Butte County
Biographies
GEORGE A. WAUGH
GEORGE A. WAUGH.—As superintendent and manager of the celebrated
Parrott Grant Ranch, located about twelve miles southwest from Chico, Butte
County, George A. Waugh has shown the results that can be obtained from a
system of exactness as to the smallest detail, efficient overhead management,
and increasing perseverance in maintaining the highest standard possible at all
times and in all departments. His experience in large-scale farming and
cattle-raising has proven invaluable in his present operations, and, added to
his practical experience, he has the scientific knowledge necessary in this day
and age, when farming is so far removed from the hit-or-miss methods of years
ago.
The Parrott Ranch is one of the historic
old ranches of Butte County, situated on the Sacramento River in the southwest
portion of the county. One is impressed with the stately beauty of the spot and
notes the commodious residence, barns and other farm buildings, the
well-planned yards, facilities for water, and every modern improvement
necessary for efficient management. It is under a high state of cultivation and
is made to yield to its owners a substantial profit. Here may be found five
hundred grade Shorthorn cows, six thousand highgrade Shropshire sheep, one thousand head Poland-China hogs,
fifty Percheron mares, to which have lately been
added, by importation from France, two full-blooded Percheron
mares, and one full-blooded Percheron stallion; ten
saddle horses (mares), and one full-blooded saddle horse (stallion). In
addition to these, a large number of mules are raised on the place; fourteen
eight-mule teams are required to do the plowing and other field work, large
quantities of alfalfa and grain hay being raised. Three thousand sacks of wheat
and four thousand of barley were raised in 1917, the rich river-bottom land
producing maximum yields. Two hundred acres are in prunes and olives, in
bearing. To manage and operate all these branches successfully means no small
outlay of time and effort.
The Waugh family is an old, down-East,
state-of-Maine family, engaged in mechanical and manufacturing pursuits. The
grandfather, James G. Waugh, was a blacksmith at Mercer, Maine. His son, David
Waugh, the father of George A., also learned that trade, his early manhood
being passed in Somerset County, Maine, where he received a thorough training
in the carriage-maker’s trade. In 1850 he decided to migrate west and came to
Redwood City, Cal., and engaged in farming. This, however, was out of his line,
and he returned to the eastern coast again, settling in New York, and there
engaged successfully in the carriage-making business, in 1854, and here George
A. Waugh was born, December 19, 1856. Later, the father established a carriage
manufacturing business in Brooklyn, N. Y.
George A. Waugh attended the public schools
and, when seventeen years of age, matriculated at Eaton University, State of
Maine. On the completion of his academic course he, like his father before him,
felt the call of the West, and the next two years were spent in the lumber
woods of Wisconsin, where he learned to swing the axe, and the ways of the
“lumber jack.” When twenty years old, in 1876, he came to Redwood City, Cal.,
where his father had finally settled, and joined him in the stock business and
farming operations for several years, thence going to old Mexico, where he
engaged with a mining company as team boss for two years. Returning to San
Mateo County, he became manager of an eighteen-thousand-acre ranch and ever
since has been identified with large-scale farming in different counties in the
state, coming to the Parrott Ranch in 1907.
The marriage of Mr. Waugh, which occurred
at Alameda, united him with Miss Mary Creighton, a native of Nova Scotia, and
one child has been born to them, a daughter, Ida, now the wife of Eugene Letraodec of San Francisco.
Transcribed by Marie Hassard
07 June 2009.
Source:
"History of Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages
948-951, Historic Record
Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Marie Hassard.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies