Sacramento County
Biographies
ARCHIBALD McNEAL
A. McNEAL, a California pioneer, was born in a place called Three Springs, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, his parents being Robert, a farmer, and Catharine (Campbell) McNeal, both natives of Pennsylvania. The family, as the name indicates, is of Scotch-Irish descent. Our subject was one of a family of seven children, four of whom were boys. He was born in May, 1815, and was reared upon his father’s farm until he reached his majority in 1838, when, starting out in life for himself, he went first to Clinton County, Indiana, where his brother, Alexander, resided, then to Madison County, Wisconsin, and afterward to Galena, Illinois, where he learned the carpenter’s trade and resided until 1840; during that year he went to Mobile, Alabama, where he worked at his trade for seven years; he then secured a position at the United States navy yard at Pensacola, Florida, where he remained until coming to California in 1849. He came with a party on board the schooner Crescent City to Chagres, crossed the Isthmus, and paid $300 for passage to San Francisco in the brig Solidad, Captain John Van Houton, who will be remembered as captain on one of the Sacramento River boats for many years, and who afterward kept the Crescent City Hotel. The old Solidad was afterward brought to Sacramento and now lies high and dry at the foot of I street between Third and Fourth. The party arrived in San Francisco August 4, 1849, and, coming to Sacramento, packed to the mines on the Yuba River, where they remained till December, when Boyd and Davis (two of the party) came to Sacramento. McNeal followed mining for a greater portion of the time till 1852, when he came here and settled down to his trade. He early became a member of the Society of California Pioneers, in which organization he takes great interest. Mr. McNeal has been twice married, first in 1859, to Mary Alice Alexander, who died in 1862; and again in 1866 to Lucretia Kennedy, a native of Ft. Madison, Iowa, who died on the 14th of June, 1868, leaving an only daughter, Minnie, who is the wife of Hiram Z. Johnson of this city.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of
Sacramento County, California. Page 664. Lewis
Publishing Company. 1890.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.