Yolo County Biographies


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



 
E. HARLEY
 
a farmer of Yolo County, was born in 1815 in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 
about thirty miles north of Philadelphia, where his parents also were born.  The 
name Harley is English, and the first emigration to this country was that of a 
Mr. Harley who was an Englishman, and his wife, who was a German woman; and it 
is said that their descendents in this country now number 300.  The father of 
the subject of this sketch changed his residence several times in Pennsylvania, 
and in 1827, probably, he moved to Stark County, Ohio, and several years 
afterward to Montgomery County, same State, and in 1840 to McLean County, 
Illinois, at which time he had six sons.  In 1850 the youngest son, Aaron, and 
the subject of this sketch, in company with others, crossed the plains to 
California, with a mule team, stopping first at Diamond Spring, near Hangtown 
(now Placerville), August 9.  Until the fall of 1851 Mr. Harley, our subject, 
was in the mines, and then with others settled in Yolo County, engaging in 
agricultural pursuits.  At that time there were very few settlers in this 
region, and there was neither town nor village west of the Sacramento River in 
that county except Fremont, merely an initial point at the mouth of Feather 
River.
            Mr. Harley�s first wife passed away in 1847.  In 1877 Mr. Harley, 
for his second wife, married Miss Powell, also a native of Pennsylvania, and 
they have one son, nearly twelve years old. Their home is in a very fine part of 
Yolo County, probably as good a section as any in the State.
 
Memorial & Biographical History of Northern California, The Lewis Publishing 
Co., 1891
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler