San Joaquin County
Biographies
PERRY YAPLE
PERRY YAPLE, merchant at
Ripon, was born in Tompkins
County, New York, March 9, 1825, a son of Henry and Sally (Dykeman)
Yaple. The father, a native of New York State, was the first white male child born in Ithaca,
New York, his birth having been preceded by a female cousin
six months before; he died in Danby,
New York, aged seventy-six. The mother, a native of Butternut,
New York, died April 12, 1836, aged forty-two. Grandfather
Jacob Yaple, the first settler in Ithaca, was a native of Virginia. Great-grandfather Yaple was an emigrant from Prussia, who settled on the James river, in Virginia. Jacob Yaple moved to New York and settled there, where Ithaca now stands. He built the first grist-mill and was
also a farmer, owning a considerable quantity of land. The tradition of the
family is that he was swindled out of a great portion of his first purchase by
the failure of his messenger to deliver the purchase money at the appointed
time.
Perry, the subject of this sketch,
received the limited education of the period in country parts. He learned the
trade of blacksmith, beginning his apprenticeship in 1842, in Ithaca,
New York, where he afterward worked as a journeyman one year.
The old shop was still standing when he visited the place in 1886. He then
worked in Danby six years, in a shop of his own. In 1852 Mr. Yaple came to California, leaving Danby September 16, and New York September 20, via the Panama route, and arrived in San Francisco October 20, 1852, when he proceeded without delay to Stockton. Here he worked at his trade a year for the stage
company, but while so engaged, in the spring of 1853, he started his own shop,
employing a journeyman to attend to such work as was brought there. Free from
his engagement with the stage company, he formed a partnership with Wells
Beardsley, a wagon maker who had accompanied him from Danby. In 1854 they made
the first gang-plow made in this State. They made three plows, each of three
gangs, that season; and ordered a threshing machine from the East. That winter
Mr. Yaple tried his luck at mining at Shaw’s Flats, Tuolumne County, where he remained until May, 1855, gathering a few
hundred dollars. He ran the threshing-machine that summer, doing fairly well,
and at the close of the season resumed blacksmithing, in partnership with P. L.
Williamson. After one year Mr. Yaple made a trip to Oregon,
but found nothing especially inviting, so returned to Stockton, January 1, 1857. He then started a barley-crusher
with D. G. Humphrey as partner and received for that work $5 a ton, a fair
day’s work being sixteen tons, and the investment about $4,000. In 1859 he
returned to his home in the East and brought out sixty hives of bees, costing
$15 each, for which he was offered $50 each, but he preferred to keep them. He
went and returned by the Panama route.
In 1862, he took up, chiefly for his bees,
160 acres, a quarter in the section on which Ripon stands. In 1868 he exchanged
with his partner Humphrey, he taking the bees and Humphrey the barley crusher.
He had about 100 hives, which the bee epidemic of that year reduced to five,
then he turned his attention to general farming. In 1864 he bought another
quarter section, and again, in 1866, another. In 1874 he bought a half section.
He exchanged the half section for a more desirable quarter section with an old
warehouse on it. In 1878 he purchased the general store of the village, which
was carried on by his son D. F. until his death in 1884. He engaged in farming
until 1883, when he sold all his land, except sixty-five acres near the
village. He then wound up his shop and began to build, his first enterprise being
the brick warehouse in Ripon. In 1886 he built the two-story brick building now
used as a general store, with Odd Fellows’ Hall overhead. He has been Justice
of the Peace since 1886. He runs the general store in the village, in the
two-story brick, forty-five by seventy feet, already referred to, in
partnership with his son-in-law, E. C. Dickinson, under the style of Yaple
& Dickinson.
Mr. Yaple was married in Danby,
New York, May 10, 1849, to Miss Ann Eliza Knapp, a native of
that State. She died in May, 1851, leaving one boy, D. F., who came to California in 1868. He ran the general store in Ripon from 1868 to 1884, when he
died, leaving one child, Estelle Perry, and his widow, Lulu (Woods) Yaple, both
living in Suisun in 1889. Mr. Perry Yaple was married a second time, at
Pacheco, California, September 25, 1862, to Mrs. Martha M. (Burley) Clark, the
widow of Lorenzo Clark, of Lowell, Massachusetts, where he died in 1855. She
was born in New York State, a daughter of Thomas and Martha (Doten) Burley,
both natives of New Hampshire, the father being born at Dorchester and the
mother at Canaan, in that State. The father was accidentally killed by a fall
from his horse at the age of fifty, and the grandfather, Jacob Burley also met
an accidental death at the age of sixty. The latter was known as Captain
Burley, having been a soldier in the war of the Revolution. His widow,
Elizabeth (Dow) Burley received a pension for some years. She was a second
cousin of the celebrated revivalist and temperance lecturer, Lorenzo Dow, and a
native of Massachusetts. Captain and Mrs. Burley had ten children, of whom
nine grew to maturity. Grandfather Doten lived to be seventy-five; his wife’s
name was Mary.
Mr. and Mrs. Yaple are the parents of two
children, daughters, namely: Nellie L., now Mrs. Evert C. Dickinson, of Ripon,
who has two children,--Clarence Leroy and Perry Yaple. The second daughter of
Mr. and Mrs. Yaple is Edith Dow, now Mrs. James S. Moulton, of Linden,
of whom a sketch is given elsewhere in this volume.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County,
California, Pages 324-326. Lewis Pub.
Co. Chicago, Illinois 1890.
© 2009 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
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