Sacramento County
Biographies
RICHARD
DALEY TORNEY
RICHARD DALEY TORNEY--A pioneer whose decease is greatly lamented by all who knew him, was the late Richard Daley Torney, who was a native of Wisconsin. He crossed the untracked plains to Oregon, from Wisconsin, in 1846, he and his good wife taking their six-weeks-old baby, Mary Jane Torney, and two years later reached California. He was a building contractor and started the first livery stable in Sacramento, with one big white horse. His wife and child followed him from Oregon to Sacramento in 1849, and the family resided at Sutter’s Fort for many years. Mr. Torney started the first levee around the city, following the flood of 1850, and he was assisted in the work by the man known as “Honest John” Bigler, who from 1852 to 1856 was governor of California.
In 1852 an epidemic of cholera struck Sacramento, and Mr. Torney succumbed at the comparatively young age of thirty years, leaving a widow and daughter in care of his brother-in-law, Elihu Cross. In the flood period, 1862, Sutter’s Fort (the home of the Torney family) was the haven to which many persons were forced to go, to save their lives, and in a report of the Howard Benevolent Society, which raised funds and in other ways aided the refugees, a paragraph is devoted to a tribute to Mrs. Torney’s hospitality and generosity; and a gold watch was also presented to her for her benevolent work in aiding the flood sufferers. Mr. Torney had purchased a part of the Sutter Grant on which the fort was located from General Sutter in 1849; and Mrs. Torney sold a portion of what her husband had bought to Mr. Garland, of Chicago, who paid $10,000, a large sum in those days for six blocks of land. Mr. Torney used to allow cattle to be driven into the corral of the Fort, and he charged as high as $100 per night, according to the number, for the privilege.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With
Biographical Sketches, Page 919. Historic
Record Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.
© 2007 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.