San Joaquin County Biographies


This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


 
OTTO DIETZ.
 
        Twenty-seven years ago Otto Dietz purchased his present ranch of 
twenty-six acres located one mile northwest of Thornton, which he has developed 
into one of the finest alfalfa ranches in the vicinity. He was born at 
Steinheim, near Geissen, in Hessen Darmstadt, Germany, July 15, 1869, a son of 
Kaspar and Elizabeth (Eickle) Dietz. His father was a brick mason by trade, and 
lived to be eighty-five years old; the mother still lives in the old country at 
the age of eighty-eight. Otto is the youngest of a family of four children; 
William is deceased, and the other two are Bertha and Henry.
        Otto Dietz was educated in the public school and the business college of 
his native country, and was reared to help on his father's farm. At twenty-one 
years of age he learned the brick mason's trade, which he followed until 1892, 
when he came to the United States and direct to California, settling at Tracy. 
He found work on a ranch for a year and a half, and then removed to the New Hope 
section, where he has since remained. When he purchased his ranch of twenty-six 
acres, in 1896, it was covered with the natural growth of brush and tules, which 
Mr. Dietz cleared away, and leveled and planted the land to alfalfa; and today 
his ranch is classed among the most productive in that section. Besides erecting 
a good, comfortable house and other necessary buildings, he has installed a 
six-inch pump equipped with a ten-horse-power motor and has piped the place with 
twelve-inch concrete pipes for irrigation. On this ranch he runs a dairy of 
twenty-five Holstein cows. On April 26, 1891, in Germany, Mr. Dietz was married 
to Miss Bertha Kroell, also a native of Steinheim, Germany, a daughter of George 
and Margaret (Mumbir) Kroell. Her parents were farmers, and reared a family of 
eight children: George, Ferdinand, Elizabeth, Anna, Gustave, Grace, Eliza and 
Bertha, now Mrs. Dietz. Mr. and Mrs. Dietz are the parents of two children: 
Laura, Mrs. Doty of Elk Grove; and Alma, employed in Stockton. There are two 
grandchildren, Margaret and Wilbur Doty. Mr. Dietz is a stanch American citizen, 
and he and his wife are members of the Lutheran Church at Lodi.
 
History of San Joaquin County, California � Los Angeles, Historic Record Co., 
1923
p   1586       
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler.