William Martin Rackerby was a postmaster for whom the town of Rackerby was named.

He arrived in California in 1849 with his parents, Joseph and Cynthia A. Rackerby. He was nineteen years old. He worked as a gold miner in Georgetown for a year and then tried farming on Cache Creek in Yolo County. In the early 1850s, he came to Browns Valley as a quartz miner. He married Ruth Adams Rackerby in Marysville and they had five children: Undine Rackerby Alberts, Vesta Rackerby Clark, Paul A. Rackerby (who became a Yuba County deputy sheriff), Wirt Rackerby, and G. C. Rackerby. The family moved to Marysville in 1881, and William Rackerby worked in real estate there until 1884, when they moved to the town now known as Rackerby. At that time it was called Hansonville, after James H. Hanson, who with R. M. Johnson had built a house there in 1856 and established in that house the first post office, store, and hotel.

In Hansonville, William Rackerby worked as a merchant and rancher and also as the postmaster. In those days, it was common for many towns to be named for their postmasters, just as Hansonville had been. (In fact, Hansonville had already been renamed after a postmaster once before: from 1866 to 1873 it had been known as Paulinville, after postmaster Paulin Rouze. The name had been changed back to Hansonville when Rouze left the position.) In 1892, William Rackerby petitioned to rename Hansonville after himself, because he was the postmaster. His petition succeeded.

Rackerby's wife died in 1901, and William Rackerby himself died in 1909.

Links

Paul A. Rackerby from History of Yuba and Sutter Counties, 1924