Sonoma County CA Archives Biographies.....Cralle, Leonidas September 12, 1818 - January 8, 1909
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Source: History of Sonoma County (1880)
Author: J. P. Munro-Fraser

“Cralle, L[eonidas] J[ackson]. The subject of this sketch, whose portrait 
appears in this work [on page 416], was born in Campbell county, Virginia, 
September 12, 1818. In 1836, he moved to Union county, Kentucky; thence in 
1849, to California, crossing the plains with an ox-team as far as Salt Lake 
City, then with pack animals over the mountains, arriving at Lawson's Ranch, 
September 6th, of that year. Not unlike others who came to this coast at that 
time, he commenced operations as a miner on the White Rock claim, in Butte 
county, prosecuting this business three years; then went to Oakland, where he 
engaged in farming five more years, then settled at King's River, Fresno 
county. In 1860 he again commenced mining at Mono and White Mountain, till 
1864, when he settled near Petaluma, in this county, but in 1869 took a 
residence in Santa Clara county; thence in 1872 to his present home in Santa 
Rosa township, where he owns three hundred and twenty acres of land. At an 
altitude of several thousand feet above the sea, among the mountains, is the 
home of Mr. Cralle. It is one of the most lovely and picturesque places in the 
county. As we stood on one of the more prominent peaks a little beyond his 
house, what a grand panorama opened out to our view! Mountain after mountain 
rose in every direction, while the intervening valleys were covered over with 
trees and underwood of varied kinds and shades, and down which glide the creeks 
and rivulets, ripple after ripple, dancing in sunlight like ribbons of silver, 
as they hurry on to the mighty ocean. Then add the further fact that in the 
valleys, on the hills and over the mountains, six hundred and fifty Angora 
goats — the property of Mr. Cralle — are scattered here, there, and everywhere, 
giving the landscape an appearance of snow-balls among the evergreens, and the 
reader has the outlines of a picture which their imaginations must fill. We 
feel assured we will be pardoned by the reader for digressing from the events 
of Mr. Cralle's life to give a slight description of his home among the 
mountains, when we say no scenery, in Sonoma county, has impressed us so 
favorably as this. But to resume. Mr. Cralle married Mrs. Nancy J. Middleton, 
nee Farley, October 27, 1863. She was born in Warren county, Pennsylvania, 
February 18, 1833. She has one daughter, Lillie Middleton, by a former 
marriage, who was born February 12, 1857.” END 


Additional Comments:
History of Sonoma County
By J. P. Munro-Fraser
San Francisco: Alley, Bowen & Company, 1880
Biographical sketch of Leonidas Jackson Cralle. Pages 637-638.

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