Person:Caleb Greenwood (3)

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Caleb Greenwood (c. 1783 – c. 1850) was a Western U.S. fur trapper and trail guide.

Parentage & Birthdate of Caleb Greenwood

- there are several Ancestry Member Trees and other internet genealogies claiming that Caleb Greenwood was born in 1783, a son of Henry Bailey Greenwood and his wife Nancy Jarvis, but based upon other sources including "Old Greenwood: The Story of Caleb Greenwood, Trapper, Pathfinder and Early Pioneer of the West", by Charles Kelley, and Caleb Greenwood's Wikipedia Biography, Caleb was born in 1763 in Virginia, and could not have been a son of Henry Bailey Greenwood, who married Nancy Jarvis on 29 April 1779 in Bedford County, Virginia.

It appears Caleb may be a more likely candidate as a potential brother of Henry Bailey Greenwood, but additional sources are needed to prove this relationship.

1.   Rootsweb Message Boards.

   Caleb Greenwood left Red River before July 1825. In 1844 Caleb Greenwood appeared in Sutters fort in California, accompanied by his two sons, John and Britton (Henry B.?), Caleb is last noted in 1846 in Lake County, California, (Oroville) in his eighty-third year of life.
   
   http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GREENWOOD/1969-12/0000000017

2.   Kelly, Charles. Old Greenwood, the story of Caleb Greenwood, trapper, pathfinder and early pioneer of the West. (Lexington, Kentucky: Margaret I. King Library, University of Kentucky, 1956).

   Caleb Greenwood was 18 when he shot a sheriff who was serving a judgment on his family in Virginia. Caleb had to disappear quickly but his need added a story to Donner Summit history.
   
   Although Caleb Greenwood had never been all the way to California he nevertheless guided the first wagon train to reach California with wagons and he did it when he was 80 years old. As if that was not enough for an 80 year old man, he made subsequent trips guiding other trains and improved on the original route he took guiding the Stephens Party. At age 84 he was part of the second relief party heading to rescue the Donner Party. Today the town of Greenwood, CA if named for him.
   
   That all came from Old Greenwood the Story of Caleb Greenwood Trapper, Pathfinder and Early Pioneer of the West. Picking up the book with the modern jacket and the 2005 printing date makes one think it’s a modern book but one need not read too far before ones looks more closely for a copyright date. There are some dated and prejudicial terms such as “diggers” for Native Americans, his “dusky bride” who was Native American, and “didn’t speak with forked tongue.” Further investigation shows that book is a reprint of the 1936 edition. This reprint was done to help publicize the now defunct Old Greenwood development in Truckee.
   
   Regardless of the reason for the reprint and the date of the old book, the story of Caleb Greenwood is an interesting story and another example of how they were tougher in the old days. Unfortunately it’s hard to write a lot of history about a man who was not in the news and did not leave much evidence of his life and so the book is short, only 129 pages. The book has a lot of guess work and family legend. We do learn some about the famous explorer though. When he came west in 1783 he probably engaged in the fur trade but he only appeared sporadically in history’s pages. He was married at age 50 and had five sons and two daughters. He died in 1853 at the age of 90.
   
   http://www.donnersummithistoricalsociety.org/pages/bookreviews/OldGreenwood.html

3.   Crosby, Alexander L. Old Greenwood: Pathfinder of the West
   pg. 16.

   The early years of Greenwood are almost unknown. He was probably born in Virginia in 1763. There is a story, told many years ago by the widow of his son William, that Caleb had to flee from home at the age of 18. His father had put up security for a neighbot that had borrowed money. The man couldn't pay. The lender had taken a fancy to teh Greenwood's Negro cook, and he decided to take her instead of the money. Before daylignt one morning he came with the sheriff. The two men seized the woman when she went outdoors to gather kindling. Hearing her screams, Caleb ran out with his rifle as the cook was being dragged away. He fired; one man fell, the other ran off. Caleb went back to the house and said he had just shot a man. The boy's father took a lantern and discovered the lifeless body of the sheriff. Fearing that Caleb might be sent to prison, the father told him to leave Virginia.
   
   Where he went no one knows, but it seems likely that he travelled across the mountains to Tennessee or Kentucky. Later he moved farther west to the Indian Territory. In 1834 Caleb told a missionary he had been living in the Indian country for 26 years, or ever since 1808.
   
   [Page 136]
   Sometime between the fall of 1849 and the spring of 1850 Caleb died, probably at the age of 87. No one yet knows when or where he died, or where he was buried. There are three clues to his death. A forty-niner from Ohio, John Edward Banks, wrote in his diary for March 24, 1850, that he was encamped in Greenwood Valley where Greenwood "was recently found dead under a tree; liquor was his executioner." Next, Colonel John E. Ross, a gold-hunter from Oregon, recalled in 1878 that Caleb died "in 1849 between Bear Valley and Yuba River." Finally, Mrs. Sarah E. Healy wrote at about the same time that Old Greenwood had died in the mining country, somewhere near Oroville.