Santa Clara County
Biographies
DAVID E. SKINNER
As a contracting builder and general famer, David E. Skinner has established an enviable reputation in the Pioneer district, Almaden township, Santa Clara county, where he grew from youth to manhood, having the average educational and other opportunities, and developing reliable and substantial traits of character. His family will go down in western history as one which dared and accomplished large results, and which was established on the coast in 1849 by his father, David E. Skinner, now deceased.
The elder Skinner was born in Warren county, N. J., in 1828, and was there reared and educated, removing this side of manhood to New York City, where he engaged as a clerk in a grocery store. In Newark, N. J., he filled a similar position for a time, and in 1849 contracted the gold fever and came to California by way of Panama. Until 1852 he labored in the mines, proving an average rather than exceptionally successful miner, and then became an employe of the Almaden quick silver mines, having oversight of the furnaces, and remaining there about four years. For the following two years he engaged in the butchering business at Almaden, and while thus employed purchased the farm of one hundred and seventy-one acres of which his son now owns one-half, and where he conducted general farming and stock-raising for the balance of his life. He was an energetic and level headed man, a stanch Republican, and a promoter of agricultural and general advancement. While at the Almaden mines he was united in marriage with Harriet Booth, who died May 24, 1860, in her twenty-fifth year. William and Ada, the two children of this union, live in British Columbia. In 1865 Mr. Skinner married Annie Dugan, a native of New York state, who died March 14, 1873, at the age of thirty-two years. There were five children of this union: David E., Herman, Cornelius, Thomas and Francis. The present wife of Mr. Skinner was formerly Anna Smith, born in Newark, J. J., in 1839, a daughter of Isaiah and Mary Smith. Mr. Skinner’s first husband was David Alyea, whom she married in 1868, and who died in Newark in 1873, leaving one son, Edward, now living in New Jersey. It was while visiting the home of his youth that Mr. Skinner met Mrs. Alyea, and the marriage was solemnized November 14, 1874. Waldo W. is the only child of this union. Mr. Skinner is a fair type of the men who came to the coast with assets consisting mainly of physical strength and a determination to succeed, and who courageously aced all obstacles, and turned them to his own account. He was prosperous because he worked for prosperity, and never for an instant lost faith in his ability to accomplish what he set out to.
The namesake of his father, David E. Skinner is the oldest of the five sons of the second marriage, and was educated in the public schools. He became a model farmer under the instruction of his father, and finally embarked with him in the butchering business in Almaden, remaining thus engaged from 1886 until 1890. He then apprenticed to a carpenter in Santa Clara and after completing his trade embarked on a carpentering and building career throughout the valley, where he has since been responsible for some of the finest country homes, barns and general buildings. His half of the old homestead is devoted to hay, as calling for the least amount of work, and thus interfering little with his building operations. He is located ten miles south of San Jose, and within three miles of Almaden, on the old Almaden road, and has one of the best improved farms in his neighborhood.
November 3, 1896, Mr. Skinner was united in marriage with Mary M. Bushey, a native of Malone, Franklin county, N. Y. She was a daughter of Oliver Bushey, a native of Plattsburg, N. Y., who came to a farm on the Almaden road in the fall of 1898, settling near the home of Mr. Skinner. Mr. Bushey is a sawyer by trade, but since coming to the west has engaged in general farming. Five children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Skinner: Annie, Dorothy, David E., Jr., and Louise and Lucile, twins. Mr. Skinner is a Republican, but believes in voting for the man best qualified for the office.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: History
of the State of California & Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California by Prof. J. M. Guinn, A. M., Pages 1396-1397. The Chapman
Publishing Co., Chicago, 1904.
© 2017 Joyce Rugeroni.