California Biographies, San Joaquin Valley

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

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

Source:
History of the state of California and biographical record of the San Joaquin 
Valley, California. An historical story of the state's marvelous growth from 
its earliest settlement to the present time.
Prof. James Miller Guinn , A. M.
The Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago 1905
Notes: Missing Page: 865-866,983-984,1175-1176


 LAWRENCE C. ELFERS. Two and three-quarter miles southeast of Conejo, Fresno county, is located the 
ranch which belongs to Lawrence C. Elfers, one of the successful and prominent men of this section. 
He is a native son of the state, his birth having occurred in Oakland August 30, 1866. His father, 
Archibald D. Elfers, was a native of Germany, who came to California in 1854 and located in Marysville, 
where he engaged as a miner. Later he removed to San Francisco and engaged in the brewery 
business and the manufacture of cigars. In 1870 he went to Stanislaus county and in the vicinity of 
Crow's Landing engaged in fanning until 1892, when he removed to Alameda, where he is now living 
retired. His wife, Catherine, is also a native of Germany. They became the parents of twelve children, 
eight of whom attained maturity, four sons and four daughters, of whom Lawrence C. was the tenth in 
order of birth. 

Lawrence C. Elfers received his education in the common schools of California, after which he engaged 
in farming in Stanislaus county, where he remained until 1901. Locating in Fresno county in that year 
he purchased his present property, consisting of three hundred and thirty acres, which he has since 
devoted to the cultivation of alfalfa and the raising of stock. He has added many improvements to his 
property, in 1901 building a fine residence on the ranch, and has installed a pumping plant, operated 
by a gas engine, drawing water from a well one hundred and seventy-eight feet deep, for irrigation 
purposes. He is a director in the Immigrant Irrigation Ditch, and still owns an interest in a warehouse at 
Crow's Landing. 

In Stanislaus county, Cal., in 1891, Mr. Elfers was united in marriage with Georgia Albina Kinnear, a 
native of Canada. Her father, James Kinnear, a native of Scotland, came to California in 1865. and now 
makes his home three miles west of Modesto, Stanislaus county, where he is engaged in the raising of 
stock and alfalfa. To Mr. Elfers and his wife have been born