San Joaquin County
Biographies
JOHN N. BALLANTYNE.
A pioneer establishment of San Joaquin County that has made a steady and satisfactory growth during the past thirty-eight years, is the Frank H. Buck Company of Lodi; and the man most responsible for the increased growth of its business during the past three years is John N. Ballantyne, the industrious manager of the San Joaquin County plants. He was born in Brooklyn, Iowa, and when eight years of age was taken by his parents to Des Moines. He was educated in the public schools, and at the Capital City Commercial College of that city, where he was duly graduated in 1902. His first position was with the Remington Typewriter Company, and later he was employed by the Charles Hewett Company, wholesale grocerymen of Des Moines. In 1905 he came to California, whither his father and a brother-in-law had migrated a few months previously, and located at Acampo, on a fruit ranch which his father had purchased. After three years with them, he sold his interest and purchased thirty acres of the Nelson orchard, located near Youngstown, and on this place he makes his home. He has improved the place with all modern equipment, including a pumping plant, fruit sheds, etc. Of the thirty acres, thirteen are in grapes of the Tokay and Zinfandel varieties, and fifteen in orchard. A six-acre apricot orchard produced in 1920 a gross income of $4500. Mr. Ballantyne owns another thirty-acre tract, in the same vicinity, twenty acres in vineyard and ten acres in orchard. The net profit from the 1920 crop on this place more than covered the original cost of the ranch, and the 1921 crop did almost as well. With a partner, P. J. McLaughlin, he owns a twenty-five-acre ranch near Youngstown, twenty acres in vineyard and the balance in orchard.
In his management of the Frank H. Buck Company, Mr. Ballantyne has oversight of the plants at Lodi, Youngstown, and Victor. The company packs and ships peaches, pears, apricots, table and wine grapes, and many varieties of plums, and during the season handles the output of about 1,500 acres. This company was among the first to enter the fruit packing and shipping industry, that has made California famous and has been such an important factor in the development and prosperity of the state.
The marriage of Mr. Ballantyne united him with Miss Anna Larson, a native of Iowa. His energies are expended toward the building up of his business, and at the same time he never loses sight of the development and prosperity of the city and county with which he has become so actively associated.
History of San Joaquin County, California – Los Angeles, Historic Record Co., 1923
p 1108
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler.
CHRISTOPHER N. ADAMS.
Prominent among the enterprising, influential and progressive residents of the Elliott district are Christopher N. Adams and his family, extensive ranchers living about two and one-half miles west of Elliott, near which town he was born on July 27, 1876. His father, Henry Adams, came to California in 1869 and settled near Elliott. He was a native of the north of Ireland, having been born at Snow Hill, near Fermanagh, Ulster County; and Mrs. Adams, who was Susy Peck before her marriage, came with her parents at the same time that Judge Terry of Stockton arrived. Her father was from Texas, and she was a native of the Lone Star State. The first year of his residence here, Henry Adams chopped wood for a living, and he then took up sheep-shearing, in which he became an expert. In the spring and fall he would shear sheep, and in the winter he would chop wood, while in the summer-time he worked on the threshing machine. Soon, however, he purchased eighty acres of land near the Elliott schoolhouse; and when he traded that off he received 240 acres on Dry Creek, along the road now known as the Adams Road. He added to his farm until he had acquired 1,080 acres before his death, 440 of which was on Dry Creek, while the balance was plain land.
Christopher Adams attended the Elliott district school, and later went to the Stockton Business College. He was the eldest of a family of eight children, the next younger being Bessie, a most attractive child, who was killed at the age of five through being run over by a wagon. The third-born is William A., who lives at Lodi; then comes Mary Estella, who is Mrs. Hatton Lockeford; and after her Eliza J., who is in Stockton; John H., of Crockett, Cal.; Walter. C.; and Robert P., who is with the California State Department of Architecture. Walter and Robert were educated at Ann Arbor, Mich.; and John attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons at San Francisco.
Christopher Adams was reared on the home place and remained with his father until the latter's death in 1909, just prior to which his father deeded him some forty acres of the estate. According to the wish of his father (who died so soon after an operation that he could not make a will), his brother, the uncle of our subject, received eighty acres of the property. Afterwards, Christopher Adams bought out his uncle's interest. He also bought a forty-acre tract from one of his brothers, and bought out, as well, his youngest brother, Robert. The eldest daughter had been left 238 acres, and this he also purchased. At present he owns 240 acres, on which his home is located, and has also acquired some 312 acres of land one and a half miles above Elliott on the Galt-Elliott road. He leases out his Elliott ranch. On his home ranch he is at present running a sanitary dairy and stock-farm. He raises all his young stock, and devotes all of the 240 acres to farming, using the land mostly for pasturing of cattle and the making of hay. His father built the home he now lives in. He had just passed his sixty-third year when he died, having lost his devoted wife when she was thirty-eight years old.
At the home of the bride, two miles south of Bellota, Mr. Adams was married on September 15, 1906, to Miss Mary E. Dalton, the daughter of Thomas and Celia (Longhurst) Dalton, a charming and gifted lady who was born in Angle, South Wales, Great Britain. She came to California with her parents when she was ten years old, and they settled at Peters, east of Stockton. She had already attended the grammar schools in South Wales, and when she came to continue her studies at Peters the teacher, Mr. Anderson, complimented her on her proficiency and declared that she was so far ahead of her natural grade that one could see the efficiency and superiority of the Welsh schools. Mrs. Adams has one sister and one brother living in California today: Mrs. Eliza M. Fairbanks, and Thomas G. Dalton, who is in business in Stockton. Her father was a sea captain in the British Navy, and was in the Coast-Guard service. He contracted influenza in Wales and was not expected to live, and on recovering came out to California for his health. Mrs. Adams, the mother of our subject, had a sister living at Peters, and so the family came to California and settled there. Later, Henry Adams settled near Lodi, and Mrs. Christopher Adams' father moved to Lockeford, where he operated a grain farm of 640 acres for four years. The family then moved to a ranch two miles south of Bellota, and it was here that Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Adams were married. Henry Adams also ran a ranch near Elliott for five years. Mrs. Dalton passed away at the age of about seventy-seven years. The father resides at Peters and is seventy-nine years old.
Two children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Adams: Celia Estella, and Christopher Norman. In national politics Mr. Adams is a Democrat. He has served for many years on the Telegraph district school board; and he is at present, and has been for the last three years, a member of the Galt union high school board, of which for the past two years he has been chairman. He has been a member of Lockeford Lodge I. O. O. F. since 1902, has passed through the chairs, and has also been a district deputy of the order.
History of San Joaquin County, California – Los Angeles, Historic Record Co., 1923
p 1108
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler.