San Joaquin County
Biographies
MRS. DELIA MARCELLA LOCKE
MRS. DELIA MARCELLA LOCKE,
widow of the late Dr. D. J. Locke, and residing upon a farm near Lockeford, was
born in North Abington, Massachusetts, May 30, 1836, the daughter of George and
Susanna (Shaw) Hammond. Her mother was also a native of North Abington, and her
father a native of Carver, Massachusetts. The Hammonds were of an old
Massachusetts family, near Plymouth. William Penn’s mother married a Hammond
for her second husband, and Mrs. Locke is a descendant from that family. One of
her father’s brothers was a well-known physician, and one was a farmer. Mrs.
Locke’s father was brought up on a farm, but went to North Abington and learned
the shoemaker’s trade, which he followed until he came to California, in 1861,
by way of the Isthmus. He settled in Lockeford, which has since been his
residence. His father, Benjamin Hammond, a farmer, who lived at Carver,
Massachusetts, died at the age of fifty years. Daniel Webster was a friend of
the family and sometimes visited them. The Shaws were also of the old New
England families. Ebenezer Shaw, a grandfather of Mrs. Locke, was a farmer and
one of the principal citizens of North Abington, whose judgment was consulted
upon all matters of local interest. He had seven daughters.
Mrs. Locke was educated at North Abington
and at Plymouth, and taught school two years at the former place. She was
married at the Congregational Church there to Dr. Locke, on May 8, 1855, and
the next day started for California, sailing from Fall River through Long
Island Sound to New York city, where they took the ocean steamer, George Law,
which was afterward named the Central America, and was subsequently lost at
sea. After crossing the Isthmus by railroad, the next year after the riot
there, they took the steamer Golden Age to San Francisco, arriving July 1, and
coming at once to Lockeford.
Dr. D. J. Locke, by whom the town of
Lockeford was laid out, came to this State in 1849, from Boston, as physician
of the Boston and Newton Joint-Stock Association. They started April 16, that
year, and the company, numbering twenty-five men in all, arrived in Sacramento
September 16. The Doctor tried mining, but abandoned it, and on the last day of
the year 1850 he and his brother Elmer camped on the place which is now the
homestead of the family. They purchased the land embracing their present ranch
from Staples & Co., who claimed it by right of a Spanish grant. This claim,
however, was valueless, and the settlers were compelled to repurchase the land
from the Government.
The highlands, on which the town is now
situated, are about sixty feet above the flats, across which a high, narrow
ridge extends to the river, broken in two places by sloughs, which carry away
the winter floods. On the highest point of the ridge a pretty little hill,
among a number of oaks still standing, the settlers built their cabin and
commenced the new life of ranching. Ninety miles distant the snow-capped
summits of the Sierras were visible, while between them and those distant peaks
was an unbroken waste with hardly a settler’s cabin. Grizzly bears were
plentiful, five being caught near the cabin in 1851 by a Mr. Lewis, a great
hunter.
The bottom lands surrounding the cabin
were covered with luxuriant grass and stretched far away into the distance,
forming a pleasant picture, which has increased in beauty as the years have
gone by. The bottom land is about three feet higher than when the Doctor
settled there, having been overlaid by sediment from overflows. The levees are
now high and strong, however, protecting the farms from future floods. The
river also has been straightened, which gives a direct channel and materially
lessens the danger.
In 1854 the Doctor returned East, and
during the next year brought to California his newly wedded wife, as already
mentioned, after which time he resided upon his farm to the date of his death,
May 4, 1887, and was buried in the family cemetery near the river road. When he
was seventeen years of age he was a school teacher. He graduated at the
Bridgewater Normal School, in the class of 1842, at the age of twenty; he also
graduated at the Harvard Medical College at Boston. At his home here he was
trustee of the school board of Lockeford from the time of its organization, in
1854, almost continuously until a few years before the time of his death.
In regard to the temperance movement he
first joined the Dashaways in San Francisco, some time in the ‘50’s; and in
1858 he became one of the charter members of the Live Oak division, No. 29, of
the Sons of Temperance, organized in his hall, and afterward a member of the
order of Good Templars; was also one of the principal members of the
Congregational Church, which also was organized in the same hall; and he was a
trustee of this religious body. He retained his membership in the church and in
the Good Templars until his death. His widow and her sister, Susan L. Locke,
are the only remaining original members of that church. The Doctor expended a
great deal of money in improving the town, erecting most of the large
buildings. He practiced medicine until within a few years of his death.
His greatest ambition was to have all of
his thirteen children well educated. Their names are: Luther, born in 1856, now
managing the Lockeford meat market; Ada, born in 1857, now the wife of Rev. W.
H. Cooke, of Oakland, pastor of the Golden Gate Congregational Church;
Nathaniel Howard, born in 1859, now a farmer on the home ranch; Horace M., born
in 1860, now a physician of the Somerville (Massachusetts) McLean Asylum; Ida,
born in 1862, the wife of Rev. W. H. Bascoe, formerly pastor of the
Congregational Church of Lockeford, who died August 5, 1889; Mary, born in
1864, now Mrs. W. P. Moore; William W., born in 1865, attending the Institute
of Technology at Boston; Hannah, born in 1867, now attending the Boston Conservatory
of Music; John C., born in 1869, attending Phillips Academy, Exeter, New
Hampshire; Edward M., born in 1871, attending school at Lockeford; Eunice, born
in 1874, attending the Oakland High School; George H., born in 1877; and
Theresa, born in 1879.
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County,
California, Pages 660-662. Lewis Pub.
Co. Chicago, Illinois 1890.
© 2009 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
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