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 JOHN RUDOLF PFISTER.� A successful rancher, following the trend of scientific research and using the methods of up-to-date agriculture, is John Rudolf Pfister, the well known brother-in-law of Messrs. Blattner and Kopp, whose interesting sketches also adorn this volume. He was born at Wangen, in the Canton of Berne, Switerland, April 17, 1873. and his father was John Pfister who worked as a cigarmaker and as a skilled artisan in a hair factory. He died at the untimely age of thirty-eight years, -when his eleventh child was only a year and a half old. His wife, who was Elizabeth Witschi before she became Mrs. Pfister, was a native of the same canton ; she was a noble woman, who kept her family together through her own unaided efforts and the use of a single acre of ground that belonged to the town. In this manner she reared the entire family, the oldest being just sixteen when the father was taken away. She lived to see all her children grow up, and peacefully breathed her last at Wangen, in the sixty-eighth year of her age. John Rudolf was the eighth child and went to school until his ninth year, also receiving religious instruction according to the Zwingli Reformed Church. When his happy school days were over, he entered a rope factory at Wangen, where he was employed for three years; and at nineteen he sailed for America, taking passage from Havre, on the Normandie of the French- American line. In February, 1893, he landed in the city of New York, soon coming to California and arriving in Selma in the early part of March. With him were two companions from Wangen, Carl Bohner, now deceased, and Adolph Kopp, and the three went at once to work, as became those who real- ized that their future must be identified with the land to which they had come. The first work Mr. Pfister obtained was on the Vietor farm at Fowler, where he was employed for three months at fifteen dollars a month and his board. He was then offered twenty dollars a month to go to Hills, in Fresno County, but his new employer cheated him out of his wages and he was never paid for his hard labor. Times were bad just then, however, and he was soon glad to work for his board. As soon as he was able he made a trip to Oregon in 1894-95, and at Fulton, near Portland, he engaged in gar- dening. On his return to the south he came to Fowler. Cal., and was a cou- ple of months with his brother, John, after which he worked in a hotel at Winnemucca, Nev., once more he returned to Fowler and to his brother, who furnished him with work for a couple of years. This brother, in 1889, was killed in a runaway accident, and his widow having remarried, already the mother of two children, is Mrs. Mason. In 1898, Mr. Pfister returned to Europe on a visit, and was gone five months, most of which time he spent in Switzerland. In the late spring he returned to Selma, worked at Hills for the summer, and in the fall made a contract to dry grapes for Ed. Holton, of Wildflower, in Fresno County. The next spring he rented sixty acres set out to grapes and peaches, and such was his prosperity that, in December of that year, he was married to Miss Emma Pfister. a lady of Wangen, Switzerland, but no relation of his, whom he had known as a girl at home, and who came all the way from Switzerland to Selma to join her lover. The sixty acres rented by Mr. Pfister were in the Selma district, and were known as the W. H. Say place, four miles northwest of Selma. A lease was taken out for two years, but at the end of that time he rented the Haas place, four miles to the south of the town and near the Franklin school. He had this property for a year, and then he bought a forty-acre ranch, four miles southwest of Selma, which he planted to vines and trees, and which, after it was well improved, he continued to run for three years. The second year he rented another place of eighty acres, and after four years he sold his forty acres at a profit. All too soon for his ambitious plans, Mrs. Pfister became seriously ill and he made a second visit to Switzerland, taking her along and seeking to recover his wife's health. She had been physically impaired, however, for the past three years, and little by little she sank to her grave. Their four children were with them in Switzerland � Rosalie, Rudolph. Helen, and Wil- liam � and six weeks after Mrs. Pfister's death her husband returned to Sel- ma with them. In 1911, he bought his present place of forty acres and settled down resolutely to solving anew the problems of life. At Fresno, Mr. Pfister was married for a second time to Miss Louise Roth, a native of Basiland, Switzerland, who grew up there to be twenty-six years of age, and accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Blattner (elsewhere referred to in this book) and family across the ocean, on their return from a five months' visit to their old home. Three children were the fruit of this second mar- riage : Emma, Walter Randolph, and Ernest Albert. The family attends the Lutheran Church at Selma. Few can assert their loyalty as an American with more confidence than Mr. Pfister; he is a member of the Raisin Growers Association, and is a pop- ular member working for the civic ideals of the Red Men at Parlier. Al- though a stanch Republican, he supported the administration in the World War. When he went back to Switzerland in 1907 he did so on account of his wife's health. He retained his farm implements and household goods, and he never lost his American citizenship. His life and example may well inspire American youth.