Samuel E. Fitzhugh is a native of New Madrid County, Missouri, born February 7, 1822, a son of Samuel E. and Margaret (Ruddle) Fitzhugh, natives respectively of Maryland and Missouri, and of Irish origin. John Ruddle was a soldier in the war of 1812. The subject of this sketch is the third in a family of nine children. His father moved from Missouri to Kentucky in 1833, where the family grew up. Mr. Fitzhugh was married in St. Louis, in 1845, to Caroline McKee, a native of Pennsylvania, but reared in Kentucky. She is the daughter of David and Eliza (Dehaven) McKee, both born in Pennsylvania, of Irish parentage. Subsequent to his marriage Mr. Fitzhugh moved to Texas, where he lived for five years.
When the war came on he enlisted in the Eighteenth Texas Volunteer Cavalry, Company C, Colonel Darnell’s regiment, and served in the Confederate Army for a period of four years. After the war he joined his family in Texas and soon set out for Arizona, where he tarried two years, and then came to California. They arrived here in March, 1866, and he at once bought twenty acres, where he has since lived, three miles east of San Bernardino, for which he paid $15 per acre. It is now highly improved and worth at least $300 per acre. He hauled the lumber in his house from the mountains, a distance of twelve miles.
For eighteen years he followed teaming on the mountains. He was the father of eight children, five of whom are still living, viz.: Charles E., the oldest, is engaged in the cattle business in Arizona; Caroline. now Mrs. Fred Rable, of Santa Ana; A. J., wife of John Pop-pet, of San Bernardino; Mary A., wife of William Morton, and Allen J. Mr. Fitzhugh and wife are both members of the Christian Church, of San Bernardino. Politically he is an intelligent supporter of the Democratic Party.