Butte County
Biographies
HENRY C. COMPTON, SR.
H. C. COMPTON, SR.— Remembered and
highly esteemed among the large ranchers and pioneer residents of Northern
California is H. C. Compton, Sr., late of Butte County, who made a name and a
place for himself in the annals of his adopted county as an extensive
property-owner and cattleman. The
progenitor of the family in America,
from whom the subject of this sketch was descended, was William Compton, who
came from England to the United
States, and with his wife, Saline (Canfield) Compton,
settled in Orange County,
N. Y. He served in a New
York regiment during the Revolutionary War and was
wounded in action. The best information
is that he served in the First Regiment, Orange County Militia, under Major
Zachariah DuBoise. His children were: David, Peter, Abram,
Runyon, Hezekiah, William, John, Anna, Elizabeth, Susan and Hannah Maria. Of these, Peter was a colonel in the New York
State Militia, and David served in the War of 1812. William, son of the original William, married
Hannah Post, daughter of Peter and Mary Canfield (Gibbs) Post; and one of their
children, Runyon, was the father of Henry C.
Runyon Compton removed from a farm in Windsor, Canada,
to near Detroit, Mich. He was the father of fourteen children: Sarah
Anna and William K., both died in the East; H. C., of this review and the first
to come to California; Peter, Abram T., Lucy Matilda, Ursula, all died in the
East; Ira Lovenzo, Benjamin Lewis, Amzee Ketchum, Frances Louisa, Amanda Maria Wilson, Clara
Eliza, and Marian Etta, all passed away in the Golden State. Both Runyon Compton and his wife died in Michigan.
H.
C. Compton was born in Windsor, Canada,
but his boyhood was spent in Michigan,
where he divided his time between going to school and working on his father’s
farm. He came to California
in 1850, via Panama, and after a short
stay in San Francisco he went into
the mining regions in the vicinity of Hangtown, where
he met with some success. He did not
like mining and determined to engage in stock-raising, and so came to Butte
County in the late fifties and began ranching on
the Parrott grant, continuing until 1871, when he located in Colusa
County for the winter. In the spring of 1872 he went to what is now Modoc
County and spent the winter of 1872
and 1873, this was during the Modoc Indian War.
In 1873 he returned to Chico and bought one hundred
ninety-two acres on the York road,
which he improved and cultivated. He
exemplified his unbounded faith in the future development of this part of the
state by making extensive purchases of good farm land; in 1878 he secured
nineteen hundred sixty acres near Princeton, which he devoted to grain and
stock-raising.
In
Marysville, November 30, 1859, H. C. Compton, Sr., was united in marriage with
Mary Murdock, a native of Ireland,
whose sketch follows in this work. This
union was blessed with six children, who are also mentioned. After a long and successful career Mr.
Compton passed to his reward, while living on his Princeton ranch, in 1888,
survived by his wife until her demise, at the home of her son, H. C. Compton,
near Chico, on May 24, 1915. Thus passed two honored pioneers of the Golden
State whose lives had been of great
value in the upbuilding of the commonwealth in which
they lived and labored, for so many years.
Transcribed 11-12-07 Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 509-510, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
©
2007 Marilyn
R. Pankey.
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