Sacramento
County
Biographies
Foster N. Mott,
the pioneer peach-grower of the State of California, was born in 1819 in the
city of New York, educated at Rockaway on Long Island, attending the common
schools during the winter and laboring on his father’s farm during the summer,
and learned the trade of smithing in New York, after which he worked as a
journeyman for several years. In 1848
he married Miss Frances L. Wood, daughter of Captain Thomas Wood, of the New
York and Savannah Steamship Line. He
became one of a company of young business men who expended $20,000 for
machinery and traps and came to California around Cape Horn, in the ship Daniel
Webster, being 156 days on the voyage.
The ship was laden with two years’ provisions, a saw-mill, machinery and
lumber for building a scow, and with the latest inventions for
gold-washing. The latter, on their
arrival in California, were found to be useless. The party arrived in San Francisco July 21, and proceeded to
build a stern-wheel steamer or scow, 20 x 40 feet. This took two months’ time.
This steamer was the first to leave San Francisco and arrive at
Sacramento without accident or delay; but running up the American River they
stuck on a bar, and after several fruitless attempts to free the vessel, they
abandoned it forever. Mr. Mott then
proceeded to Cigar Bar, on the Yuba River, with a party made up of nine of the
original company; but becoming severely afflicted with the malarial element of
the section, their number was soon reduced to four, and in September, 1850, Mr.
Mott gave up mining altogether. Going
to Marysville, he bought an interest in a bakery there. During the summer of 1853 he returned to New
York, where he remained two years.
Returning with his family in 1855, he located upon a ranch in Yolo
County, and engaged in stock-raising and fruit-growing. Dried peaches from Chili were being brought
here in large quantities for consumption, and from the stones of these he
raised the first peach seedlings ever grown in the State. These trees started the celebrated G. G.
Briggs fruit ranch in Yuba County, from which, in 1857, $70,000 worth of
peaches was sold in San Francisco that season.
In 1874 Mr. Mott purchased 2,700 acres of land in Sacramento County, and
for the next ten years he devoted himself to sheep-raising. He moved to Sacramento in 1875, where he
still resides. In 1885 he bought and
planted a raisin vineyard at Fresno, from which, at its second year, he
marketed seven tons of raisins; the third year, forty-five tons. Mr. Mott, in his political principles, is a
Republican. He voted at the first
election in 1849, for Americans, but has never been a politician or aspired to
office. He is a director in the Pioneer
Association at Sacramento.
Transcribed
by Karen Pratt.
Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of
Sacramento County, California. Page 500-501. Lewis Publishing Company.
1890.
©
2005 Karen Pratt.