Sacramento Valley Biographies

SETH LEWIS SANFORD

Transcribed by Sally Kaleta, May 2009.

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

         Although nearly three-score years and ten the subject of this
sketch, who resides in the vicinity of Arbuckle, Colusa county, is still
hale and active, possessing the strength and agility of a much younger man.
He was born in Bethel, Vt., October 1, 1839, a son of Solomon and Sally
Sanford. The father, who was a native of Connecticut, settled in Bethel,
where he devoted the greater part of his life to agricultural pursuits, his
death occurring there about the year 1840. The mother subsequently remarried
and in 1844 went to reside upon a farm located in a small town lying south
of the city of Boston. There she spent the rest of her life, which
terminated at the age of seventy-five years. She reared a family of three
children, two of whom are now living and Seth Lewis is the youngest. 

        Seth Lewis Sanford passed his boyhood and youth upon a New England
farm which, to use his own language, was "nothing but a rock-pile," and he
acquired his education in the public schools. At the age of twenty years
(1859) he started for California by way of the isthmus, and at Panama he
boarded the steamship John L. Stevens, which brought about three thousand
passengers to San Francisco, where he concluded a twenty-five days' journey
from New York. After visiting the various mining localities he went to
Sacramento and spent six months upon a dairy ranch. He was next employed
upon a farm near that city for a year, at the expiration of which time he
purchased a teaming outfit and took contracts for the construction of levees
along the Sacramento river. In 1867 he came to Colusa county, settling on a
farm of one hundred and sixty acres located half a mile north of the present
town of Arbuckle. Here he resided until 1879, when he sold that property and
bought the old Arbuckle place (so called) which adjoins Arbuckle on the
northeast. Here he was engaged successfully in the cultivation of grain for
many years, or until retiring from active labor some time since, and his
land, which comprises two hundred acres, is now rented. 

           Mr. Sanford has realized good financial results as a reward for
his many years of arduous labor, and his period of rest is fully merited. He
is interested in the financial affairs of this locality and is a stockholder
in the Bank of Arbuckle. Politically he is a Republican.

"History of the State of California and Biographical Record of the
Sacramento Valley, Cal.," J. M. Guinn, The Chapman Publishing Company,
Chicago, 1906, Pages 514-515.