San Benito-Nevada-Yuba County CA Archives Biographies.....Butterfield, Thomas 1806 - 
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/ca/cafiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com January 28, 2007, 11:21 pm

Author: Luther A. Ingersoll, Editor (1893)

THOMAS BUTTERFIELD (an Autobiography).— I was born the 3d day of November, 1806,
in the town of Wilton, then Kennebec county, then Providence, Maine. My father,
Henry Butterfield, was born in Massachusetts, and his father, Samuel
Butterfield, the pioneer of what is now the town of Farmington, Maine, also. I
worked for my father, after I was old enough to work, on his farm, except what
time I spent in getting a common-school education until I was twenty-one years
old. I then went on a small farm in the town of Farmington, which my father gave
me, and December 12, 1827, I married Hope Eaton, who was born the same year that
I was born and in the same neighborhood. We worked at farming and stock-raising
for about seven years, buying other lands and prospering both financially and
otherwise.

  We then sold and removed on a farm where the town of East Wilton now stands
and there I engaged in building and operating the Wilton Woolen Mills, of which
I was part owner and I acted as Secretary and Treasurer for the company. I acted
as Selectman and Overseer of the Poor for two years and as Justice of the Peace
for fourteen years, carrying on my farming, a hotel business and a sawmill at
the same time.

  Owing to losses in the factory business, we closed up our affairs, and in 1843
I moved my family into Aroostook county, settled on the Aroostook river and
engaged in farming and lumbering preparing timber for the St. John market. I
prospered financially and in 1848 we removed to Appleton, Wisconsin, and there
engaged in the lumber and merchandise business. I built a bridge to Appleton,
over the Fox river, 900 feet long, and furnished planks for a fifteen-mile plank
road. I ran two sawmills about two years and furnished the logs myself. The
Plank road company failed to pay as agreed and I suffered a loss and took stock
in the road that was of no value.

  In 1853 I came with my family to California, across the plains, and stopped in
Nevada county, where I engaged in mining, butchering and selling goods, also in
lumbering and doing some farming. In 1858 I bought a farm of 775 acres on the
river for $20,000 in Yuba county, and here I farmed and raised stock, mostly
good horses for about three years; but the floods, ague and mosquitoes compelled
us to leave that place and we sold at a sacrifice and went to Santa Cruz, Santa
Cruz county, and lived there until the fall of 1869. At this time we moved to
San Benito county and there engaged in importing, breeding and selling Angora
goats and pure-bred sheep. My son, James, was with me in that business. We had
the Cottswold, Lincolnshire, Leicester, South Down, Texile, French and Spanish
Merino sheep, and we prospered in this business. We sold $25,000 worth of goats
in one year. In 1875 we bought 1,400 acres of land in Contra Costa county,
paying $17,550. Before we went on the land we were at great expense in building
levees, clearing off the tules and breaking up the ground. The floods broke our
levees, ruined our crops and destroyed many thousand dollars worth of
live-stock. After four years of hard work and continual losses we became
financially bankrupt and we left the county without means and with health
shattered.

  My son went to the State of Oregon and my wife and I came back to San Benito
county and stopped in Bear Valley. Here we commenced in a small way and with a
little assistance from our son George, and with industry and economy we
accumulated enough to now place us in comfortable circumstances and we are
living in our own home in the town of Hollister. We are about eighty-six years
of age, still able to be about and wait upon ourselves and do something more. We
have been blessed with five children, one daughter and four sons, the oldest
being sixty-three years old and the youngest fifty years old. Our daughter is
now the wife of E. O. Tompkins of Nevada City, California. Our son, William,
lives in Menlo Park, where he is in the real-estate, auction and commission
business in San Francisco; George and James are in San Benito county, engaged in
farming; and Charles is living in Clatsop county, Oregon, engaged in the
dairying business, but he will probably, soon remove to San Jose, California.
They are all married and have famlies, [sic] all temperate and industrious, in
comfortable circumstances and are blessings to their parents, themselves and to
the community where they live. Our grandchildren range from one year to
thirty-seven and are nineteen in number, fifteen grandsons and two
great-grandchildren, and all bid fair, so far, to be temperate and industrious
like their parents. We have been blessed in many ways, have been married
sixty-four years and have lost no children and have had no trouble except the
loss of property and that does not amount to much in this world and nothing in
the world to come.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Memorial and Biographical History of the Coast Counties of Central California.

Illustrated.

Containing a History of this Important Section of the Pacific Coast from the
Earliest Period of its Discovery to the Present Time, together with Glimpses of
its Auspicious Future; Illustrations and Full-Page Portraits of some of its
Eminent Men, and Biographical Mention of many of its Pioneers, and Prominent
Citizens of To-day.



HENRY D. BARROWS,
Editor of the Historical Department.

LUTHER A. INGERSOLL,
Editor of the Biographical Department.

"A people that take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will
never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote
descendants."-Macaulay.


CHICAGO: THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
1893.


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/sanbenito/bios/butterfi865bs.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/cafiles/

File size: 6.2 Kb