California Biographies 

Source:
History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California
by: C M Gidney - Santa Barbara. Benjamin Brooks - San Luis Obispo. 
Edwin M Sheridan - Ventura
Volumes II - Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL., 1917

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

CHARLES AUGUST BORGSTROM has experienced about every phase of life in Ventura County 
from the early days to the present. He has known hardship, has lived in the extreme simplicity 
necessitated by the program of ambitious endeavor which he had formulated, and has also 
enjoyed the comforts and prosperity that go with the average conditions of prosperity in this 
beautiful valley.
A native of Sweden, born at Skonay March 6, 1849, a son of John Pearson and Chastie 
Borgstrom, he lived the plain and simple annals of the poor boy. In winter time he attended the 
public schools, and in the summer was employed at hard physical toil in the fields. At the age of 
fifteen he began a four years apprenticeship to the shoemaker's trade. That apprenticeship was 
served in Helsingburg.
This completed, and with a certificate as a master shoemaker, he emigrated to the New World 
to find better opportunities for a fortune. The first year he spent working at his trade in 
Brooklyn, New York. He then came via the Isthmus of Panama to San Francisco and after three 
years there came to Ventura.
Mr. Borgstrom was for thirty-eight years a shoemaker in this county and by steady application 
to his work provided for his family and also accumulated those small savings of thrift which 
eventually brought him higher up the scale of prosperity.
In 1885 Mr. Borgstrom made his first investment in land, purchasing twenty-five acres. While 
working at his trade in Ventura, he developed that land for farming purposes. However, up to 
1902, prosperity seldom smiled upon him. He built a barn on his farm, but was unable to erect 
a residence, and he and his family lived in a portion of the barn for seventeen years. There was 
no water and many times he had to haul water in a barrel a distance of four miles. The 
beginning of comfort and all the good things that go with prosperity came in 1902, when a little 
later Mr. Borgstrom was able to erect his beautiful home on his country place, and he now has 
the entire twenty-five acres planted with walnuts intersected with lima beans, and is reaping 
abundant crops as a result of his years of toil and thrift.
Mr. Borgstrom is a republican and a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. On 
December 15, 1877, he was married in Ventura to Addie Webster, a daughter of Aaron and 
Lucy (Ozborn) Webster. the father a native of New York State. Mr. Webster passed away on 
Put-in-Bay Island in 1872. In 1875 Mrs. Webster with her twin daughters, Ada and Addie, came 
to Santa Barbara, California. Mrs. Webster passed away in Santa Barbara in 1881. The twin 
sister of Mrs. Borgstrom is the widow of Lawrence Holmberg and residing in Santa Barbara. 
Mr. and Mrs. Borgstrom are the parents of three children: Ole, thirty- two years of age, is a 
Ventura County rancher; Nina is the widow of F. M. Myers and living in Ventura ; and Charles, 
aged twenty-two, is employed in Ventura.