Sonoma County Biographies

W. T. ALLEN

Transcribed by Sally Kaleta, July, 2007.

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


                    Was born in Shawneetown, Gallstin County, Illinois, June 21, 
1818. When about ten months old his father died, and the remainder of the 
family, comprising W. T., his mother, and a sister, soon moved to Kentucky, 
where his mother married. In the fall of 1831, the subject of this sketch took 
up his abode in La Fayette County, Missouri, where he remained until August, 
1840, when he started for California across the plains with a mule train. On 
arriving he engaged in mining in Nevada County, where he sojourned about eight 
months. He then came to this county and lived on a farm about six miles south of 
Healdsburg, with his uncle, Joseph Gordon, and engaged in farming one year. He 
then engaged in farming with Lindsay Carson, (a brother to the noted Kit 
Carson), and made a kiln of fifty thousand bricks, probably the first bricks 
made in Sonoma County. He left Mr. Carson in January, 1853. He was a soldier in 
Colonel Doniphan's regiment in the Mexican War, and was present at the battles 
of Brazeto and Sacramento. Was Justice of the Peace in Mendocino township in 
1855, and a member of the Board of Supervisors of Sonoma County, in 1856-57, 
when he located on his present ranch, comprising one hundred and fifty-eight 
acres situated on Dry Creek. He married, April 26, 1853, Miss Jane Capell; she 
was born February 18, 1824, and died February 17, 1873. By this union they have 
had four children, three of whom are living: Joseph B., born February 27, 1854, 
and died June 5, 1855; Elizabeth M., Born March 22, 1855; Mary J., born January 
7, 1857; George R., born April 6, 1860. For his second wife he married Mrs. 
Lucinda Rackliff, September 19, 1878. She was born April 21, 1832.
 
Source: "History of Sonoma County, Cal.," Alley, Bowen & Co., San Francisco, 
1880, p. 500.