Santa Cruz County Biographies

A. N. JUDD

Submitted by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        April 26, 1845, A. N. Judd was born at North Lee, Massachusetts. Losing 
his parents at an early age he was thrown upon his own resources at the age of 
twelve years, being equipped for the duties of life with a total of three 
months' education. His first employment was found in Wisconsin, where he worked 
for a stipend of $7.00 per month, and, after pursuing various avocations, he 
finally learned the wagon maker's and painter's trade.
        At the outbreak of the Civil War he was at the Oro Fino River, in 
Honduras. He immediately returned, and on August 9, 1861, he enlisted in Company 
H of the Fourteenth Ohio Infantry. On the 6th of April, 1862, he had his first 
experience of serious fighting, at the first battle of Donnelson, and now 
carries a relic of that engagement in the form of an ugly scar from a severe 
bullet wound in the neck. He was in the front during the first day's engagement 
at Shiloh, "in the hornets' nest," where, to use his own expression, "it seemed 
like one could reach up any time and grab a handful of bullets flying through 
the air." His regiment was part of Prentice's Division, and was in the front 
during the entire day of that desperately-fought battle. General Sidney Johnson, 
that brave leader of the Confederate forces, fell within one hundred yards of 
Mr. Judd's regiment, while leading in person the rebel forces in a last vain 
endeavor to drive back the column which had so stubbornly resisted them. When 
the battle began, at half past five in the morning, the field was covered with 
underbrush and blackberry briers; by ten o'clock it had been swept by the leaden 
hail as clean as a croquet ground. The desperation of this fight is best told by 
the three thousand seven hundred Confederates found dead and wounded in a 
fifty-three-acre field in front of Prentice's Division. As evening approached 
his regiment was still fighting, oblivious of the fact that the right and left 
wings had fallen back, and before they were aware of it they were practically 
surrounded by the enemy and captured; but in the darkness of the rainy night 
that followed, he with two others succeeded in making their escape. He was 
afterwards transferred to Company A Sixth Iowa Cavalry, serving until the 17th 
of November, 1865.
        He was with General Sully's expedition for three years, fighting Indians 
in Dakota and Montana. He was in Fisk's Corral. This historical encounter with 
overwhelming odds of Indians was on the occasion of a train of one hundred and 
twenty-one emigrants, under the escort of forty soldiers, passing through the 
territory of the Sioux in 1864. A wagon broke down, and a detachment of twelve 
soldiers was left to fix it.
        They were suddenly attacked and eleven of them killed. Sergeant Ballard 
made his escape to the main forces, which had taken advantage of the time 
consumed in the massacre, and, dropping the inside wheels of the wagons, thrown 
up a temporary breast�work. The Indians, estimated at nine thousand, surrounded 
them, and as they were armed principally with only bows and arrows, and did not 
desire to risk their heads, they were successfully held at bay for twenty-one 
days. On the seventeenth day Sergeant Ballard succeeded in getting through the 
lines and obtaining relief. It arrived as above stated, consisting of six 
companies of the Eighth Minnesota Mounted Infantry. With this little band of 
beleaguered fighters, eternal vigilance was more than the price of liberty; it 
was the price of life. Fortunately for them, water was obtained by digging a 
depth of twenty feet. Aside from the eleven soldiers who were killed at the 
first charge, there were no fatal casualties, although one soldier was so 
seriously wounded that he now receives the largest pension, $105 per month, of 
any veteran in the United States. In a foolish endeavor to get the scalp of a 
chief whose temerity had cost him his life, he got outside the fortifications 
and was literally riddled. After nightfall the soldiers, guided by the groans, 
crept out and brought him in. Both of his legs were amputated at the hip, both 
arms were cut off, one above and one below the elbow, his nose and one ear had 
been shot away, and yet he survived all that mutilation. This man's name is 
Benjamin Franklin.
        At the battle of White Stone Hill Mr. Judd was wounded in the knee by an 
arrow, which pinned his knee to the saddle. When he was wounded in the battle of 
Donnelson, he was in the successful charge under General Lew Wallace, since the 
famous author of "Ben Hur."
        When Mr. Judd was mustered out, he returned to Chicago, and came to San 
Francisco in 1869, moving three months later to Watsonville; where he has 
resided since, except five years when he lived in Fresno County. At this time he 
was of the first directors in the Fowler Switch Canal Company, which owned a 
canal thirty feet long, forty feet wide on the bottom, and five feet deep, and 
cost $100,000. Apropos of this Mr. Judd is now interested in one of the largest 
irrigating schemes in California. He owns two small farms, aggregating sixty-two 
acres, and three hundred and twenty acres in Fresno County. He has fifty-two 
acres of orchard near Watsonville, and was the first president of the Pajaro 
Valley Fair Association, and is now the deputy assessor for this end of the 
county.
        Mr. Judd was married, in July, 1873, to Caroline Williamson, daughter of 
William Williamson, a prominent pioneer of the Pajaro Valley. Five children have 
been born unto them, four of whom are living, two boys and two girls.
 
HISTORY OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.-  E. S. Harrison, 
Pacific Press Publ. Co., San Francisco, 1891