Los Angeles County, CA, Biographies This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm LEVI NEWTON BREED, President of the Southern California National Bank of Los Angeles, was born in the town of Clay, near Manlius, Onondaga County, New York, in 1832, his parents being James and Elizabeth (Kinne) Breed. He is descended from Allyn Breed, who is believed to have been the progenitor of all who bear the name of Breed in the United States. Allyn Breed was born in England in 1601, emigrated to Massachusetts Bay in 1630, and settled in Lynn, Massachusetts, where more than a hundred families descended from him still reside. The oldest of his four sons, also named Allyn, born in 1626, had a son John, born in 1663, who moved to Stonington, Connecticut. His son Allen, born in 1714, was the father of Gershom, born in 1755, who moved from Stonington, Connecticut, to Little Hoosic, Rensselaer Patent, New York, in 1789, and thence to Manlius, Onondaga County, in 1793. James Breed, who was born in 1794 and died in 1884, was the eighth son and the youngest of the twelve children of Gershom Breed. Elizabeth Kinne Breed was the daughter of Ezra Kinne and the granddaughter of Cyrus Kinne, who settled in Manlius, about 1793. The Kinne family is also of early New England stock, and both families have been neighbors for nearly a century. Breed's Hill in Boston, the joint scene of the Revolutionary conflict known in history as the Battle of Bunker Hill, was so named because it was owned by Ebenezer Breed, also a descendant, but in another line, of Allyn Breed, the immigrant of 1630. The American redoubt was on Breed's Hill. When the subject of this sketch had reached his twelfth year his mother died, and the family being in a measure broken up, he was thrown on his own resources. Reared on a farm and educated in the district school when held, the change involved, aside from the irreparable loss, was little more than lending a helping hand on the farm of some neighbor instead of his father's, with the privilege of still attending school. In 1849 he moved to Schuyler County, Illinois, where his eldest brother, Dr. S. P. Breed, had settled in the practice of his profession. There also he engaged in farm work and attended school at intervals. In 1853 he set out for California. At a reunion of the family, at the home of Dr. Breed, near Princeton, Illinois, in 1886, a generation later, he thus refers to that trip: " I find a vast difference in journeying across the continent in 1853 and in 1886. Then I was four months in driving cattle across the arid plains and rugged mountains, swimming rivers and fighting Indians, and subsisting on bacon and beans. Now the trip is made in four days, and those are spent in a palace car where you can enjoy all the comforts and luxuries of life." Mr. Breed spent some time in San Francisco but without securing a solid foothold. In 1856 he settled in Honey Lake Valley, in what is now known as Lassen County but was then claimed by Plumas. There he opened a trading post and took up 160 acres of land. In 1857 he was secretary of a public meeting of citizens which attracted some attention at the time by refusing to pay taxes to Plumas County on the ground that Honey Lake Valley was outside the legal limits of that county. The few settlers were much harassed by the depredations and attacks of hostile Indians. At one time they drove off every head of cattle Mr. Breed had on his ranch. In 1859 he quit merchandising to try his fortune on Fraser River, but the disorganized condition of society there occasioned his return to Honey Lake in 1860, settling on his place, now known as the Epley Ranch. A year later he removed to Indian Valley, where he kept a livery stable about one year. He again returned to Honey Lake Valley and in 1862 bought a general store in Janesville, where he continued to live about twenty years, owning a part of the time 1,000 acres near the town, to which together with the store he gave constant personal attention. He was a commissioner for the organization of Lassen County in 1864. In 1873 he built a larger store with a hall overhead for the various organizations to meet in. He removed to Los Angeles in 1882, handling realty for about three years. He was elected councilman in 1885, and president of the council in 1886. On the organization of the Southern California National Bank in June, 1886, he was elected vice-president, and at the election of officers in January, 1889, he was chosen president. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity and of the Republican party, and in religious affiliation inclines to Unitarianism, though the traditions of the family are Baptist, his grandfather and great-grandfather having been elders in that communion. September 21, 1861, Mr. Breed was married to Miss Samantha Blood, born in New York, August 10, 1843. She died August 19, 1867, leaving one child, Frederick Arthur, born July 7, 1862, who was killed in a railroad accident in Arizona, at the age of twenty-three. Mr. Breed was again married May 28, 1870, to Miss Annie J. Blunt, born in Somerset County, Maine, September 20, 1852. They have one child, Lillian, born June 21, 1871. An Illustrated History of Los Angeles County, California � Chicago, The Lewis Publishing Company, 1889 Page 409 Transcribed by Kathy Sedler