowed ten dollars from a friend and upon his arriving in Stockton on
November 1, 1898, his sole possessions amounted to two dollars and seventy-five
cents. He then secured employment in the
blacksmith shop and foundry of the Houser-Haines Company and later in the
blacksmith shop and construction room of the Holt Manufacturing Company. He first learned to fire the engine of the harvester
and later he was sent out with the harvester, first to Fresno and then to
Ione. In 1906 he secured his first job
with the city of Stockton when he ran the new steam roller on the streets of
the city and has been in the employ of the city ever since. He next ran a gas ditching machine; then was
transferred to the city pumping station and still later became chief engineer
of same. When the new outfall sewer was
completed in 1920 and the new $120,000 pumping plant installed Mr. West was put
in charge of the plant, which he is handling with thoroughness and capability.
The marriage of Mr. West occurred in
1907 and united him with Miss Bertha Lehman, a native of Roberts Island and a
daughter of the late Henry Lehman, a native of Germany, an early settler of the
county, who located on Roberts Island in 1865 and farmed there for many
years. Mr. West now farms a forty-nine
acre ranch on the island, the property of Mrs. West. Mr. and Mrs. West are the parents of two
children: Elaine and Fred L. Fraternally he is past sachem of the Red Men,
past commander of the Maccabees and past president of the Fraternal Order of
Eagles.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
438-441. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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