Kern County Biographies

Samuel H. Anderson

Submitted by Sally Kaleta, May, 2007

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

	Captain Samuel H. Anderson, one of the pioneers of 
California, is a native of Belfast, Ireland, born March 10, 1828, the son of a 
master mariner and a ship-owner. Captain Anderson went to sea at eleven years of 
age, and with his father navigated the Mediterranean, Baltic and White Seas, 
besides doing a general coasting business at various leading European seaports. 
In 1845 he sailed for the river Platte in South America, under the English flag, 
to do naval service. After remaining on the coast of Rio de Janeiro two years, 
he sailed around Cape Horn as second officer of a merchant-ship, Chimborazo, and 
on the west coast of South America engaged in the whaling business, as officer 
of the ship, Enterprise, of Nantucket, in 1848. He abandoned that business in 
the spring of 1849, and sailed from Chile for San Francisco as captain of a 
ketch of nine tons' register, where he arrived in July of the same year. The 
winter of 1849-'50 was spent boating in San Francisco Bay, he went to the mines. 
He spent the years up to 1861 in the mines of Southern Oregon and California, 
when he returned to Belfast, the home of his youth, and re-engaged in navigating 
the seas. He purchased a vessel, and was at sea for four and a half years. In 
1865 he returned to the Pacific Coast, navigated the Sacramento River, and 
engaged in the ship-rigging business until 1870, when he located in Kern County. 
Since that time he has been identified with the irrigating and farming interests 
of this county, and is said to be the first man to construct and locate a water 
gate in Kern County. He owns and is developing 400 acres of fine bottom land on 
Kern River near Bakersfield. The Captain is a genial, enterprising, broad in 
views upon public questions, and is esteemed by all who know him. He has been 
twice married, the first being to Miss Sarah Donald, at Sacramento. She died in 
1878, leaving four children. His present wife, nee Eliza Mackey, he married in 
1885. She is a lady of fine domestic tastes and a frugal helpmate. 

Source: "The Memorial and Biographical History of the County of Fresno, Tulare 
and Kern, California," Lewis Publ. Co., 1892, p. 453.