San Joaquin County
Biographies
STOEL CADY
STOEL CADY, a rancher of Dent Township, was born in Otsego County, New
York, April 18,
1824, a son of Horace and Eunice (Cady) Cady. The parents had a common ancestor
some generations ago, and both were natives of Connecticut. The family moved to Illinois in 1840, and settled in Schuyler County. The father died in 1862, aged sixty-three years, and
the mother in 1873, in her seventy-ninth year. The paternal grandfather, Reuben
Cady, also a native of Connecticut, was a soldier of the Revolution, who settled in New York State and lived to be over seventy; his wife also reached
an advanced age. The Cadys are believed to have been long settled in New England, probably since some time in the seventeenth century.
Stoel, the subject of this sketch,
remained at home and worked on his father’s farm until twenty years of age,
when he did farm work on his own account for five years in Illinois. He came to California, crossing the plains in 1849, and arriving at
Weaverville on the 10th of September, and mined there that winter,
making about $900. He afterward made $600 in six days, but found that the claim
belonged to others, whereupon he vacated it, and never afterward was able to
make more than $2 a day at mining. With seventeen others he sunk his all in a
mere pretentious mining enterprise in one month, then he withdrew from that
pursuit with disgust. In May, 1850, he came to Sacramento and went to work as helper in a blacksmith shop at $8
a day. He then worked on the levee, in that city, continuing on that job till
January, 1851, when he came to Stockton and took charge of some stock on the
open ranges of Stanislaus County, for the Sacramento levee contractors, his
late employers, who were owing him $900, of which he received but $16. He sowed
forty acres to barley, the first ever sown in that county, and sold his crop,
straw and all, for ten cents a pound. Here, again, he was dislodged, it being
discovered that the land was part of a Mexican land grant. He then crossed the
Stanislaus into San
Joaquin County, in 1851, to his present location, about two miles
east of Ripon, where he bought a possessory right to 160 acres. He then filed
pre-emption papers, with his brother, for 160 acres each, which they proved: he
afterward bought out his brother.
In 1853 he went East, via Panama, and returning drove fourteen horses and 225 head of
cattle across the plains from Illinois. These he unfortunately kept too long, until 1857,
and did not make much by the venture. He bought his last piece of land in 1854,
and his ranch has since comprised about 816 acres, of which 164 acres are
bottom land, and the remainder good wheat growing upland. He has devoted his
whole attention to farming, and has aspired to no office, nor held any except
that of school trustee.
Mr. Cady was married August 1, 1854, to
Miss Nancy Jane Pringle, born in Illinois in 1832, daughter of William Pringle,
whose acquaintance he had made in crossing the plains in 1853. Two years after
his marriage Mr. Cady erected a handsome residence on his place. Mr. and Mrs.
Cady are the parents of four living children, viz: Isabel Eunice, born June 8,
1855, now the wife of J. A. Plummer, a lawyer of Elko, California; Frank
Pringle, born September 7, 1857, a graduate of the Stockton Business College,
married October 1, 1878, has one boy, Leon Roy, born October 30, 1879; Fred,
born April 6, 1859, is a foreman on a cattle ranch in Nevada; May, born August
20, 1871, is now (1889) taking a course in the Stockton Business College.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County,
California, Pages 338-339. Lewis Pub.
Co. Chicago, Illinois 1890.
© 2009 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
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