the word on the streets (lodi)

by Alane K. Dashner

We drive on them every day. We roll through Woodbridge as if it were just a suburb of Lodi. Our eyes flick past that old cemetery on the east side of Lower Sacramento Road. In this article, let’s visit with long-gone residents whose dreams, triumphs, and heartaches are over while their names live on.
 
Turner Road: Frank Turner was a School Trustee
In 1852, Missouri native Frank Turner crossed the overland route to California in hopes of striking it rich in the Placerville mines. Four years later he returned East for his wife, Louisiana native Victorine Ro-bicheaud Turner, and their children, this time return-ing by the Panama overland route. The family put down roots on 160 acres in Woodbridge. As a well-connected Freemason, Frank advocated for public education so strongly that in 1863 the new Turner School District was named after him. His school weathered floods and closures from diphtheria and scarlet fever before joining the Lodi Unified School District in the 1920s. Today from Lodi you can take Turner Road west to Ray Road to see the 1910 Turner School building on your right.

By the US Census of 1880 Frank was no longer living on the family ranch. Frank and Victorine’s di-vorce was finalized on June 13, 1881. The Woodbridge Masonic Cemetery lists Frank as buried in an unmarked grave (plot 4.91) in 1880. Through the 1880s Victorine is seen in The Stockton Evening Mail as buying and selling Woodbridge real estate in her own name, confirming under California marital law that Frank was no longer alive, but no obituary for Frank is found. Victorine’s 1911 obituary says that she lived “a good and useful life” with no mention of Frank. Victorine and some of their children are also buried in plots 4.19 and 4.91 of the Woodbridge Masonic Cemetery. No descendants bearing the Turner name are known to be living in the Greater Lodi area.

Kettleman Lane: David Kettelman was a Cattleman 
Born in Germany, David Kettelman sailed to New York and then the long way around Cape Horn to reach California in 1849. He had little luck in the Mokelumne Hill mines, then found success by partnering with Lodi’s Sylvester and James Tredway to transport hard-to-find mining equipment and supplies by bull-team from Stockton to San Andreas, Poverty Bar, and other mining towns. The partners purchased 7,400 acres west of Lodi and together traveled to Missouri to fetch cattle, horses, and gold-hungry drovers (cowboys who guide cattle over long distances). Thus began the Kettelman empire.

Margaret Mehrten, also a native of Germany, was a cook and “house girl” for the Tredway family. David and Margaret married in 1864 and purchased their own cattle ranch with the lovely ten-room brick Sun-bonnet House on Cherokee Lane just north of today’s Kettleman Lane. (Note the spelling difference be-tween the family name and the street name.) A Freemason and an Oddfellow, David was a trustee for the Salem School District and also a founder of the Mokelumne Ditch & Irrigation Company, serving as its treasurer in 1875. 

David’s 1911 obituary says that he possessed nearly 3,000 acres and “a considerable fortune in securities, cash, and investments, all clear of indebtedness.” David and Margaret and many of their descendants are buried in Lodi Memorial Cemetery. 

Ham Lane: Professor Ham became Judge Ham 
William Jasper Ham was born in Iowa in 1850. He married Ellen Duke in 1872 and had one son, Fenton Mathias Ham. William graduated from Iowa’s Leander Clark College in 1877 and stayed on as a teacher before being admitted to the bar and practicing law in Cedar Rapids. The young family traveled to Wood-bridge around 1890 and sadly, Ellen soon died. 

William remarried Anna Hunter from Pennsylvania and they had a daughter, Hazel, in 1893. Anna quickly took the reins as hostess in William’s gracious home with orchard and six-acre vineyard “on the out-skirts of Lodi at the end of West Oak Street.” At the time, Lodi’s western boundary was the north-south street that today we call Ham Lane, previously named John Hutchins Road. We can surmise that the Hams’ house was approximately where the Zion Lutheran Church annex sits today. Anna joined the White Apron social club and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which was devoted to combating “the evil influence of alcohol.” 

A man of many talents, William opened a Lodi law practice and was on the faculty of Woodbridge’s San Joaquin Valley College for several years, serving as president of the College in 1894 and keeping the nickname of “Professor” for life. He became a leader in Lodi’s business community as a director of the San Joaquin County Table Grape Growers’ Association.  He audited the books of the Lodi Fruit Products Company and sold Farmers’ Mutual Protective Fire Insurance. In keeping with Anna’s WCTU work, in 1903 it was written in the Lodi News-Sentinel that Professor Ham “does not believe in selling his grapes for wine-making.”

In 1906 William was summoned for jury duty in Stockton’s infamous Emma LeDoux murder trial. He was excused before the trial started but she was found guilty of poisoning her husband, stuffing him inside a trunk, and attempting to ship his body away by train. That “murder trunk” is on display inside the Haggin Museum today. 

In 1909 William was appointed as Justice of Peace to serve out another judge’s term. Judge Ham ruled on serious cases such as theft and domestic abuse and also on minor cases that give insight into the times: He sentenced a polite vagrant known as “Rattle Snake Jack” to fifty days in the county jail, set bond when local boy Joe Bunch allegedly threw a firecracker that burned a hole in Byron DeForce’s trousers, and even fined a “cussing” Perry Gum $10 for speeding his “machine” (automobile) at least 20 miles per hour according to witnesses. In 1910 despite failing health and being confined to his bed, William ran for re-election. He lost and died one week later. 

William and Anna Ham are buried at Lodi Memorial Cemetery. Fenton Ham followed his father’s foot-steps as a Mason and business leader. He’s buried in plot 3.13 of Woodbridge Masonic Cemetery. William and Anna’s daughter, Hazel, married into Lodi’s Irey family and is buried with them at Lodi Memorial Cemetery. No descendants bearing the Ham name are known to be living in the Greater Lodi area today.

Hutchins Street: The Hutchins Clan Ruled Real Estate
In 1853, 19-year-old Canadian John Hutchins crossed the North American plains to the Placer County mines. With four partners John managed to buy much of what we consider Lodi before the name “Lodi” had been dreamed of. John owned the 73 acres immediately west of today’s Sacramento Street and north of today’s Lodi Avenue, and then he bought the next 190 acres westward between today’s Lodi Avenue and Pine Street. Having enticed the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1869 to route its tracks through Lodi instead of through Woodbridge, John began selling small parcels of his land to the new hoteliers, grocers, 
harness-makers, butchers, and saloon-keepers who are now called Lodi’s founders. As Lodi expanded west, a fortune flowed landowner John’s way. 

John married Mary Anna Nevin from Iowa in 1867. They had two sons and three daughters. Of them, Edward became the most actively engaged in local real estate. After being born at Buchanan Hospital (that building still stands at 408 E Pine Street) and working on the family ranch as a young man, Ed attended Woodbridge’s San Joaquin Valley College and St. Mary’s College at Oakland. 

In 1894 Ed married Ada Corbin, a West Virginia native. Ada had been working as a linotype operator at the Lodi Sentinel. In 1906 Ada was one of the spirited founders of Lodi’s Woman’s Club and when she added her own business acumen to her husband’s, the great financial partnership of Ed and Ada Hutchins was born. After his father’s death, Ed and Ada carved out 75 acres from the family ranch and vineyards to create Lodi’s Hutchins Oak Street Addition and the Hutchins High School Addition, which today includes Hutchins Street Square. 

In 1921 Ed and Ada built 705 W Oak Street as their private home. The house still stands today diagonally across S Rose Street from the Hutchins Street Square bandstand. 

After Ed’s death in 1951, Ada kept the family business going. He’d left her an estate that in today’s dollars was worth $3.2 million. At this point it included land both north and south of Lodi Avenue and even west of Ham Lane (formerly called John Hutchins Road). In 1955 Ada carved out and developed the “exclusive” Hutchins Sunset Park tract bordered east-west by Mills and Virginia Avenues and north-south by Lodi Avenue and Tokay Street. She created 143 large lots for “better homes,” laying out the main streets in a large “H” to honor her husband’s family. She named the cross-street Corbin Lane after her own family.  She also owned the land south of her Hutchins Sunset subdivision. In November 1962 Ada sold the Vine-
wood Elementary School site to the Woods School District Trustees for $5000 per acre despite subse-quent wrangling over the drainage pond that today is Vinewood Dog Park. 

Ada was very vocal at City Council and Planning Commission meetings as she advocated for her vision of what “better homes” would be. 

Many of Ada’s quarter-acre “better homes” still stand today, cherished by their current owners. The Hutchins clan is buried at Lodi Memorial Cemetery. Ed and Ada had no children, and of Ed Hutchins’s siblings, only his sister Katherine Hutchins Larson had children. Thus no descendants of John Sr. and Anna bearing the Hutchins name are known to be living in the Greater Lodi area today.