Butte County
Biographies
GEORGE E., CANFIELD.--Coming to California with an extensive business experience acquired in the Middle West, where he was known as a square-dealer and a successful man of affairs, George E. Canfield, rancher and horticulturist of Butte County, has demonstrated that perseverance and hard work can surmount all obstacles. He was born at Springville, Erie County, N. Y., on April 14, 1861, a son of Orville S. and Sally (Briggs) Canfield, who took their little family and moved from New York to Waseca County, Minn. The children in the family were eight in number, but only five of them reached maturity: Charles A., who died in Los Angeles, was a pioneer oil man of California, coming to the state when he was but seventeen years old; N. O., who also passed away in Los Angeles, and who was well known as an oil man and also as the owner of considerable farming land in Tulare County; Laura, who is Mrs. C. R. Wescott, of Nebraska; George E., of this review; and Milton T., who is farming in Butte County. The farm owned and improved by the father was located about twenty-five miles from the scene of the Indian massacre at New Ulm. It was on that farm that the children grew to maturity and gained their first practical lessons in agriculture.
George E. Canfield received his education in the public schools of Minnesota, attending during the winter months and in summer assisting with the farm work. When he was twenty-one, in 1882, he became manager of a grain elevator at Highmore, S. Dak., then Dakota Territory. Two years later he returned to Minnesota and became a buyer for Jennison Brothers, who operated a mill at Janesville, Minn. Mr. Canfield was interested in the grain business at Janesville, Minn., and at Bancroft, Iowa, until 1906, when he decided he would come to California and build up a home place. He arrived in Chico, on May 17, of that year, found a suitable tract of land, and on August 19, he moved his family to their new location. Here he has one hundred ten acres which he has cleared from oak trees and brush, and upon which he has set out twenty acres of almonds, ten acres of peaches, and twenty acres of prunes. He raises his own nursery stock, and has devoted his entire time and attention to the development of his fine country home, and is meeting with merited success in his enterprise.
Mr. Canfield was united in marriage at Janesville, Minn., in 1886, with Miss Susan A. Starks, who was born in St. Lawrence County, N. Y., and came to Minnesota when a girl of seventeen. Nine children have been born to them, namely: Dwight, who died when twenty-one; Clifford, who took a five-year course at the University of California, and became a teacher of agriculture and athletics in the Chico High School, and who is in the Officers’ Reserve Training Corps, stationed at San Pedro; Elsie, who is a teacher in Glenn County, and the wife of Mark Sisk; Calla, a teacher in Trinity County, married C. W. Williams, who was a senior in the University of Oregon, but who has been called to the colors; Velma, a teacher in Trinity County; Hope, a teacher in Glenn County; Orville, a graduate from Chico High School; Carroll, who is a student in the high school; and Wallace, also a student. The four daughters above mentioned are graduates of the Chico State Normal.
Mr. Canfield is a man of firm convictions, standing unfalteringly for what he thinks is right. He is a stanch friend of education and culture, and a strong advocate for temperance, and lends his support to all worthy projects for the upbuilding of his adopted county.
Transcribed
by Roseann Kerby.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1115-1116, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Roseann Kerby.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies