Sutter-Yuba County Biographies

WILLIAM HENRY BURMOOD

Transcribed by: Kathy Sedler

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


 
A rancher whose success is the logical result of his practical methods in 
farming, coupled with his honorable, dependable habits in dealing with his 
follow-men, is William Henry Burmood, living six miles east of Meridian.  He was 
born at Huntsville, Schuyler County, Ill., on August 27, 1861, the son of Henry 
F. and Mary Ellen (Plunkett) Burmood, the former a pioneer who was born at the 
foot of Little Roundtop Mountain, in Emmetsburg, Pa., and the latter a native of 
Schuyler County, Ill.  Mr. Burmood had gone to Illinois when he was nine years 
of age, accompanying his folks hither in the good old days of 1844; and he grew 
up to be a farmer, living all of his life on the farm of 120 acres, upon which 
he had come as a boy, and dying at the age of seventy esteemed by all who knew 
him.  Mrs. Burmood, who also had a circle of admiring friends, lived to be 
seventy-six years of age.  Both Mr. and Mrs. Burmood served their locality and 
their generation as might be expected of serious, sensible folks who believed 
that they had a mission in life; and when they departed, they left the world 
decidedly better for their having lived and toiled within it.  They had eight 
children: William Henry, Mrs. Amelia Sophie Sprigg, Emaline, Alna, Richard 
Clarence, Omega, Florence, and Roy Edgar.
William Henry attended the district schools of Illinois, grew up at home, where 
somebody always found something for him to do, and where he himself found 
pleasure in developing the fine home farm.  When twenty-one he started out for 
himself, first leasing about eighty acres, and then added various tracts of 
land, from time to time, near his home; but in 1884 he went into Southwest 
Kansas, and preempted a quarter-section of government land in Kiowa County, at 
that time Indian trust land.  He lived in Kansas for four years, but when he was 
compelled to go through three consecutive years of drought, he was forced to 
give up his preemption, and this led to his coming out to California and into 
Sutter County, where he settled at Meridian and worked for wages on ranches.  He 
leased a ranch of eighty acres about seven miles southeast of Meridian, and 
there in that neighborhood added to the leased land until he operated between 
600 and 700 acres, devoted to the raising of beans and grain.  He then bought 
280 acres seven miles to the southeast of Meridian, and operated that tract, 
while he continued to lease in addition.  He also added to his purchase five 
years later another 120 acres, and continued to buy, so that today he owns 603 
acres of excellent farming land.  In national politics a Republican, Mr. Burmood 
nevertheless looks upon local candidates and issues in a broad, non-partisan 
manner, and always seeks to support what is best for the community.
 
History of Yuba and Sutter Counties, Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, 1924
p 1202