El Dorado
County
Biographies
JOHN W. KILLOUGH
Notable among the pioneers of Eldorado county
was the late John W. Killough, who crossed the
western plains to California in the year 1854. He was a prominent and respected
citizen throughout a long residence in the Sacramento Valley, and he was the
type of pioneer upon which the enduring structure of the state was built.
Mr. Killough was born at Gosport,
Indiana, December 25, 1832. He attended school in the Hoosier state and
when he started for the west his destination was Oregon. En route, however, he
joined another group headed for California. He first came to Eldorado county, and mined for a time, then later purchased the
Pacific House, which he and his wife conducted successfully for six years. The
Pacific House was a well known rendezvous among the early miners and settlers
of this vicinity. Mr. Killough next bought a ranch on
the Coloma highway, which he operated continuously until his death,
November 4, 1899.
John W. Killough married Miss
Elizabeth Frances Poteet, a daughter of Thomas Job Poteet, who came to
California from Jefferson county Iowa, by way of the Horn in 1851. He mined at
first, and later settled in the Killough ranch. He
farmed for a number of years, then Mr. Killough bought the ranch. After selling out,
Mr. Poteet went to Oregon, but later returned to Santa Barbara,
California, where he died. His wife came to California in 1854, with an uncle.
She was then a child of two and a half years of age, and as her uncle rode
across the isthmus of Panama on a mule he carried her
in his arms. There were fourteen children in the Poteet family, and ten of them
are living. The mother died at the age of forty-seven years. Mrs. Killough now owns the old ranch which her father first
farmed, and which her husband later bought.
To Mr. and Mrs. Killough two
daughters were born, namely: Emma Retta, who died in
1918 at the age of forty-one; and Mary Alice, the wife of Fred Brandon, who is
operating the old Killough ranch. There are two
grandchildren of John W. Killough, and three
great-grandchildren. Mrs. Killough survives her
husband, and has her own comfortable home in the city of Placerville. Mr. Killough was a democrat, and was a member of the Masonic
fraternity and the Order of the Eastern Star. Mrs. Killough
also belongs to the Eastern Star.
Transcribed by Marie Hassard
02 June 2010.
Source: Wooldridge, J.W.Major
History of Sacramento Valley California, Vol. 2, Pages 146-147. Pioneer Historical Publishing Co. Chicago 1931.
© 2010 Marie Hassard..
Golden
Nugget Library's El Dorado County Biographies