San
Joaquin County
Biographies
ORRIN C. WILSON
Among the highly esteemed residents
of Stockton was the late Orrin C. Wilson, the proprietor of the well-known
broom factory at Stockton. A native son,
he was born in the house at Stockton in which he lived at the time of his death
on June 8, 1873, the son of John Wilson, a native of St. Johnsbury,
near Danville, Vermont, who was a farmer who came out to California by way of
the Nicaragua Route in 1852. He reached
Stockton in time, and for awhile teamed to the mines in Calaveras County, using
bull-teams to haul the freight. Later he
followed sheep-shearing, and then he had a dairy in Stockton and delivered
milk, leasing land from Captain Weber, and farming where Oak Park now is. In 1864 he bought the block in Stockton
bounded by Pilgrim, Ophir, Channel streets and Miner Avenue, paying only $450
for the same, and later he sold the half of it for the price paid for the
whole. He also owned one-fourth of
another block on Miner Avenue. He built
eight houses on his property, erecting in 1869 the Wilson home-place. In partnership with Jacob and Hiram Fisher,
John Wilson, who had married Miss Mary C. Fisher, a native of Missouri, April
7, 1863, also engaged in house-moving in earlier days, using stalwart
oxen. He died March 27, 1899, full of
years and honor as an exemplary citizen of the finest Yankee type, and his good
wife passed away in 1909. They were the
parents of two children, both sons, one of whom died at the age of five. John Wilson was a prominent member of the
Methodist Church. Mrs. Wilson was the
daughter of Hiram Fisher, who crossed the Great Plains in 1852 and became the
owner of the Fisher Addition at Stockton.
Mrs. John Wilson cooked the first meal in the first home which stood in
Modesto, and that first house was a small frame structure moved from San
Joaquin City to Modesto by her father, with the aid of ox-teams. She was an active worker in the Central
Methodist Church.
Orrin C. Wilson attended the public
schools in Stockton, and then learned the trade of a carpenter, and was the
leading building contractor of Oakdale, in Stanislaus County, for a number of
years, where he helped greatly to build up the town, erecting many of the
finest residences there, and also business blocks. There he became a member of Oakdale Camp No.
331 of the Woodmen of the World. At the
age of thirty-one he became totally blind, and then he came back to Stockton
and opened a cigar store on North Sutter Street, which he conducted for ten
years. Selling out in 1916, he attended
the Industrial Home for the Adult Blind in Oakland, a large institution devoted
to the manufacture of brooms, and there learned, and learned well, the
broom-making trade.
Returning to Stockton, Mr. Wilson
opened his own broom factory in 1918, and in this venture he was very
successful from the first. He was an
expert at the trade, and he worked every day in his factory. He manufactured on average 2,500 brooms
yearly, and he originally grew the broom-corn on his ranch of 160 acres near
Stockton, which he sold in February, 1920.
All the large manufacturing plants in Stockton were patrons of their
factory.
At San Francisco, on October 29,
1895, Mr. Wilson was married to Miss Birdie G. Mosher, a native of San Joaquin
County; and their union was made happier in the birth of one daughter, Lillie
Mary, a native of Stockton, who is now the wife of Thomas R. Carroll. Miss Mosher was the daughter of Charles Henry
and Mary (Jones) Mosher; he was a native of Oswego, New York, and crossed the
Great Plains to California in 1854, with the old-time ox-team, and farmed in
Cherokee Lane, near Stockton. He served
in the Civil War and became a veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic; he was
killed, while working on the first combined harvester built in San Joaquin County. Grandfather Jones first crossed the continent
with an ox-train in ’48; and afterwards he made no less than eleven trips, on
several of which he faced all the dangers and privations of the journey while
slowly crawling over the plains behind teams of oxen. Mr. and Mrs. Mosher had four children: Arthur H., Lillie May, Archie Courtland and
Birdie G., who became Mrs. Wilson. Mr.
Wilson died very suddenly in Stockton on August 10, 1921. Mrs. Wilson continues the manufacturing
business, having added up-to-date equipment to bring the establishment to a
high standard, and during the first year under her management she put out more
than 1000,000 brooms and now, besides supplying the various manufacturers she
has the wholesaler’s trade and sells direct, at wholesale, to the retail
dealers in town.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
715. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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