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The Candee Genealogy is one of the 'new old' books featured on this site. Recently I was looking for details on William Dunage Candee and his wife Elizabeth to see all the places where they lived in America. As his Candee ancestors were early settlers in America it is very interesting to find out about how their ancestors were amongst the early pioneers who started to move west, settling in the then still wild uncharted western territories.
Over time the Candee family had spread from New Haven, Connecticut all the way to the Pacific Coast. William D Candee moved to the West Coast area in the early years of the 20th Century. To place him in context of the family history he was born in Berea, Kentucky in the 1870s, the son of the Rev. George Candee and Eliza Ogden, who were well known prohibitionists, abolitionists and reformists. George Candee had been born in Volney, New York, in 1831, the son of Asa Candee and Mary McAlpine. When he was very young his parents decided to up sticks and moved to the wilds of Michigan where his father and older brothers built a farm in the deep forest out of logs. So back then the family really was out in the sticks.
William D Candee graduated from Berea College in 1900, and also it was there that he met his wife, Elizabeth Kreger, who was also at Berea College. While at Berea he ran the college printing shop and it must have been this experience that gave him the idea of setting up his own print shop. Shortly after graduating from Berea College, William and his wife moved to Weiser, Idaho where they set up a print shop. Their stay in Idaho lasted only for about two years, perhaps the print shop business did not go so well or better opportunities could be found further west. By about 1903 William and his family were in Portland, Oregon. This also was a short stay and the Candee family moved to where work could be found over the following years. And so William worked in the oil fields of California and as a machinist for the railway amongst other things. He did not earn a lot from this work but, with the earnings his wife brought in by working in kitchens for the railway, it was enough to feed his family. William eventually set up his own machine shop selling a 'Governor' fitted to automobile engines. By today's standards theirs was a very hard working life, but they made a go of it and their children and most of their grandchildren would go on to grow up in California or Oregon.
This is the story of one Candee family, and perhaps typical of the many migratory stories that abound America's history, but William D Candee was by no means the first of that Candee family to "start for the Pacific Slope" In the Spring of 1849 William's uncle, Selden Candee, set off for California. It was in the 1840's that the United States took an interest in California and more people moved out west after the conflict with Mexico. With the promise of free land, and several Gold strikes to help encourage interest, the number of expeditions was on the increase by the end of the 1840s. I have not been able to find out what mining Selden undertook in California, but a good guess would be that it was for gold. After 1848 there were several gold strikes made in California and perhaps it was for this reason that Selden in company with 120 men made a contract with parties that would take them through to California on a 60 day trek. However shortly after setting off the company were unable to fulfil their contract and the majority had to walk the distance. Selden remained only fifteen months in California working the mines, by which time he had earned enough to pay his expenses and set off back East again, going by way of Panama. By the spring of 1851 he had settled on a farm in Clayton County, Iowa.