San Luis Obispo County Biographies

HON. L. M. WARDEN

Submitted by Peggy Hooper

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


HON. L. M. WARDEN, a prominent resident of San Luis Obispo County has been a 
resident of California since July 6, 1850. He was born in 1825 in Licking County, Ohio, 
at the town of Granville, and was the son of Gabriel Warden, a farmer who had ten 
sons and three daughters. The subject of this sketch, the eighth son, went with his 
brothers and sisters to a point near Redfield, Dallas County, Iowa, in 1844, as an Indian 
trader. Two brothers and one sister still live in Ohio. He came to California during the 
early gold-mining period, being only sixty-two days in crossing the plains, coming by 
way of Fort Laramie and Salt Lake to Hangtown. After mining for three months he 
engaged in the livery business and staging from Auburn, Placer County, to Yankee Jim's 
and Michigan Bluffs, same county. Three years afterward he went to Napa County, 
engaging in the live-stock trade; then he removed to Mendocino County, where he was 
Sheriff from 1860 to 1868; and then he came to San Luis Obispo County, entering the 
sheep business on the Atascadero ranch, and leased eight leagues of land from General 
Murphy for four years. Then he purchased 3,100 acres on Los Osos ranch and stocked it 
with 12,000 head of sheep in the fall of 1871. The season of 1876 was so dry that he quit 
the business, with only 600 sheep. Since that time he has sold 1,400 acres. This ranch is 
known as Captain Wilson's, where ex-Governor Pacheco was brought up. Mr. Warden, 
a Democrat, was a member of the Board of Supervisors from 1874 to 1878, and of the 
State Legislature for 1878-'79. 

He has a wife, two sons and three daughters: one son and both the daughters are 
married. Frankie E. is the wife of Dr. H. M. Fisk of Chicago; May is the wife of W. 
H. Fisk, of Portland, Oregon; William H. is on the ranch; and Oscar L. is a resident 
of Portland, Oregon. 

History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California  - by 
C.M. Gidney, Benjamin Brooks, Edwin M. Sheridan, Vol I, II.  -Lewis Publ. Co., 
Chicago, 1917.