Calaveras
County
Biographies
HOSEA G. ALLEN
The state of New York has
contributed to California an element of its citizenship, which from the pioneer
days to the present time has been valuable because it has been progressive,
prosperous and law-abiding. One of the
old New Yorkers, of San Andreas, Calaveras County, is Hosea G. Allen, who was
born in Orleans County, New York, April 7, 1836, a son of Isaac and Maryetta (King) Allen.
Mr. Allen comes of French and English ancestors. Early Allen’s of his line settled in Maine
and his great-grandfather Allen fought for American independence in the Revolutionary
War, as did also his great-grandfather King, and he is of Revolutionary stock
in both lines of descent. His father was
born in Maine and his mother was a daughter of William King, of French
ancestry, who settled early in the state of New York. Isaac Allen was a farmer and schoolteacher, a
man of excellent character, who lived industriously and usefully and died in
his forty-fifth year. His wife died in
her fifty-first year. Of their eight
children, four are now living, two of them in Calaveras County,
California. One of the latter, William
D., came to the state in 1852 and lives at Vallicita,
Calaveras County. At the time of his
father’s death Mr. Allen was eight years old, and he was fully orphaned by the
death of his mother not many years afterward.
After acquiring such education as
was available to him in his native county, Mr. Allen at the age of fourteen
began to earn his own living, and his first employment was as a clerk in a
general store at twelve dollars a month.
April 5, 1853, bound for California, he sailed from New York on the Star
of the West. He came by way of the
Isthmus of Panama and fell a victim to Panama fever and had to be carried ashore
at San Francisco. He soon recovered his strength, however, and went to
Sacramento city and thence to Placerville in quest of his brother William, who
had come out the year before. At White
Rock he became ill of typhoid fever, and being without money, might have seen
hard times had he not been stopping with a man who had lived near his father in
New York state and had known him well. When he became strong enough to do light work
he began clerking in a store at five dollars a day and soon saved a little
money, but when he had paid his debt to the man who had taken care of him he
had but seven dollars and fifty cents left.
With that sum in his pocket he started on foot to San Andreas, where he
had been told his brother was, and he was so anxious to see him again that he
covered forty-three miles in his first day’s walk. He stopped overnight at Jackson, where one
Allen, who kept the local hotel, claimed relationship to him.
At San Andreas he found his brother
in the hotel business, in partnership with a man named Sykes. He soon engaged in mining and met with
varying success, but was prosperous in a modest way, managing to secure considerable
gold, and remembers that he once got a hundred and ten dollars out of a single
pan of dirt. He became a stockholder in
the Union Water Company’s ditch and in 1857 was in charge of the lower end of
it. In 1858 he was one of a party that
made a fruitless journey to Fraser River, British Columbia. He returned by way of Vancouver and was glad
to resume work in his old claim at the head of Wallace Gulch, where he had
taken out about an average of twenty dollars a day, but during the first week
he and another man got only fifteen dollars each, and during the following week
only ten dollars each, and he gave up mining and attended to the ditch, sold
water and made collections until in 1860 with two partners he opened a liquor
store at San Andreas, his interest in which he sold in 1862 and bought a farm
and engaged in raising fruit and vegetables in Salt Spring Valley, where he
remained six years and made the first wine ever produced in Calaveras County,
which he sold at two dollars and fifty cents a gallon. At the expiration of that time he returned to
San Andreas and with C. M. Whitlock as a partner turned his attention to
general merchandising. After he was
appointed postmaster by President Johnson he sold his interest in the store to
E. C. Rowarth and gave his attention to the duties of
the office, which he held through all administrations until 1892. During this period he was the local manager
for the Western Union Telegraph Company and gained a reputation as an expert
telegrapher; and he also conducted an insurance agency. For two terms he filled the offices of
administrator and coroner for Calaveras County and he was for six years one of
the trustees of the public schools of San Andreas, and in that capacity was
active in building the fine schoolhouse which adorns the town.
Long a Republican, he has during
recent years been independent in politics, and he has for thirty-eight years
been a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He owns a pleasant cottage home on one of the
hills of San Andreas and has considerable other town property, besides an
interest in the Albion mine on Table Mountain, a gravel mine which is
considered valuable.
Mr. Allen was married in 1871 to
Miss Lucy McDuffee, a native of Rochester, New
Hampshire, and a daughter of John McDuffee, and she
has borne him six children. Sadie B. is
a telegraph operator in San Francisco.
James B. and Louisa are twins, the latter is now Mrs. C. T. Toon and lives at San Andreas; and her brother is a miner. Hosea G., Jr., is engaged in mining. Maud S. is a member of her father’s
household, and John has gone to Cape Nome.
Mrs. Allen is a member of the Congregational Church.
Transcribed by
Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
“A Volume of Memoirs and Genealogy of Representative Citizens of Northern
California”, Pages 531-533. Chicago Standard Genealogical Publishing Co. 1901.
© 2010
Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's Calaveras County Biographies