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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