Butte County
Biographies
SAMUEL A. MEALEY
SAMUEL A. MEALEY.—The owner of the Butte View
Holstein herd, one of the largest and best herds of registered Holstein cattle
in Butte County, Samuel A. Mealey has also the proud
distinction of possessing and managing one of the finest-equipped stock-farms
in Northern California. He was born in Jefferson County, Iowa, on
February 1, 1860, the son of Thomas S. Mealey,
a pioneer from Pennsylvania, who settled in Iowa as early as 1842. His mother,
Jane Parshall before her marriage, was also a pioneer
from the Keystone State, who came to Iowa in 1839, when she was three years
old. Her father, John Parshall, was a forty-niner,
who came to California at the time of the gold rush and mined on Yuba River.
Returning to Iowa, he died in 1854.
Samuel A. Mealey
was reared and educated in the farming district of Jefferson County, Iowa, and
there followed farming until 1881, when he came to the Pacific Coast and
located in Sutter County, where he worked for wages in and around Sutter City.
Not fully satisfied that he had found what he wanted, in 1885 he went north to
Eastern Oregon and settled for a while in Wheeler County, and for seventeen
years was there engaged in sheep-raising with marked financial success, running
some five thousand head. Then he removed to Harney County, Ore., where he ran
sheep for seven years, having as high as six thousand head. After twenty-four
years’ experience in Oregon he sold out in 1909 and, on account of the poor
health of his wife, located at Phoenix, Ariz. Her condition did not improve,
however; so he took her back to Iowa, where she died on June 15, 1910. Soon
afterwards, in the same year, he located in Butte County, Cal., and purchased
his present ranch of one hundred sixty acres from W. S. Harkey. The place was then grain land. He leveled and
checked it for alfalfa, and sowed it as fast as he could. It is now all under
irrigation. He rotates his crops and has about one half of the land in alfalfa.
He built the canals and ditches, making his own surveys and accomplishing the
work all by himself. The Butte View Ranch, naturally choice and advantageous,
Mr. Mealey has greatly improved, providing both a
residence and fine set of barns. He has a cow barn that is modern and sanitary
in every respect, with cement floor and patent metal stanchions. In his dairy
he has forty cows, twenty-five of which are pure-bred Holsteins; and he has a
registered bull. His two-year-old bull cost four hundred dollars. He is from
New York and out of IT and a daughter of King Pontiac. This two-year-old is
registered as IT King Pontiac Syracuse, and his quality is shown from the fact
that his mother, when twenty-eight months old, had a record of 15.10 pounds of
butter in seven days.
Ten per cent. of Mr. Mealey’s herd represent an
expenditure of three thousand three hundred dollars, delivered to his Gridley
ranch. He has a pure-white heifer, for example, from a daughter of King Segis Pontiac, by the son of King Pontiac, Pelham Dukal, whose sister brought thirteen thousand dollars. His old
bull was El Prado Colantha Cornucopia, a grandson of Colantha Johanna Ladd, whose daughter stood first among all
breeds in milk production. He has three cows out of Prince Teake
Lyons, of a full-blooded Holstein type of stock, and eight out of King Segis Pontiac. He has an exceptionally good silo of redwood,
two inches thick, and fourteen by forty feet in size, with a capacity of one
hundred thirty-eight tons. However and wherever he could improve his property,
Mr. Mealey has done so. He has spent a small
fortune on the place and the stock, having put in over thirty-five thousand
dollars in cash in the place. His herd is known as the Butte View Herd of
Holsteins.
When Mr. Mealey
married, Mary Kearney became his wife. She was a native of Connecticut and was
brought up in Iowa. She died in 1910, the mother of two children, Gerald and Katheryn, who are attending the grammar school.
Fraternally, Mr. Mealey is an Odd Fellow,
holding membership in Richmond Lodge, No. 149, in Oregon. He is a member
of the California Holstein Association and the Holstein-Friesian Association of
America.
Transcribed by Marie Hassard
19 August 2009.
Source:
"History of Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1242-1243, Historic Record Co, Los
Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Marie Hassard.
Golden Nugget Library's
Butte County Biographies