Butte County
Biographies
HIRAM JAMES CLAYTON
HIRAM JAMES CLAYTON.—Well known among the residents of Butte County in the vicinity of Chico and equally well liked by those who know him, Hiram James Clayton is among the old settlers and recalls many interesting episodes of the earlier days. He was born, November 12, 1846, in Nebraska (at that time a territory), at a place called Winter Quarters, now known as Florence, near Omaha. He lost his father, James Clayton, at Winter Quarter, when but a child of six months. His mother, in maidenhood Lydia A. Moon, a native of England, came from that country to America when thirteen years of age, with her parents. After James Clayton’s death, his widow married Thomas L. Munjar, and, in 1851, they crossed the plains to Salt Lake, where Hiram James Clayton was brought up on a ranch from a boy riding the range and learning to rope and brand cattle. In those early days in the far West education advantages were not what they are now, and his education was necessarily limited. He recalls incidents of life in Utah at that early day, when the Indians gave the settlers much trouble, and describes the town of Tooele, in those days having an adobe wall fifteen feet high with a bastion on each corner, surrounding the town, as a protection from the Indians, but the wall is now all cleared away. In 1861 the family moved to Butte County, Cal., with ox teams, going in the large train known as Dyers’s train, for protection from the Indians. They were three months in Nevada and thence came on to California. The parents located on a farm east of Shasta Road, remaining there until they died.
Hiram James Clayton, remained at home, helping on the ranch and working at milling on Rock Creek, until his marriage, January 17, 1875, to Miss Melissa Roney, who was born near Napa, Cal., and was a daughter of John Roney, a native Missourian, who, at the age of seventeen, crossed the plains with ox team in the year 1849, and who, after a few years returned to Missouri, afterwards returning to the Pacific slope with Dr. Hugh Glenn. He farmed for a few years, then went to Yolo and Solano Counties, and then located in 1872 at Pine Creek, Butte County, where he farmed, later going to Rock Creek, where he resided until his death at the age of sixty-two. He was married after he came to California, to Mary True, who was born in Indiana, and who crossed the plains with her parents at the age of fifteen. She died in Butte County, ten years ago. Of their eight children, six are living, of whom Mrs. Hiram J Clayton is the oldest. She was reared in California. Mr. and Mrs. Clayton are the parents of six children, five of whom grew up, namely: Ida Belle, now Mrs. Charles L. Crowder, of Chico; Gue E., a graduate of Stockton Business College, now a salesman for Gage and Company, handling the Ford cars; Minnie, a graduate of Stockton Business College, who afterward became Mrs. Allen and who died in 1915; Clara, a graduate of Chico Business College, now Mrs. Coon, of Durham; Leo, a graduate of Heald’s Business College of San Francisco, now auto engineer with the Chico Steam Laundry.
After his marriage Mr. Clayton ran the old Keefer flour mill on Rock Creek for five years. In 1880, he began farming, preempting one hundred sixty acres, twelve miles north of Chico, and homesteading another one hundred sixty acres; he also bought two hundred forty acres of railroad land, owning altogether five hundred sixty acres. He put the first plow into this land, and improved, fenced, cross-fenced it, and built a residence and barns, and raised grain and stock of all kinds; he also leased land for grain-raising, putting in large crops. He continued harvesting his own and other people’s grain for twenty-eight summers, harvesting as many as nineteen hundred acres in a year, with a combined harvester. In 1910 he sold the ranch, and then bought and moved onto his present place of ten acres, which he improved, setting out prune and peach orchards, building a residence and making other improvements. He was school trustee, for fifteen years, and part of the time clerk of Antelope School District.
Mr. Clayton as a young man was one of six men who, after the Indian massacre on Rock Creek, went to Rock Creek Canyon and hunted till they found the bodies of the two Hickok girls who were killed by the Indians. In 1911, Mr. and Mrs. Clayton made a trip to his old home in Salt Lake. He noted many changes, the country where he once herded cattle being now under a high state of cultivation.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1161-1163, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Sharon
Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies