San Joaquin County
Biographies
GENERAL THOMAS EDMUND KETCHUM
GENERAL THOMAS EDMUND
KETCHUM, a rancher of Douglass Township, was born in New York city, July 8,
1821, in a three-story brick house at the corner of Cedar and Greenwich
streets, which was a landmark for many years. His parents were Israel and Alice
(Case) Ketchum. Grandfather Ketchum served in the army of the Revolution. His
wife lived to be eighty. Uncle Walter Case was a member of the Congress in
1819, representing the Orange County or Newburgh district. Uncle Thomas Ketchum
rendered memorable service in the war of 1812 by saving military supplies from
the enemy at Sackett’s Harbor. Grandfather Case was a Presbyterian minister of
Pleasant Valley, Dutchess County, New York. His wife was a De Ruyter heiress.
The father of General Ketchum was a resident of New York for fifty years and a
flour merchant there for many years. He died in 1858, aged eighty-four; the
mother died young.
Thomas E. was educated chiefly in private
schools and in early manhood helped in his father’s business. He received a
position in the United States Treasury toward the close of Tyler’s
administration in 1844, and when definitely ascertained that Polk was elected
he was discharged. He was also mail agent between New York and Boston for a
time. In 1846 he was employed as chemist, surveyor and subagent for a mining
company in the copper mines on Lake Superior. He left New York on the Sweden,
September 18, 1847, as Second Lieutenant in command of the second detachment of
recruits numbering ninety-eight men for Colonel Stevenson’s regiment, arriving
at Monterey, February 22, 1848. They reached La Paz by the barque Isabella on
March 15. When Captain Turner left Rio Janeiro for New York, the command
devolved on Lieutenant Matzell, and upon the latter going from La Paz to
Mazatlan, the command devolved upon Lieutenant Ketchum. At the battle of Todos
Santos he was in command of the reserve which did effective service under
direction of Colonel Burton, in deciding the fortune of the day. He remained in
command of his company until they were rejoined by Lieutenant Matzell at
Monterey, where they were mustered out October 22, 1848. Upon his discharge Mr.
Ketchum went to the mines in Tuolumne County, arriving December 1, and was
fairly successful as a miner that winter. In the spring of 1849, in partnership
with his friend, George A. Pendleton, he started a store at Jamestown in that
county and carried it on until 1853, when Mr. Ketchum sold out his interest.
Meanwhile he had become owner of the ranch where he still lives, about ten
miles east of Stockton, and he went to farming.
After the breaking out of the civil war,
he enrolled a company, beginning September 15, 1861, and completing it in six
weeks, and became senior Captain of the Third Infantry California Volunteers,
serving over three years. Receiving orders to relieve the regulars at Fort
Humboldt, he was engaged in subduing the hostile Indians in that section, and
killed and captured over fifty of them between October 30, 1861, and August,
1862. The flag afterward presented by the citizens of Humboldt County, to the
company in recognition of their services is now at the Granger’s Union in
Stockton.
With nothing left but his ranch he resumed
farming, and was honored with a commission as Brigadier General of the State
Militia or National Guards. He was married in 1852 to Miss Esther Sedgwick. The
father, a native of England, born near Bolton Abbey, came to America about the
age of twenty and settled in the State of New York, where he was married.
Grandfather Horace Hodge was a native of Connecticut, and died in Columbia
County, New York, aged seventy-five. His wife died in middle age. Mr. and Mrs.
Ketchum are the parents of two living children: Frank Everson, born in this
township April 22, 1854, who has lived all his life on the ranch except while
away at school or college. Spent some time in three of these in Collegeville,
in Heald’s Business College and under a private tutor at Berkeley. Anna A.
Ketchum, born September 24, 1871, was graduated May 29, 1889, from Mill’s
Seminary, near Oakland.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County,
California, Pages 251-252. Lewis Pub.
Co. Chicago, Illinois 1890.
© 2008 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
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