Eli Hugh Evans
Bio Pen Pictures
SURNAMES: CONE, RICKETTS, PURDON
ELI HUGH EVANS, son of Hugh and Jerusha (Cone) Evans, was born in
Oneida County, New York, June 5, 1824. His father was a native of New
Hampshire and his mother of New York. They both died in New York. Of
fourteen children they reared twelve, the subject of this sketch being
the youngest of the family. At the age of twenty he went to Wisconsin,
where he worked in different parts of the State for four years. In 1849
he came to California, making the trip overland with ox teams. When the
party was organized at the Missouri River, it numbered eighty-one
persons, under Captain Haraszthy. Mr. Evans acted as cook for the mess
to which he belonged. It took them eleven months to make the trip, by
the southern route. The party went into camp twenty-five miles south of
Santa Fe, in New Mexico, where it remained six weeks recruiting the
cattle. The party reached San Diego on Christmas-day. Mr. Evans
remained there about three weeks, when he took passage on a sailing
vessel and reached San Francisco in February, 1850. The next month he
went to the Yuba River mines and began mining, remaining there four
months, when he returned to San Francisco and went into the Redwoods,
back of Redwood City. There he engaged in hauling logs. After going to
the mines again and to the Redwoods back of Oakland, in 1853 he came to
San Jose, where he remained four years running a grist-mill. In 1857,
with some others, he organized a stock company and took a contract for
making a part of the Santa Cruz Turnpike toll-road. In 1858 he bought
his present place, of eighty acres, where he has since resided.
He was married, in 1861, to Jemima Ann Ricketts, who died in November,
1862. In 1870 he again married, to Julia A. Purdon, a native of Oneida
County, New York. They have no children. He has about thirty acres
under cultivation, viz.: 70 French prunes, seven years old, 150
Hungarian prunes, eleven years old, 500 egg plums just coming into
bearing, 25 Columbia plums in bearing, 20 Oregon silver prunes, 100
pears, mostly Bartletts, five years old, 200 apples, twenty years old,
and 150 cherries, some of which are eighteen years old. He also has
about four acres in vineyard, about four years old, with the exception
of half an acre, which are twenty years old.
Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, Illustrated. - Edited by H.S.
Foote.- Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888. page 264-265 transcribed by Carol Lackey-
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