Colusa County Biographies

Joseph O. Zumwalt

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

            Joseph O. Zumwalt was born in Well County, Illinois, March 10, 1835. 
 He arrived in California when only fourteen years old, having come with his 
father across the plains.  His first occupation was in the mines, at which he 
continued till the spring of 1853, when he returned to Illinois for the purpose 
of bringing out stock to California.  He had succeeded fairly well and was now 
enabled to go into the stock-raising business, which he followed for nearly five 
years in Solano County.  He again returned to the States in 1859 and came back 
with one hundred and fifty stands of bees, being about the first bees brought to 
this coast.  Mr. Zumwalt now followed farming in Solano County till the year 
1870, when he moved to Colusa County.  Here he rented what is now his present 
home, one mile south of Williams, purchasing it two years later.  At the home 
place he farms over five hundred acres.  Besides, he is largely interested in 
horticulture, having a vineyard of twenty acres and an orchard of seven acres in 
a high state of productiveness.  Mr. Zumwalt also owns two thousand and three 
acres of land on Stony Creek.
            In 1888 he was elected Supervisor for the Third District.  Although 
a Republican in a strong Democratic locality, he defeated the Democratic nominee 
for that office.
            Mr. Zumwalt was married, at Sacramento, November 5, 1860, to Miss 
Mary Murphy, his family circle consisting of four sons and six daughters.
 
�Colusa County� � by Justus H. Rogers � Orland, CA � 1891 � pp 439