Fresno County, California Biographies

Source: History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of 
the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with 
its growth and development from the early days to the present (1919)

History By Paul E. Vandor 
Illustrated, Complete In Two Volumes 
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1919
 
Notes: Missing+page1185-1186

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

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


THOMAS H. KOENEKE.� Among the first settlers in the section with 
which he has become identified is Thomas H. Koeneke, who came to Fresno 
County as late as 1903. When he and his father located on the ranch which 
they have so greatly improved, there were only three houses between them 
and what is now the State Highway. 

Mr. Koeneke was born at Ward, in Moody County, S. D., on October 14, 
1889, the son of Thomas Koeneke, who came from Kansas, homesteaded 
there, and became a farmer. In 1895 he removed from South Dakota to 
Marion County, Ore., where he was a farmer and a stockman ; and in Novem- 
ber, 1903, convinced of the greater attractions of Central California, he came 
to Fresno. 

On the fourteenth of the following February, he bought a ranch of 
eighty acres in the Biola district, which he improved ; and in 1917 he sold 
forty acres to his son, Thomas. The next year he sold the other forty acres 
and retired; and now he resides in the inland district. He married Anna 
Shoemaker, and among the four children of the union � a son and three 
daughters � Thomas is the oldest. 

He attended the public schools of Oregon and California, assisted his 
father, and engaged with him in farming; and in 1917 he made the purchase 
of forty acres of the home-place already referred to. There he continued viti- 
culture, cultivating for the most part Thompson seedless, and managing a 
small orchard. He built a handsome residence and other necessary outbuild- 
ings ; and operating according to the latest and most approved methods, he 
has made of the ranch one of the finest places for miles around. He joined the 
California Associated Raisin Company and is now one of its most progressive 
members. 

At Vinland he married Miss Emelie Henschel, a native of Canada, by 
whom he has had one child, a daughter named Edna. The family attend the 
Lutheran Church at Fresno ; and Mr. Koeneke performs his civic duties 
under the banners of the Republican party.