Sacramento County
Biographies
ELIJAH
COMSTOCK
ELIJAH COMSTOCK, of Sacramento, is a descendent from two well-known families of Massachusetts, the Comstock and the Rice families. Hepsiba Rice, his mother, born in Massachusetts, came to Ohio in the early days with her parents; there she met and was married to Mr. Comstock, who had also come from Massachusetts, and the subject of this biographical notice remembers hearing his father relate the many incidents of the journey by ox teams from Massachusetts to the “far West,” as Ohio was then termed. In 1823 the family emigrated to Wheeling, West Virginia, where Elijah was born June 29, 1824, the youngest of five children. When he was two years old his mother returned to Ohio to live, and there he was brought up. In the spring of 1850, John O. Garrett, who had come to California in 1849 and returned to Ohio on a visit, made up a party of about 200, mostly from Richfield, Summit County, and young Comstock was one of them. They crossed the Missouri River at St. Joseph, and kept together until they reached Fort Kearney, when they had a disagreement, and nine of the party broke away and came on by themselves, by the northern route above Salt Lake and via Fort Hall to Placerville, where they arrived on the 9th of July. They remained in that vicinity for about a year and then went farther north, to Fort Hill, where he engaged in butchering until the spring of 1852, and also in buying cattle from immigrants far out upon the plains and bringing them in. Here he made some money, and in the fall of 1852 he bought a ranch on the other side of the Sacramento River, eight miles above Washington, now known as the Merch Place, and engaged in raising fine stock and in the dairy business. He raised Durham cattle and Norman horses. In 1881 he sold his ranch and removed his family to Sacramento, and invested in property here. Mr. Comstock was married in 1848, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, to Catherine Entrican, a most estimable lady, whose people came from New York. They have had one child, a son, who died when he was one and half years old. Mr. and Mrs. Comstock are spending the evening of their lives calmly — enjoying the rest to which they are so justly entitled.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of
Sacramento County, California. Pages 687-688. Lewis
Publishing Company. 1890.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.