Merced-Los Angeles-Fresno County CA Archives Biographies.....Tracy, Albert G. 1874 - 
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Author: John Outcalt (1925)

ALBERT G. TRACY

   Known throughout Merced County as an expert on fig growing and developing,
Albert G. Tracy has been one of the most important factors in that branch of
horticulture in this section of California, for he not only has brought his own
acreage to the highest state of cultivation and valuation, but he has been of
very material aid in helping others to do the same. He is known to all as a
genuine man, ready to help those in difficulty, among whom he is known as the
"Fig expert," gaining the title through actual experience with problems of his
own in the industry.

   Mr. Tracy is a native of Ohio, born in Toledo, August 12, 1874, and he is the
only survivor of a family of four children born to George A. and Sarah
(MacElroy) Tracy, the former a native of Connecticut, and the latter of New York
State. George A. Tracy, who at the venerable age of eighty-four years is making
his home with his son, of this review, has an enviable record as a building
contractor. Coming to Los Angeles at the tail end of the boom of 1886, he
remained there six years, and then moved to Fresno, in 1892, and he has been a
leader in the trade for over forty years of building in the State. His wife
passed to her reward on October 22, 1922.

   Albert G. received his education in the schools of Los Angeles and Fresno;
and in 1896 with a party of thirteen Fresno men, he went north to the west coast
of Alaska, and was absent for four and one-half years. On his return to
California he entered the service of Uncle Sam, and with the United States
Regulars, went with a pack-train into the Boxer region of China during that
uprising, occupying the territory for twelve months. He was afterwards with the
troops under Major Case in the Philippines, and with Engineer Andre in road
construction and helped put in the first American roadbeds on the islands. He
was elected sheriff of Sourge, and filled that office for three years.

   When he returned to California and civilian life, Mr. Tracy located in
Fresno, and took up horticultural work in 1905. Starting on forty acres in the
McKinley district, and with limited means at the start, he has made several
remarkable achievements in his chosen field as a fruit man. Raisin grapes and
peach-growing were his first endeavors, and for seven years he tussled with each
as a problem, both from the standpoint of grower and also the marketing side of
the industry, which in the days before cooperation was a very serious problem
for the grower. Mr. Tracy was instrumental in organizing, and is a charter
member of the California Peach and Fig Growers Association. He developed a fine
ranch, and acquired other valuable holdings in Fresno, which he disposed of, on
his removal to Merced County.

   His latest success has been in the Black Mission and Adriatic fig industry,
and he is conceded by those who know to be an expert authority on fig growing in
California; his counsel and advice is sought from near and far. In 1912 he
sought a new field in which to develop the fig, then in its infancy as an
industry and unknown to the large majority of valley ranchers as a producer, and
a profitable one. He looked up and down the State, and after careful
consideration chose the Merced district for his development work. Purchasing a
tract of land five miles east of Merced, on Childs Avenue, up to the present
writing he has developed into fine fig groves some 300 acres of land, having in
the meantime engaged in the real estate business, with an office in Merced until
a short time ago, when he discontinued his town office and now transacts all his
business at his home, situated on the site of his first location in the county,
and surrounded by eleven acres of figs in a highly developed state. Mr. Tracy
named some of the avenues in his district, and he was one of the pioneers in an
industry which has been of far-reaching effect in placing Merced County near the
head of California's fruit districts, the value of which will be shown more and
more plainly as the years pass.

   November 15, 1905, occurred the marriage of Albert G. Tracy to Miss Maude L.
Beck, a native of Kansas City, and daughter of a pioneer Fresno family, where
her parents now reside. Mr. Tracy is a member of the Masons and Odd Fellows,
both of Merced.


Additional Comments:
From:

HISTORY OF
MERCED COUNTY
CALIFORNIA
WITH A
Biographical Review
OF
The Leading Men and Women of the County Who Have Been
Identified with Its Growth and Development
from the Early Days to the Present

HISTORY BY
JOHN OUTCALT

ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME
HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
1925


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