San Diego County Biographies
 
HENRY L. SHAUG

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


a native of Mason County, Virginia, was born December 8, 1832. His paternal 
grandfather was a physician and came to America from Germany in 1742, settling 
in Pennsylvania. In 1793 he moved to the town of New Lancaster, Ohio, and spent 
the rest of his life there. He died at the advanced age of eighty-nine. He had 
three
sons, one of whom never married; another married and had but one child, a 
daughter. The family name would have been lost had it not been that Mr. Shaug's 
father came to the rescue and had a family of fourteen children. Mr. Shaug's 
father and his father's brothers were all physicians. His parents were 
Methodists. His mother, Mrs. Sherwood Shaug, a native of Cornwall Township, 
Connecticut, was born in 1801. His father, William Henry Shaug, was born in 
1792, in the town of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and was married to Miss Hannah 
Sherwood, daughter of Mr. John Sherwood, a landowner and farmer, of English 
descent. His father was commissioned a surgeon in the war of 1812. He resigned 
that position and was commissioned by President Monroe an ensign in the regular 
army, and served all through that war. In the year 1808 he went down the Ohio 
and up the Mississippi river in a keelboat and landed at the then little village 
of St. Louis, Missouri, which had only a few houses. He died in 1859, at the age 
of sixty-seven.
        Mr. H. L. Shaug was the tenth child and spent his boyhood days on the 
farm, going three months in a year to a little country school. When he was 
fourteen years of age his father moved to Farmington, Iowa. He served an 
apprenticeship of two years in a drug store in Keokuk, Iowa, and then went to 
Hannibal, Missouri. In 1852 he crossed the plains with an ox team in company 
with seventeen pioneers. The company was organized by Captain Hoke. They landed 
in Calaveras County in August, 1852. In 1854 that county was divided, and that 
portion which he was in became Amador County. He was a miner there until 1860, 
when he went by the way of New York to Iowa and there engaged in the art of 
photography, which he followed until 1873, when he returned to California and 
settled in Los Angeles. He afterward removed to San Fernando valley and engaged 
in merchandising for seven years. In 1880 he went to Pomona, where he engaged in 
horticulture and agriculture, remaining there until the fall of 1885, when he 
removed to San Diego County, Thermal Heights, two and one-half miles east of Del 
Mar, where he located on 160 acres of Government land, 100 of which he has 
cleared, and built for a permanent home a house which cost $2,600. He has 
planted 400 deciduous trees, of nearly every variety, which are just commencing 
to bear; he has 200 olive trees and about 2,000 grapevines, consisting of raisin 
grapes and four kinds of the choicest table grapes. He is growing a very choice 
new variety of pop corn (Queen's Golden), a great yielder and considered the 
best in the United States. It has yielded as high as forty bushels to the acre. 
He planted three sacks of seed potatoes, from which he gathered thirty-seven 
sacks. It was planted on high land, was not irrigated, and received but one 
cultivation. He raised 2,100 pounds of green peas on one-fourth of an acre of 
land, 500 pounds of Lima beans; has still 200 pounds of dry beans, and there is 
still the second crop to be gathered! This is a new variety, called the King of 
the Garden. He planted one-half an acre in melons, and after the birds had 
destroyed about one-half of them, he sold five large wagon loads of fine melons. 
He has grown on this place nearly the entire list of garden vegetables, and has 
had great success with the Burbank seedling potato, producing a large yield of 
extra quality. His wife is devoting much attention to flowers, and they have 
many rare varieties, including twenty-six varieties of the Cereus.  He has 
purchased five acres of land in Chula Vista, and is going to devote it 
exclusively to flowers. Mrs. Shaug is thoroughly informed on this business and 
will take charge of it. They get water from the Sweetwater dam for $3.50 per 
acre per annum, and the president of the water company, Colonel Dickinson, is 
taking a lively interest in the project, as it will show what can be done in 
producing the choicest flowers.
        Mr. Shaug married, April 3, 1861, Miss Harriet L. Gill, daughter of 
Marcus Gill, a fanner who came to California in 1849. Their union is blessed 
with four children: Ella M., born in Farmington, Iowa, in 1862; Charles J., in 
Salem, Iowa, in 1872; Hugh G., in Ottumwa, Iowa; Marcus Luther, in San Fernando, 
Los Angeles County, California, in 1875. Mr. Shaug and his family are bright, 
industrious, upright and reliable business people.
 
SOURCE:  An Illustrated History of Southern California:  Embracing the Counties 
of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower 
California� Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890.  p.-  182-183