Biographical History
The Waterhouse and Mills families were joined together through the marriage of Leof Mills to George B. Waterhouse in the late 1880s. The Waterhouse family was originally from Long Island, New York, and the Mills family had been living in Chicago, Illinois when Leof and George married. The Mills family owned property in Illinois, Minnesota and Alabama in the late 1800s, while the Waterhouse family primarily owned property in New York.
By the late 1890s, George and Leof Waterhouse, along with Leof’s mother and sister Lyra, had purchased and owned an orchard in Saratoga, California. One of the children of George and Leof was Clark Booth Waterhouse, whose photographs from a 1916 state-wide tour are owned by the Sourisseau Academy, and are in the Clark B. Waterhouse Photograph Collection.
From the guide to the Waterhouse-Mills Family Papers, 1886-1925, (Sourisseau Academy for State and Local History, )
