David Carlton Orvis 9 BIGELOW
15326.3214 David Carlton Orvis 9
BIGELOW, son of Adoniram
Judson 8 ( Barna 7 , Silas 6 , Solomon 5 , Samuel 4, Samuel 3, Samuel 2, John 1) and
Martha Jane (Munroe) BIGELOW, was born at Sherman Island
[built by his father], Sacramento
County, CA on 02 November 1875. His marriage was on 29 March 1902,
in Oakley,
Contra Costa County, CA, (or in San Francisco, depending on equally
reliable
family sources) to Theodosia Isabel 8 Bigelow (16B2A.264), who
was
born at the family home on Bigelow Road near Pennington near
Gridley,
Butte County, CA on 27 September 1881. She was the daughter of Marcus James 7
and Clara
Isabel (Parlin) Bigelow. David Carlton died in September 1943,
at age
67 of prostate cancer, and was buried in the Biglow Family plot in
Mountain
View Cemetery in Oakland, Alameda County, California. Theodosia
(16B2A.264)
died 21 July 1971, two months short of her 90th birthday of stomach
cancer
after a short illness.
In 1891, David
Carlton Orvis
Biglow received his share of his father's estate and attended
Stanford University
where he was graduated in Law one year after the pioneer 4-year
class. Herbert
Hoover was in the first class one year ahead of him and was
manager of the
football team on which D.C.O. played center. Charles Dole of the
Dole Pineapple
family from Honolulu was another class member and football player.
D.C.O.
was a farmer at heart, and after five years as a government
employee following college he returned to farming and was a
professional ranch manager. The family
always lived on large ranches, usually between 10,000 to 13,000
acres, including
the Rancho Llano Seco (known also as the Parrott Grant), the
Mexican land
grant originally bestowed in 1845 to Sebastian Kayser, where
D.C.O. managed
the orchards. (More on David Carlton Orvis 9
BIGELOW)
Children of David and Theodosia (Bigelow) Bigelow:
15326.32141 John Orvis, b 30 November
1906,
San Francisco, CA; d 08 September 1926, in a hunting accident,
shot by a
UC Berkeley professor, a family friend, in Garberville, Humboldt
County,
CA, and was buried in the Biglow Family plot in Mountain View
Cemetery, in
Oakland, Alameda County, CA. (also 16B2A.2641)
15326.32142 Eugene
Allen, b 10 Oct 1908 San
Francisco; d 15 Jan 1999 Oakland; m 21 Jan 1938 Albertina
Martha Schweiss
(see below)
Sources:
Bigelow Family Genealogy Vol II , p 347-348;
Howe, Bigelow Family of America;
correspondence between descendants and Bigelow Society
historian/genealogist;
cemetery records: Antioch & Oakland, CA.
FORGE: The Bigelow Society Quarterly;
Vol. 9, No. 2 April, 1980
FORGE: The Bigelow Society Quarterly;
Vol. 28 No.3.
E-mail from: Michael Judson 11 Bigelow mjb5491@gmail.com
15326.32142 Eugene
Allen 10 Bigelow, was born 10 October 1908 in San
Francisco,
CA, 59 years to the day in 1849 his grandfather Biglow had sailed
through
the Golden Gate to San Francisco on a clipper ship. He married
Albertine
Martha Schweiss on 21 January 1938 in San Francisco in a small
church service
with only their attendants present. Martha, as she was known, was
born on
the Fourth of July 1906, Virginia City, Nevada, daughter of Richard
Albert
Schweiss and Mary (Mayme) Daley, both of Virginia City; and died of
a heart
attack, 21 January 1988 (their 50th wedding anniversary) at Fresno,
CA. Eugene
died 01 January 1999, also in Fresno. Both interments were in Biglow
Family
Plot in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, CA.
At the time of his death Eugene had been a
lawyer for
over 60 years, although he finally stopped practicing around 1988.
He subsequently devoted his time to building an airplane hanger on
his property and then purchased
a Piper Tripacer and rebuilt it from the bare framework into a STOL
(short
take-off and landing) plane in accordance with a set of plans. In
fall 1996
the engine had been mounted and lacked only the final fitting
procedures
when a spontaneous fracture of spinal vertebrae, probably secondary
to his
four-year earlier diagnosed prostate cancer, permanently stopped the
project;
although he spent a relatively healthy 1997 in reduced activity,
further
work on the airplane was precluded. A final stressful year of 1998
being
bedridden due to intermittant cancer pain let him only dream of his
life-long
love of flying. However, during a brief two-month health renaissance
his
airplane club friends just days prior to his 90th birthday were able
to fly
him in their private plane up to a national air show for the day.
Still
a licensed pilot at the time of his death, he was able briefly to
take the
airplane controls on the return trip to dance the sky for a final
time: days
later he celebrated his 90th birthday with a garden party and a cake
bearing
the 90 candles, but from then on he steadily declined in health
until he
"...slipped the surly bonds of earth..." about 6 p.m on New Year's
Day of
1999. Eugene led a remarkably interesting and adventuresome life,
having
bridged the horse and buggy to the flights to space. Blessed with a
memory
for events, dates and details, he was a fascinating ranconteur of
events
great and small of the 20th Century, to which many were treated,
among other
places, at wonderful dinner parties put on by his extraorinarily
accomplished, intelligent, and beloved wife Martha, as the dinner
conversations lingered long past the dessert, coffee, and port
(served in the hollow stem crystal wine glasses of his Bigelow
grandfather, an excellent winemaker of table wine
for the family's consumption.) Eugene could recall in detail riding
in 1912
with his mother in a surrey with the fringed top, the first
primitive automobiles
owned by the family, what "station wagon" motor vehicles originally
were
long before the "Woodies" made their appearances decades later, the
first
time an airplane was ever seen, the last major volcanic eruption of
Mt. Lassen
filling the air, the great Panama Pacific Exhibition which gave San
Francisco
the Marina District and the Palace of Fine Arts, and twenty years
later the
building of Treasure Island for the "best" world's fair ever, the
1938 San
Francisco World's Fair, and the list goes on...and on. Having
skipped two
grammar school grades, he and his older brother graduated high
school the
same year, Eugene only being 15 years old at the time but already a
licensed
driver for three years. A big strapping man of 6 foot, 2 1/2 inches
(though
smaller than his father's 6 feet 4 inches), he then worked for two
years
at an assortment of jobs including being office boy to founder A. P.
Giannini
of the then Bank of Italy and America and later for the American
Bridge Company
building railroad bridges through the Delta islands between the
Sacramento
and San Joaquin Rivers. At eighteen he then matriculated at the
University
of Washington, where he was a member of Delta Tau Delta social
fraternity
and president thereof in his sophomore year, where he was
instrumental in
rebuilding the fraternity following the devastation in its ranks
caused by
the beginning of the Great Depression, an event which in many ways
would
mar much of his subsequent life as well. He entered into a combined
law degree
program at the University and then transferred in his second year of
law
school to the University of California's Hastings College of the Law
in San
Francisco. In his last year of law school he was struck seriously
ill, almost
dying from pneumonia in the pre-antibiotic days, and spent years
thereafter
regaining his health. Finally finishing law school in 1938, he
passed the
bar and married Martha Schweiss of Virginia City and San Francisco
in a small
church service with only their attendants present. During this time
one
interesting footnote to history is that he and another man were
working for
the company building the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Their job one
night after
dark was to set and explode the first charge commencing the building
of the
Bay Bridge tunnel on Yerba Buena Island. He also worked for
Commercial Credit
Corporation and then as an insurance adjuster for Employers'
Liability Assurance
Corporation both during college and until he finished law school.
After
practicing law for a short time in San Francisco, he went to Mexico
and owned
and operated a placer gold mine in the Sierra Madre mountains, which
venture
was aborted by the political situation leading up to the entrance of
the
United States into World War II. Returning to California he and
Martha relocated
to Los Angeles where he indulged his love of automobiles by
purchasing and
operating an automobile garage, until at 34 1/2 years old he was
drafted into
the Army, after having earlier been turned down on medical grounds
by the
services when he had attempted to enlist. He nonetheless had an
interesting if very unusual set of war experiences while stationed
at various locales Stateside. Their son was born on Bastille Day in
Cincinnati, Ohio, while Eugene
was on a special war termination project assignment, between the end
of the
war in Europe and the end of the war in Japan, two days before the
beginning
of the Atomic Age, the only family member deprived of a "born in
California"
label in almost 100 years! After the war with his commercial pilot's
license
and an Aircraft and Engine Mechanic's rating but still suffering
with ill
health, Eugene spent ten years in the flying business in Arizona,
building
crop duster planes and operating a crop dusting business, before
returning
to California and practicing law, where his varied life experiences
enhanced
his proffered legal counsel. On May 21, 1953, following long Bigelow
family
tradition, he was initiated into the Masons, Pinal Lodge #30, and
raised
to Master Mason on May 27, 1954.
(Lawyer for 40 yrs., active 1980 but
turned
management over to son Michael. Eugene served in WW II, then
worked for
Commercial Credit Corp., then as an insurance adjuster for Emp.
Liability
Assurance Corp during and between grad. fm. college -- then
finished law
training. He practiced in San Francisco a short time then
went to
Mexico and operated a placer gold mine. During the war he
pur. a garage
in LA until age 34 1/2 when he was called into the military for WW
II.
After the war, with a commercial pilots license and an aircraft
and Engine
Mechanic's rating, he spent 10 yrs. in flying business.
Eugene says
"It is more a help than a handicap to have had so many turbulent
years, it
is as if someone had been forcing me to become versitile so I
could do a
better job for my clients.")
Child of Eugene and Albertina (Schweiss) Bigelow:
15326.32142.1 Michael Judson 11
Bigelow, b 14 July 1945 Cincinatti, OH; d ____ ; 1970
graduate of School
of Law (Boalt Hall), Univ. of CA at Berkeley, manages his father's
law firm--Eugene
Allen Bigelow of Fresno CA in 1980.
More
on
David Carlton:
While at Stanford D.C.O. had met and fallen in love with Ellen
McCaustland, who was born in 1876, one of the seven children of
James McCaustland of Shelby County, Iowa, who had moved his family
to San Jose, California, around 1890. Ellen's Irish-born father
James, according to his descendants, "...a retired farmer and
millwright, looked askance on any man [including the strapping young
Stanford law student and football player] who didn't earn his living
with his hands. Whether James simply discouraged the match or
outright refused to allow Ellen to marry remains a mystery;
different family members tell different
stories. However it happened, and despite the deep affection Ellen
and Carl
[D.C.O.] had for one another, the relationship ended." By 1902 when
James
died, all the McCaustland children except Ellen had married and so
had D.C.O.
to his sixth cousin, once removed, Theodosia Isabelle Bigelow. Ellen
kept
her promise to her father to look after her mother, Luannia, which
she did
until the mother's death in 1927. After D.C.O.'s marriage to
Theodosia ended
in divorce just after 1920, D.C.O. and his two boys continued to
live in
the ranch headquarters house at Middle River in the delta islands,
San Joaquin
County, CA, while the boys commuted daily to high school in
Stockton, CA.
For a number of years D.C.O.'s sister Elizabeth Louise Biglow Logan
came from
her home in Oakland and kept house for them until the boys could
function on their own. After John Orvis's tragic death in 1926,
D.C.O. looked up the McCaustland's address in the San Jose telephone
directory and found the family still listed, and thirty years
afterwards, Ellen still living at home. They married and lived
happily ever after until her death in February, 1941. Ellen's
choice of their wedding present to Eugene and Martha was an
exquistely beautiful
down comforter, and upon her death gave Martha her beautiful Myott
Staffordshire
china, both of which are still being enjoyed in the family.
Modified - 03/09/2008
(c) Copyright 2008 Bigelow Society, Inc. All
rights reserved.
Rod Bigelow - Director
rodbigelow@netzro.net
Rod Bigelow
Box 13 Chazy Lake
Dannemora, N.Y. 12929
rodbigelow@netzero.net 
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