ALFRED SPOONER

ALFRED SPOONER, rancher of Consumnes Township, was born in Adrian, Michigan, September 23, 1837, his parents being Jonathan Warner and Elizabeth (Knapp) Spooner. The father, a native of Vermont, of the well-known and widespread New England family of that name, died July 7, 1877, aged seventy-two, near Mendon, Michigan, where the mother, born in Wayne County, New York, in 1816, is still living. Grandfather Abram Knapp was seventy-five at his death in 1863, in Lenawee County, Michigan. Grandfather Alfred Spooner died about 1834, aged fifty-four. He was the son of Eliakim, the son of Daniel, the son of Samuel, the son of William, the English emigrant to Plymouth colony in 1637. Eliakim, the great-grandson of William and great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was in the military service of the colonies in 1757, and 1780 settled in what is now Vermont, was a member of the Legislature, and was widely known as "a man of marked mind and character." "Warner" Spooner, a tanner by trade, moved to Michigan in 1834, and built the first frame house in Adrian. In 1835 he was married to Miss Elizabeth, daughter of Abram and Elizabeth Knapp, both natives of New York. Mr. and Mrs. Warner Spooner became the parents of nine children, who eight are still living in 1889, all residing in the East, mostly in Michigan, except for the subject of this sketch, who is the oldest. The father carried on a tannery in Adrian about six years, when he exchanged it for land in De Kalb County, Indiana where the family resided four years. Selling out in Indiana, he bought 100 acres near Hillsdale, Michigan, and lived there seven years. Finally, in December, 1853, the family settled near Mendon, Michigan. Alfred Spooner received the usual district school education supplemented by one or two terms at a local academy; worked on his father's farm, and being handy with tools picked up the trade of carpenter. He came to California by the Isthmus route, arriving in San Francisco October 16, 1859. He first worked on a dairy farm on Dry Creek, in Sacramento County, nearly one year; then tried mining about two years, sinking all he had made in the American Falls Mining Company, the great flood leaving him worse off than when he arrived on the coast. He then turned to the business of teaching, being trained at the Normal school in San Francisco, where he received a certificate of qualification. He first taught near Roseville, in Placer County, and then in this county, his career as teacher covering about twenty-six years, mostly in Sacramento County. In 1869 Mr. Spooner was married to Miss Addie E. Lamb, born in Chicago, a daughter of Larkin and Arabella (Ellis) Lamb, who had come to California in 1851. She died in February, 1879, leaving one surviving child, Alfred Lawton, born June 10, 1878. They had lost three children by diphtheria, in January, 1878, which was too severe a shock to her nervous system and occasioned her premature death. Mr. Spooner was married September 3, 1888, at Malta Bend, Missouri, to Mrs. Sally Kesler, a native of Highland County, Ohio, the widow of Benjamin F. Kesler, with three children, of whom two are now members of the Spooner family: Lulu Blanche, aged thirteen, and Ina May, aged five years. Claytonia, the oldest child of Mrs. Spooner, is the wife of John Miller, residing near Wichita, Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. Spooner have one child, a son, born October 4, 1888. Mr. Spooner has been a justice of the peace in Consumnes Township for fifteen years, and was one of the parties to the remarkable contest for that office in 1888-'89, when at the general and special elections his opponent and he received an equal number of votes and finally withdrew their names by mutual agreement. He has now settled down to work on his 350-acre ranch about two miles south of Michigan Bar, where he has had for some years a small orchard and vineyard, both of which he intends to enlarge considerably. He also raises grain, hay and stock. His land borders on Arkansas Creek, and the higher portion is accessible to the waters of the new irrigating ditch.

An Illustrated History of Sacramento County, California. By Hon. Win. J Davis. Lewis Publishing Company 1890. Page 280-281.

Submitted by: Nancy Pratt Melton.