KRAEMER, DANIEL -- Among the famous pathfinders bringing civilization and progress to this promising corner of the Golden State, and the first white settler to pitch a tent in the Placentia district in Orange County, and the first white family to settle outside of the willow fence inclosing the Anaheim settlement, Daniel Kraemer, who passed to his eternal reward in 1882, deserves the lasting recognition of a reverential posterity. Born at St. John, one of the most picturesquely situated mountain resorts in the Swabian Alps, Bavaria, not far from the renowned castle of Lichtenstein, on November 17, 1816, he came to America at the age of twenty-six, and located near Belleville, in St. Clair County, Ill., where he took up farming. He also married there, and in that prosperous section of the Middle West his nine children were born.
Two tedious trips were made between his Illinois home and Southern California before he made this section his permanent home; for he first came West in 1865, bought his land, and returned to Illinois. The following year he came here again, but once more found it necessary to return East. On his third trip, in 1867, he brought his family with him. To make the journey at that time meant to take the railway from St. Louis to New York, thence by boat to the Isthmus of Panama, after that by steamer to San Francisco, and next by boat to San Pedro, from which port the tourists took wagons overland to the ranch.
When he first came here, in 1865, Mr. Kraemer purchased a portion of the original Mexican grant known as the San Juan Cajon de Santa Ana Rancho, his particular part being designated the Peor Es Nada Rancho, named from a Mexican village then near by, and meaning in Spanish, "Worse than nothing". Its English name, however, was "The Cajon Ranch". This strip of land comprised 3,900 acres, and its original boundaries were what is now Placentia Avenue on the west, the J. K. Tuffree Ranch on the north, the Richfield territory on the east, and the Santa Ana River on the south. Cattle and horses at first roamed freely there, but later the sheep herds crowded them out, so that really the latter made way for the farmer and the horticulturist.
This great ranch remained intact until the death of its owner in 1882, and since that time most of its acreage has been sold, so that the once princely domain constitutes a large portion of the present Placentia district. On his first trip here, Mr. Kraemer found a ditch, the Ontiveros, which ran eastward from the house he bought through what is now the district of Richfield, and then through Yorba, the intake being close to the old Trinidad Yorba house; and returning from the East in 1867, he discovered that the flow from this ditch, his only irrigation supply, was being seriously interfered with. He then built a ditch of his own to the Santa Ana River, which intersected the Ontiveros ditch, one and a half miles east of his home, and this was the first individual canal to be built in this section. He was also one of the projectors of the Cajon Canal, built in 1875, which carries water through all of the Placentia district, through Fullerton and Orangethorpe, and much of Anaheim.
Mr. Kraemer showed his appreciation of popular education in helping to organize the Cajon School district, in 1874, the first district in this section, and donated an acre of ground for school purposes. Five years later, this district was renamed the Placentia. He brought both the first mowing and the first sewing machine here, and before he laid aside his earthly labors, on February 6, 1882, he had splendidly improved between 400 and 500 acres of his vast estate.
When Daniel Kraemer married, he took for his wife Miss Magdalena E. Schrag, a native of Battenberg, Germany, and of Swiss parentage; a most valuable helpmate, who died on January 3, 1889. One of their daughters, Elizabeth, died on November 18, 1875. The other children are: Henry Kraemer of Placentia; Mrs. Barbara Parker of Anaheim; D. J. Kraemer of Brownsville, Texas; Samuel Kraemer, also of Placentia; Mrs. Emma M. Grimshaw of Anaheim; she has a daughter, M. Alice Grimshaw, a teacher in the Anaheim public schools; Edward M. Kraemer of Olive; Mrs. Mary K. Miller of Anaheim, and Benjamin, living on the original Kraemer home place at Placentia. A son of Mrs. Miller, Edward L. Miller, is a graduate from Occidental College, and when the World War called for his services, he enlisted. He served twenty-two months with the now historic One Hundred Seventeenth Engineer Corps, was in six important drives, and six times went "over the top".
