DAVID TILESTON LUFKIN

Sacramento County

Biographies

DAVID TILESTON LUFKIN

DAVID TILESTON LUFKIN was born in Cumberland County, Maine, August 31, 1817, his parents being Jacob Butler B., and Elizabeth (Ludden) Lufkin. Grandfather Ludden, a native of Scotland, fought at Bunker Hill in the patriot army. The Lufkins trace lineage to the early Puritan stock of Plymouth colony. David’s grandfather, Nathaniel Lufkin, was an early settler, large landholder, ship-owner and merchant at Yarmouth, and lost heavily through the embargo act, in the war of 1812. His grandmother Lufkin was of the Butler family, of Massachusetts. The father of D. T., besides carrying on the usual routine of his farm, bought and drove cattle and sheep, selling them in Portland. The subject of this sketch attended the district school till he was thirteen, when he went to driving a six-ox team in a logging camp. Obtained the gift of his time at sixteen years and nine months. Spent three months in an academy to enable him to teach a district school, and was afterward teacher and pupil alternatively until he reached his majority. His health becoming impaired by over-study he went West in 1838, by way of Boston, New York, Buffalo and Chicago to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he spent a year and recovered his health. He then went into the pine-cutting business as an employe and “rafted” to St. Louis in 1840, afterward working during the summer on the Mississippi. His health again gave way, and he went north to Galena, where he taught school in 1841 at $35 a month and board. In the spring of 1842 he went into the grocery business, which he closed out two years later, and in 1844 moved to Boone County, Illinois, where he had a farm, and built a saw-mill, which he conducted for five years. Renting farm and mill in 1849 he came to California by way of St. Louis, New Orleans, and a sailing vessel to Chagres, and on the Pacific side by the barque “Palmetto,” on which he was employed as “captain of the steerage,”—charged with the oversight of 116 passengers,—to San Francisco, arriving in the spring of 1850. He was thus enabled to secure the passage of two sick and penniless comrades from Panama to San Francisco. He went to mining in April, and kept at it steadily for about five months, his last field of operation being on Feather River. He had turned Nelson Creek from its bed, but high water soon put an embargo on his proceedings. His health, too, was none too good, and he concluded to seek for a season some more congenial climate and occupation than mining in the mountains, but with the intention of returning when the water subsided on his claim. He had made about $2,000, and invested in some cattle, renting from a mining comrade a place on the Sacramento, on which there was a rude log-cabin. Here he proposed to devote the interval until spring to feeding his cattle, and he reached the place on October 30, 1850. After a few weeks’ residence he found his health so much improved that he bought the place, and it has been his home ever since. Besides taking care of his stock he ran the Grapevine Ferry in the winter of 1851-’52, and found the climate so genial that he abandoned the idea of returning to the mines. In the fall of 1851 he brought his family to share his comforts and enhance his own. He increased his ranch by other purchase to 400 acres, but has since reduced it by sale to 100 acres, which are devoted almost entirely to fruit-raising, for which nature had admirably adapted it. Had he the designing of it and the power to achieve the desired result, he could not have made it more suitable for such purpose. He raises pears, peaches, apricots, plums and cherries, which he ships principally to San Francisco from a landing near at hand. He shipped 2,000 boxes East in 1888. Raises some alfalfa for his colts. He raised cattle and ran a dairy for some years, but found that nature had adapted his ranch for the raising of stone-fruits, and he has learned not to contravene the decision of that bounteous mother. In 1854 he burned a kiln of brick, and built a residence of that material, which after thirty-five years is still in excellent condition, besides enhancing the comfort and promoting the health of its occupants for all those years. He continued to prosper in his business for twelve years, when the flood of 1862 created discontent with the banks of Sacramento as a permanent home, and he offered to sell cheap, but fortunately could find no purchaser. In an evil hour he embarked in what seemed a promising venture,—the milling and crushing of quartz, near Aurora, Nevada, only to sink the bulk of his accumulations and lose four and a half years,—1863 to 1867,—in that disastrous enterprise. Returning to his old pursuits on his unsalable ranch a sadder but wiser man, he has learned to be content with the less dazzling vision of a competence from the fruits of his orchard, and is now enjoying a serene old age in the quiet pursuits of husbandry. He has been a justice of the peace almost continuously when living in Franklin Township. Mr. Lufkin was married in 1843 at Elkhorn Grove, Illinois, to Miss Ann E. Dalton, a native of North Carolina. Her maternal grandfather was of the Scales family, of which the present Governor of that State is a distinguished member. She died in 1876, leaving four children: Sarah Hortense, now the widow of James S. Moore, with four boys and two girls; Mary, the widow of Elijah Giles Downer with two boys and two girls; Harry Tileston, in business at Walnut Grove, and married to Louisa Wise, with two children; Roscoe C., born in 1882, and a baby girl; Clara, now Mrs. Daniel Striker, of Sacramento. Mr. Lufkin was again married in 1879 to Mrs. Sarah H. (Morrison) Weber, born in Maine of a Scotch father and an American mother.

Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.

Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of Sacramento County, California. Pages 671-673. Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.