California Biographies Mendocino and Lake Counties, California Transcribed by Peggy Hooper This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm Source: History of Mendocino and Lake Counties, California With Biographical Sketches History by Aurelius O. Carpenter And Percy H. Millberry Illustrated, Complete In One Volume Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1914 PETER M. HOWARD.� At the time of the arrival of the Howard family in Mendocino county in 1858 few settlers had preceded them to this then iso- lated valley between the mountains and the sea. The fertility of the soil, the value of the great forests and the opportunities offered for cheap trans- portation of products by ocean freight did not interest those early settlers whose thoughts were fixed upon the gold mines or upon business openings in the large cities. An investigation of different localities in Northern California with a view to agricultural development had brought to Mendocino county the father, Mark William Howard, a Carolinian, and a stalwart, rugged farmer, who after crossing the plains from Missouri during the summer of 1856 had settled in Calaveras county with the intention of ranching. How- ever, he soon removed to a ranch near Geyserville, Sonoma county, and from there, in the fall of 1858, came to a great tract of raw land (a part of the Yoka Rancho) north of Ukiah, where he died in 1901 at an advanced age. His wife, Rachael Markham, also a Carolinian, died on the old home place eighteen months after the death of her husband. They had twelve children, and to each one they left a ranch. Eight of the children are still living. The seventh in order of birth in the parental family, Peter M. Howard was born in Missouri in 1850, and therefore was about six years old at the time of the expedition across the plains with ox-teams and "prairie schooner." He became a valuable assistant to his father in the transformation of a raw, unimproved piece of property in Mendocino county two miles northeast of Ukiah into a productive ranch. With the diminishing strength of the father and his own increasing usefulness he ultimately became manager of the farm. After the death of the parent he continued to run his own ranch of about one thousand acres in Coyote valley seven miles northeast of Ukiah, where he followed farming and stock-raising. He made all of the improvements on the place and brought it to a high state of cultivation, which enabled him to sell it at a handsome profit in the spring of 1913. Being, however, a lifelong worker and a man to whom idleness is objectionable, he could not retire to leisure, but instead upon leaving the farm and settling in Ukiah he took a contract for the sprinkling of five miles of country road and this work now engages his attention. He has also purchased thirty-five acres of land adjoin- ing Ukiah. Two children, Arthur B. and Alice C, were born of his union with Miss Nancy Hopkins, who was born near Ukiah and passed her entire life here, dying in Mendocino county.