WATSON, MRS. SARAH AMANDA -- The romantically successful career of a long-honored California pioneer is recalled in the interesting family history of Mrs. Sarah Amanda Watson, widow of the late David Watson, an early sheepman and citrus grower, and for years one of the leading merchants of Olive. He was born in Missouri on November 29, 1846, a son of Henry and Tilda Watson, who were married in Missouri and came to California with their family in 1849, when David was only three years old. Of English, historic ancestry, Henry Watson was born in Virginia in 1812, and in his younger years had settled in Missouri with his wife, whose family name was Cox. The call of California, however, due to the discovery of gold, so affected them that they abandoned their comfortable Jackson County home and in company with thousands of other emigrants, hurried across the great plains. They tarried for a while where they first landed, in Sacramento, and then went to Dry Creek, near Marysville, where Mr. Watson had a hotel, at the same time that he engaged extensively in freighting. After a while, he sold out his interests there, and lived successively at San Jose, Watsonville, and Visalia, and he was also interested in the sheep business, in the San Joaquin Valley. For a while, too, he ran a grist mill. In 1869 he came to what is now Olive and became the largest landowner here, buying a part of the Rancho Santa Ana de Santiago, the property of the Peraltas.
David Watson also became a large landowner. His first marriage made him the devoted husband of Mary Ann Field, who died in 1874, leaving him three children: Louis, who is at home with Mrs. Watson; Nealy, the rancher, who is married and lives near Olive; and his twin sister, Minnie, now the wife of Chris Loptien, who resides at Delano. Mr. Watson was married a second time in Santa Ana, in 1875, to Miss Sarah Amanda Stewart, a native of Chattanooga, Tenn., who was taken by her parents to Arkansas when she was two years old, and there lived until her fourteenth year. Then she went to Texas, and there grew to young womanhood, being nineteen years old when she came to what is now Olive, then called the Bull Well Point. There was then nothing at Orange, and nothing worth while at Santa Ana. After their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Watson settled on their ranch at Olive, and Mrs. Watson brought up her three stepchildren.
As has been said, in early days, David Watson was a sheepman; and keeping thousands of sheep, he had a full complement of herders, cooks and other employes. When he disposed of his sheep, he bought a grocery store, which he managed for twenty years. He also became the owner of a grain farm of 300 acres. When he died, he owned the twenty-four-acre ranch at Olive, and also 160 acres near Newhall, Los Angeles County. On this ranch of twenty-four acres, Mr. Watson died on October 17, 1919, after an illness of about four years. He was a member of the Christian Church at Orange and was interred in the new cemetery south of town.
Mrs. Watson, who also owns a ranch of eight acres near Olive, is a daughter of John and Eliza (Wood) Stewart, both of whom were natives of and married in Georgia. Her father was a school teacher and died when she was a baby, followed to the grave soon after by her mother. They left four children. She was brought up by her grandmother, Agnes Wood of Georgia, who passed away when our subject was twelve years of age. Sarah Stewart then went to live with her oldest sister, who was married and resided in Texas; and from the Lone Star State, she came with her brother, Robert Stewart, now the rancher at Stockton, to Southern California, in June, 1869. Mrs. Watson, like her husband, is also a member of the Christian Church. In many ways, her lines have since fallen in pleasant places; and today Mrs. Watson enjoys the esteem and good will of a large number of admiring friends.
