Yolo-Solano-San Francisco County CA Archives Biographies.....Clancy, Mathew 1842 - 
************************************************
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 December 10, 2005, 10:23 am

Author: Tom Gregory

MATHEW CLANCY

    The transformation which one-half century brings into any community has
wrought its slow but resistless results in the aspect of Yolo county since first
Mathew Clancy arrived in the village of Davis on the 29th day of May, 1862. Far
removed from the center of the sanguinary war that threatened the disruption of
the Union, he found the few inhabitants of the county working peacefully at
their various occupations, unable by reason of the great distance to keep well
posted concerning the struggle in which they were not needed personally. Joining
them in the cultivation of the land, he soon learned the details in connection
with the raising of grain and of stock and for a long period he made agriculture
his occupation. Even at the present time, although not so active as in the past,
he still owns a ranch and from his home in Davis he maintains a general
supervision of his country property.

    As his name indicates, Mathew Clancy descends from Irish forefathers. He is
himself a native of the Emerald Isle and was born in county Cork, August 14,
1842. His education was secured in the national schools. At the age of sixteen
years he came to the United States and settled at Lynn, Mass., where he was
employed for two years. Late in the year 1861 he took passage on the steamer
Northern Light from New York for Aspinwall. After crossing the Isthmus of Panama
he sailed up the Pacific on the St. Louis to San Francisco, landing January 4,
1862. Immediate search was made for employment and he secured a position in a
dairy occupying the present site of Hayes park in San Francisco, where he
engaged in milking cows. During 1862 he went to Sacramento and from there
proceeded to Yolo county, where ever since he has made his home. After working
on the Swingle ranch he became an employe on the Wilger ranch, where he
continued for five years and then worked on the Chiles ranch. During 1873 he
leased five hundred and twenty acres from Fred Wilger and engaged in raising
Sonora wheat, which yielded large crops in return for his care and cultivation.

    Four years of industrious enterprise as the renter of three hundred acres of
the W. W. Montgomery ranch, where he engaged in raising stock and grain, were
followed by the lease of five hundred acres of the Rice and Roleson ranch, which
Mr. Clancy cultivated for some ten years. The frugal savings of this period of
hard labor put him in a position for land ownership and in 1896 he bought one
hundred and sixty acres in Solano county, four and one-half miles south of
Davis. For about fourteen years he owned and operated this ranch, besides
renting and managing two other ranches in the same neighborhood. Meanwhile he
was increasingly successful and rose to a position of influence in his
community. When he sold the ranch in 1910 he invested the returns in a ranch of
two hundred and twenty-one acres situated four and one-half miles northeast of
Davis. When he came to Yolo county he was only twenty years of age and it was
not until twenty-two years thereafter that he established domestic ties, his
marriage, February 4, 1884, uniting him with Miss Elizabeth Rowan, a native of
county Roscommon, Ireland.

   Of the varied possessions of Mr. Clancy there is none that he prizes as
highly as his seven bright and attractive daughters and it has been his highest
ambition to give them excellent educational advantages, so that they may be
prepared for life's responsibilities. The three eldest, Catherine, Irene and
Helen, are graduates of the high school and the second also is a business
college graduate. The fourth, Martha, has completed the studies of the Davis
grammar school, while the three youngest, Maude, Geraldine and Amelda, are
pupils in the local schools. Upon her graduation from the Sacramento high school
Catherine took up the study of stenography and at present holds a position as
stenographer in the office of Devlin & Devlin, Sacramento. The business ability
which Miss Irene possesses enables her to manage with success an ice cream and
confectionery establishment in Davis, of which she is the sole proprietor.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from

HISTORY OF YOLO COUNTY CALIFORNIA
WITH
Biographical Sketches
OF
The Leading Men and Women of the County Who Have Been Identified With Its Growth
and Development From the Early Days to the Present

HISTORY BY
TOM GREGORY
AND OTHER WELL KNOWN WRITERS
ILLUSTRATED COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME

HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA [1913]


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/yolo/bios/clancy104gbs.txt

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

File size: 5.1 Kb