Alfred Baldwin is a man quite prominently identified with the history of not only Santa Cruz County, but of the State of California. His birthplace was near Albany, New York, and the date of his birth 1816. While a boy, he read Lewis and Clark’s tales of travels and adventures in Oregon, and was seized with a desire to go West. In 1845 he joined the emigration at Independence, Missouri. One of his main reasons for coming West was that he wished to live in a milder climate than that of the East. With this thought still in his mind, he traveled next year from Oregon to California, in company with Richard C. Kirby. They arrived at Yerba Buena in August, 1846. In 1847 Mr. Baldwin came to Santa Cruz, but returned to San Francisco the same year. There he found a party of United States recruiting officers, seeking volunteers to uphold the flag during the troublesome scenes then being enacted here. Mr. Baldwin enlisted for sixty days under Purser Watmaugh, of the sloop-of-war Portsmouth, he acting as captain of the company. On the expiration of his term he re-enlisted under General Fremont, who, with a troop of three hundred and forty men, embarked at San Francisco, and set sail for Los Angeles, but, meeting on the way a vessel with orders to that effect, landed at Monterey and proceeded southward overland. The movements of this little army are now a part of history.
On his second discharge from the army Mr. Baldwin began working at this trade as a shoemaker in Santa Cruz, and after a short time returned to Yerba Buena, or San Francisco. Thence he went to the mines. He was taken ill during his stay at the mines, and while convalescent superintended Peter Larsen’s ranch, on the east side of the Sacramento River, now Senator Stanford’s Vino ranch, for five weeks at $100 per week, paid him by the foreman, who was impatient to go the mines himself. Returning to San Francisco, he found that his friend Kirby had gone to Santa Cruz, and so again turned his own steps hither. During most of his residence here he has engaged in mercantile business or worked at his trade. He has several times gained and lost considerable sums of money in mining speculations, but has no great desire for riches, preferring the peace and comfort of a placid life to the feverish excitement of the speculator’s existence.
In 1866 he was united in marriage with Miss Fannie Willard, a woman of great breadth of character and intellectual attainments. They had one child, Caroline Willard Baldwin, who is a member of the class of 1892 of the University of California.
History of Santa Cruz County, California
by E.S. Harrison
Published by Pacific Press Publishing Company
San Francisco, Cal., 1892
Transcribed by Yvonne Valentine 1/18/09, Page 234
Santa Cruz County Biographies ~ Archive Biography Index ~ Archive Index
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