Sacramento
County
Biographies
WILLIAM
ELWELL EASTMAN
William Elwell
Eastman was born in Vermont in 1828, his parents being William Elwell and Mary (Walker) Eastman. He is of the Concord (New Hampshire) branch of the Eastman family, his
great-grandfather being the first male child born in Concord.
He lived to a good old age, being over eighty when he died. Grandfather Phineas
Eastman, a blacksmith by trade, moved into Orange County, Vermont, and lived to be eighty; his wife Lucy Cogswell, was about sixty-five. William E. Eastman’s maternal grandfather,
Lieutenant Walker, of Vermont, was a hero of the Revolution, and lived
to be seventy-five, dying at the home of Mr. Eastman. Grandmother Walker survived him ten or twelve
years, and was over eighty when she died.
The mother of the subject of this sketch was sixty-five at her death,
and the father, who kept a grocery store for many years at Manchester, reached the age of seventy-nine. William E., Jr., spent three or four terms at
the Canaan Academy, and at the age of nineteen went into his
father’s store, where he remained until 1857.
He then entered the flour and grain business on his own account, running
a mill and dealing in flour at wholesale.
In 1865 he moved to Chicago, where he went into the retail grocery
business, and was burned out six years later in the great fire, recovering only
four and a half per cent of his insurance.
He lost everything, house and store, stock and furniture. Resuming business, he found himself crippled
through want of adequate capital, and in 1875 he came to California and settled
at his present place, about two miles north of Walnut Grove, on the
Sacramento. Here he bought 200 acres at
$15 an acre, now assessed at $80. He
suffered from overflow for some four years.
In 1888 he added to his ranch, which is now about 250 acres. His orchard of ten acres has been increased
sevenfold, and off his back land he sold 1,000 tons of alfalfa in 1888. He raises some horses, having usually between
thirty and forty, and also pastures a good many for others. In 1866 Mr. Eastman was married, in Concord, New Hampshire, to Miss Lucy Carter, a native of that
city, daughter of Simeon and Eliza (Abbott) Carter. Her father, who was a native of New
Hampshire, died comparatively young, in 1850; but her mother, also a native of
Concord, is now living at Hopkins, New Hampshire, aged eighty-two, having a
sister, Mrs. Mendel Sampson, who is eighty-eight, both remarkably well
preserved in mind and body. Her
grandmother Carter lived to be eighty-eight.
Mr. and Mrs. Eastman are the parents of two children, both born in Chicago; Arthur Carter, April
17, 1869; Ella
Gibson, August 30, 1874. Both children
received the usual district-school education, and the son is a willing helper
on the
farm.
.
Transcribed by Karen Pratt.
Davis, Hon. Win. J., An
Illustrated History of Sacramento County,
California. Page 509-510. Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.
©
2005 Karen Pratt.