Santa Barbara County Biographies

JOHN HOUK

Submitted by Peggy Hooper

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


JOHN HOUK, one of the progressive ranchers of the Santa Maria Valley, was born 
in Germany, in 1852; his father was a nail-maker by trade. Labor being poorly paid, 
Mr. Houk emigrated to the United States with his family in 1855, going first to 
Cincinnati, Ohio, where he began farming. At the age of thirteen years our subject 
began his self-support. He went to Missouri and worked for two years on a ranch, 
then to Texas, where he followed the beef trade for two years, and then returned 
home, where he resided until 1874, when lie came to California. After spending the 
winter at Sacramento he traveled north through Oregon and Washington Territory, 
but returned to Sacramento, where he worked at harvesting and in logging camps 
until the fall of 1876. He then came to Santa Maria and took up eighty acres in La 
Gracia country, remaining until the fall of 1880, when he sold out and bought 320 
acres of the Suez school district. Mr. Houk has his ranch well fenced and improved. 
He raised principally grain until 1888, and now carries on general farming, with a 
small dairy of twenty cows. He is improving his stock by crossing with fullblood 
Holstein, owning some line animals, and forty line Berkshire hogs. 

Mr. Houk was married at Sacramento, in 1875, to Miss Angelina Howerton, and they 
have eight children. 

History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California  - by 
C.M. Gidney, Benjamin Brooks, Edwin M. Sheridan, Vol I, II.  -Lewis Publ. Co., 
Chicago, 1917.