Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 5 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 42

When the full history of the wonderful development of Central California shall have been written, few names will deserve more honorable mention than that of George P. Dyreborg, the prominent viticulturist, and influential member of the highly intelligent group of Danish-Americans, long among the most substantial citizens of our State. He was born in Bred-Funen, Denmark, March 7, 1870, and from his eleventh year made his own way in the world. He attended the public school until he was fourteen, at the same time he worked on a farm, and at sixteen years of age he started to learn the creamery business in the cooperative creamery. Then he came to Jutland and Horsensfjord, and completed his apprenticeship at Bornholm. At the same time he studied English under a private teacher.

In 1891, Mr. Dyreborg crossed the Channel to England and went to Droitwich, Worcestershire, intending to learn the art of cheese-making, but was disappointed in the equipment of the place, and so he remained three or four months in the service of a horseman at the breeding stables. At the end of six months he left to learn gardening, and worked for Lord Hindlip for a year. Then he crossed the Atlantic for New York and made his way west to Chicago and the World's Fair; and after that he came west to Fresno, arriving on May 28, 1893.

Here he worked as a farmer and vineyardist in Washington Colony, south of Fresno, until the fall of 1893, when tiring of this, he went to the foothills in Madera County, where he prospected from place to place, and having made a somewhat precarious living he returned to Fresno in the spring of 1895. Times were hard and he worked on vineyards for as little as fifty cents a day and board. Later he was employed by the Southern Pacific Railroad for a time.

In the spring of 1896, Mr. Dyreborg rented a vineyard of twenty acres set out to muscat vines. This same year he was married, in Fairfield, Solano County, to Mrs. Maggie Johansen Bidstruc, a native of Bornholm, with whom he had been acquainted in Denmark. He continued to manage a vineyard in the Jefferson district, and he bought crops and made some money during the summer of 1896. He bought his present place of forty acres in the Enterprise Colony for $1,550, and soon after began to improve it, and moved onto it.

Having laid out the acreage, Mr. Dyreborg built his new residence in 1902, and now has eighteen acres of Malaga grapes, fourteen acres of muscats, and the balance of the tract in orchards and alfalfa, with a fine border of fig trees. The ranch is under the Enterprise Canal, and the irrigation is practically perfect. In 1904 he commenced to ship his Malaga grapes and later he was both buying and shipping. He bought eighty-four acres in the Kutner Colony, which he improved with vines, setting out Emperors, muscat and wine grapes, and he has about twenty acres finely improved. He has always supported the various fruit associations, and now belongs to the California Associated Raisin Company. For nine years he was a member of the board of directors of the Fresno-Rochdale Company.

Mr. and Mrs. Dyreborg have three sons: Lewis B., who did his best to win the war; William Stanford and Vernon, all assisting their father. The eldest, Lewis B., served overseas in the Machine Gun Company of the Three Hundred Sixty-first Infantry, U. S. A., and was in the battles of St. Mihiel, Marne, Argonne Forest, Lys, and Scheldt, Belgium. He was honorably discharged as first sergeant.

For years the cheerful home of Mr. and Mrs. Dyreborg has been one of generous hospitality, and in fraternal circles no one is more popular than Mr. Dyreborg, who belongs to Fresno Lodge, No. 439, B. P. O. E., to the Danish Brotherhood, and the Knights of Pythias, in which organization he has been a member for the last twenty-three years.