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


IVY WATSON SHARP.� A viticulturist who has been successful be- 
cause of his varied experience in all departments of his field, and because he 
studies ordinary, every-day details, is Ivy Watson Sharp, the superintendent 
of the Rogers vineyards, where he has some 700 acres under his supervision. 
He was born in Shelbyville, Tenn., September 17, 1878, the son of William 
Sharp, a native of Scotland, who sailed from that land for the United States 
when he was six years of age but lost his parents on the voyage, and so 
arrived in Tennessee an orphan. There he was reared by his grandmother 
Sharp, and in time he married Mary Raby, a native of that state, of Scotch 
descent. The father is now dead, while the mother resides on the old farm 
near Petersburg, Tenn. There were ten children in the family, one of whom, 
Clifford, was accidentally killed in the San Francisco railroad disaster in 1917. 

The second eldest in the family. Ivy W., was reared on a farm and 
attended the public school. After the death of his father, who passed away 
while the son was in his twentieth year, he continued to help his mother on 
the farm. Later he went to Alabama ; but finding it so malarial there that his 
health suffered through the change, he looked for relief in California. On 
September 3, 1903, he arrived in Fresno. For a while he was employed in 
the Wallace vineyard in Temperance Colony, and there he learned the art 
of setting out and propagating vines, and caring for them generally. He liked 
the work and for nine years continued with the same ranch, then resigning 
to associate himself with the Sperry Flour Mill in Fresno. 

As early as 1906 Mr. Sharp made his first trip back to Tennessee, and 
five years later he returned there again, this time bringing his mother, two 
sisters and a brother to Fresno, where the mother lived until in 1917, when 
she returned to Tennessee. The pleasure she derived from this filial act 
has ever since given him the greatest satisfaction. 

Following his engagement with the Sperry mill, Mr. Sharp became a 
motorman for the Fresno Traction Company; but at the end of six weeks 
he resigned and accepted his present post as superintendent of the Rogers 
vineyards. He makes his headquarters on the ranch near the Belmont and 
McCall roads, and from there goes out to survey the three ranches for which 
he is responsible. In 1917-1918 he set out about 200 acres in a new vine- 
yard, and he has also grafted 125 acres to different varieties. In 1919 he 
bought twenty acres of unimproved land, a part of the Waverly ranch. 

At Fresno, in 1912, Mr. Sharp was married to Miss Vertie Arnold, a 
native of Shelbyville, Tenn., and a lady of talent and charm ; and by her he 
had one child, a daughter named Mary Louise. Mrs. Sharp died in March, 
1915. Mr. Sharp belongs to Fresno Lodge, No. 343, I. O. O. F. In politics 
he is a Democrat.