Sutter-Yuba County Biographies

CLARENCE WILMOT JENKINS

Transcribed by: Kathy Sedler

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


 
Clarence Wilmot Jenkins is a pioneer irrigation-orchardist of Live Oak, Sutter 
County.  His ranch of fifty acres of orchard is situated three miles southeast 
of Live Oak, between the State highway and Feather River and one mile north of 
Lomo.  The ranch-house is a large stucco bungalow with a magnificent live oak at 
each side of the front entrance to the grounds.  One of these grand old oaks is 
the largest in all the country about, and is probably 150 years old.  The ranch 
produces cling peaches, prunes, raisins, dried peaches, apricots and English 
walnuts.  All these products are marketed through the various cooperative 
associations of which Mr. Jenkins is a member.
While he was yet a child, Mr. Jenkins� parents moved from their home in Chemung 
County, N.Y., to the frontier of central Kansas soon after the retreat of the 
Indians and buffalo, and there he grew up on a farm, taught school, attended the 
State Agricultural School at Manhattan, and later the University of New Mexico.  
He entered the Indian Service of the Department of the Interior as expert 
farmer, and was two years at the Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico and 
five years at the Fort Mojave Indian School in Arizona.  For two years of this 
time he did special work for the Reclamation Service of the Geological Survey in 
measuring the flow of the Colorado River at that point.
At the Fort Mojave school Mr. Jenkins met Miss Minnie Galt Braithwaite; and in 
1906 they were married, left the Indian Service, and settled in Richmond, Cal.  
For four years Mr. Jenkins was successively editor of the Richmond Daily Record, 
superintendent of the Contra Costa County Hospital at Martinez, and assistant 
postmaster at Richmond.  He decided to return to ranching and, after 
considerable investigation of different sections of the State, purchased his 
home in Sutter County.
Both Mr. Jenkins and his wife are of old American stock.  The ancestors of each, 
paternal and maternal, were Revolutionary patriots, Mr. Jenkins� being Puritan 
and Mrs. Jenkins� Cavalier.  One, Lieutenant John Jenkins, served on the staff 
of General Washington at the siege of Yorktown and the surrender of Cornwallis; 
and another, William Henry Braithwaite, was first colonial Governor of Maryland. 
 Mr. Jenkins� father was in the Federal army during the Civil War, and Mrs. 
Jenkins� father was a lieutenant in Pickett�s Division of the Confederate army.
Mrs. Jenkins was born in Williamsburg, Va.  A petition of hers to the board of 
trustees of the College of William and Mary, to be allowed to attend the 
lectures at the college, was refused, although ably supported by the president, 
Lyon G. Tyler, and Prof. Hugh Bird.  The college is now coeducational.  Miss 
Braithwaite was teaching in Virginia when she was interested in work among the 
Indians by a missionary friend.  Entering the Indian Service as a teacher, she 
was sent to the Navajo Indian School and later to the Fort Mojave Indian School, 
where she met Mr. Jenkins.  Since her marriage she has been active in club work 
in Richmond, donating space in the newspaper office for the free library started 
by the Woman�s Club, and acting as librarian.  In Martinez she was president of 
the local Woman�s Christian Temperance Union and State superintendent of the 
anti-narcotic work of that organization.
Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins are members of the Episcopal Church, which they attend with 
their three children, Bruce Talman, Raymond Braithwaite, and Dorothy Ballard.
 
History of Yuba and Sutter Counties, Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, 1924
p 819