Butte County
Biographies
WILLIAM S. HARKEY
WILLIAM S. HARKEY.--A leader in Butte
County agricultural affairs, who is proud of his father's enviable record as
the most acceptable sheriff that Sutter County ever had, is William S. Harkey, who was born in Marysville, Yuba County, on June
14, 1862. His father, William P. Harkey, was a native
of Illinois, as was his mother,
who was
Clarinda Tennis before her marriage.
They were joined in wedlock in the East, and as a wedding-trip crossed the
plains to California, in 1854.
Once settled here, the elder Harkey followed teaming
and also engaged in farming, hauling freight in early days before the advent of
the railroad. In 1868, he settled in Sutter
County at Harkey
Corners, nine miles
southwest of Yuba
City, and having bought some land, he farmed and
teamed. Five years later, he was elected sheriff of Sutter
County, and for over seventeen
years he served in that office, becoming its most efficient and popular
incumbent. Very probably he might have held the office indefinitely, but there
came a time, as is too often the case with
those who have proved good public
servants, when he insisted on retiring. He owned twelve hundred acres of land,
which kept him busy farming to grain. A Mason, he stood high in the ranks of
that fraternity, being affiliated with Enterprise Lodge, F. & A. M., of Yuba
City.
Besides
a daughter, Mrs. Ida Campbell, of Yuba City, Mr. Harkey had a son, William S., the subject of this sketch,
who attended the Yuba City schools and later was foreman
of his father's ranch and conducted his store at Yuba City.
In 1885, however, he moved to Butte County
and bought the ranch of eight hundred acres he now lives on. He improved the
place from a grain field, part of which was thickly covered with brush, and
developed his own supply of water, installing a pumping plant which drew from
three twelve-inch wells. He has a dairy heard of registered and high-grade Holstein
cows, and also raises pure-bred Red Duroc hogs. He
has forty-five acres planted to prunes; the rest is devoted to raising wheat,
barley and alfalfa. He is an influential member of the Northern California Milk
Producers' Association, and has become, without question, one of the very
successful ranchers of the county.
When
Mr. Harkey married, he chose for his wife Mamie
Deane, a native of Maine; she died August 11, 1913,
leaving him two children: William P., who married Miss Elspeth R. Kerr, of Chico,
and who now leases and operates his father's ranch; and Clara E., the wife of
E. W. Stanton, Jr., one of the leading ranchers of Sutter
County. In fraternal life, Mr. Harkey is a member of the Marysville Lodge, No. 783, B. P.
O. Elks.
Transcribed by Sande Beach.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 625-626, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2007 Sande Beach.
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