Santa Cruz County Biographies

R. A. McKEAN

Submitted by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        R. A. McKean was born on Big River, Jefferson County, Missouri, 
September 24, 1829. He came across the plains with an ox team in 1850. Crossing 
the Missouri line on May 11 he arrived at a place called Ringold, near Weaver 
Creek, El Dorado County, California, August 16, 1850. He mined in El Dorado and 
Amador Counties until the summer of 1854, when he went to San Joaquin County, 
being the possessor of $2,000 in gold and a horse worth $900. He engaged in 
farming until 1854, when he left with a span of Mustangs and $300 in debt, 
locating in Mariposa, where he engaged in teaming, which he followed for one 
year, when he sold his team and went back to San Joaquin, where he turned his 
attention to stock raising, and in 1858 went to Russian River, remaining but one 
year, when he came back again to San Joaquin. On the 15th of February, 1859, he 
married Mary C. Dibble, daughter of P. Dibble. He followed the dairying business 
for one year, when he leased Legget's Ferry, on the San Joaquin River, which he 
ran until 1864. He sold eighty head of cattle for $40, some of them having cost 
him $80 a head. He went to Amador County, and for two years farmed and raised 
fruit, coming to Santa Cruz in 1866, where he teamed until the spring of 1868, 
when he left for Adamsville, on the Tuolumne River. He bought and ran a ferry 
for two years here, and pre-empted and paid for one hundred and sixty acres of 
land, but left it, as the title was not perfect. In 1871 he homesteaded one 
hundred and sixty acres of timber land in Santa Cruz County, near the town of 
Glenwood, where he has followed the business of getting out split lumber.
 
HISTORY OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.-  E. S. Harrison, 
Pacific Press Publ. Co., San Francisco, 1891