Kruse, George

Born in Tarlyck, Samara, Russia, in 1880, George Kruse was the eldest of three living children born to Henry and Mary (Deis) Kruse. After completing his schooling and serving a blacksmith apprenticeship in Russia, he immigrated to the United States in September 1899, arriving in Dorchester, Wisconsin, before settling in Fresno County, California, in April 1900. He worked for two years on a local grain ranch to familiarize himself with California agricultural methods.

After marrying Maggie Weber in 1904, Kruse engaged in hay baling and grain farming near Fowler and Tranquillity to accumulate capital for land ownership. In 1907, he purchased twenty acres on Coalinga Avenue near California Avenue, eleven miles west of Fresno, where he built a country home and developed a ten-acre Thompson Seedless vineyard. A member of the California Associated Raisin Company and the Lutheran Evangelical Church, Kruse operated his farm alongside his wife, with whom he had four children: Henry, Marie, Harry, and Edward.