San Diego County Biographies
 
RANFORD WORTHING

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

 
Ranford Worthing, the only son of Henry R. and Amanda Worthing, was born 
September 14, 1839, in the town of Shapleigh, Maine, and shortly after returned 
with his parents to their new home in Waterborough. At the age of eleven he was 
sent to Boston, where he remained at school about a year. Being a very apt 
scholar, being able to read when he was three years old, he was well advanced 
when he returned home, where he attended the district school, assisting his 
father on the farm during vacations until he was seventeen years old, when his 
father set him up in a merchandising business at Kennebunk Depot. He remained 
there but five months, when the store was exchanged for one at Ross' Corner, 
where the firm of H. R. Worthing & Son did a large business for two years. This 
was long enough for the son, whose restless nature began to chafe under the 
monotony of life in a country store, and he concluded to go to college. In 
pursuance of this resolve he attended school at Parsonsfield Seminary and 
Lebanon Academy, and then went to Bates College at Lewiston, Maine. While 
pursuing his studies at Lebanon he made the acquaintance of Celia Augusta Fiske, 
whom he married December 23, 1862, and left school to enter the army; but, at 
the earnest entreaty of friends, changed his mind and engaged in teaching 
school. He had inherited a taste for music and had improved opportunities for 
making himself proficient as a vocalist. His wife, the daughter of a professor 
of music, was a fine pianist, and they accepted situations as teachers in 
Cheshire Academy, Ohio, arriving there in February 1863.
 
During the following summer Morgan made his famous raid through Indiana and 
Ohio, and Mr. Worthing, being a member of the First Ohio National Guards, went 
into the field with his command. After two weeks of rough campaigning, he 
assisted in capturing 3,000 of Morgan's men at the battle of Coal Hill, within 
two miles of Cheshire, where in a vain effort to cross the river into Virginia, 
they had been overtaken. Morgan had ransacked the town and Mrs. Worthing had 
been compelled to cook and serve a fine dinner to Morgan and his staff. The 
school had been broken up for that season and he resolved to take his wife back 
home and join the army. On his arrival he applied to the Governor of Maine for a 
commission to recruit a company for the war, but soon after he received the 
commission President Lincoln called for "300,000 more," and, recruiting being 
slow, he immediately volunteered as a private in the First Maine Heavy 
Artillery. Before being sent to his regiment he was found to be a good scribe, 
and was detailed as a clerk in the Adjutant General's office at Camp Berry, 
Portland. Here he remained some three months, until the news of the Fort Pillow 
massacre of colored troops reached his ears, when he asked for and received 
permission to proceed to Washington to be examined for a commission in the 
colored troops. While there he was subjected to a delay of three weeks on 
account of prior applications, and then, unwilling to wait longer, forced 
himself before the board, received a hurried examination, and was appointed a 
Second Lieutenant, having refused the offer of influential recommendations which 
would have certainly given him a Captaincy. He was then ordered to report for 
duty to General Burbridge, at Lexington, Kentucky, when he was assigned to duty 
in the Twelfth United States Heavy Artillery (colored), with which regiment he 
was on duty about four months of guerilla warfare in the State. Having been 
recommended for promotion over seniors by his regimental and department 
commanders three separate times, and been refused because it was against the 
rules of the regular army, into which his regiment had been mustered, he was 
detached and placed on staff duty. Here he was promoted successively to Post 
Provost Marshal, Post Adjutant, Acting Commissary of Subsistence, Brigade 
Provost Marshal, Superintendent of the Freedmen's Bureau, Judge of the 
Freedmen's Court, and Commandant of the Southern District of Kentucky, with a 
Lieutenant-Colonel's command. Here he served with marked satisfaction for seven 
months, reporting direct to General Clinton B. Fisk, commanding Department of 
Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned 
Lands, until honorably mustered out at the end of almost three years of service. 
Previous to his discharge he had passed and examination, "with special mention," 
before a board convened to examine officers for transfer into the regular army, 
and was placed on the roll for future call. 
 
At the close of his service in the army he went to Missouri with his family, and 
in the city of Macon, with Thomas Proctor, engaged in publishing a weekly 
Republican newspaper, called the Macon Argus. While successfully managing the 
paper he was elected City Clerk, which position he filled creditably. Mr. 
Proctor died suddenly, and Mr. Worthing decided to go south and start and 
agricultural newspaper. While in New England visiting he changed his mind, and 
went into the job printing business in Boston. Through his ability and taste in 
doing fine work he obtained the specimen work of the Boston Type Foundry at a 
very remunerative price. From boyhood he had given evidence of decided 
ingenuity, and while in the printing business it took form, and he invented 
successively an improved mitering and rule-cutting machine, a printing press, a 
supplementary horse-car seat, steamless stove-ware, and a mechanical steam 
apparatus for rendering oil and grease from refuse meat, bones and dead animals, 
without stench. Having made some money, and broken down his health by too close 
application to business and neglect of natural laws, he was compelled to sell 
out his business and change climate; consequently on the 1st day of July, 1872, 
he started with his family for Colorado. His intention was to engage in 
sheep-raising, but on arriving at Colorado Springs and making some inquiry, he 
found that during the previous winter the "sheep men" had experienced heavy 
losses on account of severe weather, and when coupled with the fact that the 
purchasing price had nearly doubled, this discouraged him and he substituted the 
cattle business, locating a ranch about half a mile from the town. 
 
Here occurred a circumstance which showed a trait in his character that has 
always been prominent, and the only thing that has ever made him enemies, and 
that is, never submitting to a wrong, no matter how small, without seeking 
redress of some sort. As a citizen of the United States he had as much right to 
appropriate the public domain as any man, but he found that a few of the older 
settlers had clubbed together and were claiming every foot of available land in 
the vicinity, and driving off with threats and violence every one who attempted 
to interfere with them, and by perjuring themselves in turn for each other, 
obtaining patents from the Government without complying with the law. This 
completely shut out bona fide settlers from obtaining farms or valuable 
Government lands, which Mr. Worthing did not propose to submit to; consequently 
he selected an unoccupied quarter section, and proceeded to build him a house. 
The enraged claimant, who was living on other Government land some two miles 
away, as soon as he made the discovery, interviewed the "club," who, upon 
reconnoitering the premises and finding the occupant working, with a 
double-barreled shot-gun in close proximity, concluded that part of their duty 
to each other had better be abandoned. It was supposed by many who were 
cognizant of the facts that he would be killed, but on discovering that it only 
needed pluck to get what they had a right to, many others followed his example, 
and soon outnumbered the old settlers and changed the programme entirely.
 
The Legislature passed a law in 1873 prohibiting the herding of more than twenty 
head of cattle within two miles of any town, which compelled him to change his 
base, and he traded his cattle for real estate in Colorado Springs. He then 
purchased a saw mill and removed to the southern part of the State, on the 
supposed line of a projected railroad, where he engaged in manufacturing lumber 
and in merchandising until the railroad changed their line and gave him the 
go-by, when he "pulled up stakes" and moved to Lake County.  Here he located in 
a mining district, and, becoming interested in some mining ventures about the 
time of the first discoveries of rich mineral at Leadville, moved there, 
purchased another mill, and with two steam mills, running night and day, 
supplied the lumber with which Leadville was gotten well under way. He had not 
retrieved his losses caused by the shrinkage of values on real estate during the 
panic, and having accepted a large offer for his business in Leadville, 
concluded to devote his entire time to mining pursuits. The summer of 1878 was a 
very sickly season in Leadville, and the fear of losing his children with 
diphtheria caused him to remove to Canon City, where he remained until the 
summer of 1879, when he took his family to Silver Cliff, where he had by this 
time become extensively engaged in mining. In connection with a partner, who 
performed the labor while he furnished the expenses, the discovery of one of the 
largest mines in Colorado was made near Silver Cliff. The mine was so valuable 
that some disreputable parties trumped up a conflicting claim and commenced a 
lawsuit for its possession. Pluck again came to his rescue, and after spending 
$18,000 and risking his life in a personal encounter with pistols, in which he 
got a bullet through his sleeve, he came out of the contest as one-half owner of 
a mine which has since been capitalized in New York at $10,000,000. He is also 
half owner of three other valuable mines near Ruby, Gunnison County, Colorado, 
which are considered to have millions in them. Mr. Worthing is now resting at 
the old home at Ross' Corner, where he has located his family and will remain 
until spring, returning to Colorado to prosecute his mining enterprises. The 
details of this sketch of a busy life will show that, notwithstanding the 
oft-repeated prophecy of his people that he would never accumulate anything, on 
account of his roving disposition, the "rolling stone" does sometimes "gather 
moss."
 
The foregoing sketch of Mr. Worthing's life was published in 1880, in a history 
of York County, Maine.
 
The summer of 1880 found him in Colorado, developing his mines in Gunnison 
County. In 1881. having taken hold of a number of enterprises, he was secretary 
and general manager of the Fiske Consolidated Gold Mining Company, Central City, 
Colorado; president and general manager Augusta Mining Company, Gunnison County; 
vice-president and consulting engineer Boston Gold and Silver Mining Company, 
Colorado, and president and general manager El Gachi Mining Company, Sonora, 
Mexico, with headquarters in Denver, Colorado. In the fall of 1881, on account 
of his children, he decided to make a home in Massachusetts, and purchased and 
fitted up an elegant home in South Lincoln, sixteen miles from Boston. The 
mining boom of 1880, having passed its zenith, was rapidly subsiding, and mining 
stocks became demoralized to such an extent that he decided to quit the business 
by selling out and withdrawing. In 1883 he had completely retired from business 
and settled down at the home he had prepared for and given to his wife in 
Lincoln, expecting to spend his days there in quiet.
 
The name Thing--sometimes spelled Thyng, to try to mitigate the peculiar 
insignificance and belittling effect of such a name--had always been a source of 
annoyance. The name in Maine, where the standing, wealth and respectability of 
the several numerous families had been well known for more than 200 years, 
passed without special notice; but everywhere else it seemed to strike every one 
hearing it for the first time, as intensely ridiculous. Printers could not 
conceive it possible to have such a name, and would invariably make something 
else of it. Children at school would make puns and rhymes with it, until his own 
children's complaints resolved him to make a change; consequently in 1884 he 
made an application to the courts of Massachusetts to change the names of his 
entire family to Worthing, being a combination of his middle and last name, and 
also his first name to the simpler one of Ranford, but retaining the original 
initial.
 
Having a predilection for farming, he was now in a position to gratify that 
propensity and also his tastes for abstruse and occult science. Desiring always 
to communicate to others his conclusions as the result of experiment on the 
farm, and deductions in science, he became a valued correspondent of the leading 
agricultural papers of the State, taking a leading position among the Patrons of 
Husbandry, and occupying the position of Master of the Lincoln Grange and 
chairman of the Committee on Education of the State Grange, until he left the 
State. He has always taken a lively interest in all public utilities, drifting 
naturally into politics, and being a man of strong prejudices, always takes 
partisan grounds and a leading position. 
 
He would in all probability have been a member of the next Legislature of 
Massachusetts had he remained in that State; but he found that the cold of that 
climate was fast ruining his eyes, owing to a peculiar sensitiveness of the 
secretory glands, and he felt compelled to seek a warmer climate at once; so in 
December, 1886, he started south to seek for a location and to test the 
different climates in the South. He spent two months of the winter in traveling 
from Florida to southern California, landing in San Diego the 1st of February, 
1887. This seemed at once to be the new plus ultra of locations, and he at once 
decided to make it his future home. Ranford Worthing is a profound thinker, a 
logical reasoner, and a fearless promulgator of his deductions. He has written 
for publication some of the best scientific conclusions on metaphysical subjects 
that have ever been published. His theories on the scientific basis of so-called 
spiritualism, mind, faith and Christian-science cures, and kindred subjects, 
from a scientific standpoint, are considered incontrovertible, and he will give 
you food for thought on almost any subject you can present for discussion. In 
fact he is a versatile genius. He came to the front very rapidly in San Diego, 
having been elected president of nearly every organization to which he has 
belonged, and at the last city election was proposed for the nomination for 
Mayor in the Republican convention, but declined in favor of another. He is 
chairman of the executive committee of the California State Liberal Union, which 
indicates his religious belief. He is of a domestic turn of mind, has an elegant 
home, where with his wife and five children he can always be found when not 
necessarily away.
 
An Illustrated History of Southern California: Embracing the Counties of San 
Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower 
California, from the Earliest Period of Occupancy to the Present Time.... - 
Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890. pp 237-241