Sacramento County
Biographies
HENRY
WILLIAM MYERS
HENRY WILLIAM MYERS was born in Hanover, Germany, February 22, 1834, his parents being Henry and Josephine (Klingenberg) Myers, originally Meyer. The father died in 1847, aged fifty-two. Grandfather William Meyer reached the age of 103, and his wife was nearly eighty. H. W. Myers while quite young went to live with his father’s brother, Frederick. He received the compulsory education of that country, and learned farming with his uncle. In 1854 he came to this country, where his first employment was a farm hand on Long Island. In 1855 he moved to Ohio, where he worked two years, and on March 10, 1857, he left New York for California, coming out by the Panama route. On his arrival on this coast he tried mining for one month, and on June 15, 1857, he came to work on Grand Island at $45 a month, on the ranch he has now owned for a quarter of a century. They raised vegetables chiefly, the soil yielding heavy crops, for instance 11,000 sacks of potatoes, of 140 pounds to the sack, on forty-five acres. After eight months he bought, in partnership with another, a place on Sutter Island for $700, which he worked three years. In 1864 he rented the 250 acres on which he now lives, and bought it in 1865. In 1866 he paid a visit to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he had some relations, and was there married to Miss Sophia Kruhoff, also a native of Germany. On his return he was accompanied by his brother Frederick, to whom he sold seventy-eight acres of his ranch, reducing his own holding to 178 acres. Some twenty years ago he began to plant fruit trees, and has now about forty acres in orchard, besides fifteen acres on his 120-acre ranch on Miner Slough in Solano County. The greater part of his home place has been overflowed since February, 1881, but the levee now being erected or repaired will, it is to be hoped, soon make overflowed lands on Grand Island a thing of the past, and transform its whole area into one of the garden spots of the earth. Mr. Myers built the present house, a comfortable and substantial residence of eight rooms, in 1876. Besides his ranches he owns considerable realty in San Francisco. Mr. And Mrs. Myers are the parents of four living children: Louis William, born October 27, 1869; Edward Henry, September 21, 1871; Dora Sophia, March 4, 1873; Wilhelmina Carolina, June 12, 1877. The sons are now following a course at Atkinson’s Business College in Sacramento, and the elder daughter is at the Irving Institute in San Francisco. Miss “Minnie” is making the most industrious use of the local district school, to be followed in due time by a higher education.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of
Sacramento County, California. Pages 619-620. Lewis
Publishing Company. 1890.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.