Sacramento County Biographies

A. P. AND SIDNEY SMITH 

Transcribed by Karen Pratt.

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


 
	Are the sons of Anthony Smith, a farmer of Canajoharie, 
Montgomery County, New York.  Their mother was of an old Connecticut family 
remarkable of its longevity, their maternal grandmother attaining the age of 
ninety-seven years, and her sister, Mrs. King, of Hartford, Connecticut, lived 
to be 103 years old.  When Sidney, the elder brother, was a child, the family 
removed from Canajoharie to Rome, New York, and here on the 6th of January, 
1812, A. P. Smith was born.  In 1816 the family removed across the State line 
into Vermont, settling at Whiting, opposite Fort Ticonderoga.  At that time A. 
P. Smith was about four years old, but Sidney, the elder, a lad of thirteen or 
fourteen, was already engaged in a country store, and when eighteen he went to 
Troy, New York, and entered the store of Daniel Marvin, and he being somewhat of 
an invalid, very soon became the buyer for the firm, making trips to New York 
city for that purpose; he remained in this responsible position until 1827, when 
he went to New York and engaged in the business firm of Henry Sheldon & Co.  In 
1830, in connection with Daniel Peck, who was a fellow-clerk, established the 
dry-goods house of Smith, Peck & Co., of Troy, which later on became Smith, 
Redfield & Co.  In 1835, A. P. Smith entered the store as a clerk, but his early 
training and natural bent of mind toward horticultural and agricultural 
pursuits, induced him in a few years to withdraw, and he engaged in the 
experiment of silk-worm culture, he being among the first to open a �cocoonery,� 
and to engage in raising the Morus Multicaulis, in 1844.  During the wonderful 
excitement consequent upon the discovery of gold in California, Mr. A. P. Smith 
became one of the party of thirty who purchased the barge William Ivy and came 
to California via Cape Horn; as stated, the original ownership of the vessel and 
cargo was vested in about thirty persons, but through gambling, buying, selling 
and trading, during the long voyage, by the time they arrived in San Francisco 
in July there were a half dozen who owned both.  Arriving at Sacramento, Mr. 
Smith at once bought of Captain Sutter fifty acres of land on the American 
River, paying for it $100 per acre, and the firm of Smith, Baker & Barber, 
nurserymen and gardeners, was established.  A full descript