This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: rdjtaj_1 Surnames: Cressey Classification: biography Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.california.counties.stanislaus/6554/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Bio ---- ALBERT L. CRESSEY.- Distinguished and esteemed as one of the early pioneers of Central California, Albert L. Cressey, until his death on October 5, 1920, was one of the halest and heartiest of octogenarians, enjoying the unique honor of being the strongest advocate of irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley, and therefore of having given a mighty momentum to the great agricultural industries along the waiting Pacific. He was born at Conway, N. H., on January 27, 1838, the son of Curtis Rice Cressey, who was born in the vicinity of the White Mountains and grew up to be a farmer. Grandfather Cressey was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and his father before him was a preacher in the Baptist Church, who dropped dead while vigorously exhorting in the pulpit. This zealous devotion to the tenets of the Baptist faith was a characteristic of Curtis Cressey, who married as his first wife Miss Susan Littlefield, a native of Kennebunk, Maine, lived to be eighty-three years old and died at Brownfield, in that state. The progenitors of the Cresseys came from England, and some early representatives of the family in America were prominent in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Mrs. Susan Cressey died in her thirty-sixth year, the mother of six children. Brought up on a New England hillside farm, Albert L. Cressey began life as a Yankee farmer's boy amid conditions not very inviting, and for a few years he at- tended the district school for from only six to eight weeks every winter, and such education as he acquired was obtained by self-directed reading and in the broad and instructive field of human experience. He did not like to pick cobble stones out of the field, the inevitable lot of the New Hampshire farmer's boy, and having obtained permission, when sixteen, to visit a sister at Great Falls, N. H., a cotton manufacturing city on the Saco River, soon tried his hand at work in the mills, but did not like that work, and then went to Portsmouth, N. H., where he worked at shipbuilding. An elder brother was in Boston, and Albert made his way into that city and took a job driving an omnibus from Dock Square to Canton Street, before the advent of street cars in that section. He next became a brakeman on the railroad, and later a fireman on the Boston and Worcester Railway. Later on he went back to Boston and took a job with the express company. Young Cressey was ambitious to "go West," and for a while thought of migrating to Wisconsin, where he had some relatives. Just then he happened to meet a man from California, and the more that he talked with him the more he became interested. Fortunately, he had saved enough money to bring him out to the Coast, and so was not long in traveling to New York, and in sailing from New York to Aspinwall (now Colon) on the old side-wheeler steamship "George Law," on her last trip ; for on her very next trip she went down when well out from New York. Albert crossed the Isthmus on the railway, and then took passage on the old "Golden 266 HISTORY OF STANISLAUS COUNTY Gate" steamship to San Francisco on what proved to be her last successful trip, for she, too, went down when next she breasted the waters. He landed at San Fran- cisco about June 1, 1857. His money was then exhausted, but he borrowed four dollars from a friend to pay his passage up the river to Stockton, where he arrived penniless. A farmer by the name of Grattan offered him a job on his ranch, and his first work in California was binding grain after a cradler. He had been thus occupied for three days when ' D. C. Madison and his assistant came from Stockton to Mr. Grattan's place, to test out the first reaper ever built in California, a wonderful contrivance built at Stockton by Madison. Mr. Cressey drove the machine and cut Mr. Grattan's grain and that of a neighbor. This was the first reaper ever made in California, and by means of it so much more labor was accomplished in a short time that he and Mr. Grattan made enough the first season to pay for the machine. While working for Mr. Grattan, Mr. Cressey took up 160 acres of Government land on his own account, and in 1859 put in a crop ; but worms attacked the grain, and the crop was such a failure that he ran into debt $300. He put in a crop the next year, and then he experienced something of the greatest importance in its after effects He and all of his neighbors had to build levees to protect their ranches from th< high water and overflow of the San Joaquin River ; but because he was a new settler inexperienced and poor, his levees were not as high or as good as those about him, and when a great rain fell late that spring, his levees burst, the river flooded the land, and he and his fellow-ranchers thought that his wheat was ruined. On the contrary, it took a new start, so that his yield was ninety bushels per acre, while his neighbors had scarcely any wheat over eight inches high, and hardly any grain. It showed what water on wheat, that is, what irrigation would do, and was the first demonstration of the kind in the San Joaquin Valley. Mr. Cressey was a neighbor of and became a good friend of Captain Charles Weber, an extensive San Joaquin farmer and landowner and founder of Stockton, and obtained his consent to build an irrigation ditch through Weber's land, in a short time getting such results that he made money from his crops. He invested in horses and mules, and commencing with six mules to a wagon, he undertook freighting between Stockton, Sacramento, Shingle Springs and Placerville to the mining camps in the mountains, going as far as Carson City, Genoa, Gold Hill, Virginia City and Chinatown in Nevada. His business increased, and he was able to expand to two eight-horse teams, with freight wagons and trailers. He lived through all the gold excitement in Nevada, and also through the Civil War, the effects of which were not much felt in the extreme West. Horses and mules were in such demand then and brought such high prices during the war that he in time sold his sturdy animals to the Government and bought a dozen oxen instead. With these he continued freighting, working from four to eight yoke on a wagon, and meanwhile he sold grain to the Government at high prices. After a while he was able to buy a dozen mules in Stockton, and all in all he continued freighting for ten years. Once nicely on his feet, Mr. Cressey came to Stanislaus County near what is Modesto and bought four and a half sections of farm land. There was no Modesto then, and wild animals abounded. He herded his stock over the plains where there were antelope, deer and bear, even grizzlies in the mountains, and he also lived through the flood of 1862. He went shopping in Stockton in a rowboat and even rowed his boat into the stores and out again, bringing home the necessary goods. He next went to Merced County, and there purchased 15,000 acres, getting it for ninety cents an acre. Coming back to Paradise, Mr. Cressey and his brother bought a half interest in a mill operated for many years by a Mr. Perkins. He traded half an interest in the mill for half an interest in the Merced farm land, and the plant became known as the Perkins and Cressey Flour Mill at Paradise. Mr. Cressey and his brother organized and opened the Modesto Bank, the first bank in Stanislaus County, of which Calvin J. Cressey became president and so remained until he organized and assumed the management of the Grangers' Bank at San Francisco, when Albert L. Cressey became president and manager of the Modesto HISTORY OF STANISLAUS COUNTY 267 Bank. The two brothers were partners in these and various other business enterprises until the death of C. J. Cressey in 1892. Mr. Cressey also helped secure the right of way for the Southern Pacific Railroad, and in the fall of 1870 ran the first train to Modesto. And since Cressey Brothers continued to be the owners of the bonanza wheat farms, they built the first grain warehouse at Merced, and erected another warehouse at Modesto, soon after the railway came. Mr. Cressey bought several well-improved ranches near Hanford. As might be expected of one so long interested in the problem of rural transportation, Mr. Cressey was for some time road overseer in San Joaquin County, and also built the Sacramento road. Mr. Cressey was for years a hard worker, and to this fact and to his industry, together with his business acumen and his willingness to dare in order to share, must be attributed his well-deserved success. When, for example, he had harvested such a bumper wheat crop after a serious drought and a sudden rain in the Calaveras Valley, because his fields were irrigated, while his neighbors' crops were failures, he sold his wheat at his granaries at five cents per pound, and took notes from the purchaser at two and a half per cent per month ; and it was ten years, in some cases, before he received final payment. The Cressey -brothers were for a while in the sheep and wool growing business, and it was the proceeds from that enterprise that enabled them to start in the banking business. From the one-story brick building of the Modesto Bank has come the more recent structure, one of the finest buildings in the Valley, a great credit to Mr. Cressey 's spirit of enterprise. Among Mr. ! Cressey 's farm holdings must be mentioned ranches in San Luis Obispo, Kings, Merced and Stanislaus counties, and among his superior stock should be listed an imported Percheron stallion weighing 2,200 pounds with which he did much to improve the draft horses in his locality. His interest in the affairs of both the city and county was always active, and for every movement for the general benefit he gave his moral support and finan- cial aid. He was the president for years of the Stanislaus County Agricultural Association. As a business man, through and through, he conducted enterprises which, while sources of profit to himself, have been of unquestioned community benefit. In 1870 Mr. Cressey returned East to marry Miss Sylvia Swan of Maine, who came back to California with him as a bride - a woman of great nobility of character who proved a most faithful wife and mother. She died in February, 1895. Four children were born of the union. Charles died in his sixth year; Nellie S. is the wife of Claude M. Maze, a farmer of Modesto ; Alberta Sylvia now resides in New York, and George A. is vice-president of the Modesto Bank. On November 18, 1901, Mr. Cressev married his second wife, Miss Hilda Marshall, a native of Georgia, and a woman of education, culture and genius. She has been a resident of California since 1884 and of Stanislaus County since 1901. Mr. Cressey was an Odd Fellow of more than thirty years' standing. ================== 1921 Biography and History of Stanislaus County, California With by GEORGE H. TINKHAM -- http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofstanisl00tink/history... ================== Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.