California Biographies Source: History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California by: C M Gidney - Santa Barbara. Benjamin Brooks - San Luis Obispo. Edwin M Sheridan - Ventura Volumes II - Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL., 1917 This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm ELDERT M. WILLIAMS. One of the American families longest identified with this section of California is represented by Mr. Eldert M. Williams, who lives near Santa Paula and enjoys the fruits of his lemon grove and ranch in that part of Ventura County. His father was the late Edward Benton Williams, who was born in New York City March 7, 1828, a son of Clark Williams, who was born in Rensselaer County, New York, in 1801. The Williams family is of Welsh origin. Clark Williams, who married Lucinda Brewer, was for many years a merchant in New York City, a lumber dealer and also carried on an extensive traffic over the canals and river routes of his day, owning some canal boats of his own. After his education in the common schools of New York State, Edward Benton Williams found work as an employe on the Erie Canal, and during that time lived in Oneida County. He had an intimate experience with all that vast traffic which poured back and forth from east to west and west to east through the Erie Canal and the Hudson River in the days before railroads. At one time he personally owned quite a fleet of boats on the Erie Canal. Coming out to California in 1858, by way of the Isthmus of Panama, he located in San Francisco, where he became associated with his brother, Charles Williams, in the mustard and spice business and for a time had charge of the spice factory of the Hudson Company. He was head workman of that company's affairs in California for over nine years. Selling out in 1866, he soon afterwards came to Ventura County and started the first grist mill in that county at Saticoy. Horse power furnished the motive force, but the machinery was afterwards taken to Santa Paula, where Mr. Williams used water power. He also rented land and was engaged in agricultural operations up to 1885. His sons then bought the Sewell ranch near Santa Paula, comprising 640 acres, and they conducted it until the land was sold in 1906. After that Edward Benton Williams lived retired until his death in 1908. In 1868 E. B. Williams became one of the charter members of the Congregational Church organized at Ventura. He was married in 1850 to Elizabeth Rogers, daughter of Peter and Hester Rogers of Oneida County, New York. They became the parents of six children: Edward D., Eldret M., Fanny, B. H., Llewellyn A. and Charles A. Eldert M. Williams was born in Oneida County, New York, February 3, 1855, and was only an infant when his parents came out to California. He had his early education in San Francisco, but soon after his father located in Ventura County, began working on the farm and around the mill. In 1885 he became associated with his father and brother Edward in the purchase of a valuable ranch of 640 acres near Santa Paula. This ranch they made into a stock farm for the raising of high-grade horses, Durham cattle and Poland China hogs. Mr. Williams had the personal management of the livestock department, and was actively identified with the business until the land was sold in 1906. Mr. Williams then bought twenty acres in the same valley and has since developed half of this to a lemon grove while the rest is hill land. He is a member of the Fraternal Brotherhood, is a republican and a Presbyterian. In San Francisco in August, 1895, he married Miss Ida Elizabeth Hudson, a native of San Francisco and a daughter of J. M. Hudson, a descendant of the Hudsons that C. H. and E. B. Williams were associated with in the early days in California. They have three children: Everett, now sixteen years of age and attending high school at Santa Paula; Catherine, also in high school, and Maynard Edward, aged ten years, and in the grade school.