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The Soderquist family’s businesses included beekeeping, a hatchery, downtown dress shops and antiques. Their Turlock history began with a Swedish immigrant buying farmland west of town. A later family connection was a 1954 Mercury restored by custom-car builder Gene Winfield.
A farm family arrives in 1902
George H. Tinkham’s 1921 history of Stanislaus County gives us an unusually detailed account of a man he identifies as A. Soderquist. Born in Sweden in 1863, Soderquist reached Minnesota in 1884. He worked in a furniture factory, farmed in Renville County and spent several years in the hardware business in Buffalo Lake.
His Minnesota years included buying 160 acres of railroad land and breaking the prairie for grain production. Farming and shopkeeping were both familiar work by the time he headed west. The Turlock venture grew out of that experience, with a new piece of land to prepare.
In 1902, he brought his family to California and bought 60 acres two miles west of Turlock. He leveled the property and grew alfalfa, planted oranges and established a vineyard. This was a working farm with several crops, rather than the single-purpose hatchery the family name might bring to mind.
He farmed that land until 1908, rented it out and sold it in 1913. Meanwhile, he bought another ten acres adjoining town on the west, built a home and raised alfalfa and cantaloupes. Tinkham also records a 40-acre holding southwest of Turlock, where Soderquist kept two apiaries totaling 150 stands. He eventually sold the bee operation to give poultry his attention.
The family was part of Turlock’s Swedish church and farming community. Soderquist belonged to the Turlock Farmers Union and Tegner Farm Bureau, and served six years as a trustee of the Swedish Mission Church. Tinkham names his wife, Emma Lundgren, and their children: Mamie, Reuben and Edwin.
Twenty incubators and 40,000 chicks
Soderquist established Rose Hill Poultry Farm and Hatchery in 1909. By the time Tinkham wrote his account, the operation had twenty incubators, each capable of holding 540 eggs. It produced more than 40,000 chicks in the spring of 1920, with the output sold locally.
Those numbers help make the business tangible: rows of incubators, thousands of eggs and a steady supply of young birds for nearby growers. The farm raised purebred White Leghorns. Tinkham’s biography places poultry alongside the alfalfa, melons, fruit and bees that had already occupied Soderquist’s working life.
A later name appears in federal agricultural records: Soderquist Hatchery, Turlock, listed in the USDA’s February 1947 National Turkey Improvement Plan directory. The department’s March 1961 poultry directory placed it at 401 N. Soderquist Road, Turlock, its historical location, with a rated hatching-egg capacity of 606,300. That measures equipment capacity, rather than annual production. These records establish the later business without settling exactly how it developed from the earlier Rose Hill operation.
Richard’s downtown shops—and that Mercury
Richard Soderquist’s 2016 obituary brings the story into a later Turlock. Born here in 1939 to Edwin and Ella, Richard graduated from Turlock High in 1957. He belonged to the Cranks car club; the Mercury he bought at 17 later received a Gene Winfield restoration and won car-show awards.
Richard bought his father’s Soderquist Hatchery in 1970, then acquired downtown’s Della’s Dress Shop. It became Miss Margie’s Fashions, followed by Expressions and Express For Less. His antiques business, Yesterday’s Expressions on South Center Street, eventually became Main St. Antiques at Main and Golden State, in his former dress shop. In retirement, he sold records online. He died in May 2016, aged 77.
The name still on the map
The Journal’s history of the Jenny Lind Lodge includes Soderquist among street names reflecting Turlock’s Swedish heritage. It does not name the particular person honored.
Today, the road also leads to Turlock Sports Park at the fairgrounds, with leagues, training programs and field rentals. The hatchery address in the old directories is a former business location, separate from today’s sports facility.
Related reading: Main Street history · parks guide.
