My mother’s father William Leffingwell was a direct descendant of Governor Bradford of Mass. (see Leffingwell Record) and Eunice Bigelow. They were married in Conn. In 1805 their children were Cynthia B., Joseph L., Matilda R., Caroline M., Mary J. William, Adam and Harriet. Harriet dies at age 2 at Pilot Hill Cal.
My Grandmother was a factory girl. She could weave more cloth in a day than any other girl in the factory. She had silver tea spoon made of the first money she earned after she was 18 yr. old. I still have of the spoon they were each spoon made of a 50¢ piece. They have he initials E. B. on them.
Soon after she and grandfather were married they moved to Western N.Y. My mother was born in Conewango, Cattaraugus Co. and about this time, 1838, the Mormon religion going strong, and my people had always been very religious, as they all had to attend meeting in those days grandmother had always sang in the choir and grandfather was a great bible student they were members of the Baptist church. Then Joseph Smith got hold of them and convinced them their souls’ salvation was in the Mormon church or Later Day Saints. My mother was one week old and a very puny baby when authorities decided the Mormons must move out of N.Y. today.
So they started their trek into the great unknown. Grandmother carried her baby on a pillow all that long ox cart journey to Nauvoo Ill., then went to Council Bluff, and Missouri and on to Utah and were there when gold was discovered in ’49. Grandfather had been sent east on several trips of confidence so when gold was discovered he was one of the men picked to take his family on to Cal to get gold for the church. They came on with their ox carts and arrived in Cal Sept. 2 1849, my mother’s 11th birthday.
They came by Donner Lake and Immigrant Gap and I have heard mother tell of the hard time they had getting up the Mts. They spent the first winter at Pilot Hill. Grandfather had a circular saw with him and it didn’t take him many days to find there was more money in lumber than in digging for gold so he set up his mill. It was a water power mill and the first circular saw in Cal. Later he had the first steam engine in the state, later he broke a tooth out his saw and there was no way of getting a new saw so he went to work and invented an adjustable saw tooth. Afterwards, Mr. Spaulding saw it and ask grandfather if he was going to patent it. He said no, he was not and Spaulding ask if he cared if he did. Certainly, said grandfather, go ahead. So Spaulding patented it and made a fortune and poor old grandfather had to buy his saw teeth ever after and never got a penny for his idea. Grandfather sold his lumber for sluice boxes and built the first sawed lumber house there of slabs in which grandmother and her girls ran the first hotel in Pilot Hill, ’49 and ’50.