Alameda County Biographies

WILLIAM CLARK BLACKWOOD

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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

 

	The subject of this sketch, whose portrait appears in this history, is the son of 
Samuel and Mary (McMordy) Blackwood, and was born in Seneca County, New York, June 7, 1813, 
being the youngest of seven sons � no daughters.  Having received a common school education 
and worked on a farm until the year 1836, he emigrated to Michigan and settled near the town 
of Farmington, Oakland County, where he followed farming for ten years.  In 1846 Mr. Blackwood 
embarked in the milling business in Wayne, in the same State, and there remained until starting 
for California.  Making the journey by way of New Orleans and Chagres, he arrived in San 
Francisco by the steamer Union, June 26, 1851.  After prospecting some months, in October of that 
year he came to the redwoods, which then stood uncut above Brooklyn, or East Oakland, where he 
remained until the following January (1852), when he removed to Eden Township and began farming, 
which he continued until 1878.  Mr. Blackwood now gives his attention to fruit-growing, he having 
an orchard of sixty acres under apricots, plums, prunes, etc.  Married, firstly, in September, 
1835, Miss Elizabeth J. Woodward, who died in April, 1850, leaving four children, viz.:  Samuel 
W., Sarah E., Mary F., and Clementine; and, secondly, Miss Jane Evert, by which union there is one 
daughter named Lucy;  and, thirdly, Miss Elizabeth Craig.  His son was educated a physician and 
surgeon, and served as such with distinction in the Union Army during the Civil War, and was 
brevetted a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Army of the United States for distinguished professional 
services by President Johnson.  He died October, 1871, in Peru, while professionally employed as 
Superintendent of Railroad Hospitals in that republic by the celebrated Harry Meigs.

History of Alameda County, California�, Oakland, M.W. Wood Publ., 1883, p. 852