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Henry Paddock McCleave. Born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, January 15, 1830. In March, 1849, he emigrated to
California via Cape Horn in the ship "Henry Astor," he being one of a company of ten taking passage as
cabin passengers, and also bringing freight, consisting of provisions, small houses framed and shooked before shipping,
also small five ton sail boats for use on the rivers. After a long and stormy passage of one hundred and eighty
eight days, not landing at any port after sailing, he arrived in Yerba Buena Cove or San Francisco Bay, September
15th of that year. The company, the next day after arrival, took a job at ten dollars per day and board per man,
the job lasting ten days. He then started with his company to the northern mines, stopping first at Colors, El
Dorado county, at General Sutter's saw mills, the place where gold was first discovered, After stopping about one
week they moved their camp into Kelsey's dry diggings, the new diggings being just discovered, and only about nine
men there at the time, They built a large log cabin to winter in, and started to mine, but during the Winter they
disbanded and went to San Francisco, everything in the shape of provisions being very high, Flour two hundred dollars
per barrel, pork one dollar and a half per pound, potatoes one dollar and a half per pound, and miners' boots only
six ounces of gold or ninety six dollars per pair. In the Spring of 1850 he went to Mud Springs, El Dorado county,
and worked a month or two in the mines, making good wages, His acquaintances, having been out prospecting, discovered
what is called Illinois Cannon, about three miles from Georgetown, El Dorado county. They all moved up to their
new diggings and worked there with success until late in the Summer, when he started the first express running
from San Francisco and Sacramento City into the northern mines. This occupation he continued for fourteen months,
receiving for express charges one dollar for every single letter, two dollars for every double one clear of postage
and fifty cents for every newspaper. He would make his trip of one hundred miles from Sacramento in one day, leaving
Sacramento in the morning and eating dinner at Hangtown or Placerville, and finishing his trip through by supper
time, He then sold out his express business, and commenced mining at Mississippi Bar, on the south fork of American
river, building water wheels thirty six feet in diameter with buckets for raising the water thirty feet high in
order to wash the dirt from the bank of the river nearly half a mile off. He then sold out and got a ranch nine
milers from Stockton, and in January, 1853, sold out his interest near Stockton, and in the Spring of 1853 he took
up the ranch or farm now occupied by S. H. Church. In 1854 he built a house and commenced to fence his land, and
married Mary, second daughter of Joel Harvey, by whom he has two daughters living, Mary Eliza and Amelia P., having
lost two sons and youngest daughter. In the Fall of 1857 he sold out and moved into Petaluma, and in 1860 located
on his present estate, consisting of two hundred and twenty acres, where he farms a portion and dairies some
From:
History of Marin County, California
Alley, Bowen & Co., Publishers
San Francisco, California 1880
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