Santa Cruz County Biographies

WINFIELD SCOTT RODGERS

Submitted by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        Among the men of note and sterling worth who, by that untiring industry 
and assiduous perseverance, always command success, W. S. Rodgers, of Boulder 
Creek, merits that confidence and esteem of his fellow-citizens necessarily 
implied in the public position which he holds. He is the supervisor from the San 
Lorenzo district, to which position he was elected by a handsome majority in 
1888.
        He was born in Placerville, California, October 28, 1853. His father was 
a farmer and stock raiser, and W. S. was the youngest of a family of fourteen. 
He moved to Sacramento Valley in 1858. It was in Sacramento County, at the 
Walnut Grove public school, that most of Mr. Rodgers' limited education was 
obtained.  In 1866 his folks moved to San Mateo County. When Mr. Rodgers was 
thirteen and one-half years old, the demand of his family for another bread 
winner compelled him to declare his education finished. He lived at La Honda, in 
San Mateo County, during the fall of 1868, at which time the family was visited 
with the great affliction of the mother's death. In 1870, when in his 
seventeenth year, he went to Boulder Creek, and subsequently returned to the 
Sacramento Valley and worked on a ranch. In 1874 he returned to San Mateo County 
and found employment with a crew of a threshing machine. In the fall of that 
year he went again to Boulder Creek, and continued to work as a laborer until he 
was twenty-one years old. He then took up some government land, which he 
proceeded to improve and began working for himself. With patience and industry, 
deserving of even greater success, he applied himself to the work in hand, and 
through his efforts and the growth and development of the country he is now 
possessed of a very nice piece of valuable property. That his conduct has 
recommended itself to his friends and fellow-citizens is evinced by the 
statement made in the outset of this article.
        He was married, January 25, 1877, to Cleo E. Wood, of Boulder Creek, 
only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. R. E. Wood. The fruits of the union have been 
seven children, two girls and five boys. His wife died January 17, 1889 (an 
infant child dying twenty hours afterward), and on the 21st of November, 1889, 
death again visited the family circle, taking one of the brightest of his little 
boys, Dalton Cornish.
        Mr. Rodgers is a man of quiet and unostentatious demeanor, but beneath 
this exterior he possesses a strong individuality and much force of character. 
He entertains very decided, and in some respects what the world could call 
radical, opinions. Without parading his views or obtruding his ideas upon 
others, he is a pronounced free thinker, and a splendid illustration of what has 
been often claimed for those of agnostical turn of mind, a man with a code of 
morals absolutely unassailable yet entertaining decidedly unchristian opinions.
 
HISTORY OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.-  E. S. Harrison, 
Pacific Press Publ. Co., San Francisco, 1891