San Joaquin County Biographies


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



 
JOHN JONS.
 
        An experienced wheat and grain rancher who was also a pioneer in alfalfa 
culture is John Jons, a native of Upper Holstein, Germany, where he was born on 
October 25, 1860. He enjoyed a bright boyhood in the comfortable home of his 
parents, who provided for him an excellent common school training; but when he 
was eighteen years of age, he decided to come to America. He reached New York 
aboard the steamer Lessing, and after a brief stay in the metropolis, pushed on 
to Iowa, where he spent three and one-half years near Ogden, in Boone County, 
engaged in hard farm labor.
        In 1882, he migrated still further to the West, and on reaching 
California, pitched his tent in San Joaquin City, then a center in San Joaquin 
County, and near by he found employment on the San Joaquin ranch owned by L. B. 
Holt. He also put in a few months in Stanislaus County. He went in for extensive 
growing of wheat and grain in the San Joaquin City district, and he was the very 
first rancher to take up the raising of alfalfa on the Kasson Irrigated Farms, 
some three and one-half miles south on the River Road from Banta. This was in 
1912; and now Mr. Jons owns a splendid tract of forty-five acres, productive of 
fine alfalfa, where he is also conducting a first-class up-to-date dairy. 
Combining the thoroughness of Old World methods with the more modern appliances 
and devices of the American farmer, and taking into account in particular the 
conditions peculiar to California, Mr. Jons has met with success.
        On September 26, 1888, Mr. Jons was made a citizen of the United States, 
and five years later, on April 6, he was married to Miss Hannah Haccius, a 
native of Germany, who had come out to Stockton in 1881, following her brothers, 
Hans, now a resident of San Jose, and Christian Haccius. Three children have 
been born to this union: Frederick is a rancher and lives at home; Hannah has 
become the wife of Ed. S Thornberg, and they have one child and reside at Tracy; 
Frieda is Mrs. William B. McBride; and her husband, who is now ranching near 
Vernalis, enlisted in the U. S. Army Aviation service. In national political 
affairs Mr. Jons is a Republican, but in local matters he co-operates in every 
way, regardless of partisanship, for the benefit of the community.
 
History of San Joaquin County, California � Los Angeles, Historic Record Co., 
1923
p    1135      
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler.