SURNAMES:  HOLLAND, HOFFMAN, BROADBENT, FREEMAN
Bio- Sawyers

Another worthy representative of a famous old pioneer family long identified with this favored section of the Golden State is Urban A. Kammerer, of the Coast Electric service, the leading experts in the installation of motors, pumping plants, pole lines and house wiring, of 1022 South First Street, San Jose.  He was born a the Kammerer home place on King Road, the son of Alexander and May Katherine (Holland)

After finishing with elementary and secondary school work, Urban Kammerer attended the State Normal School at San Jose, and when only seventeen also assumed responsibilities on the home ranch.  Then he worked for the Pacific Gas & electric Company, and became foreman in the department of distribution, and remained with the company, running out of San Jose.  He then entered the service of the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, and the U. S. Long Distance Telephone Company, spending in their employ at San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles,, most of the intervening years up to 1919.  He became well-known and well liked, and was altogether a popular fellow all the more serviceable to  his employers.  After this he began electrical contracting for himself, and is now one of the partners in Coast Electric Service, engaged in electrical business in San Jose.  The offices of the concerns are at 1022 South First Street, and from there the electricians go out, to city or country places, and install the most up-to-date apparatus, requiring a thorough knowledge of electrical science.

While in San Francisco, Mr. Kammerer was married to Miss Marie Freeman, a native of San Mateo County, and the daughter of Charles M. Freeman, a successful rancher there.  The happy couple live at 360 King Road, formerly a position of the Kammerer rancho.  Mr. Kammerer was made a Mason in San Jose Lodge NO. 10, F. & A. M., and is also a member of the Knights of Pythias, and is an independent Republican. Kammerer, and was reared on the ranch and sent ot he Jackson District school.  His grandfather was Peter Kammerer, a native of Germany, and a member of one of the old and honored families there, who had married Miss Marian Hoffman, also a representative of a very well-known German family line; and very soon after the admission of California as a state, he crossed the ocean to America and migrated to the Coast.  He followed mining with varying luck, and in 1855 took up 200 acres of land in Santa Clara County, on the King Road, in the Jackson school district, about two and one-half miles east of San Jose.  There he lived happily, enjoying the work of cultivating and improving the place, until 1864, when his life- companion died; then he lingered a year, and he, too, passed away.     This left Alexander Kammerer, the father of our subject, a four-year-old orphan; but he found the best of guardians in their next-door neighbor, J. D. White, the farmer, whose family received his as one of their own, brought him up, sent him to school and taught him to follow agriculture.  When he was twenty-one, Alexander inherited half of the family estate, the other half going to his sister, Lean, of Oakland; and once in possession of the ranch , he made it somewhat famous as a place for the cultivation of fruit, and the raising of hay, grain and stock.  When Mr. Kammerer was married, on October 17, 1883, he led to the altar May Katherine, the daughter of Simeon and Hannah (Broadbent) Holland, both of whom had come from England, their native country, To Santa Clara County.