San Francisco County
Biographies
ALMON BIGELOW DIXON
ALMON BIGELOW DIXON, a land owner and dairyman of Lorin, Oakland township,
was born in 1824, in Delaware county, New
York, a son of Francis and Chloe (Nichols) Dixon,
both natives of Conn. The father
lived to be over Seventy-five, and the mother nearly eighty years. Grandfather
Francis Dixon came from the north of Ireland,
settled in Connecticut, and
married an English woman. They lived to an advanced age. Grandfather Dixon was
a Soldier of the Revolution, and his son (father of our subject), enlisted for
the war of 1812. The father and mother moved to Gauga
county, Ohio, on the Western
Reserve, not far from Painesville,
where they owned 160 acres of land. They had four sons and one daughter:
Alfred, Elizabeth, Eli, Russell F. A. B., of whom
Elizabeth and A. B. only are living in 1891. Elizabeth
is now Mrs. Daniel Morehouse, of Claridon, Geauga county. A. B. was brought up on a farm, received a
common-school education, went to Illinois at twenty-two,
and was married in Stephenson county, in 1858, to Miss
Eleanor Aurand, a native of Pennsylvania.
Her parents had settled in Stephenson County, Illinois.
He had farmed in Illinois on his
own account and in partnership with his brother Eli, and ran
a dairy ranch by himself in 1854.
In
1860 he came to California, and went to dairying at Gilroy,
having 150 cows, using it largely in the manufacture of cheese, making 200
pounds of cheese a day, averaging perhaps sixteen cents a pound. He stayed
there till 1866; in 1863 he got his own stock, then worked the dairy ranch at Gilroy
one and a half years for wages, then rented it two years, finally buying the
stock in the fall of 1863. In 1866 he came to his present location, buying
twenty-eight acres of land, and also a number of cows, making butter and doing
teaming and small farming. About 1878 he subdivided a portion of the land and
sold the lots, he retaining about four acres in lots. He has been road overseer
for five years; and Deacon, Trustee and Treasurer of the Park Street Congregational
Church, and former Treasurer of the Berkeley Congregational Church; a member of
the Good Templars, and an earnest temperance man.
Mr.
and Mrs. Dixon have had six children, of whom four are living: Chloe Ellen,
born in Illinois, in Carroll county, in 1859, by marriage Mrs. William J. Derickson, a millwright and carpenter of Lorin; were married here; Clara Eliza, born in Gilroy, died
at the age of twenty-six years, the wife of William Menefee
of Berkeley; she died in 1889 leaving Lillian Menefee,
who lives with his grandparents Dixon, born July 4, 1884; Frank W., born in Lorin, in 1872, lives with his parents, received a business
collage education, besides the general public school course; Arthur A. born
here in 1874, received a Common school education and is learning the trade of
Carpenter; Guy Everett, born November 20, 1876.
Mr.
Dixon has been a Republican in politics since 1860; was for some years an Odd
Fellow; connection broken by removal.
The
Nichols family was Scotch, Grandfather Nichols being a Scotch Immigrant.
Transcribed by Kim Buck.
Source: "The Bay of San
Francisco," Vol. 2, Pages 517-518,
Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
© 2006 Kim Buck.
California
Biography Project
San
Francisco County
California
Statewide
Golden
Nugget Library