Mendocino County Biographies

Benjamin W. Day

Transcribed by: Pat Howard

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

	Born at Independence, Jackson county, Missouri, June 8, 1850. 
In 1853 he, in company with his parents and two brothers, crossed the plains to 
California, arriving at Diamond Springs in September, where the father opened a 
hotel, which he conducted until August, 1854. Sometime during the summer of that 
year the youngest son died; and in the fall of the above year the remainder of 
the family took passage on the steamer Yankee Blade for the East. When near Los 
Angeles the steamer was wrecked, but the passengers succeeded in getting ashore. 
The Day family then settled at Los Angeles, where the father engaged in 
hotel-keeping until 1855, when they went up to Michigan Bar, Sacramento county, 
where he kept hotel until the summer of 1858. He then engaged in the same 
business at Suisun, Solano county, until the summer of 1859; he then conducted 
the same business at Magnolia Station, Sacramento county, until January, 1860; 
then moved to Colusa, where the father resumed his former business until he 
died, May 20, 1861. The subject of this sketch then, at the age of eleven years, 
engaged as clerk in the drug-store of J. H. Woods, at Colusa, where he remained 
until September, 1864. July 31, 1863, his mother died from injuries received on 
July 30th by the falling of a porch at a mass-meeting at Marysville. In October, 
1864, Mr. Day came to Mendocino county and lived with his uncle, William Day, 
until 1868, when he returned to Colusa, where he was employed for two years by 
Gibson & Calmes as book-keeper. In 1870 he returned to his uncle in Potter 
valley, where he remained until the spring of 1873. Being discontented he took a 
trip to the upper portion of the State, and was gone about four months. He then 
returned to Ukiah and was employed in the bank as book-keeper until September, 
1875, when he was elected County Recorder, which office he held for two terms. 
Married, September 11, 1878, Miss Nettie Siddons, a native of California.
 
SOURCE: History of Mendocino County, California - San Francisco, Cal. Alley, 
Bowen & Co., Publishers. 1880 Pp. 635, 636