Santa Clara County Biographies


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



JOHN MILLIKIN, 
 
deceased. The subject of this sketch was born in Westmoreland County, 
Pennsylvania, in 1807. The first five years of his life were spent there, and 
his father in 1812 removed his family to Licking County, Ohio, becoming one of 
the earliest settlers of that State. The son, John. was there taught all the 
duties of an agricultural life, and spent his early manhood in that work in his 
native county. In 1832 he married Miss Nancy Heron, a native of the same county. 
Three years after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Milliken went to La Salle County, 
Illinois, where they established their home on a rich prairie farm. But Mr. 
Millikin's love of a frontier life soon prompted another move, and in 1837 his 
residence was changed to Iowa, where he settled in what was then known as the 
Black Hawk Tract, and continued his work of tilling the soil and raising stock. 
He was there during the exciting times of the Black Hawk War, and was a 
volunteer in the same.
        In 1852 he became one of the large army of emigrants who were straggling 
across the plains to California. Soon after his arrival in this State, he 
settled his family in Santa Clara County, on eighty acres of land, located on 
the San Francisco road about three miles west of Santa Clara, on what is now 
known as Millikin's Corner. Then commenced a useful life (spent in the 
cultivation of his farm), which lasted for twenty-five years, his death 
occurring in 1877. Early inured to hard labor, and possessed of a large amount 
of energy and a strong will, none of the obstacles always to be encountered in a 
frontier life seemed to daunt him. He was always in the vanguard of the army of 
pioneers, who cleared the way for the hosts who followed and built up the great 
centers of American civilization. Mr. Millikin, by virtue of his long residence 
in the county, was well known and highly respected. Naturally he was deeply 
interested in the marvelous development which he had witnessed, and was ever 
ready to assist in every way in his power in bringing about that development.
        By the death of her husband, Mrs. Millikin was left with seven children, 
viz.: Samuel, whose sketch appears in this connection; James, a resident of 
Santa Cruz County; David C., a resident of Los Angeles County, who married Miss 
Mary Nash, of Santa Clara County; Thomas B., a resident of Lompoc, Santa Barbara 
County; Elizabeth, the wife of James Turner, of Gilroy, Santa Clara County, but 
now residing in Fresno County; Mary, the wife of John S. Henning, of Santa 
Clara, now living at Lompoc; and Margaret, the wife of Augustus Hollet, of San 
Jose, also living at present at Lompoc.
        Mrs. Millikin was left to her children for five years after the loss of 
the father, her death occurring in Santa Clara County July 3, 1882.
 
Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, 
Illustrated. - Edited by H. S. Foote.- Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 
1888.
Pg. 560-561