Butte County
Biographies
ANSON SCHOLFIELD
ANSON SCHOLFIELD.—Stonington, Conn., was the birthplace of Anson Scholfield. His father, Joseph Scholfield, was born in England, as was his grandfather John, born at Saddleworth, Yorkshire, England. He was a woolen manufacturer and came to Connecticut with his brother Arthur in March, 1793. He built and established a woolen factory at Byfield, Mass., where broadcloth was first made in the United States. The broadcloth used for making President James Madison’s inaugural suit also was made here. Afterwards Joseph Scholfield carried on a woolen factory at Montville, Conn.; he died aged eighty years. The mother of our subject was Mercy Newbury, born near Ledyard, Conn.; she died at sixty-five years of age. Anson is the youngest of their nine children.
From a boy Anson Scholfield worked in the woolen factory for his father and then in the Bayside Woolen Mills; later in a cotton mill at Salem, where he became assistant overseer, under his brother, John, who had been a forty-niner in California. In 1857 the two brothers came to California via Panama. John Scholfield had brought an engine and machinery to engage in mining at Cherokee, but they found the ground taken, so they built a saw mill on Magalia Ridge and engaged in manufacturing lumber from 1857 until 1864, when they sold, and John returned east. Anson then began mining on Big Butte Creek at what is now Nimshew and was the first mining recorder in the district. With others he owned the “Pewter Incline,” now the Emma Mine. His wife joined him in 1864, and in 1865 he sold his interests at Nimshew and removed to San Francisco where he was employed in the Fulton Iron Works, as a machinist and also as erecting engineer, putting up machinery in different parts of the state until 1893. During this time he worked at the Mare Island Navy Yard at two different times.
In 1893, Mr. Scholfield returned to Butte County, being engaged by Mr. Pommerat to pump out a mine he had at Toadtown. Meantime he bought one hundred sixty acres at Coutolenc, on which he located, made improvements and has since made his home. He is also serving as road overseer under Supervisor H. W. White.
Mr. Scholfield was married in Salem, Mass., to Miss Anna Eames, born at South Newry, near Bethel Hill, Maine. She died in San Francisco over twenty years ago, leaving him with one child, Anna, the wife of I. F. Moulton, cashier and vice-president of the Bank of California in San Francisco. Mr. Scholfield was for many years a member of San Francisco Lodge, No. 3, I. O. O. F. He has been trustee of Lovelock school district and was clerk of the board.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Page 1084, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Sharon
Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies