Santa Barbara County Biographies

W. W. BROUGHTON

Submitted by Peggy Hooper

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

W. W. BROUGHTON came to California in the summer of 1859, and 
has resided in the State ever since. He is a New Yorker by birth, born July 
29, 1836, at Tonawanda, Erie County. New York. He read law in the office of W. W. 
Thayer, since Governor of Oregon, and now an able Judge on the Supreme Bench of 
that State. Was admitted to practice in California, in 1863, and since that time has 
favored the profession with a strong tendency to newspaper life. Several papers have been 
founded, edited and published by him in various parts of the Pacific coast. In 1874 
he owned and edited the Santa Cruz Enterprise, which has since been merged into the 
Local Item. In 1865 the New Age, the first Odd Fellows weekly paper in the United 
States, was founded by him in San Francisco and is now in its twenty-fifth year. In 1875 
he established the Lompoc Record, at the founding of the Lompoc Colony, in Santa 
Barbara County, California, which he is now editing. In 1880 he founded the Arizona 
Bulletin, in that Territory, but discontinued the publication. Mr. Broughton was the 
original projector of the Lompoc Colony, and performed herculean work in its organi- 
zation and in locating colonists. The success of the colony is mainly attributed to his 
enterprise in publishing the local paper and diffusing throughout the land the facts  
concerning the most desirable region of the Pacific coast for homes. 

In 1862 Mr. Broughton was married to the only daughter of Mr. George T. Anthony, 
a highly respected citizen of Santa Cruz. A family of seven sons and five daughters 
is the result of this happy union. In politics, Mr. Broughton of late years has been a 
Democrat, and in 1886 was the nominee for the State Senate of that party for the 
district embracing San Luis Obispo, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. At present 
Mr. Broughton is at Lompoc, practicing his profession and publishing his paper, the 
Lompoc Record, a paper recognized to be one of the ablest in the county. 

History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California  - by 
C.M. Gidney, Benjamin Brooks, Edwin M. Sheridan, Vol I, II.  -Lewis Publ. Co., 
Chicago, 1917.