Schlotthauer, J. A.

J. A. Schlotthauer, born in Marion County, Kansas, on September 17, 1881, was the son of Reverend George Adam Schlotthauer and Maria K. Schmidt. He helped his father on the family farm from a young age and later engaged in wheat raising across 800 leased acres with his brother in Washington. While living in Colfax, Washington, he married Nebraska native Lydia Schreiber, and the couple subsequently attended Walla Walla College together for a year. In 1904, he moved to Biola in Fresno County, California, where he purchased forty acres of raw land to plant alfalfa and a vineyard.

After selling his initial land at a profit, he successfully engaged in dairying and stock raising near the Kaweah River before completing a business course at Healds Business College in Fresno. He eventually settled at Barstow in January 1914, developing an eighty acre property into thriving orchards and vineyards filled with Thompson seedless grapes, peaches, figs, and apricots. Alongside managing an additional eighty acres at Caruthers, he worked as a general contractor for land leveling and checking. He also served as a school trustee, clerk of the Adventist Church, and became a prominent organizer and the first secretary for both the Fresno Cooperative Dairymans Association and the San Joaquin Valley Milk Producers Association.