Sacramento County
Biographies
WILLIAM D. McENERNEY
WILLIAM D. McENERNEY.--The many problems
in agriculture peculiar to California are very familiar to William D. McEnerney, who is ranching about five miles northeast of
Galt, on a ranch covering a quarter-section. He is a native son, and was
born at Stockton on August 31,
1873. His father was Patrick McEnerney, a
native of Westmeath County, Ireland,
and his mother before her marriage was Miss Bridget Flaherty, and she was a
native of County Galway.
Patrick McEnerney came to California
in early days, and he had a dairy farm at Franklin, in Sacramento
County; and later he settled about four miles
east of Hicksville, where he acquired 221 acres of
land. After a while, he added a section and farmed that. He died at
the age of seventy-seven, highly esteemed by all who knew him. Mrs. McEnerney is still living on the old home place, east of Arno, the mother of eleven children and the beloved center
of a circle of devoted friends.
William McEnerney attended the Arno
school, and remained at home with his folks until he was twenty-seven years
old. He then went to Sacramento, and worked for two
years, and after that he conducted a store at Arno
for a year. He then moved onto the ranch where he now lives, about five miles
east of Galt, having purchased a quarter section, and
there he raises stock, and has a Mission grape vineyard
of twenty acres which he set out. There was a house on the ranch, and
this our subject remodeled, making of it a modern home,
and he has also built some other buildings on the ranch. Besides his own
place, he leases land and puts in about 300 acres to grain, and has about 300
acres of summer fallow land each year. He is a Democrat, but esteemed
rather for his broad American patriotism which leads him to place men and
measures above partisanship; a member of the Knights of Columbus of Lodi, and a
trustee of the Brown district school, and a member of the Grange and the
Chamber of Commerce at Galt, he does what he can for the good of all.
Mr. McEnerney
was married at Sacramento on June 17, 1901, to Miss Genevieve Bolton, a native
of Clay, Cal., and the daughter of Curtis and Elizabeth (Louins) Bolton, the former a well-known pioneer whose
life-story is sketched elsewhere in this work, and who died in June, 1922, at
the age of eighty-six. Mrs. Bolton was the first woman to prove up on
land in Sacramento County.
Mrs. McEnerney attended the Clay district
school. She has five children: William Curtis; Thomas P.; Elizabeth
G. and Dorothy G., high school students; and Marjorie G., a pupil in the
grammar school.
Transcribed by Barbara Gaffney.
Source: Reed, G.
Walter, History of Sacramento County, California
With Biographical Sketches, Pages 358-361.
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.
© 2007 Barbara Gaffney.