Butte County
Biographies
WILLIAM ALBERT YOCUM
WILLIAM ALBERT YOCUM.—Descended from a prominent Southern family, William Albert Yocum, who owns a fine ranch of three hundred acres lying four miles south of Chico, was born in Montgomery County, Ky., February 29, 1861. His parents were James Harvey and Martha (Wymore) Yocum, both natives of the Blue Grass State, and represented prominent families of the South. The father fought with valor and distinction in the Confederate Army, and was twice wounded in service. In 1875, the father and his brother started for Nebraska with a band of one hundred forty mules, intending to locate there. On arriving at their destination they found the grasshoppers had eaten all the feed in the country; so they shipped the mules to Sacramento, Cal., instead. They arrived in the capital city in November, 1875. Mr. Yocum was brick mason by trade and he followed that work in the Sacramento Valley. He established a brickyard and burned the brick on the ground where he built some of the first brick buildings in Roseville. Later he moved to Colfax, where he died in 1889. The mother died in Kentucky.
A fine example of the self-made man, William Albert Yocum has been an important factor in the development of the agricultural interests of Butte County. Starting in as a farm hand, he worked on the Richardson Ranch at Nelson three years, then on the Shippee Ranch in that vicinity. For a time he was an employe (sic) of W. A. Parks on Dry Creek, and later formed a partnership with Mr. Parks and farmed two thousand acres on Dry Creek to grain and pasture. After their partnership was dissolved Mr. Yocum rented part of the Ferson Ranch south of Chico, and so successful was he in his operations that he felt justified in becoming a landowner in his own right and in 1907 negotiated for the ranch he now owns, which consists of three hundred acres. He has lived on this property for twenty-four years and has made nearly all of the improvements on it.
Mr. Yocum’s farming interests are diversified, for besides raising grain, he buys hogs and cattle, fattens them and sells in the markets, and is well and favorably known as a stock-buyer. He has set out one hundred acres to prunes and almonds, including five acres of Muir peaches. His yield of barley for 1917 was twenty-five sacks to the acre, and he also had seventy-five acres in beans and corn in 1917 which gave a large crop. In the earlier days when he was raising grain on a large scale his best yield for a given year brought him thirty-eight thousand dollars; and he has sold wheat as low as seventy-five cents a hundred, and barley at sixty-five cents. In company with other prominent men he founded the Chico and Oroville Land Company, which bought Butte County land on Butte Creek and began development. Later they sold out to Pully and Shannon.
Mr. Yocum married Miss Helen Salsbury, a native of San Joaquin County, and a daughter of James Salsbury, who owned land in Butte County at one time and was prominently connected with agricultural interests. Two children have blessed this union; Susie, a student in the University of California at Berkeley; and William K., a machinist, now employed in Butte County.
Transcribed
by Sharon Walford Yost.
Source: "History of
Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 1129-1130, Historic Record Co, Los Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Sharon
Walford Yost.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies