A. M. Winn

Major General Albert Maver Winn (1810 in Loudoun County, Virginia – August 26, 1883, in Sonoma, California), was an American military officer, politician, Odd Fellow, freemason and founder of the Native Sons of the Golden West.

Winn was a native of Virginia who came to California on May 28, 1849, and settled in Sacramento on June 25 of that year. He immediately became active in civic affairs and in the fall of 1849 was elected to Sacramento's first City Council in and selected as its President, he was ex-officio the first mayor of Sacramento. But unlike his successor, Hardin Bigelow, he was not elected directly to the office. He went on to be appointed the State Adjutant General and an early proponent of the small business community and labor reform movement. He remained in the state until his death and is remembered as one of the State’s Founding Fathers.

General Winn not only made his contributions to the civil and military beginnings of Sacramento, he was a prime mover in the fraternal and religious life of his community as well. He founded the Sons of the Revolutionary Sires, later the Sons of the American Revolution, and was its first President. In 1851 he organized the Sacramento Odd Fellows General Relief Committee and he was elected its first president. He also was instrumental in the establishment of Grace Church (later St. Paul’s), the first Episcopal church in Sacramento, of which he was both an officer and communicant. Winn was also a Mason. Indeed, his granddaughter wrote, “We are told that the general belonged to every fraternal society in Sacramento in the early days and it is quite probable that this is true.” He founded the Native Sons of the Golden West (NSGW). General Winn died at Sonoma on August 26, 1883, and was buried in Sacramento.

His family moved to Zanesville, Ohio, where he attended a one-room school and, at the age of 16, became a carpenter's apprentice. It was here that he began his interests in civic association which he later came to exemplify. In 1829 he married Catherine Gaffney in Zanesville, and they moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1832.

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