Alameda County Biographies

WILLIAM POINSETT

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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


 
            This old settler, whose portrait appears in this work, was born in 
Burlington County, New Jersey, February 1, 1830; there received his education, 
and resided on a farm until he attained the age of twenty-two years, at which 
period he came to California, sailing from the city of New York on July 6, 1852, 
by way of the Nicaragua Route, and arriving in San Francisco on the 2d of August 
of the same year, the trip being made in the remarkably short space of 
twenty-seven days.  A short time after landing he crossed the bay to what is now 
Alameda County, and found employment at Alvarado, but at the end of sixteen 
months he rented land and embarked in farming operations on his own account, 
where he continued until the fall of 1856, when he removed to San Pablo, Contra 
Costa County, and until 1858 followed the like occupation there.  He then moved 
his family to Berkeley, where he has since made his home.  Mr. Poinsett has 
under cultivation about six hundred acres of land, which is leased, and the 
thriftiness of his surroundings shows the good practical farmer that he is.  He 
has paid out sixty thousand dollars as rent for land leased in fifteen years 
past.  He has held the position of Town Councillor of Berkeley, but has never 
aspired to other public functions, being contented with his lot as a tiller of 
the soil; indeed, he has never had any other ambition; and, strange to say, he 
is one of the very few that, on first arrival in the country, did not tempt 
fortune in the gold-producing regions.  It is such men as he that help to make a 
country like the United States what she is.  By an honest and upright course of 
action through life, he has earned the well-deserved respect of his 
fellow-citizens, and his own honesty has brought, not only a fair share of this 
world�s goods, but the contentment only to be gained by a knowledge that he has 
won the praise of �Well done, thou good and faithful servant!�  He married in 
Oakland, October 28, 1858, Mrs. Horner, adopted daughter of Joseph H. Coombs, 
formerly District Attorney of Alameda County, and has a family of five children, 
viz.:  Harvey, Elwood, Alice, William, and Anna May.
 
History of Alameda County, California�, Oakland, M.W. Wood Publ., 1883, p. 960-961