Amador County Biographies

STEPHEN C. WHEELER

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

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


Is a native of Indiana, having been born November 14, 1828, at the town of Seymour, Jackson county, 
where he resided until 1852, when he migrated to California, traveling across the plains with an ox- 
team, reaching Amador county, September 30th, settling in that portion of it which at that time formed 
apart of El Dorado county. He followed mining some fifteen years with varied success, making, how 
ever, no big strikes. His experience in a gold-bearing lava bed was more interesting than profitable, 
interesting to mineralogists at least, as throwing some light on the method of the superficial deposit 
of gold. Most of his mining was done in Amador county, his family, during the time, living on the 
ranch which he is now cultivating, about two miles west of Plymouth. Since 1867 Mr. Wheeler has 
paid more attention to agriculture as more sure, if not so brilliant in its results, than mining. 

He is also interested, with another party, in the introduction of the " Asbestine Sub-irrigation Pipe," 
which, it is thought, will be generally adopted, and work a great revolution in the method of irrigation, 
as agriculture, in many places, depends upon an economical use of water. 

He was married February 21, 1850, to Miss Mary E. Thompson, a native of Indiana. His family consists 
of himself, wife and ten children, five sons and five daughters, two of the daughters being married. 

History of Amador, California With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches 
of its Prominent Men and PioneersOakland, California, Thompson and West, 
1881.