Sonoma County Biographies

JOHN MOFFET

Transcribed by Sally Kaleta, July, 2007.

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

                    Is a native of Mercer County, Pennsylvania, where he was 
born on January 2, 1831. In the spring of 1835 his parents emigrated to Des 
Moines County, Iowa, settling near Burlington on Skunk River, where they erected 
the first mill built in that state. In the spring of 1849, in company with his 
father, brother and brother-in-law, he crossed the plains to California, 
stopping at Mormon Island, Placer County, where they arrived in October of that 
year, and at once went to mining. About one year from this time, Mr. Moffet's 
father returned to his home in Iowa, where he died in 1857. The subject of this 
sketch continued his mining operations till the fall of 1851, when, in company 
with his brother, he returned to the place of his former residence in Iowa. 
Again, in the spring of '52, with his two brothers, he started for the coast, 
bringing a herd of cattle, coming via Salt Lake City, thence to San Bernardino 
and up the coast to Sonoma County, locating on the Cotate Rancho, in Santa Rosa 
Township, arriving there in July, 1853. Mr. Moffet left this place in January, 
1862, going to the gold mines in Idaho, thence to the silver mines of Humboldt 
County, Nevada, in the fall of the same year, and afterwards went to Austin, 
Nevada. In the spring of 1858, and during the great White Pine excitement he 
pushed on to that place, and later became interested in mines in southern Utah, 
in which up to the present writing he is interested. In giving the places where 
Mr. Moffet has been in the mining districts, we have only marked out the 
outlines of his operations. During the many years he spent in the mountains of 
Idaho, Nevada, and Utah, he was actively engaged in prospecting through this 
broad sweep of country, and it is due to his energy and perseverance that many 
valuable mines have been discovered. Mr. Moffet is now a resident of Healdsburg, 
this county, to which place he came in the fall of 1874. We cannot give a better 
idea as to how this pioneer Californian is esteemed by his neighbors and 
fellow-citizens than stating that he has had the honor of being placed in 
nomination by the Republican party to represent Sonoma County in the State 
Legislature, and was only defeated because of its being a Democratic County. 
Married Miss M. A. Martin, a native of this state, in 1874, by whom he has one 
son, Charles Levi.
 
Source: "History of Sonoma County, Cal.," Alley, Bowen & Co., San Francisco, 
1880, p. 511.